Gaming News

Aussie Deals: The Lowest of The Last of Us Prices, GOG Discounts to Leave You Agog and More!

As you've no doubt already seen from today's new video, The Last of Us Part I is looking sharper than an upgraded machete. What's perhaps less impressive about it: the RRP. Mind you, why would you pay full price when you've the IGN Daily Deals? I've also got you covered with cheap Sonic Frontiers, a ton of freebies and 50% off a criminally under-bought Guardians of the Galaxy title. Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch Purchase Cheaply for PC Exciting Offers for XO/XS Product Savings for PS4/PS5 Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays at ludicrous difficulties on YouTube. Continue reading...

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Colossal Cave Adventure Preview: Digging Into the Wreck

When Colossal Cave Adventure was first circulating among computer enthusiasts in the '70s, I wasn’t even born yet. I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing the original spelunking adventure, but I’ve certainly enjoyed the fruits of its success. Colossal Cave’s legacy has spawned not just more text-based adventures like the ones legendary genre pioneer Roberta Williams was inspired to create as a part of Sierra Online, but it’s also one of the progenitors of everything we play today that remotely touches the adventure genre. Even Elden Ring might not exist without Colossal Cave. So what does it mean to remake Colossal Cave in 2022? Text-based adventures have largely fallen by the wayside, so Roberta Williams and her husband Ken...

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Opinion: Netflix's BioShock Movie Should be a Prequel, Not an Adaptation

After years of false starts and being trapped in development hell, it seems the BioShock movie is finally becoming a reality. Netflix has snatched up the rights to this iconic sci-fi shooter franchise, and the movie now has a director in The Hunger Games' Francis Lawrence. Unfortunately, if the past several decades have taught us anything, it's that great gaming source material doesn't automatically translate to great movies. If Netflix wants to escape the video game movie curse, there's one critical rule to follow. The BioShock movie shouldn't be a direct adaptation of the original game. Instead, it should be a prequel. Here's why a prequel movie stands a better chance of doing justice to the games. What Would a BioShock Prequel Be...

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'All-New Mafia Game' Confirmed to be in Development

After months of rumors, Hangar 13 confirmed today that a brand-new Mafia game is under development, though it remains to be seen whether it will be titled Mafia 4. The news came from a Mafia 20th anniversary interview with Hangar 13 General Manager Roman Hladík and Head of Production and Media Director Tomáš Hřebíček. They pair took the time to look back on the franchise's journey over the past 20 years before Hladík got to the news. "I'm happy to confirm we've started work on an all-new Mafia project!" Hladík said. "While it's a few years away and we can't share anything more right now, we're really excited to keep working on this beloved franchise and to entertain our players with new stories." As the name implies, Mafia is...

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Exclusive: Roberta Williams' Colossal Cave Remake Announced for Nintendo Switch

Colossal Cave - Reimagined by Roberta Williams is coming to more than PC and Meta Quest 2. In an announcement exclusive to IGN, Cygnus Entertainment confirmed that the upcoming remake will also be coming to Nintendo Switch. "Colossal Cave - Reimagined by Roberta Williams will soon be accessible to gamers worldwide on an additional platform," Cygnus Entertainment founder and CEO Ken Williams said in a release. "We hope to bring back the spirit of traditional adventure games for devoted fans who grew up with the original game and the new generation of explorers alike. We believe bringing Colossal Cave Reimagined by Roberta Williams to the Nintendo Switch will help us do that." First announced back in March, Colossal Cave is Roberta and...

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Former Payday Developer Making a Co-Op Heist FPS With New Studio

Ulf Andersson, who worked on Payday and Payday 2, is returning to the co-op heist genre with his studio 10 Chambers. During an interview with NME, the developer revealed that his upcoming game will be a cyberpunk style, team-based action game. “I'm back on the heist s**t, basically,” he said. “So, it's a heist cooperative FPS, and it has a sort of a techno-thriller theme. I read a lot of sci-fi books, and so imagine everything that cyberpunk is inspired by, and a ton of other s**t.” The Payday games were defined by heavy action – gunning your way out of a bank and making off with as much cash as you could cram into a sports bag. However, Andersson’s upcoming game isn’t that. “This one won't be constant shooting,” he explained...

