Nintendo Switch Game Sale: Lots of Games Are $39.99 or Less

It doesn’t happen often, but it’s always nice when it does. Right now, Nintendo is running a sale that drops prices on a decent selection of games down to $39.99 or less. Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that’s about the best we can hope to see from the Mario company, which refuses to allow the deeper discounts we see on pretty much every other game on the market.

The games on sale this time around include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and also its Expansion Pass, which you might want to pick up before Tears of the Kingdom arrives. You can also find deals on some excellent JRPGs, a few mini- and micro-game collections, and quite a bit more. Let’s have a look.

Nintendo Switch Game Deals

There’s a good chance you can find something worth picking up in this sale. I recommend Link’s Awakening and WarioWare: Get It Together for good fun times. Live-a-Live is an excellent RPG that’s divided into relatively bite-sized chapters, so it’s not like you’re embarking on one ridiculously enormous quest. And the combat system in Bravely Default II is almost perfectly tuned.

If you want more digital and physical options, you can take a look at the full sale at Best Buy. Best Buy generally does a better job of keeping everything in stock than Amazon does.

Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed or on Mastodon @chrislreed.

Wanted: Dead Review

Ninja Gaiden Black is my favorite action game of all time, so if you describe something as “a hybrid slasher/shooter from the makers of Ninja Gaiden” like Wanted: Dead does on the back of its box, you’ve got my both attention and hopes up right out of the gate. But as quick as they rose, they fell even faster, because Wanted: Dead is a bad game even removed from any comparison to Ninja Gaiden. Its story is nonsense, the voice acting is some of the worst I’ve heard in a modern game, its difficulty is all over the place, it frequently crashes, and even though its combat is the best part, it still feels sluggish and poorly balanced between your ranged and melee options. If you look super closely, you can see tiny bits of some of the ideas that went into the Ninja Gaiden games, from quick and satisfying executions to dismemberment that affects the behavior of enemy AI. But those small sparks aren’t enough to save what is otherwise a soulless throwback to the many mediocre action games of the mid to late 2000s.

Wanted: Dead’s story takes place in Hong Kong and follows the Zombie Squad, a Suicide Squad-esque police task force made up of former military that wound up in prison with a life sentence for one reason or another and joined the squad as a form of rehabilitation. Despite the fact that there is a weird abundance of scenes in between missions where Zombie Squad is together just hanging out (usually eating food), there is zero chemistry between these characters. I can’t even tell you much about them outside of the fact that Herzog is a creep, Doc is super awkward, Cortez only communicates with sign language, and the player character, Lieutenant Stone, has confusing anime flashbacks with no context. Finding personnel files illuminates a little more about each character, like the fact that Herzog is “an extreme lover of women” with “The Beast” as his nickname, and Doc got expelled from med school for liking drugs and wild parties, though most of the rest of these files are copied and pasted between each character.

It all has the vibe of a Suda51 game like No More Heroes, Lollipop Chainsaw, or Killer is Dead but without any of the style or charm that goes into them. It doesn’t lean into its silliness hard enough, and as a result, the tone feels confused. It’s a gritty slasher/shooter that will throw you into an off the wall karaoke performance of 99 Luftballons out of nowhere, or pit you against your squadmate in an eating competition after learning about the history of ramen and its Chinese roots. It’s bizarre, but the kind that makes me tilt my head rather than laugh at the absurdity. The voice acting is also poor without ever having the charm to at least be considered endearingly campy. I had a hard time following what characters were actually talking about because it felt like the actors never really had a grasp of what they were talking about themselves.

A Dull Blade

I can forgive an action game of a lot if the action itself makes up for those shortcomings, and while Wanted: Dead’s combat is the best part about it, it’s far too one-note to save the rest of this sinking ship. Its fundamentals are at least pretty sound: The animations look great, there’s some satisfaction to the gory sword play, and for the first hour or so, it feels good to parry enemy attacks, liberate some limbs, and see some stylish executions. The issue is that it never really evolves beyond that base over the roughly eight hour campaign.

