One of my favorite Black Friday traditions is scrolling through GameStop on my phone and getting a bunch of cool games for cheap. Usually it works out just fine. Last weekend it was a nightmare. It’s hard to convey just how terrible navigating the experience of trying to buy something from GameStop has become in 2023,…
Now that the Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis FFIX crossover includes young Sephiroth with a Kuja costume and sword, there are two new trailers. One shows him in action, while the other shows off the live wallpaper.
First, here’s the young Sephiroth wallpaper. If you pull on the banner for him, you can earn this background for the main screen. It shows him wearing Kuja’s Attire. He also holds Kuja’s Spirit Blade in his left hand. Like the other live wallpapers for the Final Fantasy IX crossover, it shows him sitting on an airship.
Xbox Cyber Monday deals are still in full swing - but time and some of the best deals are running out. Cyber Monday also signals the last chance you can bag any of these deals. Many of them are even starting to expire or sell out as we get into the final hours of the sales event.
Our favorites at the moment include the Xbox Series S - Starter Bundle (including three months of Xbox Game Pass) for just $249 at Walmart. There's also up to $30 off Xbox Controllers, including deals on all color variations possible. But, that's not all, so make sure you take some time to dig into the rest of the deals we've found for you just below. Rival console PlayStation's Cyber Monday deals are pretty fantastic as well, so there's never been a better time to be a gamer looking for a deal.
TL:DR - Best Xbox Cyber Monday Deals
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Award ceremonies aren’t important, and if we all stopped looking at them, they’d stop existing. Anyway, The Game Awards are coming up next week, December 7, and we’re hearing news about some planned changes for this year’s outing. Will they let women on stage? Ha ha, no one’s mentioned that. But we have heard they’ll…
There's a new Tribes FPS in development, eight years since the last Tribes game, Tribes: Ascend, went skeeting off into the no-further-updates hereafter. It's the work of former Hi-Rez subsidiary and nowadays independent studio Prophecy Games, and going by SteamDB listings, it's called Tribes 3: Rivals.
New to the Tribes series? It once went by the unofficial title of "the world's fastest shooter". On the one hand, I'm not sure that claim holds as true in the era of Titanfall 2 or DOOM Eternal or Hyper Demon or heck, even latter-day Fortnite with its rocket-powered rams. On the other hand, and to pick up the tune from Matt Cox's (RPS in peace) 2019 retrospective - WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Here's a compilation of footage from a recent playtest.
There’s a new One Piece promotional video tracking what the bounty for Luffy is throughout the series ahead of the Egghead Arc anime appearance. It begins with his first one, which was 30,000,000 Berries, and ends with his current bounty of 3,000,000,000 Berries.
Things start off in the video with the first bounty. This was the 30,000,000 Berries one. Nezumi is the one who assigned that one during the East Blue Arc. During the Arabasta Arc, that went up to 100,000,000 Berries. We then see it jump to 300,000,000, 500,000,000, 1,500,000,000, and finally 3,000,000,000 Berries.
Here’s the full video, which features scenes from the manga and anime adaptations. As the bounty for Luffy increases, we see scenes in One Piece that led up to it.
Cyber Monday deals are here! If you are a PlayStation or PC gamer, can I interest you in a DualSense controller for your next play session? They're down to $49 in the PS5 Cyber Monday sale, so you can save up to $25 on your purchase. This is also your last chance to save in the sale, so make your purchase ASAP to avoid disappointment. Remember to also check in with us at @IGNDeals on Twitter/X where we will be providing play-by-play updates for Cyber Monday.
When looking at the deals available, opting for controllers like the Volcanic Red, Cobalt Blue, Galactic Purple or Gray Camo is your best bet as these are some of the most popular, tend to sell out during sale events, and cost the most at $74.99 MSRP. So buying at this at the $49 Cyber Monday offer will maximize your savings. $49 is the standard discount price we've been seeing for the PlayStation gamepad, and well worth considering over the holiday season, or as a potential gift for the PlayStation fan in your life.
See More DualSense Cyber Monday Deals
32 inch gaming monitors have emerged as something of a power-user favourite as of late, with the size offering a 4K resolution without the strict need for Windows scaling. One of the most impressive 32-inch 4K models I've seen has been Innocn's 32M2V, a Mini LED backlit 4K gaming screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, HDR highlights up to 1000 nits and HDMI 2.1 for PS5 or Series X support. This model normally costs $700, but you can get it for $600 using a coupon at Amazon US for Cyber Monday.