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Sony Forms PlayStation Studios Mobile Division to Create Games Based on New and Existing IP

Sony has announced a committed expansion into mobile gaming by establishing the PlayStation Studios Mobile Division and acquiring Savage Game Studios to develop "a AAA mobile live service action game". The new division will develop "innovative, on-the-go experiences based on new and existing PlayStation IP that meet PlayStation Studios’ high-quality standards" and will operate independently from console game development. "This acquisition reaffirms Sony Interactive Entertainment’s commitment to delivering innovative experiences to new players around the world by expanding to additional platforms," said head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst. Sony announced back in May that releasing games on new platforms was now a key part of its...

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Aussie Deals Save $240 on a Middle-earth Bundle, 25% Bitten off Dead Island 2 and More!

Let's kickstart our week with a whole mess of savings! Preorder-wise, I spy radical reductions on TMNT Cowabunga Collection, GoW: Ragnarok and Hogwarts Legacy. If you're trawling for less current stuff, I raise my mug o' grog at that Monkey Island double pack. You also can't go wrong with a 49 buck Splatoon 2 and a Jedi game that's fallen to the order of $20. Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch Purchase Cheaply for PC Exciting Offers for XO/XS Product Savings for PS4/PS5 Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays at ludicrous difficulties on YouTube. Continue reading...

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Hideki Kamiya - Looking Back, Pressing Forward

“Every night!” I’m sitting across a table from Hideki Kamiya, mildly taken aback. This is, in part, because his response bypassed our translators entirely and came directly in English. Mostly, though, it’s because – I’m realising as my mind races to reshuffle the subsequent questions – this is not the typical answer given by an industry legend when asked how often they’re able to actually play games. A much more typical answer is some level of remorse over not being able to play much these days, but that they found titles X or Y interesting over the past year or two. Be it because of a supernatural need for very little sleep, incredible talent and time-management, or perhaps just games really being his core pastime, Kamiya is very...

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Gamescom 2022: The Biggest Announcements, Trailers, and Previews

Gamescom is always one of the biggest conventions of the year, and 2022 was no different. While there weren't any megaton announcements, we were treated to reveals and updates for some truly exciting games like Dead Island 2, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts Legacy, Sonic Frontiers, The Callisto Protocol, and more. Gamescom 2022 kicked off its multi-day show with Opening Night Live, and it (and IGN!) continued to reveal big news and previews from the showfloor as the days went on. To help ensure you didn't miss any of the biggest moments from Gamescom 2022, we've gathered the best announcements, trailers, and previews below for you to check out in one convenient place. Dead Island 2 Gets a New Trailer, 8 Years After the Last One - and It's...

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Lightyear Frontier Preview: Unconventional Mech-anics

In the wake of Stardew Valley’s revitalization of the genre after Harvest Moon and Story of Season’s popularity waned, I’ve been enjoying a rush of new farming sim games that explore the familiar mechanics in new ways. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin focused specifically on a single crop while weaving in 2D action combat. Slime Rancher emphasized the collection, care, and breeding of adorable little creatures. And now Lightyear Frontier is preparing to revisit familiar farming gameplay from behind the controls of an extremely unusual farming implement: a war mech. For my hands-on preview, I was able to explore a small portion of Lightyear Frontier’s first area. I got a feel for basic farming, and was able to build some basic structures like...

