Bubsy was one of several video game mascots that tried to nip at the heels of Mario and Sonic in the ‘90s, but this quick-witted feline’s oddball, comical nature ended up being more memorable than the actual games he was in. Still, Bubsy has an endearing appeal – if maybe as a meme more than a mascot – which makes the go-for-broke energy of his next game, Bubsy 4D, all the more admirable. It tries to recapture the fast and fierce reputation of those early platformers, funneling that energy into a modestly sized, meta-level redemption story that gives Bubsy his proper due.

Equal parts parody and legit legacy sequel, Bubsy 4D sees the washed-up video game mascot clumsily make a comeback. This time, he reluctantly has to save the galaxy from another invasion of the returning Woolies, along with a new enemy known as the BaaBots. Guided by his friends, along with his Gen-Z-coded niece and nephew, he'll once again take to being the main character of a video game platformer – whether he likes it or not. While many retro-inspired 3D platformers these days tap into nostalgia, Bubsy 4D's take is a bit more self-deprecating and aware of the series' shaky legacy, but not to the point of feeling mean, and its portrayal of a down on his luck video game character is very charming.

Bubsy 4D plays out exactly like you’d expect a classic 3D action-platformer from the '90s to, with that added edge and charm of a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Made by developer Fabraz – known for great platformers like Slime-San and the more recent Demon Tides – it really leans into freeform platforming as you skillfully chain different maneuvers together to barrel through a variety of stages. It's the type of flow that rewards you for understanding the physics and rhythm of the action, which is a welcome new direction for the Bubsy series. Across three unique worlds with their own sets of stages, Bubsy uses his various skills and quirks to barrel through enemies and some wily obstacle courses in style

I really liked the energy of Bubsy's movement, which is brought to life by his anxious whining and mannerisms. It actively leans into that comical style he’s known for, and Bubsy 4D has a particularly compelling, dynamic flow to the action. My favorite moments came from darting through worlds built around computer e-waste, where I was climbing tall towers and using Bubsy's ball form to zip through the air in order to make it across the map.

Unlike 1996's Bubsy 3D, 4D is all about building up speed through these levels with his dash and rolling abilities. He's not quite Sonic when it comes to going fast, but it is particularly satisfying to find a quick pace with the ball maneuver. At its best, Bubsy 4D nails that slick, satisfying sense of mastery over your character, especially one as fun and whimsical as Bubsy.

However, I was a bit disappointed with the activities in these stages. While they do focus on the collectathon variety of 3D platformers, where you have to grab all of the knick-knacks and hidden items to score upgrades, the stages themselves feel rather sparse upon deeper exploration. With very few enemies to fight and side-activities to take in across the relatively few stages in the main campaign, it makes the more open-zone levels feel uninteresting and like a bit of a slog to clear compared to the tighter, more focused stages.

Still, there’s generally a flow to the action that I found satisfying. When it was firing on all cylinders, it made me feel like I was in deep as a 'speedrunner' with how well I could build up momentum and bypass massive gaps between explorable areas. However, it did take me some time to come to grips with the movement style, which can feel slippery and imprecise when trying to nail precision jumps. Most of my failures came from those awkward moments of falling off the ledges, using up all my jumps and leaps to attempt to save myself. During the higher-end stages that require a bit more precision, this was a frustrating hurdle to overcome.

What I found most disappointing was the brief campaign, which I finished in under four hours. While I can appreciate Bubsy 4D’s bite-sized nature, what's here doesn't quite feel as complete or ambitious as it could have. Just as it was building to a cool peak, I unexpectedly hit the final stages, and then came the ending. It results in a conclusion that’s both unfulfilling and a bit disappointing, as I was finally reaching a rhythm with the rise in quality of its late-game level design and encounters. It does provide opportunities to revisit previous levels to find missing collectibles and secure time trial finishes at least, and there's even a permadeath mode called 9 Lives that limits your hits before a permanent game over, but the overall package does feel a bit light.

Still, Bubsy 4D's charm and stylish tone really elevate it in many ways. It's packed with nods to classic Bubsy games, and many video game tropes in general, making it a full-on parody of 3D platformers. Though the characters never directly break the fourth wall to acknowledge they're in a video game, they totally lean into the heightened, cartoon reality of an action-platformer. The pause screen also includes occasional gags, with Bubsy momentarily panicking when he finds himself whisked away from the action and left to sit in a menu.

Along with some unlockable moves that poke fun at the “Coyote Time” game design concept that lets you linger in the air for a moment after running off a ledge, which is a must-get, there are also some great costumes for Bubsy, which include the retro-3D skin from his ill-fated first trip into the third dimension. There's even a neat option to turn on the classic Bubsy 3D tank-style controls for full authenticity – or if you're feeling especially daring for a challenge. While this style of referential humor can wear thin at times, I really appreciated how tongue-in-cheek the writing was. A standout is Bubsy's niece and nephew, who always poke fun at his attempts to appear cool.

Tonally, what makes Bubsy 4D so different from other games of the series is that it fully embraces the style and atmosphere of early 3D action-platformers in the vein of N64 classics like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. At the same time, however, it leans into modern flourishes that give it an extra bit of energy, elevating it beyond being just another homage to that genre. And while Bubsy's first 3D game was not particularly great three decades ago, Bubsy 4D still includes some rather fun and even respectful nods to it, including a tribute to the classic Bubsy developers in the ending credits.

Thirteen years after Ubisoft ditched Desmond Miles to go full pirate in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, this seafaring adventure is still considered by some to be the best pirate simulator of all time. So it’s no wonder at all that Ubisoft has decided to dust off this bad boy and remake it in the style of last year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, complete with all the modern trimmings you’d expect. That includes stuff like drastically improved graphics, modernized combat mechanics to make Edward Kenway faster on the draw, and my personal favorite, a near-complete removal of all the pesky loading screens that is an absolute godsend. My time with Black Flag Resynced included a few red flags to go along with the black ones though, like how some of the modernizations involved removing aspects of the original that seem like maybe they’d be best left as they were, but on the whole it’s pretty hard to be mad about this gorgeous second voyage of one of the best Assassin’s Creed games.

Many of Black Flag Resynced’s best parts come courtesy of the Ubisoft Anvil engine, last seen in AC Shadows. It’s been used to recreate Black Flag from the ground up, and that allows it to be every bit as beautiful as more recent Assassin’s Creed games. The tropical environment of the Caribbean is a night and day improvement over the original, specifically when it comes to how bright and colorful areas are versus the previous generation’s somewhat muted and dark appearance, especially when running around forested areas. Similarly, character models somehow manage to look absurdly better than they did in 2013 while also being exactly as I remember them (weird how that happens, right?). That said, I did find many of the characters to be a bit prettier than I expected, particularly when it comes to pirate characters who spend all their time boozing, sailing, and fighting. The cast seems to have been given a Hollywood glow up and aren’t nearly as gross and dirty and you might think.

Black Flag Resynced also benefits from many of the other upgrades the series has seen in recent iterations, especially changes to combat that make it faster and more decisive, and to sneaking around that make it a more competent stealth game than the original. Despite the Assassin’s Creed series ostensibly being all about sneaking around, it’s wild to think that it wasn’t until Assassin’s Creed Unity that we got a dedicated crouch button – absolutely insane in retrospect. In the original Black Flag you could only go undetected when hidden within a group of people or when walking in bushes that automatically put you into crouch mode. Aside from that, your character genuinely couldn’t crouch at all. Thankfully, Black Flag Resynced adds a dedicated crouch button, so you can go about your business of stabbing enemies to death from the cover of shadow as you please. There are also a few new gadgets in your stealth toolbelt, and some that were in the original but come to you much sooner in this iteration. For example, the badass ropedart that didn’t appear until the tailend of the story is now added to your inventory in the opening chapters so you can almost immediately start yanking enemies toward you like Mortal Kombat’s Scorpion, which, I think we can all agree, is just a great decision.

