Chucklefish would like to invite Xbox Insiders to join the Starbound Demo, starting today Wednesday 28th August – Wednesday 4th September! The playtest will be available to both Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S players in all regions, but space is limited so users will be accepted on a first come, first served basis!
What is Starbound?
Starbound, a sci-fi sandbox adventure, available for the first time on console!
You’ve fled your home, only to find yourself lost in space with a damaged ship. Your only option is to beam down to the planet below and gather the resources you need to repair your ship and set off to explore the vast, infinite universe…
In Starbound, you create your own story – there’s no wrong way to play! You may decide to save the universe from the forces that destroyed your home, uncovering greater galactic mysteries in the process, or you may wish to forego a heroic journey entirely in favor of colonizing uncharted planets. The choice is yours! To find out more about Starbound, check out the official website.
Playtest Times:
Start: Wednesday 28th August, 15:00 PM BST (07:00 AM PDT)
End: Wednesday 4th September, 15:00 PM BST (07:00 AM PDT)
How to Participate:
Sign-in on your Xbox console and launch the Xbox Insider Hub app (or install the Xbox Insider Hub from the Store first if necessary)
Naviagte to Previews and select the Starbound Demo from the list
Select Join
Wait for the registration to complete and you will be directed the the Store to install the Starbound Demo
Note: This is a limited size playtest, offered on a first-come first-serve basis.
Note: This playtest is available to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S users.
How to Provide Feedback:
If you experience any issues while playing the Starbound Closed Beta, don’t forget to use “Report a problem” so we can investigate:
Hold down the home button on your Xbox controller.
Select Report a problem.
Select the Games category and Starbound Demo subcategory.
Fill out the form with the appropriate details to help our investigation.
For more information: follow us on X/Twitter at @XboxInsider and this blog for announcements and more. And feel free to interact with the community on the Xbox Insider SubReddit.
Take flight into the wizarding world when Quidditch Champions launches September 3, making its debut as part of September’s PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup. That same day*, all PlayStation Plus members** can also enjoy the thrills of making themselves a sporting legend on the diamond with MLB The Show 24, or attempt to survive a horror-themed adventure with Little Nightmares II.
Let’s take a closer look at each.
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Quidditch Champions* | PS4, PS5
Immerse yourself in the enchanting world of Quidditch by playing solo or sharing the magic with friends and family.
Live your Quidditch fantasy: take to the sky as one of the classic positions – Chaser, Seeker, Keeper or Beater – each with their own unique play style. Soar into legendary Quidditch arenas and new maps that showcase never-before-seen areas of the wizarding world. Take on Career Mode to progress from backyard battles in the Weasley Burrow to high-stakes showdowns at the Quidditch World Cup. Rise to become a champion either solo or in online co-op with teams of up to three friends, and launch into exhibition matches where you’ll set your teams, map and difficulty and play alone or on teams of up to three in online co-op. Or select player vs player to test your skills in competitive online matches against other Quidditch teams.
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MLB The Show 24 | PS4, PS5
Swing for the fences, experience game-deciding moments, become a legend and live out your baseball dreams. Set out on the road to baseball greatness – whatever it is you want to achieve, MLB The Show 24 has got you covered.
Earn your call up from the minors to the big leagues and prove you’ve got what it takes at the top. Learn about known and unsung legends of the sport and take inspiration from their heroics. Hold your nerve when it matters and earn the right to be called World Series champions. Chalk up the wins, pick yourself up after the losses. Whatever happens, know you left nothing in the dugout. Everyone has a moment to own. Everyone has a story to tell. Unlock your moment. Own The Show.
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Little Nightmares II | PS4, PS5
Discover the sinister secrets of The Signal Tower in this horror-themed platform adventure where you control Mono, a young boy trapped in a distorted and broken world. Joined by Six, the raincoat wearing hero from the original Little Nightmares, only you can help her from fading away into nothingness. As the relationship between Mono and Six grows, the duo must work together using a combination of stealth and an array of items to overcome tricky puzzles and horrifying enemies. Muster your courage and begin your journey in the face of terrible threats in a mission to stop the source of evil that’s spreading throughout the land.
