Welcome to a new day of mad deals, my hands-on look at Assassin's Creed Mirage, and me feeling old again. Why? Because 30 years ago was the first time Aussies could buy Mortal Kombat on Mega Drive, and then enter ABACABB for the blood code. Speaking of, I'm seeing plenty of great deals on the upcoming reboot, Mortal Kombat 1, right here. I genuinely like how it's breathing fresh new life into the franchise with death.
This Day in Gaming
Aussie birthdays for notable games and hardware
- Mortal Kombat (GEN, GG,MS) 1993. Reboot
- Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA) 2001. Sequel
- Commandos 2: Men of Courage (XB) 2002.
- Tekken 4 (PS2) 2002. Sequel
- Rocksmith (PS3,X360) 2012.
- Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (PS3,X360) 2012.
- Rhythm...
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In some big Sims news today, EA has confirmed that The Sims 5, codenamed Project Rene, will be “free to download when it's ready."
“This means that when Project Rene is ready and fully open to players, you will be able to join, play and explore it without a subscription, core game purchase or energy mechanics,” EA elaborated in a blog post today during a new Behind the Sims presentation. “We want playing to be super easy for you to invite or join friends and experience new features, stories and challenges.”
The blog post went on to say that the next Sims game won’t replace The Sims 4, but that the two will exist “side by side": "We will continue to support both at the same time and will plan to bring more exciting content to The Sims...
To say I've taken a stab at the Assassin’s Creed franchise would be quite the understatement. An understabment. I took my oaths in 2007, at the altar of Altaïr. I’ve gone under the hood of more than 15 games in this killer series about serial killers. I've spent 2,454 years “consciousness commuting” in an Animus. Whenever a new AC is announced, my ears prick up quicker than dual hidden blades.
That said and while the last few Animus updates were interesting, I miss the time when Abstergo’s fancy sunbed was an undisputed killer app. Every new ARPG revision since AC: Syndicate (2015) has required a bigger leap of faith on my behalf, though the franchise's throughline—making interesting slices of history come to life with death—has...
Game developers aren't happy with a new policy from Unity that will cost developers a small fee every time someone downloads a game built on Unity's game engine.
It's called the Unity Runtime Fee, and the new pricing model will apply to developers who reach a certain amount of installs and revenue.
"We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user," Unity's announcement reads in part. "We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share."
The Unity Runtime Fee is scheduled to take...
So you’ve made your way out into the Starfield and embarked on a journey to discover the secrets of the known universe. But what happens at the end of Bethesda’s latest RPG?
If you’ve reached the end of Starfield, you might be wondering exactly what you just experienced. Luckily, we’re here to help you make sense of it all. Read on below for our explainer on just what exactly happens at the end of Starfield, and what waits for you afterwards.
Warning, full spoilers ahead beyond this point for the end of Starfield.
Starfield's Biggest Secret, Revealed
On the surface, Starfield is a highly straightforward game. You play as an Asteroid miner who encounters a mysterious artifact that sends you on a vision quest. Following this...
Apple says its iPhone 15 Pro represents the "next generation of mobile gaming", with support for console and PC games previously unavailable on mobile hardware.
Revealed at today's Apple Wonderlust Event, iPhone 15 Pro is getting a lineup of AAA games, including native versions of Resident Evil 4 Remake, Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding, and Assassin's Creed Mirage. Apple also teased huge performance upgrades and ray tracing for gaming on iPhone.
This represents a huge milestone for mobile gaming, as Assassin's Creed Mirage's release on iPhone 15 Pro will mark the first time that a console/PC Assassin's Creed game will run natively on iOS. Not to be confused with cloud streaming or the upcoming mobile-only Assassin's Creed...
CD Projekt has announced a new The Witcher board game, subtitled Path of Destiny.
The developer is working with Go On Board on The Witcher: Path of Destiny, which is set within The Witcher universe.
The Witcher: Path of Destiny is a new board and card game based on the stories from author Andrzej Sapkowski’s works. Players assume the role of heroes of the Continent, including those making a comeback from CD Projekt’s own The Witcher 3, such as Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer. There’s a dark fantasy story and “complex”, strategy-focused gameplay.
CD Projekt said it “closely supports” the creators at Go On Board in matters of design, visual aspects, and lore accuracy. The game’s author is Łukasz Woźniak (The Witcher: Old World, Valhalla...
CD Projekt has announced a special Phantom Liberty-themed episode of its Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire video series.
It’s set for 8am PDT / 5pm CEST on Thursday, September 14. In it, representatives from CD Projekt will talk about new radio stations coming to Cyberpunk 2077, gameplay improvements, new abilities, and learn about new character Reed from Idris Elba himself.
