Author: Game Infliction

Zero Orders Tactics is a clever turn-based god sim with a touch of From Dust

Classic god sims like Populous and Black & White teach that deities love to reach their horrible holy hands into our world and mess with us directly. They teach us to see 1-1 divine intervention in every random house fire and every lightning bolt that miraculously strikes our enemies. By contrast, the forthcoming Zero Orders Tactics teaches that god prefers to operate via covert means, because after all, personally lobbing some electricity at somebody would be inelegant. It’s far more graceful to trap them behind a mountain, instead.

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Score Sonic X Shadow Generations for $39.99 Right Now at Woot

Sonic fans are in for a real treat, as Sonic X Shadow Generations already has a nice little discount at Woot (see here). Normally this game is listed for $49.99, but it’s currently down to $39.99 so you can save $10 on it. Keep in mind though that this version is probably not the North American version with ESRB rating, but it’ll play just fine on your Switch since the plarform is region-free.

Sonic X Shadow Generations for $39.99

This title comes with a remaster of Sonic Generations and a new campaign for Shadow. Its part of Woot’s ‘Fall In Love With Video Games’ sale event and likely won’t be around for long, so if you’ve been hoping to add it to your collection, now’s a great time.

In our glowing 9/10 review of Sonic X Shadow Generations, IGN’s Jada Griffin said that it “takes an already excellent game and spring jumps it to new heights at a blistering pace by doubling up the campaign length with creative level design, fantastic bosses, plenty of collectibles, and an appreciable graphical upgrade.” It’s a game that “hopefully will be the gold standard Sega holds itself to when it decides to bring back other Sonic games from the past.”

If you’re looking for even more Nintendo Switch games on sale, you’re in luck. We’ve got plenty more to check out in our roundup of the best Nintendo Switch deals. This includes discounts on even more recent releases like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, also at Woot.

And with big sale events like Black Friday coming up soon, there are going to be even more game deals popping up over the next few weeks. Some retailers are kicking off their sales sooner than you think as well, like Walmart, so you can get a head-start on tracking down different deals.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.

Ritual Tides Announced for PC, With Console Versions to Follow

Introducing Ritual Tides, the first game from Vertpaint Studios, a new developer made up of industry veterans who’ve worked at Rockstar, TT Games, and more. Ritual Tides is a horror game in which players find themselves washed ashore on an island beach with just one goal: uncovering the island’s terrifying secrets. Ritual Tides is due out in Q3 2025 for PC, with console versions to follow later.

“The team also promises to set the visual quality bar for 2025, giving Ritual Tides players a near photo realistic immersive story to unfold,” according to the press release. Watch the first teaser trailer above and check out the first pieces of concept art in the gallery below.

Gameplay details are still a mystery for now, but the developers hint that “gruesomely designed enemies lurk, danger lies around every corner, and you best hide, or run. Ritual Tides presents a ‘gun’, but not in a typical fashion, candidly setting it apart from other games within this space.”

Stay tuned for more on Ritual Tides as development progresses.

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.

We’ve temporarily closed comments for maintenance, but they’ll be back

Hark! Comments have been temporarily turned off on Rock Paper Shotgun. We and all of our sibling websites are moving to a new commenting platform and the existing comments need to be ported across. This process will take some time – days, perhaps – and we’ll update this post once it’s complete and commenting functionality has been restored.

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Switch Accessory Firm CRKD Is Launching A Rather Unsavoury ‘FOMO’ Scheme

Drop it like it’s hot.

Switch accessory manufacturer CRKD has announced that it has launched a new ‘Hot Drops’ scheme for its products, which is essentially a rather unsavoury way of instilling a sense of ‘FOMO’ in its potential customers.

In a nutshell, Hot Drop products are accessories that feature unique designs and exclusive colours and will be revealed on a weekly or bi-weekly basis in highly limited quantities. If customers miss their window of opportunity, CRKD states that the products “may appear later down the line or disappear, locked in the vault forever”.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Gets Nuketown This Week as Activision Reveals Season 1 Plans

Nuketown comes to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on November 1 ahead of Season 1 arriving on November 14, Activision has revealed.

A Call of Duty blog post outlined the wealth of updates planned over the next few weeks, beginning with the release of fan favorite multiplayer map Nuketown. This map is a recreation of the original Nuketown from the first Black Ops, meaning players can enjoy its 1950s motif and unabridged chaos.