Download the image
Last chance to download August’s games
PlayStation Plus members have until September 2 to add LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, FNAF Security Breach and Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights to their game libraries.
*All three games will be available to PlayStation Plus members on September 3 until September 30.
**PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup may differ in certain regions. Please check the PlayStation Store on launch day for your region’s lineup.
Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus monthly games for September 2024, all playable for subscribers from September 3.
As revealed in a post on PlayStation Blog, the headline addition is Harry Potter game Quidditch Champions (PS4, PS5), which makes its debut as part of September’s PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup.
Live your Quidditch fantasy: take to the sky as one of the classic positions – Chaser, Seeker, Keeper or Beater – each with their own unique play style. Soar into legendary Quidditch arenas and new maps that showcase never-before-seen areas of the wizarding world. Take on Career Mode to progress from backyard battles in the Weasley Burrow to high-stakes showdowns at the Quidditch World Cup. Rise to become a champion either solo or in online co-op with teams of up to three friends, and launch into exhibition matches where you’ll set your teams, map and difficulty and play alone or on teams of up to three in online co-op. Or select player vs player to test your skills in competitive online matches against other Quidditch teams.
MLB The Show 24 (PS4, PS5), meanwhile, also joins September’s PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup. IGN’s MLB The Show 24 review returned an 8/10. We said: “MLB The Show 24 continues to push the genre forward – not every choice is a homerun, but it has enough hits for another all-star appearance.”
Swing for the fences, experience game-deciding moments, become a legend and live out your baseball dreams. Set out on the road to baseball greatness – whatever it is you want to achieve, MLB The Show 24 has got you covered.
Earn your call up from the minors to the big leagues and prove you’ve got what it takes at the top. Learn about known and unsung legends of the sport and take inspiration from their heroics. Hold your nerve when it matters and earn the right to be called World Series champions. Chalk up the wins, pick yourself up after the losses. Whatever happens, know you left nothing in the dugout. Everyone has a moment to own. Everyone has a story to tell. Unlock your moment. Own The Show.
And rounding out the month is Tarsier Studios’ horror adventure Little Nightmares 2 (PS4, PS5). IGN’s Little Nightmares 2 review returned a 7/10. We said: “Little Nightmares 2 delivers similar stealth and scares to the original, but leaves less of a lasting impact.”
Discover the sinister secrets of The Signal Tower in this horror-themed platform adventure where you control Mono, a young boy trapped in a distorted and broken world. Joined by Six, the raincoat wearing hero from the original Little Nightmares, only you can help her from fading away into nothingness. As the relationship between Mono and Six grows, the duo must work together using a combination of stealth and an array of items to overcome tricky puzzles and horrifying enemies. Muster your courage and begin your journey in the face of terrible threats in a mission to stop the source of evil that’s spreading throughout the land.
With news of September’s games comes warning of the last chance to download August’s games. PlayStation Plus members have until September 2 to add LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, FNAF Security Breach and Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights to their game libraries.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Crash Bandicoot, a character owned by Xbox subsidiary Activision Blizzard, shows up in upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive Astro Bot.
VGC spotted a reference to the beloved bandicoot in a PlayStation Blog post discussing character designs in Astro Bot, confirming Crash would appear as a cameo character in the reference-heavy platformer. Astro meets characters wearing costumes from games like God of War and Horizon, for example, and Crash Bandicoot is also on the list.
“With all of these characters, the eyes are paramount,” said Astro Bot director Nicolas Doucet “Sometimes LED eyes just didn’t work on certain characters because the original design relies so much on the pupils being a certain size or color for instance. So for more cartoony VIPs like Crash Bandicoot or from Ape Escape, the Bots are wearing a mask to help bridge that problem.”
Crash Bandicoot debuted as an original PlayStation game from The Last of Us and Uncharted developer Naughty Dog but, while those two franchises are still firmly in camp PlayStation, Crash has found himself on the opposite side of the console war.
It obviously still has roots in PlayStation though, and is still associated with the brand given Crash Bandicoot’s prominence in the early PlayStation days.