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Moonbreaker Mixes Exciting Hearthstone Strategy With Chilled Warhammer Painting

The worlds of tabletop games and video games have often overlapped. Here at Gamescom 2022 there are three different Warhammer games, and over the years we’ve seen the likes of D&D, Pathfinder and more adapted into a variety of video game forms. But Moonbreaker, from Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment, is unlike any tabletop-inspired video game I’ve ever seen. Rather than making the lore a reality, Moonbreaker quite literally is a competitive tabletop miniatures game played with figures you paint yourself. It’s a celebration of the paint-and-play hobby, and I think it has the potential to be brilliant. Unlike the games I’ve already mentioned, Moonbreaker is not based on an existing tabletop game. Everything has been...

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Dredge Is a Relaxing Fisherman Simulator Hiding a Very Sinister Heart

Dredge begins with a shipwreck, your unseen fisherman player-character forced to alight on the shores of the island town of Greater Marrow, unable to get home. They’re made to loan a boat from the shady mayor, and work the local shallows to pay off the debt. And yet this is Dredge’s least unsettling section. The bones of Dredge are those of a gentle fishing sim - you pilot a pretty, almost cel-shaded boat around calm waters, playing an almost rhythm-action minigame to reel in catches, found in burbling schools around the initial island. Trade in enough fish to the local fishmonger, and you can use your payments to buy upgrades from the shipwright - extra outboard engines, stronger rods for larger species (there are 128 entries in the...

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The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me - First-Look Preview

Spooky storytelling makes The Dark Pictures Anthology a cornerstone for fans of choose-your-own-narrative-style gameplay often seen in games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead series and Life Is Strange, but with a bit more horror involved. If you’re not familiar, this anthology from Supermassive Games includes Man of Medan, House of Ashes, and The Quarry, all of which act as individual episodes within a larger season, and the upcoming fourth and final entry – called The Devil In Me – looks like it could be taking the series to some truly horrific heights. If it does, it’ll be via its setting, a recreation of the terrifying “Murder Castle” once used by H. H. Holmes to ensnare his many victims. In it, you’ll guide five distinct characters...

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Park Beyond Hands-On: A Park Simulator That Lets You Build The Impossible

Playing out the fantasy of owning and operating your own theme park can be a lot of fun, but why limit yourself to merely what’s possible when you can create masterpieces of excitement that could never exist in real life due to technical limitations, the laws of physics, and an inevitable mountain of lawsuits? That’s the central question behind Park Beyond, a theme park simulator that blends true-to-life park management simulation with over-the-top and wonderfully absurd rides and roller coasters that quite literally go off the rails. While I enjoyed the highly detailed and painstakingly realistic park management features, it was in the mishmashing of that realism with purposefully untethered possibilities within my park’s attractions...

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Xbox's Fall Lineup Locks In – Unlocked 558

Xbox brought plenty of content to Gamescom, and now we've got a clear picture of what the holiday lineup looks like for Xbox gamers. Plus: Xbox commits to maintaining Xbox prices after Sony raised the price of PS5 in many major territories, Phil Spencer hints at his next acquisition priorities, and more! Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our recent interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase: For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review. Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's...

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Destiny 2: Where Is Xur Today? Location and Exotic Items for August 26-30

The thing from the black lagoon, Xur, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week's reset. If you're looking to get your some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further. Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he's got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians. We've rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP. Where Is Xûr Today? Xûr's location can be...

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Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game: The Interview

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game was one of the less expected hits out of Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase. The 3v7 horror-action game is a collaboration between the original movie's creators, Colombian developer Teravision, and Friday the 13th: The Game executive director Randy Greenback, and is looking to build on the recent explosion of licensed horror multiplayer games. To tell us how, we got Greenback himself to answer some of our biggest questions after the reveal: IGN: The '80s Asymmetric Licensed Horror Game' has become an unlikely subgenre in recent years. What made Killer Klowns a natural addition to it? Randy Greenback: I’m a massive horror fan and Killer Klowns has been a bucket list item for years. I love...

