It’s been a while since Massively OP’s MJ muddled about in Middle-earth, and she has missed it. With the Spring Festival in full force, it’s the perfect time for her to hop right in. (And not just to enjoy spring and flowers, as opposed to the snow still present outside her window.) Join us live […]

Gamigo’s Trove is continuing to get love regardless of what’s going on with the rest of the company’s MMORPG catalogue, and for the blocky sandbox, that comes in the form of yet another update called, cutely, the Gear Up!date. “With the new spring update, players can master the latest new profession, Gearcrafting, enjoy dynamic loot, […]

Sony has revealed Gran Turismo 7’s next big update, which adds three new cars, an extra Café Menu, three World Circuit Events, and more.

Gran Turismo 7 patch 1.44 includes the return of the legendary Toyota GT-One (TS020) ’99, as well as new stickers available for a limited time. Update 1.44 goes live today, March 27 at 11pm PST, Sony said in a post on the PlayStation Blog.

The three new cars are the aforementioned Toyota GT-One (TS020) ’99, the Audi R8 Coupé V10 plus ’16, and the Lamborghini Urus ’18. The Jaguar (Collector Level 41 and above) menu has been to the Extra Menus section (Extra Menu No. 37). And the following new events have been added to World Circuits:

European Clubman Cup 600 – Blue Moon Bay Speedway – Infield A ReverseSchwarzwald League – High Speed Ring ReverseWorld Touring Car 900 – 24 Heures du Mans race track

Elsewhere, official TV animation series Highspeed Étoile’ stickers are available for a limited time from the GT Auto / Livery Editor. Here’s the official blurb, from Sony:

For a limited time, 26 stickers including eight title logos and 18 main character stickers themed on the Japanese TV anime Highspeed Étoile will be provided in the preset decals of the Livery Editor. The original TV animation Highspeed Étoile depicting a world of motorsports in the near future is planned for broadcast in Japan starting April 2024. We will be updating information regarding the period of availability at a later date. And finally, Fukushima has been added as a featured Curation in Scapes.

Gran Turismo 7 launched on PlayStation 4 and 5 Gran Turismo 7 in March 2022, with IGN’s Gran Turismo 7 review returning a 9/10. We said: “Mixing the original GT’s trendsetting format with GT Sport’s stern but very successful focus on competitive online racing, Gran Turismo 7 makes a few errors but is a potent podium performance from developer Polyphony Digital.” Sony hasn’t announced sales numbers, but series development chief Kazunori Yamauchi has said Polyphony had maintained a high number of active users since launch.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].

Tony Hawk is making a kids-focused animated TV show called Skatebirds, a title inspired by Hawk’s ‘Birdman’ nickname.

Deadline reports Hawk is working with Montreal’s Laughing Dragon Studios to develop the series, which is aimed at kids aged 6-11.

According to Deadline, Skatebirds will “celebrate skateboarding’s playful community while emphasizing its adventurous nature.” It’s about a group of young skateboarders who are also birds. Expect plenty of teamwork, friendship, and a focus on community. Episodes are 11 minutes long.

Legendary professional skater Tony Hawk is the face of Neversoft’s phenomenally successful Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, which began life in 1999 on PSone. Activision released Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 in 2020, courtesy of developer Vicarious Visions, now known as Blizzard Albany. In 2022, Hawk claimed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was canceled due to Vicarious Visions’ merger with Blizzard. Since then, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. The company behind Xbox has yet to announce plans to revive the series it now owns.

Image credit: Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].

As a massive fan of survival games and Dune, I’ll admit to being a bit skeptical about an open-world survival game that takes place on the famously barren planet of Arrakis, but after an hour-long presentation of the upcoming Dune: Awakening, those concerns have disappeared entirely. Based on the hands-off showcasing of what’s to come in this MMO survival game, it certainly appears that developer Funcom has taken their hard-won learnings from the underrated Conan Exiles and applied it to this ambitious multiplayer world set in one of sci-fi’s most beloved galaxies. Whether it was the impressively detailed character creation options, the intricate RPG systems filled with skill trees and craftables, or the absolute insanity of trying to outrun a Shai-Hulud or escape a massive sandstorm, Dune: Awakening appears to be on track to become the sci-fi survival game I’ve always dreamt of, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

How do you make a survival game set in an utterly desolate wasteland of sand? Well, according to Funcom, the answer lies in the “hidden spaces” of Arrakis. Described in Frank Herbert’s novels, these hidden pockets of shade and refuge are home to life and micro-biomes that will be altogether unfamiliar to those who have only seen the movies, but Dune: Awakening hopes to lean pretty heavily on their existence to fill the massive desert with things for players to do – whether that be finding a pocket of shelter to build a base in, delving into a cave that’s home to hostile creatures, or taking down remote enemy bases in search of loot and resources. In fact, the wide-open empty spaces filled with hot sand might be more of an asset than a hindrance, as it allows for a heat stroke mechanic where players are punished for spending time in direct sunlight with some pretty devastating debuffs, meaning players will instead need to dart from shelter-to-shelter, battling the elements as they explore the world and its many hidden spaces.

