Author: Game Infliction

Longtime Halo senior developer Joseph Staten, the subject of last week’s Unlocked, has announced where he’s going next: Netflix! We discuss what this means for Netflix’s gaming efforts before turning our attention to the newly announced departure of another longtime Halo developer, Frank O’Connor. Plus: Diablo 4’s community interactions continue to impress, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase:

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.

While I have always favored the Fire Emblem franchise as my Nintendo turn-based tactical game of choice, the Advance Wars series has always held a special place in my heart ever since the first time I booted it up on my Game Boy Advance 22 years ago. I’ve always enjoyed how these games encourage me to get creative with my units and strategies. Whether that is hiding my army in the fog of war and taking advantage of the terrain to obliterate my opponents before they know what’s hitting them, or building a massive platoon of tanks and steamrolling the enemy with my oppressive numbers. It’s rewarding to see my plans work out as intended, and though it stings when they fail, I feel like I always learn something about how to improve my future strategies.

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp may not have a large variety in its game modes, but the amount of variables you can swap around to your liking makes each battle feel fresh even when replaying maps. The improvements to the visuals and music of the original, in addition to the inclusion of other modernizations like voice acting, animated shorts, and online play, make it a great way to experience these classics for veterans and newcomers alike. My 60 hours with Re-Boot Camp took me through both campaigns, including alternative missions with different characters that unlocked after completing each campaign, warring with AI on a variety of unlockable maps, spending time designing my own maps, and a small taste of online multiplayer.

It took 15 and 25 hours to complete each respective campaign on the classic difficulty setting (the hardest available from the start). Even having turned it up a notch, the difficulty curve for the original Advance Wars is consistently on the easier end thanks to many of the missions mostly serving as tutorials for new mechanics, win conditions, introducing new commanding officers (COs), and more – it’s not until the final missions of each section of the campaign that things pick up. But once you reach the Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising campaign it starts to include a lot more missions with some surprising difficulty spikes due to the introduction of the new Black Hole army COs and their powerful new abilities.

While the missions may not always be difficult, some ended up taking a while to finish due to the scope of battles where you control multiple armies, or tactical errors on my part, like losing my last infantry unit to hidden artillery, requiring me to spend a large number of extra turns to wipe out the enemy army instead of capturing the enemy base in two or three turns. The good news is that if you were hoping for more of a challenge, finishing each campaign unlocks a new Challenge difficulty that has started to push some of my previous winning strategies to their limits, causing me to reassess which CO and strategy to use on each map when given a choice. It would’ve been nice for that mode to be available from the start for those of us who already know our way around this series.

Re-Boot Camp has updated the Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising campaigns with a charming new art style thanks to the use of 3D graphics, a fantastic re-recorded soundtrack, online multiplayer, and a few features like the ability to restart a turn to help newcomers learn from their mistakes, and the option to fast-forward battle animations to reduce the time between turns if you like. The soundtrack is one of the highlights for me, as each CO has a distinct musical theme during their turns which helps each battle feel fresh. Grit from the Blue Moon Army has a bit of a bluegrass style to mirror his laid-back attitude, while the theme from the Yellow Comet’s Sensei uses a piano and saxophone to give an upbeat jazz feel to his turns.

Outside of the updated visuals and new features, Re-Boot Camp maintains its faithful retelling of the wars between the various nations of Cosmo and Macro Land and the mysterious Black Hole Army, meaning if you were hoping to see any of the new additions or changes included in later games like Dual Strike or Days of Ruin, you will still need to boot up your DS for that experience. (The attention to detail in nearly every area of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp does give me hope that the third and fourth games will get the same treatment next.)

While neither story is what I would call deep, they both have their brighter moments, with the Black Hole Rising campaign being an improvement thanks to the addition of the new COs and their various personalities. In addition to the Orange Star army COs, commanding officers from the other nations get a modest amount of voice acting that helps to show off each of the characters’ unique personalities. The performances aren’t anything to write home about, but that is more based on the lack of quantity than the quality of them. One of the most intriguing additions is the inclusion of a few animated shorts that had me wondering if we might get an Advance Wars animated show down the road now that Nintendo has seen so much success with the Mario movie.

