May 2023

Revenant Hill, the next game from the creators of Night In The Woods, is headed to PlayStation 5.

During today's PlayStation showcase, The Glory Society, a team made up of two Night in the Woods co-creators, revealed Revenant Hill.

Featuring an art style that seems to mirror Night in the Woods (the main character Twigs even looks like a version of Night in The Woods' Mae who walks on all four legs), Revenant Hill seems to promise more of the exploration-based gameplay that Night in the Woods was based on.

According to the PlayStation Blog, the game takes place in 1919. "After the barn he was living in burns down, Twigs the cat takes up residence in a wet log near an abandoned graveyard," the blog reads. "When the owl from the next hill over starts demanding rent, Twigs must find a way to make ends meet, and things just get more complicated from there."

The game will also feature everything from crop growing to hosting "increasingly ambitious parties for witches and demons and other things that don't have proper names."

We gave Night in the Woods an 8.7 in our 2017 review, saying its "exploration of young adulthood manages to be charming, funny, and devastatingly sad all at once."

Find a list of everything announced at today's PlayStation Showcase here.

Capcom has unveiled new gameplay footage of the PS VR version of the Resident Evil 4 remake at today's PlayStation Showcase.

A release date, however, was not announced, which Capcom merely saying that it's currently in development.

The new trailer showed off some pretty standard Resident Evil fare, with Dr. Salvador coming at Leon with a chainsaw. Elaborating further in a blog post, Edvin Edsö, promotion producer for Resident Evil, called it the "ultimate immersion experience."

"Because the game takes place in VR, the perspective changes from third person to a fully immersive first-person view," he added. "From Leon’s point of view, you can really take in the details and atmosphere of the environment.

Resident Evil 4 Remake VR was originally announced last year when the game was officially revealed. Capcom would later confirm that the VR mode would not launch alongside the game, with development starting in late February of this year.

Much like Resident Evil Village, the VR mode for Resident Evil 4 Remake will be available exclusively for the PlayStation VR2 at no additional cost to those that own the PS5 version of Resident Evil 4.

At Sony's PlayStation State of Play Showcase, Cygames showed us a new look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink, which is coming this winter on PS5, PS4, and PC.

Granblue Fantasy is set in Zegagranda Skydom, which the PS Blog post notes is set "in the corner of the world" where islands are guarded by primal monsters and winds. Players will be tasked with discovering the "web of intrigue reaching far beyond the borders of Zegagrande" and will fight to determine the future of the Sky Realm, according to Cygames.

Announced back in 2016 at Tokyo Game Show, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is an action RPG based on Cygames’ mobile Granblue Phantasy. Cygames was originally collaborating with Bayonetta developer Platinum Games, but it was announced back in 2019 that the two developers parted ways.

While no firm release date was shared, the PS Blog post from General Director, Tetsuya Fukuhara, said that fans should "stay tuned for more updates this summer."

For more information on what appeared at today's PlayStation State of Play showcase, check out our everything announced roundup.

During today's PlayStation Showcase, another new game in the Five Nights at Freddy's series emerged. It appears to be a direct sequel to Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted, and is aptly just called Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2.

We didn't see much in the way of gameplay for Help Wanted 2, likely to preserve the scares to come. But we can draw some clues from the first Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted.

The first Help Wanted game came out in 2019 for VR and later regular consoles, and was a series of mini-games featuring characters and situations from the Five Nights at Freddy's series. The main series of Five Nights games tends to feature players surviving five nights working at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria while a host of killer animatronics try to sneak into the security room and murder the player, though subsequent iterations have included increasingly complex mechanics and spins on the theme.

Help Wanted 2 promises a brand new series of scary minigames, locations, story, and animatronics. Players are tasked with completing minigames quickly and well, with very violent consequences for messing up.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2 is planned for release later this year for PSVR 2. In the meantime, check out our full recap of all the announcements from the PlayStation Showcase.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

We've finally gotten the first look at the long-anticipated Dragon's Dogma sequel.

The new trailer featured a host of creatures, from a dragon roaring over the ruins of a castle to a medusa. It also featured plenty of combat, suggesting that Dragon's Dogma 2 will bear a greater resemblance to the original game than one might expect. It'll be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

Hideaki Itsuno, the director of the original 2012 action RPG, announced that it was in development during a 10 Years of Dragon's Dogma livestream last summer, but little information has been revealed since. It's being developed on the RE Engine.

