Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a Switch 2-exclusive that was released in November of last year. Up until now, the price has stayed fixed at $69.99. Even today, retailers like Amazon, Gamestop, and Nintendo eShop haven't budged. That's not the case for Best Buy, however. Best Buy has dropped the price of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment by 30%, down to $49.99, with free shipping for a physical copy. In fact, if you're a My Best Buy Plus member, you can get it for $39.99, saving up to 43%.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment on Sale at Best Buy

Forza Horizon 6 for PC and Xbox comes out next week (the PS5 edition comes later). This is the perfect excuse for you to finally upgrade from a controller to a bona fide racing wheel. For a limited time, Amazon Resale is offering a used "Like New" Logitech G923 Trueforce Racing Wheel and Pedal Set for PC and Xbox for just $184.79 with free shipping after an extra 20% discount that's automatically applied. It normally retails for $350 new, although it's currently on sale for $280.

Amazon Resale (formerly Warehouse) is Amazon's official account for used goods. The products are sorted by condition, with "Like New" being the best. All Resale items get the same 30-day return policy as buying new.

50% Off Logitech G923 Trueforce Racing Wheel and Pedals Set

While folks may picture a certain gentleman spy these days when they hear IO Interactive, fans of Agent 47 and board games may want to listen to this: Hitman: The Board Game is coming, and its campaign is now live on Gamefound.

IGN had a chance to go hands-on with a preview sample to see whether this cardboard adaptation could capture the thrill of the video games. Grabbing my best red tie and bald cap, I eagerly recruited some fellow assassins, and off we went to see who was the best among us. After the blood settled, it was easy to see that even with this small snippet of what's to come, it’s on the right track to succeed in that mission.

Published by Mood Publishing, the same publishers behind the tabletop adaptations of Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim, and Goat Simulator, Hitman: The Board Game, pits up to four players against one another in a race to see who can take out the target first. Along the way, you'll do your best to secure helpful loot around the map, avoid guards, and don disguises all in an effort to complete that task. Think of it like a sort of Anti-Clue (or Cluedo for my overseas friends) where instead of attempting to be the first to deduce the who, what, and where questions of a murder, you are instead racing to pull off said murder and deciding on those things yourself.

The gameplay itself I found to be pretty straightforward, and the friends I brought by to try it out got the gist of things within a turn or two. Turns are composed of drawing an event card that triggers things like moving the target, staff, and guards, or respawning loot resources on the map, followed by the player taking some actions from a pool of possible ones like moving, putting on a disguise, breaking some noses, or playing helpful Agent cards with their one-time effects, all before ending their turn and the cycle repeats with the next hired killer at the table. By the second go-round, the players at my table, consisting of both Hitman vets and not, had a good grasp on how things ran, and we could all just focus on how best to tackle our target.

The big twist, and a large factor when deciding on your next course, is that actions are categorized as either being legal or illegal. Navigating the common areas, scouting around, and drawing those helpful Agent cards, or even “accidentally” dropping that coin nearby to lure staff around, are all perfectly legal and harmless, raising zero suspicion from the attentive staff and guards nearby. However, the moment you move into someplace you aren’t supposed to be in (or at least aren’t dressed the part for) or perform other more incriminating actions like stripping a body for a disguise, hiding a body, breaking property, etc., then you will start drawing attention, with those being classified as “illegal.”

Weighing your options and picking the right moment to perform these actions, positioning yourself or other nearby NPCs so that you won’t be seen committing anything illegal, makes completing your missions far easier and more manageable. It pays to be a silent assassin, as being hidden and inconspicuous makes it easier to take care of enemies too, when you finally do strike.

Combat, much like the rest of the gameplay, is straightforward, coming down to who has the bigger number: you or the NPC. With the exception of the staff (they are just innocent hardworking folk after all), all the guards and enemies have an associated “Alertness” value that you will need to overcome, with each agent having a base attack value of 1. If you're able to sneak up and attack an enemy without their notice – such as being disguised or not found doing anything illegal – the only thing you have to factor in is this alert value. But if the guards attack you or you're found to be doing something illegal, the guards will draw a card from an equipment deck and add its value to their alertness, making them harder to deal with.

Agents aren’t without options of their own, however, thanks to being able to find weapons themselves or discarding certain Agent Cards to boost your own attack value. Other players can even help you out if they wish, but they can just as easily help out the guards instead. These moments reminded my group of playing Munchkin, but thankfully, these interactions here never felt as mean as they do in that dungeon crawler.

The sample I played only featured a small taste of what will be in the full game, with rules and components that are still all works-in-progress and subject to change, but there was still a surprising amount to check out. In the sample box, we could pick from two contracts and one location to mix-and-match, with the final base game promising eight targets and four locations to build out your contract from.

We had plenty of variety even with the smaller offering, thanks to the different perks and unique rooms that the targets Viktor Novikov and Dalia Margolis have. Taking out Dalia requires you to collect Secret Documents that spawn around the map that can be used to either weaken her or lower her ability to spot you (it’s almost like you’re blackmailing her!), which is good because most of your disguises won’t hide your identity from her gaze.

If you feel like reliving the first level from 2016’s Hitman: Showstopper, then take on Viktor during his gala in Paris. Once again, you'll be able to sneak around the luxurious mansion, but just be sure to avoid Viktor, who is always joined by his powerful bodyguard and will take off at the first sign of danger, meaning setting up traps or staying hidden is your best chance with him.

Mood seems to have a solid understanding of how to capture and adapt those qualities that fans of the video games associate with the Hitman series. Many of Agent 47’s classic tricks are here: knocking out enemies and stealing their outfit to disguise yourself, setting traps like poisoning a drink or dropping chandeliers, and even tossing your trusty coin to distract and lure guards out of the way.

Playing the board game gave me much of the same assassin-y goodness that I look for in the Hitman video games. Thought, preparation, and planning feel genuinely important, but much like the source games, things can turn on a dime, and you have to improvise. That twist might come from an unfortunate pull of the cards or a perfectly timed interrupt card held by another player.

Even if you have no idea who Agent 47 is, Hitman still just feels fun to play. Only one of you can be the series’ bald protagonist anyway. The core of this game is much more about the actual gameplay loop – the planning, preparation, and execution of the… execution (pun intended) – with the Hitman backdrop adding to the ambiance in spectacular fashion.

For all that I enjoy about this preview build, it's not it’s without a few areas I hope get tweaked before the final release. As I’ve mentioned, much of the Hitman experience has been adapted pretty solidly to this bio-degradable format, but I find there to be a disappointing lack of any sort of pre-assassination prep phase, as you get in the video games. I would love to have some sort of system that lets you buy some gear before you begin, to help you plan out your mission ahead of time, while keeping it hidden from the other players to keep things extra exciting.

Secondly, considering all of the assassins are masters of their craft, I would like to see some of that come through in their gameplay, as currently the only thing that sets them apart is the art on their standees. There is an optional rule module that you can add on, Opportunity cards, that can provide your character special boons like being able to use tools to improve the damage you deal. But these are randomly drawn at the start of the game, and the possible pool is similar to the event cards, either general or location-based options. Even giving each assassin a small set of unique cards to add into the mix could help.

I also wouldn’t mind more player interaction during the game. The interrupt cards are fun and all, but it feels a bit off that you can’t interact more directly with other players when you’re in a space with them. It would be neat to have the ability to steal an item, or try to knock them out to take their disguise. Or heck, let me get into a larger joint distraction to pull more guards' attention to help other players get away, should there be a co-operative or team game mode. There’s some potential there.

Hitman: The Board Game, even in this early state with its "work in progress" components and rules still in flux, has gotten me excited to see what the full breadth of content will look like when it starts delivering next year. Just the base game alone, with its four locations and eight targets, you would have over 1,500 variations, to say nothing of the randomized room locations.

Already, the success of the Gamefound campaign has unlocked additional cards, as well as a new optional mechanic in the form of Personal Restriction cards that both give you a benefit and a handicap, such as no longer being able to hide bodies, but certain units won’t be able to see through your disguises anymore. And for folks who want even more, expansions adding the Berlin location and three more targets to throw into the mix are on offer too, really kicking up the number of options you have to pick from when the game delivers next year. In the meantime, start brushing up on those sneaking skills, agent, you have people to kill.

Hitman: The Board Game’s campaign is currently live over on Gamefound with a planned delivery date of next year.

Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.

NFL teams have been coming up with creative ways to announce their season schedules in recent years, from using memes to parodies to celebrities. For 2026, the Los Angeles Chargers have turned to Halo in order to tell everyone who they'll be playing in the upcoming season.

The team posted a six-minute video, whose introduction notes that the Chargers got permission from Microsoft and that they didn't use any actual gameplay footage. It's modeled after a multiplayer setup screen, with each week's opponent listed as if it was a multiplayer map. They appear to have even hired Halo multiplayer announcer Jeff Steitzer (or a fantastic soundalike) to do callouts for each week, such as "Beast Mode" for the Seahawks matchup in Week 4, complete with a faux Pike Place Market level. Plenty of NFL and pop-culture references are baked in as well, including a subtle nod to the scandal that Week 12 opponent New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel is currently mired in.

should we REALLY make our schedule release video in halo?

yes yes yesyes
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yes yes yes yes yes
yes yesyes yes yes
yes yesye yes yes
yes yes yesyes pic.twitter.com/eusK9QmNGd

— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) May 14, 2026

Halo, meanwhile, will be "on the field" this season, as Halo: Campaign Evolved, the Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign, is due for release sometime this year. We'll likely get a release date for it at the upcoming Xbox Showcase. Check out our hands-on preview impressions in the meantime.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

No matter where Henry Cavill goes, Warhammer 40,000 seems to follow. The former Superman actor, who is a huge fan of Games Workshop’s tabletop wargame and is set to star in the Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe for Amazon, was chatting with fans during a break from filming Highlander in Poland, when he was presented with a special gift from a local store owner: a Custodes box.

For the uninitiated, the Adeptus Custodes are a popular faction within Warhammer 40,000. In the lore, they are the Emperor’s bodyguard, more powerful even than the genetically enhanced Space Marines, resplendent in their gold armor and devoted to protecting the leader of the Imperium of Man. Cavill has spoken of his love of the Custodes before, posting clips on his social media showing off his painting skills — and even leaving books for the Horus Heresy tabletop game strewn about on his table for a photo showing his recovery from a leg injury sustained while filming Highlander.