If you aren’t in the mood for stealth, though, one change to this iteration of Black Flag is likely to bring you joy: those deeply irritating tailing quests have been reworked. Whereas before you’d have to slowly follow people around town unnoticed, paying the ultimate price of having to start over from the beginning if you got caught, now you’re provided alternate ways of completing the mission instead. In the one example included in the demo, I decided to sprint right at the two people I was told to follow just to see what would happen, and although the result was sloppy and most unbecoming of an aspiring assassin, I can confirm that I was indeed given separate means for completing my objective anyway, though they were significantly bloodier and less smooth than planned. A pretty great change, if you ask me!

Likewise, combat has been modernized to focus on player skill, complete with my favorite: a perfect parry mechanic that opens enemies up to be instantly killed if you get the timing just so. As someone who has been honing his parry timing for years in the crucible of soulslikes and uber-difficult action games, this is one of my favorite changes. Not only does it make you feel like a complete badass when you slap someone’s sword out of your face and finish them off with an execution, but it also allows for combat to go faster – something that feels quite needed at times with all the samey boarding combat sections that happen every time you want to pillage a ship of its cargo before sinking it. I also played with the difficulty turned all the way up and found myself dying quite a bit, both in ship-based combat and while swashbuckling. Some of this is surely just the fact that I was playing this remake for the first time and learning as I went, but here’s hoping this iteration of Black Flag is a bit more challenging than the original, where I rarely found myself in any real peril.

Though this remaster draws on many of Assassin’s Creed’s more recent entries, it steers clear from the RPG elements found in Valhalla and Shadows, instead sticking to its action-adventure roots like Mirage and, crucially, the original Black Flag. There are still some stats on weapons that can be purchased in shops and some RPG-like upgrades here and there, but Resynced focuses much more on being a competent action game than an RPG, so you won’t find yourself stealth-assassinating someone and not doing enough DPS to take them out in one strike. I actually enjoy both the more RPG-style Assassin’s Creed games and the less chunky action games that the series found its roots in, but if I’m being honest, this one just feels like it’s much better suited as a pure action game. After all, I’m a bloody pirate for God’s sake! I’m meant to be showing these nautical narcs the business end of a flintlock, not running the numbers on my armor set or doing math on my critical hit chances. Yar, I say! Yar!

Some of the streamlining of Black Flag Resynced’s action has led to some peculiar choices, though, like how you can no longer pick up the weapons of slain foes to use in combat. In the original, if you downed a big guy who was wielding a two-handed ax, you could then pick it up and use it to mop up the rest of the scallywags in your path. For whatever reason, that was removed in the demo I played, though, possibly to simplify things and keep the action moving along without having to clumsily retrieve a weapon from the ground in the heat of battle. I can certainly see the logic in that choice, but honestly, I kinda missed being able to have that kind of freedom, and it felt to me like one of those wholly unnecessary changes that could have just as well been left as it was. Then again, this feature hasn’t been a part of the series in quite some time now, so maybe it’s just one of those things that no longer fits within the Anvil engine.

While reliving my time with Black Flag was largely awesome, one surprising revelation is that the entirety of the present-day storyline has been removed from this version. As someone who misses when the Assassin’s Creed series actually tried to tell a story within its sci-fi world, it’s a bit of a bummer to see them follow in AC Shadows’ footsteps of giving up on that aspect of the series entirely. It’s especially odd if, like me, you have the twist ending at the end of the original Black Flag burned into your memory – I’m honestly very curious how this remake will be able to cut around that aspect of the story entirely, and worry the story might feel a bit awkward in doing so. That said, the historical story and pirate gameplay is quite obviously Black Flag’s strength, so maybe it won’t be any big loss not having it around, even if it does feel a bit strange.

Perhaps as a way of making up for the lack of a present-day story, Resynced interestingly adds content to Kenway’s story that wasn’t in the original, some of which I played. This includes whole story sections that focus on Black Beard and Stede Bonnet, who were only briefly involved in the original version of Black Flag, if memory serves. There are also new party members you can recruit to join your pirate crew, complete with quests to indoctrinate them into your privateering operations. One such quest involved breaking a shipwright out of jail and persuading her to join my team by agreeing to help her with a personal matter down the road. Her name is Lucy and she’s pretty much a complete badass. I think she’ll fit in with Kenway and company just fine.

After a handful of hours playing this remake of one of the best Assassin’s Creed games, I’m pretty sold on replaying through it in its entirety when it comes out later this year. What do you think? Will you give Black Flag a return trip? Let us know in the comments.

Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.

Original Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward has new studio heads, but neither of them is new to the studio. Jack O’Hara, who came up in production, has been at Infinity Ward since 2012. Mark Grigsby, meanwhile, made his name in animation starting back in 2005, though he left for a stint at Respawn Entertainment (which, of course, was infamously started when a substantial number of team members followed IW cofounders Jason West and the late Vince Zampella out the door in 2010 following a royalties dispute) before returning in 2012. Both are insistent that the studio will remain true to the bold design that makes up its DNA.

“We actually have one person that does work here that was here from the beginning,” Grigsby said. “The DNA of that crew still lives in this studio.” He continued: “What we created back then, how the vibe was in the studio back then – it's still something that we push for [with] our employees here, and what we want the studio to generate. It was a vibe. It still is a vibe, right?

“Unfortunately, COVID kind of hurt us a little bit back in the day a couple of years ago,” Grigsby continued. “But we had a tremendous amount of like energy and fire and drive in 2019 and COVID kinda hit the world and messed things up a little bit, but we are still on that trajectory and we are still as passionate as we were back in 2003, 2005, it's still there.”

“I think that as the generations have gone on, we just keep accumulating very talented people that are very passionate,” O’Hara said. “Our culture is really about trying to make the best game possible, about being passionate about your craft and, and excellence in your craft, and making sure that we're, we're good at giving each other feedback and direct with each other about what needs to get better and, and how to improve the game, and to make sure we listen to feedback and have no egos in it and just make the best game possible.”

This year’s Call of Duty from Infinity Ward will mark the first series entry since Zampella tragically died in a car accident last December. It sounds like Infinity Ward’s new leaders are still wrestling with how to best honor him. IGN asked if the studio’s 2026 CoD would include an “in memory of Vince Zampella” in the credits, and O’Hara responded, “A lot of us knew Vince personally, so, when his tragic death happened, I think for a lot of us it, it hit home hard. We all had stories about Vince to remember him by and to share amongst ourselves. [So] we haven't finalized any plans for anything, at this point, mainly because a lot of us know his family and so we want to be very sensitive about what we do.”

2026's Call of Duty is likely to be announced on or before June 7, as that's when the Xbox Showcase takes place.

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.

Warhammer Skulls is back! The showcase event for all things Warhammer video games promises to deliver big news on everything from Space Marine 2 to Darktide, and we'll be reporting on all the announcements, reveals, and updates via the live blog below. Here's what to expect...

Warhammer Skulls 2026 video game lineup:

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (Focus Entertainment & Saber Interactive)
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Fatshark)
• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy (Owlcat Games)
• Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun 2 and Warhammer Survivors (Devolver Digital & Auroch Digital)
• Total War: Warhammer III (Sega & Creative Assembly)
• Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector (Slitherine)
• Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War IV (Deep Silver, KING Art Games)
• and many, many more…

Warhammer Skulls 2026 live blog

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.

TT Games has returned to the world of Lego Batman, and once again, there’s a whole crate of cool Easter eggs, references, and fun details to find hidden all across this bricky version of Gotham City.

Legacy of the Dark Knight is, unsurprisingly, stuffed full of nods to Batman movies old and new. The entire game is essentially eight movie tie-in Lego kits smashed together, and if we were to detail every single movie reference, this video would simply be a let’s play. There are some deeper cuts, though, such as quoting immortal lines from great sitcoms, referencing viral moments from kids’ TV, and even manifesting Michael Caine’s tweets. Expect many spoilers as we dive into 48 brilliant little details in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and be sure to swipe through the image galleries to see them in action!

1. We’ll start with a guy in one of the story's early cutscene, running across the shot with a sparking bomb held high above his head. Fans of a certain vintage (or people who love a good gif) will know this is a nod to a scene from 1966’s Batman: The Movie, in which Adam West’s camp Caped Crusader attempts to dispose of an explosive without killing nuns, babies, a brass band, or family of ducks. Sometimes, you really just can’t get rid of a bomb.

