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If you’ve played Apex Legends, you know there’s only two big rules to this game: Don’t follow your Octane teammate jump-padding into a fight with four other teams already there, and cool skins are everything. And 2024 had some great skins. From the thematic to the stylish to the downright bizarre, a skin you like is one way of leaving your signature on a kill for all others to see, whether on the battlefield itself or on your player banner. Here are the best skins in Apex from 2024. View the full article

Publisher Nordcurrent Labs and developer River End Games shared a new gameplay trailer for Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream, their new isometric narrative stealth game. Here’s a rundown on the game, plus a new trailer: Experience an isometric, narrative-driven stealth game set in the stunning city of Eriksholm. When Hanna’s brother, Herman, disappears and the police begin […] Source View the full article

Platform games can be some of the first that many players experience, with classics from Super Mario and many Metroidvania titles being incredibly popular. They often have fairly straightforward gameplay mechanics of running, jumping, and climbing, with different levels to jump between on the screen. Though this sounds fairly basic, the complexity that developers can create within this genre can vary greatly and include some challenging puzzles for players to overcome. View the full article

After 12 months of big hitters such as Helldivers 2, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Dune: Part 2 and Shogun, it’s not unreasonable to consider 2024 a good year for pop culture. But the smooth always comes with the rough, and the past year really has been a rocky one for the things we love and the people who make them. From layoffs and studio closures to costly consoles, underwhelming adaptations and struggling sequels, these are the biggest disappointments in 2024. Gaming Industry Layoffs and Closures The games industry found itself facing a crisis in 2023 as many publishers and studios, both large and small, made scores of staff redundant in an effort to cut costs. But the pains of that year would be repeated in 2024, which has seen an estimated 14,600 job losses - a 39% increase year-on-year. The cuts have seen thousands of talented studio staff thrown into the most difficult job market the games industry has ever seen, with developers attempting to find new roles in a landscape where companies are slimming down. Among the major companies cutting staff loose have been Riot, Microsoft, Bungie, Unity, TakeTwo Interactive, EA, and PlayStation. Such businesses have reduced their staff numbers for a variety of reasons and factors, be that rising development costs, shifting player habits in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Whatever the reasons, remaining staff at these publishers and studios must continue to work in uncertain times without the aid of their former colleagues. That is if their studio still exists. Adding to the dismal picture are several studio closures. Perhaps the most prominent among them is Arkane Austin, Bethesda’s immersive sim specialist responsible for the acclaimed Prey. Sadly its most recent release, Redfall, was a critical and commercial bomb – a situation that seemingly sealed its fate. Arkane Austin was shuttered by parent company Microsoft, along with Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Games, and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks. Somewhat miraculously, Tango was rescued by Krafton in a last-minute turn of fate, but such good news is rare. Also suffering closure this year was PlayStation’s London Studio, Galvanic Games, Avalanche Studio Group’s New York and Montreal studios, as well as others. To say it's been a tough year is an understatement. Trend-chasing Failures Another developer closed for good is Firewalk Studios, the team behind what is certainly PlayStation’s biggest disaster of the generation: Concord. A PvP hero shooter, its long and costly development meant it arrived long after the genre had peaked in popularity. But, despite being developed by many FPS veterans hailing from the likes of Bungie and Activision, what could have been PlayStation’s next big multiplayer phenomenon struggled to stand out from the likes of Overwatch and Apex Legends thanks to its lacklustre character kits and standard