Gaming News

Aussie Deals: 50-60% off Switch and PlayStation AAAs, plus a CDPR Steam Sale!

The days of physical Easter Eggs have ended for 2022. Now begins the time when you can load up on cheap video games that contain the digital kind. Not as delicious, sure. But there are still endorphins to be dairy-milked from games like Zelda: Link's Awakening (which, basically, tasks you with cracking one giant one). The LEGO games are choc full of 'em too... Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch Purchase Cheaply for PC Exciting Offers for XO/XS Product Savings for PS4/PS5 Adam’s our Aussie deals wrangler. You can watch him game on YouTube. Continue reading...

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Rockstar Quietly Removes GTA 5 Content Described As Transphobic From New-Gen Releases

Close to 10 years after its original release, Rockstar has quietly removed a handful of characters and jokes from Grand Theft Auto 5 that critics have described as harmful stereotypes of transgender people. As first reported by Ars Technica, GTA community members have noted various changes to the remastered version of GTA 5 available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. They include characters labeled as "drag queens" no longer spawning outside Cockatoos in addition to having dialogue removed. Over on Reddit, another user noted that a Captain Spacetoy with "interchangeable genitalia" has been cut. As community members have pointed out, the changes follow an open letter from Out Making Games asking Rockstar Games to remove the content, which...

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Portal 3 Needs to Happen – Unlocked 540

My Xbox and Me host MC Fixer joins us to discuss a big week of Xbox news, from Portal 2's lead writer publicly calling on Valve to greenlight Valve 3 to Amy Hennig getting another shot at a Star Wars game to Sega working on big-budget reboots of Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio 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 latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo's original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career: Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at...

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Jane Foster Thor Coming to Marvel's Avengers as a New Playable Hero

Crystal Dynamics announced its plans to add Jane Foster: The Mighty Thor to Marvel’s Avengers’ roster of playable characters. This will mark Avenger's first new character since Spider-Man in November 2021. Jane, who has appeared in the Thor comics since the early 1960s, will join the game in Update 2.5. In a blog post announcing Jane Foster, the developers say that Jane Foster Thor will be a unique hero with her own abilities. “Our Hero designs are driven first and foremost by their core comic book identities, so, as a fellow wielder of Mjolnir, her suite of abilities will have a lot in common with the Odinson’s, however she will also have elements that are distinctly Jane,” Square Enix said via a development update. It’s unclear...

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Why Dragon Ball FighterZ Fans Hate Its Latest DLC Character

Dragon Ball FighterZ has remained surprisingly popular within the fighting game community since its release back in January 2018, bolstered by a slow but steady stream of content updates and balance patches. Considering it's four years old as of this year, DBFZ has managed to hold its own alongside heavy-hitters like Street Fighter V and Tekken 7, and it's even managed to outlive sequels to popular franchises like Samurai Shodown (2019) and Soulcalibur VI which debuted long after DBFZ launched. However, for the first time since Dragon Ball FighterZ was released, casual fans and seasoned pro-players appear to feel ambivalent about the future of the game - due in large part to the release of its newest DLC character, Android 21 (Lab...

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World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Reimagines Fundamentals of Talents, Crafting, and UI

World of Warcraft is, inarguably, a pretty old game as far as MMORPGs go. So even though it remains popular nearly 20 years after its initial release, there are a number of antiquated systems and visual aspects that Blizzard's been steadily trying to update with each subsequent expansion. And now with Dragonflight it's time for an overhaul to three big ones: talents, crafting, and the UI itself. For several expansions now, World of Warcraft players have been frustrated with a series of gimmicks designed to increase player power that were then ditched at the end of each expansion (RIP Artifact Weapons). In Dragonflight, Blizzard appears ready to ditch the temporary magic amulets and what-have-you and go back to a good old-fashioned...

