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It’s been hard to find a PlayStation VR in stock in recent years, but not right now. Not only is the PSVR Iron Man VR bundle in stock, but it’s also on sale for $100 off as part of the PlayStation Days of Play sale. You can grab it now for $249.99 at Best Buy or GameStop.

PSVR Iron Man VR Bundle Deal

The bundle includes everything you need to get the most out of PSVR. Hardware-wise, it comes with the headset itself, two PlayStation Move controllers, the PlayStation camera, and a camera adaptor so you can plug it into a PS5. On the software side, you get copies of Marvel’s Iron Man VR and the PlayStation VR Demo Collection 3.

If you’re considering picking this up, though, you should give it some thought first. PSVR came out in 2016, and it definitely shows its age. It requires roughly four miles of cables, which makes it way less convenient than, say, the Meta Quest 2 (see it at Amazon), which operates completely wirelessly and only costs $50 more.

You also might be better off waiting for PSVR 2. Sony has announced the specs, and it looks pretty good, although it will still require a cable. Unfortunately, that piece of hardware still doesn’t have a release date.

Vampires, rejoice: V Rising now has an offline mode.

Stunlock Studios, the team behind the new open-world vampire game, added the feature via Patch 0.5.41448 today. According to the patch notes, the new mode allows players to play “solo or with friends on the same local network,” allowing for the game’s vampiric action to continue regardless of access to online connection.

The mode can be enabled through “the host game screen and when starting up the server.”

Stunlock Studios reminded players that the feature might require some tinkering later on as the game is still in early access. “Please keep in mind that we will work on improving the LAN Mode as we continue to develop V Rising during Early Access,” the notes read.

The patch also includes features and fixes such as:

Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has revealed new information about his upcoming sci-fi horror The Callisto Protocol - still scheduled for 2022 — including a breakdown of combat, its not-so-subtle Dead Space influence, and more.

In an extensive interview with Game Informer, with screenshots shared on Reddit, Schofield explained the game's basic story. Set 300 years in the future, protagonist Jacob Lee is forced to make his way through a prison on Jupiter's Callisto moon that's become overrun with all sorts of horrifying monsters.

Combat in The Callisto Protocol

Lee is just an average cargo ship pilot so doesn't have any special training. Over the course of the game, he'll gather new weapons, but in the demo shown to Game Informer he's only equipped with a baton, a pistol, a shotgun, and a device called the GRP that lets players push and pull items (or enemies) across the environment.

The upcoming cyberpunk action-adventure platformer Replaced has been delayed until 2023 due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

In a Tweet, the folks at Sad Cat Studios announced the game's new release window and explained the reasoning for the delay, which is closely tied to the location of its team.

Ş̸̯̅̇͌̈̚ô̴̡̬̣͚̮͜ŗ̶̳̯̹͖̣̆͑r̴̢̖̲͎̙̬̹̓̆̓̾̂̈́̊̕y̶̡̡̫͔̩̲̩͉̌̈́̊ pic.twitter.com/KgY852bBna

— REPLACED (@REPLACEDGame) May 25, 2022

“The Belarusian based studio working on the game, Sad Cat Studios, has a team of talented developers from Belarus and Ukraine,” the Tweet reads. “Unfortunately, the continued war in Ukraine has heavily impacted the development of Replaced, as most of the team resides in the neighboring regions.”

“The priority for Sad Cat was for the safety of the team and their families,” the post continues. “As a result, part of the team has now relocated and work has only recently restarted on Replaced.”

While the team is once again hard at work after this relocation, the Tweet makes it clear that developers’ mental and physical health are still being prioritized with this newly announced delay.

Marvel has become an undeniable pop culture juggernaut: The legendary company is the most successful western comic book publisher of all time, while the MCU is easily the highest-grossing film franchise ever. That success, however, hasn't quite as consistently translated to the world of video games, where Marvel has historically had plenty of ups and downs throughout a 40-year gaming history that began back in 1982 with Spider-Man for Atari 2600.

Bu Marvel Games as it exists now aims to emulate that success in the games space, as Marvel’s games division rebranded, reformed, and was rebuilt into the Marvel Games brand we know today. The plan really began to materialize with the release of Spider-Man PS4 in 2018, which has since been followed by Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Guardians of the Galaxy, among other (less celebrated) games.

As the company continues to establish its foothold in gaming, we've compiled this list of every upcoming Marvel game (for now, we're only focusing on officially announced games). From Marvel Snap and Midnight Suns to Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine, these are all five known Marvel games currently in development.

More on games in development:

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has been confirmed for release on Nintendo Switch along with the previously announced platforms – even though it was originally announced for a next-generation Nintendo console.