I could buy new skills from a very limited skill tree, but none of them ever felt like they affected my approach to combat. Most either felt like skills of convenience that I should’ve had from the start, like a dashing attack or the ability to use an execution on a downed or limbless enemy, or they were necessary power ramps that felt virtually required just to be able to survive the later encounters, like more stimpacks or flat increases of damage and defense. Nothing ever made me better at defeating specific enemy types or gave me a new way to deal with any particular threat, let alone a reason to use anything other than the same combo that I’d been using since the start. There are no air combos, practically no learnable special attacks outside of a nearly useless charge attack and the aforementioned dashing attack, and no new melee weapons beyond the starting katana. Put simply, Wanted: Dead’s combat is pasta with no sauce.

Put simply, Wanted: Dead’s combat is pasta with no sauce.

As a result, the combat grew stale after the second level, and became a chore for the remaining three. It doesn’t help that the enemy AI and variety in Wanted: Dead is terrible. They can basically be boiled down into five archetypes: Weak ranged grunts, weak melee grunts, shield dudes, ninjas, and big boy brutes. While there are some slight variations within those archetypes, they all pretty much behave the same. Once I learned the parry timings, combat essentially just became a game of taking turns. I’d attack until the enemy parried, wait to parry their attacks, and then either die or attack until they parry again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For those looking for a challenge, at the very least Wanted: Dead does provide that, but it does so in all the wrong ways. For starters, the checkpointing is atrocious. I frequently found myself playing for 10-15 minutes without hitting a checkpoint in a single level, and worse still, some of these stretches were capped off with what are essentially miniboss fights – that meant I wouldn’t even get a shot at trying again without retracing my steps through the same 10-15 minutes of enemy encounters if I died. This is especially bad in a game that’s so reliant on learning enemy rhythms and attack patterns.

The most damning thing, however, is that Lieutenant Stone feels super weak to play as throughout the entire campaign despite the fact that she is supposed to be some badass super cop. She can use guns, but most enemies are bullet sponges that take forever to kill; she can throw grenades, but you can’t cook them, so your foes will almost always dive out of the way; she can’t block bullets, she dies in just a few hits, and she needs to purchase upgrades to do basic things, like blocking more than one strike at a time or attacking after a perfectly timed parry.

Wanted: Dead’s combat is pasta with no sauce

There are isolated moments where Wanted: Dead does briefly come to life. The third level begins with a cool encounter where it tries to overwhelm you with a bunch of weak enemies that die in just one or two hits, which acts a great showcase for the exciting super move Lieutenant Stone can use to chain executions together, much like Ryu Hayabusa could do in Ninja Gaiden 3. And while it’s super janky to look at, there’s another fun moment where you’re given a chainsaw in a hedge maze, chopping up enemies as you round the corners. Wanted: Dead desperately needed more moments like these to break up the monotony, but sadly they are few and far between. It also doesn’t help that even good moments could be soured by a tendency to crash repeatedly while I played on PlayStation 5.

3 Great Deals on Star Wars, Batman, Mario and More Merch at the IGN Store: Fan Fest 2023

In case you missed the news, IGN Fan Fest is back and bigger than ever for 2023! If you hadn’t heard of Fan Fest before, IGN Fan Fest is a two-day event, bringing fans exclusive interviews and sneak peeks from some of the biggest movies, shows and games you all love. (You can see everything announced at Fan Fest 2022 for reference).

What better way to celebrate fans than giving out special discounts this week on the coolest merch from your favorite franchises and beyond? Keep reading to see what deals are up for grabs this week only on our very own IGN Store.

TL;DR – What to Expect at Fan Fest 2023

  • Feb. 13 – Feb 16: Exclusive IGN Fan Fest preview content all week long
  • Friday, Feb. 17: Day 1 of the IGN Fan Fest livestream begins at 10am PT
  • Saturday, Feb. 18: Day 2 livestream begins at 10am PT
  • Here’s the Fan Fest 2023 Schedule, including panel lineup and details about new giveaways
  • Here’s How to Watch IGN Fan Fest 2023

Celebrate Fan Fest This Week With 3 IGN Store Deals

  1. Save 40% off all items in the New, Limited Time Fan Fest Special Collection with Coupon Code: FANFEST
  2. All IGN Short Sleeve Tees are only $15
  3. Spend $150+ and Get a FREE Black IGN Logo Tee

*This week’s deals start February 13th at 12pm PT and end Monday, February 20th at 11:59pm.

Top In-Stock Items You Can Get on the IGN Store Now

For even more, check out all of the cool merch around IGN Fan Fest favorites available at the IGN Store:

About the IGN Store

IGN Store sells high-quality merch for everything you’re into. It’s a store built with fans in mind for all geek culture and fandom we love across comics and gaming. So, whether you’re into comics, movies, Anime, games, or just like to collect cute plushies, this store is for you.

