A full-on remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 was “technically on the road map” to follow the original Knights of the Old Republic remake which has been in development for the past few years. Well, that’s at least the plan LucasFilm Games and co had as of March this year, with the KOTOR 2 remake’s current status looking to be up in the air.
Sorry, puzzle geeks. Don’t expect a Blue Prince 2 any time soon. Or, ever, really.
That’s what we learned from speaking with Blue Prince creator Tonda Ros last month. We asked him loads of questions and you can read our full interview right here, but one big mystery we wanted to clear up was if he’d ever make a sequel to Blue Prince. And, no, he won’t. No sequel to Blue Prince, nor to any other game he makes in the future.
But he is going to make something else.
“I can say I will never make a sequel to my work because I love creating something standalone and then going on to something completely different,” he said. “It will likely not even be in the same exact genres. I will probably be mixing it up. You’ll start to see overlap. You’ll start to see overlaps with some of my interests. So it will be familiar, and hopefully I’ll inadvertently have things that really worked with Blue Prince that I’ll carry on in terms of at least technicals. But yeah, we’ll see. I’m hesitant to do another 3D game because for my first game, 3D was so difficult. I really wish I did a 2D game. I probably could have done it in five years instead of eight. But yeah, I think it’ll be something totally different.”
This might be disappointing to hear for Blue Prince fans, especially for those still mulling over the game’s remaining unsolved mysteries and wishing there was some sort of answer to them. It also sounds like, from our interview, he won’t be doing any more major content updates to Blue Prince after the upcoming so-called “final update.” “I do love complete games,” he said. “And I do love when something is definitively done. So I had tried my best to get everything into the game at launch because that was something I just really wanted. I didn’t want to eternally be updating this.”
Whatever it is Ros is working on next, it will be a while before we see it. He says he still expects to be working on Blue Prince in small ways for the next year, finishing the final update, bug fixes, and such. And given that Blue Prince took about eight years to create, he’ll need a lot more time on top of that to create something brand new. At least Blue Prince fans have already completed a serious exercise in patience by finishing the game at all.
You can read our full interview with Ros here, and check out our review where we gave Blue Prince a 9/10. As our reviewer wrote: “If The Witness, Portal, and Myst are already emblazoned on the Mount Rushmore of first-person puzzle games, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Blue Prince carved alongside them soon enough.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
“This is one you won’t want to miss”.
The Game Awards is taking place later this week, and ahead of the big industry event, Lara Croft’s return has been teased.
As highlighted by the show’s creator and host Geoff Keighley and the official Tomb Raider social media account, fans of Lara will be able to tune into the event to find out about the “future” of this iconic video game character. No other details have been shared just yet, but Geoff says it’s a reveal “you won’t want to miss”.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
There are a lot of skateboarding games, and I feel like I’ve played most of them. Some of them are majestic. Some are not. The Simpsons Skateboarding was the absolute pits. Tony Hawk: Ride was tortuous pain. This year’s Skate is a microtransaction hellscape.
Enter Skate Story. Like those latter examples, it too is a trip to skateboarding hell and a study in pain. In this case, however, that’s actually the whole point of this extremely peculiar journey through perdition on a piece of 7-ply. I wasn’t always aboard for the sheer and utter weirdness of Skate Story’s broader adventure, but there’s no doubt developer Sam Eng has successfully married it to a robust and approachable set of skate mechanics – and it certainly makes for a memorable skateboarding game like no other I’ve ever played.
Skate Story is a slightly tricky game to describe, if only because attempting to even discuss the plot sounds a little like you’re making it up on the spot. The deal is you’re a demon made out of glass and pain, marooned in Hell. It’s referred to as The Underworld, more specifically – but the Devil is here, either way. I know this because I have his pants.
From the Devil comes a deal. That is, you can be free on one condition: you find a way to flip, grind, and manual your way to the moon – and eat it. For some reason.
Are you still following? Because I haven’t even got to the frog barista yet. Or the subway train with legs.
I’m hesitant to say much else lest I spoil any of the particularly quirky developments along the way, so just be aware Skate Story is an incredibly weird trip through a bizarre underworld. To be candid, this isn’t really the kind of thing I’d typically seek out. That is, the stories I like normally feature big guys causing problems in small towns, assassins with grudges, or pictures of fighter planes on the cover. That is, I’m more David Leitch than David Lynch, if that makes sense. Skate Story did largely win me over, though. There were definitely moments I found myself getting a little numb to the weirdness, on account of just how offbeat it sometimes gets, but overall I admire the commitment to its surrealistic vision.