Every now and then I reflect on the statistically determined average age of a Gamer – what is it now, 36, 37? Please let it still be under 40 – and realise with alarm that, by extrapolation, a lot of the people reading this probably have children. Augh, children! Please excuse me while I go stand on a chair, clutching a broom. I’ve never understood the craze for generating smaller versions of yourself. It’s one of those weirder subcultures you read about in the papers, but rarely observe in daily life.
I do, however, understand the appeal of same-screen co-op games like Run From Mummies – which, being a bloodless comedy dungeon romp, seems like a fair pick for those encumbered with boisterous selfspawn. Don’t worry, the “mummies” of the title are just regular old disembowelled corpses wrapped in cloth, not those sinister, non-embalmed “mothers” you’ve been hearing about down the grocers.
Sometimes you forget to build a graveyard. It happens. When ten citizens dropped dead on the roads of one of my settlements in post-apocalyptic city builder Endzone 2, I had to work fast to avoid a sickness breaking out. But graveyards require a lot of space, and if you’ve already filled your shanty town with a sea of corrugated metal roofs, this poses a problem. Welcome to the pleasant headache of town planning in a post-nuclear world, where most of the land is brown and uninhabitable.
Has there ever been a horror movie that’s used elevator music successfully as its entire soundtrack? We mean a reasonably good one. Any suggestions? It almost seems there may be something tonally mismatched about the idea — unless you’re going for comedy — and, honestly, when playing Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, it’s sometimes tough to know whether it’s horror or humour we’re supposed to be enjoying. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
This brand new entry in the Famicom Detective Club adventure series has managed to arrive to quite a bit more fanfare and interest than would usually be reserved for an entry in a visual novel franchise that, whilst perfectly fine, has never really set the gaming world alight. Old has-beens (like this writer) sampled Tantei Club Part II via fan translation and enjoyed it for what it was, but whilst the 2021 remakes are nice to have, it’s hard to say they are absolute must-plays, even whilst recognising their importance in terms of influencing the likes of Ace Attorney.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33was revealed for the first time at Xbox Games Showcase, and wowed an unsuspecting audience with its mix of stunning visuals and RPG combat, set within a truly unique fantasy world inspired by the French Belle Époque. It’s all the more impressive for being the debut game from Sandfall Interactive, telling the story of a world in which the ominous Paintress regularly condemns everyone of a set age to death – and the group of adventurers who set out to put an end to the cycle.
That reveal was a tease for what’s to come – and in a walkthrough at gamescom 2024, I got a far more in-depth look at the game. Watching a party helmed by Gustave, a character we met in the reveal trailer, I saw two areas from the game: a fantastical underwater realm called Flying Waters (with gorgeous, shifting lighting and enormous coral reefs) and a glimpse of Ancient Sanctuary, covered in blood red vegetation and dotted with imposing structures on the horizon.
But perhaps the most detailed part of the walkthrough focused on combat, a mixture of classic turn-based systems accented with real-time inputs. Clearly inspired by the Persona series, and with flashes of recent Final Fantasy titles, it’s immediately striking in how it turns what could be familiar, simplistic systems into something deeply stylish and gratifyingly reactive.
Here’s a rundown of how it all works:
Exploration and Pre-Battle
Areas in Expedition 33 are freely explorable – you control a single character (it’s your choice who from your party that will be) as they navigate locations, finding treasures, secrets, and points of interest. Enemies roam these areas, and interacting with them kicks off an instance of battle – but you have the opportunity to strike them before they strike you, offering a turn advantage as the battle begins.
Your Turn
When in a battle, you and your enemies’ turn order is displayed prominently at all times, allowing you to prepare for battle accordingly. When one of your characters’ turns arrives, you’ll be presented with a slick menu, offering the ability to attack, use items, use skills, or enter a free-aim mode (more on that below).
Your skills are the key point of difference between characters, offering special physical attacks, elemental abilities, stat buffs and debuffs, and more. Key to all your skills is timing – each attack comes with an onscreen prompt, asking you to hit a button at the correct time to make the skill more powerful or add additional beneficial effects.
Each character also has a wholly unique ability that changes how they play. Gustave has a mechanical arm that is charged by other abilities, and does huge damage when unleashed. Lune can create “elemental stains” that are created by casting spells and can be consumed to unleash extra effects, while Maelle can seemingly take up different swordfighting stances to allow for a range of different abilities and stat changes.