The IGN Store carries collections and apparel from the big fandom franchises. Browse your favorites:

1. Marvel

2. DC

3. D&D

4. Harry Potter

5. Disney

6. Nintendo

7. Star Wars

8. Star Trek

9. Pokemon

More Franchises to Explore from the IGN Store:

IGN Fan Fest 2023 Giveaway terms and Conditions here.

Deliver Us Mars Review

Just before my group of four young astronauts with major, personal conflicts of interest blast off to the red planet, I’m assured by our team leader that, while some corners had to be cut to get our ship spaceworthy, it should do its job just fine. And it does… kind of. Which is a great metaphor for Deliver Us Mars as a whole. This platforming, puzzle-solving, interplanetary adventure is trying to do too much with too little, and it ends up touching down just North of adequate.

The backstory for our plucky, rebellious, sometimes even endearing hero, Kathy, is that she was separated from her father Isaac just before he boarded a colonization mission bound for Mars. Years later, she’s been through astronaut school on a climate-ravaged Earth and a mysterious transmission from Isaac spurs her and her older sister, Claire, to seek seats on the mission to bring the colony ships back. Periodic flashbacks do a respectable job of filling in the complicated and painful story of their family along the way.

The launch sequence from Cape Canaveral is among the strongest. It has you perform various checks and landing procedures that feel authentic and tactile before watching through the front window as your ship, the Zephyr, leaves Earth’s atmosphere with no cuts or loading screens. You’re not briefed on any of these procedures ahead of time, which led to a lot of me swiveling my mouse pointer around frantically trying to find the highlighted switch for the internal power interval or whatever, but it was neat once I got the hang of it.

Outside these scripted sequences, Deliver Us Mars consists of first- and third-person explorations of an orbital facility and the surface of Mars itself, featuring some fairly simple puzzle-solving and occasional, frustrating platforming. There are several sections where you have to bounce wireless power beams around, matching the voltage on doors and terminals to get to the next area. They’re generally not too difficult, but I found some of the trickier ones satisfying to solve.

Exploration features fairly simple puzzle-solving and occasional, frustrating platforming.

What wasn’t nearly as satisfying were these obnoxious climbing wall segments. You have to click the left and right mouse button at the same time to grab onto a wall to begin with, and you have to do so with enough room that you don’t slide off of the climbing surface. But this action is so unresponsive that whether you can get a purchase or not feels more random than anything, especially in some cases where you have to jump at an angle. Also, one of the moves you need to progress in some of the later segments is never explained at all, and I discovered it by accident when I was just trying out random buttons in frustration after I’d been stuck for several minutes. Pro tip: You can hold S and press spacebar to jump to a wall that’s behind you.

This lack of direction even extends to some segments of the main story where you have several different ways you can go, but aren’t told at all which is the right one and can end up wandering way off in the wrong direction. There is an option under Accessibility to always display quest markers, and while I don’t necessarily need a big star constantly guiding my every step, it could really use some sort of middle ground. If you tell me to go to Ark Vita without ever giving me a hint about where it is, that seems like you’re really leaving me to twist in the wind.

Doll-like models can’t keep up with otherwise convincing performances.

At least the characters are endearing. What few of them there are, anyway. Neil Newborn (whom you may remember as Resident Evil: Village’s maniacal Heisenberg) gives a great performance as Isaac, a complex character with conflicted motivations. Kathy herself is brought to life by Ellise Chappell, who gives a convincing performance with a wide emotional range. And the story is respectable, with the mystery of what happened to the Martian colonists pulling me forward at each turn.

The character models can’t really keep up with it, though. They have a very doll-like, uncanny valley look to them – when we get to see their faces at all. A lot of backstory is delivered through these pre-recorded holograms where hairless, faceless crash test dummies pose in place while dialogue plays. It really looks like placeholder art you’d see in an unfinished game, and the developers just never had the time or resources to replace it. There is also a whole chapter toward the end that jumps from one scene to something completely unrelated, giving me the sense that they cut a significant amount of plot without doing a very good job of stitching it back together.