2. That bomb would have come in handy when Batman has to deal with a giant shark in the story's second chapter. Thankfully, he’s armed with Shark Repellent Batspray, a tool that was also added to the Dark Knight’s belt in the 1966 movie.

3. Fast-forward a couple of decades and Adam West made way for Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s much darker big-screen adaptation of Batman. During your tours of Gotham you may spot the words Furst City Planners painted onto some brickwork - a reference to Anton Furst, Burton’s production designer on Batman, who won the Oscar for Best Art Direction in 1989.

4. While you’re waiting to get to the right floor in Shreck's Department Store, you’ll hear the familiar melody of Danny Elfman’s Batman theme soundtrack to your descent.

5. There are a few display dummies around the store, and if you attack them using Catwoman’s whip, she’ll decapitate them - just as Michelle Pfeiffer did in Batman Returns.

6. Also in Shreck’s are a couple of miniature Batmobiles. Rather than simple toys, these are replicas of the mini Batmobile that the Penguin uses in Batman Returns to hijack Batman’s car.

7. If you come across one of the many arcade cabinets, take a closer look and you’ll see a high score screen featuring five names. Topping the leader board is Batman himself, but the names below are all people who have played Batman. There’s CHR - likely pointing to Christian Bale, with 9000 points, closely followed by PAT, or Robert Pattinson. Trailing behind is VAL, Val Kilmer, with 6k points. Amusingly, AFL - Ben Affleck - has just 500 points, perhaps a sly jab at him being arguably the least popular Batman. At least he’s got a better score than George Clooney, who didn’t even make the leader board.

8. Out in the city streets, you’ll find numerous references to the best Bat flick of them all. Posters with Heath Ledger’s famous Joker line “why so serious?” can be found pasted to walls…

9. … and you’ll also stumble over a parody of the poster for The Dark Knight, featuring The Gray Ghost. In the lore of DC’s animated universe, this fictional crime fighter was the original inspiration for a young Bruce Wayne.

10. Talking of different DC universes, during a late-game mission, the clown prince of crime delivers messages to you via people dressed up as different Jokers, including Cesar Romero's moustache-covered-in-makeup Joker from the 1960s. Perhaps the most recognisable of them, though, is Arthur Fleck, the down-on-his-luck sign-twirler who would become the Joker in Todd Phillips’ incredibly grim 2019 movie.

11. Opinion on Joker is split, but everyone agrees that 2004’s Halle Berry vehicle Catwoman is an absolute disaster. However, that dud is the basis for the delightful Halle Purry missing cat posters dotted around the city – a great joke referencing that Berry’s Catwoman is completely missing from the game.

12. It’s not just Batman movies that you’ll find referenced all over Legacy of the Dark Knight - there are plenty of cinema gags to be found across Gotham, including several that any kids playing will be completely oblivious to. Perhaps the most amusingly age-inappropriate reference is to the brutally deranged serial killer story, American Psycho - employees at Wayne Tower can be seen fawning over Bruce Wayne’s business card, quoting lines from the film’s famous scene.

13. During the story’s Batman Begins-derived section, Ra's al Ghul quotes the famous “very particular set of skills” speech from Taken. That film’s protagonist was played by Liam Neeson, who, of course, was also Ra's al Ghul in the first of Nolan’s trilogy.

14. Alfred answers a phone call at Wayne Manor by sliding into the room wearing nothing but a baggy shirt. Tom Cruise fans will recognise this as the most famous shot from 1983’s Risky Business.

15. When exploring the depths of Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge, you can find “Ska-kham Asylum” - a club dedicated to calypso-tinged rhythms and Batman puns. That’s not the joke, though. Knock on the door and someone inside will say “We don't want any more visitors, well-wishers or distant relations”, quoting an exasperated Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings. (Incidentally, Ska was the precursor genre to Rocksteady in ‘60s Jamaica. Rocksteady developed three beloved Batman Arkham games. Are we stretching here? Maybe. But it’s fun anyway.)

16. During the boss battle with the Penguin, you’ll hear him shout, “Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!” It’s a double-reference; this section of the game is based on Batman Returns, which is set at Christmas, and so it’s only right that Oswald Cobblepot would quote one of the greatest Christmas movies of them all, Home Alone.

17. During this same fight, he also screams, “So anyways, I started blasting!” He’s quoting Frank Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, played by Danny DeVito, who also played Penguin in Batman Returns.

18. Throughout the game you pick up a hell of a lot of studs, and will at some point want to spend them at Bat-Mite’s store. Among his wares you can find this telephone booth, which can “make calls” and may possibly be a “time machine.” That’s a reference to Bill & Ted, who use a phone booth to travel through time in their 1989 excellent adventure. The booth is priced at an unusual 2002 studs, which could be a reference to the movie Phone Booth, released in 2002 and starring Colin Farrell, who would two decades later go on to don a mountain of prosthetics to play the Penguin in The Batman.

19. A few more obvious references to the world of cinema can be found on the walls of Gotham’s various theatres, including posters for Batman riffs on The Shining, Goodfellas, Indiana Jones, and The Matrix.

20. Posters are one of the most common sight-gags in this Lego Gotham, and you’ll see them on every street corner and often towering above you as massive billboards. There are too many to name all of them here, but among our favourites is one for Cavalier Mobile Phones, a niche DC villain. His rapier is electrified, hence the “shocking prices” of his phones.

21. There are multiple adverts for Chocos, Gotham’s legally-distinct Oreo-style cookie.

22. The city seems to have a thriving theatre scene, with advertisements for a huge variety of Broadway parodies. There’s Les Minifigures, a riff on Les Miserables…

23. … Detroit, the Lego world’s take on Chicago…

24. … and Bats, a send-up of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Cats. Thankfully there’s no CGI felines here, but ticket holders do get to see Man-Bat himself, Kirk Langstrom, presumably belting out “Memory” live on stage.

25. Talking of cats, during a sequence in the Flugelheim Museum, you can control Catwoman’s purring pal and have them walk over a security guard’s keyboard. That’s a cute reference to cats being little dicks, but the punchline is that the guard’s screen will then display a riff on the internet’s favourite keyboard cat.

26. There are several good memes referenced across the campaign, and it’d be a shame to spoil all of them, but one of the best arrives during the Case of Waylon Jones side quests. During the chain’s sixth mission, Batman overhears from a sewer grate a voice saying “We’re just normal men, innocent men.” It’s a riff on Hacker T. Dog's hilarious improvised skit from BBC children’s television, beloved by pretty much everyone in the UK.

27. More widely known is Michael Caine’s eternally amusing Twitter blunder, when he made a typo of the first Batman film he was in. When exploring the Batcave, Alfred may quote the tweet in full: “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. Batman Begin.”

28. In-game Alfred is just as clumsy as the man who once played him, though – during an early cutscene he spills sauce all down his chest, which settles in the shape of the Batman logo.

29. Nothing is safe from Lego parody in Legacy of the Dark Knight – not even the sacred and holy medium that is video games. Visit Bat-Mite’s store and you’ll occasionally hear him attempt to say “What are ya buyin’?”, the very same business slogan employed by Resident Evil 4’s merchant.

30. Over in Haley’s Circus, Robin navigates a very Nintendo-like obstacle course, complete with the classic Donkey Kong ramp where he must dodge rolling barrels.

31. During this section, Two-Face calls out “How’d you like to see a barrel roll?” This is, of course, a riff on Star Fox 64’s most famous line of dialogue, when Peppy Hare advised Star Fox to “do a barrel roll.”

32. In one of the later story chapters, Batman seeks out villain Black Mask to learn information about an evil scheme. This involves beating up his car in a Lego reimagining of the classic Street Fighter minigame.

33. It’s undeniable that this Lego Batman owes a major debt to Rocksteady’s Arkham games. Its open world full of Riddler Trophies and counter-based combat system are both inspired by that fantastic series. But there are a couple of other ideas that have been lifted wholesale from Arkham, such as Batman’s explosive spray, which he once again applies to surfaces in a perfectly-formed bat shape.

