Author: News Polite

Last week, in honor of Star Wars Celebration and the premiere of Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series, we asked you to help us decide which video game from that galaxy far, far away was the best of them all. Now, after thousands and thousands of 1v1 battles with matchups like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order vs. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Star Wars Battlefront vs. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the ultimate Star Wars game has been chosen.

So, which competitor claimed the top spot for the best Star Wars video game and is prophecized to bring balance to the Force? Drumroll please…

As if there was any doubt, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has once again claimed the top spot of a list of best Star Wars video games. We also crowned KOTOR #1 on our ranking of Star Wars games, and it has impressively held on to that honor despite being originally released in 2003. The love for KOTOR may only get stronger in the future as a remake is currently in the works at Aspyr.

KOTOR’s story, which is set thousands of years before the films, remains the high point for a quintessential Jedi journey that is filled with memorable characters, surprising twists, fantastic RPG mechanics, and much more. The competition was tough, however, as its 91.5% win percentage was only about 3% more than the second-place finisher – 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

Yes, a relative newcomer to the Star Wars video game world has risen the ranks and secured the #2 spot by winning 88.2% of its battles and holding off Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, 2005’s Star Wars: Battlefront II, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was not only a very well received game (we gave it a 9/10!) that features Soulsborne-esque combat and Metroidvania elements wrapped up in Star Wars, but it also had the benefit of having its sequel – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – announced during Star Wars Celebration and this Face-Off.

Rounding out the top 10 were 2004’s Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. All-in-all, seven of the ten games in the top 10 featured lightsabers, proving the ever-lasting appeal of that elegant weapon from a more civilized age.

On the other end of the galaxy, Kinect Star Wars placed last, which undoubtedly will make dancing Han Solo very sad. Kinect Star Wars only won 12.3% of its battles, which was just slightly worse than Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing’s 14.8%.

Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, the mobile spin-off of Tiny Tower, placed right behind those two and just ahead of Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Jedi Alliance, Angry Birds Star Wars, Star Wars Uprising, Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, LEGO Star Wars: Castaways, Star Wars Pinball, and Star Wars: Battle Pod.

Many of these games in the bottom ten were non-traditional entries (mobile, arcade, kinect, VR, etc.), perhaps showing Star Wars fans are looking for a more standard approach to their games, despite some of these entries still having some fun gameplay to offer.

Are you wondering where your favorite Star Wars video game landed, like maybe Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles? (It placed, in my humble opinion, way too low at #46!) For all the rankings, you can check out the full list of where all 64 Star Wars video games that competed in this Face-Off ended up.

For more on Star Wars, check out our roundup of all the announcements from Star Wars Celebration, our review of episode three of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and how Star Wars Jedi: Survivor picks up from Fallen Order.

Every IGN Star Wars Game Review

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The PlayStation 5 has now surpassed 20 million units sold worldwide and Sony has promised to significantly increase its production efforts within the next six months.

Sony executive Veronica Rogers told gamesindustry.biz that the company is “planning on a significant ramp-up in PS5 production this year” and is “working endlessly to make sure that PlayStation 5 is available for everyone who wants one.”

As noted by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter (below), the PS5 hit 20 million units in one year, six months, and 22 days (568 days in total) meaning it’s fallen slightly behind the PS4’s record of hitting 20 million units in one year, three months, and 14 days (471 days in total).

That being said, the PS5 has encountered significant production issues due to component shortages that have plagued the video game industry and beyond, forcing Sony to re-evaluate its sales forecast for the year in February.

The company announced in its latest financial earnings results that 19.3 million PS5s had been sold by the end of the 2021 financial year, meaning the console fell short of its original sales target by 3.3 million units. Its goal for this financial year, however, meaning from April 2022 to March 2023, is to sell an ambitious 18 million units, tying in with Rogers’ comments today about significantly increasing production.

Sony’s chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said earlier this month that this number was based on the “current visibility into parts procurement”, however, meaning the company is still expecting component shortages to be an issue over the next year.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

IGN has more Sonic Frontiers gameplay for you today, this time focusing on combat. In the above video you’ll see Sonic battle big bad guys and absolutely gargantuan bosses. And clearly, Frontiers doesn’t simply have one-hit-kill enemies that serve as mere speed bumps as you zip through the stage. You’ll need to use Sonic’s speed and skills in order to outsmart and outmaneuver his foes out in the open zone.