"That's right! Given recent speculation over the Nintendo Switch and potential next-generation Nintendo iterations, we wanted to play it safe and investigate what options we had before fully committing to a Nintendo Switch version," Rabbit & Bear Studios announced.

"But now the wait is over and we're delighted to confirm that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will also be landing on Nintendo Switch!"

The Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Kickstarter launched in 2020 and it hit its initial crowdfunding goal of $3 million in only two hours. The Kickstarter page originally noted that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes would release on "Nintendo's next-generation console," if the platform holder ended up launching a successor before the game was released.

The Nintendo Switch is now in its fifth year and whether a successor is in the works is currently up in the air. Nintendo has stated that it's trying to make the transition smooth and prevent the same mistakes it did when moving from Wii to Wii U.

Dead Space creator Glen Schofield recently shared his feelings on Dead Space Remake, including that he feels 'a bit weird' not being involved in the upcoming project.

Speaking with Game Informer, Schofield said that he took the announcement of Dead Space Remake "as a compliment" and is glad that the franchise was given "a second life" but was "still kind of bummed" to not be involved in the upcoming title.

"I took [the annoucnement] as a compliment. I still do take it as a compliment. I'm still kind of bummed about it too. There's this weird, weird thing, like you're not attached to your own game," Schofield told Game Informer. "It's a weird feeling. [...] They want to make a game better than the one you made."

Schofield served as the creator and executive producer of Dead Space (2008) while he was employed at Visceral Games and provided creative input on Dead Space 2 before leaving the studio to co-found Sledgehammer Games in 2009. However, Schofield was not involved with 2013's Dead Space 3.

Horror game developer Bloober Team was offered the chance to make a Saw video game, but opted to create its take on Blair Witch instead.

Speaking to IGN at Polish games conference Digital Dragons, Bloober CEO Piotr Babieno talked about working with licensors and explained how the Blair Witch project came to be – and what didn't happen as a result.

"I was working with our good partner, United Talent Agency," Babieno explained. "We were meeting many people in the industry from Hollywood. UTA is very recognizable and they have good relations with all major movie studios. We talked with [multiple studios], and some of them came to us and [said] 'Okay, guys, you are focusing on horror and we would like to work with you.' [But] the licensors were very straight: 'We would like to do this story. We would like to have the game in 2021 [to coincide with our movie launch]," and so on. We decided, 'Okay, [this is] not what we would like to do.'"

Bloober is widely rumored to be working on a Silent Hill game for Konami, with some reports centring on a remake of Silent Hill 2. Babieno previously told IGN that the studio insists on working on games it can make its own (including "the project we can't talk about", as Babieno put it), and one movie studio met that criteria, and offered some big opportunities:

Jehanne Rousseau, CEO of French developer Spiders, loves BioWare games. She, along with her development team, love BioWare games so much that Spiders’ informal mission is to make character-rich RPGs during a period when BioWare… just isn't.

“We are all fans of these types of games, so I guess [the reason Spiders decided to make BioWare-style RPGs] was partly out of our frustration, because we couldn't play these types of games again,” she says. “Because [BioWare] was a huge influence to us we really wanted to be able to develop those kinds of games.”

The results of that passion haven’t always been successful, but with each new game Spiders has honed its understanding of both BioWare DNA and its own house style. 2013’s Mars: War Logs was a ropey tribute to Mass Effect, but by 2019 Spiders had its own accomplished answer to Dragon Age in the form of GreedFall. Encouraged by its biggest success so far, Spiders is now hard at work on a sequel, the recently announced GreedFall 2: The Dying World.

The plan is for GreedFall 2 to feature seven companion characters (up from the original’s five), making for a roster that rivals (at least in raw numbers) the crew of the Normandy. “You will be able to take control of them,” promises Rousseau. “So we are getting closer and closer to our reference there. The idea is really to try to give players who love the type of BioWare games like Dragon Age [the ability to] travel in another world with a different type of setting.”

No Man's Sky developer Hello Games is putting the "finishing touches" on its Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Announced in February with a summer 2022 release date, the Switch version of No Man's Sky is seemingly on schedule according to a new update.

In a press release detailing the new Leviathan Expedition, the developer said: "In the background, the rest of our small team have been hard at work putting the finishing touches to, among other things, the Nintendo Switch version and some large upcoming updates."

No Man's Sky on Switch will be the complete version of the game with all 20 major updates, including the latest two: Sentinel and Outlaws. Sentinel was released in February and completely refreshed the game's weapon system and on-foot fighting, while the Outlaws update did the same for space combat and added Han Solo-esque smuggling and space pirate missions.