Interestingly, CD Projekt teased “a surprise or two”.
The Cyberpunk 2.0 update launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC alongside the Phantom Liberty expansion on September 26. For more, check out IGN’s hands-on impressions of Phantom Liberty.
This week, developer CD Projekt warned PC players to double-check their rigs are up to the task. Lead scene...
Even as the Nile gleams beneath monumental pyramids and the looming chaos of the Late Bronze Age Collapse nears the shimmering shores of the New Kingdom in Total War: Pharaoh's grand campaign, there's still a certain pesky scarab in the sand. Total War fatigue is real. I've been playing this series since the original Shogun over 20 years ago and seen so many permutations of the formula that it's hard for me to get excited about it again. Especially when I could be playing Total War: Warhammer, which has dragons, hydras, and wizards…
…which is why the couple dozen turns I put into Total War: Pharaoh were so surprising. This ancient sandbox really has gotten me excited about a classic swords-and-sandals Total War again. It's a familiar...
Last week, a Starfield player stuffed 20,000 potatoes into their ship’s cockpit, then attempted to close the door. The clip went viral, with awe-struck reactions from players and game developers alike.
But we weren’t just impressed at the audacity of someone going through all the trouble of gathering that many potatoes. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman called the clip “mind-blowing” because all of the potatoes “have physics.” But what does it mean for something to “have physics”? Why is everyone fussing so much about a pile of 20,000 tumbling potatoes in a game about being a cool space explorer?
We spoke to a number of game developers to get their insight on what’s really going on in the potato clip, why more games don’t let players...
The Mortal Kombat 1 launch trailer doubles as a Reiko and Shang Tsung gameplay trailer, revealing a first look at a pair of suitably gruesome fatalities.
The potentially NSFW trailer, below, shows off story elements lifted from cutscenes of the new Shang Tsung, who is reborn in the universe created by Fire God Liu Kang. Shang’s famous shapeshifting magic is present and correct, and lets him morph into his opponents and copy their moves.
We also see Shang Tsung’s fatality (shown off in the slideshow of images below). This fatality shows the evil sorcerer open a wound in his hapless opponent’s chest, pour some foul concoction in the hole, then sit back as a demonic horror bursts out for a savage bite. You can see why fans have already...
The First Descendant is an upcoming next-gen looter shooter, built using Unreal Engine 5, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Nexon has just introduced Sharen Julicia, a half-woman, half-machine hero that's going to deal some serious damage up close. Check out her gameplay reveal trailer above.
Gameplay-wise, Sharen uses camoflauge on approach and retreat in order to get in up close, where she is particularly lethal. Her passive skills include Assassinator, in which she does more damage to enemies who are not targeting her.
Her active skills, meanwhile, include: Cutoff Beam, which is an electric beam attack that adds an Electrocution effect; Active Camoflauge, which obviously hides her until she attacks. But when it ends, it triggers...
With the past few games in the series it's felt like Assassin’s Creed has lost a little bit of what made it so special back when it launched in the late 2000’s. Don’t get me wrong: Odyssey and Valhalla were extremely solid RPGs that offered a vast and unique setting and a definite bang for your buck in the runtime department, but there’s something about those games that didn’t necessarily feel necessarily “Assassin’s Creed” due to their hefty open-world settings and heavy RPG gameplay mechanics. Thankfully, the next installment in the franchise is Mirage, and based on my playtime with it so far, it manages to capture what made the series so special and brings the social stealth history simulator back to its roots in the best way...
CD Projekt Warns Cyberpunk PC Players to Check Their Cooling Systems Ahead of Phantom Liberty Launch
Ahead of the launch of the Phantom Liberty expansion and 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077, developer CD Projekt has warned PC players to double-check their rigs are up to the task.
Lead scene programmer Filip Pierściński took to X to ask Cyberpunk PC players to check their cooling systems in particular.
“We use all that you have, so workload on CPU 90% on 8 core is expected,” Pierściński said. “To save your time please run Cinebench or similar and check stability of your systems.”
Cinebench is a free cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's hardware capabilities. Pierściński focused on cooling systems due to concern players may hit “thermal throttling”, which in turn may result in poor performance or even crashes.
In...
The recently released NBA 2K24 is currently the second-worst-rated Steam game of all time after a backlash from PC gamers.
The $60 basketball game, developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K, has an “overwhelmingly negative” user review rating on Steam, where players are tearing the PC version apart.
The long list of complaints include the fact the PC version is yet again not on par with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S version (the PC version of EA Sports’ FC 24, for example, is on par with the current-gen console version), rampant cheating, and a lack of cross-play in key modes.