Performance, especially during cutscenes, is also a major issue. My RTX 3080-powered system exceeds the recommended specs, but in many cinematics I would see my framerate drop below 10 fps, even with DLSS on. I had to turn off the per-strand hair rendering altogether because it kept glitching out. In regular gameplay, it’s usually fine. But this is clearly not a very well-optimized project.

Wild Hearts Is So Tough That Even Its Own Developers Have Trouble With It

The mighty Kemono – the creatures inhabiting Wild Hearts, the new monster hunting game by Koei Tecmo and EA – aren’t easy. In fact, they’re hard enough that even one of the game’s directors has trouble defeating his own creations.

“I have quite a lot of difficulties,” Wild Hearts co-director Takuto Edagawa says with a laugh. “When we look at [the toughest Kemono in the game], those ones I die [against]. If I’m not properly prepared, I’ll go in and I’ll be killed.”

But luckily for Edagawa, a helping hand is always close by — literally. His development partner, co-director Kotaro Hirata, smiles and says, “I’m totally awesome at [Wild Hearts], actually.”

The Omega Force division of Koei Tecmo is primarily known for Dynasty Warriors, the wild power fantasy series that sees players effortlessly taking out hundreds of foes at a time. With Wild Hearts, which will seek to capture the appeal of Capcom’s popular Monster Hunter series, Koei Tecmo is well aware it is developing a very difficult game. Edagawa and Hirata want you to fear the Kemono, the nature-infused beasts that inhabit Wild Hearts’ world.

But the development has also been careful to introduce several mechanics to encourage players new to the monster hunting genre to give Wild Hearts a try.

How Omega Force Crafted Wild Hearts’ Karakuri System

What does set Wild Hearts apart is, in fact, crafting. Players will be able to take advantage of the new Karakuri crafting system, which gives players the power to instantly construct objects during the heat of battle. Whether it’s a box to climb on to launch yourself closer to the massive Kemono, or a spring that helps you quickly evade devastating incoming attacks, the Karakuri are designed to give players the edge.

The Karakuri crafting system came about when Edagawa and Hirata realized the beasts were too difficult for players to defeat. Rather than nerfing the Kemono’s abilities, the two decided to give the player the power of the Karakuri to even the score.

[Crossplay] was actually quite a significant decision for us, and it was one of the toughest things we actually had to work with in development.

“Before [the Karakuri system] came along, the Kemono were way too strong for the players,” Hirata said. “They were just massive creatures with too much power. But then the Karakuri idea came in, and then we realized, ‘the Karakuri system might be too strong now!’… We wanted to make sure the Kemono were really strong and really difficult to beat, because we wanted the players to feel the sense that it was a challenging endeavor. But trying to find that right balance between the actual strength of the Kemono versus the strength of the players was the hardest balance to figure out.”

The directors say the difference between great Wild Hearts players and those who are still figuring it out will be the mastery of the Karakuri system. For players struggling against the nature-infused Kemono, Wild Hearts’ flexible multiplayer support will make calling in help a breeze. Wild Hearts supports online multiplayer for up to three people, and Hirata said watching how more experienced players use the Karakuri can teach rookies very useful strategies.

Unlike Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, Wild Hearts also supports crossplay, allowing players on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC to tackle the game together.

“[Crossplay] was actually quite a significant decision for us, and it was one of the toughest things we actually had to work with in development,” Edagawa said. “EA actually said that cross platform play is definitely a plus, and so we thought, ‘Then okay, we’ll do it.’ And ultimately we’re very happy that we decided that… When we think of the fact that we want more people to play, and people from more diverse environments to play, it was definitely worth the additional effort that was required to be able to do this.”

A New Hunting Franchise for Omega Force

While Hirata and Edagawa shied away from drawing comparisons to Capcom’s hunting juggernaut (the two didn’t use the word “Monster” during the entirety of the interview, referring to the beasts in Wild Hearts as “Kemono”, “creatures”, and “prey”, exclusively), it’s impossible to not look at Wild Hearts and see the similarities to Monster Hunter. The two titles are cut from the same cloth, both focusing on the central gameplay loop of hunting creatures to improve your gear, and using that better gear to take down even more powerful foes.

Given Monster Hunter World’s sales success, it’s easy to understand why the Dynasty Warriors studio wanted to take another stab at a hunting action game.

Omega Force previously developed the Toukiden series, which saw three games released between 2013 and 2016. The franchise never caught on in the West, causing a long hiatus for hunting action games from the studio.