fare objective design. From the outside Concord simply looked like another typical hero shooter, which meant few wanted to see what was going on inside. It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost no one turned up for its August release – it achieved a high of just 697 concurrent players on Steam during its first week. Less than two weeks later, Sony pulled Concord from *****, refunded players, and shut the game down. By the end of October, Firewalk Studios was closed for business. It all sadly means Concord is gone without a trace. Well, almost – an episode of Amazon’s Secret Level animated series serves as a prequel to the ongoing Concord in-game story that never happened. A similar, thankfully less tragic story also happened earlier this year with Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. After months of poorly-received marketing, Sucide Squad launched as a critical and commercial bomb. As with Concord, much of Kill The Justice League’s failings were due to chasing trends that players have long since largely tired of – in this case, the Destiny-style live-service shooter grind. It didn’t help that Suicide Squad resembled Crystal Dynamics’ ill-fated Avengers game from a few years back, which similarly annoyed players for being a repetitive multiplayer PvE game. In Suicide Squad’s case, it was a shattering fall from grace for a studio that previously made beloved single-player Batman games. Many of us just wanted more of that best-in-class superhero action with a villainous twist, but sadly Warner Bros’ chase of live-service revenue seemingly got in the way. Not that it paid off - an initial lack of sales and dwindling players has contributed to a significant revenue decline for the company. Hardware Hiccups The time-compressing effect of the pandemic years has disguised the fact that, yes, we’re already at the midpoint of the current console generation. Right on cue, Sony delivered its mid-cycle refresh PlayStation 5 Pro, and it’s safe to say that practically no one was pleased by its $700 price tag. That’s not just down to the cost of living squeezing everyone’s wallets – Mark Cerny’s presentation that apparently showcased the console’s ability to render The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered so much better than the base console was basically the “They’re the same picture” meme from The Office in action. While there’s definitely time for the PS5 Pro to prove why it costs $200 more than the regular PS5, the initial results have been pretty disappointing. Rather than eliminate the need to decide between quality and performance modes, developers have added even more options to Pro-patched games, with confusing names such as ‘Fidelity Pro’ and ‘Versatility’. Remember when you just plugged in a console and it worked? Halcyon days. Plus, all the Pro’s extra power can’t even make Bloodborne look any better. At least Sony fans got a console, though. After months of rumours that Nintendo was due to announce its successor to the Switch, the company announced a brand new piece of hardware: an alarm clock. Yes, the Alarmo is a $100 clock with game-themed alarms and a motion sensor that can detect when you’ve got out of bed. It’s hardly the Switch 2 we were hoping for. And even when it comes to Nintendo’s history of weird hardware, Alarmo is far from the most interesting or bizarre. A true disappointment from the house of Mario. Unreliable Reliables Over in the realm of television, things have largely been bright thanks to the likes of Arcane, Shogun, and Fallout. But 2024 also saw some traditionally reliable shows struggle to maintain their quality. Season 3 of The Bear certainly wasn’t bad – it once again provided some solid character drama and beautifully-shot kitchen nightmares. But, compared to the incredible highs of the first two seasons, this third chapter fell significantly short. Its frustratingly slow pace clashed with the lightning speed of previous years, and the focus being almost entirely on Carmy’s inner crisis forced valuable characters like Sydney into the sidelines. Similarly, we saw this year’s Star Wars project struggle to hit the highs of The Mandalorian and Andor. The Acolyte was built on a fascinating premise that delved into the galaxy’s past, exploring the late High Republic era. It was packed with Jedi and featured one of the coolest lightsaber battles in the entire franchise, but even that couldn’t save the series from its sloppy and often infuriating storytelling. The Acolyte’s saving grace could have been Manny Jacinto’s Sith lord The Stranger, who sports one of the most menacing helmets in all of Star Wars. But while deeper exploration of his character could have resulted in a much-improved season two, we’ll never get to see that thanks to Disney axing the show entirely. This isn’t just a Disney problem – Netflix has also continued its habit of cancelling shows after barely giving them a chance to realise their full potential. 