And so a Custodes box (specifically, the Warhammer Horus Heresy: Legio Custodes Battle Group box) madce for a fitting gift for Cavill, given to him by a games store owner in Lodz, Poland. In a reddit post, store owner BenzOC called it was “a great experience,” and said he wanted Cavill “to have some nice Warhammer memories from our city.” According to BenzOC, Cavill was “very pleased with the present,” and based on the actor’s smile captured in the photo, below, that’s quite the understatement.

“Hope he will come back to shoot some Warhammer material here also!” BenzOC added, referencing the Warhammer 40,000 live-action work Cavill is set to kick into gear at some point in the future.

Speaking of which, back in January, Games Workshop addressed the long wait for Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe, insisting that Amazon was in control of the delivery of the adaptation. Games Workshop itself has cautioned fans not to expect to see anything of it for some time, even now, over three years after the deal was announced.

Fans have spent the last few years in a state of enduring excitement about the prospect of finally seeing Warhammer 40,000 brought to life in live-action form across films and TV shows — and with Cavill steering the ship, they’re confident it will be done right.

Hopefully we'll get some details, including who Cavill himself will play, soon. In June last year, Cavill touched on the “complexity” and “trickiness” of adapting the Warhammer 40,000 IP. But, he insisted, he was loving the challenge. Bringing Warhammer to life "is a dream come true," Cavill said, "but it's different from what I've done before, in the sense I haven't had my hand on the tiller of things before. It's wonderful doing that. It is a tricky IP, and a very complex IP, and that's what I love about it. The challenges that come with putting this on the page in a way that is doing justice to that complexity, that trickiness, and that nuance, is a challenge I'm enjoying enormously."

But Warhammer 40,000 wasn’t the only thing Cavill is famous for that followed him all the way to the Highlander shoot in Poland. Another fan said that he was given a script of a The Witcher spinoff book, too.

Cavill, of course, played Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, and is a huge fan of the games. The Witcher began life in Poland as a series of fantasy novels by author Andrzej Sapkowski, so this was another fitting gift.

As for Highlander, it’s still without a release date, but production is in full swing, and there are plenty of set photos out there that give us an idea of what to expect from the “John Wick with guns” reboot.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Best Buy has dropped some great deals on select games for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 recently. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment for Switch 2, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for Switch, and Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1 for Switch are just a few that caught our eye, but you can see even more of our favorites on sale at the retailer right now below.

There's quite a range of discounts here as well. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment for Switch 2, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for Switch, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for Switch 2 are all between 29% to 33% off at the moment, but the other three from the list above are actually all 50% off. What better time to grab them?

It's also worth noting that the deal prices for both Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond are only visible after you've added them to your cart.

We have quite a lot of love for these games, too. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Persona 3: Reload earned 9s in their respective reviews, while Yakuza 0 landed just under with an 8.5. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment came in just below that with an 8 each, which is still well worth celebrating.

If you're looking for even more video game deals, it's also worth checking out Amazon. At the moment, the retailer has some excellent deals for PS5 users to look into. And if you're curious about big sales that are still to come this year, have a look at our rundown of upcoming sales events. Here, you can see a breakdown of what's to come over the next few months, so you can be prepared for more game deals as they drop.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.

Forza Horizon 6 has already reached an impressive player count on Steam despite its official launch still being days away.

Although publisher Xbox Game Studios and developer Playground Games won't officially pull their latest open-world racing game out of the garage until next week, those who own the pricier Premium Edition have already started taking advantage of early access, which launched for PC (Xbox App, Steam) and Xbox Series X and S today, May 15. Despite the bundle's $119.99 cost, the Steam version has already reached an impressive peak of 172,093 users (via SteamDB) and is hovering around 160,000 players as of this article's publication.

That puts Forza Horizon 6 head-and-shoulders above the Steam launch for Forza Horizon 5, which managed to pull in a little more than 80,000 players for its all-time peak in November 2021. It's unclear if the Xbox racer is on a path to attract even higher player counts today or through the weekend, but there's a pretty good chance we'll at least see that number go up when its official release date rolls in next week.

Steam, which represents just one slice of the platform pie that makes up the Forza Horizon 6 player base, currently ranks the open-world racing game at number two on its list of top-selling games globally. Subnautica 2, which launched yesterday to even more impressive stats, is the only game above it.

Five years after Xbox and Playground took players to their version of Mexico with the last installment, Forza Horizon 6 finally lets drivers loose in streets inspired by locations in Japan. It's a setting that seems to be at least partially responsible for its roaring success out of the gate following the strong reviews published yesterday. We here at IGN also found a lot to love about Playground's latest, as we called it a "Masterpiece" in our 10/10 review. "The new standard in open-world racing is here, and it’s a gundamn masterpiece," we said.

If you're playing, you might have noticed that shrines, temples, and cherry blossom trees are indestructible. Well, there's a very good reason for that.

The base Forza Horizon 6 experience launches across PC and Xbox Series X and S on May 19, 2026, and costs $69.99. You can catch up on everything you need to know about the Xbox game's launch plans here. You can also check out the first Festival Playlist rewards ahead of their launch May 21.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Forza Horizon 6 finally brings the racing series to Japan. Players can cruise around a highly detailed, stylized and condensed version of the country, taking in everything from downtown Tokyo, famous landmarks, and scenic country roads in all seasons as they test their mettle against other racers.

The game also rewards you with experience points for letting out that road rage by smashing your car into other vehicles or your surroundings. However, The Japan Times’ recent interview with design director Torben Ellert revealed that while you can destroy most things in Forza 6 by crashing into them (whether on purpose or because you understeered on a hairpin bend), culturally important things like shrines, temples, and cherry trees are indestructible.

“Almost all trees in the game are smashable to ensure that traversing the world map is both fun and rewarding,” Ellert explains. “However, several tree types are not — for example, the cherry blossom trees — because they’re an iconic element of Japanese culture. Certain temples or other cultural elements are also excluded so that players aren’t tempted to drive through shrines or locations of cultural importance.”

Cherry blossoms are historically and culturally important in Japan, often appearing as a key symbol in Japanese literature, art, and poetry. Their pink blossoms are a sign of rebirth and the coming of spring, but also a reminder of how fleeting life is. In ancient times, farmers made offerings and held feasts underneath the cherry trees in the hope that the spirits of the fields would bring a good harvest. In the 800s, the emperor and nobles also kicked off a tradition of holding parties to admire the cherry blossoms. These traditions have evolved into modern day hanami — cherry blossom viewing parties where people have picnics under the trees and enjoy the blossoms.

Cherry blossom trees in real life can be easily damaged. Tampering with or shaking the branches of cherry blossom trees in public parks is punishable by fines in Japan. Furthermore, some of the countries’ oldest trees are over 1,000 years old and protected as natural treasures by the government (like Uozumi Zakura in Gifu). Consideration for their cultural importance explains why UK studio Playground Games decided to make cherry trees invincible in Forza Horizon 6.

As for shrines and temples, last year, Assassins Creed Shadows received heavy pre-release backlash in Japan due to a preview that showed that players could smash up shrines. Ubisoft addressed this in a day-one patch that made shrine objects indestructible and prevented unarmed NPCs from bleeding when attacked (thus preventing bloodshed on sacred grounds). Forza Horizon 6’s devs have opted to be culturally sensitive regarding what the player can do to religious and cultural sites.

“Japan has been on our shortlist for several games now,” Ellert told The Guardian. “But we just didn’t feel like we were ready to take on the challenge of building it.” The team conducted in-depth research for the game, right down to the smallest details, hiring experts including cultural consultant and former Porsche ambassador Kyoko Yamashita to advise on their depiction of Japan and its racing scene. “Because it’s a culture we see a lot, there’s a temptation to think you know it better than you do, which is why we tried really hard to get people to course correct us if we were drifting,” added Ellert.

While those who pre-ordered the premium edition of Forza Horizon 6 are already burning rubber, the game officially releases on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on May 19. While you wait, check out IGN's Forza Horizon 6 review.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

Publisher 2K has announced its brick racing game Lego 2K Drive will be delisted from digital storefronts on PC and console starting May 19, 2026.

A message alerting players to the delisting was published on the game's Steam page and shared online today. The same text can be found on the Xbox and PlayStation Store pages.

Players will be able to purchase Lego 2K Drive digitally until it is removed from online shops, this Tuesday. Although it will remain available to play and redownload after this date, 2K added that multiplayer servers will also go offline starting May 31, 2027. All online services tied to the game will be unavailable from then on.

Developer Visual Concepts launched Lego 2K Drive May 19, 2023, for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S. Its gameplay aims to click players into the open-world land of Bricklandia to race, build vehicles, and compete to earn the big prize in story mode.

"In LEGO 2K Drive, your awesome transforming vehicle gives you the freedom to speed seamlessly across riveting racetracks, off-road terrain, and open waters," an official description reads. "Explore the vast world of Bricklandia, show off your driving skills, and build vehicles brick-by-brick!"

Although multiplayer features will be shut down in a little more than one year, offline features will remain available to players who own the game. Those interested in picking up Lego 2K Drive before the delisting can purchase it for $19.99.

We gave the Lego racing game an 8/10 review upon its release in 2023. At the time, we called it a "wild and whimsical all-ages kart racer with an incredible custom vehicle creation tool that’s just about worth the price of admission alone." As Lego 2K Drive leaves digital stores, the gamers supporting the Stop Killing Games initiative are still fighting to keep the games they love (and even the ones they don't) around for years to come after reaching 1 million signatures last year.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

James Bond: the ultimate spy. The secret agent that other secret agents check under the bed for at night, although that’s probably less to do with their concerns about his martial arts prowess and more about his penchant for sexual congress. Hey, honey, whose Aston Martin is that in the driveway? And why is it beeping?

At any rate, conceived by WWII British Naval Intelligence officer Ian Fleming as a cocktail of the many killer elite commandos and secret agents he met during his time in the service, the iconic James Bond has clearly come a long way from his literary beginnings in 1953. Bond quickly migrated from the pages of Fleming’s novels to radio plays, comic books, and – of course – a film series that’s lasted over 60 years. There aren’t many movie franchises that have been around longer. Not this side of Godzilla, at least.