34. More substantial is the opening of the “A Serious House” level, which is a very close replica of the opening of Arkham Asylum. It features a bricky riff on that game’s intro cutscene, and then has you follow a chained-up Joker as he’s slowly wheeled through the asylum’s halls.

35. No Batman game is worth its salt without a multitude of DC Comics Easter eggs, and Legacy of the Dark Knight is full of them. Early on, as you work your way through the Iceberg Lounge, you’ll find gateways to other clubs, including the occult Club Constantine, a reference to DC’s troubled warlock, John Constantine.

36. Across the hall from Club Constantine is Xanadu Inn. I won’t spend too much time wondering why there’s a hotel inside a nightclub, but this is a reference to DC’s Arthurian mystic, Madame Xanadu.

37. Yet another supernatural character can be seen referenced on one of Gotham’s billboards. Zatanna Zatara, DC’s sharply-dressed mage, is holding a magic show in the city.

38. The Flugelheim Museum may be best known for hosting the Joker’s Prince-scored vandalism, but in Lego Batman it’s also home to an array of DC Comics’ most important items. Among the collection is a shard of Kryptonite, one of Superman’s only weaknesses…

39. … a Green Lantern’s lantern…

40. … and Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth.

41. Among the museum’s artwork are a couple of significant comic covers, including Detective Comics Issue #27, the very first to have featured Batman. However, since this comic is in-universe, it depicts The Gray Ghost on the cover instead.

42. Alongside it is a painting of two men, a writer and an artist. These are Bill Finger and Bob Kane, the duo who created Batman for Detective Comics.

43. There’s also a framed copy of The Dark Knight Returns, written by Frank Miller, and its iconic lightning bolt cover.

44. Frank Miller gets his flowers elsewhere, too – among Gotham’s many local businesses is “Miller and Moore: Attorneys at Law”. The Moore in this pairing is Alan Moore, the author of Watchmen and, more importantly for a Batman game, The Killing Joke. Miller and Moore are responsible for some of Batman’s most gritty, edgy stories, so perhaps it should come of no surprise that their minifigure personas run a firm dealing with crime.

45. A billboard for Gotham Year One features the names Beatty, Pulido, and Martin. This refers to writer Scott Beatty and artists Javier Pulido and Marcos Martín. All three were part of the creative team for DC’s Year One comics in the early 2000s, including Robin: Year One, Nightwing: Year One, and Batgirl: Year One.

46. At Gotham’s library, there are banners for books by Alan Grant and Tom King. Both are prominent writers of Batman. Grant wrote the long-running Shadow of the Bat storyline through the 1990s, which introduced villain Victor Zsasz to DC’s rogues gallery. King, meanwhile, won the Eisner Award for his celebrated run on Batman through the late 2010s.

47. Updates on the Gotham Stock Exchange can be seen on digital billboards mounted to one of the city’s skyscrapers. Amusingly, the stocks going up in value are all Lego pieces - studs, bricks, and tiles.

48. Finally, we probably shouldn’t end this list without a cool little detail that’s actually helpful for playing the game. If you hold the left trigger and aim at interactable objects in the world, your character will automatically switch to the correct gadget for the job. There’s no need to manually switch between Batarangs and the grapple when Batman will do it for you.

So there we go, 48 brilliant little details we found in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight. But that’s far from all of them – the world is packed with amazing references, jokes, or cool touches on every street corner. Did we include your favourite detail that you’ve seen so far? If not, let us know the best things you’ve seen in the comments.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.

Overwatch is currently marking its 10th anniversary, but players haven’t necessarily been in the mood to celebrate. With much of the fanbase expecting more from the in-game event, the backlash has put a slight halt to the momentum Blizzard’s shooter had built up since its removal of the “2” and rebrand back to Overwatch.

When the anniversary event started, players were required to sink a lot of time into completing matches and objectives in order to earn loot boxes containing new colorways and old skins. That grind for underwhelming loot isn’t exactly what long-term fans (such as myself) were expecting to mark such a milestone.

To the developer’s credit, a swift response was issued by game director Aaron Keller on social media, who stated that rewards would be increased and easier to obtain in weeks two and three of the event, guaranteeing players a minimum of 10 legendary skins each.

Looking ahead, we’re also planning an additional season-long event in Season 3 with even more rewards, expanding the base level of earnable rewards in our weekly Play N Games tracker, while working on other ideas for later in the year. 6/8

— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) May 15, 2026

But, for some, that still doesn’t feel quite enough for the celebration of Overwatch’s 10th birthday. An issue compounded by jealous eyes looking at the raft of new skins and rewards for Chinese players to mark the same occasion.

That’s something Overwatch general manager and head of live games and mobile development at Blizzard, Walter Kong, is aware of and explained to IGN in an interview. “Yeah, I think with the benefit of hindsight, it is something where we had to recalibrate, and we wanted to take action fairly quickly, hence the adjustments we made to the event,” said Kong.

“Just the nature of development is that a lot of the structure of these events comes together over quite a period of time,” he continued. “So there are some limits to how we can pivot, but as we saw the feedback coming in and we sat around the table, we did believe that there was a need to recalibrate, but we're looking at the 10th anniversary as more than just this current event. We want this year to really be an opportunity to celebrate Overwatch's 10th anniversary. And I think even going back to Season 1, the ambition to release 10 Heroes in the year was very much in the context of the 10th anniversary, and we'll certainly be doing more during the year to remind players that we're very grateful for just the continued engagement with our game.”

As for the reason why Chinese players receive exclusive content unavailable to the rest of the world, it’s all down to Blizzard’s relationship with NetEase in that part of the world. “I would say that part of it is related to our partnership structure with NetEase,” Kong explained.

“I think NetEase has the responsibility of publishing our game in China, and part of their approach is to do things that are specific to that market,” he added. “And the approach that we want to take is to make sure that our game makes players feel cared for, no matter the market. And I think we fell short of the mark with this current event, but it does mean that as we look forward to future events and activations, we have a very specific view that ‘Is this just the right way to run the event?’, and from the perspective of holistically, ‘How do things balance out?”

Overwatch has seen somewhat of a resurgence recently, following the announcement that the game was dropping its "2" and adding 10 new heroes in the future. This year will see Overwatch enter a "new, story-driven era" with a year-long narrative and a major overhaul, which began with the launch of Season 1 on February 10. Blizzard, and Overwatch’s fanbase, will both be hoping this event is a minor bump in the road for a game that’s in as good a place as it has been for many years now.

That optimism is shared by Kong, who feels good about both the present and future of the hero shooter. “I will say that I am happy with where the game is today,” he stated. “I think that from just a play experience perspective, it's strong. It's been refined over such a period of time, and just our approach to the game has become more oriented to an almost collaborative process with our players, especially in the last few years. So I'm happy with where the game is today, and I'm also very, very optimistic about the future, not just for the game but for just the franchise overall.”

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Fallout 4 maker Bethesda has confirmed that an increase in storage for mods on the console versions is on the way, giving players more space to download and use Creations.

"We’re excited to share the Fallout 4 Creations storage expansion will arrive for consoles on May 27," the company said. "Console players will soon have more space to download content, including larger, more ambitious Creations. This update will allow for Creations storage on Xbox Series X/S to be scalable up to 100GB. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox One will all have Creations storage increased from 1GB or 2GB, respectively, to approximately 15GB.”

Calling it a "significant" increase, the developer/publisher said that this will roll out on May 27, although players on current- and last-gen systems with saves older than November 10, 2025 "are expected to be impacted." But if you create a fresh save for your ongoing playthrough, you should be okay (here's how to do it).

If it's been a while since you last popped in to play, here's our round-up of everything major added to Fallout 4 since launch.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

The former creative director of one of gaming's most influential stealth franchises, Splinter Cell, has suggested that advancements in lighting and shadow have made it more difficult than ever for the fans — and creators — of the genre.

In an interview with FRVR, Clint Hocking, who was creative director of 2005's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, talked candidly about how the more sophisticated development methods actually make it harder to create the shadows needed for stealth games.

“I actually think one of the difficulties with modern stealth games is that the sophistication in the rendering has made lighting so much more realistic,” Hocking said.

