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A PC port of Unicorn Overlord isn't in the pipeline, a senior Vanillaware official has confirmed. The critically acclaimed tactical RPG will hence remain limited to consoles for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever. View the full article

Larian has put out Baldur's Gate 3's last big community update of 2024, and it brings some nice news. Registration's now open for the stress test of Patch 8 that's set to take place early next year, so you you can throw your username in the hat if you wish. Read more View the full article

In 2024, we saw games where soldiers dove headfirst into alien planets to defend Earth, Princess Zelda led her very own legend, a little robot overcame impossible odds to rescue PlayStation’s greatest characters, and a game of poker played out unlike anything else. There can be arguments for why any number of our Best Game of 2024 nominees could take home the crown, a stark contrast from last year where Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were locked-in favorites. The breadth of games on display, from ****** Myth: Wukong to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, means picking this year’s winner was harder than usual, but ultimately there was one clear winner. Here’s IGN’s Best Game of 2024. Honorable Mentions Before we get to the overall winner, let’s look back at some of the other games from this year that deserve your recognition, starting with our Honorable Mentions. These nominees were much-loved by IGN’s editorial team but didn’t get as many votes as our winner and runners-up. The Rise of the Golden IdolHonorable Mention: Rise of the Golden Idol[/b]A follow-up to 2022’s breakout detective game, The Rise of the Golden Idol continues to impress by empowering you to solve its crimes with hands-on detective work. Set in the 1970s, it presents multiple diorama-like crime scenes in each chapter, demanding you to gather clues via close observation and then piece together exactly what happened. Rarely are the actual events as simple as they seem, and the truth can only be deduced from spotting minor things such as an empty gun chamber or the hidden subtext in an angry note. It’s a “puzzle” game that’s not simply about finding the right button to push, with an artistic presentation uniquely its own."/> The mystery is afoot in the sequel to 2022’s delightful point-and-click game The Case of the Golden Idol. Set 200 years after the events of the first game, Rise of the Golden Idol returns with more devilishly clever puzzles where you solve various crimes that begin to combine into one grand mystery. Infinity Nikki The Fashion Nikki series has always had its share of devotees. The dress-up simulator was a pleasant, cozy way to pass the time, collecting different outfits and making your character as cute as they can be. But Infinity Nikki is a bold reinvention, combining all the elements fans loved, along with the amazing outfits they could create, and adding a vibrant, Zelda-like open-world to explore. Silent Hill 2 There were doubts as to whether Bloober Team could faithfully remake one of the most beloved horror games of all time. Even Bloober admitted as much, citing the mixed reception some of their previous horror games have received. But the determination to do right by the source material paid off as Silent Hill 2 delivers one of the scariest – and best – gaming experiences of the year. Faithful to everything that made the original great, while updating the rusty, aging bits beautifully, Silent Hill 2 embodies everything that’s great about the original and then some. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown The Prince of Persia, one of gaming's forgotten greats, finally got a new entry worthy of the Prince’s title. This 2.5D Metroidvania delivers one of the most exhilarating revivals of any franchise in recent memory, and with its tight controls, excellent action, and swashbuckling storytelling, this is the best Prince of Persia game since Sands of Time. ****** Myth: Wukong ****** Myth: Wukong captivated audiences ever since its first trailer was revealed, but that was only a part of the story. Yes, the boss fights are epic, and the combat is sublime, but this loving recreation of one of China’s oldest, most beloved stories means millions of players can finally appreciate the legend of the Monkey Prince in a whole new way. Animal Well One of the earliest surprises of the year was Animal Well. On the surface, it’s another well-made homage to past 2D Metroidvania games. But the deeper you go, the more you realize Animal Well isn’t all that it appears. While the core gameplay and platforming are excellent, you quickly discover there’s a massive puzzle at the heart of it all. So take out your notebook and get ready to put your brain to work to uncover the truth behind Animal Well. Runner-Up: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Next up are games that were oh-so-close to being crowned Game of the Year, but narrowly missed out to the overall winner. MachineGames is back with another Nazi-punching blockbuster. And no, this isn’t a new Wolfenstein game. Instead, the Swedish studio has endeavored to bring one of cinema’s greatest heroes into the modern gaming age. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is essentially a truly great Indiana Jones movie brought to life. And by truly great, we mean up there with the original trilogy. Buoyed by Troy Baker’s frankly insane portrayal of Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist, The Great Circle feels like a dream come true for anyone who grew up enraptured by movies like The Last Crusade and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy was never a shoot ‘em up hero; instead he used his brains as well as his brawn to solve ancient riddles and punch out bad guys, and that’s something MachineGames has wonderfully adapted here. Whether it’s exploring the ancient catacombs of The ******** or sneaking up on fascists and bonking them over the head, The Great Circle literally puts you into the dirt-caked shoes of Indiana Jones, and it turns out it’s every bit as fun and exciting as we imagined. Runner-Up: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom “Why is it called The Legend of Zelda if it stars Link?” is a question most have asked at one point in their life. Well, ask no more as Echoes of Wisdom puts Zelda in charge of her own legend in this new top-down adventure game. Visually similar to the 2019 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Echoes of Wisdom is very much a true Zelda game, complete with the classic puzzles and dungeons the series is known for. Its creators have clearly learned from more recent games in the series too, and even though Echoes of Wisdom is more of a “classic” Zelda experience, the freeform creativity of Breath of the Wild is present thanks to the Echoes mechanic that lets Zelda conjure whatever item and enemy she encounters, leading to all kinds of madcap solutions. Stuck on the other side of a ledge? Just stack a bunch of beds together to cross. Duh. Runner-Up: Helldivers 2 Are you doing your part in the war to save our galaxy? If not, jump into Helldivers 2 and start blasting away at alien and robot *****. Arrowhead Game Studios delivered one of the new live-service games of the year with the sequel to its isometric alien shooter. Reimagined as a squad-based third-person shooter, Helldivers 2 is both a satirical take on the military-industrial complex while also being an addictive blast thanks to its potent mix of high-powered weaponry, devastating orbital drop missiles, and a spirit of Earthian patriotism. Runner-Up: Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth After the prelude that was Final Fantasy 7: Remake, we finally get to the heart of the adventure in the second in Square Enix’s planned trilogy. Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth encompasses some of the most important moments from the original, but more than that stands on its own as a brilliant open world RPG. What stands out almost immediately is how much love Square Enix has for these characters. It’s clear Square Enix wants players to spend as much time as they can with Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, Barrett, and Red XIII, providing plenty of side quests and minigames, and expanding entire moments so that we can all spend just hang with the gang some more before they resume their mission in the fight against Sephiroth. It makes these moments all the more valuable too, given the ending to Rebirth and the approaching finale. Runner-Up: Astro Bot Astro Bot’s life began as a humble mascot for the Playroom tech demo. Anytime Sony had some new hardware to show off — whether it was the PS VR headset, or the PlayStation 5 — Astro Bot was there to guide players through the ins-and-outs of whatever new system Sony wanted to show off. But with Astro Bot, the adorable little mascot finally takes center stage. This colorful, vibrant 3D platformer isn’t just a showcase for the PS5’s powerful GPU and fast SSD, because between the unbridled level of creativity in each level and the controller-stressing difficulty of some of the harder challenge runs, Astro Bot is pure delight and wonderment. Every ability Astro Bot plays around with — from inflating into a balloon or punching enemies with bungee fists — never fails to amuse even the most hardened gamer. I don’t say this lightly, but PlayStation might have just found its