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Valve is Already Thinking About a Steam Deck 2

In the months following the Steam Deck's launch, demand for the handheld gaming PC drastically outperformed Valve's expectations. In response, the company has now revealed that it's definitely thinking about creating a successor to the original Steam Deck. Yesterday, Valve released a 50-page booklet about the Steam Deck. As pointed out by @Wario64, in a section of the booklet titled "The Future: more Steam Decks, more SteamOS," Valve reveals its plans to support the Steam Deck for years through both new hardware and software versions. "In the future, Valve will follow up on this product with improvements and iterations to hardware and software, bringing new versions of Steam Deck to market," the booklet reads. The company is also...

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Homeworld 3’s Space Terrain Makes the Death Star Trench Run an RTS Tactic

Space is not known for its interesting terrain. The word itself pretty much implies a complete absence of terrain, and so it’s logical that the original Homeworld series - RTS games set in the airless vacuum of outer space - did not have terrain. But that was the early 2000s. Now, the long-awaited sequel Homeworld 3, releasing in 2023, is reinventing one of the fundamentals of strategy combat in space. It’s got terrain, which means it has cover mechanics, and that completely changes the game. During an hour-long hands-on session at Gamescom 2022 I played two early missions from Homeworld 3; the tutorial-focused Facility 315, and the more danger-packed Kesura Oasis. Both were populated by dozens of pieces of terrain; asteroids...

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Wreckreation Knows You Want Another Burnout, So It'll Let You Build It (and Thousands of Other Things)

Three Fields Entertainment, the studio formed in 2014 by former Burnout Paradise creative director Alex Ward and Criterion studio director Fiona Sperry, began work on Wreckreation by just trying to imagine a giant open-world racing toybox. Having seen it in action, it's clear that it shares plenty of DNA with its creators’ previous work. The team built a huge map (“The largest map Unreal Engine lets you make is 440 square kilometers. We’re a team of just seven people… so we made the map 440 square kilometers”), created some cars, and began to play around inside. Work began 18 months ago amid COVID lockdowns and the developers decided that, instead of Zoom meetings, they’d meet up inside their own game world, allowing themselves to...

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Adorable Social Sim Mineko's Night Market Reemerges With New Trailer

Disclosure: Humble Bundle, the publisher of Mineko's Night Market, is owned by Ziff Davis, the parent company of IGN. Humble Bundle and IGN operate completely independently, and no special consideration is given to Humble Bundle announcements or promotions for coverage. It's been a while, but development on adorable social sim Mineko's Night Market is still chugging away, with the cat-filled game getting a new trailer this week at Gamescom. Mineko's Night market follows Mineko, a young girl who has just arrived on the struggling Mount Fugu Island, where villagers have begun to catch sight of the mysterious Sun Cat Abe, who they worship. Mineko must work to restore the village to its former glory through daily activities, quests...

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Nobody Saves the World Announces DLC Expansion, Frozen Hearth

Shapeshifting action-adventure game, Nobody Saves the World is getting a DLC expansion. Frozen Hearth will add new areas, challenges and forms, and will arrive on September 13. Annnounced during IGN's Awesome Indies showcase at Gamescom, Frozen Hearth sees players find an underground region in which "the strongest warriors compete for glory in The Tempering, a series of puzzles and challenges that will push players’ transformation skills and creativity." The expansion adds two new transformation forms – Killer Bee and Mechanic – new characters to meet, and rewards for conquering the Tempering. The expansion will retail at $4.99 USD on all platforms. “When we shipped the original game, there were so many ideas we had to leave on the...

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Gord Is Aiming to Cross The Witcher with Rimworld (and the Signs are Good)

Understandably, a lot of the talk about upcoming ‘adventure-strategy’ game Gord has focused on debut developer Covenant’s connection to The Witcher. Made up of a variety of Polish AAA developers, some of which moved on from CD Projekt Red to set up the studio, Covenant isn’t running far from its roots - like much of The Witcher, Gord takes place in a grim, pastoral fantasy world inspired by Slavic folklore. But when I saw it at Gamescom, Covenant CEO Stan Just made a different comparison that reveals Gord’s promise - Rimworld. Like Rimworld, Gord begins by giving you a smattering of generated villagers, each with individual personality traits that can affect their working and personal lives. Like Rimworld, you task those villagers...

