The Dell Presidents Day Sale offically kicks off this week. Traditionally, this has been Dell's best sale during the early part of the year to score a big discount on both Alienware gaming PCs and laptops. Prices on prebuilts have risen in 2026 because of the increased demand for RAM and GPUs, so if you're looking to upgrade now, you don't want to miss this opportunity to get a new system without an egregious markup. All systems ship free and include a one year warranty. I will continue to add to this article as more deals go live closer to President's Day weekend.

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 5080 Gaming PC for $2,180

A lengthy, 60-plus minutes Sony State of Play is heading our way this Thursday, February 12, and promises new looks at “third-party and indie games headed to PS5, along with the latest from teams at PlayStation Studios.” So, what upcoming games can we expect to see fresh reveals for and gameplay of? Well, here’s what we think is likely to show up, as well as a few out-there guesses.

Exclusives

Seeing as it's shaping up to be PlayStation’s biggest game of 2026, you’d perhaps have expected Wolverine to show up in Thursday’s stream. Well, a late spanner has been thrown into the works via Insomniac’s official X account, which claims that we won’t be seeing any more of its latest Marvel game until “Spring 2026”. Last time I checked, February was in Winter, so maybe we’ll have to wait a little longer.

Spring 2026.

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) February 10, 2026

At the last State of Play, back in September 2025, Insomniac Games gave us a first look at Marvel’s Wolverine in action. As one of Sony’s tentpole releases for this year, it certainly wouldn’t be a shock to see some more X-Men gameplay, as well as perhaps a release date for Logan’s latest adventure. Could we also catch a glimpse of Daredevil, who has been teased to be making an appearance, too?

PlayStation Studio’s first big exclusive of the year comes in the shape of Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter, which will be looking to emulate the success of last year’s Arc Raiders. It’s been a bumpy road for the Destiny developer, such as a plagiarism scandal and poor reception to its alpha, but this week’s State of Play will be one of the last chances for it to convince players to hop into its world on March 5.

Later in Spring, we have Saros, Housemarque’s follow-up to Returnal, which will be dropping on April 30. We’ve seen it pop up regularly on recent State of Play streams, and it would make perfect sense to see it here, too, seeing as we’re only 10 weeks away from launch.

Another PS5 console exclusive is Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, the upcoming superhero fighting game from Guilty Gear Strive developer Arc System Works. Due for release this year, the flashy-looking fighter suffered from an unfortunate leak earlier this week that revealed a few key details about the game, such as the size of its roster. It would not be a shock to see some of this information officially confirmed as fact on Thursday.

PS5 console exclusive Phantom Blade Zero is a hotly anticipated wuxia action RPG coming from Chinese developer S-Game. The lead character is called Soul, so you can probably guess what genre this project borrows heavily from, too. It’s all looking very impressive, and maybe we’ll get yet another look at it in action this week ahead of its September 9 launch.

Then there’s the freshly revealed Horizon Hunters Gathering, yet another spin-off of the mechanical monster-hunting series created by Guerrilla Games. A 3-player live-service co-op action game, it's getting its first playtest at the end of this month, so, again, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we were to get a further look at some gameplay in this State of Play.

Unveiled at The Game Awards, 4:Loop is a PS5 and PC exclusive that appears to infuse some roguelike elements with the co-op shooting of games like Helldivers and Left 4 Dead. That makes more sense when you consider that Left 4 Dead creator Mike Booth is behind the project, working with Bad Robot Games, the video game wing of film director J.J. Abrams' production company. No release date has been given yet, but playtesting will start soon, with maybe a timing for that revealed at this State of Play.

One exclusive that we don’t think is coming this year, but would certainly love to see more of, is Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The Last of Us and Uncharted studio’s upcoming sci-fi action-adventure has gone very quiet since its initial reveal back at the 2024 Game Awards. So, is it time for a deeper look into what this new world has to offer? Let’s hope so.

As for what the other PlayStation Studios are up to, your guess is as good as mine, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect one or two surprise reveals or updates. This State of Play stream is over an hour long, after all, so surely there’s something brand-new in there? Perhaps a look at the next project from God of War developer Sony Santa Monica, or a look into the world of Ghost of Yotei: Legends from Sucker Punch? Maybe the time is right for a first sighting of Gran Turismo 8, or an update on the development of Haven Studios’ Fairgames — if we don’t see this one soon, we’ll really start to get worried about it. Then there are two of Sony’s most creative studios, Media Molecule and Team Asobi. We’ve certainly been waiting a lot longer for a follow-up to Dreams than we have Astro Bot, but you never know what’s been going on behind those doors...

Multiplatform

Will we see GTA 6 at this Sony State of Play? No. I will eat my whole fist if we do.

There are a fair few other exciting games that we wouldn’t put body parts on the line for in terms of their likelihood, though. Resident Evil Requiem is imminent, so now seems like as good a time as any to show us one last slice of Leon Kennedy action before the big day on February 27. Sticking with survival horror, Konami has curiously announced a Silent Hill stream will be taking place just two hours after the State of Play. Is this a signal that a more in-depth look at a new Silent Hill game will be at that show, following its reveal just minutes prior as part of PlayStation’s stream? Perhaps this week is when we’ll see Bloober Team’s remake of the original in the series, or – more likely – our first proper look at the Annapurna-published Silent Hill: Townfall, which was first announced in 2022 and has been MIA since.

Back at Capcom briefly, and you can likely expect to see something from one of, if not both, Pragmata and Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Final Fantasy 7 remake director, Naoki Hamaguchi, recently teased that Square Enix will “share more updates than ever before” about the project this year. Does that mean a potential reveal of the third part in the modernised RPG trilogy will happen at this State of Play? Or could we get an Intergrade-style bridging chapter as DLC for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?

But, before we get too sidetracked, let’s stick with games closer on the horizon, such as Hitman developer IO Interactive's 007 First Light, and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight from Warner Bros. Games. Both are coming this May, and their respective developers could share further info on Thursday. Before those, though, March will bring with it Crimson Desert, Pearl Abyss’ ambitious open-world action-adventure that looks set to push the PS5 to its limits. No stranger to a trailer, we can likely expect it to turn up here, too.

As for later in the year, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra recently shifted out of its original window of early 2026 to “beyond early 2026”, so your guess is as good as mine as to when we’ll be playing Amy Hennig’s Captain America and Black Panther in World War 2 story. Legendary PlayStation hero Lara Croft will be returning in a “reimagining” of her original game, titled Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and Finnish developer Remedy is back with another entry in its connected universe, Control: Resonant. Also announced at The Game Awards was the pleasantly surprising Star Wars: Galactic Racer from the makers of Burnout and Need For Speed that is scheduled to drop in 2026. All of these are possibilities.

As for indies, outside of the announcement of a PS5 version of Hades 2, there are a few destined for PlayStation that I’d personally love to see more of on Thursday. Namely, Beethoven & Dinosaur’s coming of age story Mixtape, old-school cartoon-inspired shooter Mouse P.I. For Hire, and Japanese convenience store sim inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories.

What game are you most looking forward to seeing more of at this week’s Sony State of Play? Let us know in the comments!

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.

Amazon's been a great place to find discounts on video games lately. Hidden among the retailer's selection of PS5 deals at the moment is Battlefield 6, which has dropped to $39.88 (see it here). It's not just the PlayStation version that's seen a price drop, though. Xbox fans can also scoop up it up on Series X for the same price (see it here).

Overall, this is a 43% discount for each platform, which is some great savings to make a move on. According to price tracker camelcamelcamel, it's also just a few dollars away from both PS5 and Xbox Series X's lowest price at the retailer of $35, so why not grab it now if you've been itching to drop in?

Battlefield 6 (PS5/Xbox Series X) for $39.88

“It's all allowing players that freedom,” says Peter Molyneux. “And that's what we've been exploring with Masters of Albion.”

The god game thrives on freedom, and, arguably, is nothing without it. No one knows that better than Peter Molyneux. The lead developer of landmark god games such as Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, he’s returning to those roots after years away with Masters of Albion, a self-declared “culmination” of all his work to date that blends those god game greats with other milestones from a long career that also birthed Fable.

Freedom very much is the word I heard most often when speaking with Molyneux recently. His upcoming project, developed at his studio 22Cans, is not only inspired by his own vaunted library, but also by modern masterpieces that have reframed our understanding of player freedom.

“I look at the true greats, things like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom”, Molyneux reveals. “I wouldn't dare to say that our games are anywhere close to as good as those games, but I'm inspired by the fluidity, the seamlessness of those experiences. You're not going through level-up screens. It is just seamless. I'm really inspired by that.”