Wild Hearts is a fresh start in the genre for Omega Force, and the directors have high hopes for the game beyond this week’s launch. The studio will continue to support the game with free, post-launch updates that will add new Kemono for players to face off against.

There are currently no plans for microtransactions, with Edagawa saying, “when it comes to gameplay and content, players will not be charged anything for any of the actual gameplay.”

If the developers do implement microtransactions down the line, it will strictly apply to cosmetics. Beyond that, Hirata said Koei Tecmo wants Wild Hearts to be a new core franchise for the studio.

“We wanted to build a new pillar for Omega Force. I think in the past we had experiences with the Warriors series and also Toukiden as well, but… When we talk about the reach to a global audience, those titles were not quite there yet in appealing to a wider audience. So one of the things we really wanted to work on and one of the things that started off this project was for Omega Force to have a game that had a global appeal, that was accepted more by a much wider audience.”

Wild Hearts is out this February 17 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer at IGN

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Season 2 All Warzone and Multiplayer Changes Explained

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is hitting Season 2 February 15th and we see the return of Resurgence Mode with a new Warzone Map, New DMZ map and wipe, new ranked mode in multiplayer, the launch of Gun Game, and more. There’s a new Operator Ronin dropping into the battlefield and a full new battlepass with new rewards to collect. Here’s everything coming to Modern Warfare 2 Season 2 for Warzone and Multiplayer.

Warzone 2.0 Updates

Ashika Island is a smaller, Japanese-themed map that is located in the Asia Pacific region. Research showed that Ashika was being used as a hideout for the Ultranationalist Konni Group which focused on transporting chemical and biological weapons. Even though this is a smaller map, Ashika has waterways for traversal and mountains/high points to leap off of and redeploy.

Return of Resurgence

Ashika Island is also the new map for Resurgence, a game mode coming back from the original Warzone. This will feature solos, duos, trios, and quads, with its own playlist update throughout Season 2. As a reminder, Resurgence allows for multiple respawns as long as one of your teammates is still alive.

The respawns happen after a certain amount of time has passed, which you can shorten by doing specific challenges like killing enemies. As the circle closes, the countdown for respawns gets longer and longer, and you still have access to buy stations if you get too impatient.

In this mode, there’s a new feature called Restore Honor where each player will drop a dog tag when eliminated which can be picked up by their teammate or enemy that will give a small cash reward and a single UAV ping that marks enemies and supply boxes.

1v1 Gulag

The Gulag is returning to its 1v1 standoff with Season 2 and will no longer feature the Jailer as the tiebreaker but bring back its Domination flag capture. The Gulag map will still be the Season 1 map but slightly altered to support 1v1 and we’re finally getting new weapon pools instead of just constantly getting a tiny pistol each time.

The weapon pool includes Assault Rifles, Submachine Guns, and Light Machine Guns. Shotguns have been completely removed from the Gulag and you’ll only have the pistol as your secondary weapon. The Gulag map also has cash lying around so you can run around and grab some before fighting, and if you win your match, the cash payout will be much larger so you can redeploy with a better chance of survival.

No more Backpacks

In Season 2 players will no longer have to go into menus to pick up objects and loot will now drop all out of containers like how things spray out from Supply Boxes. The backpack system will also be altered so you no longer need Medium or Large backpacks and each player will have the same backpack throughout the match that has reduced penalties for stacking healing items, equipment, and killstreaks. Player loot, when eliminated, will now spill out instead of being confined to a dropped backpack.

Cheaper Loadouts

In order to reward players with easier access to Loadouts, the price of Primary Weapons you can purchase in Buy Stations have been reduced and Loadout Drop Markers costs have also been reduced so Squads can get their full Loadouts faster. An additional second Loadout Drop Public Event has been added so drops will now occur on the first and fifth Circle each match.

No More Lootable Armor Vests

Everyone will spawn in with 3-Plate Vests instead of having to loot different tier vests each match.

DMZ Updates

Season Refresh

With all new missions coming with Season 2, DMZ players will get a complete refresh of their missions which includes a clean wipe. This wipe includes a Contraband and Keys reset but keeps your Insured Weapon Slots and any other permanent content earned in Season 1 intact. DMZ will feature both Al Mazrah and Ashika Island as their maps to get your missions completed on but Al Mazrah will have a few Points of Interests (POIs) changed for fresh exploration. You can choose whatever map you want, including Building 21, at any time when starting up DMZ.