Its Leviathan expedition - a relatively self-contained adventure - also launched today (May 25) and revolves around time loops and space whales.

No Man's Sky is adding time loops and space whales in its Leviathan expedition, which arrives in today.

Developer Hello Games said this latest contained adventure is unlike any of the previous six expeditions – the game's story-led events. Leviathan instead represents a roguelike where the player gets stuck repeating the same sequence over and over.

Players start together on the expedition and must work together as a community to break free of the loop. Dying resets progress, but the further players get, the more the shared "universal memory" will increase.

Better upgrades will become available as this builds, allowing players to go further and work towards eventually freeing themselves.

Hello said its community has joked about the game needing space whales for some time – and this event finally adds the beasts to its universe. The story will seemingly revolve around the Leviathan, which has finally entered No Man's Sky as a creature shrouded in myth and mystery.

Upon breaking the time loop and completing the expedition, players will be given several rewards headlined by the first ever living frigate, the Space Whale itself, but also including the Whalestalker cloak, an Organic Frigate for their base, a Temporal Starship Trail, and more.

Call of Duty is hosting what Activision says is the first-ever charity race inside of a video game, with players invited to run 100 virtual kilometers in Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific, between May 26 and June 3.

The Veteruns event will support the Call of Duty Endowment fund's ongoing mission of veteran employment, with Activision Blizzard, the video game developer and publisher behind Call of Duty, allocating "$1 for every 10 virtual kilometers run on-foot in Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific, up to $10 per player as part of a $1 million total donation to the Call of Duty Endowment," according to a press release.

Update: The Days of Play sale has officially come to a close, but strangely enough the incredibly popular DualSense controller discount (down to $59) is still available for those who might have missed it. But, since this sale was supposed to end yesterday, we wouldn't be surprised if it simply expires at any moment. So, if you did miss the discount, I'd suggest checking it out ASAP before Amazon finally closes it down. The original article continues below.

Sony's Days of Play sale is coming to a close, which means this is your last chance to pick up our absolute favorite deal from the sale. The DualSense Wireless Controller has been discounted by at least 20% at most major retailers in the US and UK.

That means you can currently get the controller for just $59. This is an incredibly rare discount to see, and absolutely well worth considering if you've been after an extra controller. Not only that, but the sale also includes the wide variety of different colors available for the DualSense. This includes the new Galactic Purple, Cosmic Red, Nova Pink, and Starlight Blue, all of which have dropped from the list price of $74.99. Don't forget, there are even more incredible Days of Play deals to check out as well, and the sale is running until June 8, so don't miss out.

In news that will make any Nazi with a nutsack feel nervous, the serial scrotum-sniping soldier, Karl Fairburne, is back on the hunt. Sniper Elite 5 shifts the series’ established blend of espionage and X-rayed executions to 1944 France, taking Fairburne deep behind enemy lines into another collection of surprisingly large-scale stealth sandboxes. Yet while welcome enhancements to controls, weapon customisation, and multiplayer features make Sniper Elite 5 by far and away the most flexible entry in the series to date, another forgettable story and some heavily recycled mission objectives made it seem more like sniper repeat than sniper elite by the time I reached the end of its 12-hour campaign.

The Sniper Elite series has always been more concerned with tracing the trajectory of its bullets than creating complex story arcs for its characters, and indeed this fifth mainline instalment is no different. This time around Fairburne is on a quest to uncover and thwart the Nazis’ top-secret Operation Kraken, assisted by yet another ragtag group of resistance fighters who exist simply to act woodenly and populate your list of objectives at the start of each mission. Drop in a cartoonish high-ranking Nazi antagonist and a series of predictable late-game dramatic turns, and you have a WWII story more straightforward than the scope on Fairburne's carbine.

Sony's Days of Play sale has officially kicked off and will be in full swing until June 8. This year we can get excited for a whole new set of discounts, including huge savings on DualSense Controllers, PS5 and PS4 games, PlayStation accessories, and more.

One of our favorite deals right now is the 20% discount on DualSense Controllers at all retailers, including all the different color sets the DualSense has accumulated since its launch with the PS5, such as the stunning Galactic Purple which has dropped to $59.99 from its list price of $74.99. There's also Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which has seen a significant discount down to $39.99.

This is a no nonsense deals page, with only the very best discounts available shown to you, we've even included a handy little TL;DR just below in case you're short on time. For now, here are all the absolute best Days of Play deals right now. For those in the UK, check out our best Days of Play deals in the UK roundup.