The latest two Zelda games are heralded for how reactive their versions of Hyrule are, and how their systems beg to be experimented with. You can see a similar ambition in the latest gameplay trailer for Masters of Albion, which showcases the numerous ways you can interact with the world of Albion. You can approach from many different perspectives, from the more traditional city building and infrastructure management layer, to RPG-esque missions full of sword and shield combat, to running the rule over its open world via a massive hand that floats over your townspeople as if The Addams Family’s Thing has risen to deity status.

“The hand really is the star of the show”, says Molyneux. “Giving players the ability to reach into a world, to manipulate things, to move things around, to combine things in ways that we may have never thought of is incredibly alluring for me and really fascinating to experiment with. And the interesting thing is, the more we develop this idea and the more we create it, the more other ideas come around the hand. There are some real surprises in that thing.”

The hand, of course, has played a starring role in Molyneux’s Black & White games, but revisiting the concept has allowed 22cans to add a number of new surprises. Among them, I’m teased, is the ability to contort its four fingers, thumb, and palm into whichever shape you choose, and each and every occupant of Albion will react expressively to that. I’m not saying that you might want to raise only your middle digit up when confronting a tiny person who refuses to behave the way you’d like them to, but you do really want to, don’t you?

There are other, more playful ways to annoy your devoted townsfolk. Want to make a laughing stock of one of your villagers? Then have him parade around the streets dressed in armour made of sausages, created through the detailed factory system that allows you to substitute chainlink for chains of pork. This playfulness and sense of humour are things we’ve come to expect from Molyneux’s games, but crucially, all of these quirks play into Masters of Albion’s world systems, too.

Not only a flicking off device, the hand also plays into the surprisingly deep city-building side of things. This isn’t your standard “drop a mine near a valuable source of ore” situation, but one that lets you express yourself in the architectural design and colour of your buildings. While a snap-together block building system allows you to create towers and factories and housing complexes of your own design, be aware that your arrangements have consequences, including shifting your moral alignment — something familiar to any fan of the Black & White series. But there will also be other, more surprising consequences that evoke the odd systems of Lionhead’s Fable days, such as the rather ominous-sounding arrival of a housing inspector…

Molyneux explains that choices like colour and shape can cause a property inspection, and while he’s careful not to spoil the consequences of a failing grade, it sounds like something worth avoiding.

”You want to be careful that you don't trigger the housing inspector, because when [he] comes and he doesn't like that you've created a slum where everyone's packed together… he does not like that sort of stuff,” he teases.

While things like the housing inspector will take time to occur in-world, Molyneux also wants to ensure that there’s instantaneous fun to be found in designing towns and individual buildings. He’s doing away with the genre staple construction timers, instead getting straight into the buffs and nerfs each new block might bring.

“I love playing city-building games, but I always get frustrated that I have to build a mine here and that's it,” Molyneux states, clearly frustrated by the time spent waiting for resources to start flowing. “[In Masters of Albion] you can build anything you want, anywhere you want, and it works immediately. There are no wait timers. If you've got a farm and you've got a mill and you've got a factory, you can say, ‘I'm just going to put them all into one building’ and you can make this thing that looks like Howl's Moving Castle with all these workstations for your workers, and it will work as you are building it. You don't have to wait for bricks to come to build it. I really want it to feel more like Lego than anything else, that immediacy of what you are building.

Like Howl’s Moving Castle, there’s nothing rooting you to the spot. “You could go back to your original town, which is Oakridge, and you could say, ‘Do you know what? I'm going to move the whole of Oakridge to Wyrmscar, so I'm going to have everyone live in Wyrmscar.’ So this all comes back to god games being about freedom.”

But that freedom also needs direction, and that’s where Masters of Albion’s story comes into play. Launching into early access on April 22 will be chapter one of a planned trilogy, for which a full “epic” story is planned. While tales will play out in the world as you (literally) build it by hand, it appears the main thrust of its narrative structure can be found when Masters of Albion morphs more into a Fable-like shape, as you possess its heroes and venture out on RPG-like quests, slashing enemies down with a sword or turning them to dust with magic.

“One of the things that we haven't done a good job of explaining is that there is a narrative story”, admits Molyneux. “It’s a huge epic story that winds through the entirety of the game. You saw a couple of times in the gameplay trailer that when the gold scroll was clicked on, that's a quest. If it's a gold scroll, it's on the golden line. It's a story quest. If it's a silver scroll, it's an optional quest.

“And all those quests, they give you more stuff”, he continues. “They may give you one of the currencies in the game, they may give you more blocks that you can build with, they may give you more parts that you can design things with.

“You'd be travelling through a land in Fable, and you'd see a chest, and you go and open that chest,” Molyneux explains. “We've got that in here. You can go and open a chest just like in Fable, you can stumble upon a scene that is playing out, and you can get involved in that scene. And so we've been inspired by the open-world nature of Fable 2 and Fable 3.”

Masters of Albion does sound ambitious, but ambition is something we’ve learned to take as a given from Molyneux’s work over the years. Whether these many complex, intertwining systems all come together and work in harmony is, of course, yet to be seen. I’m hopeful, though, because without big swings like Masters of Albion, genres such as the god game would be left to stagnate. That’s something Molyneux is highly aware of, due to the complex nature of their conception.

“It's very hard, in my experience, to sit down and say, ‘Right, I'm going to design a god game.’ Because so much of it is the visceral feeling of connecting these gameplay systems together. It is a very frightening design process that you'd think, ‘Oh, I wish I could just make a first-person shooter. I know what a first-person shooter is.’ It's a terrifying development process to make a god game.”

Masters of Albion will be released into early access on April 22, 2026, and is available to wishlist now on Steam. For more, check out how 22Cans plans for Masters of Albion to be a trilogy, and Molyneux’s emotional reaction to watching the gameplay reveal of Playground Games’ upcoming Fable.

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.

Playground Games gave us a first look at gameplay from its Fable reboot earlier this year in January’s Xbox Developer Direct, and among its viewers was the series’ original creator, Peter Molyneux.

IGN recently spoke to the former Lionhead Studios developer in anticipation of his new God game, Masters of Albion, and took the opportunity to ask for his thoughts on what he saw from this new incarnation of Fable.

“When I was watching the Fable trailer, I just felt myself tearing up”, reveals Molyneux. “I know that I could probably be slaughtered for saying that, but I am someone who cries frequently, and I felt incredibly emotional, and the reason I felt emotional was: F*** me. This thing that we created, it's going to live, it’s going to carry on. This world, which we loved creating so much, and other people loved, has a life.”

“And for me, the saddest thing would be to see it diminish, which is one of the reasons I'm really going back to God games. So that was the overall emotion. I thought it was really smart of them to retell Fable 1 rather than have the burden of continuing the Fable story. I loved seeing some of those references. I thought it was super smart to have the kid’s family turn to stone. I thought that was really smart. And so those were all the plus points.”

But… there’s always a but. Although there was plenty that the series’ original creator enjoyed in Playground’s grand unveiling, it didn’t completely hit the nail on the head for Molyneux — with the game's tone and visual design not quite to his tastes.

“I mean, if I was critical, which I think you want me to be, there was a slight antiseptic feel about it," Molyneux states. “But I mean, they've got months and months to build in that character and almost that dirtiness that you want in the world. I never thought Fable as being clean and all the angles being sharp and defined. It's more chaotic. It's more what Old England probably used to be, which was not straight lines, the place, it's more crinkling, and all the buckle belts on people are ridiculously large, and the boots and the hands ridiculously large because that is part of the character. So there’s a little bit more of that character, which I would probably foolishly and ridiculously ask for.”

But these minor quibbles with the current aesthetic certainly aren’t getting in the way of Peter looking forward to getting his hands on it when it arrives later this year. When asked if he plans to play Fable, he replied: “Absolutely. For sure. Not as someone looking for the flaws and faults, but as someone who truly loves and adores that universe.”

I, too, cannot wait to jump back into the fairy tale world of Fable. You can check out all of the latest updates on Playground’s upcoming fantasy RPG here, including how it plans to utlilise a surprising storytelling technique from The Office, and how you’ll be able to marry each and every one of its 1,000 NPCs.

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.

Masters of Albion, the new God game from 22cans, may well be “the culmination” of legendary developer Peter Molyneux’s career to date, but we may not see its end for many years to come — due to it being the first part of a planned trilogy.

“So this is an epic,” Molyneux tells IGN. “We are thinking about three epic chapters, I suppose you'd call them. Then what we'll be releasing into early access will be chapter one, and it's going to take us quite a few years to get to chapter three.”

