Category: Gaming

Most of Dead by Daylight is spent running away from its stable of horror villains, but a surprise visual novel will soon have players running toward familiar characters like The Trapper… for romance.

At a recent anniversary event, Behaviour Interactive announced a new dating sim titled Hooked On You: A Dead By Daylighting Dating Sim. Developed by Psyop, the creators of I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, it will feature “romance, steamy references and… shirtless outfits.”

Hooked On You’s stars will be four familiar Dead By Daylight killers who inhabit something called a magical land called “Murderer’s Island:” The Huntress, The Spirit, The Trapper, and The Wraith. Here’s how the official release describes it:

Hooked on You: A Dead by Daylight Dating Sim takes players on Murderer’s Island. Their companions: four dead-sexy Killers who, underneath their murderous exteriors, just want a little romance. Fans flirt their way into the hearts of The Huntress, The Spirit, The Trapper, and The Wraith, uncovering dark twists along the way. Will they find true love, forge friendships or get hacked to death? Only they can decide. As mystery unfolds, it’s their job to make sense of it all. What brought them here? Where did these Killers come from? Why do they show so much interest? And, most importantly, if only one had to be chosen for love… who would it be?

On top of its new dating sim, Behaviour Interactive also announced another crossover with Resident Evil titled “Project W”; a new original chapter titled “Roots of Dread”; an Attack on Titan collaboration, and a major update for its mobile game.

Now seven years old, Dead by Daylight has grown to include some 31 survivors and 28 killers, collaborating with famous franchises such as Hellraiser, Ringu, and Stranger Things. As for its quirky new dating sim, Hooked On You will be out this summer on Steam.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

After Starfield and Redfall both got delayed out of 2022 on the same day, we discuss why Xbox fans are understandably frustrated with the lack of major first-party exclusives this year. Next year does look amazing – and we discuss that in detail – but we also talk about how many fans are tired of being told “Wait until next year.” Can the Xbox Showcase provide any immediate answers? Join us!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo’s original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

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.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers premieres Friday, May 20 on Disney+.

An animated pop-culture extravaganza, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a fast and funny roller coaster into a cyclone of cartoon characters, with clever gags, inventive action, and enough heart and depth to allow a story to eke through.

Directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer, this particular Rescue Rangers outing is a meta affair, portraying the famous chipmunk BFFs as actors who once starred on the Rescue Rangers TV series decades earlier. Now, appropriately washed up in typical E! True Hollywood Story fashion (thanks to Dale’s solo career attempt), Chip and Dale must bury the past in order to rekindle their friendship and save the day for real.

This hybrid slice of live-action/animation silliness is perhaps the closest thing we’ll ever get to a follow up for 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and not just because Roger Rabbit himself pops up briefly. This is a world — a Los Angeles to be more specific — where humans and cartoons co-exist, and where any cartoon who breaks big in show business films their movies just like any other performer, except on an animated set. It’s not a stretch by any means to imagine this being what Roger Rabbit’s L.A. would be like 70 years later.

Oh, and let’s not forget this La La Land’s seedy underbelly, which is the other noir-ish element present here, helping with the Roger Rabbit vibes. Not everything in the world of cartoons is hand-drawn sunshine and computer-generated puppies. There are criminal activities afoot and when Chip and Dale’s old Rescue Rangers co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) goes missing, the estranged pals reunite to track him down amidst pushers of stinky cheese, promoters of Muppet fights, and a gangland run by bootleggers. No, not prohibited alcohol — bootleg animated movies featuring kidnapped performers changed to look like knockoffs for foreign markets.

John Mulaney and Andy Samberg voice Chip and Dale, respectively. Mulaney lends his analytical, perturbed demeanor to Chip’s cerebral idea-man while Samberg gives his man-child all as Dale, the duo’s impulsive doofus. Will Arnett is on hand as the villain (making this film feel like a Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands reunion of sort) while the rest of the voice cast features recognizable efforts from Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, and Tim Robinson. Original Rescue Rangers voice actor Tress MacNeille reprises her role as Gadget while KiKi Layne looms large, literally, over the proceedings as a rookie police detective helping our heroes crack the case. It’s a strong cast, capable of firing off the rapid jokes — as well as a nicely placed Seth Rogen bit (involving his history in animated voices).