answer to Nintendo’s Mario. Runner-Up: Dragon Age: The Veilguard After a brief interlude into the live-service genre with games like Anthem, and a perhaps ill-advised attempt to rush out another Mass Effect game with Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare has gone back to what it knows best – a good old-fashioned, dungeon-crawling RPG full of delightful characters, witty dialogue, and the chance to create a character who looks and talks exactly the way you want them to. But while BioWare may have opted for a back-to-basics approach to storytelling, there is one area of major improvement: the combat. It’s not unfair to say this is the best a BioWare game has ever played, from its sword-and-sorcery combat to even the way you traverse the myriad of dungeons and mystical locales. While we’re only one game into the BioWare renaissance, all eyes are back on the storied studio. Runner-Up: Balatro “It’s just a poker game with some roguelike mechanics,” I remember saying to friends, incredulously, when they first told me they spent all night playing a little game called Balatro. “How good could it be?” Turns out after tens of thousands of poker hands and hundreds of hours spent playing, Balatro still has me wrapped around its fingers. A lot can be said about Balatro’s addictive qualities and how it has this magnetic ability to get you to play just one more round. The reason for Balatro’s rapid ascendency is how it took one of America’s oldest games and refashioned it for one of gaming’s most popular genres, the roguelike. The combination of classic poker rules and randomized Joker and Tarot cards that augment your combos and bump up your high score so you can get to the next round is pure gaming bliss. Balatro is built on creating seemingly endless moments of elation and devastation in equal measures. All you have to do is play your cards right… literally. Winner: Metaphor: ReFantazio For years, Atlus’ cult-RPG Persona went from being a cool underground RPG series from Japan to one of the biggest franchises in modern gaming. But with Metaphor: ReFantazio, it’s clear the developers behind Persona were seeking to push themselves to new heights. Trading in the modern-day Japanese high school setting for a pure fantasy world full of long-eared knights and bat-like ninjas, Atlus’ Studio Zero has created an incredible and timely meditation on political strife and demagoguery. After the death of the King, the United Kingdom of Euchronia, divided by racial prejudice among its citizens, begins the process of holding its very first popular election that kickstarts a grand, cross-continental adventure. For anyone familiar with the Persona series, you’ll find familiar hallmarks here. Players split their time crawling through difficult dungeons full of horrifying monsters, while spending free moments building up relationships with various party members and inhabitants around the country. But while the Persona games took these quiet moments to reaffirm the virtues of youthful friendships, Metaphor uses these times to tackle headier questions. What defines a knight’s duty, or the responsibilities of those born into wealth? Can one ever heal from the pains of racism, and is religious tolerance a foolhardy endeavor? These aren’t easy questions to address but are asked plainly throughout Metaphor’s 70-hour playtime. While Studio Zero refrains from giving clear-cut answers to these questions, it instead acknowledges the virtues of empathy, kindness, and strength in the face of overwhelming fear and hatred that can take root in an uncertain world where leaders promise salvation in exchange for unwavering loyalty. Wrap these philosophical musings in a stylish, turn-based RPG that looks and feels stupendous — complete with beautiful character designs from artist Shigenori Soejima and music from Shoji Meguro – and you’ll quickly understand why Metaphor: ReFantazio is IGN’s pick for Best Game of 2024. So congratulations to Metaphor: ReFantazio and Studio Zero, and also to all of our other winners and runner-ups in 2024’s IGN Awards. Be sure to check out our full list of Award Winners for Best Movie, TV Show, and more, and we’ll see you again in 2025 for even more gaming goodness. More of IGN's 2024 AwardsThe Best Anime of 2024The Best Horror Movie of 2024The Best PC Game of 2024The Best Comic Book Series or Original Graphic Novel of 2024The Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie of 2024The Best Nintendo Game of 2024The Best Horror Game of 2024The Best RPG of 2024The Best Xbox Game of 2024The Best TV Show of 2024The Best Movie of 2024The Best Action/Adventure Game of 2024The Best PlayStation Game of 2024The Best Accessible Games of 2024IGN Awards 2024: The Nominees [/url] View the full article