“But this chapter one, it has a story. It starts as a classic story of a hero coming and finding his power. There was an adversary who was doing something awful. There was a confrontation. It's a classic. This first chapter is a classic beat of that narrative story. There's going to be love, loss, hate, and betrayal in that first episode of the story. So it is a complete game. We are just thinking bigger rather than, right, this is the game. That's it. We've always been thinking about this bigger story.”

It’s ambitious, a word that has followed Molyneux around for much of his career, whether that be the technologically driven Project Milo, or the experimental Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube? While some of these projects may not have fulfilled their initial promise, many of the British developer’s games have become favourites over the decades. Not least, Fable, of which Molyneux compares in narrative structure to Masters of Albion.

“If you think of Fable, there was Fable 1,” says Molyneux. “We were always thinking when we were thinking of Fable; right, we want time to move on a lot, and so the next issue of Fable is hundreds of years in the future. We thought of that before we even finished Fable 1.

“Whereas something like Black & White, we didn't really think beyond Black & White 2. So when we came to Black and White 2, that felt a little bit clumsy because there wasn't a continuation. So Masters of Albion will finish on a huge… well, I can't say anything. There is a hint in the gameplay trailer at the very end.”

The best laid plans are all well and good, but Molyneux is also fully aware that for two more chapters of the Masters of Albion series to be made, there needs to be both hunger from its audience, and the financial heft to do so.

“My overall desire is that Masters of Albion just brings joy to people,” Molyneux continues. “And if it brings joy to people and there are enough people, we'll definitely be going forward with Master Albion 2 and 3. But you need money to do this.”

Masters of Albion will be released on Steam on April 22, 2026. Do you plan on playing it? Let us know in the comments below. For more, you can check out more details on the god game, or read about what made watching the new Fable’s gameplay reveal so emotional for Peter Molyneux.

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.

It’s pretty safe to say that generative artificial intelligence has become a divisive issue within the games industry and wider player community. As the technology becomes more prevalent, companies and studios are being pushed to offer clarity on their use of it. Within the past few months alone, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has faced significant backlash against its use of generative AI, and RuneScape studio Jagex has promised no AI will be used for any assets a player can “touch, hear or feel.”

ZA/UM, the developer behind Disco Elysium and the upcoming Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, has offered its view on the issue, and it’s a pretty simple one: “No AI.”

Talking to IGN, ZA/UM’s head of studio, Allen Murray, offered his perspective on the situation: “I think about the world right now, where everybody's dealing with AI in a creative space, and what I see is there'll be a hunger for this singer-songwriter in a cafe. I want a really human experience, right? I don't want a computer-driven creation.”

“I think we'll see more of that,” he continued. “There's always this desire for storytelling and something created by humans that has meaning, that you can relate to. And so I think there'll be a resurgence in that.”

When pushed to clarify the studio’s stance on the technology, Murray gave a simple statement. “No AI,” he said. “As a stance, we don't use it.”

Jim Ashilevi, writer and VO director at ZA/UM, added, “It's all just us being messy and human all the way through. And if it's embarrassing, and if it's not as polished as it would be if you went and used AI or whatever, that's fine. Because all we really care about is just being ourselves, basically.”

“You can feel it when you play our games,” continued Ashilevi. “You can see and feel the fingerprints of real human beings when you exist in those worlds and when you read the stories that we like to tell. I think there's a certain rugged and kind of unpolished quality to the kinds of stories and worlds we like to create.”

Artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) were not particularly prevalent during the development of Disco Elysium, but during the creation of Zero Parades they have risen to become a major force in the world of tech. Google’s new “Project Genie” AI tech has demonstrated a (very limited) ability to create playable worlds based on simple prompts, while Sony has patented AI systems that create podcasts hosted by PlayStation characters and an assist function that can help players overcome challenges in video games. Not every creative is convinced though, with Rockstar’s co-founder Dan Houser suggesting that AI is akin to “when we fed cows with cows and got mad cow disease.”

ZA/UM’s vision for its new RPG is rooted in traditional development processes, through which it hopes to create a story about “what it means to lose everything and then keep going regardless.”

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.

No Man's Sky's next big update, Remnant, is here, introducing something developer Hello Games has "been wanting to give players since the very beginning": a gravity gun.

Called the Gravitino Coil, the powerful anti-gravity module for your multi-tool will turn the sci-fi game into "a physics playground," allowing you to "grab large objects and fling, toss, or carefully carry them around the world." It can also be used as a ballistic weapon, allowing you to grab sentinels or heavy objects, turning them into projectiles.

We'll now also be able to collect and recycle the salvage and debris found on planets, turning them into "highly prized" resources, and construct new trucks, tipping flatbeds, and haulers to transport resources back. By carefully sorting and depositing the materials you find — being careful not to accidentally blow yourself up with the "highly volatile" stuff, of course — you'll reap "great rewards."

"You can work alone or join a salvage crew with friends," Hello Games explained. "It creates this really fun and tactile new loop of searching for wrecks, loading trucks full of cargo and hauling across the alien landscape to industrial yards to gain new loot and rewards."

There's also other rewards up for grabs, as well as vehicle parts, a steampunk armor set, and vehicle customization to "create bespoke tracks and haulers for your needs."

Last but not least, there's a new limited-time community expedition on the way, where players can band together to clean up and salvage materials like a space-age trash collection crew.

"Last year was a big year for No Man’s Sky. Even we struggle to know how we pulled off so many large updates last year — Worlds Part II, a Switch 2 release, and Voyagers in the same year, interspersed with smaller but significant updates in Relics, Beacon and Breach," said Hello Games boss, Sean Murray. "As we head into our 10th year post release, our small team is excited for our first update of the year.

"2026 represents 10 years since we launched, and I couldn’t be prouder. For any game to reach such a milestone is a privilege. It wouldn’t be possible without your continued support and we genuinely appreciate it."

Despite being almost a decade on from launch, however, No Man's Sky recently celebrated its best-ever player numbers, following the launch of its Breach and Voyagers updates last year. The Breach update lets players salvage wrecks, unlocking new ship-building parts along the way, while Voyagers added multiplayer ship crew capabilities and skydiving, among many other features.

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.

Have you ever fallen in love?

I did nearly a decade ago, with Overwatch, Blizzard’s hero shooter of near-immaculate design. But that relationship sadly became strained, distant even, ever since its decision to move on from those initial glory days and reinvent itself as a sequel. Well, now Overwatch has gone and seduced me all over again, like a Hanzo scatter arrow delivered straight from Cupid's bow. And it's all thanks to one woman: the corporate villainess tank, Domina. And it has absolutely nothing to do with those thighs.

This week saw the launch of a new era for Overwatch. Blizzard has ditched the “2”, implemented a long-overdue menu overhaul, kicked off a brand new, year-long story, and, crucially, added five brand new heroes to the roster. You’ve got Anran, a fire-fan-wielding damage-dealer; Emre, a tactical operative equipped with more firearms than actual arms; Mizuki, a cursed ex-yakuza member with a healing hat; and Jet Pack Cat, who is, well, a cat with a jet pack. And then last, but certainly not least, is Domina, an incredibly destructive tank with a deadly pulse-action laser beam, explosive crystal bombs, and a giant extra pair of mechanical arms that erupt out of her shoulders. I think I love her.

Vaira, if I should be so bold as to use her real name, is the sort of aggressive tank character that I’ve always been drawn to in Overwatch. With nearly 300 hours clocked in dive tank D.Va alone, it’s pretty clear that there’s nothing more satisfying to me than launching a behind-enemy-lines attack on an objective and absorbing all of the opposite team’s attention as I try to cause as much chaos as possible. Domina isn’t a dive tank, though. Yes, she can cause huge amounts of damage like everyone’s favourite South Korean mech enthusiast can, but if I were to compare her to anyone, it would be a powerful combination of the reworked Orisa and Reaper.

Domina is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to taking the enemy head-on, thanks to a couple of skills that deter foes. One is a very large shield that looms high over her and her teammates. I have to say I was initially worried about this ability, since I still carry mental scars from that period when Overwatch was a complete shield-fest five or six years ago — never again do I want to see a Bastion and a Torbjorn turret sitting behind an Orisa and Reinhardt shield combo on that dreadful first Paris choke point. But Domina’s force field has a fun wrinkle that plays tactically into both teams’ approach, as squares can be punched out of it with a moderate amount of damage, creating literal windows of opportunity for those faced with it. It’s a smart approach to shielding in Overwatch that, at least right now, feels balanced for both attackers and defenders.

Then there’s her sonic repulsors, a pair of energy blasts fired from the palms of her extra mechanical hands. They not only deal a bit of damage, but also boop people away from her. I’ve already had maybe too much fun pushing players off the edge of Illios and Lijiang Palace’s perilous points like a super-sized Lucio. Combine that with a crystal grenade that floats through the air towards enemies before detonating, and a laser beam that fires off a shotgun-like burst at the end of a trigger pull, like a devilish combination of Symmetra and Reaper’s weapons, and you have a hero who can single-handedly run an entire match. I did tell you it wasn’t about the thighs.