The furore is fuelled by a PC playerbase who are fed up with the state of the game on their platform, with anger coming to a head now the...
From the city street shootouts of Heat to the creepy clown masks found in The Dark Knight’s opening moments, there’s something alarmingly alluring about the Hollywood bank heist fantasy. Fortunately, the excellent Payday series has been letting me live it out for more than a decade without needing to establish a rap sheet of my own. The next chapter in this long-running burglary simulator, Payday 3, recently concluded its open beta before we all get to filch the final version later this month – and though this early look was only a limited snapshot of what’s to come, it already feels like a significant step up from the lawbreaking of Payday 2. After twelve hours of smashing and grabbing, I’ve got a whole lot more left to see in the full...
Ubisoft could potentially launch somewhere between the middle of September to the middle of October after being denied certification by PlayStation and Xbox.
In a written update, producer Mark Rubin said that Ubisoft started the certification process for XDefiant on PlayStation and Xbox at the end of July. However, in mid-August, Ubisoft found out that the game received a Not Pass. If it had passed, then XDefiant would have been released at the end of August.
Now, Ubisoft has to search for compliances and functionality bugs within the game and fix them so that it can ship. Ubisoft plans to submit to first party platforms for certification again in less than two weeks. If the game passes, then it can officially be released by middle...
Bethesda’s leviathan space adventure Starfield is out in the wild, and players are busy exploring the countless planets and stars that populate the sprawling RPG. To mark its release, IGN is taking you on an orbital tour of Starfield's digital solar system, featuring every major planet around Earth's star, with a few of the choicest moons thrown in along the way.
Starfield’s representation of our little corner of the Milky Way is an impressively faithful rendition of the real thing, boasting planets with realistic textures and models that feature many of the major geological characteristics observed by spacecraft like Cassini and Juno.
Of course, Bethesda’s imagining of the solar system is not meant to be a carbon copy of the one we...
The Life Is Strange franchise has taken on a second life outside the video game world, expanding into a series of spinoff comics and novels. Now Titan Comics is back with a new limited series called Life Is Strange: Forget-Me-Not.
All week long, Titan will be revealing the cover art for Life Is Strange: Forget-Me-Not #1. IGN can exclusively debut the first cover, illustrated by Barnstormers artist Tula Lotay. Check it out below:
Life Is Strange: Forget-Me-Not is set after the events of 2021's Life Is Strange: True Colors. The series is written by Zoe Thorogood (Joe Hill's Rain). Life Is Strange: Dust artist Claudia Leonardi and colorist Andrea Izzo are both returning for the new series. Here's Titan's official description for Life...
It’s a new era for EA Sports’ football games, with the long-running FIFA series no more. EA FC 24, due out later in September, is EA Sports’ first non-FIFA game, and with it comes a fresh assessment of the real-life footballers whose virtual counterparts star in the game.
Today, EA has revealed the top 24 men and women’s ratings for FC 24, confirming who the developers at EA Sports reckon are the four best footballers on earth.
FC 24 has four players with an overall rating of 91. They are:
Kylian Mbappé 91 Ligue 1 Uber Eats
Alexia Putellas 91 Liga F
Erling Haaland 91 Premier League
Kevin De Bruyne 91 Premier League
FC 24 lets male and female players play with and against each other in Ultimate Team, the game’s most popular and...
It’s been six years since Forza Motorsport 7 was released, and a fraction under two years since it was delisted. That’s right; it’s been over 725 days since you could buy a Forza Motorsport game this side of the second-hand market. Fortunately, that’s about to change next month – but ahead of the much-anticipated launch of Forza Motorsport on PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles on October 10, 2023 we’ve finally been able to get behind the wheel. Unsurprisingly, it does look and feel fabulous – but it’s the more thoughtful tweaks to the moment-to-moment racing out on track that have me the most interested.
While our time with the Forza Motorsport preview build has essentially been unlimited since we were granted access to it, we should...
Deliciously pulpy horror storytelling was at the heart of the original Alan Wake. It returns for the sequel, too, but the Stephen King-isms look to be confined to The Dark Place; the New York-styled nightmare cage the titular writer is trapped in. Out in the real world (or at least what seems like the real world) – the domain of our second protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson – developer Remedy Entertainment has crafted a new collage from pieces of its favourite detective stories. The eerie shadows of True Detective, Seven, and The Silence of the Lambs creep through Alan Wake 2’s gorgeous digital depiction of the Pacific Northwest.