Now, James Bond’s video game history obviously isn’t quite as storied as his silver screen exploits, but it still stretches back well over 40 years. So, whether you’re unfamiliar with Bond games, or you’re just after a quick refresher, we’ve assembled a full history of James Bond games right here, so all you need to do is pour yourself a dry martini and slip into something more comfortable.

To uncover the very first James Bond game we need to go back to 1982, but there is a slight twist to it. 1982’s Shaken but Not Stirred! was developed and published by Richard Shepherd Software for the ZX Spectrum computer, an underrated icon of 8-bit gaming that played an instrumental role in the home computer revolution – and helped inspire an entire generation of UK game designers in the process. Richard Shepherd, a certified accountant, was one such man. Urged on by his wife, Elaine – who suggested he look into adventure games after she’d been shown one while visiting a work client – Shaken but Not Stirred! came together as a classic text adventure.

In 1982, text adventure games were at the peak of their popularity – and the genre was the only real way to have complex adventures in interactive form at the time. ‘Complex’ may be a slight overstatement when it comes to Shaken but Not Stirred!, though it is bizarrely impenetrable at times. That is, I began the game by being instantly abducted and shot dead, before being reincarnated by the game designer, and I left sometime after getting lost in a randomised ocean and shooting my second octopus.

However, what’s particularly interesting about Shaken but Not Stirred! is that it was never actually an official Bond game at all. Richard Shepherd Software never had the rights to make an official Bond game, something that seems obvious when you note Moneypenny’s transparent name change – but admittedly less so when ‘Miss Cashcoin’ is introduced directly beneath the sentence “A James Bond Adventure.”

Yes, perhaps – especially since, by 1982, the Bond license had already been secured by Parker Brothers. Unfortunately for Richard Shepherd Software, the American toy and board game giant was ramping up its video game efforts at the time after snatching up the lucrative rights to publish Star Wars games, and Bond was another hot property it jumped on. Resultingly, Shaken but Not Stirred! was rapidly re-issued as Super Spy and, in 1983, Parker Brothers released what’s technically the first official Bond video game: James Bond 007, for Atari, ColecoVision, and Commodore 64. A version called 007 James Bond was also released in Japan for the SG-1000, Sega’s first-ever home console.

James Bond 007 is a side-scrolling vehicle shooter with three or four levels, depending on the version you played. Each is extremely loosely based on a moment from four Bond films released between 1971 and 1981: The Spy Who Loved Me, Diamonds are Forever, Moonraker, and For Your Eyes Only. You don’t control Bond himself so much as you control a transforming Bond car, although it realistically spends most of its time as a kind of jumping submarine.

James Bond 007 otherwise plays like a short and safe clone of existing side-scrolling vehicle shooters from the dawn of the ’80s, and you can certainly argue the bulk of the Bond flavour comes from the 007 logo slapped on the front. The official license did, however, bring along with it the opportunity to use the Bond theme for the first time – which is an admittedly crucial component of the Bond experience.

1985 arrived with two separate Bond games, both based on A View to a Kill. It was the new Bond film for that year, and the final featuring Roger Moore.

The first is an action game for a variety of home computer platforms, including ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, and Commodore 64.

Published by Domark Software – a short-lived company that spent the late ’80s and early ’90s publishing only Bond games before merging with Eidos in 1996 – its version is broken up into three chunks. It opens with a driving level, which is followed by two rudimentary action sections. The three-games-in-one approach was novel enough, but ultimately the game was not especially well-received.

A View to a Kill’s other game tie-in was a text adventure for MS-DOS, Apple II, and Macintosh, and one of the first games published by Mindscape. Interestingly, A View to a Kill’s text adventure was written by Texas author Raymond Benson. 12 years later Benson would be tapped to take over writing duties for the continuation of the James Bond novel series, stepping in for the retiring John Gardner who had stewarded the Bond books throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

Benson would go on to contribute to the next Mindscape Bond game in 1986, which was another text adventure for the same platforms – this time based on 1964’s Goldfinger.

However, while Mindscape returned to a past Bond adventure, Domark decided to remain in the present with its 1987 tie-in for Timothy Dalton’s Bond debut: The Living Daylights.

For The Living Daylights, Domark opted for a traditional, side-scrolling shoot’em up approach, developed for what appears to be just about every major home computer system of the era. The result wasn’t revolutionary, but it was a considerable step-up from A View to a Kill.

Beginning with Bond’s training exercise against the SAS in Gibraltar and ending in the villainous Whitaker’s mansion, The Living Daylights might be a bit basic, but it at least effectively mirrors the plot of the movie upon which it's based. The ability to choose a different weapon before each level also adds some additional replayability.

With no new movie in cinemas in 1988, Domark’s next Bond game for home computers was loosely inspired by 1973’s Live and Let Die – which had been the first to feature Roger Moore. The key word here is loose, as Live and Let Die is exclusively a… speedboat shooter.

While it’s true the iconic speedboat chase is one of the most memorable moments of Live and Let Die, basing a whole game around it stretches the concept to breaking point. It has just four levels, only the last of which is ostensibly focused on disrupting Dr. Kanaga’s drug operation. The remainder are extra training levels set about as far away from the setting of Live and Let Die as you can get. How far? The Sahara Desert, and the North Pole.

However, there is a reason that Live and Let Die barely feels like a Bond game, and that’s because it was never meant to be one. In truth, Domark simply got wind of a speedboat shooter at UK software house Elite Systems called Aquablast. Domark subsequently pulled the plug on a boat blaster project it already had on the boil with a different developer, slapped a 007 logo on Aquablast, and published that instead. It seems Live and Let Die was always going to be stuck in a boat, but going with Elite got it done faster.

In 1989, Timothy Dalton’s second and unfortunately final Bond film hit the big screen, and Domark unsurprisingly had a game to coincide with it. Licence to Kill, again developed for all major home computers of the era, was yet another new approach for a Bond adaptation – this time it was a top-down, vertically-scrolling shooter. It was rather tricky, but arguably serviceable enough compared to similar games of the era. 1989 also saw a light-gun enabled version of 1987’s The Living Daylights bundled into Amstrad’s Christmas relaunch of the Spectrum +2.

The James Bond 007 Action Pack included two generic shooting gallery games to justify the inclusion of the Magnum Light Phaser, though neither are worth remarking on.

In 1990, Domark again resurrected a slice of the Roger Moore era with The Spy Who Loved Me for home computers, which is perhaps notable for having the funkiest remix of the Bond theme ever partially stolen from Run-D.M.C., Rob Base, and DJ E-Z Rock.

The Spy Who Loved Me was a Spy Hunter clone: a top-down, vertically-scrolling vehicle shooter that has a few flourishes to call its own, but overall is pretty similar to Midway’s 1983 classic. The comparison is potentially a little unfair considering how heavily inspired Spy Hunter was by James Bond in the first place – down to the Interceptor’s suspiciously close resemblance to Bond’s iconic white Lotus Espirit – but either way The Spy Who Loved Me was certainly a little derivative.

1990 also saw the arrival of Interplay’s 007 James Bond: The Stealth Affair, a point-and-click adventure for Amiga, Atari-ST, and MS-DOS – which was officially licensed but wasn’t actually a bona fide Bond game at its core. The Stealth Affair had previously been released in Europe as a Bond-adjacent adventure called Operation Stealth, starring CIA agent John Glames. For the North American release, Interplay simply changed Glames to Bond, but left him taking orders from the CIA rather than MI6.

On the topic of Bond games that aren’t quite Bond games, in 1991 THQ’s James Bond Jr. – developed by Eurocom – was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. A distinct (and worse) Super Nintendo version, developed by Gray Matter, arrived in 1992. If you’re unfamiliar with James Bond Jr, it was a cartoon series that ran for around six months back in the early ’90s focusing on the nephew of James Bond; a man who is canonically and famously an only child, and not an uncle to… anyone.

1992 also saw the release of a completely unofficial adaptation of the Roger Moore film Octopussy, developed by a Bratislava-based studio and released only in Slovakia. Octopussy was the final Bond game for the then-ancient ZX Spectrum and, while the game was totally unlicensed, it’s certainly possible it helped shift a few more systems down in central Europe before it was discontinued that same year.

1992 additionally marked the arrival of the final Bond game from Domark: James Bond: The Duel. It was released on Sega consoles – first for Mega Drive in Europe in late 1992. A North American release on Genesis followed in early 1993, as did a version for the Master System, and a Game Gear version emerged in 1994. It was made by the same internal development team at Domark that made The Spy Who Loved Me, which I didn’t mention before, but was rather ironically known as The Kremlin.

James Bond: The Duel is notable for being an original Bond story – that is, not based on a film or book – that nonetheless features the official Bond of the era. In this instance, it’s the likeness of Timothy Dalton, several years after his final big screen appearance. Dalton was intended to make a third film, but legal issues between MGM and the film’s producers dragged on for too long and the actor hung up his Walther PPK. There’s no denying that James Bond: The Duel remains an indefensibly boring title that captures none of the intrigue or charm of an actual Bond novel or movie name, but the game itself is a passable action platformer – even if it is hilariously seedy that Bond’s means of replenishing his health is rescuing blondes.

In 1995 we got a new Bond in Pierce Brosnan, and a new film with GoldenEye. What we didn’t get, however, was a game. Not initially, anyway; not after the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy saw Nintendo cancel a Bond driving game based around GoldenEye. No, the actual GoldenEye 007 as we all know it wouldn’t come until two years later, but it would change everything.

Developed by legendary UK software house Rare and published by Nintendo itself for the Nintendo 64, 1997’s GoldenEye 007 was lightning in a bottle. With a rookie director Martin Hollis at the helm, GoldenEye was eventually assembled by a small team of around a dozen developers with no meaningful experience building a shooter. In fact, eight members of the team had never even worked on a commercial game before.