Look, I’ll admit that she’s probably too powerful right now and will, in all likelihood, be subjected to a nerf in the coming days or weeks. But while she’s here in all her glory, I can’t recommend Domina enough.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of fun to be found elsewhere in Overwatch right now — this entire update is a genuinely incredible shift for a game that only a short time ago faced an existential threat, and it’s inarguably more enthralling to play now than it has been in many, many years. That being said, I do still yearn for those glory days of 2017 to 2019, and find myself queuing to play its unranked 6v6 mode more than any other. It still feels the most balanced, satisfying way to play Overwatch, and if Blizzard was ever to fully revert back to the two tank, two support, two DPS team structure of old, I think Overwatch would truly own my heart once again.

As for now, I fear my beating chambers belong solely to Domina and her stacked set of skills that simultaneously feel fresh, but also referential to the Overwatch of old. As I’m writing this, I’m counting down the hours until I can play as her again and send people falling to their doom down an Illios well, or imprison them in her explosive Panopticon ultimate ability.

I can’t help but smile when I see that Overwatch is benefitting from its highest concurrent player numbers in over a year, and feel happy for the developers who have worked so tirelessly to make sure this universe that people love so much will not die. This update has made me fall back in love with a game I once held closer to my heart more than any, and a large part of that is down to how fun its five new heroes (but mainly Domina, let’s be honest) are. If Overwatch carries forward this momentum into the rest of 2026, it may become a problem for the rest of my social life.

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.

Imagine E.T. snorted your dad off a space toilet. You’d be mad, but there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it. Unless you happened to have an arsenal of powerful alien guns and some tricked-out power armour. This is the story of you, an unassuming kid who just happens to love video games, and how Earth getting taken over by a vast interstellar drug cartel turns out to be the making of you.

The events of High on Life start at the outbreak of alien invasion on a seemingly normal day in sleepy suburbia. Your parents are out of town, your cokehead sister, Lizzie, wants to throw a wild party, and all you want to do is lose yourself in a Legally Distinct first person shooter. Relatable.

Out of nowhere arrives the G3 Cartel, led by a disgusting slimy slug man called Garmantuous; a blob of distorted flesh more hideous than Jabba the Hutt and twice as mean. He’s here because, sadly, human beings are a very potent recreational drug. In a spot of obscenely bad luck, evolutionarily speaking, we just so happen to be like catnip to the various species that make up galactic civilisation. So the G3 cartel is here to enslave us, stick us all in jars, and sell us on street corners, showing absolutely no regard for our rights as sentient beings. They even murder beloved Hollywood stars Jack Black and Susan Sarandon!

Fortunately, an early chance encounter with tips the scales ever so slightly back in humanity’s favour. You meet Kenny, a sentient gun from the planet Gatlus. The Gatlians are proud race of living weapons who are also enslaved by the cartel, subjected to a brutal bioengineered plague. Any survivors are pressganged into forming the bulk of the cartel’s lethal arsenal.

You know, I’m starting to think these guys aren’t very nice.

Kenny turns out to be an affable young gun with an axe to grind against the cartel and a plan for you both to get even. With his help, you escape the ravaging of Earth by warping your entire house to Blim City, an alien metropolis full of gleaming towers, fantastic technology, and, well… pawn shops, criminal gangs, filthy slums, and gobby delinquents. It is a city after all. They’re all Birmingham or Detroit or whatever when you get down to it.

So here’s Kenny's plan: you become a licensed bounty hunter and destroy the G3 cartel’s entire sordid operation by systematically murdering all of its top brass... which involves chaotically murdering much of its bottom brass. All of which is quite impossible without the help of Gene Zaroothian: a down-on-his-luck, formerly famous bounty hunter who has at some point resorted to selling his own legs for a bit of quick cash. In exchange for a permanent seat on your couch and custody of the TV remote, he sets you up with the aforementioned Tricked Out Power Armour and the all-important Bounty-5000, a vast alien computer that combines the functions of a contract board and a Stargate. He also sets you up with your first mission: head to the slums, recover Gene’s knife “Knifey”, and assassinate 9-Torg, a local crime boss. And also 5-Torg, her cloned sister, if you like.

While not strictly speaking part of the G3 Cartel, 9-Torg’s gang do business with them as drug runners and so it feels perfectly morally consistent to, y’know, murder them all. With Knifey recovered and the associated skills of knife crime and grappling unlocked, your crusade to save humanity from the scum of the universe begins in earnest.

Target 1: Krubis

Your first target is Krubis, the big cheese of G3’s mining operations on the planet Zephyr Paradise, with a thick New Jersey accent and drills for hands.

“Mining operation?”, you say? "I thought this was a drug cartel? What could they possibly be mining for?"

Drugs. They’re mining drugs. Specifically, a living drug called Furgles, another sentient race enjoying the dubious honour of somehow having evolved to give other aliens a really good high when snorted. They tend to live underground in caves, hence all the mining. Furgles share the planet with the Moplets, a race of Despair Bears with scrotums for faces who have been brutally enslaved by Krubis in order to keep the mines running.

Krubis, however, has a problem. With the discovery of humans, who have proven a much more potent narcotic, the demand for Furgles is set to collapse. He and his product is now fast slipping out of favour with Garmantuous, meaning his position within the G3 Cartel rests on very shakey ground. Which is what happens when you dig too many tunnels.

Soon enough, however, that’s the least of his concerns, because you kill him and take his gun, Gus, the JB Smoove voiced frog-faced shotgun with a vacuum function who can shoot large sawblades that you can use as platforms. He’s also the only Gatlian who has arms, which is ironic for a race of arms. You know, armaments. Ah, forget it.

Meanwhile, back home, while Lizzie has been getting into the alien dating scene, Gene has been making himself a bit too comfortable on the couch, and so you find the two at each other’s throats.

Target 2: Douglas

The second G3 target is Douglas, the cartel’s head of training. And also torture. And while some level of evil is required to work in recruitment, Douglas’ unrelenting cruelty and hedonism makes him extremely bad at his job, often making new recruits fight each other to the death despite the G3’s existential staffing problems. This, of course, means he’s fast slipping out of favour with Garmantuous, which seems to be a running theme here. How can such a chaotic and badly managed organisation be the dominant criminal conspiracy in the galaxy? It’s almost like someone else is really pulling the strings here...

Douglas is a small, vulnerable octopus creature who is obsessed with setting pointless, arduous training tasks. In disguise as Dr. Joopy, he almost convinces you to lead him back to the power armour he’s accidentally locked himself out of while on a bender, but the ruse is uncovered by Gus, and so you can just shoot him instead of playing his stupid games. Or not. Either way you end up fighting his suit, win, and acquire a new Gatlian companion: Sweezy, an obnoxious needler with a nifty time bubble alt fire which can be used to get into air ducts.

Target 3: Doctor Giblets

Clugg Nuggmin, Blim City’s magistrate, summons you to his office to congratulate you on your campaign against the drug trade, and offers his assistance in rescuing the human race by building a safe haven for your people and a giving you a device to teleport any humans you find directly there. Setting aside for now the high probability of this guy having a nefarious agenda, you proceed to the next assassination mission… stopping briefly to solve another domestic between Gene, Lizzie, and her dipshit boyfriend, Tweeg.

The next target? Doctor Giblets, the cartel’s deranged warp scientist, who’s currently hiding out on Zephyr Paradise. Current intel on Dr. Giblets says he’s gone into hiding after murdering all of his own men, and is in possession of a powerful Gatlian. Upon finding his secret base, however, you find only a Busted Gatlian, which is utterly broken and inoperable after being experimented on. Before you can deal righteous revenge on his abuser, though, Giblets accidentally trips over and... dies. Far from saving you the bother of a boss fight, though, this leads to one of the hardest battles in the game in the form of Dr. Giblets’ posthumous revenge.

Giblets ends up thoroughly dealt with, and the Busted Gatlian is delivered back to Gene to see if anything can be done for them. But Giblets wasn’t the only G3 boss on Zephyr Paradise performing horrific medical experiments.

Target 4: The Skrendel Brothers

Next on the hit list: the Skrendel Brothers, overseers of Skrendel Labs, a vast drug facility where the cartel are experimenting on humans in order to increase their potency. On the way there you rescue another Gatlian, Creature, and learn of the nasty experiments that have turned him into a gun that is permanently pregnant, capable of shooting his own offspring as projectiles. What is it with these guys and horrific medical experiments?