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World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Is the Blizzard MMO's Long-Awaited Dragon Expansion

At long last, the rumored dragon-themed World of Warcraft expansion is upon us. Blizzard has announced that the ninth expansion for its long-running MMORPG will be titled World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, and will take place on the mythical Dragon Isles. Unlike several recent expansions, Dragonflight will open with a much more optimistic tone as explorers and adventurers arrive on the shores of the ancestral home of the dragons, which have recently awakened after being hidden for centuries. Draconic characters who have previously played major roles in World of Warcraft lore — such as Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Ebonhorn, and Wrathion — will return for major storylines. As usual, there will be new quests, dungeons, and raids tied to this...

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Blizzard Open to Continuing WoW: Classic into Cataclysm, if the Community Wants It

With the announcement today of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, World of Warcraft has now committed to revisiting arguably its most famous and beloved expansion — a time period that could also be looked at as the end of an era. Wrath represented the peak of World of Warcraft's popularity, and while it's continued to thrive since then, the expansions that followed were very, very different. Cataclysm, specifically, was a moment of dramatic change throughout the "old world" of Azeroth, and saw a major revamp of numerous regions from the original game. That's not to mention the various mechanical and visual changes from that point forward. It's for those reasons that I asked WoW Classic head Brian Birmingham and production director...

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World of Warcraft Game Director Dismisses Rumors of Eventual Console Port

Over the years, there's been a series of rumors that, one day, World of Warcraft would get a console port. Most recently, there's been discussion flaring up again due to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard and the tantalizing idea of an Xbox version, just as FF14 is playable on PlayStation. But at least for now, WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas is dismissing these hopes. In an interview about the game's newly announced expansion, Dragonflight, I asked Hazzikostas if a console port was on the horizon specifically because of the planned UI overhaul announced as a part of the expansion. With the MMO getting improved controller support recently and now a fully customizable HUD that players can move around however they like...

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World of Warcraft: Classic Gets Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Later This Year

Blizzard has just announced the (rather unsurprising) next step for World of Warcraft: Classic. Later this year, it's moving on to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Originally launched in 2008, Wrath of the Lich King brought with it numerous additions that put WoW firmly on the road to being the MMORPG that it is today. They included the massive Northrend map; famous dungeons such as Violet Hold and the Culling of Stratholme, and numerous raids ranging from an updated Naxxramas to the frigid finale in Icecrown Citadel. It also added features such as an achievement system, the inscription profession, and the game's first hero class: the Death Knight. By and large, Wrath of the Lich King's revival in WoW Classic will mirror the...

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You Can Finally Play as a Dragon (Kind of) in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight

Given that the next major expansion to World of Warcraft is themed around dragons, it's only natural that we finally get to actually play as a dragon with the new Dracthyr Evoker hero class. It may not look exactly like the dragons we're used to seeing fly around Azeroth, but that's probably for the best — the actual Dracthyr have quite a bit more going on. We spoke with game director Ion Hazzikostas and narrative director Steve Danuser ahead of the announcement about the Dracthyr, beginning with a fundamental question: why make a combination hero class/race where Dracthyr can only be Evokers, and Evokers can only be Dracthyr? Hazzikostas says that the team started with the concept of the Dracthyr race, and came to the conclusions...

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Halo Composers Reportedly Settle Lawsuit With Microsoft Over Unpaid Royalties

The Halo composers who sued Microsoft over unpaid royalties have seemingly settled the lawsuit. Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori filed the suit in February claiming that Microsoft was not paying them the agreed upon amount for using their music in the upcoming Halo TV series. In a tweet earlier today, however, O'Donnell said that "Microsoft and O'Donnell/Salvatori Inc are pleased to have amicably resolved their differences." The pair had originally claimed they signed a contract with Microsoft that guaranteed them 20% of the profits made from their music, such as in the Halo TV show, soundtracks, and so on. O'Donnell told Eurogamer at the time: "If this is 20% then it doesn't seem like Microsoft is really making much money."...