Its story is told via text that you can read through at your own pace. There’s no voice acting or voiceover – and there’s an argument to be mounted that it might’ve gained a bit of gravity from some kind of baritone narration à la The Stanley Parable or Bastion – but Skate Story’s finely honed soundtrack means there’s still plenty to listen to. Assembled by New Jersey band Blood Cultures, the music is a generous mix of the group’s experimental, electro-pop sound, and it ranges in tempo and intensity as the locations and pace of the levels vary. This sort of music is also comfortably out of my usual wheelhouse, but nonetheless I found it extremely evocative and catchy, and it suits Skate Story to a T. It fabulously complements The Underworld’s abstract environments, and the atmosphere of its eternal night backdrop.
Don’t be fooled by Skate Story’s grainy, low-fi look, either; this is one of the most eye-catching and imaginative-looking games I’ve played in recent memory. Its psychedelic vision for a neon underworld blends jagged forests of spikes with broken slabs of ancient architecture, and twisted blocks of New York City with carpets of stars. Watching this wild world refract through a sneaker-clad demon made entirely of glass is certainly something.
The controls are not immediately intuitive, because they’re noticeably different from the approach taken by the sorts of dedicated sports-oriented skating games a lot of us are familiar with. That is, Skate Story doesn’t have tricks mapped to flicking an analogue stick around like the Skate series (or both analogue sticks, as in the case of something like Session). It’s more in line with playing something like Tony Hawk, only imagine someone remapped all the buttons.
Basic tricks are activated by a combination of either a shoulder button or trigger plus a face button, and grinds occur when you pop and land suitably on a rail or ledge. A variety of other, progressively more complex tricks are rationed out and taught to us as the story unfolds over its roughly six-hour duration. It’s not a revolutionary approach, sure, but it’s a smart one since having us always picking up new tricks keeps things fresh throughout. There was a moderate learning curve as I sought to archive decades of THPS muscle memory in order to learn Skate Story’s own specific trick system – but it didn’t take too long to come to grips with.
It’s all very grounded and weighty, which I like, and the tricks look great in motion with the low slung camera that tumbles to the ground like a physical object each time you bail and shatter to bits. I love how the powerslides feel, and I love the slow motion enders we’re rewarded with for our successes. When it comes to vibes, Skate Story nails the landing.
There’s a timing mechanism for executing tricks that results in different pop heights, which is illustrated by an on-screen doodle (a different shape for each trick). Depending on the speed of your skater, a marker will trace the doodle slowly or quickly – and there’s a sweet spot for getting max altitude – but I have to admit I generally paid little attention to it. On default settings, Skate Story never demanded a fastidious level of timing finesse to get through its levels and defeat bosses. This suits me just fine, but the fact that you can just essentially spam your way through a lot of the most frantic-looking segments may come across as a little trivial to anyone looking for a stiffer challenge.
Boss battles are handled in an interesting way, and to win these encounters you need to build up combos and “stomp” them down inside a marked zone. They can be cleared with a bit of mild button-mashing, but there’s certainly room to be much more deliberate about your trick selection and timing if you choose to (and you will, admittedly, accumulate better combos and deal more damage – and faster – if you do). There are also a number of small and trippy sandbox-style levels to cruise around with various objectives to complete, but some of these tasks do get disappointingly trivial. For instance, one mission that called on me to gather up a selection of floating letters sounded like a cute nod to Skate Story’s ancestors – but most of them were just hovering at ground level, turning what could’ve been a brief but fun challenge into a basic fetch quest across the map and back.
My favourite parts of Skate Story, however, were the speed segments, where you must hustle from your spawn point to an ethereal exit door – like some kind of haunted hill bomb. The music ramps up for these high-speed bursts, and I like the fast-paced trial-and-error nature of them as your fragile demon smashes to shards and you instantly get another crack. I always felt a little pang of regret when I reached the end of these runs, and I wish there were a few more of them.
Welcome back, Yoshi’s Crafted World!
Following on from a sample of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond‘s soundtrack last week, Nintendo Music has now followed this up with the 2019 Switch title Yoshi’s Crafted World.