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Hello Neighbor Publisher Acquires Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and Other Bossa Studios IP

Hello Neighbor publisher TinyBuild has acquired Bossa Studios IPs including Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish for $3 million. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Bossa Studios was looking to sell its catalog of existing IPs as it moves on to developing games "exclusively in the genre of co-op PvE". According to job listings on Bossa's website, the studio is working on a free-to-play, survival or "survival-adjacent" live-service game. "Together with TinyBuild, we found a path that allows Bossa to dedicate its full attention to its new projects, while ensuring Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish have a new home that understands what makes these games tick as well as we do," said Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers...

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The Last of Us Part 1 Uses PlayStation 5's Haptic Feedback to Help Deaf Gamers

The upcoming remake of The Last of Us Part 1 has some interesting accessibility features, including the use of haptic feedback to help deaf gamers feel how dialogue is delivered. A PlayStation Blog post outlined the several accessibility features arriving in the game, carrying on from The Last of Us Part 2's extensive array of modifiers. “[One feature] which started as a prototype but ended up being really successful during playtesting is a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback,” said game director Matthew Gallant. “That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.” This...

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Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed Review

There was a time, back in the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox era, when a lot of sequels were what kids today would call “just a bunch of DLC stuck together.” That’s basically what we’ve got with Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed – a loyal, graphically updated remake of a 2006 sequel that goes to new locations, adds a handful of new weapons and enemy types, revamps the upgrade system, and extends the story. Even so, it plays so similarly to 2020’s Destroy All Humans! Reprobed that it feels like a clone of what I played two years ago – except its comedy act has already worn a bit thin. Bearing that in mind, I have pretty much the same praise and the same complaints about the quality of this remake. The gameplay has held up fairly well...

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In Atlas Fallen You Play as a Sand Thanos Whose Mission is to Punch a God

The reveal trailer for Atlas Fallen didn’t give too much away. We knew there was lots of sand, and that some gnarly looking monsters liked to call it home. After seeing roughly 20 minutes of gameplay behind closed doors at gamescom 2022, I can confirm that there’s a whole lot more to it than that - and it all looks very exciting. A fast-paced, semi-open world action RPG, Atlas Fallen shows flashes of Monster Hunter, Control, and the Horizon series, while also introducing some intriguing new ideas of its own. Fully playable in both single-player and two-player co-op, Atlas Fallen is a narrative-driven RPG that is, refreshingly, neither a soulslike or live-service game. Multiple (at least six that I know of) fairly large open areas make...

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Total War Developer Creative Assembly Is Working on a New Action Game

A third-person action game is on the way from Creative Assembly, the developer renowned for its Total War strategy games including Shogun: Total War and the more recent Total War Saga: Troy. Creative Assembly also develops the Games Workshop series Total War: Warhammer - with the most recent Warhammer III arriving earlier this year - but it's not averse to non-strategy games either. The new project is said to “sit alongside Total War, Hyenas and the studio’s other yet-to-be announced project”, and in an official announcement, the studio said it’s looking for developers “with experience working on third-person titles using the Unreal 5 engine”. Creative Assembly may be best known for its strategy offerings, but it’s also dabbled...

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Amazon EA Acquisition Rumors Spark Confusion

Video game industry media was sent into a tailspin earlier today, August 26, after a USA Today report claimed Amazon was planning to make an offer to purchase publishing giant EA. Conflicting reports have now emerged from CNBC, however, that say there are no acquisition plans in place. USA Today's report arrived from Swedish press agency Good Luck Have Fun, who claimed its sources were aware of an imminent formal offer from Amazon to acquire the FIFA 23 and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order publisher. Not long after, however, CNBC anchor David Faber said on air (below) that there are currently no plans from Amazon to acquire EA. "I have talked to some people who would actually know if there was something going on, and they say there's...

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