Combined with the forever game of “the floor is lava” that is dodging sandworms on Arrakis, players will need to remain on the move constantly, and develop strategies for managing their water reserves, protecting against the heat, and, of course, engaging in the never-ending struggle for all-important spice. In one leg of the demo, players worked together to claim a massive deposit of spice while keeping an eye out for the ever-looming threat of the Shai-Hulud, drawn to their activity in the desert…only to be unexpectedly overwhelmed by a sandstorm instead, which swallowed them and their precious cargo along with them. In another section, a group of players worked together to infiltrate a high-level facility filled with rare materials and dangerous enemies, making sure to harvest the blood of fallen baddies to replenish their rapidly depleting water reserves. Before the demo, I had a lot of questions about how a Dune survival game would even work without becoming extremely monotonous in short order, but by the end I found myself wondering why in the heck someone hadn’t made one sooner – seeing all the clever ways Dune: Awakening plans to make brilliant use of Dune’s unique lore made me a believer.

Seeing all the clever ways Dune: Awakening plans to make brilliant use of Dune’s unique lore made me a believer.

Beyond the major things Dune: Awakening aims to get right, the demo also included all these little details that took my hype to the next level, like how they showed off an incredibly detailed character creation engine that included things like choosing your home planet and origin to decide some of your starting traits and aspects of your appearance, or how the in-depth skill trees and crafting system allowed you to drastically augment your playstyle from a telekinetic mentalist with a bag of supernatural tricks to run-and-gun soldiers with a bag of high explosives. As someone who has spent a good deal of time with the Dune tabletop RPG, dreaming up the characters I’d like to portray in that universe, this looks like it’ll scratch an itch I’ve had for decades, and I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on it later this year.

NetEase and Marvel Games have announced Marvel Rivals, a 6v6 team-based free-to-play shooter headed to PC that stars iconic heroes and villains from the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, and many more.

While no release date was given, Netease and Marvel did reveal Marvel Rivals will have a Closed Alpha Test in May. It also shared that this multiversal adventure will feature an initial roster comprised of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Groot, Hulk, Iron Man, Loki, Luna Snow, Magik, Magneto, Mantis, Namor, Peni Parker, Rocket Raccoon, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Storm, Star-Lord, and The Punisher.

Watch the announcement trailer below.

Marvel Rivals also promises ever-changing battlefields that will be destroyed by the cavalcade of powers on display in each match, no matter if it’s in Asgard, 2099’s Tokyo, or others. This isn’t for show either, as you can destroy and reshape your surroundings to gain a tactical advantage over your foes.

The strategic thinking doesn’t end there, as Dynamic Hero Synergy will be available for those who find the right combination of characters. For example, Rocket Raccoon can hop on Groot’s back to become more powerful and Hulk can unleash Gamma energy at Iron Man for a massive attack.

Much like other free-to-play games, Marvel Rivals will continue to evolve and gain new content as the seasons roll on, including new playable characters, maps, and much more. Each new season will also tell more of the story of Marvel Rivals, which was written by the NetEase writing team.

In this multiverse, Doctor Doom and his future self from the year 2099 are locked in a vicious battle that has caused countless universes to collide in the Timestream Entanglement. To stop things from getting even worse, heroes and villains from across the multiverse must put their differences aside and band together to save everything we know and love.

This will be NetEase’s third Marvel game following Marvel Duel and Marvel Super War. NetEase has also developed other such games as EVE: Echoes, Naraka: Bladepoint, The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War, Dead by Daylight Mobile, and Harry Potter: Magic Awakened.

As for Marvel Games, we have Skydance’s Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel’s Wolverine by Insomniac, EA’s Iron Man and Black Panther games, and Marvel’s Blade by Arkane Lyon to look forward to.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

Remember Hellgate: London? The dark fantasy action role-playing game came out in 2007 for PC, a year before developer Flagship Studios went bankrupt. Since then, various free-to-play and online revivals have come and gone. Now, 17 years after the release of Hellgate: London, it’s back.