2024’s Netflix cull included Kaos and Dead Boy Detectives, which join last year’s Lockwood & Co in the “cancelled after a single season” club. Awful Adaptations This year’s Fallout was a stellar exercise of how to adapt a video game for television, with Amazon’s wasteland show being among our TV highlights of 2024. But it seems like Fallout’s success isn’t a guaranteed indicator that every Amazon video game show will be fantastic, as proven by the dreadful Like a Dragon: Yakuza show that landed on the service several months later. Featuring no karaoke, far too little Majima, and far too much melodrama, Like a Dragon totally failed to capture the stark contrast between serious and silly that the Yakuza games thrive on. It wasn’t just Japanese RPGs that were treated poorly for TV this year, though. Famed Japanese manga Uzumaki also received its long-awaited animated adaptation, and the results couldn’t have gone any worse. The four-part Adult Swim show turned Junji Ito’s monochrome horror into a rushed mess that sprinted to the finale, undermining plot points, character arcs, and scares on the way. The biggest disappointment, though, was the severe drop in animation quality following a visually rich episode one. Uzumaki transformed from beautifully chilling into a low-budget nightmare in the space of a week – it was a rug-pull scarier than anything Junji Ito could write. Box Office Bombs Unfortunately, terrible adaptations weren’t limited to the small screen. One of the biggest box office bombs of the year came in the form of Borderlands. Gearbox’s wacky looter shooter was transformed into a hideously miscast Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off for its live-action big screen adventure. Many of the games’ best-know qualities, such as its sweary sense of humour and love of turning humans into piles of goopy gore, were toned down to the point of vanishing completely. The result was bland, recycled MCU-ish ideas geared toward mass marketability. In short: a complete disaster. Unsurprisingly it died an unceremonious death when it launched in cinemas – with Lionsgate’s CEO saying “nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” It’s arguable that an FPS like Borderlands was never going to survive the transition to cinema. A sequel to the most profitable comic book movie of all time and the first R-rated film to pass a billion-dollars at the box office, though? Surely a second Joker was going to be an easy win. Not so much. Joker: Folie à Deux turned out to be a miserably dull follow-up, with director Todd Phillips undoing almost all the good he established in the first film. When not even Lady Gaga can save your kinda-sorta musical from its snoozefest courtroom drama scenes, you know you’re in trouble. For the classic-mould movie buff, though, almost certainly the biggest disappointment of the year is Megalopolis. The years-in-the-making, self-financed magnum-opus from The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola was (perhaps, if we’re honest, somewhat predictably) an indulgent catastrophe. Some people have seen method in the madness (including our own reviewer, who gave it a 9/10) but for many this opulent fable set in a futuristic, Rome-like New York City was a bloated, pretentious, dull mess. Quite how the creator of the quintessential ****** movie got here may prove to be one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. From studio closures to box office catastrophes, 2024 has had some real low points. It’s hard to find a silver lining in some of them, and we continue to hope that the industries that make our favourite things will turn a better corner in 2025. But in other instances it’s the downs that make the ups shine brightly – and you can find many of those bright stars in our roundup of the best reviewed games of 2025. Matt Purslow is IGN's Senior Features Editor. View the full article