To say that there were a variety of factors conspiring against the success of GoldenEye 007 would be an understatement. It wasn’t just a movie tie-in; it was a late movie tie-in. Hell, Brosnan’s second Bond film – Tomorrow Never Dies – was already complete and set to hit cinemas later in 1997. Furthermore, GoldenEye 007 was a first-person shooter, which was a genre that mainstream console gamers had yet to prove they had a real appetite for. FPS games simply had no firm footprint on consoles at that stage.

On top of this, the team was missing deadlines, and began working 100-hour weeks in the lead-up to launch. The multiplayer mode was squeezed in just six months out from release. Expectations for GoldenEye 007 were low. Even esteemed Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto was unconvinced, with a fax to Rare late in development warning of his unease with the amount of close-up killing and suggesting that the team consider having Bond visit his vanquished enemies in hospital at the end of the game to shake hands with them.

Thankfully, the team at Rare opted against this advice, and the result was more than just the greatest Bond game to date; GoldenEye 007 is frequently regarded as amongst the greatest games ever made. It was a smart and layered story-based shooter with an absolutely essential splitscreen component that literally revolutionised the genre.

GoldenEye 007’s multiplayer, which was brimming with characters, weapons, and clever modes, may have come about as almost an afterthought, but it became the template for four-player FPS fun – years before the internet would swoop in and try to crush same-screen shenanigans. Slappers only, anyone?

GoldenEye 007 wasn’t the first FPS to hit consoles, but its immense success gave the genre a whole new trajectory. It even helped pioneer the idea of dual analogue controls, since one control scheme allowed gamers to play using a separate N64 controller in each hand. Following this, using two analogue sticks to control an FPS on console quietly made its way into the original Medal of Honor as an alternate preset, and it was still very contentious by the time it appeared as the default control solution in 2000’s Alien Resurrection. The controversy is quaint in retrospect, considering how surprising an FPS without dual analogue controls would be today.

Ultimately, GoldenEye 007 sold more than eight million units, grossing $250 million dollars on a budget of just $2 million. Globally, it is the third highest-selling N64 game on the console. In the US, it’s the bestselling N64 game ever. It is far and away the single most important game in this list, and we could talk about it for a good deal longer if we didn’t have so many more games still to get to. After a gutbusting development period, Hollis and a few of his team declined an offer to make a sequel to GoldenEye 007 and, regardless of Rare’s plans, EA swooped in and reportedly “dramatically outbid” all comers for the Bond license, anyway. As such, the Bond games moved on without Rare, and so must we.

Following Nintendo’s James Bond 007 in 1998 – a top-down, RPG-style adventure for Game Boy – Bond began a lengthy tenure at EA.

The first game was 1999’s Tomorrow Never Dies. Developed by long-defunct Black Ops Entertainment and published exclusively on the original PlayStation, Tomorrow Never Dies was initially intended to be called Tomorrow Never Dies: The Mission Continues and pick up where the movie left off.

While the final product was extensively reworked to follow the plot of the film instead, it was a very different sort of game to GoldenEye 007. For one, it was an entirely conventional third-person shooter, as opposed to a trendsetting first-person shooter. Two: it had no multiplayer whatsoever.

And three? It wasn’t very good.

EA was able to effect somewhat of a course correction with its next attempt, which was based on The World Is Not Enough. Three separate versions of the game were produced – one for PlayStation and one for N64 in 2000, and a clunky and forgettable Game Boy Color version in 2001.

The World Is Not Enough on PlayStation was again developed by Black Ops Entertainment, which immediately pivoted from its Tomorrow Never Dies approach and built The World Is Not Enough as a first-person shooter. The result was undoubtedly an improvement, but the solid but scrappy PlayStation version again had no multiplayer. The original PlayStation only had two controller ports compared to the N64’s four, and perhaps asking PlayStation owners to wear the additional expense of purchasing a Multitap was too optimistic to ask for.

At any rate, The World Is Not Enough on PS1 paled in comparison to the N64 version which, funnily enough, was built by James Bond Jr. developer Eurocom. The World Is Not Enough on N64 doesn’t carry the same esteem as its predecessor, but it still packed four-player splitscreen multiplayer – this time with optional bots – and was nonetheless an excellent shooter for its time.

2000 also saw the release of 007 Racing, a PlayStation-exclusive action driving game that played out from entirely behind the wheel of a fleet of recognisable Bond vehicles. Developed by Eutechnyx, the developer of PS1 racing games like Total Drivin’ and Max Power Racing, 007 Racing was a good concept for resurrecting the idea of a SpyHunter-inspired, vehicle-based Bond game – but it was impossible to recommend over something like the Driver series, which was the king of 3D action driving at the time. A sequel to 007 Racing was planned but never eventuated.

The turn of the century brought with it exciting new consoles with the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube, and alongside this new hardware came a new era of Bond games – beginning with James Bond 007 in Agent Under Fire.

Agent Under Fire initially began life as the PS2 and PC versions of The World Is Not Enough. However, after development delays – and concern that interest for the film would’ve cooled off too much by the time it was released – The World Is Not Enough for PS2 was rebuilt into a new and original Bond adventure, albeit one that didn’t actually feature Pierce Brosnan as Bond this time around. This should be immediately clear from badly-lit Bond on the box art, which looks as if someone’s tried to take a picture of 007 without using a flash.

Released on PS2 in late 2001, and ported to GameCube and Xbox in 2002, Agent Under Fire was a short but solid Bond shooter – and far better than its fractured development might have suggested it should have been. Developed internally at EA, Agent Under Fire’s mix of first-person blasting and driving missions – which were more robust than one might expect thanks to EA’s Need for Speed experience – was entertainingly slick based on the standards of the era. It even introduced optional, cinematic-inspired flourishes throughout the action called Bond Moments, where keen-eyed players could tackle certain moments throughout the levels with a well-aimed shot or smart decision. Speaking of smart decisions, Agent Under Fire also boasted four-player splitscreen on all consoles, with usable jetpacks, no less.

EA followed Agent Under Fire with James Bond 007: Nightfire in 2002, which added Pierce Brosnan’s likeness back into proceedings, albeit not his voice. The home console versions were led by Eurocom, and the result was a slightly more refined evolution of Agent Under Fire that has the distinction of being the first Bond game with its own original song, and the first time we got to see an Aston Martin turned into a submarine.

In confusing circumstances – especially since Nightfire is typically considered one of the strongest Bond games in the history of the series – Nightfire’s PC port is an entirely different game to Eurocom’s console version, and it’s terrible in contrast. Developed by Gearbox, Nightfire on PC runs on a totally different engine, features no driving levels, and is regularly broken.

Indeed; let’s.

EA subsequently made a risky pivot, and 2003’s James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing arrived as a third-person shooter. In other words, EA had opted to follow up Nightfire, an otherwise well-received first-person shooter, by returning to territory previously soiled by the disappointing Tomorrow Never Dies. The shift to third-person probably represented better value to the EA beancounters – after all, if you’re going to pay for Pierce, you may as well try to put his head on screen as much as possible. But it certainly didn’t represent a sure-fire strategy.

Fortunately, it worked. Everything or Nothing was the best-looking Bond game to date, with a lengthy set of levels, explosive action, and quality driving missions. It also had a stacked cast of voices AND likenesses, featuring not only Bond alumni Brosnan, Judi Dench, and John Cleese, but also Heidi Klum, Shannon Elizabeth, and Richard Kiel as the famous Jaws. EA even got Willem Dafoe on deck to play the villain.

However, while the single-player component of Everything or Nothing was pleasingly strong, the multiplayer wasn’t quite up to the same standard. While Everything or Nothing introduced a fun, but slightly less-polished, co-op mode, the GoldenEye-inspired brand of four-player, FPS deathmatches was cast aside.

Unfortunately, after a robust three-year run, EA fumbled the bag with 2004’s GoldenEye: Rogue Agent for PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and DS, which was a disappointingly bland and cynical attempt to marry mid-2000s edginess with a recognisable brand.

Set in an alternate Bond timeline, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is an FPS that follows an ex-MI6 agent who, after being ejected from the service for being reckless, recklessly joins forces with a host of Bond villains, including Goldfinger and Scaramanga – most of whom betray him. Lacking in the swagger or spirit of a true Bond game, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent also had the misfortune of being a first-person shooter released in November 2004 – the same month as Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

For clarity, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent has absolutely nothing to do with the 1995 film or the N64 classic. It’s just called GoldenEye because the main character has… a golden eye.

Despite ending with a clear sequel tease, that was the end of the road for the GoldenEye: Rogue Agent experiment, and EA’s final Bond game in 2005 was a return to how things were before – and in more ways that one. That is, not only was it a third-person shooter like Everything or Nothing; EA turned the clock way back to 1963 for an adaptation of the Sean Connery classic From Russia With Love – starring Connery himself, no less, in his video game debut.

Developed for PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and the PSP, From Russia With Love was perhaps a little shallow overall, but its ’60s setting oozed charm and it was a significant step up from GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

Unfortunately, the fun was just about to come to a dead end.

In May 2006 it was announced that Activision had acquired the Bond video game license. After a pair of spin-offs and half-a-dozen mainline entries, the EA cadence of yearly Bond games fans had enjoyed was suddenly over.

Unfortunately, things haven’t been quite the same ever since. In 2008 Activision released Quantum of Solace on a host of platforms, including PS2, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and even DS. It was fine enough, but Daniel Craig’s video game debut was otherwise pretty unremarkable, even by contemporaneous standards.

Things did improve a little in 2010, with the release of two separate games: Blood Stone, developed by Bizarre Creations for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, and a remake of GoldenEye 007 for Wii by Eurocom. Both games also had a DS version built by n-Space.

Blood Stone, an original Bond adventure featuring the voices and likenesses of Daniel Craig and Judi Dench, was a third-person shooter with a variety of driving sequences – the latter being a natural fit for the studio behind the Project Gotham Racing series. It was a well-produced action game, but it just wasn’t a long or revolutionary one.

GoldenEye 007 on Wii fared better. Replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig and updating the story made for a pretty… iffy reimagining of the source material, but it gathered a good deal of praise for being one of the better first-person shooters for the Wii. For Bond fans without a Wii, GoldenEye 007 was ported to PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011.

But then, in 2012, we got 007 Legends.