Multiplayer Changes

New Game Modes

Ranked Play is the hottest game mode in Season 2 where you can finally put your skills to the test. Treyarch and the Call of Duty League build this mode together that uses CDL approved rules, restrictions, maps and modes with exclusive ranked based rewards that let you show off your skills. This is an intimate 4v4 multiplayer mode and you have to be at least evel 16 to access Ranked.

The modes in the Ranked playlist include Hardpoint, Search & Destroy, and Control. The ranks start at Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Crimson, Iridescent, Top 250 (where your name will be displayed on a special leaderboard). If you finish a season in the Gold rank or above, you’ll get a special set of rewards. The ranks will not reset each season and everyone will start in Bronze without any placement matches so players can just immediately start working on grinding their Skill Ratings (SR) up.

And don’t worry, if a player disconnects or quits during a match, all team members outside of that player’s party won’t lose any SR. But you can still earn SR if you win that match while shorthanded. But if you lose that match, you won’t lose any SR. Also, if you do end up losing SR, you can’t derank immediately and will have demotion protection for the first three games in the new rank division.

Let’s take a look at the other game modes coming back this Season that aren’t in Ranked Play. Grid from Modern Warfare 3 is back as a modified Kill Confirmed where you have to stack enemy dog tags and bank them at one of two locations in the map.

Gun Game and Hardcore are also back as classic favorites. Another game mode from Modern Warfare 3 Infected is back where one player is randomly selected as the “infected” who must spread that tag to others. Every survivor eliminated will join the Infected team until no one else is left or until the five-minute timer expires.

New Maps

The new maps from Al Mazrah include Dome and Valderas Museum for Core game modes, Zaya Observatory and Al Malik International for Battle game modes.

New Raid

Later in Season 2’s launch will feature another Raid following the story after Price, Farah, and Gaz fought through Atomgrad. This will pick up where Atomgrad left off and further the story for Modern Warfare 2.

Modern Warfare 2 has a lot of content with the drop of Season 2 and it’s February 15th so don’t forget to update your game if you want to play now. There will be regular midseason updates so we’ll be sure to alert you once any of those changes go through, right here at IGN.

Stella is a Video Producer, Host, and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is on competitive FPS games and she’s previously reviewed Apex Legends, Hyper Scape, Halo Infinite Multiplayer, and Battlefield 2042. She regularly hosts and shoutcasts competitive Apex Legends and Halo Infinite tournaments when she isn’t streaming on her Twitch channel after work outs. You can follow her on Twitter @ParallaxStella.

The Best PS5 SSD Deals for 2023: 2TB WD Black SN850X From $159.99

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.

WD Black SN850X 2TB PS5 SSD From $159.99

Amazon has the newest WD Black Series SN850X M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD for the best price we’ve seen. In fact, this is lower than the price we saw on Black Friday. 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.

XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 SSD with Heatsink for $159.99

If you want the absolute best deal for a 2TB SSD, then this is the deal you’re looking for. The XPG Gammix S70 Blade is on par performance-wise with the SN850, however this stick includes a heatsink for $159.99. The S70 Blade boasts transfer rates up to 7,400 MB/s and a PCIe Gen4 interface.The low-profile aluminum heatsink is really thin and by no means as robust as the one you’ll find on the WD SN850 SSD, but it does it’s job and fits easily.

Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 SSD from $189.99

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, and it’s still Samsung’s fastest M.2 PCIe SSD. 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.

Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB “Optimized for PS5” SSD with Heatsink for Only $179.99

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.

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.

Dead Island 2 Release Date Moved Forward by One Week

Developer Dambuster Studios and publisher Deep Silver have announced that Dead Island 2’s release date has been moved up by one week, from April 28 to April 21.

“You asked for it, you got it. Dead Island 2 went gold and it’s coming out a week early. See you in HELL-A on April 21, 2023,” revealed the Dead Island official Twitter account.

Dead Island 2 was originally scheduled to be released on February 3, but was later delayed to April 28. Now, players will get their hands on the game a little earlier than expected.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was also recently announced to be delayed to April 28 from its original March 17 release date. With Dead Island 2 moving up a week, the two games won’t launch on the same day anymore.