The Skrendel Bros are a compound being of triplets who combine into an ultra form during your final battle with them, which they obviously lose. By now you’ve become enough of a thorn in the cartel’s side to garner the attention of Garmantuous himself, who warns you to back off, with the implication that your long lost parents will be harmed if you don’t. However, it actually turns out that Garmantuous has Hollywood’s beloved Jack Black and Susan Sarandon, not your parents, in one of the game’s funniest twists and long-form gags. Which I completely spoiled in the intro to this recap. Hey, look, if you were bothered about spoilers, you wouldn’t be reading a recap, right?

In the meantime, it turns out that the busted Gatlian is a former resistance leader by the name of Lezduit, who's now a shadow of his former self due to mistreatment, but is still a hugely powerful firearm. However, it seems that he has a troubled past with Kenny...

Blim City Invasion

It wouldn’t be a video game without a perilous third act where you nearly lose everything. Firstly, Lizzie has gone missing, and so you head to Space Applebees in the slums where her boyfriend, Tweeg, works as a cook. That’s right, there’s a Space Applebees, in one of the funniest and most unlikely pieces of product placement ever featured in video games. This would be like having a licensed OMEGA watch in a Bond game that you only ever see covered in shit.

At Applebees, Kenny takes one of the game’s rare quiet moments to explain his unwitting part in the downfall of the Gatlian race, confessing that he became the personal firearm of a G3 smuggler and ended up, through cowardice and incompetence, leading the Cartel directly back to his home planet, triggering a war which his people lost due to a genetically engineered disease that turned most of them catatonic. Feeling the a huge strain from this guilt, Kenny vows to save humanity to atone for the genocide of his people. Which is all pretty heavy stuff for a daft Rick and Morty first-person shooter, but the pathos is regularly interrupted by an Applebees waiter just to keep things as light as possible. This is, without a doubt, the best bit in the game.

Moving on, it turns out Tweeg is a G3 agent tasked with infiltrating your home by romancing Lizzie and gaining her trust. He’s seen kidnapping her in his space RV and fleeing Blim City, but before you can chase, the place is overrun with Cartel, forcing a hasty escape involving once again warping your house to a new location. This time, you arrive on the toxic ruins of Gatlus, the home planet of the Gatlians.

Lizzie’s fine, by the way.

Target 5: Nipulon

The penultimate boss is Nipulon: Garmantuous’s right hand man and the G3’s chief of customer relations. He runs an infamous drug den and is, contrary to the wisdom of most high-level operatives in the illegal drug trade, partial to his own merchandise.

And, of course, like Batman’s Scarecrow or a tired parent with access to kid-grade Tylenol, Nipulon is skilled in weaponising drugs. This leads to one of the trippiest boss fights in modern gaming, in which we learn that, no matter the odds, any challenge can be overcome with the power of teamwork. And that handling firearms while intoxicated can sometimes lead to a positive outcome. Actually, you know what, I don’t think there is a moral to this story, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.

Finish the Fight

After dispatching Nipulon, Gene manages to save the powerful Gatlian Lezduit from oblivion: with no more guns to collect and no more upgrades to purchase, the only thing left to do is return to Earth and kill Garmantuous, permanently ending the tyranny of the G3 Cartel once and for all and saving the human race from the ignoble fate of becoming ecstasy for ALF.

Even the firepower of Lezduit won’t quite be enough to take down Gamantuous, however. The only way to kill this crime lord, surmises Gene, is to ram a bomb up his backside. And so, at the climax of a prolonged Bullet Hell battle, with an incapacitated Garmantuous showing his entire ass metaphorically and literally, the butt bomb enema fails to explode. The remote detonator is faulty.

Yes, the game’s punchline requires you to sacrifice one of your newfound friends by pushing them up the villain’s anus. A fitting end for the galaxy’s biggest asshole, for sure. The only question is: who to sacrifice?

The most prudent choice is Kenny, given how this noble sacrifice completes his redemption arc, but it doesn’t really matter because your choice is immediately undermined when it turns out that whichever gun you cast into the void immediately comes back after surviving the resulting explosion.

That’s right: Oh my god, they don’t kill Kenny. Except they might as well have done, because when the High on Knife DLC rolls around his character gets unceremoniously written out with a bit of exposition, for reasons that are beyond the remit of this recap.

Incidentally, the major revelations from the DLC are: Knifey is not a type of melee Gatlian but a native of the planet Australia 2, hailing from a race of pacifist knives who can’t stand him. And also that getting rid of the dysfunctional G3 Cartel doesn’t actually make humanity any safer from the intergalactic drug trade, but we already figured that out from the secret ending of the base game, in which the big villainous mastermind behind it all is revealed to be Dr. Gurgula. He's found in the bowels of the Human Haven set up by Magistrate Clugg, ostensibly to help you save your people but actually to recapture them and provide human subjects to Dr. Gurgula for even more horrible experiments. The game is pretty unequivocal that this reveal is a tease for the sequel, in which you, your sister, Gene, and at least some of the returning Gatlians are fugitives on the run from galactic authorities.

And that is the entire story of High on Life, or at least the stuff you actually need to know before you play High on Life 2.

We already knew that Overwatch fans were returning in their thousands with the advent of its new name and "story-driven era," but Overwatch hasn't just matched its original Steam release-day fervor, it has smashed it, more than doubling the platform's concurrent peak set back in 2023.

You'll remember that Blizzard's sequel unfortunately stumbled out of the gate, and while it saw a massive surge of players at the start, those numbers dropped in the following year. As time went on, user reviews complained about a number of issues such as monetization and controversies around the cancellation of the game's long-awaited PvE Hero mode.

Now, however, with the launch of yesterday's (February 10) first year-long storyline, The Reign of Talon, Overwatch — the game formerly known as Overwatch 2 — smashed its original concurrent Steam peak of 75,608. And while we'd already seen a spike in players over the weekend, Sunday's peak of 69,135 simultaneous gamers has been almost tripled, with SteamDB recording 165,651 concurrent Steam players overnight, marking an excellent start for the rebooted hero shooter.

The Reign of Talon focuses on the antagonistic faction Talon as it takes over around the world, while Overwatch continues to fight back. In-game events, hero trailers, animated comics, short stories, and map updates will tell a story across six seasons rolled out throughout the entire year, beginning with the launch of five new heroes as the new season kicked off yesterday.

New heroes include Domina (tank), Emre (damage), Mizuki (support), Anran (damage) — who some of us met over the weekend — and Jetpack Cat (support). More heroes will join in the future, with a new hero added in each of Season 2-6 to come. A new story arc is planned to begin with another Season 1 in 2027.

We're also getting a Hello Kitty-themed in-game event from February 10-23, a new Meta Event called Conquest, where players choose to align with either Overwatch or Talon over five weeks to compete for rewards including lootboxes, skins, and titles. There's also a major UI and UX overhaul with a new hero lobby and a promise of faster navigation on the way.

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.

If you're in the process of building out a new gaming PC and you're looking for CPU recommendations, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D AM5 processor should most definitely be on your shortlist. Amazon is currently offering it for $443.99 with free shipping after a $35 off instant discount. Even better, it comes with a free voucher code for the highly anticipated Crimson Desert game, which will be released on March 19. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is considered to be the best gaming processor currently on the market and outperforms even pricier AMD and Intel CPUs.

The Gamer's Choice: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU for $444

Blizzard Entertainment is just one day away from unveiling the future of Diablo with its 30th Anniversary Spotlight.

Just like last week’s gargantuan Overwatch Spotlight, the February 11 presentation is said to show an extended look at new announcements and updates for the classic dungeon-crawling franchise. That means reveals for Diablo 4, Diablo 2: Resurrected, and Diablo Immortal, as all three games seek to keep players scrounging for loot in 2026.

Unlike the presentation for its hero shooter, Blizzard has given fans a taste of what to expect. Diablo 4, which launched in June of 2023 and received its Vessel of Hatred expansion in October 2024, is barreling toward the launch of its next expansion, Lord of Hatred, this April. We already know one of its two new classes will be the Paladin, but Blizzard says the Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight will come with a look at the yet-to-be-revealed class, too. The World of Warcraft company also teased that fans should expect a deep dive into “major updates to skill trees” as well as its new endgame systems.

Diablo 2: Resurrected is an unexpected but welcome addition to the Spotlight. Blizzard has been coy when it comes to what it will show for its Diablo 2 remake, only teasing that “there’s a lot we want to share with you,” as it prepares for the launch of Ladder Season 13 February 20. Some are hoping for quality-of-life changes while others speculate about a potential Steam release, but with the 2021 remake largely remaining faithful to the original 2000 experience, it’s hard to say what its future holds.