Each of the COs has their own specialty when building armies, as well as a unique power that can help turn the tide in combat. The spirited but inexperienced mechanic Andy is well-rounded with no bonuses or penalties but has the ability to restore health to his units with his hyper-repair power, making him a safe choice in most battles. The straightforward and brawny Max gives a power boost to all direct damage units while his indirect units, like artillery or rockets, suffer a penalty to their maximum range, making him a good option for when you want to punch through an enemy’s defenses and overwhelm them with raw power.

Advance Wars 2 adds new depth to the formula by including Super CO powers. These often add alternatives to traditional CO powers, like utility effects – such as refilling your unit’s ammunition and fuel or increasing your vision range in the fog of war. The happy-go-lucky special forces commander Sami grants large bonuses to her infantry units when she activates her Super CO power, giving them the ability to capture buildings in a single turn, including enemy HQs, to sneak a victory out of even the direst of situations.

It’s important to know each one’s strengths and weaknesses otherwise, even the best-laid plans can come undone. While many battles in Advance Wars can devolve into a contest of who has the superior numbers, using the proper units in the right positions can help neutralize even the largest of armies. One of the most common tactics is to place a more durable unit, like the medium tank, on a bridge to prevent your opponent’s advance and then barraging their army with artillery or rockets to reduce their numbers so you can go on the offensive. Building an army of units that cover land, air, and sea gives a lot of versatility to strategies across most maps, and building to your CO’s strengths will often tip the scale in your favor. Battles waged in the air are best with the use of COs like Eagle or Sensei, who give large boosts to various aerial units, while Grit’s long range makes it easy to overwhelm opponents from the shadows on maps that have fog of war.

At the end of a mission, Advance Wars will grade you based on speed, power, and technique. So the faster you are at claiming victory while efficiently destroying your opponent’s units without losing your own, the higher the rating you will earn, meaning more currency to unlock new maps, music, and COs for game modes outside the campaign. This helps to improve the mileage you will get out of Advance Wars, since its replayability depends on the unlockable content, so the better you rank, the faster you can unlock more of the content to give you more options and extend your play further.

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp’s customizable War Room is one of the areas where I got the most replayability out of it, and foresee it earning the bulk of my time moving forward. Being able to take on the role of any CO on a sizeable number of maps against a variety of AI-controlled opponents with a variety of customizable parameters like fog of war, weather, and victory conditions means there is almost no limit to the ways you can make each battle feel different, even when revisiting favorite maps.

And if the included maps start to feel too familiar, the Design Room map editor is another way to make it feel new again and is only limited by your creativity. Anything you see in the campaigns is at your fingertips, so if you want to build a map that’s all water and play an Advance Wars version of Battleship, you can. Afterward, you can share those maps online, so if you have a good group of creative friends, you can swap maps for an effectively limitless amount of content.

The online multiplayer in Re-Boot Camp is one of the biggest letdowns for me in that there’s no matchmaking system at all. That means you can only compete against opponents on your friends list, so if you happen to be the only person in your group of friends who owns it, you’re going to either need to make some more friends or get comfortable only competing against the AI. On current-generation hardware like the Switch, it’s just plain disappointing not to have a matchmaking lobby. Thankfully, it does have the option for local multiplayer on either the same console or with others on their own Switch, meaning that it will surely see some popularity at various conventions and gatherings.

IGN’s Summer of Gaming is returning for its fourth year this June, bringing with it even more trailers and news for the biggest games of 2023 and beyond.

As in previous years, IGN Summer of Gaming 2023 will be a multi-day event filled with tons of content featuring your favorite games and developers. IGN will be also be partnering with developers to share exclusive reveals, interviews and more!

We’re happy to announce that we will once again be carrying and covering Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest as part of our Summer of Gaming programming. Check out IGN on June 8 for the stream and all of our analysis.

You can also look forward to the Starfield Direct and coverage of Xbox’s Showcase, which will be taking place in Los Angeles.

For an idea of what to expect here on IGN, check out everything that was announced at last year’s event as well as our full hub. There will be lots more where that came from at this year’s event!

Summer of Gaming 2023 will once again be a fully-digital event and can be viewed entirely from home. Catch all of the announcements here on IGN, or check out our channels on Twitch and YouTube for more.

Stay tuned to IGN for all the action as the Summer of Gaming returns!

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.