007 Legends, for PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Wii U, was the last Bond game published by Activision. Unfortunately, it was also the last ever game made by regular Bond developer Eurocom, which was shut down less than two months after the game’s release, after 25 years of operation.

Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the film franchise, 007 Legends had grand plans to celebrate the entire series, and its single player campaign was built to contain missions from films featuring all six different Bond actors. That is, Goldfinger for Sean Connery, On Her Majesty's Secret Service for George Lazenby, Moonraker for Roger Moore, Licence to Kill for Timothy Dalton, Die Another Day for Pierce Brosnan, and Skyfall for Daniel Craig. However, like the GoldenEye 007 remake, it simply used Daniel Craig’s likeness in place of all the previous actors.

Unfortunately the end result was a tepid Call of Duty clone that did very little to capture the spirit of Bond, and even less to translate what fans love about these films.

007 Legends doesn’t just misunderstand Bond; it gets him totally wrong. Hell, he even completely flubs his most famous line, “Bond. James Bond.”

Mowing down mooks with a mounted minigun may be pretty typical shooter stuff, but it isn’t what James Bond is about. He’s a spy, not a super soldier. There are parts of 007 Legends you can play by keeping a low profile, but they mainly boil down to slinking around slapping blokes on the arse so firmly they die.

All Activision Bond games were suddenly pulled from Steam and the publisher’s own web store in January 2013. The move, which happened less than three months after the release of 007 Legends, came completely unannounced and without explanation. Since Activision originally announced its deal with MGM was supposed to last until 2014, the premature termination of the license led to speculation that things had soured significantly.

The spirit of Call of Duty killing James Bond was deeply ironic considering it’s been suggested that the James Bond game series very nearly prevented the Call of Duty series from ever happening in the first place. That could have happened if EA had partnered with Call of Duty creators Vince Zampella and Jason West, who had pitched for the PC port of Nightfire back in the early 2000s. As it turned out, EA went with Gearbox, and Zampella and West accepted a deal from Activision and founded Infinity Ward.

At any rate, the funk of 007 Legends has sadly hovered for some time, and there have been no new Bond games for over a decade. He didn’t quite disappear completely, though. 10 classic Bond cars, complete with gadgets, made their way to Forza Horizon 4 in 2018, and two Bond Aston Martins hit Rocket League in 2021. In 2023 the original GoldenEye 007 fought its way out of licensing purgatory and onto Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. In 2024 a confidential sizzle reel concerning a past pitch to make a LEGO James Bond game even leaked onto the internet; the idea looked and sounded incredible, but it obviously never made it into production.

Happily, Bond’s long hiatus is just about over thanks to the imminent arrival of IO Interactive’s 007 First Light in May. A modern and original origin story for Bond, which appears to be a more explosive riff on the sort of gameplay IO has been refining within its Hitman series for the past two decades, First Light features Irish actor Patrick Gibson as Bond, with Lenny Kravitz aboard playing the villain.

For more deep dives into the histories of long-running licensed video game franchises, you can check out IGN's look back at the terrifying (and sometimes terrible) history of Alien games, and embark with us on a crusade through the history of Indiana Jones games.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

The owner of a leaked copy of Subnautica 2 appears to have accidentally revealed themselves — after contacting the game's developer for support.

Hit underwater adventure Subnautica 2 launched this week in early access, though after illegitimate and unfinished copies of the game began circulating online.

At the time, developer Unknown Worlds acknowledged in a statement to IGN that leaked copies were now being downloaded, though cautioned that these were "incomplete development versions" that "do not reflect the content or gameplay experience being prepared for the official release."

It's unclear exactly what issue the leaked copy owner contacted Unknown Worlds about, but it seems clear enough that they were trying to play an incomplete version of the game, and a staff member quickly wised up.

"It took some doing, but this guy self-reported," Unknown Worlds developer Anthony Gallegos said of the user via the game's official Discord (as spotted by RespawnFirst). "Thanks for pirating a game that I've spent years working on. I'm disappointed that you'd do that when it's kind of how we make our living. I hope you rethink your life choices."

"Just to be clear, pirates are gonna do their thing. We were all kids once," Gallegos continued later. "Money and the economy is very hard. I get it. It wasn't the piracy that bothered me. It was the people that flagrantly walked in here and wagged it in the faces of people who were waiting to play legitimately. That was the part that aggravated me.

"I understand and thank you for supporting the studio ultimately. I cannot condone piracy, but I get why people do. I would much rather people buy the game, try it for an hour, and return it than go play it illicitly."

News that illegitimate copies of Subnautica 2 were being spread online bizarrely followed several other high profile video game leaks in quick succession, including at least one user being able to access their pre-ordered copy of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight days early.

Then, earlier this week, Forza Horizon 6 developer Playground Games issued a dramatic warning to anyone found playing a leaked build of Xbox's new racing blockbuster. Those found doing so risked incurring "franchise-wide and hardware bans", the studio said, and one player subsequently reported receiving a hardware ban until the year 10,000.

Still, the leaks don't seem to have sunk Subnautica 2 — quite the opposite. Already, the game has sold a stunning 2 million copies within 12 hours of its early access arrival. Peak concurrent players across all launch platforms exceeded 651,000, with Steam alone reaching a peak of more than 467,000 concurrent players. That’s nearly nine times the all-time peak concurrent player count of the original Subnautica, which launched in 2018.

And Unknown Worlds has just released the Subnautica 2 early access roadmap, detailing what fans can expect over the next few months. We’ve got a Things to Do First in Subnautica 2 guide to check out before you dive in, plus resource location guides to help you find Titanium, Silver, and more. Discover blackbox and supply crate locations on our interactive Subnautica 2 map, and make sure you don’t miss any Angel Comb Adaptations or Blueprints.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Fresh from its huge launch, underwater survival and crafting adventure Subnautica 2 now has an early access roadmap detailing the updates players can expect to see over the next few months.

Unknown Worlds said it’s working towards a “big drop” that will expand the world with biomes, creatures, resources, tools, vehicles, and the next chapter of the story. But in the meantime, improvements will be added to the game. The first update will include quality-of-life fixes that Unknown Worlds said “should help adjust and address some areas that need a little tweaking to make your Subnautica 2 experience even better.” The second update, meanwhile, will focus on improving the co-op experience.

Unknown Worlds stressed that the roadmap is subject to change, but there’s plenty here that should excite fans — and there are a lot of them. Subnautica 2 sold an incredible 2 million copies in just 12 hours, and obliterated the first game’s Steam concurrent player peak. IGN’s Subnautica 2 early access review returned a 7/10. We said: “It’s pretty impressive that wading in the shallow tides of Subnautica 2's early access debut is as fun as it is already, and that should be a great sign of things to come, but I also wouldn’t blame anyone for waiting for these waters to rise a bit before getting their feet wet.”

We’ve got a Things to Do First in Subnautica 2 guide to check out before you dive in, plus resource location guides to help you find Titanium, Silver, and more. Discover blackbox and supply crate locations on our interactive Subnautica 2 map, and make sure you don’t miss any Angel Comb Adaptations or Blueprints.

The roadmap details, courtesy of the Unknown Worlds website, are below:

Subnautica 2 early access roadmap:

Early access 1.1 quality-of-life update

Planned improvements to:

• Biomods system
• Blight encounters
• Wrecks gameplay
• Vehicle docking and fabrication
• PDA Databank
• Voicelogs priority system

Planned additions:

• More passive Biomod slots
• Storage cache
• Sprint

Early access 1.2 co-op centric update

Planned improvements to:

• HUD signals
• Base builder tool
• Pinned recipe system

Planned additions:

• Voice chat
• Emotes
• Player trading
• Player revive
• Additional customizations

Future major expansion updates

New region:

• Expand the world
• New biomes
• New creatures
• New resources
• New tools
• New vehicle
• Next chapter of the story

Ongoing improvements:

• Big fixes
• Balance tuning
• Optimization
• And other continuous updates

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

I can’t say I was anything but skeptical with the reveal of Monster Hunter Outlanders. It visually looked good, certainly, but a Monster Hunter with truly live-service and gacha mechanics? To get even more general: a highly skill-based action game on… a phone? No, thank you. But I have to admit, after playing it myself and speaking with Monster Hunter Outlanders’ development director Bryan Li, Monster Hunter Outlanders is carefully toeing the line between the Monster Hunter and free-to-play live-service game formulas. With about 15 hours into the Closed Beta Test 2, I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of Monster Hunter Outlanders… and I’m having a hard time pulling myself away from digging to write these first impressions.

What Is Monster Hunter Outlanders, Really?

Let’s get the big questions and explanations out of the way. Monster Hunter Outlanders is developed by TiMi Studio Group and officially licensed by Capcom. TiMi, for its part, is no stranger to big IP adaptations and mobile-first titles–it developed Call of Duty: Mobile and Pokemon Unite (my most played Switch game in 2025, coincidentally), as well as Arena of Valor, to name a few. Monster Hunter Outlanders appears to be its most ambitious project yet. Mashing Monster Hunter together with a free-to-play mobile model while also making it open-world with meaningful exploration sounds like a tall order, but the set up is promising.

Li said that a requirement to join the Monster Hunter Outlanders development team is to be a Monster Hunter fan, and many of the game designers have hundreds and hundreds of hours in the Monster Hunter series. These developers have focused heavily on the core combat experience to try and preserve the Monster Hunter feel on mobile. They even hired regular Monster Hunter series composer Tadayoshi Makino so it sounds just like you’d expect a Monster Hunter would.

In short, expect the core PVE action-forward Monster Hunter loop–hunt a monster, craft new armor and weapons out of that monster’s parts, hunt a stronger monster, repeat–complete with quintessential Monster Hunter experiences like getting paralyzed by a Vespoid while carving, with many additional customization and growth systems to interact with and currencies to earn common to deep free-to-play RPGs. Add on more emphasis on open-world exploration, crafting, and progression systems that remind me a bit of Wild Hearts and Genshin Impact, and you’ve got Monster Hunter Outlanders.

The most concerning aspect for TiMi was, indeed, properly balancing the feel of Monster Hunter while tailoring it towards the free-to-play mobile market, which they said has been very difficult for them to find a sweet spot and maintain that balance.