“When you think about those old school stealth games because of their baked lighting, the lighting is very clean and readable and very understandable for the player,” he added. “But once you get into this diffuse and ambient occlusion and all of the stuff that comes with it, it gets very hard to tell what’s light, what’s shadow, what’s dark, what’s safe, what’s dangerous and all of that stuff.”

The problem, Hocking said, is that realistic lighting systems, such as direction, can be difficult to manage when so much of the gameplay requires players to huddle in shadowy corners.

“Part of it is also just lighting direction,” Hocking said. "When you go and see a play on a stage, the lighting is often super dramatic. So, you can do it with real lights. It’s just that, you know, these places are often lit to be very realistic and not lit to be aesthetic [for the purposes of] stealth gameplay."

It's a "tough bridge to cross," Hocking added, especially as "people in the industry spent 20 years of their career thinking about how to make things look more realistic."

Ubisoft recently insisted its long-awaited Splinter Cell remake remains in development despite layoffs at the studio working on the project. 40 jobs were cut at Ubisoft Toronto, the company announced in February, as part of the ongoing push to cut costs that has seen thousands of employees depart over the past few years. In a statement sent to IGN, Ubisoft said that work on Splinter Cell was unaffected by the redundancies.

The game itself remains firmly under wraps without any kind of release window. Still, some positive news emerged late last year — when the remake's original director David Grivel announced he had returned to recommence his role after leaving Ubisoft in 2022. Here's hoping more emerges from the shadows soon.

As for Clint Hocking, he left Ubisoft in February having led work on Assassin's Creed Hexe, the upcoming entry in Ubisoft's flagship series that's set to feature a witchcraft vibe.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Splitgate developer 1047 Games has announced Empluse, a "Titanfall-inspired movement shooter" expected to release into early access later this year.

In an interview with Polygon, 1047 boss Ian Proulx said that while the team will continue to support Splitgate — the second game, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded released just a few months ago in December 2025 — Empluse is the "main priority" going forward.

“I still do believe in [Splitgate: Arena Reloaded," Proulx said. "I really do. I think it's a great game. I think it needs sort of a… I mean, I don't know what it needs, to be honest.”

“We looked very closely at some of our favorite and the best movement shooters out there, like Titanfall 2, Black Ops 3, some of the movement CODs. But we also looked at non-shooting games,” Proulx said of Empulse. “Do you remember SSX Tricky? One of the things we took inspiration from there was that feeling of, like, you're in that flow state. You're wall running, you're grappling, you're sliding, and then you're bouncing off these jumps. We had this vision of, what if instead of it just being your typical jump pad or man cannon, it was actually more like a snowboard jump?”

That doesn't mean the studio has entirely abandoned its Portal-y roots, though, as Empluse reportedly "riffs on Portal 2’s paint mechanic." Players will have P.A.I.N.T. Bombs (Plasma Activated Infusion of NanoTech) that, like Portal's pro- and repulsion gels, provide extra speed or jump boosts. These can be chained to create a highly mobile shooter where players are never standing still, creating a "really freaking fun" experience.

"We have a lot of Titanfall fans in the company. We've seen it even in our community," Proulx said. "A lot of people have asked for wall-running over the years, actually. And so that was one of the things we actually prototyped in early 2025, and we ended up not putting it into the game because we're like, ‘This just doesn't really work and none of the maps were built for this. This is about portals.'"

You may remember the launch and "unlaunch" of Splitgate 2 last year. Splitgate 2 released last June to middling reviews, controversy, and a rapid drop-off of players as criticism of the game grew. In response, 1047 "unlaunched" Splitgate 2, announcing in July it would temporarily wind down support for it while the team worked on a new version of the game with "big, sweeping changes." It was then relaunched as a free-to-play game across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

"If I look at live-service games that haven't done well, there's a million reasons, right? It's such a difficult industry," Proulx added. "I think one of the reasons that certain games haven't done well is chasing trends, instead of trying to provide something players are asking for.

"And honestly, we're partially guilty of that. I think we had our own unique take on things, but I think this time around it's: let's just make this type of game. It doesn't have to be the next Fortnite, it doesn't have to be the next Call of Duty. We think this is a game that players are asking for."

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

IO Interactive has confirmed the exact second you can start playing 007 First Light next week. As you likely already know, 007 First Light will be released on May 27th but, if you pre-order, you can get in on the action a day early on the 26th. However, if you were prepared to stay up all night and jump in at midnight, you'll have to do some waiting. 007 First Light will be doing a global launch, meaning the game will become available for everyone at the exact same time.

IO Interactive has revealed that the game will be released at 3 PM BST. For those in the United States, that means the game will be released at 7 AM PDT/10 AM EDT on May 26th and May 27th, depending on if you pre-order or not. That also means the New Zealand method that Americans sometimes use to play the game "early" by changing their console's region won't work, since everyone is getting it at the same time. For those down under, 007 First Light will be available from midnight AEST on May 27th and May 28th depending on your pre-order status.

007 First Light is just around the corner, and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it.

Check out the launch map to see when the game becomes playable for you during early access and release.

Are you locked in and ready for this re-imagined origin story?

Pre-order now… pic.twitter.com/ULvCKHcIpS

— 007 First Light (@007GameIOI) May 20, 2026

As of right now, we're still waiting to hear details about when 007 First Light can be pre-loaded. IO Interactive hasn't revealed how big a download this will be but, hopefully, fans will be able to pre-load it this weekend or on Monday so they can be prepared for launch.

If you're looking for other ways to prepare for launch and are in the market for a new console, it seems like PS5 Pro will be the best console to experience 007 First Light on. It was recently confirmed that the game will benefit from 60 FPS on PS5 Pro but, don't worry, there is a performance mode on the base consoles that will allow for 60 FPS.

007 First Light is expected to be one of the biggest games of 2026. It has been in the works since 2020 and it looks like IO Interactive's hard work will soon pay off. We've given 007 First Light two glowing previews, noting that it "feels like the fresh start that Bond fans deserve." Only time will tell if the full game can live up to the hype but, if it does, it may be in contention for some awards later this year.

007 First Light is arriving on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is set to follow at a later date. In the meantime, why not take a look back at the suave, smashing – and sometimes positively shocking – 40-year history of James Bond 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.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will be recasting its male protagonist and his twin brother, according to developer Owlcat Games. The developer confirmed that it heard vocal fan feedback regarding the performances of the game's male protagonist character and his twin brother, prompting them to actually take action.

"While the voice actor for the male protagonist and J put in a lot of good work, they felt less expressive than we wanted," said the developer in a blog post. "Because of this, we are changing the voices of the male protagonist and J."

It was noted in a press release that the team is already in the process of searching for a new actor, but it's unclear how intensive this process will be on the production of the game. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn recently held a beta, which got a mixed response from fans. However, it did provide Owlcat Games with a lot of actionable feedback. Thankfully, the full game isn't due out until 2027, so there's plenty of time to address player concerns. Owlcat noted it is also addressing concerns with gameplay, tone, and other quality-of-life elements to improve the game. Fans are hoping that The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will be another high-quality sci-fi RPG that can go toe to toe with Exodus next year.

While it's pretty rare for a game to replace an actor after a game has already been put into the hands of players, this isn't the first time it has happened. Bungie famously cast Peter Dinklage as the Ghost in Destiny, and he was present in the game for about a year. However, fans complained that it felt like Dinklage was phoning it in, and Bungie replaced him the following year with Nolan North.

There are also a number of cases of actors being replaced before a game's release. According to Master Chief actor Steve Downes, two new actors were cast to play Chief and Cortana in Halo 4. However, internal feedback was so poor that 343 Industries, AKA Halo Studios, brought the original actors back. A similar incident happened on Hitman: Absolution, when Agent 47 actor David Bateson was replaced by William Mapother. However, IO Interactive changed course and brought Bateson back at the last minute after fan backlash.

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.

Forza Horizon 6 players are exploiting certain parts of the game so that they can quickly and easily unlock every vehicle in the game. As spotted by GamesRadar, YouTuber XMBWesley posted a guide on how to quickly rack up a bunch of credits and XP. For starters, you can use map code 121 812 769, equip the Impreza 22B-STI Version 1998 Subaru (you'll need to acquire this if you don't already have it), and then enable auto-steering and assisted braking. The game will essentially do all the work for you and ram your car into a bunch of objects. This will not only earn you credits at the end of the race, but give you skill points.