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Elden Ring Has Added a Tutorial for Its Tutorial

Elden Ring's tutorial is somewhat easily missed by new players, but it seems that FromSoftware is aiming to change that with the game's 1.04 update. The new patch adds a tutorial prompt that explains, well, the tutorial. FromSoftware fans have long enjoyed the studio's esoteric game design, which requires players to figure out just about everything by trial and error, but Elden Ring has offered a solid middle-ground with features that make the game just a bit more accessible. This has included a larger collection of explanatory text boxes than ever before and even a full-blown tutorial section that explains the core mechanics through a mixture of text and gameplay. Known as the Cave of Knowledge, the unexpectedly detailed (at...

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CD Projekt: 'No Plans' for New Gwent Game to Come to Consoles

CD Projekt Red is not planning to release its single-player Gwent spin-off, Project Golden Nekker, on consoles. Gwent Comms lead Paweł Burza confirmed to IGN that the game will be available at launch on PC, iOS, and Android when it is released later this year. Gwent was available on consoles from December 2018 to June 2020, while another spin-off, The Witcher Tales: Thronebreaker, is still available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. But game director Vladimir Tortsov said on the latest This Week in Gwent - a weekly stream hosted by Burza - that there are currently no plans to bring this new game to consoles. "With consoles, we left them for a reason," he said. "There was obviously some good about them otherwise it wouldn’t be...

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Eternal Threads Preview: Kind of Like a Time-Traveling Gone Home

In Eternal Threads, your goal is to travel back in time and save six people from a burning boarding house in Manchester. Easy enough, right? Just quench the flames and make sure the firefighters are in position. Alas, before warping back to the mid 2010s, your handler makes it clear that you cannot simply stamp out the fire. Instead, you'll need to carefully edit a series of decisions made by the residents over the course of a week which imperceptibly added up to the tragedy. You know that old adage about a butterfly batting its wings and causing a hurricane halfway around the world? That's the spirit of Eternal Threads; benign decisions, disastrous consequences. After an hour with the game I was already smitten with Eternal Threads'...

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Assassin's Creed Origins Is Coming to Xbox Game Pass Soon

Alongside the reveal of the second wave of Xbox Game Pass entries in April, Xbox has also announced that Assassin's Creed Origins and For Honor: Marching Fire Edition will be coming to Game Pass in the near future. According to an Xbox Wire blog post, both games will be coming to Game Pass within the next two months. 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins will be the first Assassin's Creed entry to join the game subscription service. For Honor Marching Fire Edition will also hit PC Game Pass via Ubisoft Connect. For Honor's base game is already available on Game Pass, so the Marching Fire Edition will therefore become a free upgrade option for those using Game Pass on your console or via the cloud. 'In the next two months' means we should...

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Elden Ring Hero Let Me Solo Her Is Now an NPC Thanks to New Mod

Elden Ring legend Let Me Solo Her has now been modded into the game as an NPC summon. As spotted by VG247, FromSoftware content creator Garden of Eyes has created a mod to add a "Puppet of the Legend" spirit summon to Elden Ring, immortalising the player who went viral last week. Complete with its own artwork and flavour text, the Puppet of the Legend summon is an exact replica of Let Me Solo Her that's seemingly just as capable of taking down ultra-touch boss Malenia, Blade of Miquella. The description calls the dual katana-wielding, half-naked hero a "warrior whose skill was a match to the Rot Goddess herself." It replaces the Lone Wolf Ashes item, and is currently only available by subscribing to Garden of Eyes' mod-focused...

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Elden Ring's Secret Underwear Is Being Used by Trolls to Get Players Banned

Elden Ring trolls are soft-banning players by dropping the game's secret underwear in their worlds. Yes, that's a sentence that exists. The Deathbed Smalls - a scanty piece of equipment which is only obtainable through hacking - will seemingly soft-ban players for six months if picked up, meaning they can only play online with hackers. Vice reported a recent spike of players experiencing this issue, with several Reddit users complaining about their accounts being quarantined after other players enter their world and drop the Deathbed Smalls. This can be done with any item and, as Elden Ring's multiplayer encourages cooperation, players often drop powerful weapons and items to help their fellow Tarnished. Picking up the Deathbed...