Hellgate: London chief creator Bill Roper, via his new studio Lunacy Games, has signed a licensing agreement with HanbitSoft (HanbitSoft acquired the rights to the Hellgate franchise from Namco Bandai in 2020) to create a new AAA Hellgate game, codenamed Hellgate: Redemption. It’s due out at some point for console and PC, and is set in an as-of-yet undisclosed part of the alternate-history, demon-apocalypse world.

“I’ve dreamed of returning to the franchise we created back in 2007 for many, many years,” Roper said. “I’ve always felt I had unfinished business with the Hellgate IP, which is why our codename for the project is Hellgate: Redemption.”

Hellgate: Redemption is built on Unreal Engine 5, Roper added. “We’re keeping core gameplay and lore elements of Hellgate: London in our current design, but our intent is to build an exciting new experience that takes advantage of the numerous advances the industry has seen over the past 17 years since the original game launched.”

Here is an overview of the original game, via Lunacy Games:

Hellgate: London is an influential game that was ahead of its time in numerous ways. It pioneered the Looter Shooter genre, featuring randomly generated levels that demanded a proprietary 3D engine with real-time lighting support, and employed a business model that was unique at the time, now widely recognized as a Battle Pass. That era of gaming even required the formation of a second company to build and operate the online portion of Hellgate: London.

Flagship Studios was founded in 2003 by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik, several developers who worked on Blizzard’s Diablo. Hellgate: London was hotly anticipated, but it launched with various bugs that caused the game to crash. Roper later admitted the game was too ambitious and should have narrowed its focus.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].

If you haven’t seen my 75-minute interview with BioShock creator Ken Levine detailing the journey he’s been on for the past decade in building something entirely new with Judas, check that out below. But if you just want to see the new gameplay footage that developer Ghost Story Games gave us to accompany that interview, I’ve got you covered right here. Check the video above.

That said, I can’t tell you any more about Judas that Ken didn’t already talk about in the interview, so as not to spoil anything for you, but I can describe what’s going on in the footage that was provided.

Let’s start right where the game does: with you being reprinted! It looks incredibly painful, and the fact that you’re being reprinted at all means that, you guessed it, you’ve been dead for some indeterminate amount of time. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You play as Judas, a hacker and self-taught engineer who’s part of a multi-generational trip from Earth to a new planet called Proxima Centauri aboard the colony ship called the Mayflower. The capital-M Mission is to continue the human race after departing Earth due to a bacterial plague. Also, on board this ship, you’re not particularly well-liked! See, it turns out that things went seriously sideways, and it’s all your fault.

It turns out that things went seriously sideways on the Mayflower, and it’s all your fault.

Now that you live again, you’ve got the three holographic heads of the ship to contend with: Tom, the ship’s head of security who wants to protect the Mission at all costs; Dr. Okeke, the ship’s medical officer who embraces a robots-are-the-way-forward mindset and becomes Nefertiti after abandoning all of her biological self; and Hope, the ship’s counselor. But there’s a family dynamic in play here. Tom is married to Nefertiti, and Hope is their adopted daughter. So why is Hope robotic underneath? Because they’re all robots, which Judas discovered and told them all about, throwing the entire ship into chaos and causing an existential crisis for everyone – particularly Hope, who sees deletion as the only way out of her endless existence, and like the T-800, she cannot self-terminate. That’s why she needs your help.

Judas’s “narrative LEGO” dynamic is all about the choices you make during gameplay. Who will you help out, and as a result, who will you piss off? You need to get one of them back in their robot body so that they can pilot the ship through the impassable-by-humans asteroid field orbiting Proxima Centauri so you can get off the sinking ship that is the Mayflower. Depending on how you play this game of tug-of-war, no two playthroughs might ever be quite the same. Helping one might yield rewards, for instance, such as showing up to help you out when you’re clearly outnumbered. Conversely, if you ignore one of the Big Three for too long or go against one of them by helping one or both of the others, they might get mad at you – again, all dynamically within gameplay – by, say, locking the door you’re trying to get through while being chased by enemies.