‘Tis the season for snow, gifts, cheer, land sharks, and joy! Marvel Rivals’ Winter Celebration event has arrived. The unrelenting terror that is Jeff the Land Shark has his own special mode in in the seasonal event, and you can unlock the Cuddly Fuzzlefin skin for Jeff just by playing it. But, you will need to win matches, and doing so can be more difficult than it seems. View the full article

Marvel Rivals recently announced that players will have the opportunity to win free skin bundles by entering a match with featured streamers. Content creators have been busy playing Marvel Rivals since its wildly successful launch in early December. In addition to Twitch drops, players will now have another way to engage with streamers for free rewards. View the full article

What's better than getting a great discount on a few games? Getting a major ***** on almost 50 games with Humble Choice. Whether you want to battle mythical creatures in games like Atlas Fallen or you hope to enjoy the cel-shaded vibes of the Jet Set Radio-inspired Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, there are plenty of games to take for a spin each month. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Underloved Payday 3 rival Crime Boss keeps giving DLC away for free Crime Boss, 2023's worst-rated FPS, might actually be good now Once-hated Payday rival Crime Boss blows up on Steam with rave reviews View the full article

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth beat some tough competition to pick up The Game Award for Best Score and Music this year. But outside of this year’s exceptional TGA shortlist, what other game soundtracks deserve your attention? To find out, we battered the inboxes of composers from all over the world and asked them to choose the best video game music from 2024. The rules are simple: composers could only have one top pick, and their choice had to be from a game OR official game soundtrack released in 2024. We’re cool with DLC, too (sorry, Awards police). In addition to shining a spotlight on some fantastic soundtracks and composers, we hope this round-up encourages VGC readers to check out some games and soundtracks you might have missed otherwise. To help you do that, we’ve included links to the relevant platforms where you can listen to these soundtracks in full. Read More... View the full article

So you've rolled up your character, battled past innumerable horrifying monsters, and thrashed Doryani's machine. Twice. You've got your free waystone, clicked on the map device, and opened up the Atlas of Worlds. Now what?.. Read more.View the full article

Thousands of Fortnite players are currently using an exploit in the game to break Epic Games’ policy and get the XP-locked Renegade Raider skin within a few seconds. The glitch allows players to quickly earn millions of XP and unlock the Renegade Raider and other rewards without spending any V-Bucks. Players have discovered a custom map that rewards them with tons of free XP. After spending a couple of seconds in this specific custom map, you can load out of it and repeat this process a few times and gain the 4 million XP required for the Aerial Assault One, Aerial Assault Trooper, Renegade Raider, and the Raider’s Revenge. Those aren’t just a few levels. View the full article

A new Fortnite leak suggests the free-to-play battle royale title will soon be crossing over with world-renowned car manufacturer Lamborghini in an upcoming update. Players may soon be able to drive their very own Lamborghini Urus in the title, following in the footsteps of other car brands added to the game over the years. This leak also follows the release of several other highly anticipated collaborations, as well as the return of some of the most sought-after items in Fortnite, all of which come in the middle of the game's latest chapter. View the full article

Call of Duty fans continue to speculate on classic titles such as ****** Ops 2 and the original Modern Warfare coming to Xbox Game Pass in the near future. In recent weeks, various Call of Duty titles such as Advanced Warfare, Ghosts, WWII, ****** Ops 3, and more have suddenly made an appearance on the Microsoft Store for PC, with ****** Ops 2 becoming the latest to join the platform just this week. View the full article

Terastal Festival hit store shelves in Japan on December 6, so in the intervening weeks there's been plenty of time to get a sense of what the Pokémon TCG meta might look like once Prismatic Evolutions (the equivalent English-language set) arrives in January. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Pokémon Terastal Festival gave me some superb pulls ahead of Prismatic Evolution Pokémon Brilliant Stars expansion back in stock, almost three years since launch Pokémon TCG Pocket: How to beat the new Celebi Ex Serperior deck View the full article

The Chronicled Banner is coming back in Version 5.3, as the latest Genshin Impact livestream revealed which characters and weapons will feature in its second iteration. While the original Chronicled Banner was met with much controversy, the developers of Genshin Impact have decided to bring it back for Version 5.3 during the Lantern Rite – with some notable adjustments. Namely, Genshin Impact characters no longer need to have three banner appearances to feature in the Chronicled Banner. View the full article