This follows on from other Yoshi-themed albums like Yoshi’s Story from the N64 era and Yoshi’s Island on the Super Nintendo. This latest soundtrack update contains 53 tracks and has a runtime of 1 hour and 11 minutes.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Download it now!
Nintendo’s been busy getting in its final updates of 2025, and alongside a system update for the Switch 2 and Switch this week, it’s also put out a new update for its battle royale racer F-Zero 99.
According to the official patch notes, this includes “new additions”, various adjustments and changes, as well as the usual fixes. Some of these new additions includes “new secret tracks” and a music player has also been added to the title.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The post Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is Available Now for the PlayStation 5 appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed us by, but thankfully there are still plenty of toys and gifts getting discounts before Christmas. If you’re looking for an awesome Hot Wheels set to buy for a kid (or yourself), the Hot Wheels version of Bowser’s Castle has just dropped to its lowest price ever on Amazon. It includes Bullet Bill a massive loop, and storage for up to 38 vehicles.
As someone who has logged a lot of Mario Kart hours, I can honestly say this thing looks pretty fun to play with. My own son isn’t quite old enough to start messing around with Hot Wheels stuff, but my nephew would go crazy for this thing. He probably wouldn’t care at all that it’s Mario Kart-themed, but he would be smacking that launcher like nobody’s business.
At $41.99, this is the lowest price we’ve ever seen it go for on Amazon. It’s worth noting, however, that it only comes with one Hot Wheels car. You’ll get a 1:64 scale die-cast Kamek in a classic Kart. So if you want to build a larger collection of Mario Kart characters, you’ll need to buy the separate Hot Wheels packs for buy them individually. I’d recommend going with the four pack route, but it costs almost as much as the track itself.
The discount on the track itself is already pretty good, but it’s also included in Amazon’s latest promotion. For a limited time, you can save $25 when you spend $100 on a ton of different gifts included here. The list of toys, games, and other random gifts is pretty massive and there’s some surprisingly good stuff in here. You could easily spend $100 on Barbie dolls or board games, for example, and get the extra $25 off.
The promotion works similarly to the ‘3 for 2’ sales Amazon has run in the past. All you need to do is add $100 worth of eligible items to your cart all at once and the $25 discount will be automatically applied at checkout.
Jacob Kienlen is a Senior Audience Development Strategist and Writer for IGN. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he has considered the Northwest his home for his entire life. With a bachelor’s degree in communication and over 8 years of professional writing experience, his expertise is spread across a variety of different pop culture topics — from TV series to indie games and books.
I am sure the words “new” and “Ace Attorney game” have functioned as a sleeper agent’s activation words for some of you, and these are words that Capcom themselves have sort of put together, but let’s slow down before we get carried away. As spotted by Mega Man fansite Rockman Corner, Capcom have released their integrated report for 2025, which for the most part is boring, corporate nonsense. Here comes the but. But! It also appears to suggest that the developer is thinking about new ways it can further develop series like Ace Attorney, as well as Mega Man and Devil May Cry.
Following the cancelation of Perfect Dark and the dissolution of its dedicated studio, The Initiative, two of the project’s leads have found a new home at Take-Two Interactive, and more specifically at 2K.
As reported by Jason Schreier on Bluesky, Perfect Dark studio head Darrell Gallagher and director Brian Horton have been hired at 2K to start a brand new studio. No details have yet emerged as to what the new studio will work on, or if any other former Perfect Dark employees joined them.
When asked, a 2K spokesperson provided the following confirmation of the hire:
With a combined six decades of AAA game-making experience across franchises like Tomb Raider, Call of Duty, Destiny, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Hitman, Deus Ex, and more, we’re thrilled to confirm Darrell Gallagher and Brian Horton have joined 2K for their next all-new venture. We don’t have additional details to share at this time, but look forward to sharing updates on their work in the future.
This comes after the cancelation of Perfect Dark by Xbox earlier this year as part of a larger wave of devastating layoffs. The project had previously been a troubled one, with multiple studios being brought into help and a number of internal revisions as studio leads tried to figure out what the game should be.
While The Initiative was closed down upon the game’s cancelation, Crystal Dynamics had also been working on the project. Per Schreier’s reporting and corroborated by IGN’s own sources, leadership from both studio sides of the project spent two months after its cancelation shopping it around to publishers in an effort to save it. Take-Two Interactive allegedly was one of the interested parties, but the deal fell through, and Crystal Dynamics underwent layoffs (it’s second round of three this year).
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