Free-Aim Abilities
As mentioned above, you can start your turn with a free-aim ability that acts slightly differently to other options. Your character will use a pistol or magic, and you physically aim them at your enemies, adding extra damage. This can come with some added benefits – in the example I saw, an enemy called a Demineur was attached to a floating sea mine, which could be shot and detonated with Gustave’s gun. This dealt damage to all the enemies, rather than just one, and made the evasive Demineur vulnerable to follow-up physical strikes.
Enemy Turns
You can’t take your eye off the ball during enemy turns, either. Expedition 33 has a neat risk-reward system for enemy attacks – many attacks can be dodged or parried with well-timed button presses, but which you choose can determine how well you succeed. A successful dodge has a longer input window, and will negate all damage you receive. Parries, however, are harder to pull off – but manage them successfully and you can perform massive counterattacks as well as avoiding the damage. Neither is designed to be easy to pull off, but there’s a clear indication about how you should prioritize which to use during tougher bouts.
Boss Battles
I only saw sections of a single boss battle – against a gigantic monster called Goblu – but it’s clear that Expedition 33 will add more to think about in its signature fights. Goblu can attack all your party members at once, making dodges and parries more important than ever – and of course comes with an enormous health bar that means your choices are more important than ever.
Post-Battle
While I only saw a glimpse of its skill trees, Expedition 33’s battles end with the loot and XP rewards you’d expect – as well as more in-depth stats like the highest damage you did, the number of successful parries and dodges, and more. You can even get a bonus for taking no damage at all within a fight, teasing the possibility of doing a challenging no-hit run of the game for die-hard players. How all of this ties into your party’s progression is still a mystery, and I look forward to seeing more.
Even in a short look at the game’s combat, it’s clear that Expedition 33’s combat is as flashy and in-depth as you’d hope for from that first look – and a tease of the areas and enemies we’re still yet to see promises that there’s so much more to find out.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes to Xbox Series X|S in 2025, and you’ll be able to play on day one with Game Pass.
Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number. And everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she’ll wake and paint “33.” And tomorrow we depart on our final mission – Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again. We are Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a ground-breaking turn-based RPG with unique real-time mechanics, making battles more immersive and addictive than ever. Explore a fantasy world inspired by Belle Époque France in which you battle devastating enemies.
Reactive Turn-based Combat
In this evolution of JRPGs, real-time actions enhance the heart of turn-based combat. Craft unique builds for your Expeditioners that fit your playstyle via gear, stats, skills, and character synergies. Open an active dimension in combat – dodge, parry, and counter in real time, chain combos by mastering attack rhythms, and target enemy weak points using a free aim system.
“Tomorrow Comes”
With only one year left to live, join Gustave, Maelle, and their fellow Expeditioners as they embark upon a desperate quest to break the Paintress’ cycle of death. Follow the trail of previous expeditions and discover their fate. Get to know the members of Expedition 33 as they learn to work together against impossible odds.
A Hauntingly Beautiful World
Explore an enchanting realm populated by surreal adversaries. Wander through breathtaking landscapes, from the Island of Visages to the Forgotten Battlefield, discovering secrets and hidden quests along the way. Find allies of fortune in creatures of legend and recruit special companions, access new travel methods and discover secret areas in the World Map.
Experience the debut game from Sandfall Interactive, fully realized in Unreal Engine 5 with stunning graphics and a heartbreaking soundtrack.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG incorporating real-time elements, focusing on a unique journey to stop The Paintress from ever painting death again. In this early preview of the game’s initial stages, PlayStation fans will get a first look at gameplay in Flying Waters, a mysterious region where Gustave and Lune search for their missing companion, Maelle.
Each environment within Expedition 33 offers something distinctive. Flying Waters, for example, defies conventional physics, presenting a setting that is both underwater and not. This surrealistic approach is central to the game’s design, aiming to immerse you in a world where the impossible becomes possible. Inspirations from surrealist art are woven throughout, creating a striking experience that constantly keeps you on the edge of discovery.
