Rocksteady has officially delayed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to February 2, 2024, quite a few months from its previous May 26, 2023 date.
The developer announced the news on Twitter today, writing in a statement, “We have made the tough but necessary decision to take the time needed to work on getting the game to be the best quality experience for players.”
“Thank you to our amazing community for the continued support, patience, and understanding,” the statement goes on. “There is much more to share in the months ahead and we look forward to seeing you in Metropolis next year.”
However, it’s unclear if this delay means Rocksteady be overhauling any of Kill the Justice League’s live-service elements. At the time of the Bloomberg article, reporter Jason Schreier noted that delays like these are usually for “polish” rather than to “overhaul the core gameplay.”
This latest delay means Kill the Justice League will come out nearly nine years after the most recent major Arkhamverse game, Arkham Knight. It will have players choose between one of four supervillains – Deadshot, Harley Quinn, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang – who are tasked with stopping Brainiac’s invasion of Metropolis.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Joseph Staten just left Microsoft. Technically it didn’t really change anything when talking about the future of Halo compared to when he left Halo developer 343 Industries to return to his previous role at Xbox Publishing back in January. That came amidst the layoff-fueled shakeup at the studio that saw many senior leads leave either at that time or in the past year since Halo Infinite first shipped. And yet somehow, his complete severance from Microsoft feels a bit more somber for this longtime Halo fan, because it means that he’s unlikely to have much, if any, influence on the future of the franchise – which he still could’ve from his Xbox Publishing perch.
And so while it’s fair to wonder where Halo is heading from here – I’ll get to that in a bit – I wanted to take the opportunity to express my gratitude for someone that had a major hand in creating some of my favorite games of all time. Staten was a Bungie “Grizzled Ancient,” the studio’s internal term for someone who’d been at the company for a long, long time. This is the man who wrote the original Halo trilogy. You remember, the near-perfect first game – the one whose memorable campaign and characters single-handedly turned the Xbox into a major player in the console space – the smartly told and shocking sequel that had you playing as The Arbiter for part of the adventure, and the trilogy capper that gave Master Chief and friends closure and meaning while still leaving a glimmer of hope that Spartan-117 might one day return. “Wake me… when you need me.”
But Staten wasn’t done with Halo there. He followed that by directing Halo 3: ODST, the film noir-inspired Halo game that took you out of the MJOLNIR armor and into the boots of a regular-ol’ human. The Covenant bad guys (well, except the Grunts… who, by the way, were voiced by Staten) looked a lot bigger as a regular person than as a seven-foot-tall super soldier. And all of it was set in a pseudo-open hub world where you could go where you wanted to and revisit locations when you wanted or needed to. Everything was watched over by the mysterious Superintendent AI (“Keep it clean!”), which, coincidentally, was also voiced by Staten. And the mood was set by Halo composer Marty O’Donnell’s jazz-inspired, piano-heavy soundtrack that made ODST feel unlike any other Halo game. It is, to this day, still beloved by Halo fans and, for some, remains their favorite Halo game ever.
And then, of course, we get to Halo Infinite. Its six-year development cycle was messy, even just from what we got to see publicly. And after the gameplay debut for the Xbox Series X’s would-be day-one flagship launch title went infamously poorly, Microsoft took the bold and somewhat embarrassing but absolutely necessary step of delaying Infinite out of the Series X’s launch window and bringing Joseph Staten into 343 as the project’s creative director. Though I know there are fans out there who’d hold Joseph accountable for making tough decisions like cutting split-screen co-op and delaying Forge – and as creative director the buck stops with him – in the bigger picture, look at where Halo was at before Staten arrived (i.e. Craig) and look at the campaign we ultimately got in December of 2021. We got an outstanding single-player campaign – one that soft-rebooted Halo while still continuing Chief’s story. And one, I might add, that successfully washed the bad taste of Halo 5’s disastrous campaign out of our mouths. No, Staten didn’t do it alone, but he nevertheless deserves a lot of credit for pulling Halo Infinite together like he did.
Staten didn’t do it alone, but he nevertheless deserves a lot of credit for pulling Halo Infinite together like he did.
And as I mentioned earlier, Halo’s future is nevertheless murky. It seems highly unlikely we’ll get any campaign content whatsoever – be it a side-story DLC with Blue Team (as they are mentioned in an audio log) or a full-blown “Halo 7” – anytime in the next several years or perhaps more. Another big question is, “Who is going to lead Halo into the future?” It won’t be Staten, whom I’d have trusted implicitly. Instead, it might be a younger generation of game development talent at 343 – similar to the young guns at id Software successfully reinventing Doom for the modern era in 2016 – or 343 might look to poach big-name talent from other studios.