Finally, there’s Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s 2022 mobile spinoff. A closer look at the 2026 roadmap is locked in, as the company has told players its ongoing story will carry them “deeper into a world shaped by corruption, conflict, and consequences.” Its blog post on the matter promises more information about a new class, a new region, and “the return of a malevolent force.”

The Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight premieres tomorrow, February 11, at 2pm PT/5pm ET, and can be streamed on Twitch and YouTube. Keep an eye on IGN for a breakdown of all of the biggest announcements and reveals but, in the meantime, you can check out our reviews for Diablo 4, Diablo 2: Resurrected, and Diablo Immortal.

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

I treat sales like a stress test for taste. When prices drop this hard, it becomes very easy to buy things you will never actually play, and much harder to spot the ones that'll genuinely earn your time / attention / love. Let's remove the guesswork. I've already put hours into these games, and this list comes from experience rather than impulse. Every one is worth a run (Gotham Knights maybe less so.)

Contents

• Retro
• Nintendo
• Xbox
• PlayStation
• PC
• LEGO

This Day in Gaming 🎂

Today I’m celebrating the 26th birthday of The Sims. When this launched, I must confess that my first thought was, “Well, this is barely a game right here.” The Sims seemed more like a virtual fish tank that was only fun if I kept concocting new (and worryingly sociopathic) ways to torment the virtual peoples in my employ. Though this game and genre didn’t flick my switch straight away, personally, the lights clicked on and stayed burning bright for the many, many more of you. After 15 years this original sold a whopping 11.24M copies, so it absolutely deserves a place of honour in the PC gaming pantheon.

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

- The Sims (PC) 2000. Get

- Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GC) 2004. eBay

- Shadow of Rome (PS2) 2005. eBay

- MAG (PS3) 2010.

Nice Savings for Nintendo Switch

• EA Sports FC 26 (-49%) A$46 A familiar rhythm with small but meaningful tweaks, still best enjoyed in short bursts, and still prone to menu friction once you dig too deep.
• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (-35%) A$45.30 Still brutally honest about skill gaps, still secretly mean, and still one of the sharpest kart racers once nostalgia wears off.
• Lunar Remastered Col. (-22%) A$58.10 A warm, earnest JRPG throwback that shows its age, but rewards patience with charm modern games rarely attempt.
• Borderlands 3 Ult. Ed. (-52%) A$43.10 The writing still divides, but the gunplay finally carries the whole experience once everything is bundled.
• TowerFall (-75%) A$7.50 Pure couch multiplayer tension, instantly readable, endlessly replayable, and capable of ending friendships in under five minutes.

Or gift a Nintendo eShop Card.

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Exciting Bargains for Xbox

• Resident Evil 4 (-49%) A$30.50 Still impeccably paced, still confident in its redesigns, and still terrifying without relying on cheap tricks.
• Gotham Knights (-70%) A$32.50 Messy systems and repetition remain, but the co-op and city vibe land better once expectations are lowered.
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (-55%) A$44.60 Enormous, occasionally indulgent, but still rewarding if you treat it like a long term historical hangout.
• No More Heroes 3 (-90%) A$7.40 Stylish, scrappy, and knowingly uneven, but Suda51’s personality carries it through every rough edge.
• Dead Cells (-50%) A$16.70 Still one of the cleanest action loops around, still punishing, and still impossible to play just once.

Xbox One

• The Last Campfire (-90%) A$2.30 A gentle, melancholy puzzle adventure that values tone over challenge, perfect for a quiet evening.
• LEGO Worlds (-41%) A$29.50 More sandbox than structure, charming in bursts, but best approached with creative patience.
• Diablo III Eternal Col. (-56%) A$44.30 Still absurdly playable, still dangerously moreish, and still Blizzard at its most accessible.

Or just invest in an Xbox Card.

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Pure Scores for PlayStation

• Ghost of Yotei (-21%) A$99 Visually striking and contemplative, but deliberately slow, asking patience before it truly opens up.
• Star Wars Outlaws (-68%) A$34.90 Ambitious and uneven, but nails the fantasy of being a small time operator in a huge galaxy.
• Unicorn Overlord (-40%) A$57.20 Deep tactics wrapped in lavish art, surprisingly approachable, though commitment is non negotiable.
• Hitman World of Assassination (-48%) A$54.60 A masterclass in player freedom, endlessly replayable, and still unmatched in systemic stealth design.
• Kena Bridge of Spirits Del. Ed. (-34%) A$49.90 Gorgeous presentation hides a surprisingly tough combat curve that may catch some off guard.

PS4

• Gran Turismo 7 (-58%) A$46.10 Reverent and obsessive about cars, sometimes frustrating, but unmatched if you love the culture.
• Assassin's Creed Mirage (-63%) A$29.90 A tighter, quieter Assassin’s Creed that trades scale for focus, mostly to its benefit.
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ult. (-55%) A$40.20 Content rich and mechanically solid, though its grind still overstays its welcome.

Or purchase a PS Store Card.

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Purchase Cheap for PC

• God of War Ragnarok (-40%) A$57.40 Spectacular without being hollow, emotionally grounded, and mechanically confident across its entire runtime.
• Black Myth Wukong (-25%) A$67.40 Visually stunning and occasionally punishing, with combat that demands precision more than flair.
• Mortal Kombat Elder God Bndl (-84%) A$19.90 An absurd amount of content for the price, though learning curves remain unforgiving.
• Everspace 2 (-80%) A$13.90 Clean systems, satisfying dogfights, and a structure that respects limited play sessions.
• Hogwarts Legacy (-86%) A$12.50 Lavish and familiar, best enjoyed as a focused tour rather than a completionist marathon.

Or just get a Steam Wallet Card

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Magic: The Gathering just had its most financially successful year yet, Hasbro has announced. And it's largely thanks to its collaborations with other brands, via its Universes Beyond and Secret Lair releases.

In its earnings call today, Hasbro revealed that MTG revenue was up 59% year-over-year, in no small part thanks to the Avatar: The Last Airbender set last year, which is now the third highest-selling set in Magic history after Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings. Other Universes Beyond sets, as well as Secret Lair, also had a hand in the success.

That 59% is a huge increase, and one that is responsible for Hasbro's overall numbers looking good. The company overall was up 14% year-over-year, almost entirely driven by 45% growth in the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment (Monopoly Go! also helped a little). Its other segments, Consumer Products and Entertainment, both saw declines of 4% each.

The revenue-raising capabilities of Universes Beyond and Secret Lair are a helpful look for Hasbro's C-suite, which has found itself the target of a shareholder lawsuit on the very subject recently. The lawsuit alleges that Hasbro has mismanaged Magic: The Gathering by overprinting sets of cards, specifically Universes Beyond and Secret Lair, thereby devaluing existing cards. The complaint itself contains some pretty sharp accusations that the company's top brass have been holding such sets in reserve to deploy whenever the rest of the company is struggling.

In response, Hasbro has stated that such claims have "no merit," and has recently moved to dismiss a similar lawsuit with very similar accusations filed in 2024 by the West Palm Beach Firefighters' Pension Fund and City of Miami General Employees & Sanitation Employees' Retirement Trust, on the basis that the complaint has been amended so significantly since it was originally filed that it is no longer related to the original issue.

Hasbro reached out to share the following updated statement on these lawsuits as pertains to its earnings today:

As we shared when you covered the matter in January, these claims have no merit. Our strategic plan for Magic was implemented, and the results underscore the strength of that strategy. As further reflected in our earnings results released this morning, Magic: The Gathering just completed its most successful year ever.

Magic: The Gathering's next set will be a Universes Beyond set for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, complete with commander deck, and will release on March 6.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that it doesn't "currently" have plans to visit any magical schools besides its own Strixhaven in future sets, suggesting that a Harry Potter collaboration isn't in the cards for the moment.

This comes from a Reddit post from the official WOTC_CommunityTeam Reddit account in response to a thread on the Magic: The Gathering subreddit asking if WOTC might "touch the fire that is [Harry Potter]" in the future. The post was sparked by a slide from this morning's Hasbro earnings call, where the WOTC parent company talked about expanding its partnerships on IP such as Harry Potter, KPop Demon Hunters, Street Fighter, and Voltron.

In response, WOTC_CommunityTeam wrote, "The Magic Multiverse has its own school of Magic at Strixhaven with plenty of secrets still to explore. Our Universes Beyond roadmap currently doesn't have us visiting any others."

The reply does say "currently," meaning that a future Harry Potter collaboration may not be fully off the table for the future. The company has been printing more and more of its "Universes Beyond" collaborative sets in recent years (so many, it's now the subject of a lawsuit) as well as smaller "Secret Lair" sets for other collaborations. However, WOTC does plan these sets out pretty far in advance, often around three years or even as many as five in the case of Final Fantasy. That means we're unlikely to see Harry Potter make an appearance for at least a few years, if at all.