Magic is everywhere if you know where to look, and you need look no further than Digital Sun’s The Mageseeker. It’s a worthy addition to the growing list of League of Legends spinoffs, this time a pixel-art action RPG puts you in the role of Sylas The Unshackled as he escapes from prison to seek his revenge against those that locked him away since his childhood. It’s faithful to the lore of League of Legends and expands on it in exciting new ways, showing us even more of the spell-stealing rebel. I came away from my time with The Mageseeker enjoying the journey but wishing it had taken a few different paths along the way.

Following in the footsteps of other League of Legends spinoffs like Ruined King and Hextech Mayhem, The Mageseeker brings another batch of characters from their 160+ champion roster to life in a new way. Sylas is depicted in a bigger way than ever before as he helps to lead a rebellion against the tyrannical kingdom of Demacia, where mages are hunted. The story has some nuance and even lightly parallels moments of real-world history where a group of people has been persecuted for being different.

It took around 18 hours to not only finish The Mageseeker on the hard difficulty, but also complete everything necessary for the platinum trophy on PlayStation 5. This included all the sidequests, replaying a handful of missions to gather any collectibles I missed on my first playthrough, and a handful of restarts against a few bosses who gave me a bit of trouble.

You only ever play as Sylas, but The Mageseeker brings along a few other fan-favorite characters like Morgana, Garen, Lux, Jarvan IV, Shyvana, and a few surprises that I won’t spoil along for the ride. I had a lot of fun seeing how Digital Sun envisioned just how powerful these champions could be when not constrained by the need to be balanced in a competitive landscape. Morgana’s Dark Bindings last longer, Lux’s lasers are larger than life, and Shyvana gets to show her true scale when transforming into her dragon form. There are also plenty of Easter eggs and other fun nods throughout the story that are sure to please fans of League of Legends.

In addition to those familiar faces, Sylas is joined by some entertaining original characters who take on different supporting roles throughout the story of vengeance, growth, and rebellion. There are a few standouts, such as Leilani, who forms a strong bond with Sylas early on and serves as the guiding light of the rebellion while Sylas does what must be done on their journey in the hope of freeing themselves from the persecution of the Mageseekers who are out to imprison or eliminate them.

The Mageseeker begins with a literal bang as Sylas borrows the magic of a young Lux to make his escape from his Demacian prison and upcoming execution. Though the first mission seems momentous, it hits a bit of a slowdown early on as Sylas comes into the role of rebel leader. The Mageseeker absolutely nails the feeling of playing Sylas: the way you can repeatedly dash, use your chains to pull yourself to enemies or around the environment, and all the spells you can borrow and use for your own purposes. Anyone who has played a match of League of Legends as Sylas will be right at home when in combat, though the mechanics are intuitive enough that even those who haven’t should be able to pick it up just as easily.

As Sylas, you have the ability to sense and borrow the magical abilities of others and use them against anyone who stands in your way. Including powerful ultimate abilities I gained access to 30 different spells most of which fell into six different elemental trees, nearly all of which played a useful role in various moments as I progressed. Early spells included elemental projectiles to counter enemies with opposing affinities, while the later spells granted large area-of-effect versions or spells for healing, shielding, or imbuing my melee strikes with elemental buffs. Spells stolen from enemies are single-use, but as you progress you gain the ability to craft spells you’ve borrowed and can cast them as you see fit, as long as you have the mana to do so.

Combat starts out simple, but in the later levels, when facing larger groups of enemies and their numerous projectiles, I found that if I wasn’t staying mobile and dashing or pulling myself to enemies I’d lose large chunks of health. While I primarily focused on using spells that either recovered my health or granted me a shield, that was more about my playstyle than out of necessity: there are plenty of options, and the ability to swap out your spells at any of the generous checkpoints placed throughout the stages gives even more flexibility.

In addition to standard spells, Sylas will also gain access to powerful ultimate abilities that, for the most part, enable him to deal massive amounts of damage but also temporarily boost his power. Using Lux’s ultimate, Final Spark, to fire a large concentrated beam of light to disintegrate large groups of enemies is almost as enjoyable as securing multiple kills with the same ability in regular League of Legends matches.

There is plenty of enemy diversity, and they range from elemental mages employed by the Mageseekers that cast spells to hurl shards of ice, heal other enemies, or create cyclones of damaging wind. As well as creature based enemies ranging from fiery frogs named lava gromps that fans of League will recognize who can create fields of fire, as well as other larger beasts that summon homing beams of lightning, like the gorilla-lizard hybrid Thunderbeasts. Levels continually mixed up the arrangements of enemies, adding a nice level of depth that kept me on my toes when it came to deciding which enemies to prioritize.