A game I had honestly never heard of because I live under a rock. A cult classic RPG named OFF is getting a Steam release next year. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the popular bullet heaven / survivor-like spin-off from Funday Games and Ghost Ship Publishing continues to be very popular and so the price is set to go up soon. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has opened registrations to stress test Patch 8 ahead of its release in 2025. Patch 8 adds the long-awaited crossplay feature, photo mode, and 12 new subclasses. Larian has said Patch 8 is Baldur’s Gate 3’s last major update, with the developer moving on to brand new games away from the Dungeons & Dragons universe. The Patch 8 stress test build is set to go live in January, Larian said in a post on Steam. It will be available to players on PC via Steam, and on console via Xbox and PlayStation. GOG and Mac players do not have access. The form for registering interest is live now. Larian said it wants to "rigorously" test Patch 8 for instability or gameplay issues before it comes out. “With your help, we’ll be able to keep an eye on any funny business,” the developer said. Part of this is testing crossplay. "Bringing crossplay to a game the size of Baldur’s Gate 3 has been no easy task," Larian explained, "and we want your help to test-drive this new functionality. “Share the stress test registration link to summon your friends and settle in for a crossplay campaign, or head to the Larian Studios Discord Server to look for a group to play with." Supported mods “should” remain free of issues, but the stress test will hopefully turn up any issues mods might have interacting with Patch 8 features. While Patch 8 is Baldur's Gate 3's last major update, Larian has promised to continue to support the game's modders, with “big updates still to come,” including more functionality “to let you tell your own stories.” Official mod tools were released in September, and since then players have uploaded more than 3,000 mods and downloaded over 70 million. Meanwhile, Larian said it’s winding down mod curation for consoles during the holiday season. It’ll pick back up again in the new year. 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

Two bits of good news for gamers interested in picking up The Rogue Prince of Persia from developers Evil Empire and publisher Ubisoft, as they've given an update on some future plans. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] 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

It's that time! Yes, again, and the last one before the holiday season. Each week Prime Gaming, part of what you get with a subscription to Amazon Prime, add and remove various games you can claim to keep. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Welcome to the future: The world is ruled by corporations headed by invincible tech billionaires with an iron grip over our political processes, our lives are driven by mindless work with precious little economic mobility, and mysterious AI programs threaten our very way of life. These also happen to be things that are happening in Cyberpunk 2077, which had its recent 2.2 update released earlier this month, and as it turns out, there's a free gift in it. Yippee!.. Read more.View the full article

The AUG is one of the few assault rifles exclusive to the Engineer class in Delta Force Warfare. If you’re not a fan of battle rifles and machine guns, the AUG is a great choice, especially because it has a higher base range than most assault rifles in the game. The AUG has a base range of 40m, just like the G3 battle rifle, but it has a faster fire rate and much higher base Control, allowing it to be a machine in mid-range gunfights. With the right attachments, you can raise its range even higher while maxing out Control. View the full article

It's been a little over two weeks since Marvel Rivals launched, and the meta is still being worked out. There are characters that are certainly disliked more than others (looking at you, Jeff the Land Shark, Iron Fist, Hela, and Hawkeye), but the debate still rages about whom the best character really is, if there is even such a thing. View the full article

It's December! Time for some highlights of what's been Steam Deck Verified by Valve recently so you can find some new picks to play through. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Two of the rarest Skins in Fortnite are back and available to purchase from the item shop, but to maintain their exclusivity, there’s an extra catch to unlocking them. You need 1.5 million XP to even have a shot at acquiring the second one, the Renegade Raider. Fortnite doesn’t tell you how many levels this much XP is and it’s also not easy to consistently watch your total XP, so it can be tough to track your progress. It’s a lot easier to know how much you have left to get when you’re focused on the level you need to reach instead, so here’s how many levels 1.5 million XP is in Fortnite. View the full article

Don't miss this chance to upgrade your gaming setup in time for the holidays, as this Acer gaming monitor deal will let you snag a 27-inch display with a huge 38% saving. This Acer Nitro monitor is now priced at just $178.94 on Amazon, which is a great deal for the specs on offer. Indeed, the Acer Nitro XV271U M3bmiiprx has specs that easily rival the best gaming monitors out there. This Acer display is packed with goodies to please any gamer, from the hugely impressive 180Hz refresh rate to the crystal-clear 1440p resolution that makes it ideal for modern gameplay. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Acer leaks Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 VRAM ahead of CES 2025 launch Save $380 on this amazing Acer Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 gaming laptop This 180Hz Acer gaming monitor is a bargain at just $129.99 right now View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]