But what about combat? It will look familiar to BioShock veterans (though, to be clear, Judas is its own game and in no way connected to any BioShock game). You’ve got a gun in your right hand, and abilities in your left hand. Pistols and shotguns are two of your most prominent tools of the trade – at least of your right hand – when trying to survive the robots-gone-wild insanity aboard the Mayflower. You’ll fight Fix-It robots who used to tidy up the ship by shooting them or zapping them with lightning, one of the powers you can acquire for your left hand. Even better if there happens to be water on the ground that you can electrify, thus taking out multiple enemies at a time.

But like I said, Judas is a hacker, so she can hack lots of things around the ship, which very much includes your robotic attackers. You can make them do any number of things, from turning passive to aggressive to sheer chaos (in this case, go into kamikaze mode).

As for the bizarre bionic beasts you’ll battle? They used to serve normal functions aboard the ship, but as things got crazy, so did they. The Dentist, as an example, used to walk around the ship, going to meet the people who needed dental care. This is a multi-generational mission, remember? You’re going to need your teeth cleaned every six months! Now, though, they angrily seek you out looking to show you the wrong end of their drill. Thanks for the nightmares, Ken.

Another of my favorite enemies was the Deputy, a Bojack Horseman-looking, long-rifle-wielding lawman who likes to fire his gun into the air when he gets riled up. Fortunately, there’s a lot a neck to aim for when going for headshots against these guys.

And remember how I said the Mayflower was a colony ship? It’s an enormous one – the size of a city! – and helping you get around it is your trusty Clifford-sized robot-dog companion Scutty. He can take you from district to district in order to go do new missions for whichever of the Big Three you’re backing at that given moment.

Be sure to check out the full interview with Ken Levine for much more, including the roguelike loop that’s baked into Judas’s “narrative LEGO”-powered, player-agency-driven first-person shooter. And stay tuned for much more on Judas on IGN in the coming months. There’s still a lot left to find out about Ken Levine’s first game since the seminal BioShock Infinite back in 2013!

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

There are times when Open Roads hits alarmingly close to home. Early on in this interactive road trip, your 16-year-old protagonist Tess turns around to reach for a bag perched in the back of her mom’s vintage station wagon – without skipping a beat, she’s accosted by her mother, Opal, from behind the wheel. The altercation flooded my brain with memories of family road trips in the early 2000s: “You can’t just turn around. It’s unsafe,” my dad would say from his vehicular throne, despite how frustratingly close I was to grabbing my Game Boy. Parental authority and nostalgia are just a few of the powerful tools Open Roads harnesses to deliver a playful and relatable story about coming of age in the early aughts, however, hastily resolved problems and the lack of an engaging mystery also make this adventure a little too predictable to leave a lasting impression.

Set in the wake of her grandmother’s passing, Tess and her mother are forced to navigate grief and economic uncertainty as they cope with the breakdown of their nuclear family. Tess’s father is distant, in touch via text alone, while her mother maintains a tough exterior for her daughter’s sake. Stuck in the middle, Tess’s optimistic outlook shines through but hides a trove of complex emotions. Open Roads’ exceptional Hollywood leads, Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, amplify their uncomfortably raw exchanges – Russell’s Opal is believably guarded but capable of arresting warmth, whereas Dever’s Tess balances youthful naivete with spirited angst. Tonal subtext abounds as emotions run high, and I felt connected to these characters as early as the opening back-and-forth.

Open Roads’ art style leaves a lasting first impression as well. Hand-drawn 2D characters are layered on top of meticulously detailed 3D environments, giving this world a unique, dreamlike quality. Imperfections augment scribbled notes, juxtaposing them against the angular digital backdrop – and I couldn’t help but inspect the scratches and flecks of dust on a chunky iMac lookalike I came across at one point. While this trip is mostly isolating by design, the touches of life, like soot particles and trees swaying in the wind, make you feel more at peace in the solitude.

Open Roads’ art style leaves a lasting first impression.

In the process of sorting through her late grandmother’s belongings, Tess uncovers a curious briefcase of relics, complete with a cryptic postcard from an unknown sender beckoning her grandma to join them. Keen to escape the immediate burdens of loss, Tess convinces a reluctant Opal to cross the country and unravel a generational family mystery. Melancholic but strangely engrossing, Open Roads almost entirely consists of rummaging through dioramas lost to time. From derelict summer houses to musty hotel rooms, each new location contains sprinklings of forgotten belongings to interact with alongside precious tidbits of environmental storytelling I relished in examining with a fine-tooth comb. An admittedly repetitive process, standout items like charming childhood drawings that mask coping mechanisms with superheroes and classic rented DVDs managed to keep me on the hook while effectively time-stamping each hazy era they were from.