It’s not the cast that warrants the majority of attention, though — it’s the sheer shock of intellectual property collision. Of course, this isn’t a new trick. In 1988, Roger Rabbit gave us Disney swirled up with Warner Bros., mixed in with King Features Syndicate, Fleischer Studios, and more, but studios were less likely to horde and more open to sharing back then, when animation as a whole was taking a bit of a hit. Now we’ve got things like Ready Player One and Space-Jam: A New Legacy giving audiences their fix of crossover battle royales to an extent we’d never dreamed of. And yet, still, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers surprises on that front. With any meta project, there will be a few strained attempts at humor, and this story isn’t fully free of that, but for the most part, the winking jokes and use of cartoon cameos are on point, filling the world with expansive ideas instead of one-off eye rolls.

The human story — or, chipmunk story, really — at the center of this madness involves two friends putting aside old differences and re-discovering the spark that made them buddies to begin with. This arc doesn’t resonate as strongly as it could have, as the world of crotchety claymation cops, Coca-Cola polar bear henchmen, fan conventions featuring the likes of Lumière and Tigra, and other gags take precedence, but it’s still sweet enough to balance the film out and temper the hijinks, and together Mulaney and Samberg deliver some very funny banter. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it is a much better, and far funnier, animated smorgasbord offering than some of its recent predecessors.

If, for some reason, you decided you weren’t too keen on LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at full price, well my patient and frugal friend, the Nintendo Switch version is on sale right now at both Walmart AND Amazon.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga on Sale

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

For Nintendo Switch.

See on Amazon

It’s important to note both Amazon and Walmart’s deals are being offered by 3rd party sellers, but they’re being fulfilled by the respective retailers. I buy 3rd party stuff all the time and haven’t had any problems. At least, not yet.

If you’d prefer, Amazon has the PS4 and the PS5 versions on sale as well, but the mark-down isn’t really that exciting compared to the Nintendo Switch version.

Traveller’s Tales really did an outstanding job with this one. In our LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga review we called it “a series of interplanetary playgrounds that are dense with discovery and entertaining diversions.”

Basically, even the video game versions of the movies you didn’t like are fun to play through. That’s saying something, considering how divisive the nine movies making up the Skywalker Saga actually are. Is there anyone who absolutely loves them all? I’m sure there are, and I’m sure they’ll be in the comments.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.

Arma Reforger is a work in progress. That point was hammered home over and over again at a recent preview event hosted by developer Bohemia Interactive. It’s been almost a decade since the release of Arma 3, and while a formal sequel is still on the horizon, the company is first offering a smaller, scaled-down version of their traditional warfighting precision. The goal, says Bohemia, is for Reforger to be a “bridge” towards Arma 4; using the platform as a testbed to gauge community feedback throughout the rest of the development cycle. That makes a lot of sense considering how Reforger, and the future Arma 4, are both headed to consoles for the first time in the series’ history. The studio now needs to answer questions it never had to ask before. Can a gamepad mesh with the complex logistics of a military simulator? Does the console audience even have an appetite for Arma’s many quirks? You can understand why Bohemia wanted to dip their toes in first before taking a dive.

Arma Reforger is, in some ways, a reimagining of the first game of the series — 2001’s Operation Flashpoint. A fictional Eastern European island from that game, Everon, has been fully remastered in Bohemia’s new Enfusion engine, and players are cast as either Americans or Soviets in the keening, late-’80s apogee of the Cold War. I was granted access to a pre-release build, which gave me a tutorial and a few multiplayer servers that were otherwise abandoned by any other actual human players, and it was immediately clear that Bohemia’s graphical retrofitting paid off. Pastures bloomed with dewy grass, trees lined the horizon on the impressive draw distance, glassy water lapped against the shores. Bohemia mentioned that development for Reforger has been difficult, likely because importing systems to a brand new gaming infrastructure is always challenging. But this new chapter of Arma is both beautiful, functional, and right in line with other triple-A shooters on the market.