Marvel Rivals players recently took to social media to request that NetEase Games enable hero bans across all ranks of Competitive play. The popular hero shooter is currently in Season 0, with Season 1 expected to drop sometime in January 2025. Many Marvel Rivals players are eagerly awaiting the new season and hope to see it released alongside fresh heroes and maps. View the full article

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge After years of of chasing live-service and open-world blockbusters, games like Astro Bot and Balatro showed that old formats could be a solution to modern industry problems. Read the full story at The Verge. View the full article

The predicted amount of Primogems in Genshin Impact 5.3 has leaked, indicating just how much of the precious resource players will be able to obtain during the action RPG’s next update, both in F2P (free-to-play) ways and with premium subscriptions. Version 5.3 is the next big patch in HoYoverse’s game, and it should add the final Natlan Archon Quests, as well as four new playable characters. One of them will be made available for all players, as it is the Pyro Traveler, while the new units in banners are Lan Yan, Citlali, and Mavuika in Genshin Impact. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The highly-regarded action RPG surpassed 8 million just earlier this year. View the full article

****** is one of those series that arguably lost its way a little over time. While the first game was critically acclaimed (on PC, at least) and its sequel did even better, it’s probably fair to say that ****** 3 dropped the ball a bit. While it did manage to pull off one thing the series has always been renowned for – its accurate depiction of an era and location rarely visited in video games, in this case New Orleans in the late 1960s – its ******* narrative and heavier reliance on open-world exploration made it feel more like a ****** game done in the Ubisoft style. [Hidden Content] Read More... View the full article

Every Thursday we share the weekly Famitsu sales charts, which tracks physical boxed game sales and hardware sales in Japan. ... Read more View the full article

Leakers on the Chiphell forums recently provided two close-up images of the upcoming GeForce RTX 5090. Meanwhile, established tipster @kopite7kimi has provided near-complete specs for the 5070 Ti and 5070. Read Entire Article View the full article

In November 2024, Resume-building platform Resume.Org surveyed 900 business leaders whose companies had implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies since the pandemic. Read Entire Article View the full article

As with other Clouded Leopard Steam ports of Falcom games, this will not support English text or voiceover. View the full article

In late September, Dominik “Domtendo” Neumayer received a troubling email. He had just featured The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom in a series of videos on his YouTube channel. Now, those videos were gone. “Some of your videos have been removed,” YouTube explained matter-of-factly. The email said that Domtendo had now received a pair of copyright strikes. He was now just one copyright strike away from losing his 17-year-old channel and the over 1.5 million subscribers he’d built up. At least, he would have been, if Domtendo hadn’t spotted something fishy about the takedown notice — something YouTube had missed. Domtendo had been a little bit confused right from the start; the strikes didn’t make sense. Like countless other creators, Domtendo specializes in “Let’s Play” videos, a well-established genre where streamers play through the entirety of a game on camera. “The next copyright strike will close your channel” [/url] Nintendo has a complicated relationship with the fans who use its copyrighted works, infamously shutting down all sorts of unauthorized projects by sending cease-and-desists. It has gone after YouTubers, too. But both the Japanese gaming giant and the broader... Read the full story at The Verge. View the full article

Grand Theft Auto 6 is easily 2025's most anticipated game thanks to the huge amount of hype that's been building for it practically since the launch of GTA 5. For many, it seems like a shoo-in for the best game of the year and the best-selling game of the year. That's not an unreasonable assumption, even just based on the game's initial reveal trailer view count on YouTube. View the full article

Activision has confirmed that the highly-anticipated Call of Duty x Squid Game collaboration will be released on January 3, featuring new limited-time modes, weapon blueprints, operator skins, and more. Call of Duty's collaboration with Squid Game was announced earlier this month and will now be released just one week after the launch of the show's second season, which is available to stream right now on Netflix. View the full article

If you're after a heartwearming dating sim, MiSide is not that game. It has all the trappings of a dating sim - an adorable anime girl, gifts you can earn to gain her favour and more. Plus, it's rated a massive 98% on Steam. But there's something very wrong in Mita's world, and finding out could cost you your life. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

More than 18,500 games will have been released onto the PC gaming platform Steam in the year 2024, according to SteamDB. Dividing that by the number of people covering games at Ars, or the gaming press at large, or even everybody who games and writes about it online, yields a brutal ratio. Games often float down the river of time to us, filtered by friends, algorithms, or pure happenstance. They don't qualify for our best games of the year list, but they might be worth mentioning on their own. Many times, they're better games then they were at release, either by patching or just perspective. And they are almost always lower priced. Inspired by the cruel logic of calendars and year-end lists, I asked my coworkers to tell me about their favorite games of 2024 that were not from 2024. What resulted were some quirky gems, some reconsiderations, and some titles that just happened to catch us at the right time. Read full article Comments View the full article