If you missed our world gameplay reveal earlier this week, featuring you first long-form look at Sonic Frontiers’ open-zone gameplay, take a look below:

We’ll have much more on Sonic Frontiers as our month-long IGN First coverage rolls on, including the world’s first hands-on preview, interviews with the game director and Sonic Team boss, and more. Check back on Tuesday for the next drop!

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.

It’s one thing to blow up a spaceship; it’s another to dismantle it piece by piece, systematically reducing it from a hulking barge to a pile of valuable scrap. There’s a great sense of satisfaction in doing that job well, especially when performing it efficiently requires careful planning and carries a not-insignificant risk of killing yourself in a wide variety of ways in the process. Hardspace: Shipbreaker does a fine job of empowering us to carve up these gigantic space turkeys like every day is Thanksgiving and smothers it in a thick blue collar gravy, but it does wear thin with time. By the end of its campaign, the repetitive objectives and intentionally slow progression made shipbreaking start to feel like exactly what it’s simulating: hard labor.

Almost immediately upon stepping into the vacuum of space, an excellent tone is set with twangy music that takes me back to an early scene of the pilot episode of 2002’s Firefly, where the crew raids a derelict ship for valuables by cutting through the hull and floating away with them. Swimming through a shipyard with a full six degrees of freedom feels serene and control is smooth, thanks in large part to the brake button that allows you to come to a stop more or less whenever you like (as long as you don’t run out of thruster fuel). Physics aren’t truly Newtonian, in that objects will eventually slow to a stop, but innertia is a powerful force to be reckoned with in both your own movement and when moving objects around. And while the graphics and lighting aren’t cutting edge by any means the spaceship designs are distinctive, often asymmetrical, and interesting – if I hadn’t already known that the developer, Blackbird Interactive, is also at work on Homeworld 3, it would’ve been easy to guess.

The plot isn’t at all subtle about its comical corporate dystopia where workers are kept in indentured servitude to a tyrannical interstellar business empire that exploits them relentlessly, even resurrecting them after accidental deaths on the job so that they can continue to work off their crushing debt. There are a few good lines in there, such as a low air warning coming with a reminder that oxygen deprivation can cause a loss of company profits, but it’s largely on the nose and its humor relies entirely on that simple setup. The story that plays out over unskippable audio is equally one-note, with your faceless, mute character’s crew of salvagers being basically forced to unionize to fight back against their corporate overlords. There are twists, but they’re so clearly telegraphed that there’s not much by way of memorable moments or surprises, and the supervisor villain is a standard-issue middle-management caricature. Outside of that, there’s a fair amount of world-building lore to be found in emails and data drives you can retrieve from salvage missions, though I never came across anything revelatory.

Dismantling a large spaceship in zero gravity is definitely a rewarding exercise. It boils down to zapping yellow bits that join hull plates together with your cutting laser, then using your handheld tractor beam and deployable tethers to toss chunks of scrap and machinery into whichever of the red, blue, or green ports in the surrounding space station you’re told to. While certain materials can be cleaved apart freeform with your laser’s wide beam mode, most of the cutting has a paint-by-numbers feel to it because only those cut points can be disintegrated. However, upon approaching a new ship you do have to worry about explosive decompression which – if you cut into a hull improperly – can not only launch precious salvage out into space and destroy sensitive equipment, but also blast you into walls with enough force to splatter you like a bug on a windshield. Making sure to separate out different types of components takes a keen eye and the use of your suit’s sensor views if you’re trying to get the absolute maximum out of every salvage operation – that’s something I wish could be automated to a certain degree, because it’s frustrating to be penalized for missing a single light fixture or neglecting to manually detach every last computer console and door control aboard before you toss a chunk of hull into the furnace, and it becomes a chore to then hurl each of those small pieces into their own receptacle individually.