“Surprisingly, based on the feedback we collected from the previous CBT1 [Closed Beta Test 1], it seems that the players kind of acknowledge that balance point,” Li explained. “It gives us quite a lot of confidence sticking to our current design.”

About Monetization

One of the biggest hallmarks of a free-to-play mobile game is the gacha monetization mechanics, which Monster Hunter Outlanders implements along with the exorbitantly abundant and dizzying progression systems, which are also present in ways likely very familiar to the free-to-play RPG crowd.

The gacha part of Monster Hunter Outlanders is very new to the Monster Hunter series, though–unique, playable characters in addition to your self-made original character dubbed the “Fated Adventurer.” Besides the Adventurers, Li said other monetization will be about cosmetics and customizations–purely vanity items that have no effect on gameplay, like special weapon skins. I’ve opened a lot of boxes earned in-game that reward regular layered armor and weapon skins, so you can still do some fashion hunting without engaging in the premium currencies. The third type of monetization is about “flexibility” allowing players to “shape their journey in a way that best fits their gameplay style.” No, I’m not totally sure what that means, but it may have to do with being able to purchase items for progression, like leveling up., but I can tell you more about the Adventurers.

These named Adventurers have unique, anime-forward visual looks and distinct gameplay mechanics that set them apart from your usual playable character in a Monster Hunter. For example, just because Midori uses a Long Sword doesn’t mean she uses a Long Sword like your original character would–her flow of combat, special “Skill 3,” and Ultimate attack are all exceptionally unique and demands you to master slightly different skills to unlock her full potential.

“We think it's… a good opportunity for us to bring something a little bit more refreshing to the franchise, because none of the pure installments actually adopt this kind of mechanism,” Li explained. “And to be honest with you, we, at least based on what the team feels at the moment and on the feedback collected from the previous play tests, it seems that it’s actually quite a preferred and favored choice, not only by us, but by the players.”

I can absolutely agree on this sentiment. It would have been horrid if things like crafting materials, weapons, armor–anything already present in traditional Monster Hunter–was locked behind a gacha system. The monsters are already walking Loot Boxes of sorts, and we don’t need more gatekeeping than that.

Li said that every Adventurer can be earned for free through active gameplay, and they have zero intention to gate any adventures behind any payment wall. “Our goal is to deliver a Monster Hunter experience that you can enjoy anytime, anywhere with your friends, and we want to make sure that this experience can be as free as possible,” Li said.

Three predetermined SR (regular rarity) Adventurers have joined me for free as part of the story as of Chapter 2, which is important, considering you put together your own four-person party for the story with the Adventurers you’ve unlocked. (You can also play completely solo if you’d like.) I’ve also earned quite a few Standard and Featured Contracts that let me “pull” for a random Adventurer (or Buddy–a support Felyne, Rutaco, or Trillan–which is the large majority of what you’ll get.) With the Contracts I collected, I got 200 rolls between three different “Recruitment” types and I have enough alternate currency to convert to dozens more. Honestly, more generous than some, but not as generous as others. There are also different events you can participate in to unlock the highest-rarity SSR Adventurers for free occasionally.

However, the Featured Recruitment Adventurer, Midori, is limited, which means she won’t make it to the “Standard” recruitment pool after her time in the Featured Recruitment is up. Though she may come back around in the future, the FOMO could be enough to push players to buy more chances at getting her… I mean, she is really cool, and apparently very strong. Since the “real money” store isn’t open in the US during the CBT2, I can’t tell you how much this might actually cost. But Monster Hunter Outlanders needs to make money somehow for it to keep existing, and personally this doesn’t look like an egregious play-to-win model, especially as someone who willingly spends a little money on free-to-play games for every twenty or so hours I get out of them. If you want to ignore the monetization systems, you very well may be able to.

From what I’ve played, I really don’t think I’ll need these Adventurers to complete any of the game’s content anyway. I keep coming back to my original “Fated Adventurer,” who has a more classic Monster Hunter style of play, and is more flexible. Your custom character benefits from any element and can use any weapon, while the named Adventurers are stuck with their signature weapon and element type. When you also consider each character needs to both be leveled up with semi-limited resources and be equipped with their own armor, weapon, and more to reach their full potential, the flexible Fated Adventurer becomes a bit more appealing, despite the rare Adventurers being flashier.

Li said, “Non-spending players will be able to fully experience, participate in, and master 100% of the game's core content,” and I can definitely see that, especially for the single-player story content, which I haven’t struggled with just yet despite not meeting the suggested power level for a while. For difficult challenge events, personal skill will likely bridge the gap a specific SSR Adventurer might create. To be clear though, I obviously haven’t reached “end-game” content, so I can’t say for sure if this will be true for the lifecycle of Outlanders. And, if you’re looking to compete for the top spot on one of the many, many leaderboards, all of this becomes an entirely different conversation, and you may feel much more pressured to get the best-of-the-best.

Combat Feels… Good

Trying out each new Adventurer I do get is super fun, though. They provide another layer of gameplay variety that will keep a game fresh for even longer than Monster Hunter’s very different 14 weapons already do. I really like the Lance–the newly available weapon in this Closed Beta Test 2–but I liked Adventurer Ouyang Varen’s style of Lance even better, which is even more counter and parry focused than usual (but gives up the Lance’s classic dash in exchange.)

If you couldn’t tell by the way I’m describing the differences in combat between weapons and characters, Monster Hunter Outlander’s combat mechanics are nuanced and combo-focused enough for these seemingly small changes to matter. I found a lot of my skills forged in core Monster Hunter games transferred to Outlanders, from weapon mechanic memory to monster movement reading, and it was much more satisfying than I expected.

Outlanders isn’t, however, a one-to-one to the combat in core Monster Hunter. The controls are a bit simplified, and things have been adapted to better suit mobile play, like the monster glowing red before an attack to telegraph it better on a small screen. You can turn this off (and adjust a lot more) in the settings, but my deteriorating eyesight welcomed it for the very perfect-evade and counter-demanding version of combat in Outlanders as a Bow, Long Sword, and Lance user. I still need to read the monster well enough before that moment to make sure I’m not in the middle of a combo when that telegraph pops up, anyway. Additional mechanics have been implemented as well, for example to showcase the Adventurers with unique “Ultimate” attacks that also have passive effects on your team.

I was worried that a co-op, combat-heavy game reliant on fast reactions would work poorly on mobile, but most of the time, it ran well enough to not affect gameplay on my iPhone 17 Pro on the Ultra graphics setting. Not as well as it would on a PC or console, certainly, but serviceable. The most trouble it had was while I fought Kushala Daora (who’s still an ass to fight, by the way), because of the constant tornadoes, wind currents, lightning, and rain it had to render along with four characters of remote players, our buddies, and the monster itself. Yeah, my phone struggled during this at times. And though my phone didn’t usually get very hot while playing, my friend’s iPhone 15 absolutely did.

The Loop and Experience

Of course, there’s more to Monster Hunter Outlanders than gacha mechanics and combat. It begins much like any Monster Hunter would. You first customize your hunter, who’s on their way with a crew to a new land to investigate some anomaly. Only, in Outlanders, the crew and accompanying folks are much… flashier. It’s a lot of main character energy for one ship.

After some character introductions and combat tutorials, you find yourself in a village, and continue with…a lot more tutorials as you progress, just about every step of the way. Look, if you thought Monster Hunter was difficult to grasp, Outlanders has a whole other level of systems to wrap your head around. As someone with more than 2,000 hours in the Monster Hunter series and decent experience with gacha live-service games–including one with pretty similar progression systems–it still presented as convoluted at the start. I’m still far from fully understanding everything under the hood since I haven’t even unlocked everything yet, but it did start to click soon enough, and when it did, I couldn’t put it down.

I found myself falling down the Monster Hunter rabbit hole that is so appealing to me–trying new weapons and making new sets all to face a new threat. Monster Hunter Outlanders makes this endeavour much more streamlined compared to core Monster Hunter, which is welcome on mobile. From anywhere, you can open the Forge menu, tap a material you need for a piece of equipment, and the game will tell you how to get it. It will even take you directly to the menu to start a Free Hunt for the monster whose materials you need, or to the Melding menu if it’s obtainable by exchanging other materials for it. But if you’d rather hunt monsters in the world, you can do that, too. The only thing that held me up was the lack of equipment loadouts–a modern quality of life feature that is really needed if you intend to use the Fated Adventurer and more than one weapon type. It honestly made me change my plans because I didn’t want to have to switch equipment back and forth.

Even during this (mostly) streamlined loop, I got happily distracted on the way, both in the open world and in the menus of activities.

There’s more to the map in Monster Hunter Outlanders than just serving primarily as a backdrop for a monster–there are watchtowers to discover, mini-games to play, chests to find, NPCs to help, endemic life to capture, and even exploration-specific skill trees to develop. You’ll be crafting camps to create fast-travel points, and mobility equipment like Ballista to help you get around faster and easier. Though not my main reason to play a game like this, it’s easy and fun enough to engage in in-between quests.

One time, I got a notification that the “Dance Night Party” event was about to begin, so I paused what I was doing to check it out. I had previously made a guild, and, well, I couldn’t join another in time to participate, so I rolled into my guild solo not expecting much. I was still able to play the Fever Dance-Off and Taster’s Trial mini-games despite being alone, and earned a Dance Fever buff that lasted for 50 minutes, a temporary Midnight Dance Master title, and some items as a reward. It was fun–and would certainly be even more fun if I did it with friends!

Finally, I have to admit, Monster Hunter Outlanders is the first action game I’ve really played on my phone ever, and even so, I picked up the controls quickly. That isn’t to say I like playing with the touch-screen controller–but that’s absolutely from my inexperience and hands that cramp up at the mere mention of the PSP. There were more than a few times that I wanted to keep playing Monster Hunter Outlanders, but I was so uncomfortable I had to put it down. For anyone intimidated by the more nuanced combat controls of Monster Hunter, there’s a simplified control format called “Adventure” that still feels interesting enough to play with only three buttons to worry about, but it felt kind of like cheating to me!

For those used to playing action games on their phone, this likely won’t be an issue for you, but for the rest of us, Li ensured that controller support is absolutely coming. In fact, it’s the most requested feature from the community. I thought maybe this meant Monster Hunter Outlanders might make it to consoles–or at least PC–but Li said, “at the moment what I can tell you is that Monster Hunter Outlanders is a mobile game only.”

