While horror classic Resident Evil 4 is getting a big makeover this month, don’t expect the same treatment for the game’s iconic Chainsaw Controller.
The Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller came at a time when many gaming companies were experimenting with different types of weird controllers and peripherals. A product of the early 2000s, the gore-covered gamepad was designed for 2005’s original Resident Evil 4 on Nintendo GameCube.
The design is unforgettable from the moment you lay eyes on it. The bright yellow, bloodstained base is fitted with all the buttons you’d expect from a GameCube controller, and it’s connected to the chainsaw’s giant, bloody, purely cosmetic blade. With the Resident Evil 4 remake set to come out this month, naturally we thought it was fitting to ask Capcom about a potential return for the Chainsaw Controller.
“So first of all, thank you for remembering the controller,” Capcom producer Yoshiaki Harabayashi told IGN. “I mean, it was a great controller back in the day, but unfortunately we’re not able to recreate the Chainsaw Controller now.”
“I mean, one of the things that’s stopping us is that we’re releasing the game on so many platforms right now, so that’s a hurdle for us. And of course, the team focused a lot on the actual development of the game, so that took a lot of the time. So unfortunately, no Chainsaw Controllers as of now.”
Resident Evil 4 launched as a console exclusive on the GameCube, meaning the Chainsaw Controller only had to come in one version to match that console’s button layout. We loved its design and packaging back in the day, but its clunky control configuration and off-balance analog sticks made it less than ideal for actual play.
Resident Evil 4 is coming to PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on March 23. For more, check out our full Resident Evil 4 interview with director Yasuhiro Ampo and Capcom producer Yoshiaki Harabayashi, where we learned about parrying, new finishing moves, optional side quests, and more.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
What are the best board games to play? It’s a more complicated question than it might seem at first blush. What do we mean when we talk about an “all time” great in any medium? It’s got to be something that’s stood the test of time, like all our picks for the best classic board games. But at the same time we need to steer away from games that have become diminished by over familiarity and shift into new and exciting territory. We also want to include things that have been acclaimed as top of their particular tree at one time or another, to give some historical perspective.
That’s the thinking we’ve brought to the list below, a mixture of board games once seen as the best ever, together with some close pretenders that have earned their spot through novelty or popularity. They’re all great in one way or another, so whatever you pick you can’t go wrong. Here are the best board games to play in 2023.
Don’t have time to scroll? Here are all the games you’ll find below.
Cosmic Encounter
Lots of games that revolve around grabbing territory tend to involve the kind of tentative alliances and festering enmities that mimic real-world diplomacy. Back in 1977, the designers of Cosmic Encounter had a brainwave: why not get rid of the territory and cut to the chase? The result is this hilarious game of shifting alliances where every player has a game-breaking alien power to leverage in the race to win colonies on five of your opponent’s planets. Crammed with variety, tactical decisions and more dramatic reversals than a prime-time soap opera, Cosmic Encounter may be the only negotiation game you need.
Gloomhaven
The current king of the board gaming pile got that way through an ingenious bit of genre-blending. If you like old-fashioned dungeon crawls with a strong narrative, well, the 95-scenario campaign of fantasy adventure has you covered. If you’re a sucker for tactical combat then its cunning, card-driven face-offs against a staggering variety of foes will thrill you. But if you want heavyweight strategy then deck-building and resource gathering over the campaign plus the in-scenario exhaustion mechanic gives you plenty of meat. Truly all things to all gamers — even fans of the best solo board games — Gloomhaven deserves its staggering level of acclaim. And if the cost is a bit much, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion offers a smaller campaign at a much smaller price tag. And not for nothing, both of these iterations also made it on our best board games for adults list as well.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
If combat-based narrative campaigns aren’t your thing, how about working together to purge the world of infectious diseases? Building on the success of the original Pandemic, this introduces “legacy” concepts to the game, in which components are added or removed as you progress through the game, based on your decisions, successes and failures. After a few plays, your copy will be a unique record of your group’s play. So in addition to offering a very personal tale to engage you, Pandemic: Legacy also individualizes your strategic experience. It’s a magical combination that has spawned two further seasons, creating an epic arc of story and strategy to enjoy with a gaming group or even as one of the best family board games.