Where shipbreaking gets more complicated is when you’re handling the valuable reactor, which is very much like disarming a bomb. While a Type 1 reactor can simply be grabbed and tossed into the recepticle before it goes critical, more advanced versions have an order of operations that must be completed first to maximize the amount of time you have between when it’s detached from its housing and when it goes boom, causing an explosion that makes my GeForce RTX 3080 cry “uncle” as it tries to keep up with all of the resulting chunks of shrapnel. That has the same tension as figuring out whether to cut the red wire or the yellow wire on an explosive first, and mistakenly firing your cutting beam at a fuel line that hasn’t been flushed yet can instantly vaporize you (sometimes a bit unfairly, if you ask me) and spray tiny fragments of the ship’s hull everywhere. But pretty much everything is spelled out for you if you know where to look in the tooltips that pop up when you target something, so it never felt obtuse.

There are several different classes of ship to dissect, each of which has its own layout, reactor configuration, and peculiarities you must learn to disassemble them efficiently. That’s a good initial challenge, but what Shipbreaker desperately needs to keep things interesting is different objectives within that – beyond simply breaking a ship down into its parts – and those rarely pop up. I enjoyed it most when I was given a secondary shopping list of parts to acquire to work on a side project, but that only goes so far and is even removed entirely for the third act for story reasons that don’t replace it with anything else to do. Also, when mysterious “ghost ships” arrived to be disassembled I was intrigued… but was let down when it turned out to be what amounted to barnacles that must be lasered off before turning in a piece of salvage. (The music takes on a nice spooky tone for those, at least.) Even when you unlock the remote-detonating demolition charges, nothing really changes because those simply allow you to destroy cut points that are rated too high for your laser – and I didn’t encounter more than a handful before I unlocked the charges.

As time went on in my 35-hour playthrough I wanted more variety and more pressure, or more ways to subvert the authority of the evil corporation through sabotage or other covert action, but it never came. Unlike that scene from Firefly where Mal, Zoe, and Jayne have to improvise to get back to Serenity before an Alliance ship catches them in the midst of their illegal salvage operation, in Hardspace there’s never any tension or reason to hurry beyond the threat of meaningless fees. The ships may be varied in shape and size, but every salvage operation takes place in the same spacedock facility and you’re always alone, never at risk from anything but your own carelessness. It isn’t until the final mission that the objective is shaken up at all, and that’s in the most basic of ways, with only one iteration on that idea to play with. It took me 25 ships to complete the story, with each one taking an average of an hour and a half to hack to pieces – and that, frankly, was about twice as many as I’d have expected given the amount of content here.

The fees you incur by moving slowly are meaningless because Hardspace’s economy makes no sense. For the entirety of the campaign you’re trying to work your way out from under a mountain of debt $1.2 billion tall, which means that unless you’re keeping careful tabs on your ledger you might not even notice the dent that a $10 million haul makes in the total. It certainly drives home the story’s point about being effectively trapped in this Sisyphean servitude forever, especially when you finish a shift and are presented with a screen tallying up the charges you’ve incurred – such as equipment rentals and administrative fees – that take a sizable chunk of your earnings back. At the same time, when the number is so big it makes decisions like whether to buy equipment repair kits for $9,000 or to wait as long as you can to top off your thruster fuel for $10,000 per charge seem utterly inconsequential (unless you’re competing on the scoreboards for every penny in the free-play mode). You’re already deep in the hole and can never run out of money to spend, so what’s a little more? Besides which, it’s not like you have a choice of whether or not to buy oxygen for $16,000 per tank anyway – the alternative isn’t great.

So while it purports to be all about money, and that’s what’s constantly shown in the largest fonts at every opportunity, in reality, Hardspace’s true currencies are the two types of points you earn for filling each increment on the salvage bar. One of these lets you improve your tools with mostly dull, incremental upgrades like better cooldown speeds, capacities, and durabilities that don’t do much to change how you play, while the other ranks you up, which in turn unlocks new upgrades to be purchased and progresses the story. It’s oddly camouflaged, though I suppose you could interpret that as a message that money isn’t what’s really important.