Reforger plans on keeping the vibrant Arma modding scene alive and well. The main menu includes a link to the Workshop, where players will be able to upload their own bespoke creations directly to the game’s servers. Reforger also includes a new game mode called Game Master, which is pitched as a way one player can effectively direct an Arma multiplayer match through the ebb and flow of battle. (It sounds similar to a DM in Dungeons & Dragons.) This should be a boon for diehards of the series; finally, a chance to play around with Arma’s tools using modern technology.

Some PC lifers might fear that Bohemia’s console pivot means that the studio will deemphasize some of Arma’s more fiddly, hardcore tics. I’m not a milsim expert by any means, but from what I saw, those anxieties can be safely put to bed. Reforger keeps both the restless shooting mechanics and all of the administrative overhead; you will absolutely be hauling supplies to different checkpoints in order to construct vehicle depots and armories, and this remains a waypoint free experience. That means Xbox players are going to become very much accustomed with their compass and coordinates, as they triangulate where, exactly, the enemy lines are located.

But anyone spending the $29.99 on Reforger’s early access release should know that, as of this writing, the game seems to be in its opening stages of development — especially compared to how fleshed-out and content-rich earlier games in the series are. Reforger has one gigantic map so far, and only two modes. One is the aforementioned Game Master suite of tools, and the other is a capture-and-hold rigamarole, which means that currently, Reforger has a dearth of single-player content outside of the tutorial. Compare that to Arma 3, which released an expansion focused on a literal alien invasion three years ago. It becomes clear that Bohemia has a long way to go before Reforger reaches feature parity with the rest of the series. (Right now, the studio is saying that Reforger will be in Early Access for about a year, with frequent updates occurring throughout the cycle.)

Unsurprisingly for a work-in-progress Early Access game, I also ran into a number of bugs during my playthrough, including some psychedelic visual glitches and a number of crashes as I attempted to load into matches. Remember, I was playing on empty servers, so I can’t speak to the stability once everyone is piling onto Everon at the same time. I can only imagine that Bohemia is eager to see how their backend holds up.

But hey, these are the growing pains of any intrepid new platform. New Arma games are treated like seismic events in the milsim community, and Reforger – with its new engine and fresh debut on consoles – stands as one of the boldest ventures in Bohemia’s history. We’ll keep checking in as the war rages on.

Techland has revealed the first piece of concept art for its unannounced AAA open-world fantasy action RPG. Additionally, the development team has recently recruited talent that has previously worked at Arkane and CD Projekt Red.

Concept art from Techland’s fantasy RPG project. Image credit: Technland

The concept art features a man looking at some sort of ancient city surrounded by lush trees, pink vegetation, and waterfalls. Notably, the archetecture of this ruin isn’t traditional medieval England in its aesthetic, so we may be in for something slightly left field for AAA fantasy.

For this new IP, the studio has employed narrative director Karolina Stachyra and narrative lead Arkadiusz Borowik, both of whom previously worked on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The rest of the team has similarly notable backgrounds. Recently recruited members include open world director Bartosz Ochman, who previously worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3. Mario Maltezos, the project’s creative director, has worked on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Mad Max, while lead game designer David McClure worked on Deathloop. Lead animator Kevin Quad worked on Horizon Zero Dawn and its DLC, and lead UI designer Marcin Surosz was a UI/UX designer at People Can Fly.

“We’re very happy with what we have accomplished with the Dying Light franchise so far,” explained Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka in a press release. “Moreover, our journey with Dying Light 2 Stay Human has only just begun as we plan to support this game for at least 5 years, with its scope and size matching, if not exceeding, what we have provided our community with during post-launch support for its predecessor.”