TL;DR - Best Days of Play Deals Today

Days of Play Sale at Amazon: 20% Off DualSense Wireless Controllers

The Days of Play sale is here for the UK, and it's going to be a brilliant sale for PlayStation users. There are plenty of great deals on PS5 and PS4 games that I've included below, but one of the biggest deals is definitely on the DualSense Controller, with up to 25% off every single colour available right now. Not only that, but Amazon is selling the gamepad at a better price than PS Direct, with some controllers like the Cosmic Red dropping to just £44.99.

There's also 30% off a great range of refurbished tech at eBay right now, including discounts on Apple AirPods, smartwatches, desktops, mobiles and more. There's also a discount code at eBay right now with code CROWN20, getting you an extra 20% off in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee weekend coming up in June. This is a great sale, with PS5 games, Xbox consoles, and more available at a big discount.

TL;DR - Our Favourite UK Deals Right Now

Days of Play: 25% Off PS5 DualSense Controllers

AD: Incredible Deals on Refurbished Tech at eBay

Days of Play: Best PS5 and PS4 Game Deals

Despite a fulfilling start to the year for the games industry, none of the top played games during 2022’s Q1 were released this year.

Today, NPD’s Executive Director and Video Game Industry Advisor Mat Piscatella shared stats from The NPD Group's PlayerPulse. The list, which chronologically ranks the top 10 most played games during 2022’s Q1, sees games as old as 2009’s Minecraft and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V still standing as player favorites.

Here are the top 10 most played games of Q1 2022 in the U.S. ranked by year of initial release. (Source: The NPD Group's PlayerPulse)

Half of the top 10 weren't launched this decade. Elden Ring ranked 20th. Ahead of it were games like Rocket League, World of Warcraft and Skyrim. pic.twitter.com/eWXKVMFHZj

We look back at the Fall of 2007 and discuss: was it the best 90 days of any console ever? From August 21-November 21, 2007 we got Halo 3, Mass Effect, BioShock, The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - all in a 90-day window. There were also a number of other really good games in that same window: Assassin's Creed 1, Project Gotham Racing 4, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, and more! Join us as we look back on one of the greatest stretches in the history of gaming. Plus: spoiler-free Halo TV Series season 1 reactions.

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo's original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

If you're a regular IGN reader, when I write the words "Cyberpunk yellow", you can almost certainly picture the neon shade I'm referring to. From its earliest days, CD Projekt Red used a particular yellow in everything from artwork to announcements. Eventually, it even became a warning sign for fans, after multiple delay announcements used the colour as a backdrop.

Speaking at Polish games conference Digital Dragons, Cyberpunk lead environment artist Michał Janiszewski brought that fact up in a lecture, using a section of his talk to answer the question, "Why Is Everything So Yellow?" In essence, the fact that so many people can recall that shade proves that the team did their job right.

Early in the talk Janiszewski brought up the glass Coca-Cola bottle as a key piece of industrial design history – you can recognise it by its shape, design, the font, and the colour. CD Projekt was aiming for something similar: "We were speaking about the Coca-Cola," said Janiszewski. "The yellow colour is pretty much the same thing. It is conveying the information, it is simple to remember."

EA DICE has announced it is no longer developing content for Battlefield 2042's Hazard Zone mode just six months after the game launched.

Hazard Zone will still be playable on Battlefield 2042's current levels but won't be available on any future DLC maps, and DICE is "no longer actively developing new experiences or content for the mode".

It announced the news in its latest development update just five days after its 128-player Breakthrough mode was also removed from the game.

Ahead of the Season 1 launch next month, learn about what we've been working on for #Battlefield 2042.

Watch our Development Update video 👇

https://t.co/6sYhtOFlpW pic.twitter.com/8dpvlI65St

— Battlefield (@Battlefield) May 24, 2022

"We're winding down future development on Hazard Zone," the post read. "All of us on the team had great ambition and higher hopes for this new Battlefield experience throughout our development, but we're the first to hold our hands up and acknowledge that it hasn't found the right home in Battlefield 2042.

Over the years, The Sims series has been praised for including diverse character representation far beyond what most other AAA gaming franchises had available.

The Sims has allowed same-sex relationships since its 2000 debut, and has actively worked to improve options around same-sex marriage, cultural and racial diversity, gender representation, and more ever since. And today, a free update will add custom pronouns and improve players’ ability to see themselves within The Sims even further.

Currently, the way The Sims 4 works is that Sims are assigned a pronoun based on a binary gender system. During Create-A-Sim, players must designate a Sim as either male (he/him pronouns) or female (she/her). They’re able to customize further from there, with factors such as whether a Sim can become pregnant, their body type and physical appearance, and clothing choices made independent from the initial male/female selection. But players nonetheless have been locked into a binary gender system for all of the narration in The Sims 4 until now.