Twilight Struggle
Billed as a cold war simulation and with bullet-pointed rules, Twilight Struggle can appear daunting to the uninitiated. But there’s a reason it was widely acclaimed as the best game of all time after its 2009 release. Players have hands of event cards that replicate key moments from the conflict, keyed to either their side or their opponent. If you play an opponent’s card you can still make moves on the board but their event also occurs. This makes every hand a thrilling, tactical dance of play and counterplay as you try to move your plans forward while also nullifying enemy events. In addition to the superb strategic workout, you might even learn some history too with this war board game.
Agricola
Another game that spent its time in the “best game ever” limelight is this unlikely game about farming. Stepping back from the theme, however, growing a family to work on a family farm is a dead ringer for the popular Worker Placement mechanism. As a result, Agricola conjures a real sense of growing and developing your humble plantation into a thriving stead, with plenty of interesting strategic bumps to navigate along the way. Its particular genius is its huge decks of cards, only a handful of which are used in each game, which ensures lots of strategic variety and allows you to tailor things like complexity and interaction to your group’s tastes.
The Castles of Burgundy
Coming into this game of estate-building in medieval France you could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the options to grow your castle. Fortunately, it’s a dice-based game where the roll each turn limits your choices of where you can take actions. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a random game: rather, the dice are there to keep throwing you curveballs you have to dodge around as you build a strategy. A classic case of having too much to do and too little to do it with, every action of every round feels weighted with impossible priorities, keeping you stretched right up until the points are tallied.
Lords of Waterdeep
By marrying the sensibilities of Dungeons & Dragons with the mechanics of modern board games, Lords of Waterdeep made a smash hit to last down the ages. Players take the roles of power brokers in the Forgotten Realms’ biggest city, hiring adventurers to defeat perils threatening Waterdeep while building new facilities in the town. It’s these additions that take this unusually thematic worker placement game to the next level, with the new buildings entering play ensuring that new strategies are required each time. Throw in a modicum of minor “take that” cards to spice things up and you’ve got a brilliant game with very wide appeal.
Ticket to Ride
One of the few hobby board games to cross over into full mainstream sales, Ticket to Ride is a steaming success story. It’s a combination of familiar concepts with players collecting cards, like a Rummy game, in order to try and claim matching routes on a map of the US. But beware: it’s a tight board with relatively few potential connections between the cities that you’ll need in order to complete your allotted routes. And if another player gets there first, you’ll lose potential points instead of gaining them. Easy to learn and exciting to play and with a wide variety of versions and expansion maps, Ticket to Ride is great fun for all ages. It also works well as a two-player board game, or with a group.
Concordia
While conquest games involving ancient Rome are ten a penny, Concordia instead has you manoeuvring a noble family to gain wealth and contacts during the height of empire. Play is conducted using a deck of action cards that you can expand, using wealth from your trades, as the game progresses, allowing you to tailor your strategy accordingly. But the kicker is that your final scoring is also depending on those cards, with different cards earning you points in different ways, from goods in your storehouse to colonist pieces on the board. This creates a fascinating, rich, wheels within wheels layer of strategy, while the resource management elements also let you mess up your opponent’s plans while advancing your own.
Summoner Wars 2nd Edition
Collectible games wax and wane in popularity and print status, which makes even classics like Magic: the Gathering hard to include in this kind of list. Summoner Wars, however, with its clever blend of card and board-based gameplay has an evergreen sense about it and, best of all, its collectibility comes in packages. So if you tire of facing off the six included factions against one another, you can just add more to your collection. By forcing players to use cards both as units and currency, it keeps everyone making knife-edge decisions as they maneuver round the board and roll off against opposing units in their quest to kill the enemy summoner, right up until the on-board death.
Codenames
Blasting onto the scene in 2015, Codenames changed the face of party games forever. In place of trivia quizzes or trivial tasks, it challenged players to come up with clues to interlink a series of apparently unconnected words. So you might link “Trip”, “Rome” and possibly even “Embassy” with the clue “Holiday”. The concept proved so accessible and addictive that it launched an entire new genre of synonym-based word games, each giving different spins on a similar formula. But for ease of teaching and wideness of enjoyment, the original is still the best.
What to Consider When Shopping for the Best Board Games
There’s so much choice in modern board gaming that picking a game can be overwhelming, not to mention expensive! So to help winnow down the selection, here are a few things to look out for when making your picks.
Perhaps the most important one is whether it’s likely to see much play. Aspects of this are fairly obvious: whether it appeals to your friends, what’s the target age, if it’s a long game, will you have time for it, and so on. But there’s still more to these facets than may be immediately apparent. You may feel comfortable learning a very complex game, for example, but will your fellow players, and will you be able to teach it? Do you want a game to play with your partner, or your wider family, or does it need to be flexible enough to cater for both crowds?
Even then, these are often vexed questions. The play times listed on box sides are often hopelessly optimistic. Similarly, a game’s advertised player count can be very different from the ideal. A good tool to clear this up is the game information database boardgamegeek.com. If you search on a game there then, at the top of the page you’ll find, beneath the player count, a “best” suggestion for the optimal player count according to the site’s users.
There are other many other considerations. Some games take up a lot of table space, for example, which is no good if you play on a coffee or card table. Others can take a long time to set up and put away. These issues are often mentioned in a review if they’re problematic. And they can stack: you may be able to play a much longer game, for example, if you have space to pause and leave it out on the table to resume later.
Some genres of game require greater research than others. Increasingly, games are being released as lifestyle choices with a steady stream of expansions and new content. Which is great if it appeals to you, but you need to know what you’re getting into. Other games merge into miniature modelling which is a whole other hobby in it’s own right. Editions and versions are another thing worth checking out as many modern games come in standard and deluxe editions or may, in fact, be reprints of older titles.
You also need to think about how a game might fit in with your existing collection, both aesthetically and physically. For the former, consider what makes it different enough, mechanically or thematically, from games you already own to make it worthwhile. For the latter, remember that board games are big, and you’ll need to find space to store it!
Collecting and playing board games can be a very enjoyable and rewarding hobby. Good luck!
Bandai Namco sent us some of the first Elden Ring action figures, the S.H. Figuarts Festering Fingerprint Vyke and super-deformed Figuarts Minis of Melina and Raging Wolf. Vyke will run you around $75, while the Minis are both $30. A variety of toy and collectible sites have had them up for pre-order for a while, and will likely start shipping soon.
Vyke, who appears as an NPC invader in-game and whose armor is being worn by the Tarnished on Elden Ring’s box art, includes his war spear, a fire effect to recreate the frenzyflame thrust attack, and four interchangeable pairs of hands (one pair of first, one pair open, and two pairs for holding the spear at different angles.) Data-miners have dug up unused assets that suggest Vyke originally had a much larger role in Elden Ring’s story, but currently, the game’s cover model and first official action figure feature a random dude who jumps you outside an abandoned church.
Melina and Raging Wolf each include one interchangeable arm – Melina’s is outstretched, Wolf’s is holding a sword. Though the Minis are articulated, the proportions and sculpted clothing make posing pretty limited. They unclude small stands though, which are necessary for displaying purposes on account of the toys’ enormous heads.
Weirdly, these are the first FromSoft characters to get the Figuarts treatment, despite it being a Bandai Namco toy line. There are a variety of Dark Souls collectibles from other manufacturers, and Bloodborne, Sekiro and Demon’s Souls have all gotten Figma action figures. Figma and Nendoroid both have some Elden Ring figures in the works, but hopefully we see more from S.H. Figuarts as well.
Some of us, however, couldn’t wait a whole year for Elden Ring toys, and decided to take matters into our own hands before the game was even out:
Two amiibo from the Super Mario line have been reprinted and are now available to purchase again at Best Buy. You can pick up a Mario and a Peach amiibo, both of which came out a few years ago before going out of stock and into retirement. Well, they’re back, at least for the time being. Grab them if you want to add them to your collection.
Mario and Peach Amiibo Reprints
The Mario amiibo was originally released on March 19, 2015. The Peach amiibo came a couple years later, on March 23, 2017. Despite their release dates being updated to 3/1/2023 in Best Buy’s listsings, the product descriptions for both still reference scanning them on your Wii U GamePad controller (RIP). Don’t worry, though — they’ll work just fine on your Nintendo Switch.
It’s unclear why, exactly, these two amiibo have been reprinted now, though there are some possibilities. We’re approaching March 10, aka Mario Day, and these could be part of that whole celebration. There’s also the impending release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which may have something to do with it as well. In any case, these are some colorful amiibo that would look good on the shelf of any Mario and Peach fan.
These reprints raise other questions that are unanswered for the moment, as well. Will other amiibo from this series be repinted soon? Will these amiibo show up at other retailers aside from Best Buy? Who knows! If they do, we’ll add links above.
If that’s not enough for you, also take a look at our roundup of the best Nintendo gifts, and the best toy gifts. They don’t even have to be gifts for other people. Treat yourself, as they say.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed or on Mastodon @chrislreed.
2023 might finally be the year where 2TB PS5 SSDs might actually be worth the upgrade. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $100 price point and 2TB SSDs are under $200. The reason PS5 SSD upgrades are pricey is that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive. That means, for better or for worse, picking a top-shelf SSD.
Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.
Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PS5 SSD for PS5 for $131.99
Constantly going in and out of stock
Crucial’s newest M.2 SSD meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.
WD 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $179.99 or Less
Amazon is offering a 2TB WD Black SN850X with preinstalled heatsink for only $179.99.The SN850X is the successor to the SN850 SSD. It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware, which combined offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds. For PC gamers, there’s also an updated Game Mode 2.0 utility that’s designed to tune the SSD for better performance during gaming sessions.
Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB “Optimized for PS5” SSD with Heatsink for Only $159.99
Corsair is a very well known brand for DIY PC builders. Corsair makes some of the best gaming products on the market, and that includes solid-state memory like RAM and SSDs. The MP600 Pro is the same super-fast M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 Gen4 SSD that’s marketed for enthusiast gaming PC builds. This one is “optimized for PS5” because it includes a rugged preinstalled heatsink that is slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay without any issues. Performance wise, the MP600 Pro matches the best SSDs out there with its 7,100MB/sec sequential read and 6,800MB/sec sequential write speeds.
Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB PS5 SSD for $144.99
Amazon is offering the Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x 4 Internal Gaming Solid State Drive, which is compatible with the PS5 console, for only $149.99. This makes it definitely the lowest price we’ve seen for a brand name 2TB PS5 SSD, especially since this one even includes a slim aluminum heatshield. The VP4300 is an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 solid state drive with rated transfer speeds of 7,400MB/s read and 6,800MB/s write. That makes it well above the PS5’s recommended 5,600MB/s speed requirement.
Samsung 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $179.99
Samsung SSDs need no introduction. They’ve made some of the most popular and reliable PS5 SSDs on the market. The 980 Pro has been out for a while now, but it’s still one of Samsung’s fastest M.2 PCIe SSD, with only the newly released 990 Pro being faster. It is fully PS5 compatible in terms of form factor and performance, with blistering speeds of up to 7,100MB/s. It goes toe to toe with other well-known options like the WD Black SN850 and the Seagate Firecuda 530.
More PS5 SSD Deals
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.
How easy is it to install the SSD?
It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.
What if the SSD I bought doesn’t have a heatsink?
Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.
For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.
Fresh off of winning “Best Mobile Game of the Year” at the 2022 Game Awards, publisher Nuverse is ready to share their next project, Dragonheir: Silent Gods. Not looking to slow down, Nuverse continues to work with leading developer teams dedicated to making fun and immersive games for us all to get lost in. This time, instead of superheroes and villains battling it out in a strategic card game, we’ll head to a rich fantasy world in need of adventurers like you. The latest title is developed by SGRA Studio, a newly-formed team of industry veterans inviting us into the world of Adenthia, an enchanting land filled with dwarves, orcs, death knights, dark elves, sorcerers, and more.
Dragonheir: Silent Gods is an online fantasy multiplayer RPG that launches players into the center of an ancient conflict spearheaded by the Three-Headed Dragon Queen. Players assume the role of the chosen one and assemble a team of heroes with complimentary power sets and abilities for an open-world RPG adventure across multiple planes and dimensions. There are four classes to choose from in creating your character type, soldier, thief, sage and entertainer. Each will have its strengths within six attributes such as strength, charisma, wisdom, and dexterity.
Strategy & Strength In Numbers
A wide array of activities and pursuits await in the open world of Dragonheir: Silent Gods – hunt for treasure, solve intricate puzzles, join a drinking contest or a cooking competition, and shape your hero’s story in any way you want.
Players won’t take on this adventure alone. The world of Adenthia has over 200 heroes with unique abilities and attributes just waiting to join the fight against the darkness gripping the land. You can also take on the bigger challenges alongside your friends and comrades in a cooperative PvE mode in which players can team up to slay the most formidable enemies and forge their glory together. The different build options also mean endless possibilities to customize your party members to ensure your crew stands out. Your unique set of strengths will also play a key role in recruiting some of them to join your party.
Fans of strategic combat will love the unique blend of chess-like strategy, different character abilities, and a stroke of luck while rolling the dice to see who fortune favors this round. While turn-based combat is fast-paced emphasizing proper character placement, knowing how your characters can take advantage of different terrains is pivotal in deciding who emerges victorious.
More To Come
In December, we wrote about how Dragonheir: Silent Gods is looking to capture the fun of tabletop classics. Between Dragonheir: Silent God’s modern graphics engine and their involvement with Nuverse, the game continues to add to the promise and anticipation ahead of release.
SGRA and Nuverse have a busy schedule and a full slate of post-launch seasonal content that introduces new quests, characters, and dimensions along the way. Doing so encourages players to experience something new each time they log in all the while expanding the world-building and adding to the adventure.
Dragonheir: Silent Gods is set to release in the second half of 2023 so PC, iOS, and Android players can look forward to slaying dragons and saving the world together very soon. Stay tuned for more updates and ensure you’re ready when it’s time to step up as the chosen one.
Resident Evil 4 Remake is just a few weeks away but IGN got one more look at the highly-anticipated survival horror game ahead of the launch, with plenty of enticing new details to pore over. While we would have preferred to actually play the game, especially since it’s so close to release, instead we were shown just under 20 minutes of new Resident Evil 4 Remake footage. However, it gave us enough of a look to spot some of what we think will be the biggest changes coming to the horror classic.
Parrying
In an interview with IGN about how the development team figured out what new gameplay mechanics to add to Resident Evil 4 Remake, director Yasuhiro Ampo said, “when looking into making the remake, the team didn’t want to disturb the main mechanics that the original game had. However, when looking into the game, they looked into what they could add on top of what was already there, what was already good, and making everything even better.”
To highlight this philosophy, Ampo specifically cited knife combat, which is enhanced from the original. In the original Resident Evil 4, Leon would use the knife as a last resort; in the Remake, Leon is able to parry attacks, making the knife not only a viable weapon but a necessary one, especially if you’re running low on health.
Parrying enemy attacks transforms the knife from a last-ditch tool and glorified wooden crate opener into a defensive tool where you’re able to keep yourself alive just a little bit longer, so long as you have the dexterity to block incoming attacks.
New Finishing Moves
Similar to the parrying skill, you can also use knives as finishing attacks when enemies are on the ground. In one particularly striking scene from the footage we previewed, Leon was able to approach an enemy on the ground and slit their throat.
It’s a particularly brutal sequence, but one that points to how Resident Evil 4 Remake will maintain an equal balance of horror and action. In our interview, Ampo said the team was “highly focused on creating a really balanced game with both horror and action.”
Side Quests
In previous interviews, the Resident Evil 4 Remake team said the game will be somewhat bigger than the original. While that suddenly won’t turn Resident Evil 4 into an open-world game, there appears to be some optional side quests Leon can complete through mysterious blue parchments.
In one scene, Leon picks up a blue piece of paper asking him to bring them a rare gold chicken egg. Completing this side mission rewards Leon with three Spinels he can later sell to the Merchant for some cash.
Customization Options
Leon’s best friend is an attache case that houses all of his gear. Not only is the case back in the Remake, but players are able to customize the attache case with different colors and can even add little charms to personalize the case. In the preview video we watched, Leon is able to add a little chicken charm to the corner of his case. And as a bonus, organizing your gear in the attache case’s grid system still looks incredibly satisfying.
Revamped Ashley
Your mission in Resident Evil 4 is to rescue Ashley Graham, the daughter of the President of the United States. Spoiler alert, you find Ashley partway through the game, but that doesn’t mean your mission is over just yet. Ashley follows Leon around and it’s up to the player to keep her safe from enemies while trying to escape this hostile village.
Ashley has new abilities this time around, like being able to unlock doors. Leon is also able to direct Ashley to either stay close behind him or hang back a bit while he takes care of some enemies.
She also sports a new look in the Remake, something Capcom producer Yoshiaki Harabayashi says was meant to remedy something from the original game. In our interview he said, “So looking into the environment that she is in and looking into the season that the game is taking place in, it was taking place in a very cold area in Europe, and in that way, she was a bit underdressed for the weather, so to speak. So the team decided to add a jacket that suited her.”
New Weapons
Fans may have already spotted this in some of the new trailers, but Resident Evil 4 Remake will feature at least one new weapon: the Bolt Thrower. These are explosive mines attached to silent bolts that can not only take care of tough enemies from afar but they’re delivered in a silent way, making them almost like a stealth weapon (at least until they explode).
Stealth
This brings us to another point: stealth. The developers confirmed in our interview that Leon will be able to use stealth to get past enemies in the Remake. Not only can Leon crouch, but if you’re careful enough, you can get past enemies by silently dispatching them with the knife, or create distractions from a distance using the bolt thrower.
The new stealth mechanics are particularly handy when fighting the Garrador, which rely on sound to track down Leon’s location.
Different Boss Fights
Our preview ended with a glimpse of the fight against Leon’s old teammate Jack Krauser. While the fight was originally a QTE event in the original game, the boss fight is now fully playable with Leon using his improved knife to go toe-to-toe with Krauser.
Capcom confirmed to IGN there will be no “cutscene-based QTEs in the Remake,” however, there are times during combat when players will have to mash a button in order to escape. So there are still button prompts like that in the Remake.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
The Xbox exclusive rythmic action hit Hi-Fi Rush has officially surpassed the two million player mark according to Bethesda and developer Tango Gameworks.
As spotted by G.I.Biz, the engagement milestone came by way of a tweet from Bethesda encouraging fans to “keep on being rockstars”, whle celebrating the fact that “two million players have moved to the beat of Hi-Fi Rush” since the game’s January 25 straight to Game Pass surprise launch.
“Some people had played it and they spoke about it to their other [colleagues],” said Hi-Fi Rush director John Johanas in an interview with IGN.
“They’re like, ‘Did you see that game that they’re making there?’ There’s this weird sort of viral positivity to this just playing this game, and Game Pass just felt like an excellent opportunity to let something… lose that skepticism immediately by just playing it and people just talking about it.”
Judging by the newly revealed two million player milestone, paired with the overwhelming social media positivity surrounding the game at launch, Tango Gameworks’ gamble certainly appears to have paid off.
IGN gave the rhythm extravaganza a 9/10, saying that “Hi-Fi Rush is a memorable journey that matches to the beat of its own drum and without a doubt stands among the action greats”.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
At this point, it’s probably fair to say that Team Ninja has a pretty good handle on this whole soulslike genre thing. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty may not reach the same heights as Nioh 2 did back in 2020, but it certainly scratches that same itch of lightning-fast combat, punishing-yet-rewarding difficulty, and deep build customization options that you can craft and tailor to your own playstyle. It’s great for the same reasons that the Nioh games are, and it accomplishes that feat even while completely changing up the fundamentals of its combat system to be closer to Sekiro than Dark Souls. But by that same token, it also falls victim to the same familiar issues nagging at those other Team Ninja soulslikes, including subpar storytelling and excessively fiddly loot mechanics. But when you consider that the things Wo Long does better than just about any other game in this genre, that baggage amounts to scratches on an otherwise pristine set of armor.
If you’re familiar with the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history you may get more out of Wo Long’s story than I did (my knowledge basically begins and ends with the fact that you should not pursue Lu Bu), but I think even then it won’t be a highlight because Team Ninja continues to struggle with telling a memorable story with likable characters. This is a supernatural take on the final days of the Han Dynasty, where we take control of a nameless warrior who gets swept up in a power struggle between warring kingdoms and their pursuit of an elixir of immortality. In practically every level you team up with some sort of historically significant warrior to fight through a level, have a boss battle against an evil or corrupted historically significant warrior, and then move on to the next one.
Characters are introduced at a rapid-fire pace and leave the scene just as quickly, often without making any sort of impact on the overall story. Sometimes they return many hours later, but I’d already forgotten them because they didn’t do anything meaningful. Fortunately, the actual gameplay in between the cutscenes make up the vast majority of what we’re here to do, and it’s there that Wo Long shines brightest.
The Dance of Combat
Wo Long’s combat is a puzzle that needs to be figured out really quickly if you plan on getting past even the first major boss, but once you solve it, it’s incredibly satisfying to play around in. Similar to Sekiro, it’s a system that relies a lot on carefully timing deflections so you can preserve your Spirit meter while also avoiding damage, especially when enemies also start mixing in powerful, unblockable attacks that have to be parried rather than blocked. Crucially, though, you can completely negate damage from regular attacks just by holding down the block button, so long as you have enough Spirit built up to avoid having your guard broken – if that happens, you’re left helpless. You can even hold down the block button while also attempting to deflect, making it so that even if you’re too late on the deflection timing, you’ll still block the attack.
Once you solve the puzzle of Wo Long’s combat, it’s incredibly satisfying to play around in.
It’s a good thing that Wo Long has this leniency built in because in practically every other regard, it doesn’t pull any punches. Enemies will regularly power through your attacks to deal a more powerful blow of their own, they have combos that go on for days, and they do a really good job at varying the rhythm of their attacks to try and bait you into parrying too early. It rewards a careful eye and punishes falling into a predictable rhythm. Even with all of that it isn’t nearly as hard as Nioh 2, for reasons I’ll get to later, but it still manages to find a really satisfying balance of being tough, fair, and absolutely exhilarating once you start to pick up on an enemy’s attack patterns and find yourself deflecting each hit of an incoming combo.
One clever wrinkle is that your Spirit meter is also a resource that can be spent on spells, special martial arts abilities, and Spirit attacks. That’s a nice risk-reward mechanic that lets you put yourself in a potentially more vulnerable position in order to gain some sort of advantage. If you know an enemy has an elemental weakness, for instance, you can exploit that by spending Spirit to enchant your weapon with an element to stagger and quickly break them. Martial arts abilities are unique depending on the weapon you’re wielding, and there are many that offer powerful attacks that can either do big single-target damage or give you a way to deal with many enemies at once. Finally, Spirit attacks are powerful strikes that increase in damage the more Spirit you have built up, which give you another reason to hold onto your Spirit meter until you need it.
I never felt like I was stuck against a wall with no idea of how to overcome a particular challenge.
If it’s not already clear, there are tons of layers to Wo Long’s combat, which greatly enhances the already excellent swordplay by laying out a ton of options and ways to vary up my strategy whenever I found myself dying repeatedly to a particular boss. If just straight-up attacking didn’t work I could focus more on defense and reduce their Spirit by deflecting their big attacks; failing that, I could double down on rushing them down and trying to break their Spirit with aggressive attacks and martial arts abilities. Or, if I could figure out what they were weak to, I could try using spells. So while Wo Long is certainly tough, I never felt like I was ever stuck against a wall with no idea of what else I could try or how to overcome a particular challenge.
The Loot Problem
Where Wo Long feels very similar to the previous three Team Ninja soulslikes – in a bad way – is in its loot. More specifically, there’s an overabundance of it. I became absolutely inundated with garbage gear that I had no use for within just a few hours, and it only got worse after that. I’m just not the kind of person who really wants to spend 10 to 15 minutes in a menu trying to decipher whether a -2.6% reduction in Martial Arts Spirit is worth sacrificing a +7.2% Genuine Qi Obtention, or if I’m willing to sacrifice a few points of attack power for +24 alliance Spirit defense. Those simply aren’t interesting decisions – those are spreadsheet entries and math problems, and it’s made worse by not even being able to sort your massive list of weapons by set, or by a specific special effect you’re looking for.
Where Wo Long feels very similar to the previous three Team Ninja soulslikes – in a bad way – is in its loot.
I’m fully aware that there are people who love these games for this level of hyper-specific build optimization, and if that is you, then you’ll find a lot to appreciate here. You can salvage junk gear to extract their special effects, then slot those special effects into weapons that you want to use, and then you can copy the appearance of any other weapon or armor so you don’t have to worry about being forced to use an ugly weapon or armor set because it has great stats. It’s fairly exhaustive in its options, but it’s also not for those of us who prefer action to menu screens.
Fortunately, I found that I didn’t have to get too far in the weeds on my first playthrough because I was more than powerful enough just by engaging with loot on a surface level. For armor, I just picked whatever gave me the highest defense number without putting me into the heavyweight category, which would limit my mobility. Then I would pick a weapon type I liked, swap it with one with a higher gear score whenever I came across one; similarly, when I found one that came with a Martial Arts ability that I liked, I just upgraded that as high as I could. No major tweaking was necessary to keep me from falling behind the power curve, leaving the complexity for those who are looking to test their mettle in the multiple iterations of New Game+ or PvP invasions.
Raising Morale
One of my favorite new ideas in Wo Long is the addition of Morale Ranks, which is basically a separate progression system that starts at zero at the beginning of every main mission and goes all the way up to 25. You gain morale simply by defeating enemies, but you’ll gain it even faster by killing them using Spirit attacks, Martial Arts abilities, or critical strikes. You will also lose some morale everytime you die, up to a certain point determined by your fortitude level, which you can increase by finding various flag poles throughout each mission. Enemies have Morale Ranks too, and those with a higher rank than you deal more damage. I love this addition because it gives every level a very natural ramp-up in difficulty, while adding extra incentive to explore and mop up more bad guys.
Each level begins fairly easy: a bunch of low-morale-rank enemies make up the majority of foes, with a few high-rank monsters sprinkled in here and there to give you an occasional challenging fight. By the time you’re near the end of the level though, you’re regularly going up against rank 20 enemies and bosses that will be really tough to deal with if you haven’t been thorough in clearing out the opposition.
Some of my favorite side missions even have you sparring against your allies in challenging boss battles.
Much like Nioh, Wo Long’s campaign is broken up into main missions and side missions, with the main missions taking you through humongous levels – from castles, to active battlefields, to jails with Dark Souls-like poison ponds on the ground floor – and the side missions typically having you revisit those settings with some sort of fun twist with regard to the objective and enemy placements. Some of my favorite side missions even have you sparring against your allies in challenging boss battles. One of the really great things that Wo Long does is that it allows you to exit out of a mission from a Battle Flag and save your progress on that main mission. This is a wonderful safety net, because frequently what can happen is you can find yourself underleveled and stuck on a main mission; here you’re allowed to back out to the level select, complete some side missions to level up or get new gear, maybe head to your secret village home base to upgrade that gear, and then return right where you left off on that main mission without feeling like you’ve lost your hard-fought progress.
The levels themselves won’t win any awards for how they look, but they’re very well designed from a gameplay perspective. Branching paths that often allow you to find an easier way through a particularly tough area and tons of easily missable optional detours leading to bountiful rewards keep them from being straightforward paths from point A to point B.
Wo Long’s biggest problem – bigger than the loot issues and the poor storytelling – is its enemy variety. Even though the combat system is excellent and varied, there’s simply not enough different types of opponents to fill a game of this size. The ones that are here are fantastic and fun to fight, don’t get me wrong, but part of the fun of a soulslike is encountering a new threat, learning their attack patterns, and finding ways to get through the fight without taking heavy damage. In Wo Long, I felt like I figured out everything I needed to know to get through every non-boss encounter by hour five of a game that, in total, took me about 22 hours to beat. That took out a lot of the tension and fear of death that these games thrive on. Without the anxiety that something unexpected might be lying in wait around the next corner, Wo Long is still a very challenging game, but one that lacks a certain sense of adventure.
Wo Long’s biggest problem is its enemy variety.
It’s also worth mentioning that Wo Long also includes online co-op for up to three players, an extensive New Game+ for those who really want to min/max their characters to the extreme, and even has PvP invasions (which you can opt out of if you’d prefer to deal with relatively easy AI invaders). Unfortunately, not enough people were playing ahead of launch for me to test the competitive multiplayer features out for this review, but cooperative play is super easy to set up and play through, just like it has been in prior Team Ninja soulslikes. You can either recruit random strangers into your game from within a level when you need help, or you can start a level fresh from the beginning with a friend.
Amazon is currently a Micro Center 1TB Micro SDXC card for only $84.98. That’s one of the least expensive 1TB Micro SDXC cards we’ve seen, and it’s fully compatible with the Nintendo Switch console.
If you’ve started compiling a collection of digital games, you probably already know just how limited the Switch’s base storage capacity. With only 32GB of starting space (and some of it reserved for the OS), you’ll barely fit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Sword or Shield, which tap out at 13.5GB each! There’s only one expansion slot in the Switch console so you want to make sure you get the biggest card you can afford.
1TB Micro SDXC Card (Switch Compatible) for $84.98
Micro Center is a legitimate company; they have about two dozen retail stores and they’ve been around for over 40 years. This particular brand of Micro SDXC card has over 14,000 reviews on Amazon with an average user score of 4.6/5. The Micro Center “Premium” card has a faster Class U3 rating, which means it boasts a minimum read speed of 30MB/s. Of course if you plan to use this in a Nintendo Switch, it doesn’t even matter. The Nintendo Switch can only support U1 (10MB/s) speeds, so a higher rated U3 speed will just be throttled back down to U1 speeds anyways. So make sure your money goes into maximum storage capacity, not maximum speed.
Note: An official Nintendo Switch branded Micro SDXC card is no more compatible than any other Micro SDXC card with similar specs. Aside from the official licensing, you’re paying extra only for the card’s design. Of course, no one’s going to see the card once installed.
Steam Deck Owners Can Use These Cards Too!
The Switch isn’t the only gaming system that accepts these cards. If you’re a Steam Deck owner, you can also use this card, especially if you picked up the 64GB storage option. This deal may come around on Black Friday, but we highly doubt that it will be any cheaper. You might as well get it now and never worry about running out of space again. Check out our guide to the best SD cards for Steam Deck for more info.