“At the same time, our ambition is to introduce a brand new IP that is vastly different from what we have been doing for the past several years. We want to create a fully next-gen experience,” he continued. “A new fantasy epic set in a sprawling open world, fueled by the skills and experience we have gained as a team over the years, infused with new ideas, passion, and creativity. While we cannot share more details about this project now, we’re all truly invested in it and looking forward to showing it to gamers when the time is right.”

Techland is currently hiring more developers to work on the unannounced fantasy game. This seems to be an ongoing trend of studios trying to court more talent by teasing high profile projects either on social media or showing them off within game showcases, as in the case of Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell remake.

Techland are fresh off developing Dying Light 2, and while many of the development staff are remaining with the zombie open world to create post-release content, it seems clear that the studio is gearing up for production on their next (hopefully major) IP.

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

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of multiplayer survival game Scavengers have been cancelled as developer Midwinter Entertainment has been sold by parent company Improbable.

As reported by Eurogamer, Midwinter has been sold to Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive for an unknown amount, with the most of the studio now working on a new project.

The PC version of Scavengers is unaffected as only a small portion of the development team is required to maintain it, though the game is still in Early Access on Steam and has only had a few hundred players since November last year according to Steam DB.

Improbable CEO Herman Narula told Eurogamer that the publisher sold Midwinter as it’s now switched focus to metaverse development, but Midwinter appears happy with the sale as studio head Mary Olson said her studio and Behaviour share very similar values and development philosophies.

“We are thrilled to join and learn from a team with proven success across a broad spectrum of IP, while in turn leveraging the strong foundation, culture, and team we’ve built at Midwinter to expand Behaviour’s portfolio,” she said.

The console versions of Scavengers already seemed fairly forgotten, as the game’s official website still has them pegged for a late 2021 release date.

Scavengers was first announced in 2018 from former Halo developers from 343 Industries and released several demos and tests for the game before it finally launched in Early Access last May.

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

Like most other large gaming companies, Take-Two has been a part of a recent flurry of acquisition activity industry-wide. Its planned acquisition of Zynga is set to close by the end of the month, and its Private Division label snapped up Roll7 late last year. But what about Take-Two itself? Is it possible that it, like fellow major publisher Activision-Blizzard, might be acquired by a bigger gaming corporation?

For now, that seems unlikely, based on comments made by CEO Strauss Zelnick in an interview ahead of today’s full year and quarterly earnings call.

“We’re a public company, and we’re here for the shareholders,” he told IGN. “That said, our track record of creating value as an independent entireprise is pretty terrific, especially if you exclude the last three months. We think there’s plenty of great times ahead, and we like being an independent organization. But we’re here for the shareholders.”

Zelnick also offered some context for the publisher’s recent acquisitions of Zynga and Roll7. He acknowledged the reality of industry consolidation, especially over the last six months. But he added that the increase in overall indistry acquisitions wasn’t going to change anything for Take-Two, whose growth he says has “always been largely organic” but “populated with some selective acquisitions along the way.”

“We’re looking for creative deals that bring us great intellectual property and great teams, and we’ll continue to do that in the future,” he said. “Undoubtedly the Zynga transaction is exceedingly significant for this company and we have a lot of work to do collectively to make sure we deliver on the value, and the focus will be largely organic growing forward. But that will not prevent us from continuing to make acquisitions that are selective and disciplined for Private Division and the rest of the business, including the mobile part of the business.”

Zelnick also spoke to us on a few other topics, including the likelihood of Take-Two picking up the FIFA license after EA and FIFA parted ways, and the currrent fan frustration with the state of Red Dead Online.