With the help of GLAAD and the It Gets Better Project, Maxis has implemented a new feature allowing players to determine a Sim’s pronouns as part of Create-A-Sim, right at the start when they input their Sim’s name.

Players will be able to either select she/her, they/them, he/him, or create a custom set that will fill in for all that Sim’s narration. The custom option has fields to input pronouns for the subjective, objective, possessive dependent, possessive independent, and reflexive forms, and includes sample sentences in case grammar terminology isn’t your forte.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 will be released this October.

In a new Tweet from the official Call of Duty Twitter account, the studio announced Modern Warfare 2 will be released on October 28. In addition, the over-the-top video clip gave a sneak peak at some of the characters and potentially the cover art for the upcoming sequel.

Not content with a simple cover reveal and release date, Activision revealed the key art for Modern Warfare 2 by putting an oversized version of the image on a shipping boat and having it docked to combine into the full image.

The key art features an operator with a skull mask. But unlike the grim and gray look of the first Modern Warfare reboot, Modern Warfare 2 is going for a neon green look. Check out the full key art below.

Remember when Count Dracula spent several sleepless nights deforesting an entire hillside so he could manufacture industrial quantities of wooden planks to build his castle? Yeah, I don't either – but in V Rising, that's a big part of your vampire lifestyle. Luckily, it's also got some fast and exciting ARPG combat to make up for it. I’m now a bit more than halfway into crossing off its list of bosses, and so far, those showdowns have been worth the drudgery of grinding for resources.

As a newly-resurrected vampire coming into a world where humans have mostly chased your kind into the shadows, this mashup of Diablo and ARK: Survival evolved doesn't waste a lot of time on storytelling. The descriptions for its varied bosses give some sense of how the world is put together, but there's not really a plot to follow. You build a blood altar, you get a list of special enemies you need to kill to unlock new abilities and better technologies, and you're off on the hunt. This doesn't bother me too much, but I do occasionally find myself wondering what my ultimate goal is supposed to be.

Part of that is because a lot of V Rising kind of feels like a slog. Gathering resources is slow going, and refining them at crafting stations takes even longer. Thankfully, if you're playing solo, you can set up a world where trees and ore veins yield more resources and refining goes much faster. This is probably the only way to make the experience tolerable if you don't have a vampire clan to help with all the crafting chores.

Hogwarts Legacy's PlayStation 5 version includes a ton of exclusive features as developer Avalanche Software looks to make full use of the DualSense controller.

Announced in a PlayStation Blog post to go alongside a new trailer (below), Avalanche explained that the DualSense's adaptive triggers "allow for more flexibility in combat", as the player has "so many spells" at their disposal, implying that pushing in the trigger at different rates could cast different attacks.

Haptic feedback will also make each spell feel individualistic and Avalanche has isolated all of these effects to the right side of the controller to represent the in-game character holding a wand (sorry lefties). Deflecting spells can also be felt as the player's Shield Charm sizzles with magic as it reflects and absorbs blows.

Various other activities throughout the world, such as crushing ingredients in Potions class, pulling Mandrake seedlings from pots, and flying on a broom will also have matching haptic feedback.

The lights on the DualSense will also flash with each spell being cast or damage being taken, but in more relaxed moments the controller will glow in your Hogwarts house colours: blue and bronze for Ravenclaw, scarlet and gold for Gryffindor, green and silver for Slytherin, and yellow and black for Hufflepuff.

It’s no exaggeration to say Final Fantasy 14 is a beast. How Long to Beat pegs Final Fantasy 14’s co-op content at over 1,484 hours long, while the "single-player" story content is anywhere from 106 hours to 1,565 hours long.

While Final Fantasy 14 is and remains a rewarding and worthwhile MMORPG experience, there's hope now for RPG fans looking to experience the game as a story-driven, single-player game.

Beginning Final Fantasy 14 is daunting, let alone as a solo player. Even before stepping into multiplayer content like Raids and Dungeons, there’s a vast slate of game mechanics and classes to learn, which can be incredibly daunting when put to the test in a live environment surrounded by other players.

That’s all on top of queue times for PvE content, which can eat up well over half an hour depending on the time of day and your job role.

One of the biggest hurdles for Final Fantasy fans jumping into Final Fantasy 14 is the multiplayer aspect, which prevents fans of Square Enix’s single-player odysseys from immediately jumping into arguably one of the company’s best Final Fantasy games.

The Stoor hobbit Sméagol, corrupted into the twisted form of Gollum by the One Ring, is not the most obvious protagonist for a video game. But there is potential for the dual personalities of The Lord of the Rings’ sneakiest character to translate into fun gameplay. A battle between cowardice and vindictiveness, fought within the very mind of your playable character, could spin off into challenging choices and unique mechanics. Sadly it looks as if the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum from developer Daedalic Entertainment is struggling to find such an entrancing angle.

During a recent hands-off presentation I was shown just over 20 minutes of beta gameplay footage from The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. This was split across two Middle-earth locations: Cirith Ungol, the path that runs through the mountains of Mordor and acts as the stage for the game’s first chapter, and Thranduil the Elvenking’s Woodland Realm. While Gollum is inspired by the books rather than the movies these locations draw from more or less the same palette used for Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic, and so are instantly recognisable.

Taking place just a few years before The Fellowship of the Ring, the story sees Gollum desperately searching for his precious ring while attempting to stay out of Sauron’s clutches. This scenario forms the framework of a stealth game in which you must avoid fights at all costs, lest you find yourself captured by the dark lord’s servants.

Daedalic Entertainment has announced that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will release this September.

The upcoming story-focused stealth game will be available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on September 1. A Nintendo Switch version is also planned, and should release later in 2022.

Playing as Gollum, you'll explore Middle-earth in a time just before The Fellowship of the Ring, hunting for the one ring that you lost to Bilbo Baggins while attempting to stay out of the clutches of the dark lord, Sauron. Familiar faces are promised, as well as a system in which you must decide which of the character's dual personalities gets the upper hand in important decisions; either Gollum or Smeagol.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was first announced in 2019 and was set for a 2021 release, but was later delayed to 2022. Based on the Tolkien books rather than the Peter Jackson movies, developer Daedalic promises a "Prince of Persia-like" stealth game with a branching narrative. We recently saw 20 minutes of gameplay footage, and you can find out what we thought in our Gollum hands-off preview.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Only some PS1 and PSP games available through the new PlayStation Plus tiers will feature trophies, as developers can choose whether or not to add them.

Sony revealed in a PlayStation Blog post that while some games - including Ape Escape, Hot Shots Golf, IQ Intelligent Qube, and Syphon Filter - will have trophies, their inclusion will be on a game-by-game basis as "this feature is optional for developers".

Trophies were only added as a feature to PlayStation games during the PS3 era, meaning everything from the PS1, PS2, and PSP lacked an external achievement system (unless, like Final Fantasy 7, a game was ported to a more modern console).

Players will therefore be able to play games like Syphon Filter with a new set of objectives for the first time in more than twenty years.

While Sony has only revealed four games with trophies so far, the full list shouldn't be too far away as the new PlayStation Plus tiers launch in North and South America on June 13, followed by Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on June 23.

Here's a rare deal: Pokemon Shining Pearl is on sale for $29.99 at Amazon and Best Buy. That's a hefty 50% off its MSRP. Additionally, a handful of other recent Pokemon games for Nintendo Switch are also on sale at various retailers. There's plenty of savings to go around for Pokéfans. Let’s take a look.

Pokemon Shining Pearl Is $29.99

Other Nintendo Switch Pokemon Game Deals

Pokemon Deals at All Retailers

Lots of retailers have all the recent Pokemon games for Nintendo Switch on sale right now, including Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart. Let's take a look at how much each one costs, and where.

George R.R. Martin hopes to see The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power succeed – but he very much wants the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, to do better.

Speaking to The Independent Martin said he doesn't like how people are pitting the shows against each other - with House of the Dragon being released on August 21 and Rings of Power on September 2 - but he's competitive enough to want his show to outdo the other.

"The minute the dates were announced, it’s 'oh, the battle for fantasy supremacy. It’s Rings of Power versus House of [the] Dragon, who will win?,'" Martin said. "I don’t know why they always have to do that."

"I hope both shows succeed. I'm competitive enough; I hope we succeed more," he added. "If they win six Emmys, and I hope they do, I hope we win seven. But nonetheless, it's good for fantasy. I love fantasy. I love science fiction. I want more shows on television."

Competition or not, the shows releasing close together certainly mark an exciting time for fantasy fans, with Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones arguably being the two biggest fantasy stories of the modern age.

A PC mod that brings seamless, four-player co-op with shared game progression to Elden Ring is entering beta this week.

While the game does support three-player co-op organically, its designed to be more of a fleeting experience generally intended for one-off boss fights. A mod from YouTube user LukeYui shows players being summoned from the first main Site of Grace, and who can seemingly stay as long as they like.