“This remaster remains extremely faithful to the original design and layout of the map, even down to the precise placement of parked vehicles and other scenery harking back to the original three-lane design,” Activision said.

Two weeks later and the publisher promises a “massive content drop” in the form of Season 1. Little was said about the impending update but it will arrive for free in both Black Ops 6 and Warzone and add new maps, modes, and more.

“At the start of Season 1, deploy to the new Area 99 Resurgence map in the free to play Call of Duty: Warzone update,” Activision said.

“Also set in the Nevada desert, this top secret government site is just miles away from the original Nuketown location. See where it all began by exploring the mannequin assembly plant, the factory warehouse including pieces of the Nuketown homes in development, and much more, when Season 1 launches.”

Black Ops 6 is off to a strong start, outperforming both Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 on Steam in its opening weekend. Its launch is also special as it marks the first Call of Duty game to come to Xbox Game Pass on launch day. Analysts expected its release could boost the subscription service by up to four million new users, but at the cost of six million lost sales.

If you’re jumping into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer, check out our Essential Multiplayer Tips and Tricks to help you get started. We’ve also got a full weapons list (including the below ranking tool you can participate in), a guide to all multiplayer maps and game modes, and details on how to unlock all Black Ops 6 operators.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicle makes good on Ubisoft’s threat to coil out hot steaming NFT garbage straight into my innocent eyes

“Worthless,’ they’d declared. Most NFTs were ‘worthless.’ The greatest artistic movement since The Big BSoD, the greatest proof of the power of the blockchain, the very future of the whole funging Infobahn, and the hedgie soybean-counters say it’s all ‘worthless’,” once wrote the greatest living prophet of our era.

Now, in an entirely predictable case of “I am once again asking our tech overlords to watch the whole movie”, those plucky chancers at Ubisoft have lifted AliceO’s ideas wholesale, ignored her timely and cogent commentary, and released a roiling puke reservoir of NFT upchuck masquerading as a game. Thank you Ian Games for the spot. You are the Neal Stephenson to AliceO’s William Gibson, but for worthless crap. (The IGN piece has some very good context and is worth reading).

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Indiana Jones doesn’t “endorse” Nazis, Bethesda assures, just in case you were confused by him repeatedly murdering them

The line between escapist entertainment and Problematic fantasy can be thin, but I think Indiana Jones’s dislike for the German National Socialist Party of the 1930s and 1940s is fairly clearcut. “Nazis – I hate these guys!” he says in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Let’s play Devil’s Advocate and try to Lionel Hutz that quote: “Nazis? I hate these guys!” [pointing at some Communists]. Yeah, I’m not really feeling it.

I guess Indiana did sleep with a Nazi once, but only by accident, and yes he did once cosplay as an SS officer and get Hitler’s autograph, but again, only by accident. I think his political stance is abundantly obvious in Indiana Jones And The Great Circle – the new Wolfenslike from MachineGames, in which you will blast and bludgeon literally hundreds of Shitlerites in unambiguously one-sided first-person view. So it’s amusing, if not wholly unexpected, that MachineGames and Bethesda have slapped the game with an explicit disclaimer stating that the game’s depictions of Nazis are not, in fact, Nazi propaganda.

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Random: Stardew Valley Creator Has Finally 100% Completed… Stardew Valley

“The dev gave me a pat on the back”.

When it comes to knowing a game inside and out, the game’s developer is usually top dog. That is, of course, the case for Stardew Valley‘s creator, Eric Barone (aka ConcernedApe), but this is a sandbox so massive that there are bound to be some elements that even the brain behind it all hasn’t ticked off.

That was the case until earlier this week. You see, yesterday, ConcernedApe took to Twitter to reveal that he has finally 100% completed his own game (on Steam, at least).

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Max Caulfield is a terrible detective – I wish her all the best

If I am ever murdered, please do not ask Max Caulfield to investigate. I’ve already written our review for Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, in which I celebrated the touching moments of Max’s return to the series, and lamented the clunky plot that she finds herself in. In this adventure game, you’re looking into the killing of a close friend, shot by an unknown assailant. You hop between two dimensions to solve the case – one world in which your pal still lives and the other in which she’s dead. Unfortunately for the murder victim, you play a bona fide hot mess who could not perform a cross examination if she were standing in front of a crucifix with a magnifying glass.

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