By investing the skill points back into your vehicle, you can unlock more wheel spins, bonuses, and more to help quickly earn additional credits. You can do this as much as you want, but there is also a second race that is just as lucrative. If you enter the map code 197 337 317, you can play another track with the same custom settings as the previous race. The race takes about 40 minutes to finish, so you can set your controller down and put something against the trigger to make your car accelerate while doing something else. Once you finish the race, you'll have 100,000 credits. You can do this over and over again.

Of course, this will hinder a sizable portion of Forza Horizon 6's progression if you do this. Although there are other forms of progression, earning credits and buying cars is one of the biggest parts of the game. This will also almost certainly be patched by Playground Games at some point, though it's unclear how long that might take. If you want to cheat the system, you'll want to act now, but be warned, it may ruin some of the fun for you.

So far, Forza Horizon 6 has been a massive hit for Xbox and Playground Games. Forza Horizon 6 has enjoyed high player counts since its early access launch last week and has only grown since the release of the standard edition on Tuesday. We also gave the game a 10 in our review, stating that it is a "new standard in open-world racing" and "unequivocally the best" of its genre.

Not only is the racing itself sharp, but it also has a wonderful sense of humor. Forza Horizon 6 features a cheeky reference to Pokémon, which has amused fans. Players are also decking out and modifying tiny cars like the Peel P50 to make it an unsuspecting yet absolutely absurd racing machine.

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.

Walmart is offering an outstanding gaming laptop deal that I haven't seen since Black Friday. As part of the Walmart Memorial Day Sale, you can pick up a powerful MSI Vector HX 16" Gaming Laptop for just $1,399.00 with free shipping. This laptop features an RTX 5070 Ti GPU with 140W TGP rating for impressive gaming performance.

MSI Vector HX 16" RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Laptop for $1,399

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.

Save an Extra $400 Off the Cooler Master NR2 RTX 5070 Mini PC

If you're planning out a PC build and have been hoping to get one of the new Nvidia Blackwell graphics cards at a reasonable price, this might be the best opportunity you'll get in the near future. Walmart is offering a retail boxed PNY GeForce RTX 5070 12GB graphics card for just $599 shipped. Mind you this is still $50 over MSRP, but it's the best price I can find right now for a standalone 5070 GPU and the first time I've seen this card drop below $600 this year.

PNY GeForce RTX 5070 12GB OC Graphics Card for $599

Ubisoft has promised to release new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon games all by the end of March 2029.

Reporting its financial results, Ubisoft said it will deliver a significantly stronger and diversified content pipeline over the 2027-28 and 2028-29 financial years, supported by releases across Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon.

The witchcraft-inspired Assassin's Creed Hexe will be among them — it’s expected to launch at some point in 2027. A new Far Cry game is long overdue, after Far Cry 6 came out in 2021. And Ghost Recon hasn’t seen a mainline release since 2019’s Breakpoint.

Ubisoft considers Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon to be its biggest franchises, and while there’s discussion of the performance of live service games such as Rainbow Six Siege, The Division 2, The Crew Motorfest, and For Honor, there was no mention of the eternally MIA Beyond Good and Evil 2, nor the Splinter Cell remake. Ubisoft did say it had canceled seven projects in the last year, and delayed six projects.

The company has endured a tough period that has seen around 1,200 employees leave the business (Ubisoft’s total headcount stood at 16,590 at the end of March 2026). It has €1.16 billion (approx. $1.35 billion) in cash from Chinese megacorp Tencent to help turn around the business.

The next big release on Ubisoft’s radar is Black Flag Resynced, due out July 9. Ubisoft said the remake’s reveal “generated strong engagement across the Assassin’s Creed community, with players praising the game’s modernized presentation and expanded gameplay features while recognizing its faithfulness to the original experience. Early pre-order momentum has been particularly strong, notably in China, ranking among the franchise’s best performances over the first three weeks.”

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.

Get a detailed look at the new Specialist class in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the upcoming four-player, third-person PvE shooter sequel where you'll be blasting hordes of Xenomorphs. The Specialist class must be unlocked be leveling up the other classes, and once you do you'll be able to build almost any Specialist character you want. Check out the developer overview video above.

In the video, the developers show and explain how leveling up the other classes will allow you to really customize your play style using the fully configurable Specialist class that lets you borrow abilities from any of the other classes.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is our IGN First "cover story" for the month of May, and the game will be released this summer for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Check out the reveal if you missed it, as well as a closer look at some of the new and returning Xenomorph enemy types you'll face off against. And keep checking back all May long for more exclusive coverage!

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.

Valve has moved to dismiss the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the company, which claims loot boxes in its games such as Counter-Strike 2 promote illegal gambling and threaten to addict children.

Attorney General Letitia James has accused Valve of making "billions of dollars by letting children and adults illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes," calling loot boxes "addictive and harmful."

As reported by Courthouse News, the company behind Steam said it would be a slippery slot to deem loot boxes illegal gambling, because doing so would mean the likes of baseball cards, Happy Meal toys, and even Labubu blind boxes would be considered gambling, too.

Valve said: “Each of those transactions — and many more like them — involves a purchase of randomized items that can be resold for cash. No court has allowed the executive branch to criminalize overnight such ‘a breathtaking amount of commonplace’ conduct not specifically proscribed by a statute. This court should not be the first.”

“People enjoy surprises,” Valve continued. “Part of the appeal of many popular collectibles, from baseball cards to cereal boxes, is the possibility of opening a sealed package and being surprised with a rare item. … No legislature or court has ever deemed that act illegal gambling.”

Valve's "people enjoy surprises" line echoes a similar comment from an EA executive issued in response to concern around Ultimate Team card packs ("we don't call them loot boxes, we call them surprise mechanics"). By and large, video game publishers operate loot boxes as they have done for years, despite multiple attempts from various authorities across the world to clamp down on them.

In March, Valve issued a rare public statement on the New York lawsuit when it said generations had grown up with Pokémon and Magic the Gathering cards. “Players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games,” it said at the time. “In fact, most of you don't open any boxes at all and just play the games — because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”

Valve detailed its fight against accounts that use Valve items on gambling sites, which it said violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

“NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that,” Valve added.

“We respect New York's right to determine the laws governing behavior in the state. We will of course comply if the New York legislature passes laws governing mystery boxes — something it has not done despite considering the issue a few times,” Valve continued. “Such laws would be the result of a public process, presumably with input from the industry and New York gamers. The type of commitments the NYAG demanded from Valve went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself. It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, but we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.”

In its motion to dismiss, Valve continued to heavily criticize the lawsuit. “Can parents purchase packs of baseball cards for their children?” it said. “Can families go to Chuck E. Cheese to play games of chance and exchange winning tickets for prizes? Can a child reach into a cereal box and grab a surprise toy? All these actions and more could lead to chargeable crimes under NYAG’s interpretation of gambling.”

If the NYAG is successful, Valve could be blocked from selling loot boxes to New Yorkers. NYAG seeks damages worth three times the amount Valve has profited from its loot box business, which is estimated at a $4 billion economy for Counter-Strike items alone.

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.

Quantic Dream has canceled its live service game, Spellcasters Chronicles, just three months after its early access launch.

The French game company released MOBA Spellcasters Chronicles as its first ever free-to-play game in February, but it struggled for players and was met with a “mixed” user review rating on Steam. According to SteamDB, peaked with 888 concurrent players at launch, but had a 24-hour peak of just 54. Rather than see the early access period through to 1.0, Quantic Dream has decided to kill Spellcasters Chronicles now, signalling layoffs.

Quantic Dream is best known for its successful single-player story-driven games, such as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Spellcasters Chronicles was a drastic departure, revolving around 3v3 MOBA gameplay. Clearly, it hasn’t worked.

“With Spellcasters Chronicles, Quantic Dream set out to propose a bold and original multiplayer experience,” the developer said in a statement issued to IGN. “It gave our studio the opportunity to explore new creative territories and experiment with new concepts. However, in today’s particularly challenging market environment, we must acknowledge that the game, in its current form, has not reached a sufficient audience to ensure its long-term sustainability.