But if that’s so, what’s with the time limits on shifts? Every time you go out into the shipyard you’re given a 15-minute countdown within which you’re encouraged to do as much work as possible, and at the end you’re booted back to your dormitory. Then you can simply go back to the ship you were working on in the next shift (or move onto a new one if you’re satisfied you’ve done all that’s worthwhile) with the only cost being the monetary fees associated with each outing. That makes the entire concept of getting pulled out for the end of a shift feel as pointless as the money does, and the fact that you already have to return to your base every few minutes to restock oxygen and thruster fuel makes it just another annoying interruption. Sure, your living quarters have a nice lived-in feel and it’s a nice touch that you can customize it with posters you pick up from the ships you’re salvaging, but it’s off putting to go from the freedom of zero-G movement to the oddly constricted movement system where you can’t even walk freely, only move from station to station.

It should be noted that you can turn shift timers (along with oxygen and fuel limits) off in the non-standard Open Shift mode, and if I were to play through the campaign again I definitely would.

Square Enix has profiled two key characters from Final Fantasy 16, and shown off the game’s world of Valisthea in new screenshots.

Following on from its gameplay trailer reveal and release window announcement in the PlayStation State of Play yesterday (June 2), Square Enix shared even more from the game in a blog post.

Unlike protagonist Clive Rosfield – firstborn son of the Archduke of Rosaria – the first new character introduced doesn’t have quite as fancy a title. Hugo Kupka is a “permanent economic adviser”, but thankfully for players is also host to the Eikon (the game’s name for summons) Titan to keep things interesting.

“Once a nameless foot soldier in the Republican Army, his awakening as Dominant of the Eikon Titan thrust him to the forefront of Dhalmekian politics,” the post reads. “It was here he used his newfound position as the most powerful man in the republic to exert influence over both the nation’s armies and its policy making – amassing a personal fortune in the process.”

Money and power aren’t everything though, as the second new character, Benedikta Herman teaches him these “are far from all the world has to offer”,

Harman “emerged from the storm of youth cold-hearted and ruthless” and is Dominant (she hosts a summon) of the Eikon Garuda, Warden of the Wind. This is paired with her talent for swordplay and subterfuge, making Harman one of the best informers around.

“It is on a mission to find the elusive second Eikon of Fire that she crosses paths with a like-minded Clive and is forced to face her past,” the post adds.

The new screenshots (above) focus on the western fantasy-blended world of Valisthea in which Final Fantasy 16 is set and its various landscapes, cities, and creepy tombs.

Following the trailer being released, producer Yoshida Naoki said Final Fantasy 16 will have “high-octane battles featuring our protagonist Clive Rosfield wielding a full arsenal of attacks unique to the game’s many Eikons.”

Though the game is now playable from start to finish, Square Enix’s all-star development team are taking until summer next year to get everything right.

The Final Fantasy 16 reveal was the first of many in PlayStation’s State of Play, but for everything announced, including Resident Evil 4 Remake and Horizon: Call of the Mountain gameplay, check out IGN’s full round-up.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Insomniac Games has revealed that its Marvel’s Spider-Man games have sold over 33 million copies worldwide as of May 15, 2022.

“I’d like to pause and express Insomniac’s profound gratitude for those of you reading this post who have already purchased and played the PlayStation console versions of Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4) and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4, PS5),” explains Insomniac’s Ryan Schneider in a PlayStation Blog post. “Let me tell you, there are a lot of folks to thank for your passionate support!” It’s unclear whether this sales milestone also counts Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PS5.

However, the series will continue to sell now that both Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Spider-Man: Miles Morales are coming to PC. The former launches on August 12 while the latter will be released later this fall.

The PC versions of the games are handled by Nixxes, a studio specializing in PC ports that Sony acquired last year. “I am extremely pleased with our collaboration with Insomniac on the Marvel’s Spider-Man series, the shared support provided between our teams and their dedication to quality above all is inspiring,” says Nixxes founder Jurjen Katsman. “It allows our team to leverage our technical expertise and focus on creating the best possible PC experience that takes advantage of all the exciting possibilities the PC platform has to offer.”

In our Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered review, we said, “The gameplay itself feels largely unchanged, but that still leaves you with a spectacular Spider-Man adventure, with all its additional content, that’s also one of the best superhero games ever made, and a visual treat to kick off the PS5 era.”

Insomniac is also currently working on a sequel to Marvel’s Spider-Man that is slated to release in 2023.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey