Category: IGN

Pokémon Legends: Z-A will add a fresh batch of superpowered creatures to the franchise’s Mega Pokédex — and here’s every one revealed so far.

While the game is not expected to add any all-new Pokémon species, Legends: Z-A’s setting within the region of Kalos, the home of the Mega Evolution ability, has made it a fitting title in which to introduce a number of never-before-seen designs, and give players something fresh to collect.

In the run up to Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s launch for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on October 16, 2025, The Pokémon Company has begun drip-feeding fans with new Mega Pokémon reveals — and one species has even already made its Pokémon anime debut.

Below, we’ll recap every Mega Pokémon announced so far, and discuss a widely-shared leak of all the Mega Pokémon species fans now expect.

Mega Dragonite

The Crown Zenith market has been sending some mixed signals this month. While some Galarian Gallery Ultra Rares are dipping in value, Secret Rares are heating up thanks to collector demand and limited availability. Mid-tier fan-favorites like Leafeon VSTAR and Suicune V are seeing downward pressure, while the golden Secret Rares – particularly Giratina VSTAR and Arceus VSTAR – continue to climb. Crown Zenith’s overall collector appeal remains high, but the card-to-card movement tells a more nuanced story.

TL;DR: Crashers and Climbers This Week

On the climber side, I’ve seen Giratina VSTAR (Secret) make a strong move from around $152 in July to as high as $180 recently. That’s a healthy 18% jump, and it tracks with what I’m seeing in collector circles: people are still chasing the big four gold cards, and Giratina seems to be the crown jewel. Mewtwo VSTAR has also caught some upward momentum lately, jumping from around $102 to nearly $127. It’s not just about nostalgia with this one – its twin art featuring the Charizard faceoff is iconic and playable decks still find room for it.

On the flipside, Leafeon VSTAR has slipped from its February peak of $49.87 down to about $45.54. That’s not a dramatic crash, but it’s enough to suggest the hype has faded a bit. Deoxys VMAX is feeling a sharper drop, now sitting around $36 after once approaching $45. These cards were never unplayable, but they’re not commanding the same attention in the meta or from collectors.

Pokémon Card Crashers

In one of the more wholesome video game stories of the year, veteran Helldivers 2 players who’ve seen and done it all on PC and PlayStation 5 are helping out Xbox newcomers, with player numbers hitting new heights.

Arrowhead’s Sony-published third-person co-op shooter launched on Xbox Series X and S this week, and, according to the CEO of the developer, concurrents hit an incredible 500,490 players across all platforms.

But Helldivers 2’s community is celebrating another milestone: the coming together of all players to help out new recruits on Xbox. Helldivers 2, as anyone who’s played it for more than a few hours will know, can be a panic-inducing experience, with deliberately fussy controls and a level of complexity that can make what start out as easy-going missions quickly descend into chaos. Helldivers 2’s focus on physics-driven gameplay and friendly fire being on can also create an intimidating experience for newcomers. This is what fans of the game love about it, and what newcomers via Xbox are now getting to grips with.

So it’s great to see the Helldivers subreddit, Discord, and social media channels littered with tales from players who are either thanking others for their co-op handholding, or just bigging up the community for being so helpful overall.

In a post on the Helldivers subreddit upvoted 7,400 times, Xbox player DrifterzProdigy thanked the community for helping out new Xbox players.

“My first drop out of training I immediately called in a machine gun and noticed an ‘SOS beacon’ so I called that in too,” they said. “Not even 15 seconds later two people joined (both level 100+) and immediately showered the ground with some dope ass stuff. Quasar, mech suit, a bunch of other stuff I don’t know the names for yet when it comes to ordnance. The best part? They both in chat said ‘welcome brother, try these out’ and then proceeded to guide me for the next three hours of gameplay.

“With how toxic online gaming can be nowadays this release was a breath of fresh air and the community has been absolutely wonderful to interact with. I knew I was in a good community when I accidentally pushed a button on a guys backpack and all he did was give me a hug and typed ‘hold me brother’ as we lit up in glorious liberation luminescence.”

Experienced players are now seeking out Xbox players to help, scanning for low level missions and looking at the player levels before joining. Level 1-15 players are usually Xbox players, at the time of this article’s publication, but of course as Helldivers 2’s Xbox launch heads into its first weekend, that range will fluctuate.

“I call in a mech and they always get in like puppies after a tennis ball,” said redditor TheMustOnenShow. “It’s really cute.”

“I always avoid the mechs that high level players drop because I don’t want them to think I’m stealing it,” responded Embarrassed-Split-71. “I’m an xbox player.”

Then, continuing the wholesome exchange, TheRealPitabred explained: “If they ping it, they want you to get in it. Source: me, level 150 bringing toys.

It’s a particularly great time for Helldivers 2, which has some eye-catching new gameplay experiences coming following the Halo: ODST crossover event. The Into the Unjust update, due out September 2, will see Helldivers venture into Hive Worlds, which include towering structures built by Terminids beneath the planet surfaces.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

You may have spotted the brand new trailer for GRYPHLINE’s upcoming game Arknights: Endfield, a real-time 3D RPG with strategic gameplay elements, during Opening Night Live, but there was certainly no missing the game’s presence on the show floor at gamescom.

As one of the leading game companies from China making a strong push onto the global stage, GRYPHLINE came prepared.

Much like all-you-can-eat Pizza Huts, reasonably-priced concert tickets, and The Secret World of Alex Mack, Screamer is something I enjoyed in the 1990s but essentially disappeared from our lives decades ago. The original Screamer, released in 1995, was one of a trio of games developed by Italian studio Graffiti before it quickly rebranded itself as Milestone a year later. An over-the-top arcade racing game exclusively for PC, it arrived rapidly in the slipstream of pioneering 3D racers like The Need for Speed, Ridge Racer, and Destruction Derby (and was followed by a sequel and two one-and-done spin-offs) but has faded into relative obscurity since. However, over a quarter of a century since Milestone’s final Screamer game, the series is howling back to the track with a wild new look and an interestingly nuanced suite of controls and power-ups that shake up the slamming, the shifting, and even the steering.

According to game director Federico Cardini, Screamer is a game Milestone has long wanted to resurrect, but you should know that it’s more the name that’s being brought back here. That is, aside from the title there really isn’t anything immediately significant in the new Screamer that meaningfully reminds me of the original. Dramatic changes of identity are usually kryptonite for sequels and reboots – especially belated ones – but I actually don’t think it’s a problem in Screamer’s case. The original was an impressive game for its time, but it was admittedly otherwise largely typical of arcade racing games in that era. The new one is a bit of a different story.

You can’t describe Screamer in a single sentence the way you can with a lot of arcade racing games. A good deal of arcade racers generally allow you to count the number of pertinent instructions on your nipples. That is, there are only two: accelerate and steer. After an hour of hands-on driving and drifting with Screamer it’s clear there’s a lot more to it than this, and it’s this depth that makes it quite fascinating.

Screamer is a twin-stick racing game, and it instantly reminds me of 2020’s Inertial Drift in this sense. While the left stick is used for conventional steering, the right stick is used to add drift angle. In simple terms, the left stick controls the front of the car, and the right stick basically controls the rear. It’s easier to grasp than it perhaps sounds, but it does require a certain deftness on both sticks to make the necessary adjustments to your angle.

It goes much further than this, however, as Screamer also packs a potent range of power-ups that are extracted from two separate gauges that fill based on certain actions. Inspired by fighting games, Screamer calls this its ‘Echo’ system – where using one side of the gauge affects the other side. There’s a shotgun spray of bespoke, in-game terminology that you’ll encounter if and when you play Screamer yourself, but I’m going to avoid most of that here because I think it’ll only serve to make Screamer sound a little impenetrable. On track – and in the thick of it – it’s all fairly intuitive, so I’ll try to describe it as such.

Essentially, the left side of the gauge will fill throughout a race both passively and via certain actions – like perfectly-timed shifts. Screamer’s vehicles have semi-automatic transmissions, so they’ll shift automatically if you’re overwhelmed (or you forget), but if you nail your upshifts you’ll fill the left gauge faster. It’s not a remotely racing related comparison, but it reminded me of Gears of War’s active reload system.

The left gauge is used to provide both boosts and shields against attacking opponents. Even boosts are handled differently, with a press–hold-and-release mechanic that you need to time by using an onscreen icon. Get the release spot-on and you will earn a longer and more effective boost than standard.

So what of the gauge on the right? Well, you fill the gauge on the right by using the power-ups afforded by the gauge on the left. The gauge on the right allows you to use the offensive abilities Screamer has dubbed ‘strike’ and ‘overdrive.’ ‘Strike’ is a temporary boost in speed during which any other car you smash into will explode, and ‘Overdrive’ is an indefinite boost that lasts until you crash. Overdrive is pretty tough to use on the twistiest portions of the tracks; after a certain amount of time locked in Overdrive you’ll reach a critical state where even a brush off a wall will see you blow up. It is extremely quick, though, and it’s a power-up I observed the AI was always willing to deploy at every opportunity.

Like the 1995 original, Screamer features a roster of unlicensed cars. However, while the original game’s cars were clearly just de-badged versions of iconic ’90s sports cars and exotics with otherwise generic names, the cars in the upcoming Screamer are wild, anime-inspired vehicles covered in aggressive, time attack-style aero. The anime inspiration extends beyond the cars, too; indeed, Milestone has partnered with Japanese animation studio Polygon Pictures for Screamer’s story. We weren’t privy to any of these cutscenes during our preview, but I did get to race as a variety of different characters – each of whom have different abilities that alter how they fill their power gauge, and how their cars handle. There’s a really significant difference in car feel across characters so, even though the handling is quite easy to pick up, it’s not one-note.

Milestone achieved the improbable in 2021 with Hot Wheels Unleashed, creating a gorgeous and highly approachable arcade racing banger that far exceeded any expectations one might have had of a game based on a licensed toy. It’s a very different sort of racing experience to the Hot Wheels Unleashed series but, after my hour with it, I’m not expecting Screamer to quietly come and go when it arrives in 2026.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since I first set sail and fell in love with Valheim. As a fan of survival crafting and all things Norse, it’s one of the best experiences out there in both regards. And while it still feels fairly familiar at the outset – and somehow it’s still calling itself “early access,” whatever that means anymore – it’s gotten a mountain of patches since launch, with a list of changes that would take longer to read than the rambling tangent about some side character’s great-grandfather in a viking saga. From new biomes and new bosses to crafting and combat improvements, the version of Valheim you can download today cuts like a blade that developer Iron Gate has been sharpening winter in and winter out.

All of that still holds true today, except that the world has gotten much bigger and just about every system has been improved on in some small or large way. Except greydwarves. They’re still annoying as hell. But we’ll get to that.

Good news for melee builds

This revisit is based on the opt-in beta patch announced at Gamescom 2025, known as the Call to Arms update, and that’s fitting because it’s brought some of the most significant changes to combat yet. Trinkets are a new equipment slot that lets you build up adrenaline by skirmishing – basically a super meter if you’re familiar with fighting games – with different effects at full adrenaline for different trinkets. They’ve also added a “perfect dodge” that makes it possible to run a melee build without a shield, as long as you’re good at timing enemy attacks. And perfect blocks no longer cost stamina, which makes that build way more viable too. Finally, the reign of the stealth archer may be coming to an end! Well, probably not entirely, but at least it won’t be so far ahead of other playstyles. Just like nearly everything else that’s changed in Valheim over the years, combat is the same system that’s always been here but just a bit better and deeper.

We finally get (killed by) bears!

The mascot for this patch, though, is the lumbering bear enemy. Why did it take this long to put a bear in the viking survival game? I don’t know, but I’m glad she’s here now. Sitting somewhere between greydwarves and trolls in terms of difficulty, bears add some much-needed enemy variety to the early areas where most people end up spending a majority of their time anyway. And collecting bear parts lets you build a new weapon and armor set that really lean into the super-aggressive melee playstyle. I’m worried that these items will be completely underpowered in the mid-late game, but it’s nice for the first leg of your adventure to be able to go full berserker.

Journeying through mist and flame adds mythological flair

In the bigger picture, Valheim has become a much more complete saga since I originally reviewed it. Two additional biomes, the foggy Mistlands and burning Ashlands, have been added along with their attendant bosses, but I haven’t been able to check the latter out yet on this fresh save I made for the patch where I’m about 25 hours in. As a matter of fact, even with well over 100 hours in Valheim overall across multiple playthroughs, I’ve still never seen the Ashlands – added just last year – at all, actually. The world is huge! And that’s very exciting. There’s still a bit left to go on the roadmap, with one major boss and one biome still missing, but it’s much closer to the finish line than it is to the start.

Even in my initial Early Access outing, I said I could barely tell this is an Early Access game, and that’s only become more and more true. The amount that’s already here could take you months to chew through playing off and on like I do. The final 1.0 release might be out already by the time you finish the Ashlands if you start today. The sheer amount of time it would take to even run into a proverbial Under Construction sign puts them out of reach of what most of my playthroughs have even come close to accomplishing. And I have to ask: if it takes 60-plus hours for me to even notice something isn’t finished, is it really unfinished at all? Or am I just waiting for an expansion to come out? It kind of feels more like the latter.

Swamps are still a bummer

Every new area has fresh enemies, unique survival challenges, new recipes to discover, and a strong theme. Higher-level biomes pull in more mythological elements that really remind you you’re not in Kristiansand anymore. Moving from the Black Forest into the Swamps is still a rough transition with how much more unforgiving the terrain, enemies, and status effects become – right at the same time that travel distances are becoming an issue, and before you can unlock portals. It’s no surprise to me that that’s where a lot of my runs have ended. Plus, who likes a stinky poison swamp anyway? It’s definitely my least favorite biome, even in the latest patch. But it’s worth getting through to see what comes after it.

Greydwarves are still annoying as hell

Greydwarves in the Dark Forest remain annoying little pests that come to bother you all the time and present very little combat challenge. If we could craft a trinket that scares away lower-level enemies, I think that would be great. Remember the Morrowind mod that added a belt that would zap cliff racers out of the air? Are Valheim players too young to remember Morrowind? You know what, don’t even answer that. I don’t want to know.

Mining feels less grindy, but maybe that’s just character development on my part

Gear progression feels a lot less grindy now as well. I haven’t compared the numbers to see how much of that is actual changes to ore drop rates and carry weights and how much it’s just that I’ve gotten used to how time-consuming it is. I no longer feel like I’m spending hours and hours teching up from stone to bronze. And while I was initially annoyed by the lack of realism in the fact that repairing items doesn’t cost crafting mats… I have to admit I was wrong. It’s a great little quality-of-life feature that I don’t have to go hunt down extremely rare materials to keep my best gear nice and shiny. It’s good to know that once I craft something, it’s mine forever.

The building system could still use some work

Building is one area where I think other survival crafting games have kind of left Valheim behind, mainly in terms of how fiddly it can get. I know part of this is that it’s meant to be fairly realistic, and I respect that. But the variety of structural building pieces, especially early on, is still kind of disappointing. And it remains a massive pain to work on rooftops or anything high up due to how stairs, ladders, and slopes behave. As unrealistic as it is, I find myself wishing for something as simple as Minecraft scaffolding, which lets you ascend up to whatever height you need just by holding jump. I know we can’t have Dune: Awakening-style hovering in fantasy Scandinavia. Maybe I could send a raven up there to help me place stuff? Just some ideas.

One of the best survival crafting games ever has only gotten better

I adored Valheim when it was roughly half the adventure it is now. The world has gotten so much richer and the progression so much deeper in the four years since, while even mechanics I was interacting with on my first day of a new playthrough have improved in small and subtle ways. If it doesn’t lead the pack for the whole genre outright, it’s at least very close to the front, howling gleefully as its charming, low-res 3D art style beckons me into calm meadows and foreboding dungeons. I haven’t ever really stopped playing it for more than a handful of months at a time since it launched in early access, and the idea of starting a new world always gets me excited even if I know the first few verses of the saga by heart at this point.

Crystal Dynamics has laid off an unknown number of workers following the cancelation of Perfect Dark by Microsoft.

In a statement on LinkedIn, Crystal Dynamics confirmed the layoffs, but did not specify the number of people impacted.

“Today we made the very difficult decision to part ways with a number of our talented colleagues as the result of evolving business conditions,” the statement reads. “This decision was not made lightly. It was necessary, however, to ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market.”

The company also confirmed that Tomb Raider, still in development, was unaffected by the decision.

While the statement does not explicitly mention Perfect Dark as the reason behind the layoffs, multiple former workers have posted on social media whose posts and profiles suggest that was the game they were working on. These layoffs seem to be a delayed reaction to Xbox canceling Perfect Dark, which Crystal Dynamics was working on with The Initiative, earlier this year. The Initiative was shuttered at the time of the cancelation, back in July.

Crystal Dynamics was originally brought in to revitalize Perfect Dark after struggles getting the project moving with former co-developer, Certain Affinity. Crystal was later acquired by the Embracer Group in 2022, at which time the studio was revealed to have 273 employees across its Austin, Bellevue, and San Mateo offices. Crystal laid off ten people in 2023, and laid off 17 more people earlier this year. It’s unclear how many remain now.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Christophe Gans’ Return to Silent Hill is hitting theaters in January 2026, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the original Silent Hill movie. This is good news, given that Silent Hill still ranks as one of the better video game movie adaptations to date. 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation? Not so much.

Cineverse just released a short first teaser for Return to Silent Hill, offering a glimpse of the many horrors Jeremy Irvine’s James Sunderland will face as he navigates the town in search of his missing wife.

Given that so much time has passed since Gans last set foot in the moody town of Silent Hill, you might be wondering how this sequel is connected to its predecessors. Is it a direct continuation of Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Revelations? Which game is it adapting? Here’s everything you need to know before Return to Silent Hill hits theaters.

How Return to Silent Hill Connects to the Other Movies

2006’s Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell as Rose Da Silva, a woman who brings her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) to the remote, abandoned town of Silent Hill in order to get to the bottom of Sharon’s recurring nightmares. Sean Bean also stars as Rose’s husband Christopher, who attempts to rescue his family even as they become trapped in a hellish other dimension.

Despite featuring a different director and writer in M.J. Bassett, 2012’s Silent Hill: Revelation serves as a direct sequel to the first movie. Adelaide Clemens stars as the adult Sharon, now assuming the identity of Heather Mason. When her father disappears in Silent Hill, Heather and her classmate Vincent (Kit Harington) return to the town to find him. Revelation also deals heavily with the religious cult known as the Order of Valtiel.

Return to Silent Hill is not a direct follow-up to either of those films. Instead, this film is telling a standalone story with a different set of characters. Return to Silent Hill stars Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland, a widower who is stunned to receive a letter from his dead wife Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson), urging him to meet her in Silent Hill. James will descend deeper and deeper into the otherworldly dimensions of the town in order to find her. Silent Hill 2 Remake’s Evie Templeton will reprise her role as Laura, a young girl also caught in the web that is Silent Hill.

In short, it seems you don’t necessarily need to have seen the other Silent Hill movies in order to enjoy Return to Silent Hill. This sequel follows the approach of the games in that the spooky town itself, not the characters, provides most of the connective tissue. Most of the games aren’t directly intertwined by plot, but instead focus on different characters being drawn into the town and finding their personal demons manifesting into literal monsters. The series is not unlike Hellraiser in that regard, as the Hellraiser movies are mostly standalone horror stories linked together by the overarching mythology of Pinhead and the Cenobites.

“The script for a new Silent Hill movie that is totally independent from the two previous movies made and respects the way Silent Hill has evolved,” Gans said in 2022. “Silent Hill is a bit like Twilight Zone, the Fourth Dimension, a place where anything and everything can happen.”

Which Games Does Return to Silent Hill Adapt?

If the description of Return to Silent Hill’s plot sounds familiar, it should. This film happens to be a direct adaptation of the Silent Hill 2 game, which was originally released in 2001 and remade in 2024. Just like this film, Silent Hill 2 follows James Sunderland as he navigates the various dimensions of the town in search of his late wife.

Return to Silent Hill looks to be the most faithful adaptation of the game out of the three films to date, to the point that Gans went to the trouble of casting Templeton as Laura again. We assume the film will follow the core beats of the game, pitting James against terrifying monsters like Pyramid Head and culminating in a similarly tragic twist ending. Pyramid Head himself can be seen in the teaser, making him the one character confirmed to appear in all three films.

Neither of the previous Silent Hill movies could be considered more than loose adaptations of the source material. The first Silent Hill film may borrow liberally from the imagery and music of the series, along with a few basic plot points from 1999’s Silent Hill, but its plot and cast of characters are largely unique. Silent Hill: Revelation is sort of an adaptation of the Silent Hill 3 game, transforming Rose and Christopher Da Silva into Heather and Harry Mason. But, again, the less said about Revelation, the better.

Direct adaptation or not, it doesn’t appear that Return to Silent Hill will be a 1:1 copy of Silent Hill 2. Gans has hinted the film also draws inspiration from 2014’s P.T., the infamous demo that was meant to lead into Hideo Kojima’s canceled Silent Hills game. Does that mean the film will feature first-person sequences, a la 2005’s Doom? Or is the P.T. influence more in terms of the steadily mounting sense of dread and psychological horror? We’ll find out when Return to Silent Hill hits theaters in January 2026.

For more on Return to Silent Hill, find out why the teaser trailer has divided the Silent Hill fan community.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Sony has announced its PlayStation Plus monthly lineup of games for September 2025, which includes a Xbox-published title and a hugely popular farming sim.

Further solidifying the friendship between Xbox and PlayStation, next month’s list is headlined by Psychonauts 2, the platform-adventure from Tim Schafer’s Doublefine Studios, which is of course owned by Microsoft. This quirky sequel launched to positive reviews (and no, you don’t need to have played the first).

Next up is Stardew Valley, the charming life and farming simulation which really doesn’t need much introduction. If you don’t yet own a copy or three of this beloved indie game, now’s your chance to see what all the fuss is about. Just don’t expect to do anything else for the next dozen hours, as it gets its hooks into you.

Finally this month, there’s Viewfinder. A mix of photo mode and first-person puzzle game, this well-received indie first launched in 2023 and boggled all our brains with its perspective-warping levels and extremely smart gameplay.

PlayStation Plus Monthly Games September 2025:

• Psychonauts 2 | PS4
• Stardew Valley | PS4
• Viewfinder | PS4, PS5

All three games will be available to claim from September 2 onwards. And, as ever, you have just a couple of days left to add August’s PlayStation Plus games to your library. Act now to nab Lies of P, Day Z and My Hero One’s Justice 2, before they leave the subscription service on September 1.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social