“We have consequently made the difficult decision to discontinue the development of Spellcasters Chronicles and to refocus our efforts on our other projects. This decision reflects a disciplined and responsible approach in light of current market conditions. It in no way diminishes the remarkable work accomplished by the teams involved. Their talent, creativity, and dedication have been essential in bringing this ambitious project to life, and we are proud of what has been achieved together.”

Quantic Dream then suggested the studio will suffer a round of layoffs.

“As a result, the studio will undertake an internal reorganization,” Quantic dream said. “We are fully committed to ensuring that this transition is handled with fairness, care, and respect. Wherever possible, we will prioritize internal reassignments to support our other productions.”

Quantic Dream told IGN it was unable to share the number of staff affected as the consultation process has only just begun, and must work through the French legal process. Discussions are expected to progress in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the studio insisted the development of Star Wars Eclipse “is not affected by this decision and continues as planned.”

Announced in 2021 via a flashy cinematic trailer, Star Wars Eclipse has flown under the radar in the years since. Set within the franchise's High Republic era, Eclipse is expected to integrate Quantic Dreams' traditional story-based gameplay with an action-adventure game set in the Star Wars universe.

Beyond that, details on what to expect remain thin on the ground, and Quantic Dream has only commented on the project over the past few years to quash rumors of development trouble and delays, amid suggestions that the studio was struggling to hire staff following previous workplace allegations. Star Wars Eclipse is still without a release window.

Spellcasters Chronicles will remain accessible online until June 19, 2026, at which point the servers will be shut down. As a “gesture of respect toward the players who placed their trust in us,” Quantic Dream said all amounts spent during Early Access will be fully refunded upon request.

Spellcasters Chronicles is just the latest live service video game disaster to crash and burn, joining the likes of Sony’s Concord, Warner Bros. Games’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and, most recently, Highguard. Even battle royale behemoth Fortnite has struggled to keep up player interest. Meanwhile, some single-player games have enjoyed enormous relative success, with the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Crimson Desert all breaking out.

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.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight marks a 40 year milestone for DC’s Caped Crusader. Across four decades, Bruce Wayne has been the hero of countless video games. And, as we’ve explored across two chapters already, Batman’s video game history is as varied as his rogues gallery. But now, we study the moment that changed everything. The era when Rocksteady created the superhero experience that redefined an entire genre. The Batman game that re-wrote The Dark Knight’s rulebook.

The story of Batman’s greatest video game starts a little earlier than the launch of Arkham Asylum, though. Rewind the clock a few years, and we find ourselves in a time when Batman as an IP was still licking its wounds after a movie duology where the Batsuit had nipples. It would take a visionary new director to restore Batman to his rightful position as the essential superhero.

The Dawn is Coming (2005 - 2008)

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was quietly confident. The film was key to repairing the franchise’s reputation, which had collapsed during the era of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, and building a bridge to the future. Among the movie’s modest merchandising was a video game tie-in from EA and Eurocom that offered a tantalizing glimpse into Batman’s digital future.

Batman Begins looks good and sounds great, with some nifty ideas like gadgets and interrogations and picture-in-picture cameras in the grounded stealth vein of Splinter Cell. Most notable is the emphasis on generating fear, stalking rooms and spiking enemy heartbeats as Christian Bale growls threats at them. It’s a genuinely forward-thinking use of a characteristic that hadn’t been exploited in games before, and clearly foretells the pants-soiling terror Batman would inflict in the coming years as he prowled the halls of Arkham Asylum and the streets of Arkham City. It was clear that Batman games were building towards something– after a brief detour through the toy aisle.

LEGO Batman is a lovely mashup of all things Batman, with music and minifigs pulled from all corners of the canon and a refreshing indifference to continuity. It plays like every other Lego game, which is to say it’s fun, accessible, and designed to be beaten by six-year-olds. It was also a massive hit, prompting Warner Bros. to buy the studio and greenlight LEGO Batman as its own subfranchise, complete with two open-world, fully voice-acted sequels and its own utterly charming movie, an adaptation of an adaptation of other adaptations. We’ll return to the Danish delights of Lego soon enough, but we’re about to hit the turning point for Batman, a seismic arrival that immediately split the history of superhero games in two.

Arkham and Everything After (2009 - 2015)

Batman Begins was a modest success, but the movie didn’t really set the world aflame. Its 2008 sequel, on the other hand, earned a billion dollars and became a cultural institution. The Dark Knight is a top contender for the greatest Batman movie ever made– and it never got a video game.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Pandemic Studios spent years trying under the auspices of EA, but a disastrous development led to the game’s cancellation. Defeated, EA let the Batman rights lapse. Eidos Interactive snapped them up and hired London based Rocksteady Studios to create a brand new concept. Without a movie or show to anchor the project, the team needed a source of truth for the new Dark Knight it was about to create from scratch, so it turned to the folks who had done it best before. Rocksteady hired Paul Dini, a driving force of Batman: The Animated Series who co-created Harley Quinn, along with actors from the show to reprise their roles for some of their final performances.

2009’s Arkham Asylum is clearly built around the core of the TV show, which raises a fair question: did Rocksteady truly create its own unique take on the Batman, or is it just BTAS with better graphics? Things certainly diverge story-wise, but the games feel like a natural extension of the DCAU, just with a sheen of Unreal Engine sweat and heavy Batsuit armor.

Gotham’s rogues get the biggest glow-up, finally fulfilling their video game potential as the bosses they were born to be. Their new designs were dirty and lived-in and dripping with character as they taunt and belittle Batman’s defeated corpse while the life drains from his eyes. Refreshes like Harleys would ripple beyond gaming, but Arkham’s biggest impact was on the industry itself.

For one thing, it proved that licensed titles didn’t have to be linked to a multimedia event. The talent and technology had progressed to the point where an iconic IP alone could sustain an adaptation custom-tailored for the digital medium, even though Batman games had spent thirty years proving the opposite. Every Batman title to this point had been derivative by design. From Mortal Kombat to Monkey Island, virtually all the Batman adaptations before Arkham borrowed their grammar from other games, but Arkham Asylum was the first to lend its language to others.

Rocksteady’s freeflow combat system– snapping to enemies and smacking them to a brawling beat with chained combos and telegraphed counters in scored encounters– became a new baseline almost overnight. Like Resident Evil 4 turning every third-person-shooter into an over-the-shoulder affair, Arkham Asylum created a new template for 3D melee combat that developers spent the next decade copying wholesale. The same could be said about the sandbox-y, stealth-focused Predator Rooms and especially Batman’s Detective Vision, the augmented-reality UX innovation that infected the industry like it was airborne.

If you’ve read our previous chapters on the history of Batman games, it should be abundantly clear that the Arkham series stands cowl and shoulders above the dozens of Batman games that came before it. The only real question is: which Arkham is the best of the best?

Many purists prefer the 2009 original. Arkham Asylum traps Batman in the titular looney bin for the second-worst night of his life, a stripped-down John Carpenter premise that perfectly suits the lean, deliberately contained experience. Hunting down the Asylum’s colorful occupants is a linear affair, with straightforward progression in a tightly-controlled map, pointing Batman down the path towards the final brutal framemogging.

However you prefer to diagnose its greatness, Arkham Asylum immediately established itself as a new franchise. It sold four million copies on the strength of its excellence alone, with nary a Hollywood star or viral new villain in sight. Warner Bros, which published the series and eventually purchased Eidos, wanted more. So did the fans, and they were about to feast like Dick Grayson in the Batcave fridge.

Arkham City tripled its predecessor's sales and then some, bathed in so many critical accolades and game-of-the-year awards that it plastered them all over its infamous white cover art. Freed from the asylum’s walls, Batman is finally free to stalk the streets he’s spent his life protecting– or rather, a cordoned-off section of the city turned open-air supermax prison. It’s not quite Gotham proper, but the wider scope and limited space create a dense urban playground just big enough to make brilliant use of Batman’s new traversal– gliding from rooftops, divebombing your terrified prey, and grapple-boosting back up to the gritty black skyline. The confines of Arkham City create the biggest little open world ever made, free of bloat and packed with so many secrets and surprises that not even the hunt for two hundred and forty Riddler trophies feels like a chore.