Most stages are very straightforward and follow a similar pattern of simple platforming using Sylas’ chains or dashes to cross short gaps, a few enemy encounters that need to be cleared before a door or gate unlocks, and a boss that typically incorporates the elements from the rest of the level. I would have liked to have seen some additional elements in the levels, such as light puzzles or optional platforming challenges to make me earn the rewards placed throughout the map, rather than just being given them as a reward for exploring. There are numerous unlit braziers and other objects in the background that could have been used for triggering something magical like a hidden passage or revealing a chest, but I was always disappointed that casting fire spells on them didn’t do anything. It’s a missed opportunity to encourage replayability and creative use of spells.

The bosses, though, are one of the biggest highlights in Mageseeker. While I could get away with whatever spell loadout I wanted in some battles thanks to Sylas’s excellent mobility, others benefited greatly from swapping out my equipped spells to give me an elemental advantage or boost my survivability with heal or shield spells. On the hard difficulty level, many of the earlier bosses would wipe me out in four to six, hits depending on the attack. It became a bit more forgiving once I’d picked up some health and defense upgrades towards the middle of the campaign, only for the steep challenge to return in the final hours of the campaign with an increased volume of more powerful enemies; thankfully this is balanced by the addition of more ways to heal or mitigate damage. This created a new dynamic of requiring me to decide on how best to use my mana, either recovering my health or dishing out more damage with flashy spells

In addition to the main missions, there are two chains of sidequests. One had me assaulting Mageseeker bases using uniquely empowered versions of my spells, giving these levels almost a roguelike feel that offered some of the most fun in the entire campaign, despite how the side missions reuse the same bosses. The other chain of missions is a series of basic arenas that end with some of the more exciting bosses that fans of League of Legends will want to see. Levels are also filled with various collectibles, such as the adorable silverwings, mages to recruit, and notes dropped by characters that help offer more background information on the state of the world or their lives.

The musical score is filled with fast tempos to match the often chaotic battles, paired with relaxing rhythms during your time in base between levels. Each location has its own style, with the music evolving as you progress further, and culminates into an exhilarating melody during the boss battles. The Mageseeker remains faithful to its source material by using various voice lines and sound effects from League of Legends as characters cast their abilities, and while there is limited voice acting, overall it’s still entertaining to hear familiar elements outside of their normal environment.

I did run into a few bugs during my playthrough: I had enemies and bosses become unkillable, lost the ability to use my chains to grapple or borrow abilities, and one peculiar one where a falling rock followed me wherever I went, including the main menu. It was nothing a quit-and-reload or reboot couldn’t fix, but they did pop up enough times to warrant mentioning.

It would have been relatively easy for Guerrilla Games to rest on their laurels and put out a Horizon expansion that was just more Forbidden West. And in some ways, the Burning Shores DLC is exactly that: a distilled helping of what made the core game so great – an elevated sci-fi story in a pulpy wrapping, tied with a bow made from high-octane action. You’ll once again be fighting machines, solving puzzles, and yes, climbing tall structures. But Guerrilla has done much more here, adding in surprises with new machines to discover and introducing even more fun ways to take them down. Burning Shores is for the most part a great time, and clumsily engineered ending aside, a worthy addition to the Horizon series.

After the conclusion of the main campaign, this DLC summons you to LA in order to hunt down a lead that may be helpful against the looming threat introduced at the end of Forbidden West’s story. The titular Burning Shores are an archipelago roughly four times the size of the San Francisco area of the main map, and shares a lot of that region’s visual identity. It’s a smart decision to echo Forbidden West’s standout location – the sand still sparkles and water glistens – but here lava flows in a natural representation of the increased danger that lurks in the Burning Shores. It wastes no time in throwing you into that danger, either, plunging you straight back into the rousing rhythms of Horizon combat.

At first, I found myself scrambling in the sand to rediscover half-buried techniques such as whipping into the air and slowing down time, but quickly got back in the zone, shifting styles like the tectonic plates sliding beneath me. Burning Shores doesn’t hang about when introducing new methods of machine destruction either, such as explosive crystals that cause ruins to collapse onto nearby enemies. Due to the clustered island nature of this new area, the level design tends to naturally create large, contained spaces that are perfect as action-filled arenas. The combat encounters that unfold within these spaces feel as accomplished as anything Guerrilla has created in the Horizon series yet, with a great variety of enemies paired together and environments filled with opportunity.