Rare has published the first new Everwild art in nearly three years, suggesting it could potentially ramp up pre-release marketing for the game in 2025. Rare announced the new IP in November 2019 and released another trailer in July 2020, but updates on the game since then have been rare. However, fans finally got another glimpse of the game this week, via Rare’s Instagram Christmas card, which features festive-themed Everwild art. Read More... View the full article

Escape from Tarkov's latest update, Patch 0.16.0, is here, and it offers higher-end PvP players a compelling reason to get back into the game. The new Prestige system gives pro players somewhere to go, instead of just reaching the top and twiddling their thumbs. And if you've been rolling your eyes at Escape from Tarkov's bots, they've been given a welcome boost in intelligence. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: When is the next Escape from Tarkov wipe? New Escape from Tarkov update adds essential feature and random mortar strikes New Escape from Tarkov and EFT Arena roadmap reveals major changes View the full article

Over 25 years of Halo content has leaked online, including playable builds from before the iconic first-person shooters series joined Xbox – or was even an FPS. The leaked content appears to have originated from a Halo Studios collaboration with fan modders, which aimed to restore cut content from past Halo titles, including the Halo 2 E3 2003 demo released last month. The mod team Digsite had been working with 343 since last summer – allegedly for no pay – to restore content, including multiplayer maps originally developed for the PC port of Halo Combat Evolved, and cut content from classic Halo games. Read More... View the full article

Ark: Survival Evolved has made the leap from PC to mobile, with the release of Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition. But instead of being some Tamagotchi-style dinosaur-feeding game, this is Ark: Survival Evolved as you know and love it, just on a smaller screen. And it's off to a strong start, with over one million downloads in just 24 hours. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The best Ark mods 2024 Ark commands - cheats and admin code list Ark remaster delayed, now early access, but cheaper View the full article

Infinity Nikki gets its first major update soon, Infold Games has announced. The Shooting Star Season update lands on December 30 across PC, PlayStation 5, iOS and Android, and runs until January 23, 2025. It adds new adventures, limited-time events, and of course new outfits, which you can check out in the new trailer. Fans can also expect new storylines and platforming challenges. The tagline is: "Let shooting stars guide paper cranes on their journey of fulfilling dreams." Here’s the official blurb: Stories of the past still echo in the wind, as new wishes begin a brand-new chapter. During the season of shooting stars, people come together beneath a starlit sky. May paper cranes carry each precious dream, shooting stars shine upon every heartfelt wish, and may every day of the new year shine as brilliantly as the stars in the sky. Infinity Nikki, downloaded over 20 million times since launch, is a free-to-play adventure dress-up game developed in China at Papergames and published by Infold Games. It’s one of IGN’s best-reviewed games of 2024, securing a 9/10. We said: “Infinity Nikki has deep open-world exploration, a quirky story, and some of the most beautiful in-game outfits you'll ever see – you just have to be ready to navigate a maze of menus to get them.” For curious stylists and outfit collectors, we've got a guide to all Outfits in Infinity Nikki, plus all Ability Outfits, to help you avoid a fashion faux pas. As you explore Miraland and search for collectibles, keep an eye out for all the Whimstar locations, and make sure to check in with our Infinity Nikki daily tasks guide. Plus, there are plenty of Infinity Nikki launch rewards to claim, including some very generous promo codes you won't want to miss. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

Sci-fi roguelike Caves of Qud has exited Steam Early Access after nine long years, and it's sitting pretty as 2024's highest-rated game. It's beaten out Hades II, Balatro and Satisfactory, according to OpenCritic which has ranked it as its 2024 game of the year. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: 95% rated roguelike Caves of Qud just hit 1.0 after a 15-year wait Caves of Qud update adds a ton of new content to 9/10 Steam roguelike Caves of Qud adds massive new dungeon in Tomb of the Eaters update View the full article

Earlier this week, the very much expected double XP event kicked off in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 across all platforms. This is something that happens every year, and 2024 is no different. Read more View the full article