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Elden Ring: New Patch Nerfs a Popular Way to Beat Malenia

Elden Ring's patch 1.04 has nerfed an incantation that's been used as part of a popular tactic in the fight against the game's most difficult boss, Malenia, Blade of Miquella. The incantation Swarm of Flies has been altered as part of the latest gameplay changes. The blood-based magic now has "Decreased blood loss buildup on enemy," and the community is already noting the impact it will have on the fight with Malenia. Melenia is an incredibly difficult battle, and many players have been using Swarm of Flies to build up blood loss at range in order to eventually deal substantial damage to the deadly swordswoman. Anecdotally, during my scraps with her I've noticed that it's a very popular choice among summons. Following the nerf...

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Cyberpunk 2077 Expansion: CD Projekt Clears Up Team Size Confusion

CD Projekt Red has clarified that half of its studio is working on the first Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, after sparking some confusion about the number of developers involved last week. In a chart from its latest financial report (now updated), the developer originally stated the largest portion of its team was working on "other projects including the new game in The Witcher IP" but has since made clear that this is not the case. CD Projekt Red's investor relations Twitter account raised the mistake and confirmed that "the biggest part of our team is currently working on the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion." Fans initially shared their disappointment when the developer wrongly said that only a small team was working on Cyberpunk 2077 going...

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Elden Ring Update 1.04 Adds Dozens of Buffs, and New Quest Events for Patches

Elden Ring's 1.04 update is released across all platforms today, and brings big changes for strength builds and magic users – not to mention adds new quest events for FromSoft in-joke NPC, Patches. Announced by publisher Bandai Namco, the new patch is split broadly into four sections – Major Changes, Sorcery/Incantation, Weapon Skill, and Bug Fixes. The Major changes include new event phases for Patches, although no detail is added about what those are – we'll have to wait for players to suss that out, it seems. Fans with strength-based builds are also celebrating changes to Colossal weapons that increase attack speed, decrease recovery time, and increase two-handed damage. It makes heading out into Elden Ring's vicious world with a...

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Battlefield 2042 Finally Gets Voice Chat, But Only For Squads and Parties

Voice chat has finally arrived in Battlefield 2042 five months after it launched in November last year. The feature won't let you speak with everyone online, though, as channels are limited to either Squad or Party chats. It arrives in Battlefield 2042's Update 4.0 update, coming today, April 19, which includes hundreds of other fixes and adjustments as detailed in developer DICE's latest blog post. The update is headlined by voice chat, or VOIP (voice over internet protocol), which has been one of the most highly requested features since launch, and which some players believe should have always been in the game. Other changes include a UI refresh of the scoreboard (that was first added last month), balance updates to specialists...

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Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio Reportedly Getting 'Big Budget' Reboots

Sega is reportedly working on "big-budget" reboots for Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio, with the intention of creating new installments that generate recurring revenue and online communities. According to a report from Bloomberg, the reboots are part of Sega's Super Game inititiative, which aims to create games with large communities and the ability to generate a long tail of revenue. Basically the Fortnite model of microstransaction-fuelled content drops. Bloomberg's sources claim that the Crazy Taxi reboot has been in development for over a year, and that Sega aims to release it within the next two or three years. It and Jet Set Radio are allegedly two of four planned 'Super Games', with a third apparently being a first-person...

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MTG Commander: Full Obscura Operation Decklist and WOTC’s Gavin Verhey on the Rise of Treasures

With Magic: The Gathering’s new Streets of New Capenna set just over the horizon, IGN is excited to reveal the full decklist for its Obscura Operation Commander preconstructed deck. Alongside official first looks at all of the deck's new cards, I spoke with Wizards of the Coast senior designer Gavin Verhey to discuss its saboteur-focused design, the rise of Treasure tokens in Commander, and one of the deck’s breakout cards. Like all five of New Capenna’s Commander decks, each based on a different one of its five demonic crime families, Obscura Operation contains 17 brand new Magic cards. It’s a White-Blue-Black deck lead by Kamiz, Obscura Oculus, with a strategy centered around using creatures that have a triggered abilities when they...