Summoned players will even stick around after the host dies, putting the defeated player into spectator mode, unlike Elden Ring's normal system that returns them home. If the beta is a success, this essentially means that PC players can start and play through the entirety of Elden Ring with up to three friends in a shared game world.

The mod also takes into account other limitations of normal Elden Ring multiplayer by allowing mounts to be summoned by all players, and "friendly fire" can even be activated by turning on a PvP mode. Item drops from bosses will be applied to all players, progress is shared, and more.

The beta begins on May 27 but LukeYui didn't give any indication as to how long it will last or when the official release date for the mod will be.

Rainbow Six Siege's next update will increase punishments for players who purposely kill teammates – making it harder for them to hurt anyone on their teams but themselves for multiple games.

Siege already has a system whereby players who do enough damage to teammates (and are reported for griefing) are given a "reverse friendly fire" status, seeing damage dealt to friendlies reflected back at them. This effect will soon apply to several of the griefer's games going forward.

As reported by PC Gamer, the Operation Vector Glare June 7 update will include the first phase of developer Ubisoft Montréal's reputation system, which targets players who repeatedly damage teammates. Branded as "pre-emptive reverse friendly fire" by director Alex Karpazis, griefers will have reverse friendly fire applied for up to 20 games, or until they play several matches without injuring teammates.

The effect essentially means these players can no longer ruin another player's game without impacting several of their own, and anyone who kills their teammates before rage quitting in any one match will face repercussions when they log back on.

As one of the few high-profile multiplayer shooters to include friendly fire, it's a confident step from Ubisoft in tackling griefing problems in the community.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had launched just a couple of months earlier, but the emails assaulting the inbox of CD Projekt Red community assistant Paweł Burza were about another game entirely. The community was fiercely hungry for a standalone version of the beloved in-world card game, Gwent. “We got thousands of emails,” Burza tells IGN, “and I mean literally thousands.”

The demand was heartening, particularly as Gwent almost never happened. While it’s a successful digital card game today – with Esports tournaments giving away hundreds of thousands in prize money, a dedicated and consistently growing community, and positive reception from players and critics alike – the journey to get there wasn’t easy.

Five years on from the standalone version of Gwent going public, and seven years on from The Witcher 3’s initial release, CD Projekt Red developers spoke to IGN about Gwent’s humble beginnings, the brutal trials it faced in development, and the success it’s found since.

A Maverick Endeavour

Let’s rewind. 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, as we all know, was a very ambitious game in terms of scope. The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings featured a dice poker minigame, but CD Projekt Red wanted to enhance the side activities in the third instalment. A card game, the team thought, would allow players to take a breather from quests, add some variety, and increase the authenticity of the world.

Sony has officially revealed the required PC specs for its upcoming PlayStation Plus Premium plan, offering future plan owners a look at how powerful their computers will need to be compatible for streaming games. Luckily, the requirements aren't strict.

In a blog post today, the PlayStation team revealed more details about the three tiers of subscription, which are set to launch on June 13.

While games can run with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core i3, the PlayStation team recommended a faster CPU, such as a 3.5GHz Intel Core i3 or 3.8 GHz AMD A10, for optimal performance. The other specs are relatively low-end as well, with the streaming program only requiring 300 MB of storage and 2 GB of RAM.

Users will also need a DualShock 4 controller to properly play these games.

Read below for the full list of PC specs requirements and suggestions for PlayStation Plus Premium Games.

PlayStation Plus Premium Games streaming PC spec requirements

Operating System

Minimum: Windows 7 (SP 1), 8.1, or 10

Recommended: Windows 7 (SP 1), 8.1, or 10

CPU

Minimum: Core i3 2.0 GHz

Recommended: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i3 or 3.8 GHz AMD A10 or faster

RAM

Minimum: 2 GB

Recommended: 2 GB or more

Storage Space

Minimum: 300 MB of available storage

Recommended: 300 MB or more of available storage

A group of quality assurance employees at Raven Software have officially voted in favor of unionization with the National Labor Relations Board, with a final vote total of 19 for and three against.

The vote count was announced today over an official webcast meeting. Approximately 28 employees were considered eligible to vote, 24 votes were submitted, and two of the votes were challenged and rendered invalid. The remaining group voted to legally form the Game Workers Alliance, making it the first North American video game union at a AAA gaming company. Indie studio Vodeo Games unionized late last year.