Dead Island 2’s development cycle has been turbulent. The game was originally revealed all the way back at E3 2014, with previous developer Yager at the helm. The game’s development later shifted to Sumo Digital, before shifting again to Dambuster in 2019. Its current form was finally shown after years of waiting at Gamescom 2022, where it was re-revealed along with its original February 2023 release date.

In IGN’s Dead Island 2 hands-on preview, we said “Dead Island 2 appears to share a huge amount of common ground with not just the original Dead Island, but also its step-sibling, Dying Light.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Dead Space Was the Best-Selling New Game in the U.S. in January 2023

The latest figures from The NPD Group reveal that Dead Space is the best-selling new video game in the U.S. in January. The well-received remake of the 2008 survival horror was kept away from the top spot by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which enjoys its fourth consecutive month as the best-selling game in the U.S.

Dead Space was joined in the top 20 best-sellers by three other new games: Fire Emblem Engage (No.5), Forspoken (No.7), and One Piece Odyssey (No.9).

While there were four new releases among the top 10, U.S. consumer spending on video game software, hardware, and accessories dropped year-on-year by 5%, according to NPD’s Mat Piscatella. “Video game hardware spending was flat, while content (-5%) and accessories (-14%) spending fell,” he revealed on Twitter. This means sales are down year-on-year for the first time since last September.

Not everything was down, however. The Last of Us: Part 1, the PS5 remake of Naughty Dog’s celebrated survival horror, saw a leap in chart position. Fuelled in part by the popularity of the new HBO show, it rose from No.36 to No.11 in the sales chart.

As for Dead Space, a debut at No.2 means that it has had a much better start in life than last year’s The Callisto Protocol. Widely considered a spiritual successor to Dead Space thanks to being helmed by the original game’s co-creator Glenn Schofield, some may have expected The Callisto Protocol to have made something of a splash. But despite that pedigree, it debuted at an underwhelming No.17 in the NPD sales charts for December 2022.

Just one month on, The Callisto Protocol has completely disappeared from the top 20 sales chart. Time will tell if Dead Space has the sticking power to hang on into next month’s charts, but with a significantly better critical response and little AAA competition in February, it has more favorable odds.

The full rankings for January 2023’s top 20 best-selling premium games in the U.S. are:

  1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  2. Dead Space (2023)
  3. Madden NFL 23
  4. FIFA 23
  5. Fire Emblem Engage
  6. Elden Ring
  7. Forspoken
  8. God of War: Ragnarok
  9. One Piece Odyssey
  10. Pokemon: Scarlet/Violet
  11. The Last of Us: Part 1
  12. Sonic Frontiers
  13. Monster Hunter: Rise
  14. Mario Kart 8
  15. Minecraft
  16. Need for Speed: Unbound
  17. Just Dance 2023 Edition
  18. NBA 2K23
  19. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
  20. NHL 23

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.

Metroid Prime Developers Criticise Remaster for Not Crediting Original Team

Two developers who worked on the original Metroid Prime have criticised the newly released remaster for not fully crediting the original creative team.

Zoid Kirsch, who formerly worked for Retro Studios as Senior Gameplay Engineer on the original Metroid Prime, posted a screenshot from the remaster’s credits to Twitter.

The message, which appears right at the very end of Metroid Prime Remaster’s credits roll, reads: “Based on the work of Metroid Prime (original Nintendo Gamecube and Wii versions) development staff”. No full credits for the original development team are included; only those who took part in the creation of the remaster are credited in full.

“While many studios did amazing work on the remaster, I’m let down Metroid Prime’s Remaster does not include the full original game credits,” said Kirsch. “I worked with so many amazing people on the game and everyone’s name should be included in the remaster, not just a single card like this.”

Kirsh’s comment was followed up by Jack Mathews, former tech lead on the Metroid Prime series at Retro Studios. “This is a travesty,” he said. “Not just for my credit (even though most of my code was probably replaced), but for people whose code and work are largely unchanged, like Mark HH, Steve McCrea, all of the uprezzed art and concepts, the game design. Shameful.”

The issue of remakes and remasters not crediting the original developers is not a new one. Shadow of the Colossus and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Triology remakes are just two examples of games that have not provided full credit to the original teams.

The issue of credit goes much wider, too. Only last month The Last of Us co-creator Bruce Straley spoke about his lack of credit on the HBO show, and noted it may be a reason for unionisation.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.