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Blizzard President Responds To Rumors Of Interest In Crypto Games: "No One Is Doing NFTs"

As the controversy over non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continues to rage, Blizzard’s President Mike Ybarra has denied the company is interested in pursuing blockchain technology for its games. Ybarra was responding to a story from Video Games Chronicle reporting that a YouGov survey asked players about crypto and NFT products in Activision Blizzard games. This sparked speculation that Activision Blizzard itself was polling the players about the controversial technology. Ybarra tweeted in response, “No one is doing NFTs.” NFTs are unique digital items that are stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain. While Ybarra’s answer will probably give many players a sigh of relief, other game companies still believe NFTs are the future of...

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Jason Momoa Reportedly In Talks To Star In Minecraft Movie

Warner Bros.' troubled Minecraft movie is reportedly negotiating with Aquaman star Jason Momoa to voice the main protagonist. According to The Ankler, Warner Bros.' rights to Minecraft expire in January 2023, meaning the studio must start production on the movie before then. In addition to Momoa, the film has also apparently tapped Jared Hess to direct. Hess is best known for directing Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. The report also states Warner Bros. is looking to turn the Minecraft movie into a franchise if the first movie can get off the ground. Recently, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise has successfully proven a video game movie series can work, with two hits at the box office, a third on the way, and a spinoff...

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Every Square Enix Game in Development

In 2003 two of Japan’s most prolific video game publishers, Square and Enix, joined forces, bringing classic RPG series Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest under the same roof. Nearly two decades later, those franchises remain two pillars of Square Enix — pillars on which it has built a diverse, ever-expanding portfolio of games. Between new releases and unexpected announcements, 2022 has already been a memorable year for Square: Triangle Strategy and Stranger of Paradise are two of the year's best-reviewed games at IGN, while Kingdom Hearts 4 is arguably the year’s most surprising game announcement (so far). With even more promising projects on the horizon, we’re exploring Square’s development pipeline to give you a complete picture of...

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Postal 4: No Regerts Review

Maybe I’m supposed to hate Postal 4: No Regerts. Maybe that’s sort of the point. Developer Running With Scissors describes it as a sequel to “the worst game ever,” Postal 2, renowned for its vulgarity and rough edges. If the goal was to make one that’s even worse then that’s certainly been achieved, but that gag doesn’t mean it’s ever fun to actually play. Even for the novelty of a guilty pleasure, like watching a really bad movie for a laugh, Postal 4 only ever disappoints – if I could somehow forgive the corny writing, bad graphics, awful gunplay, and constant bugs, it would still be incredibly difficult to enjoy any game that hard crashes every hour or so. Whether you’re in on the joke or not, there’s nothing on offer here except...

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Activision States Microsoft and Bobby Kotick Have Not Discussed 'Post-Closing Employment Arrangements'

Activision Blizzard has stated that its CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft have not yet discussed what his employment status will be following Microsoft's acquisition of the company. As spotted by Axios' Stephen Totilo, Activision added a line to its United States Securities and Exchange Commission filing about the planned sale to Microsoft that made clear these talks have not happened yet. "No discussions or negotiations regarding post-closing employment arrangements with Microsoft occurred between Microsoft and Mr. Kotick prior to the approval and execution of the merger agreement and the transactions contemplated thereby, or have occurred subsequent to such approval and execution, through the date hereof," the filing reads. A big...

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Portal Co-Writer Erik Wolpaw Wants Valve to Let Him Work on Portal 3: 'I'm Not Getting Any Younger'

Portal 1 & 2 co-writer Erik Wolpaw has shared his desire to begin work on Portal 3, but warns it may be tough to actually get it started at Valve. As reported by VGC, Wolpaw appeared on the Kiwi Talkz podcast and ended his appearance by saying, "we've gotta start Portal 3. That's my message to... to whoever." He continued to say that he isn't getting younger and that, if Valve wanted to do a Portal 3 with any of the original team members, it should greenlight the project sooner rather than later. "I am not getting any younger," Wolpaw said. "We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think [that we’re] literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it.” Alongside working on the Portal franchise, Wolpaw...

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