This is disappointing for me because while I can see this being very fun with a guild, convincing enough friends to play consistently on mobile isn’t going to happen (two of my friends couldn’t play because their phone was incompatible, for example.) Even though the open world isn’t explorable in multiplayer, the large variety of guild challenges, co-op hunts, and arena challenges seem really fun. I had a good time with my longest hunting partner of nearly 20(!) years on a few hunts, but we still need to figure out all the multiplayer systems to get the most out of it. It’s possibly just as convoluted as multiplayer is in core Monster Hunter games.

I’m looking forward to challenges that require thoughtful team-comp, and to learn the different Adventurer roles outside of classic Assault–Disruptor and Support. I actually enjoyed the sort of forced class-roles in Monster Hunter World’s Behemoth hunt (I rocked a Wide-Range Wiggler build) and it’s cool to see those kind of actualized in Monster Hunter Outlanders. I can’t say how well it works just yet, but the idea is promising.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Monster Hunter Outlanders, and flowed pretty naturally between all the “styles” of play it has to offer–story, exploration, events, and co-op. If you like Monster Hunter or free-to-play action-RPGs, Monster Hunter Outlanders is worth a shot. But, if you categorically hate either genre, the lure of the other might not be enough for you. Monster Hunter Outlanders will take some effort to learn–a lot of things are hidden in really weird spots in menus, and though there are a lot of “how to’s,” there isn’t always a good explanation of the why. But, I find the things I need to put effort into to be the most rewarding, which is absolutely the case with Monster Hunter in general.

Playing with a community of hunters who’ve learned the ropes might be the best way to take a step into Monster Hunter Outlanders, and I can’t imagine an experience being more Monster Hunter than that.

Casey DeFreitas is on IGN's Guides team and has put thousands of hours into the Monster Hunter series. Talk about it with her on BlueSky @shinycaseyd.bsky.social.

With Forza Horizon 6 available now to those who’ve purchased the more expensive premium editions – and May 19 for the standard edition – developer Playground Games has outlined the first batch of free reward cars that will become available for players when the Festival Playlist functionality is switched on come May 21.

Series 1, dubbed ‘Welcome to Japan’, will run from May 21 to June 18 and make 10 new cars available to collect, listed below.

• 1999 Toyota Altezza RS200 Z EDITION (earn 20 points during the Summer Season)
• 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX MR (earn 40 points during the Summer Season)
• 1997 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec (earn 20 points during the Autumn Season)
• 1991 Honda CR-X SiR (earn 40 points during the Autumn Season)
• 2019 Subaru STI S209 (earn 20 points during the Winter Season)
• 2016 Toyota Land Cruiser Arctic Trucks points (earn 40 points during the Winter Season)
• 1996 Toyota Starlet Glanza V (earn 20 points during the Spring Season)
• 1974 Toyota Corolla SR5 (earn 40 points during the Spring Season)
• 2008 Mazda Furai (earn 60 points over the course of the whole 'Welcome to Japan’ series)
• 2010 Nissan 370Z (earn 120 points over the course of the whole 'Welcome to Japan’ series)

This structure ought to sound pretty familiar to anyone who participated in the playlist structure in Forza Horizon 5, though Playground has reiterated there has been a change to the format, noting that Forza Horizon 6 will be introducing “unique secondary rewards to the Festival Playlist.”

According to the team’s latest post, “Series History Rewards” will include “exclusive cars that are unlocked based on the lifetime Playlist Points that you have obtained from playing the game.”

It’s not entirely clear how this will work in practice, so we’ll have to dig into it next week. Forza Horizon’s Festival Playlist structure has copped criticism for embracing its FOMO sensibilities a little too seriously.

If you haven’t already, you can check out IGN’s review for a deep dive into what makes this 10 out of 10 speedster the best open-world racer in the business and, if you’re already laying rubber all over Japan but need some pointers on where to find its pesky treasure cars and barn finds, we’ve got you covered there, too.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

James Ohlen, the former director of BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, has discussed his exit from the storied RPG maker in 2018 — after an attempt to reboot the game that ended up squashed by publisher EA.

Ohlen was a BioWare veteran of 22 years, with a string of high profile credits on BioWare classics such as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In more recent times, Ohlen led Archetype Entertainment, a studio staffed by several former BioWare veterans making big budget Mass Effect-like Exodus, a huge project starring Matthew McConaughey that will be eight years in the making by the time of its release in 2027.

Last year, Ohlen also moved on from Archetype — and now, he's given a wide-ranging interview on his various departures, discussing in detail the effects of burnout he has felt over his long career in video games, as well as his long-scrapped plan to reboot Star Wars: The Old Republic under a new guise.

"I always told everybody I should never be the head of a studio because it'll kill me," Ohlen told PC Gamer, talking of his more recent departure from Archetype. "And it nearly killed me. It was six years of nearly killing me.

"I was running on fumes, and it was hurting my health, and my personal life, and everything. I just needed to step away," he continued. "As a creative you care about everything so much, and then as the head of the studio, you have to be cutting the baby in half all the time, and having people attack your vision constantly. I definitely wouldn't put myself in that situation again; that's not a healthy place to be."

Before Archetype, Ohlen rose through the ranks quickly at BioWare ("the last time I was truly in love with my job," he claimed), and is credited as lead designer on beloved BioWare single-player RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This then led to BioWare's bosses Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk asking if he would oversee a new BioWare Austin studio tasked with making the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.

"I was like, 'I hate massive multiplayer games. But all right, I'll do it,'" Ohlen said — before realizing it would be a "never-ending" project where he frequently had to spend time simply ensuring "big ego designers... didn't kill each other."

"I'm just not someone who can manage hundreds and hundreds of people to go in a different direction," he said of The Old Republic's early days. "Everyone wants to build [World of Warcraft] in space, and it's my job to say no, we're making [something different], and I wasn't able to do that."

Ohlen ultimately realized he would move on after what sounds like a lengthy and extremely difficult pitch to Lucasfilm and EA for a full reboot of the game, which would see it renamed Star Wars: The New Republic. Ohlen spent half a year on a plan before getting the greenlight from former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, as well as Star Wars creative boss Dave Filoni.

"He was like, 'If you set it a couple hundred years before the fall of the Republic, we can have a tie in,'" Ohlen recalled of Filoni's eventual agreement. (It's a time period that sounds not dissimilar to Lucasfilm's The High Republic, which the company has since mined for its storytelling potential.)

"I remember I got super excited because the big challenge was Patrick Söderlund [former EA chief design officer, who now heads up Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios]," Ohlen said next. "I think [he's] great but hates Star Wars: The Old Republic. And I convinced him... it was one of the greatest accomplishments of my career."

Unfortunately, everything then came crashing down. While Söderlund was sold, EA's board of directors was not.

"[They] remembered spending $300 million," Ohlen said, referring to The Old Republic's high development costs. "They're like, 'Why the fuck are we gonna spend a bunch more?'"

"That was the beginning of the end for me," he continued. "The only way you get through life is by having empathy for everybody, including people that are causing you pain. I was thinking of it through the lens of EA. And I'm like, there's no way I'm ever going to win in this. It just doesn't make sense to empower someone like me. If I was there, I wouldn't. So I gotta get out. This is just not for me.

"I would tell people, I'm actually a highly paid, completely useless person. It's just that everyone thinks that I'm super useful because of my reputation. No one seems to be able to tell, except me. There's research that shows that when you just feel like you're not accomplishing anything, it's actually the biggest thing to bring about burnout.

"My wife was like, 'But you could have ridden it out. Don't lots of execs do that?' And I'm like, 'I know, but they're not creatives. They enjoy the politics, and I don't blame them. But that's not what I like."

Ohlen is now in the middle of authoring various RPG adventure books, working alongside his former Archetype and BioWare colleague Jesse Sky (who is now Exodus' creative director). The promising-looking Exodus, meanwhile, is on track to finally release next year, and scratch the Mass Effect itch for many BioWare fans of old.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Subnautica 2 has sold 2 million copies within 12 hours of its early access launch, developer Unknown Worlds has announced. It’s a huge start for the underwater survival and crafting adventure game after a turbulent road to release.

Peak concurrent players across all platforms Subnautica 2 launched on (PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Series X and S), exceeded 651,000, with Steam alone reaching a peak of more than 467,000 concurrent players. That’s nearly nine times the all-time peak concurrent player count of the original Subnautica, which launched in 2018, Unknown Worlds said.

Subnautica 2 was the most wishlisted game on Steam ahead of launch, and had enormous momentum off the back of 18.5 million sales across the series. This sequel, developed using Unreal Engine 5, has optional co-op for up to four players, fuelling multiplayer virality. IGN’s Subnautica 2 early access review returned a 7/10. We said: “It’s pretty impressive that wading in the shallow tides of Subnautica 2's early access debut is as fun as it is already, and that should be a great sign of things to come, but I also wouldn’t blame anyone for waiting for these waters to rise a bit before getting their feet wet.”

Subnautica 2 had a bumpy road to release, with development beginning around 2022. The game was initially targeting a 2025 release, but was delayed following drama with publisher Krafton. In July 2025, Krafton removed Unknown World's leadership from the company, including CEO Ted Gill. This spawned a legal battle, with the fired employees claiming Krafton let them go and delayed the game to avoid paying out a massive $250 million bonus for hitting key targets and deadlines. A judge had Gill and his colleagues reinstated earlier this year, which then put the game back on track for release.

There was one last obstacle before launch, however. Subnautica 2 leaked online days before its release. However, it doesn't seem to have hurt the game in any notable way. Subnautica 2's launch is just the beginning, as it will be updated over time with new content. For now, the game packs a meaty narrative, co-op, and an expansive sea to explore.

We’ve got a Things to Do First in Subnautica 2 guide to check out before you dive in, plus resource location guides to help you find Titanium, Silver, and more. Discover blackbox and supply crate locations on our interactive Subnautica 2 map, and make sure you don’t miss any Angel Comb Adaptations or Blueprints.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Pearl Abyss has released a new major patch for Crimson Desert — the second this week alone — that makes yet more significant changes to the game.