A few new threats join the party to further enhance that mechanical menagerie, including the buzzing, flying ant-like Stingspawn and my favourite, the colossal, acid-spewing Bilegut: a leaping mecha-toad that is a terrific challenge to take down. An exciting new weapon is introduced to your arsenal to even the odds, too. I won’t spoil what it is here, but it’s a highly enjoyable and delightfully powerful addition that I quickly became reliant on in later battles.

It’s joined by fresh abilities added to the skill tree, some of which are fantastically effective and – crucially – fun to use. The grapple critical strike solves the formerly lingering problem of dispatching downed-but-distant enemies, and one of the new Valor Surge ultimate abilities causes gleeful chaos by sending surrounding machines into a berserker mode that forces them into a frenzy against one another.

The depiction of the city itself is stunning and further reinforces Forbidden West as one of the very best-looking games out there. Some landmarks still stand, such as the crumbling husk of the Capitol Records Building where the only music being made these days is a clanging mashup of metal and electronic as machines whirr and crackle.

The new surroundings aren’t just lovely to look at but supply fun new gameplay quirks too. Fizzing geysers offer the chance to glide high into the air, making for an effective option in combat as you swoop over unsuspecting threats. Ballistas are used for their puzzle-solving abilities as much as their destructive ones as you create new paths in cliffs with their bolts. It’s this smart deployment of equipment with multiple varying uses that serves as a further display of the clever level design (ending aside) on display here.

The majority of the fights are a thrill, which makes it a deflating anticlimax when, in its big moments, Burning Shores falls a bit flat. An arrow-sponge boss battle midway through its five-hour story is a particular annoyance, for example. Then there’s the huge-scale final encounter, where the clunky action just can’t match the spectacle as you’re bounced around the arena like a ragdoll while trying to find damage-dealing windows. A stuttering sin when compared to Horizon’s trademark fluid combat, it’s a disappointing finale that feels at odds with most of Burning Shores’ runtime. This is a fun adventure that ends with a clumsy thud both mechanically and in the story, which does fall foul of some of Horizon’s sci-fi trappings.

However, it never forgets to focus on the humanity of the situation, further fleshing out Aloy as an endearing and relatable character. The advancement of her character arc comes primarily thanks to the introduction of Seyka – someone similarly insular to Aloy – and the duo helps each other unlock themselves. Seyka proves a valuable companion not only in combat, but also by easing the plot burden from Aloy – crucially giving her someone to talk with and, mercifully, less time telling you about what she’s putting in her stash. The returning Ashly Burch is as good as ever as Aloy, but special mention has to go out to Kylie Liya Page as Seyka, who does a fantastic job at creating an engaging and believable three-dimensional character in a relatively short amount of time.

There are some great scenes between the two scattered throughout, both quiet and loud, with some highlights once again being when Horizon turns its lens towards our history through its old-world architecture. One area in particular is a delight as the amusement park-like veins that run through LA are re-exposed hundreds of years later.

The two lead characters are cut from the same cloth – both outsiders who’ve learned to be part of a bigger whole – leading to a fun dynamic between the pair as they navigate the Burning Shores together. If Forbidden West was all about Aloy learning to work with others, then Burning Shores feasts on the fruits of those efforts thanks to her competitive, but gradually softening dynamic with Seyka. There will no doubt be discussions surrounding how their chapter together ends, but I felt it was largely in keeping with what we’ve learned about Aloy as a character over the series, even if this particular finish line does seem to have been rushed toward ever so slightly.

Burning Shores is essentially one long side quest, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as similar diversions were some of Forbidden West’s high points, but sometimes it does struggle to balance character development with feeling like a worthy bridge to the inevitable sequel. It does play stage for a new BioShock-flavoured villain who is a mustache-twiddle away from a cliché, and they don’t really get enough screen time to come across as too significant a threat, but do manage to leave a charismatic mark on the story, nonetheless. Despite the villain’s slight impact, Burning Shores does ultimately feel like an essential chapter of Aloy’s story, just not necessarily one to the world of Horizon as a whole.

Of course, there are side quests within this side quest, too. Each is often tied to personal stories of intrigue or anguish delivered by the once again solid supporting cast. As with the main game, there is a welcome amount of depth to be found in these with the character and costume design on show is once again best-in-class, with no detail spared.