Looking ahead, Take-Two is planning 18 new releases in the coming fiscal year, including core titles The Quarry, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, NBA 2K23, WWE 2K23, PGA Tour 2K23, and Kerbal Space Program 2. There are also eight mobile games coming, a new sports title from 2K (likely its NFL arcade game), a new franchise from Private Division, Tales from the Borderlands 2, and “one new iteration of a previously-released title available for purchase”.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

With EA and the FIFA brand set to part ways, one big question on everyone’s minds is: who will pick up the FIFA license to keep making more soccer games? One possibility is Take-Two Interactive, but for now, the company isn’t saying whether or not it’s in to be the official soccer publisher.

Speaking to CEO Strauss Zelnick ahead of today’s earnings call, IGN asked if Take-Two was considering working with FIFA in the future to expand its existing sports line-up.

“We’re definitely interested in expanding our opportunities in sports, and FIFA has a great brand and incredible clout, but we have no current plans to discuss,” Zelnick replied.

It’s understandable that Zelnick wouldn’t be able to say much for now, as if there is any discussion about a deal right now, it’s likely going on behind closed doors. But Zelnick’s praise for the brand isn’t the only reason to think Take-Two might be interested. The publisher is one of the few who could conceivably afford the reportedly very expensive license, and already has a track record of sports titles with NBA 2K, WWE 2K, plus whatever it’s working on with the NFL.

EA and FIFA announced their split earlier this month, with EA citing a desire for more creative freedom as well as the expensive license among the reasons it opted to go its own way with EA Sports FC in the future. FIFA has confirmed it will continue to release games under the FIFA name, but has not yet said who it will partner with to make this happen.

Even if Take-Two goes after the FIFA license, we won’t see it manifest for a while, given that EA still has FIFA 23 ahead. Take-Two has a busy year ahead anyway, with 18 planned releases. According to the Take-Two earnings report, six of those are “immersive core titles”: The Quarry, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, NBA 2K23, WWE 2K23, PGA Tour 2K23, and Kerbal Space Program 2 (which has been confirmed for release in early 2023 as of this morning, after previously being pushed to sometime between April 2022 and March 2023).

There are also eight mobile games in the works, a new sports title from 2K (likely its NFL arcade game), a new franchise from Private Division, Tales from the Borderlands 2, and “one new iteration of a previously-released title available for purchase”.

The publisher also gave a few updates on sales of existing games, including NBA 2K22 having sold over 10 million copies, GTA V selling over 165 million, and Red Dead Redemption 2 selling over 44 million. Oddly, there were no sales figures provided for WWE 2K22, but its sales for the first four weeks after release exceeded both WWE 2K19 and WWE 2K20 during the same period.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

For months now, the Red Dead Online community has been begging developer Rockstar for more significant updates to the game on par with what Grand Theft Auto Online has been getting, using the hashtag #SaveRedDeadOnline. Thus far they’ve received little in the way of acknowledgement for their movement, until today.

Speaking to IGN ahead of Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick affirmed he was aware of the community’s frustration, but added that fans would need to look to Rockstar for a response.

“Rockstar Games talks about the updates that are coming, and we’re working on an awful lot at Rockstar Games,” he said. “I’ve heard the frustration, it’s flattering that they want more content, and more will be said by Rockstar in due time.”

When asked if Take-Two intended to continue to support Red Dead Online long-term, Zelnick affirmed that this was the plan. [Update 2:45pm PT: Post-publication, Take-Two Interactive reached out to clarify that this comment was “solely referring to the online servers” and that any future content updates would be up to Rockstar.]

#SaveRedDeadOnline has been continued across social channels like Twitter and Reddit since January of this year, when Rockstar published an announcement of new content for Red Dead Online that the community felt was largely insufficient compared to much larger updates being pushed in Grand Theft Auto Online. Since then, there have been a handful of other similarly small updates, but nothing large enough to quell the frustrated fans who feel that Rockstar has abandoned their beloved game to focus on a much older one that has already received years of major updates and attention.

As of the latest earnings call, Red Dead Redemption 2 has sold over 44 million units worldwide, which Take-Two said in its report is “notably above our expectations for the period, which is further proof of the ongoing popularity of Rockstar’s blockbuster entertainment experiences.”

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.