It's hard to know where to begin with this, but let's just rip the plaster off and get it over with. Reedpop have today announced that they're "investigating the potential sale" of RPS owners Gamer Network. This also includes our friends at Eurogamer, VG247, Dicebreaker, and GamesIndustry.biz. Not included in the sale are UK events EGX or MCM, or the website Popverse. There's not a lot more I can say at this stage - we ourselves still have lots of questions that need answering first - but I'll endeavour to share more with you, our readers, as soon as I can. For now, here's the broad strokes of what's happening.
About one month on from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2's launch, we’re learning some new details about Insomniac Games’ open-world robber-stopper RPG. According to a report by YouTuber Evan Filarca, the game had a ton of content cut before releasing on October 20, particularly relating to the big-bad Venom.
I know this doesn’t have the clickity-clack, heavyweight mechanical-ness of the gaming keyboards I’d normally be highlighting this time of year, but the Logitech K400 Plus looks like it could be a sweet little Cyber Monday deal. Amazon UK has it down from £45 to £24, a tasty 47% saving.
Kotobukiya released its Mega Man plastic model kit that lets people make a figure based on his Mega Man 11 appearance. The kit is available at a tax-inclusive price of 8,580 yen (~$58), and people who have previously placed pre-orders can now expect their kits to start shipping. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]
The non-scaled kit will stand at around 135mm (~5.3 inches) tall when completed. The set comes with four facial expression parts and an alternate head part showing Mega Man's hair without the helmet. The iconic Mega Buster weapon is available to attach on either hand with its shooting effects also included.
The Japan-exclusive Kotobukiya Online Shop is also offering a mini acrylic stand of Mega Man as a limited bonus while stocks last.
Hey everyone, I wanted to share a quick update about Eurogamer, and its future which now looks to lie outside the Reedpop business.
If you've been reading for a while you may know Eurogamer has been around a few years (24!) and spent most of that time as part of the family-run Gamer Network.
Five years ago, Gamer Network was bought by Reedpop, the pop culture-focused arm of events company Reed Exhibitions, which already ran PAX and New York Comic-Con.
The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 is a nice revision over the original lots-of-buttons-with-screens concept, giving you an easy control centre to fire off macros, adjust the volume, launch programs, bleep yourself, adjust Corsair and Elgato components and peripherals and generally do things quickly and easily no matter what you're doing on your PC at the time. We spotted a deal on the latest full-size Stream Deck over at Currys, where you can pick it up for £119 versus the original £149.
Larian Studios’ hit RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 is expansive and consuming, but its map isn’t quite the size of something you’d expect in open-world games like The Witcher 3 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. So it shouldn’t be surprising that a fan was able to pretty much mark exactly where in the Dungeons & Dragons universe…
NCSoft unveiled new trailers for its upcoming games Project M and LLL at G-Star 2023 which show off new features.
Project M is a narrative thriller which we first saw in June 2022 with a trailer filled with quicktime events reminiscent of Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. The game looks packed with drama, family, violence, and the supernatural. LLL was announced a few months later in November 2022 and is a sci-fi MMO set in an alternate history which caused modern-day Seoul, the Byzantine Empire and the 23rd century to become entangled with one another.
The trailer for Project M gives us a look at a new environment, a brightly lit but dilapidated theme park. There's also some stealth and action sections which aren't driven by quicktime events, so there'll be some variety in the game's combat.
UPDATE 28/11/21: Following Reuters' report, the Marvel Snap team has said "Snap will continue to operate and flourish in the future!"
In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter), the official Marvel Snap account acknowledged many of its players had "expressed their concerns regarding reported structural changes at Nuverse".
The team thanked its community for this concern, before stating: "We wish to... assure you that regardless of any changes at Nuverse, Snap will continue to operate and flourish in the future!"
During the Oshi no Ko Ichigo Production Fan Festival 2023 event, Doga Kobo announced season 2 of the anime will begin broadcasting in 2024. On November 26, 2023, a teaser visual and video were uploaded to official Oshi no Ko social media accounts.
Currently, we do not know of a more specific release window for Oshi no Ko season 2. We can only confirm that the anime is scheduled to be released sometime next year.
The new key visual and trailer features three major characters in Oshi no Ko: Aqua, Kana Arima, and Akane Kurokawa. These three characters are in a love triangle following the events of the first season. Both young women might also help Aqua find answers to help him achieve his goal.
You can check out the key visual for Oshi no Ko season 2 below:
Bloober Team has unexpectedly provided a light update on its upcoming remake of Silent Hill 2, ensuring fans that its development is “progressing smoothly”. You'll just have to wait for Konami to share more details.
In an X post, the team behind The Medium and Layers of Fear asks for fans’ patience in regard to new information on the game while stating that development is going according to schedule. Konami announced the Silent Hill 2 remake last October with a lengthy trailer showcasing the 2001 classic’s updated presentation. The game currently has no release window but will launch on PlayStation 5 and PC.
Here is Bloober Team’s full update:
Fewer games than I'd like have captured that feeling of everything getting really out of hand. Not just getting harder, but putting you in a situation that's truly deteriorating all around you.
Last Train Home has an intriguing premise: taking the Czechoslovak Legion home from the Eastern front via an armoured train directly through the chaos of the Russian Civil War. Its unusual mixture of survival sim, RPG, tactical skirmishes, and narrative history holds together, I think, precisely because your efforts to make it all work provide such a contrast to what an incredible mess the world around you is becoming.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the Ubisoft stealth adventure series’ 2015 entry featuring dual protagonists that’s set in 19th century London, is currently free on PC until December 6. There’s just one twist: You’ll need to get it from Ubisoft Connect launcher (insert horror emoji). Don’t hate the messenger.
Sega revealed a new arcade game called Virtua Fighter 3tb Online at the Amusement Expo in Tokyo Big Sight, and it shared direct feed screenshots of it in a new press release. It will release the arcade game on November 28, 2023. A Premium Music Collection album containing new arrangements with vocals from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi will also appear on the same day.
The new arcade release will retain the gameplay balance from the latest version of Virtua Fighter 3tb while adding the online matching features built for Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown and support for player names with Aime cards.
The main game will retain the 4:3 aspect ratio, but Sega will also add more information columns to fill the now-standard 16:9 screen. Each side will show the respective player's titles, win rates, and comments. If the player is in a single-player mode, the other side will instead show a command list for their current character.
NetEase teased what’ll be available in the first Sanrio collaboration for Identity V. You’ll be able to get skins and pets based on Hello Kitty and Cinnamoroll.
From December 28, 2023, you’ll be able to get skins for the Gardener and Photographer characters. The Gardener will have a Hello Kitty-themed skin, and her Toolbox looks like a Hello Kitty purse. As for Photographer, he’ll have a Cinnamoroll skin. He’s holding a blue star-shaped rod and the photographs he holds when using his skill have a Cinnamoroll design on it. Aside from the skins, you can also get pets that look like Hello Kitty and Cinnamoroll.
SteamWorld Build is the latest in a series of charming, bot-focused games that run the gamut from mining platformers to turn-based RPGs. This time around, Swedish developer The Station retooled the setting into a city-builder along the lines of Anno or perhaps The Settlers, with the twist being that you also control the mine excavation business underneath the town..
The setup follows homesteader Jack Clutchsprocket and his daughter Astrid, steam-powered robots on a mission to found a mining town in the desert at the behest of a suspicious machine of unknown origin. The machine explains that the planet is unstable, and they must delve deep into the earth to uncover lost technology before they can escape to the stars. But to support all that, they're going to need to found, then expand, their little frontier town. It takes a village to escape a dying planet, after all.
In another lifetime, SteamWorld Dig could have easily ended up as SteamWorld Build. When Image & Form first released their 2D digging platformer back in the depths of 2013, its moreish loop of carving out rocky chasms, finding gems and treasure, then upgrading your pickaxe and burgeoning township back on the surface was instantly captivating, and its 2017 sequel continues to be one of my favourite platformers of all time. Now, a decade later, SteamWorld Build has reimagined Dig's core ideas as a handsome citybuilder, placing equal focus on managing your rustbucket town up top, while plundering its depths via an abandoned mineshaft to find treasure, resources and (most importantly) rocket parts, so you can escape your crumbling planet and find a new homestead up in the stars.
Reviewed on:
PC
Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher:
Thunderful Publishing
Developer:
Thunderful Development
Release:
Rating:
Everyone 10+
The most endearing aspect of the SteamWorld series is how each of its games relates to one another despite their disparate genres. From tower defense to turn-based RPG, each title offers a unique spin on a specific gameplay experience while adhering to a shared mythos, resulting in a fun collection of games that coalesce thematically. SteamWorld Build, Thunderful's city-builder/RTS hybrid, serves as the latest iteration of this formula. Sporting streamlined genre mechanics, intuitive controls, and charming visuals, many essential parts are in place. Unfortunately, despite a solid foundation, SteamWorld Build struggles to maintain an engaging experience throughout its campaign.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by tea-brewing adventure game mishaps, low-fi city-building, the ubiquitous cool violence, a lovely bucket of fish, and heaps more. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!
Developer Mane6 is ceasing active development on Them's Fightin' Herds, meaning there will be no new content once the game's Season Pass 1 is finished.
This includes its Story Mode, a feature which was promised as part of Them's Fightin' Herds' initial Indiegogo campaign.
The studio slipped this news in rather casually towards the end of a recent blog update about the game, where it detailed its upcoming DLC characters.
Good news, fans of dire implications! Daniel Mullins, developer of RPS bestest best horror comedy Inscryption and the equally acclaimed/diabolical Pony Island, appears to be making something new.
The best Cyber Monday SSD deals still resemble a Greatest Hits of Black Friday week’s storage bargains – surely a relief to the unfortunate souls who missed out when they were fresh. Fancy a cheap WD Black SN850X? Done. Surprise savings on the new Crucial T500, one of the most effective cutters of game load times on the market? Sure. And those are just a couple of the NVMe highlights, with plenty more SATA and external SSD deals hanging around until the sun sets on Cyber Monday as well.
This past weekend, TikTok creators ByteDance revealed that they were winding down Nuverse and retreat from the mainstream gaming space. According to a report from Reuters, ByteDance is restructuring their gaming business, and employees will be told to stop working on unreleased games, while the company looks to divest from titles that have already been launched.
As the publisher of Marvel Snap, Nuverse’s dissolution may come as a source of concern for fans, many of whom have likely already spent a significant amount of money on the digital card battler. However, Second Dinner has since taken to Discord to reassure fans that this will not affect the game in any way, shape, or form.
Almost all of Cyber Monday’s best gaming monitor deals were also up for grabs on Black Friday – so if you spent all of the latter away from your desk, or on holiday, or locked up in someone’s car boot, good news! You can still upgrade your screen to one of these RPS-approved gaming displays for less. A lot less, especially where ultrawide and 4K monitors are concerned.
Videos of gameplay from a new Tribes entry have been shared online ahead of a public playtest later this week.
The most recent release in the series was Tribes: Ascend in 2012, which was developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios.
Tribes 3: Rivals is in development by Prophecy Games, an independent studio which was founded in 2019 within Hi-Rez Studios.
Writer Megan McDonnell, who has worked on Marvel projects WandaVision and The Marvels, has joined the team working on Amazon's Tomb Raider TV series.
In a recent report by Variety, the outlet confirmed McDonnell's inclusion in the series.
When discussing her wider portfolio, McDonnell said she often takes inspiration from her own experiences when writing characters. "Most of my stories start with whatever funk or crisis or feeling I'm living in, then I figure out how to explore that through speculative fiction," McDonnell shared.
The best Cyber Monday Steam Deck accessories deals come at a time when this Black Friday/pre-Christmas sales season starts winding down. Happily, there are still more than a few microSD card, docking station, case, and screen protector deals running, for both the UK and US. New Steam Deck OLED and classic Deck owners alike, take a look – some of these will tangibly improve your handheld PC experience and maybe even unlock whole new features.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is "progressing smoothly", developer Bloober Team has assured fans.
Last night, Bloober Team released a statement on X (formerly Twitter) saying it "would like to clarify" that work on the upcoming remake is continuing on "in accordance with [its] schedule".
"As Bloober Team, we are proud to be a part of Konami's plans for the Silent Hill franchise," it wrote. "Alongside our partner, we are diligently working to ensure the Silent Hill 2 remake attains the highest quality."
Here’s the very first of RockPaperShotgun’s new weekly news liveblogs. Read more about the thinking behind them in our announcement post, if you dare.
There is a Creature that resides in the farthest corners of the cosmos and the deepest fathoms of the human psyche. It is a dreadful god of gossip and reportage, a hideous, paradiscursive entity of boundless appetite, whose Number is Infinity+1 and whose Sign is the Serrated Spiral. It's one of many abyssal denizens of a dungeon dimension outside of Time, where nothing changes and there is accordingly an apocalyptic hunger for News. My ancestors, the Brigante Celts who once ruled the misty valleys of Yorkshire, called it keno-augā-brājat, or “the cave that will never be filled”. But nowadays, we call it the Maw.
Black Friday may have been and gone, dear readers, but the deals still continue with the dawn of Cyber Monday. This will be the last day of the Black Friday extravaganza, so make sure you get those purchases in before midnight if you still want to take advantage of any offers. And to help you navigate the trauma of endlessly navigating several different price-checking sites to bring you the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, I'm back for one last day of liveblog duties. Hardware editor James will also be updating our dedicated Cyber Monday deals pages with lots more of the best deals if you're looking for something more specific.
(And if you're looking for more console-related Cyber Monday deals, then our friends at Eurogamer have their own Cyber Monday liveblog you may want to keep an eye on as well.)