For this month’s IGN First, I visited Remedy’s studio in Finland to play Alan Wake 2. Across more than...
Starfield is getting official mod support in 2024 according to Bethesda development chief Todd Howard.
Speaking to Famitsu and translated by IGN, Howard didn't say exactly when official mod support would be released but did suggest it's likely coming through the Creation Kit also available for Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.
"Once mods are supported, you’ll be able to do almost anything, just like in our previous games," Howard said. "Mod support will be available next year, and we love mods too, so we’ll go all-in."
Fallout 4 and Skyrim's Creation Kits let players access the same tools Bethesda used to actually create the games, letting more advanced mods be created with greater ease. Skyrim's was released in 2012 while...
A list of six PlayStation Plus Extra games due out in September has hit the internet.
The ever-reliable billbil-kun of Dealabs revealed September’s selection of PS Plus Extra games:
NieR Replicant (PS4)
Star Ocean: The Divine Force (PS5, PS4)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PS4)
Sid Meier’s Civilization 6 (PS4)
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2
Unpacking (PS5, PS4)
NieR Replicant, full title NieR Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139, is the upgraded prequel of NieR:Automata. IGN's review returned an 8/10: "Improved visuals and smoothed out combat go a long way in Nier's update, but it's the story that's the star of the show."
Unpacking, one of the best indie games of 2021, is a puzzle game about putting life's bits and bobs in the right place...
Playing Starfield and wondering why the NPCs look like they’re dead inside? One developer reckons they’ve worked out why.
Character and tech artist Delaney King took to X to post a fascinating look into the eyes of Starfield’s characters, explaining why their smiles look fake.
According to King, who has worked on the likes of Dragon Age and God of War, the character smiles have an issue with the orbicularis oculi muscle not contracting, which gives a "Duchenne smile". The effect is a smile that looks fake. Rather than look genuine, this sort of smile makes it look like you’re lying or constipated. If you watch The Boys, you’ll know this sort of smile from the superb Anthony Starr, who plays Homelander.
King references András Arató...
This year has seen the release of a truly absurd number of excellent games. One of the first to hit shelves, all the way back in March, was a from-the-ground-up remake of the all-time classic Resident Evil 4. It’s safe to say the remake was successful, earning a 10/10 “masterpiece” rating in our review. So here’s some good news for horror game fans heading into spooky Halloween season: all console versions of RE4 Remake are on sale for $39.99 at Best Buy. Amazon has the PS4 version on sale for the same price.
Resident Evil 4 Deal
Capcom has been absolutely killing it with Resident Evil games in recent years. That includes original games (Resident Evil 7 and Village), but it also includes remakes of the older games from the '90s and...
Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.
Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.
“In case anyone's curious about the odd colours, that's the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge's army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform's earliest days. “I...
Gearbox, the U.S. game company behind the Borderlands series, is reportedly up for sale.
Reuters reports Gearbox parent company Embracer is weighing up its options, one of which is a sale. Apparently Embracer has received interest from a number of third-parties. Neither Embracer nor Gearbox have issued comment.
Embattled Embracer is currently undergoing a significant restructuring that has already seen the closure of Volition, the long-running studio behind the Saints Row series.
Earlier this year, Embracer announced it would start to close studios and cancel games as a $2 billion deal reportedly with Saudi government funded company Savvy Games Group fell through at the last moment.
Embracer Group had been on an acquisition spree...
Starfield has overtaken The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim's all-time concurrent players record on Steam in its first weekend available after full launch.
Data from SteamDB shows Starfield sitting in 27th place in Steam's all-time list, while Skyrim is now in 31st. Starfield hit a peak of 330,723 concurrent players on September 10, while Skyrim's record peaked 12 years ago at 287,411. The space epic fell short of developer Bethesda's previous release Fallout 4, however, which sits in 16th place overall with 472,962.
While it's perhaps surprising to some that Starfield hasn't achieved a higher spot on the list, having topped six million players overall with one million concurrents on launch day, its inclusion on Xbox Game Pass has likely...
Starfield modders are having their fun with Bethesda’s space role-playing game, making some weird and wonderful concoctions as well as some really useful, quality-of-life improvements. Now, modders are turning their attention to Star Wars.
Perhaps the most impressive Star Wars-related mod for Starfield so far is this Galactic Civil War Conversion, created by kboykboy, which turns the United Colonies cops into Stormtroopers. This fantastic-looking mod replaces the models of the UC police uniform with accurate Stormtrooper armour, so you can continue to interact with the NPCs as if they were UC security.
Kboykboy has some ambitious plans for the mod. They intend to replace all UC armour with Imperial versions, as well as all Freestar...