But that’s a conversation for another day. For now, I’d like to express my appreciation and gratitude to Joseph Staten for having such a big hand in creating so much of the best Halo there’s ever been: Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo Infinite. That’s a lot for him to be proud of, and I’m so glad I got to play those games as they came out and enjoy the water-cooler conversation that each one generated – and talk to him about his great journey.
Enjoy your next adventure, Joseph, and thanks for all of the great Halo.
Ubisoft’s XDefiant is an upcoming free-to-play first person arena shooter that, if I’m being honest, I didn’t originally feel interested in at all. I had no real connection to any of the factions from different Ubisoft games showcased in XDefiant, and the gameplay didn’t capture my interest. However, I got to play for about an hour in a closed preview event and I was surprised to find that I was wanting to get more playtime in after the servers closed down.
An hour isn’t really a lot of time to give a full preview in any game, so this is just a first impressions piece I wanted to share with you all. I had actually played XDefiant in 2021 with one of Ubisoft’s extremely NDA-ed closed tests, and this was a huge change up from that iteration. It’s a great sign to see that Ubisoft has taken feedback seriously and made some major changes.
In my opinion, XDefiant really didn’t have a sense of identity when the first closed test opened. I couldn’t figure out what the game was trying to do or how the game was supposed to feel. There was no real guidance on how to play the game or who the characters were. But loading into XDefiant now, there’s more structure to it.
Factions
Let’s start with Factions. There’s no story or narrative on why these agents from each Faction are in XDefiant. In speaking with Safy Saada, Creative Director, I was told that there’s no underlying story or reasoning for these characters being in XDefiant. They were merely inspirations.
Each Faction is really just like selecting a class with different Abilities and Ultras (ultimates). There were five Factions available in this closed beta and I detailed their abilities and class-specific traits below:
Cleaners: Origin – Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Passive:
Incendiary Rounds: Weapons inflict extra burn damage over time but decreases the weapon range
Abilities:
Incinerator Drone: Napalm-Delivering drone burns everything in its flightpath
Firebomb: Throw a Molotov cocktail causing explosive damage and lighting the area with fire
Ultra
Bring out a flamethrower that incinerates enemies
Dedsec: Origin – Watchdogs 2
Passive:
Fabricator: After a device is deployed, your Fabricator prints a new one
Abilities:
Hijack: Hack enemy-deployed abilities and make them yours
Spiderbot: Deploy a Spiderbot that will target and stun the nearest enemy
Ultra:
Lockout: Deploy an EMP that prevents enemies from using their Abilities and Ultras in the radius of the Lockout
Echelon: Origin – Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Passive:
Low Profile: Your character does not appear on the enemy’s minimap
Abilities:
Digital Ghillie Suit: Turn invisible when not shooting your weapon
Intel Suit: Periodic sonar waves reveal where enemies are around you
Ultra:
Sonar Goggles: Activates your sonar goggles to see through walls and allows you to deploy Sam Fischer’s 5.7 pistol to eliminate enemies
Libertad: Origin – Far Cry 6
Passive:
Espiritu de Libertad: You slowly heal over time and heal nearby enemies over time as well
Abilities:
BioVida Boost: You regen health and boost the total amount of health for you and nearby enemies in a specific radius
El Remedio: Throw a gas canister that heals friendlies until it’s destroyed or out of fuel
Ultra:
Medico Supremo: Your Medico backpack provides a large health and healing boost for a limited time
Phantoms: Origin – Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms
Passive
Hardened: Health increased
Abilities
Mag Barrier: Deploy an electromagnetic barrier that blocks incoming enemy fire and grenades while letting you shoot through it
Blitz Shield: Equip a tactical shield that lets you shield bash with melee
Ultra
Aegis: Deploy a spherical plasma shield that moves with you and equips you with an electro shotgun
Each Faction has their own traits and abilities to make them stand out and be more viable in a team composition. There are six people on each team and there’s no limit on how many people can be from one Faction. I honestly found myself playing predominantly as The Division’s Cleaners or Splinter Cell’s Echelon.
The flamethrower Ultra that Cleaners have was incredibly strong, and by that I mean you barely had to touch an enemy’s hitbox to insta-kill them. Also, the flamethrower’s time to use let you get in quite a few kills before the Ultra was used up. Additionally, the incendiary rounds passive Cleaners have were equally as oppressive and overpowered. If you had an SMG you could basically run half your mag into an enemy and let the fire damage over time do its thing and watch your enemies desperately try to run away only to die around the corner due to the damage over time effect.