Catwoman and Robin join the playable roster and even more villains jump in the fray, with a bigger-swinging story starring Ra’s al Ghul and a dying Joker out for one last laugh. For a lot of players, Arkham City was the Batman game they’d always wanted, and the only one they’d ever need again. It lacked the surprise impact and more intimate scale of Asylum, but if there’s a number 1 and 2 among Batman games, both of these titles are still fighting for the top spot.

This Bat-revolution probably wouldn’t have mattered much if all you owned was a Wii or a DS. The mainline Arkham games wouldn’t appear on Nintendo hardware until the Switch era, and the best those players had was a cheerful sidescroller based on the golden-age inspired Brave and the Bold– fun on its own terms but cold comfort for anyone desperate to defeat Hugo Strange.

Demand for Arkham was high enough that Warner Bros. ordered a spinoff without Rocksteady at the wheel, commissioning WB Montreal to produce a stopgap prequel while the A-team took their time on the third game in the trilogy. The result is Arkham Origins, an extremely iterative re-skin of City that nonetheless has genuine merits of its own. Set on Christmas Eve, there’s a $50 million bounty on Batman’s head and a murderer’s row of costumed assassins coming to collect. Boss fights are an improvement over the previous two games, and encounters with Deathstroke and a DLC mission against Mister Freeze are remembered fondly to this day. The game suffered from a buggy launch that was a stark contrast to Rocksteady’s rock-solid polish, and the combat timing was off just enough to betray our built-up muscle memory, but it’s still an enjoyable romp through a lavishly-produced Arkham game, and we don’t get many of those anymore.

What we do have plenty of are side-scrolling Metroidvanias, including one starring our very own Caped Crusader. The existence of Arkham Origins: Blackgate, developed for the 3DS and PlayStation Vita by former Metroid Prime staff, is an oddity in the modern age– a spinoff of a spinoff, designed for the limitations of handheld consoles in a throwback to the strange, small scale Batman gaidens that once drained the batteries of our Lynxes and Game Gears.

The 2.5D search-action shenanigans of Blackgate weren’t exactly the second coming of Symphony of the Night, but it and Origins were enough to keep the lights on until Rocksteady’s last ride was as ready as it was ever going to be. The time was ripe for Arkham Knight– and the beginning of the end.

Batman R.I.P. (2015 - Now)

Rocksteady spent the four years following City creating the biggest, best-looking Batman game ever made. We would finally have free reign of Gotham City proper, rendered in jaw-dropping, rain-slicked detail. Everything is seamless: gameplay blending into cutscenes, gliding bleeding into jumpscares, the Joker’s mind game warping your perception of reality without ever breaking the flow.

Navigating a world five times larger than its predecessor meant it was finally time to give gamers the keys. The Batmobile is always a risky proposition in Batman games– it has a long history of feeling obligatory at best– but Rocksteady heard that Batman liked quality of life features and smooth controls, so they pimped his ride to make it one of the most intuitive vehicles ever controlled. Summoning it anywhere in an instant and leaping out at full speed is an absolute joy… until it’s not.

At a certain point Arkham Knight begins to resemble an arcade tank simulator– less pedal to the metal, more Metal Slug– and not as minigames or breather levels but as a significant chunk of the critical path. The final boss fight is a tank battle, and the only way to reach the real ending is to find every Riddler trophy and complete his incredibly aggravating Batmobile challenges. Give up before you get all 243 and you’ll never see Batgirl and Robin get married.

Arkham Knight feels like the opposite of a wedding, a bleak funeral for a franchise that literally begins with Batman’s eulogy and only gets grimmer from there. The Dark Knight is dying throughout, poisoned from within by the also-dead Joker’s infected blood. The much-hyped plot twist was obvious to anyone who's been on Tumblr since 2010. It’s all kind of a bummer. Batman: Arkham Knight tries to be Metal Gear Solid 4 and winds up as the Seinfeld finale of gaming: a high quality, impeccably-crafted sendoff that doesn’t really end where you want to leave things. Batman has been more or less dead ever since.

At least, in his own games. He’s essentially the star of two cinematic DC epics from NetherRealm, cast in the Injustice series as the reluctant conscience of a fascist Elseworlds universe. The Dark Knight has appeared in some MMOs and certainly hasn’t been a stranger to Fortnite, but Warner Bros. has seemed oddly hesitant to follow Rocksteady’s act, and you can’t entirely blame it. Telltale, at least, deserves credit for trying.

Rather than competing with Arkham on its own terms, Batman: The Telltale Series and its sequel The Enemy Within carved out a quieter lane with an all-new alternate canon molded to its traditional point-and-click adventure formula. Thomas Wayne turns out to have been a ruthless crook, while Bruce strikes up an unlikely friendship with a sympathetic John Doe on his slow, sad journey toward Jokerdom. They’re an interesting diversion that at least tried something different than the two VR games that try to tap into Arkham’s waning spark with mixed to “that’s kinda neat” results.

The Bat-Signal went dark after Arkham Knight. Movies and animated series, once the engine behind an unreasonable number of video games tie-ins, had stopped generating them entirely. Warner Bros. just seems too intimidated by Arkham’s shadow to step back into it.

So they killed him. Twice!

2022’s Gotham Knights opens with Bruce Wayne’s death and thrusts you into the grieving boots of his proteges as they prowl the streets in a grindy, co-op heavy crusade against the Court of Owls. Poorly executed, barely marketed, and roundly rejected, Gotham Knights limply came and went, an embarrassing stumble, but surely not an indicator of the future success of future Batman-related games. Then Rocksteady itself finished them off.

After Knight, rumors abounded of Rocksteady’s next project. Years of silence were followed by the deflating announcement that Rocksteady would return to the Arkhamverse for an online looter-shooter starring the Suicide Squad, a popular antihero team with some Bat-villain experience who had begun to seriously overstay their cultural welcome by the game’s original release date of 2020. When the game finally flopped out of development hell in 2024, it had already lost the room.

Harley Quinn shoots Batman point-blank in the head. It’s a summary execution after an okay boss fight with little pomp or circumstance, just a stern lecture and a see-you-later for the character Rocksteady had spent a decade building. In terms of so-called “disrespectful” sendoffs, it makes The Last Jedi look like Logan, especially considering it was released after the untimely passing of forever-Batman actor, Kevin Conroy. A retcon, buried in Season 4’s final content update and delivered in static comic panels thanks to cuts at Rocksteady, revealed that the Justice League we’d been killing were actually clones. This was surely little comfort to the few who were still playing the $200 million failure.

Most of the people who made Arkham had long since departed from Rocksteady. We would never get a proper Arkham game again, and the character that survived Joel Schumacher, screaming about Marthas, and the ZX Spectrum had now been killed twice in two consecutive years across two separate games. If you want a live Batman, you’re gonna have to build him yourself.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight isn’t a reinvention, but it’s not a retread either. Instead it’s a celebration, a rapturous balloon parade dedicated to the past eight decades of Batman– and it’s a lot more fun than killing him off. Batmen of all eras are rendered in cheerful plastic with an encyclopedic roster of suits, vehicles, and setpieces to serve them. Based on the more substantial systems Traveler’s Tales debuted in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Legacy won’t play exactly like an Arkham game, but the open world evokes everything we loved about exploring Gotham in Rocksteady’s classic series.

But a lovingly curated museum isn’t going to solve the long-term problem. Arkham got a Batman right, but it didn’t get the Batman because there is no one singular Batman to get. There are untold multitudes to the character that have never been explored in gaming, lost somewhere between the movie-based sidescrollers and Arkham setting the standard. Frank Miller’s cranky old Dark Knight has never been in a video game, and neither has Grant Morrison’s time-tumbling, Darkseid-slaying master of prep-time. Where’s the axe-swinging character action game starring Scott Snyder’s Absolute, butlerless Batman? Where is our Batman RPG? We’re 85 years into Batman and the games have barely scratched the surface.