In Flying Waters, you will navigate environments filled with remnants from past expeditions, such as destroyed structures, worn paths, and other telltale signs of previous groups that met untimely ends. Expedition 68 perished here, and by closely examining the area, you can piece together how they met their tragic end.
Making these environments fun to explore was something key for us. So, we built them to be nonlinear, with a layer of verticality and full of mysteries and secrets. There are multiple tools at your disposal to reach every hidden area: a grapple, climbing hooks left by previous expeditions, ropes… Exploring a level fully will always be very rewarding and you may find secret bosses, items or even entire secret levels by being meticulous in your exploration.
Combat in Expedition 33 blends traditional turn-based mechanics with reactive real-time elements. During battles, timing is key—whether initiating attacks or defending against incoming strikes. The battle system requires quick reflexes and strategic thinking. While commands are inputted in a turn-based format allowing you to take as much time as you need to establish your strategies, you must also react swiftly during enemy attacks to defend effectively.
Basic attacks in the game deal minimal damage, so you must rely on skills and special abilities to topple powerful enemies. Many skills come with timed commands that enhance damage or provide other bonuses. As battles progress, you will see the turn order displayed on the left side of the screen, giving you a clear understanding of when to expect attacks and when to prepare your counters. You will be able to dodge using Circle and parry with R1. Dodging allows for a larger timing window, letting you evade attacks completely, while parrying demands more precise timing. A perfectly executed parry not only negates damage but can also trigger a powerful counterattack if the entire combo of an enemy is parried. And yes, this means that in theory, you can beat any enemy of the game at level 1. Good luck with that.
Each party member in Expedition 33 has their own unique playstyle, featuring abilities that can change how you approach combat. Gustave can charge his mechanical arm, building up his Overcharge to unleash a devastating special move. The longer the charge, the more spectacular and damaging the resulting attack. Lune, on the other hand, can infuse skills with elemental affinities using her ability called Stains, enabling you to exploit enemy weaknesses with devastating effects!
In battle you can also use the Free Aim system to shoot at an enemy’s weak points. The Demineur, for example, is accompanied by floating sea mines, and targeting and detonating these before you approach them will cause a chain reaction.
After battle, you can level up and allocate points to various stats and customize each character’s build. Skill Points earned in battles can be spent unlocking new abilities in each character’s unique skill tree, allowing for further specialization and strategy customization. We also have other progression systems that allow you to make really crazy builds that we can’t wait to reveal in future updates.
Bosses in Expedition 33 are powerful and usually have an element that adds to their strength in combat. Goblu is surrounded by flowers that grant it potent buffs, which can quickly turn the tide against the party. In these cases, the free-aim system becomes crucial, allowing you to target and disable these flowers, weakening Goblu and shifting the battle in your favor. Identifying and exploiting these unique boss mechanics will be vital to your victory.
This preview has offered just a glimpse into the world of Expedition 33, and we’re excited to share even more in the future. Our team is small and incredibly passionate about games in this genre, and we are dedicated to creating an experience that both honors classic RPGs and pushes boundaries in new ways that haven’t quite been done before. Our dream is to make a game that will profoundly touch players as much as the classics impacted our lives. And hey, even if we fail, we lay the trail for those who come after, right?
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launches on PS5 in 2025 – Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
While the entire collection will no doubt excite Metal Gear fans, it’s the inclusion of Metal Gear Solid 4 that’s of most interest. Kojima Productions’ 2008 action-adventure stealth video game has been shackled to the PlayStation 3 since launch, and with Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2. expected to launch on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch, an army of newcomers are set to experience Guns of the Patriots for the first time.
Now, in a recent interview with IGN to discuss the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Konami producer Noriaki Okamura teased Vol. 2 and its inclusion of Metal Gear Solid 4.
Asked directly about bringing Metal Gear Solid 4 to modern consoles, Okamura replied:
“We definitely are aware of this situation with MGS4. Unfortunately we can’t really say too much at the moment with Vol. 1 containing MGS 1-3 dot dot dot… you can probably connect the dots!
“Right now we still are internally concerned about what we should be doing for the future of the series. So sorry, we can’t really reveal anything at the moment. But stay tuned!”
While we wait for the inevitable Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 announcement, check out IGN’s Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater preview. It’s due out on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam later in 2024.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