Dragon's Dogma may not be one of the biggest Capcom IP, but it gained a passionate fanbase after its release, particularly for its versatile combat and memorable boss battles. Prior to last year's official announcement, a massive Capcom data breach revealed the sequel was in development, making fans even more eager.

While this will be the first new mainline Dragon's Dogma game in more than a decade, an enhanced edition, Dark Arisen, was released for PC in 2016, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2017, and Nintendo Switch in 2019. It also got an MMO, Dragon's Dogma Online, in 2015, though it was exclusive to Japan and shut down in 2019.

Street Fighter 6 is coming in just a few days but until now we didn't know much about the story mode, until now. A new trailer at the Playtation Showcase showed off an all-new Story Mode.

The story looks like it follows an up-and-coming fighter as they climb the ranks to become a legend. There are a lot of familiar faces, of course, but it looks like there are a couple of new characters snuck in there as well.

Street Fighter 6 comes out June 2 on Xbox Series X | S, Playstation 5 and PC.

Jackie Thomas is the freelance computing queen. You can find her work at Gizmodo, Reviewed, TechRadar and you can follow her @Jackiecobra

Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the next mainline game in the series, has officially been dated for Oct. 12.

Ubisoft announced the news at today's PlayStation Showcase, although it was leaked earlier in the day by a few Japanese retailers. It also got a new trailer, which showed off some new abilities and some familiar ones as well.

As PlayStation elaborates further in a blog post published after the Showcase reveal, one of the new features will be what's called Assassin's Focus, which will allow you to mark and assassinate several targets in a row. There's also the Pole Vault, which Ubisoft teases as "brand-new parkour ingredient."

Mirage will see the player stepping into the shoes of Basim Ibn Ishaq (a character introduced in Valhalla) and it takes place in Baghdad, 20 years before the events of Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

It's coming to Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, and Amazon Luna, and is now available for pre-order. Those who pre-order will also get access to a bonus quest, The Forty Thieves.

The 13th major Assassin's Creed installment and successor to 2020's Valhalla, Mirage was first unveiled at the September 2022 Ubisoft Forward, where it was hailed as a return to the series' classic action-adventure roots.

A year-and-a-half after its original announcement, Alan Wake 2 resurfaced at today's PlayStation Showcase, where it received a new trailer and numerous details.

The new trailer feature the titular hero, Alan Wake, but he seems to be trapped in the Dark Place. He stars alongside Saga Anderson, an FBI agent and second playable protagonist who seems to be investigating some unusual circumstances that Alan is also involved in.

Writing on the official site, creative director Sam Lake explained that Saga Ander is a "profiler with a reputation for solving impossible cases with uncanny leaps of logic."

"Our two heroes are very different from each other yet connected in multiple unexpected ways," Lake explained. "They are both critical parts of this story and experience. Saga is a newcomer when it comes to the supernatural lore in Alan Wake’s world, and thus a perfect point-of-view character to lead new players into the Remedy universe, but also offers so much depth for returning fans into this new mystery. It’s important to us that Alan Wake 2 works as a stand-alone experience but also has a ton of connections for our fans to find."

Lake described Alan Wake 2 as a "deep, layered story with surprised buried inside, waiting to be discovered." The story once again takes place in Bright Falls, where Saga begins to uncover pages of a horror story seemingly written by Alan that begins to come true around her. Alan, who went missing 13 years ago, is simultaneously trying to write his way out of a nightmare he's trapped in.

During today's PlayStation Showcase, Sony revealed Phantom Blade Zero, a third-person action RPG headed to PlayStation 5.

Made by S-Game, Phantom Blade Zero features fast-paced, third-person sword-based combat. The game seems to rely heavily on a samurai theme, emphasizing combat and traversal in a dark and rainy-looking world.

In a PlayStation Blog post, S-Game Founder and CEO Soulframe Liang revealed that the game takes place in a semi-open world that is "bleak and punishing, a constant reminder to never let your guard down." He also described the game's style as "Kung-Fu Punk" and discussed the game's plot.

"In Phantom Blade Zero, you play as Soul, an elite assassin serving an elusive but powerful organization known simply as 'The Order,' " the post reads. "Soul is framed for the murder of The Order’s patriarch, gravely injured in the ensuing manhunt, and, though his life is saved by a mystic healer, the makeshift cure will only last for 66 days. Now, he must fight against powerful foes and inhuman monstrosities, all while seeking out the mastermind behind it all before his time runs out."