Widely popular as Harry Potter is, the post and subsequent community discussion on Reddit is overwhelmingly against Harry Potter being introduced into Magic due to author and creator J.K. Rowling's openly professed transphobic beliefs, as well as her large donations to anti-trans causes. In contrast, a fundraiser for Trans Lifeline run by popular Magic content channel Tolarian Community College just amassed over $600k in donations over three days. The game itself introduced its first canonically trans character, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, way back in 2015 in a short story, and has since turned her into a pretty solid Commander card.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Mewgenics, the cat-breeding tactics roguelike from the developer of The Binding of Isaac, has hit the ground running to say the least. It’s already made back the cost of its roughly seven-year development, blew past internal sales expectations, and is currently approaching the highest peak concurrent player count of Isaac itself – and it only launched today at 6am PT.

“So far this is beating expectations by quite a lot,” developer Tyler Glaiel tells IGN, saying it likely took less than three hours for development costs to be fully recouped. “Its a bigger launch than any of the Isaac expansions already, and its only been a few hours.”

His partner Edmund McMillen, best known for games like Isaac and Super Meat Boy, put just how wide of a gap that is into a perspective: “I think the highest sales day for any game of mine, release-wise, was [The Binding of Isaac:] Rebirth, and it sold 40,000 units I think day one.” By comparison, McMillen says Mewgenics sold around 152,000 copies in its first five-and-a-half hours. “Isn't that kind of insane?”

Mewgenics is also sitting at more than 63,000 concurrent players on Steam at time of writing, creeping steadily towards Rebirth’s all-time peak of 70,701. “We knew the game was good and would do good,” Glaiel says, “but Isaac is *HUGE* so we thought it was unlikely to beat that.” There are also almost 85k people watching it on Twitch – one of which is McMillen himself, who says he’s enjoying watching Northernlion be so immediately good at it.

The critical reception for Mewgenics has been glowing as well, currently sitting at an 89 on sites like Metacritic and 96% positive user reviews on Steam (with roughly 1,700 in at the moment). IGN’s own Mewgenics review gave it a 9/10, saying it’s “a fantastic tactical RPG that's good for more than a hundred hours of roguelike runs. Just when you think you have it figured out it'll throw something completely unexpected and hilariously gross at you – and probably a catchy new original song, too.”

Tom Marks is IGN's Associate Reviews Director. He loves puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

When you have a series that's consistently gotten new games for almost 40 years, you have to think about how younger generations will be able to play them. That, and, of course, thinking about your bottom line, has led every publisher to lean more and more into multiplatform releases. On top of PC ports, Square Enix has released a decent amount of remasters and special editions of the Final Fantasy series specifically for Nintendo's handheld.

The Final Fantasy games hitting Switch isn't entirely unprecedented. The connection between Final Fantasy and Nintendo dates back to the series’ infancy, when the first game debuted on Nintendo's Famicom system in 1987. In fact, the first six mainline Final Fantasy games debuted on Nintendo platforms before Square Enix jumped to PlayStation as the series’ primary platform with Final Fantasy 7.

We've got a lot to look forward to on both Switch systems in 2026, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Switch 2. Below, we’ve compiled a complete list of Final Fantasy games available on the Nintendo Switch and what to expect next.

How Many Final Fantasy Games Are Available on Switch?

There are 22 Final Fantasy games you can play on the Switch — 13 mainline games, one prequel, and eight spinoffs. These games have been split into two sections below: mainline games (ordered by original release date) and other games (ordered by Switch release date).

Every Mainline Final Fantasy Game on Switch and Switch 2

Final Fantasy 1–6 Pixel Remaster

The first six Final Fantasy games are all available on Switch as part of Square Enix’s Pixel Remaster collection. Each game has been overhauled with new graphics, rearranged soundtracks, updated UIs, and new galleries for players to explore the creatures, illustrations, and music from all six games. If you're interested in diving into the original Final Fantasy experience, this is the best way to do it.

The Pixel Remasters are available individually ($12–18 USD/each) or as part of the six-game Final Fantasy I–VI bundle ($75 USD). If you're looking at the games individually, I'd recommend FF6, as it has one of the more immersive storylines.

Final Fantasy 7

One of the series’ most beloved games, Final Fantasy VII, is also available on Switch. This is not a remastered version of the game but rather a port of the 1997 original with three extra features: a 3x speed mode, the ability to turn battle encounters off, and a battle enhancement mode to make encounters easier. While the newer remasters, Remake and Rebirth, introduce modern action RPG mechanics to Cloud Strife's battle against Sephiroth, the Switch edition of FFVII is one of the best opportunities to experience what made the original PlayStation game so impactful.

Final Fantasy 8 Remastered

The series’ next entry is also available on Switch as Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. This updated version was released in 2019, 20 years after FF8 originally debuted on PlayStation. Additions to the remastered version include a 3x speed mode, the ability to turn off random encounters, and battle assist options to lessen the difficulty of combat.

Final Fantasy 9

Final Fantasy IX on Switch, like FFVII before it, is a port of the original RPG, which, despite not being quite as "famous" as Final Fantasy VII, is considered to have one of the best storylines in the series. The Switch version includes a few extras compared to the 2000 original, including high-speed and no-encounter modes, an autosave feature, and HD cutscenes and character models.

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster is a bundle of Final Fantasy X and its sequel X-2 (the series’ first-ever direct sequel). The two games feature over 100 hours of RPG content, according to IGN sister site How Long to Beat, and include upgraded graphics and reworked audio (with the ability to switch back and forth between the new and original sounds).

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Skipping the now-shuttered MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, the series’ next mainline game available on Switch is Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age. The Zodiac Age, a remaster of the 2006 original, features HD graphics and a re-recorded soundtrack, as well as the Zodiac Job System, an increased battle tempo, an optional high-speed mode, and autosave functionality.

Final Fantasy 15 Pocket Edition HD

Final Fantasy XIII and XIV: Online are not available on Switch, which brings us to Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD. It’s the latest mainline game available on the platform, as FFXVI is still only available on PS5 and PC.

Final Fantasy 15 Pocket Edition HD is an abridged version of the original game with cartoonish character models, simplified combat, a reduced skill tree, and fewer side quests. Pocket Edition HD does, however, retain the full FFXV story, boys on the road and all.

Final Fantasy VII: Remake Intergrade (2026)*

We have officially entered the 'only on Switch 2' section of this list. In this case, that has nothing to do with the game being Switch 2-exclusive. Rather, the increased power of the Switch 2 console has allowed for some heftier ports, including Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. We specifically re-reviewed this game when it launched on the Nintendo console, acknowledging that while you're limited to 30fps, it "checks pretty much every box you could ask for from a portable version."

Other Final Fantasy Games on Switch

World of Final Fantasy Maxima (2018)

World of Final Fantasy Maxima, co-developed by Square Enix and prolific Japanese developer Tose, came to Switch with new content and the subtitle ‘Maxima’ two years after it was first released on PS4 and Vita. It’s an accessible RPG aimed at younger audiences that combines the series' Active Time Battle system with the ability to capture Mirages (i.e., creatures) to use in battle.

Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy! (2019)

Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy! is a remastered version of the 2007 Wii game Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon. This Final Fantasy spinoff is a turn-based RPG with randomly generated dungeons and a buddy system that allows players to bring other creatures or characters along for the dungeon-crawling chaos.

Collection of Mana (2019)

This collection of three Mana games is on this list due to its inclusion of the 1991 Game Boy game Final Fantasy Adventure. Despite beginning as a Final Fantasy spinoff, the Mana series dropped those ties with the release of its second game, Secret of Mana, and has since remained an independent franchise.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition (2020)

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is an enhanced version of the 2004 RPG/dungeon crawler originally released for GameCube. Crystal Chronicles for Switch features a cute aesthetic, online co-op, and the addition of English voiceover for the first time. It’s a graphical improvement upon the original that also added new areas, monsters, weapons, and a higher-difficulty option.

Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend (2020)

Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend compiles three Game Boy games: Final Fantasy Legend I–III. We’ve included these games in service to creating a comprehensive list, though these are only Final Fantasy games in name; the SaGa games belong to an independent franchise of RPGs inspired by but not necessarily connected to Final Fantasy. The first three SaGa games were given the Final Fantasy name to capitalize on the brand recognition with western audiences.

The collection adds a high-speed mode and Switch-specific enhancements like adjustable screen magnification and the ability to play with your Switch oriented vertically (when in handheld mode, with Joy-Cons detached).

Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion (2022)

A prequel to Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion is a remastered version of the 2007 PSP RPG. The game stars a young warrior named Zack Fair, whose connection to Cloud and FFVII is revealed throughout the story. Reunion features remastered graphics, new character and background models, fully voiced dialogue, a newly arranged soundtrack, and a refined battle system.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (2023)

A rhythm game that celebrates the music of Final Fantasy, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line launched with 385 tracks from across the Final Fantasy series, though that has since grown to include music from other Square franchises for a total of 505 tracks. The Final Fantasy music pulls from 46 games, according to Squre, including FFI–XV. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line features over 100 characters and online multiplayer support for up to 8 players.

Chocobo GP (2023)

Chocobo GP is a Final Fantasy-themed kart racer developed by Arika (Tetris 99). While there are better kart racers available on Switch, Chocobo GP is a fun respite from the more involved RPGs that make up the majority of the Final Fantasy franchise. Like other kart racers, it features time challenges, tournament-style races, and options for multiplayer racing.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (2025)

A remake of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles recently came to PS5 and Switch with enhanced graphics, voiced dialogue, and various quality of life improvements over the original PS1 game. Ronny Barrier's review for IGN says the remake of the tactical RPG removes "the cruft of Final Fantasy Tactics while surfacing what made it special through smart UI tweaks, convenience features, and excellent new voice acting."

Upcoming Final Fantasy Games on Nintendo Switch

Square Enix has confirmed that all of the Final Fantasy VII remakes will be making their way to the Nintendo Switch 2 over time. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade released on the Switch on January 22, 2026, and will be followed by the Switch 2 release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on June 3.

Unfortunately, we still have no word on a release date for the third and final part of the remake, but with ongoing trends, there's a chance it comes to Switch 2 at launch.

The newly-rebranded Overwatch just benefited from its best weekend player count "in over a year" across all platforms, developer Blizzard has said, as the game's new Season 1 officially goes live today.

Players have flocked back to Overwatch following last week's big Spotlight reveal event that confirmed the sequel was ditching its "2", adding a host of new heroes, and telling a fresh interconnected narrative over the next year.

An early access launch for new hero Anran also helped draw players in, while the company has quickly addressed calls from fans and the game's English-language voice actress for tweaks to the character's design.

As reported earlier this week, Overwatch had a particularly strong weekend on Steam — where the game recorded its best player count since launch. Last week's announcements continued with confirmation of an upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 port of the game, scheduled for release sometime within its new Season 2.

Here's everything that's live today, alongside the launch of Season 1:

Overwatch Season 1 — February 10

● Five New Heroes at Launch: Jump in to experience five new heroes right now, with five more coming throughout 2026 (one per season).

○ Domina (Tank), a long-range, zone-control Stalwart Tank hero and vice president of the Vishkar Corporation.

○ Emre (Damage), a fast-paced, run-and-gun Specialist Damage hero with cybernetic upgrades.

○ Mizuki (Support), a versatile Survivor Support hero aligned with the Hashimoto clan.

○ Anran (Damage), a fire-wielding Flanker Damage hero, Overwatch recruit, and Wuyang’s older sister.

○ Jetpack Cat (Support), a permanently flying feline, acting as a Tactician Support hero with quick reflexes and Hero towing abilities

● The Reign of Talon: For the first time, Overwatch is telling a fully connected narrative across an entire year, following Talon’s rise under new leadership. Follow along on this new story with our latest cinematic, as well as ongoing motion comics, animated Hero trailers, short stories, and more.

● Conquest Meta Event: Conquest is a five-week faction-based event where players align with Overwatch or Talon, completing missions and earning rewards along the way.

● Gameplay, Competitive, and Systems Updates: Season 1 includes new role sub-roles and passives for all Heroes, a competitive year reset with rewards and rarity titles, Stadium updates, a full UI/UX refresh, and new systems like Praise.

● The Overwatch x Hello Kitty and Friends collaboration is available now, introducing colorful, Hello Kitty and Friends-inspired skins plus themed extras like name cards, sprays, emotes, and more. Available now through February 24, the crossover introduces skins for…

○ Juno as Hello Kitty

○ Widowmaker as Kuromi

○ Mercy as Pompompurrin

○ Lucio as Keroppi

○ D.Va as My Melody

○ Kiriko as Cinnamoroll

● Skins and Cosmetics: Season 1 includes faction-themed skins, new themed bundles, a Mercy Celestial Guardian Mythic, Juno’s Star Shooter Mythic Weapon, and a Lootbox pool refresh including skins from the past six seasons.

After all that, Overwatch's new Season 2 will introduce a fresh hero, mythics and a celebration of the game's 10-year anniversary later this spring. Another hero joins in Season 3, due this summer, alongside the Japan Night map and more mythics. Later this summer, Season 4 drops yet another new hero and includes activity tied to BlizzCon and the Overwatch World Cup.

Catch up with everything else announced last week at Blizzard's Overwatch Spotlight event right here.

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

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that mixtapes (or Spotify playlists now) were an important part of those crucial, formative teenage years. I'm also sure that I'm definitely not alone in the shared experience of putting together the perfect playlist to share with my friends or a significant other. Simply put, those playlists tell a story. And while the ones from my teenage years may seem like nothing more than whatever cool metalcore bands I was into and in at the time, te memories created from those long lost CD-Rs and iTunes playlists still stick with me years later.

The importance of music during that formative but extremely awkward time is how we expressed ourselves and built an identity. The subgenres and scenes were as important to me as anything during those teenage years playing in garage bands, getting sunburned at the Warped Tour, and sifting through thousands of MP3s on my beat-up laptop in order to build that week's lineup of songs.

In video game form, Mixtape does – at least so far – an excellent job at invoking the feeling of needing that perfect soundtrack for day-to-day life. From the start of the demo, I was skating in a picturesque northwestern town during golden hour while listening to Devo’s “That’s Good”. The vibe check was passed immediately when the protagonist, Stacey, breaks the fourth wall and explains the importance of good headphones and a good playlist. Mixtape’s presentation is a hybrid of a traditional point-and-click adventure similar to Life is Strange, mixed with abrupt but natural fourth-wall breaks for exposition and what the characters are feeling in that moment. While this isn't a new thing, very few games have managed to pull it off like Mixtape does, and it has yet to overstay its welcome.

From the few chapters I've played, Mixtape seems best described as a blend of a video game and a stylish TV show. The camera work and intentionally low frame rate animation on the characters lend a charm to it, and the dialogue, while a bit campy, never took me out of the moment. Stacey, Slater, and Cassandra are very much your typical teenage archetypes in the best way possible. While they weren't annoying or overbearing like some rebellious teen-fronted games tend to be, the trio are definitely written in an unrealistic way that works perfectly for the story Mixtape is trying to tell. It's obvious that these three are meant to be stereotypical in a way that evokes a feeling of nostalgia from the player. There were a few moments where I found myself saying “been there before,” and for a story that's clearly trying to invoke a specific feeling of anemoia (nostalgia for a time that never existed) with the player, it nails that.

Let's talk about Mixtape’s namesake. The music here, while not necessarily anything that would have landed on one of the thousands of CD-Rs I made as a teen, is outstanding. In the little bit of the campaign I played, the needle drops included a mix of songs ranging from Devo to Silverchair, which show the potential diversity of Mixtape's final soundtrack, and I'm glad the developers at Beethoven & Dinosaur didn't go with your run of the mill “safe” selection of hits from the ‘90s. It's obvious that the team is digging deep with the music selection in order to not only tell its story about music snobs hoping to craft the perfect mixtape in order to get a job as a music supervisor, but also tell the story about the final day of three teens' high school years.

Of course, vibes and music aren't everything when it comes to video games, and the gameplay is where Mixtape started to feel a little flat. While there were a few moments in the demo that required a bit more interactivity than finding something highlighted on screen, such as escaping from the police in a shopping cart, throwing toilet paper at Stacey’s principals house, and positioning Stacey and Slater into various poses in a photo booth, the select chapters I played felt like they were missing the welcome bit of interactivity that other point-and-click adventures offer. While the best moments had a decent amount of gameplay, a few chapters felt like I was watching a (very polished) interactive show rather than playing a video game. That being said, Mixtape's gameplay isn't necessarily the selling point here, because every time I found myself thinking about it, something cool would happen on screen, the needle would drop, and I would be pulled right back into Stacey Rockford's story.

After playing 30 minutes of Mixtape, I can clearly see the direction Beethoven & Dinosaur is looking to take with this ‘90s-set teenage adventure. The visuals are striking, its sense of nostalgia and warmth are unlike anything I've seen recently, and the needle drops definitely made me want to play more than what the demo allowed me. Is it going to be everyone's favorite thing? Probably not, but that's the fun of making the perfect mixtape, isn't it?