A light smattering of systems allow you to engage your inner holistic detective to piece together the past – but don’t expect deep puzzles or critical thinking. Across its roughly three-and-a-half-hour run time, Open Roads didn’t get more complicated than finding an odd opening to another room or searching out a partially hidden letter. The more you scour, the more you’ll confront Open Roads’ past-meets-present storytelling that revolves around Opal’s own childhood traumas, which are finding new life in the issues now plaguing her daughter. Like phantom wounds passed down through the generations, their happy-go-lucky veneer masks troubling truths that are, for the most part, intriguing to unfurl.

The pieces of this quilt never quite stitched together for me.

Interacting with items can prompt Tess’s inner monologue and offer a window into her developing psyche, while plot-forwarding objects trigger eye-opening conversations with her mother. Seeking out as many of these touchy scenes as possible helped ground me in Open Roads story and compelled me to tinker with all the toys I could find in search of more emotive exposition. Unfortunately, such loaded artifacts were few and far between, but the conversations surrounding them felt sincere and created a nervous atmosphere that kept me guessing as the family’s secrets started to surface.

Environmental inspections are spliced between highway drives where Tess and Opal process the latest day while coasting to the next spot. Where static locations focus on Opal’s murky upbringing and faulty memory, the car conversations center around Tess’s present issues with her mom. Initially, the mysterious man’s letters and postcards appear to be the hook, but the persistent interpersonal turmoil is by far Open Roads’ defining asset.

It was disappointing then that as the player-come-passenger in this journey, I began to feel like a ghost in the machine, privy to all the surrounding context but unable to engage with it meaningfully. Even though I could radio surf, flick door locks, and text as the autumnal foliage passed me by, I felt distant from Tess as the story soldiered on. Despite the amount of time I’d spent in her head, Tess’s actions felt unusually measured for a teenager dealing with such traumatic events. I often wished that Open Roads would stop pulling its punches until, surprisingly quickly, the credits rolled. A few breezy puzzles offered fleeting resistance, but the twists and turns of the story didn’t provoke the emotion I expected when they finally arrived. The pieces of this quilt never quite stitched together for me.

This feeling is most frustrating when you’re offered options in dialogue. I was often keen to chase certain plot threads, but my choices always tended to lead to the same place, and the inconsequentiality of what I thought was important subtext became disheartening when I realized this in my second playthrough. The investigative spirit in its early-game explorations was never nurtured during Open Road’s conversations. Heavy discussions about mental health felt like an opportunity to level the playing field between Tess and her mother, but such moments aren’t allowed to breathe in a believable way. A safe and disappointing climax only confirmed my fears, providing an easy answer that felt like a messily applied band-aid over a far more complex wound. I was left longing for more of the ugly, believable humanity we all partake in, but Open Roads decidedly orbits.

Preorders for the much anticipated Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology (PC) have dropped to just £40.76 in the UK at the moment. To get the deal, all you need to do is head over to The Game Collective store on eBay and use the code CHICK15 at checkout to get that sweet 15% discount. The Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology was announced back in February, and it will come out on April 11, just one day before the Fallout TV series hits the screens.

Aside from seven games (listed below), the compilation includes seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. cards. These cards are based on the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. cards players can find in Fallout 76. Each card is printed with a P.C. code for the seven Fallout games. The games included in the anthology are:

FalloutFallout 2Fallout TacticsFallout 3: Game of the Year EditionFallout: New Vegas – Ultimate EditionFallout 4: Game of the Year EditionFallout 76

The Fallout deal isn’t the only great gaming deal available in the eBay CHICK15 sale though. The Game Collective are our favourite store on eBay and they’re one of the featured sellers for this code, so everything on their store is 15% off until the code expires on Friday.

Possibly one of the best deals with this code is the fact that you can pre-order Stellar Blade at a discount, it’s down to just £59.46. You can also pick up Rise of the Ronin for the same price, which is another fantastic deal. Check out the rest of our top picks for this eBay sale.

When Does the CHICK15 Code End?

The code will stop working at 11:59pm on Friday night, so you don’t need to rush into anything, but you should be fairly hasty in snapping these deals up if you’re desperate for anything in the sale. We’ll be bringing you all our favourite deals in the sale over on Twitter, so giving @IGNUKDeals a follow is your best chance at staying up to date with all the savings.

Joe O’Neill-Parker is a freelance writer and audio producer. He is the owner of O’Neill Multimedia. He writes commerce, sports, and audio-related tech articles for IGN.