Liang also revealed that Phantom Blade Zero is based on Rainblood: Town of Death, their 2010 indie game that led to the development of the Phantom Blade franchise, which was only available in China. Liang called Phantom Blade Zero "the spiritual rebirth of the original Rainblood and the game we always wanted to make."

Phantom Blade Zero was not given a release date or window.

We already knew that Croteam was working on a sequel to its 2014 puzzle game The Talos Principle and that it would arrive on PS5, in addition to PC and Xbox Series X/S. Today, we learned that the game would be released this year.

Announced at today's State of Play Showcase, The Talos Principle 2 is a puzzle game that will greatly expand "the first game's philosophical themes and stunning environments with increasingly mind-bending challenges," according to the game's Steam page. The Talos Principle 2 was announced back in 2021, and while details on the game since its reveal have been slim.

A PlayStation Blog post on the game notes that The Talos Pattern 2 will take "a giant leap forward" for the franchise, which currently has two games. Specifically, the world design will be bigger, stranger, and more beautiful, according to Croteam.

For more information on what appeared at today's PlayStation State of Play showcase, check out our everything announced roundup.

Nearly 20 years after its original release, Konami is officially remaking Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PlayStation 5 (Update: It has also been confirmed for Xbox and PC).

Announced during today’s PlayStation Showcase, the new Metal Gear Solid 3 remake is titled Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater and looks to be a faithful remake of Hideo Kojima’s original game. (Δ is pronounced “Delta”.) It was revealed in a brief CGI teaser trailer in which the camera pans through a familiar jungle landscape and eventually comes to a rest on Snake amid Cynthia Harrell’s rendition of the classic theme song.

Additional info released after the event confirmed that the remake will feature the original voices, presumably including David Hayter as Snake. Konami also promised “unprecedented graphics and immersive sound.”

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 revealed alongside remake

In addition to Metal Gear Solid Δ, Konami also announced the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1. The collection will include Metal Gear Solid as well as the first three games. It is set to release in Fall 2023, and platforms are to be confirmed.

Metal Gear Solid Δ and Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection will mark the extended series’ return to modern consoles after a lengthy absence. The original Snake Eater was released in North America in 2004 and subsequently remastered, but Kojima’s well-publicized break with Konami led to a lengthy hiatus for the series proper. Its last major release was Metal Gear Solid Survive, which launched to middling reviews in 2018.

Foamstar, from Square Enix, was announced at the May 2023 Playstation Showcase.

Foamstar is a 4v4 Foam shooter. The trailer features a cast of colorful characters shooting various brightly-colored foam at each other.

The gameplay is similar to Splatoon, but instead of paint, you and your colorful friends shoot foam at one another. The trailer only showed in-match gameplay, so we don't know if you're going to be able to gather together in a town square to show off weird art to one another.

Rather than both teams racing to cover the entire map in their color of paint, the foam being shot in Foamstars will be used to both attack and change the layout of the map. So, theoretically you'll be able to create cover or alternate ways to traverse the map.

Foamstar doesn't have a release date quite yet, but if you're looking for a Splatoon-like shooter to play on PS5, Foamstar might just be it.

Jackie Thomas is the freelance computing queen. You can find her work at Gizmodo, Reviewed, TechRadar and you can follow her @Jackiecobra

Ghostrunner 2 is on the way, and its protagonist now has his very own ninja motorcycle.

The sequel to One More Level's action-platformer was shown for the first time during today's PlayStation Showcase, with vehicular combat prominently featured. The official release claims that it will "up the ante from the original in every conceivable way" as Jack explores the wasteland beyond the Dharma Tower.

In addition to the gameplay reveal, 505 Games also released numerous screenshots, which you can see below.

Originally released in late 2020, the first Ghostrunner turned heads with its neon-drenched visuals and fast-paced action. Our review called it a short-lived but memorable action game that was a "speedrunner's dream."

Ghostrunner 2 will attempt to expand on that formula with its new vehicular combat and other features. It will be available later for PC and PlayStation and Xbox consoles in 2023.

In the meantime, there were plenty of other announcements at today's PlayStation Showcase. You can find the complete recap right here.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Remedy Entertainment revealed that Alan Wake 2 will be a digital only release across all platforms.