There’s a lot to dig into with update 1.07.00, which adds more bosses for rematches and makes various bug fixes (patch notes, courtesy of the Crimson Desert website, are below). But perhaps the highlight here is the addition of Blinding Flash Finisher for unarmed combat with Kliff.

For the uninitiated, Blinding Flash Finisher is an essential combat skill that lets you do big damage to stunned enemies while time is slowed down. But, even better, if you hold the button down until Kliff finishes the slow-mo combo, he ends it with a hit that sends a shockwave out in all directions. This is great for clearing groups of weaker enemies, as well as dealing serious damage against foes with more health. Adding it to unarmed combat means those who favor fisticuffs now have access to one of the most powerful combat abilities in the game. So, if you’re playing Kliff like some fantasy version of Batman, your moveset is pretty much complete.

Also of note, this patch fixes an issue where Damiane’s Elegant Carmine Leather Armor appeared abnormally. Earlier this week, social media posts of before and after images of Damiane, the female playable character in Crimson Desert, went viral for showing clothing seemingly changed to cover up previously bare skin. This led to complaints within the community — and even mild Steam review-bombing — with some accusing Pearl Abyss of censorship.

However, Pearl Abyss insisted Damiane’s Elegant Carmine Leather Armor was "unintentionally altered” while it was fixing an issue that would cause the item of clothing to clip. Now, the bug is resolved.

Elsewhere, the patch adds additional wolf and bear types that can be registered as mounts, and both Damiane and Oongka (the third playable character) now have access to the Aerial Stab, as Pearl Abyss continues to make non-Kliff characters more viable.

Fans weren’t expecting another major Crimson Desert patch so soon after the last one, but as the developer has explained, it’s working to a more MMO-like update schedule — informed by its actual MMO, Black Desert — and it maintains momentum in this single-player open world action adventure. Certainly players are enjoying the speed with which Pearl Abyss is improving the game.

This week, Pearl Abyss revealed just how successful Crimson Desert has been, while also confirming plans to explore DLC. It’s sold 5 million copies since going on sale on March 19, and just in March alone it generated KRW 266.5 billion (approx. $178.8 million) in revenue. Pearl Abyss expects it to make over half a billion dollars by the end of 2026.

What could the DLC involve? Players have gone out of bounds and found various interesting parts of the map with unused content. There's also a named area to the east, called Sunbaked Peaks, that players are currently unable to reach. Perhaps a story expansion could open that up.

Crimson Desert update 1.07.00 patch notes:

New Additions

Added more bosses that can be challenged again in rematches.

• The rematch locations for each boss are listed below and can also be found in Journal > Knowledge > Memory Fragments > Bosses. Additionally, rematch locations for bosses originally found in the Abyss have been adjusted to take place on land.
  • Muskan: Bonepit
  • Corrupted Caliburn: Fort Musket
  • Goyen: Spire of the Sun
  • Draven, the Crowcaller: Church of West Demeniss
  • Clockwork White Horn: Gate to Advancement
• [Damiane] Added unarmed combat skills.
  • You can find the new skills by selecting "Fists" in the skill menu.
• [Damiane/Oongka] Added "Aerial Stab" for Damiane and Oongka.
• [Kliff] Added "Blinding Flash Finisher" for unarmed combat.
• Added additional wolf and bear types that can be registered as mounts.
• Added reins for certain mounts.

Main Improvements Content

• [Damiane] Fixed an issue where the "Elegant Carmine Leather Armor" appeared abnormally.
• Fixed an issue where the "Faces on the Bounty Notice" could not be progressed if the player obtained Ulzok's bounty notice before speaking with Yann.
• Improved visual effects of "Champion's Plate Gloves."
• Fixed an issue where the "Eastern Witch's Fan" would disappear when extracted.
• Fixed an issue where the Kuku Bird Egg would occasionally disappear from the nest.
• Fixed an issue where some NPCs would appear abnormally at the Saltroad Trading Post.
• Fixed an issue where the "Check the honey quality at the Pollengarth Apiary" could not be completed for "Ugmon's Request."
• Fixed an issue while carrying out the "Protectors of the Abyss" quest, where tokens inserted into the door would disappear if only some of them had been inserted and the player moved too far away.
• Fixed an issue where the "Plentiful Greeting" quest could not be progressed even when the relevant requirements were met.
• Fixed an issue where floppy-eared bulldogs could not equip the "Sigil of Valor".
• Fixed an issue where Ibexes could not be sold to a fence.
• Fixed an issue where missions could not be progressed if comrades were disbanded after moving to the mission location while assembled.
• Fixed an issue where legendary mounts could not be summoned when switching to Kliff in certain situations.
• Fixed an issue where the A.T.A.G. could not be summoned in certain situations.
• Fixed an issue where the A.T.A.G. would occasionally not appear in the hangar.
• Increased the number of animals in the world that can be used as mounts.

Controls

• Fixed an issue where the eating animation would not be canceled by other actions while unarmed on Easy or Normal difficulty.
• Fixed an issue where the handwheel on the coil pillar could only be interacted with from certain angles.

Combat / Action

• [Oongka] Added a charge phase to Explosive Strike.
• [Oongka] Improved chaining into "Stab" when dual-wielding.
• [Damiane] Improved general movement animation while unarmed.
• Improved most unarmed attacks and skills so that they can now successfully hit enemies lying on the ground.

UI

• Fixed an issue where the icon for the "Sword of Starlight" differed from its actual appearance.
• Fixed an issue where, when playing with a controller, certain key guides shown in the bottom-right area of the screen would display keyboard and mouse inputs.

Graphics & Settings

• Fixed a GPU crash issue that occurred with AMD driver version 26.5.1.

Localization

• Fixed various localization errors and improved localization quality across all languages.

Others

• Fixed an issue where, when the "Display Melee Weapons" option was set to "Selected Only", the sheath for a two-handed sword would be displayed while a one-handed sword and shield were equipped.
• Fixed an issue where equipment equipped on horses would disappear in certain situations.
• Fixed an issue where lions, tigers, and large wolves would fall over every time they were hit.
• Fixed an issue where other actions could be performed while attacking on horseback.
• Fixed an issue where two-handed cannons would flicker while sliding.
• Fixed an issue where the player would glide an excessive distance during a jump attack while equipped with a sword and shield in certain situations.

Applied bug fixes and improvements regarding specific bosses. (To prevent spoilers, details are listed in the dropdown menu below.)

• Fixed an issue where certain attack patterns of Awakened Ludvig involved excessive gliding.
• Fixed an issue where Blackstar's health would not recover after retrying or giving up while fighting with the ultimate weapon during "Deferred Advance."

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Marathon is attempting to broaden its playerbase with new offerings, such as a PVE-only mode. Depending on who you ask, Marathon has struck a chord with a dedicated playerbase, but may not have the wide appeal. It seems Bungie is acutely aware of the fact that it may need to expand its audience to make it more approachable and is planning on doing so.

In a massive new blog post, Bungie laid out its plans for the future of Marathon. Among the many details in it, arguably the biggest takeaway content-wise is the introduction of a brand-new PVE mode being introduced in Season 2. It's an experimental mode that won't have player-on-player combat to instead emphasize working together to complete objectives, fight UESC bots, and make progress in a less chaotic and hostile environment. Additionally, there will be a mode that focuses on "PVE, but with a light touch of PVP," though details are scarce on what exactly that means.

For those fearing this means PVP will take a backseat from Marathon, that's not the case. Bungie teased that it is developing a purely PVP-focused mode as part of plans for more experimental modes in Marathon. Bungie noted its goal is to create a game that allows for nail-biting tension and sweaty gameplay, but also one that allows you to take a step back and chill. The aim is to ensure there is a pace of play for whatever mood you're in, rather than constant high-stakes, tense gameplay with big time commitments.

Bungie is also planning to update and improve Marathon's onboarding experience for new players, as well as deepen the overall experience for the diehard fans:

The following is the general roadmap for the future of Marathon throughout 2026:

• Season 2 is on the horizon and we'll be sowing the seeds for a lot of our future plans via new content such as Sentinel and Night Marsh, systems, and experiments around new play modes that may become permanent in the future.
• Season 3 we're planning to introduce a lot (and I mean a lot) of revisions to our early experience, including big updates to Perimeter, alongside a new Runner shell, and additional (no spoilers) content.
• Season 4 we're focusing on building more depth into the existing extraction loop.
• Season 5 we're looking at bringing the whole ecosystem of (PV(P)VE) play together and evolving our weird sci-fi world in new ways.

While there is a passionate group of Marathon players, some would-be fans were interested in experiencing the game for Bungie's tight gunplay, but didn't click with the main extraction-based modes. It seems like this is a direct response to those people and hopefully, it will lure them in and expand the playerbase.

Sony claimed in a recent earnings report that despite a positive reception from players, Marathon's underperformance contributed to a massive $765 million impairment loss following Bungie being acquired. It appears this is part of Bungie doing what it can to pump Marathon's numbers up. Bungie has plans to support Marathon for several years, but obviously, Sony isn't afraid of shutting down studios as seen most recently with the closure of Bluepoint Games.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Nintendo has been getting amazing brick treatment over the last few years, and one of the biggest and most impressive sets has been the 2-in-1 The Legend of Zelda Great Deku Tree. It originally came out in September of 2024, but sadly it looks like it's already scheduled to be retired soon. This set joins a wide breadth of other LEGO kits about to be sunsetted on LEGO's Last Chance to Buy page, but there should still be plenty of time to pick one up from Amazon or directly through LEGO before it's too late. This is one of just two LEGO Legend of Zelda sets, with the Ocarina of Time - The Final Battle set dropping earlier this year.

Cooler Master's NR2 series PCs offer plenty of gaming prowess in a compact 18-liter chassis. Because this is a premium product for a semi-niche audience, prices are usually higher than a comparably equipped gaming PC, but not always. Case in point, Amazon is currently offering the Cooler Master NR2 RTX 5070 gaming PC for $1,799.98 shipped after you apply a $400 off coupon on the product page. This brings the price in-line with other standard-sized 5070 prebuilts but you get a stylish, powerful system that won't take up much desk space.

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