This move legally allows members of Game Workers Alliance to bargain with Activision Blizzard management over their employment contract, a process we are likely to see unfold in the coming weeks and months. But at the moment, it seems unlikely that the publisher will make this process easy. The company has reportedly been actively discouraging Raven Software employees from voting in favor of the union both through town halls and official emails, and a Bloomberg report from earlier today indicates that the NLRB is readying an official complaint suggesting their threats were illegal union-busting.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was released almost 10 years ago, but it has recently been seeing an uptick of new players due to a related meme involving one of its characters, Jetstream Sam, stroking his chin and thinking.

Samuel Rodrigues, or Jetstream Sam, is a character from PlatinumGames' 2013 spinoff Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. He's recently been seeing an uptick in popularity as a meme online.

According to Playtracker, the Jetstream Sam meme went viral early this year, and this coincided with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance seeing an increase in popularity. The game's concurrent player numbers went from an average of between 300 and 800 players in 2021 to about 2000 players on average in January 2022.

Additionally, across all platforms the game was released on, achievement unlocking activity has been spiking and is at its highest since 2018, indicating that more people are indeed playing through the game. Steamcharts has shown that there has been growth in the game's player base in the past two months.

Although it is almost 10 years old, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is seeing numbers it hasn’t seen since launch.

📈 concurrent players up 1000%
🏆 peak in achievement activity across all platforms

The cause? Various meme templates featuring characters from the game went viral. pic.twitter.com/Ey6FmYAXJp

Today, AT&T announced that Control Ultimate Edition is now free to stream for its customers for a limited time.

According to today’s announcement, “low latency of AT&T 5G paired with cloud streaming technology helps deliver virtually instant, high-fidelity gameplay to the devices you already own.”

This means that Control can be streamed on any AT&T connected phone, tablet, or computer. There is no downloading, subscriptions, or hidden costs. Customers will just need an “AT&T postpaid mobility plan” to play.

The streaming is powered by Google’s Immersive Stream for Games, which is the same technology used when AT&T offered customers Batman: Arkham Knight.

This service lets gamers who are AT&T customers try out the full game. AT&T hopes this leads to publishers using “the combination of 5G connectivity and cloud streaming technology to offer limited-time play sessions directly from a search result" in the future.

In February 2022, it was announced that Google would offer its streaming technology to companies like AT&T, as a white-label product.

An Elden Ring modder has orchestrated the ultimate Battle Royale, pitting each of the game's demigod bosses against one another.

YouTube user Garden of Eyes - who's previously modded legendary summon Let Me Solo Her into Elden Ring and pit Malenia against every other boss - uploaded a video of all six demigod bosses battling throughout a handful of different rounds with different rulesets.

Malenia, Rykard, Radahn, Morgott, Godrick, and Mohg can all be watched as if from one of Elden Ring's suspicious colosseums as they unleash hell upon each other in their NG+7 and highest area scaling states.

The War of the Shardbearers is here, and it's much bigger than the Shattering! A battle royale of the strongest Demigod. https://t.co/HgScrgnc9G pic.twitter.com/32hBRDGmFZ

— Garden of Eyes (@EyesGarden) May 20, 2022

The different rulesets applied include, well, no rules in round one, but later apply different effects such as removing Mohg, Lord of Blood's bleeding effect, returning bosses to their original area scaling, and so on.

New screenshots from upcoming JRPG One Piece Odyssey have shown off the game's colourful turn-based combat and revealed two new characters.

Revealed on the game's Japanese website, and spotted by DualShockers, the combat has a UI reminiscent of the super-stylish Persona games and appears to feature a rock, paper, scissors system where fists beat guns, guns beat swords, and swords beat fists.

Several bizarre looking enemies can also be seen in the screenshots (below) including a giant fire-breathing lion/dragon, monkeys dressed as bumblebees with ice-cream hats, and a comparatively normal giant scorpion.

Two new characters have also been revealed for the game including Lim, a "mysterious girl who hates pirates" and Adio, a drifter and explorer.

Movement appears to be another element of the turn-based combat, though it doesn't look to be a fully-fledged tactical RPG like a Fire Emblem game, for example. Instead, distance appears to affect what kind of attacks a player can do: get in close to swing your sword but stand back to fire a gun.

PS1 games coming to PS4 and PS5 through the new PlayStation Plus tiers will seemingly include options for a CRT filter, gameplay rewind, and more new features.

Listings on the Malaysian PlayStation Store have appeared ahead of the revamped PlayStation Plus service launching in Asia on May 24, with options to buy some PS1 games separately.

As spotted by ResetEra user brokenswiftie, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Worms World Party, and Worms Armageddon are all listed as PS1 Emulations ranging in price from the equivalent of $5 to $10. The first two cost 20 Malaysian ringgits while Worms Armageddon costs 39, and other titles listed at the latter price cost $9.99 on the U.S. store.