In a frequently asked questions page on the Alan Wake website, Remedy explained, "There are many reasons for this. For one, a large number of have shifted to digital only. You can buy a Sony PlayStation 5 without a disc drive and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S is a digital only console. It is not uncommon to release modern games as digital-only."

Remedy continued by saying that not releasing a disc helps keep the price of the game at $60 on console and $50 on PC. The studio didn't want to want to ship a disc and have it require a download for the game either as it wouldn't be a great experience. There are also currently no plans to produce a physical copy of Alan Wake.

Alan Wake 2 FAQ. The game is digital only due to a large number of people shifting to digital only and helps keep the price at $59.99/$49.99. They also do not want to ship a disc that requires a download https://t.co/bCWQToOlLT pic.twitter.com/RX54tqfoE3

— Wario64 (@Wario64) May 24, 2023

Since the standard version of the game is kept at a lower price point, the digital Deluxe edition will cost $70. It includes the expansion pass containing the Night Springs Expansion and Lake House Expansion, a parliament shotgun skin and celebrity suit for Alan, as well as a nordic shotgun skin, crimson windbreaker, and lantern charm for Saga.

Microsoft has filed an appeal challenging the UK CMA's decision to block its $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.

A report from Bloomberg confirmed Microsoft's formal filing through a company spokesperson. Its Wednesday response was made on the deadline for appeal, set last month after the CMA's decision blocking the deal over concerns for cloud gaming.

In April, both Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, and Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick criticized the regulator's market understanding and promised to challenge the decision. Smith said the CMA's decision "discourages technology innovation and investment in the United Kingdom," while Kotick wrote it was "far from the final word".

As the merger remains in limbo in the UK, other regulators have approved the tech giant's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Last week, the European Commission announced it would allow Microsoft to proceed, and China's State Administration also joined the 37 other regulators approving the company to move forward.

Following its reveal at today’s PlayStation Showcase, Konami has released the first screenshots for its Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, which it has titled Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater.

The four screenshots mainly focus on the remake’s environmental details, from the texture of the leaves to the way that the sun beams through the jungle canopy. A Soviet soldier does appear in one screenshot, with another featuring a ferocious looking crocodile.

The original game was a Cold War-era spy thriller set in a fictional jungle environment in the USSR. One of its main conceits was that Snake had to eat food to survive, forcing him to hunt the local wildlife. In Metal Gear Solid 3, crocodiles are some of the most ferocious enemies in the game, swiping at Snake with their tails or biting his leg.

Konami has confirmed that all four screenshots are taken from an in-development version of the game, offering players a clearer glimpse of what to expect from the new remake. The PlayStation Showcase teaser did not feature any gameplay.

The screenshots align with Konami’s promise to faithfully translate the original game to modern consoles, with a special focus on graphics and sound. It will retain the original voice acting as well as the original story. Little else is known about Metal Gear Solid Δ save that it’s set to release on PlayStation 5.

The Apple Watch is one of tech companies' most popular products. The smartwatch is sleek, stylish, very useful for everyday life, helps you achieve your health goals, and it’s very customizable to suit your personality. If you landed on this shopping guide too soon and want to see which Apple Watch you should first buy, start here: Best Apple Watches and Apple Watch deals.

In fact, when you consider all the different watch faces, sizes, types, cases, and watchbands, there are thousands upon thousands of combinations and styles available. Apple even has an Apple Watch Studio to help pinpoint options for you.

While there are loads of excellent Apple Watch bands out there, it might be a little overwhelming to pick one. So we’re here to help you narrow down which one will work best for you. From sporty to fashionable, classic to contemporary, or budget-friendly to luxurious, here are the best Apple Watch bands to buy in 2023.

One of the biggest surprises to come out of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was an entirely new area of the map. Not only can you can explore the skies above Hyrule, you can also dive down into The Depths below and traverse an equally enormous area.

Similar to the shrines located across Hyrule above, The Depths has a series of fast travel points you can activate throughout the darkness called Lightroots. Every Lightroot is directly below a shrine above, meaning you can find them based on the shrine locations or vice versa.

How Many Lightroots are There?

There are a total of 120 Lightroots located in The Depths, which directly correlates with all 120 shrines located on the surface of Hyrule. Not only are all of the Lightroots directly below the shrines, the names of each one are actually the same name of the shrine above, but backwards.

A cool secret about the Hyrule map: Every Shrine in Tears of the Kingdom has a corresponding Lightroot. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/FzFwFFNV2Y