Echelon made it so my hitbox was incredibly small and I could run around in my invisible suit and pop in and out to kill enemies by surprise. I mostly bounced between these two Factions since they felt the most overpowered, but each Faction really had its own balance issues. The Libertad’s healing abilities nearly instantly healed me and my teammates and it was impossible to try and kill anyone standing in the area of effect healing because of how effective the rate of healing was.
There’s definitely a need for some heavy tuning and balance adjustments with the Factions and their abilities. Yes, XDefiant felt fun in that hour of playtime I got, but I could easily see how frustrating things could get if one team just absolutely rolled the other from being made up of all Cleaners. I think maybe limiting how many Factions are allowed to be in a team (like one Libertad and up to two of the other Factions) would be helpful, especially since each Faction seems to serve a specific team role.
Weapons
But I liked that none of the Factions were limited to a specific weapon loadout. You can make loadouts that can then be selected by any Faction when you enter a match. The time to kill (TTK) was extremely fast and reminded me of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The SMG and Shotguns were incredibly overpowered, not even with the Cleaners’ additional passive abilities. Thus, any faster rate of fire weapons and immediate burst weapons were the best to use in matches.
The shotgun, meanwhile, was basically a one-hit kill and SMGS barely needed to run through a full mag before shredding an opponent. Again, some aggressive balancing here will help the future of XDefiant, but I will say the gunplay and movement felt so much better in this game than Hyper Scape, which was Ubisoft’s other recent attempt at a free-to-play multiplayer shooter.
XDefiant unsurprisingly has game modes similar to Overwatch and Call of Duty, but the mix kept matches from feeling stagnant. The game modes included in the beta included Domination, Occupy, Escort, and Zone Control. I kept getting Domination and Zone Control so I can’t speak on the other game modes, but those two felt incredibly fast paced and fun. Even when I was getting killed repeatedly and trying to run back to defend a point, I found myself giggling every time I would sneak up on an enemy to take them by surprise before taking out their other teammates and securing a point for my team.
Live Service
But it’s not enough for a multiplayer game to be fun these days. There are only so many hours in the day, so not every game can survive and thrive. So when I asked how this game would be supported as a live-service game, since I experienced a hefty laundry list of weapons, abilities, and mechanics that needed to be rebalanced, Saada explained that they built XDefiant to have a flexible code which would make future changes and updates easier to implement.
This was pretty huge for me since one of my main games is Apex Legends and one of the consistent issues throughout the seasons there have been audio bugs. Oftentimes there are no audio cues on abilities, weapons, or footsteps and that has been a huge problem with Apex. Respawn has stated that they’re not able to just fix things immediately because the code would break from the two years they’ve spent updating the game so it’s more complicated than pushing a simple fix.
So hearing Ubisoft specify that they are building XDefiant to be flexible with updates and changes is incredibly relieving, especially since I wasn’t a huge fan of how they handled Hyper Scape, a game I reviewed and specified had a huge potential but wasn’t updated fast enough to actually survive past a month of its release. I feel very hopeful for XDefiant as it shows a lot of signs that Ubisoft has learned from its past mistakes of launching an FPS game that just did not resonate with the current standard for FPS games.
Again, it’s not perfect and definitely requires a lot of major and fine tuning. But the core gameplay is there and it’s fun. There’s another Closed Beta happening on the 13th and I’ll be playing more then to see if changes have been made and how updates feel, but I’m genuinely feeling optimistic about the trajectory of XDefiant.
Any fan of first-person shooters has handled a wide variety of digital weaponry in their gaming career. We’ve fired historical weapons while storming the beaches of Normandy, shot modern guns in modern warfare, and used futuristic blasters in sci-fi shooters. One thing we don’t often do in FPSes, though, is cast spells. That will change with Immortals of Aveum, a magic shooter that replaces mechanical weapons with magical abilities. In a recent hands-off preview, I got a look at this upcoming shooter, and I’m intrigued to see more.
Pitched as a “single-player, story-driven, magic shooter,” Immortals of Aveum appears to live up to that tagline, based on what I saw. The combat shares many ideas with the military shooters we know and love. You can cast spells that act as long-range rifles, shotguns, grenades, and the like. But since it’s magic that fuels your capabilities, you also have access to additional moves you won’t find in traditional shooters.
Say the Magic Word
For instance, the Lash spell lets you pull distant enemies close using what looks like a rope made of blue plasma. Then you can cast the Shatter spell to slam them with a wall of spikes. If you’re feeling overwhelmed in combat, you can use a Blink spell to teleport out of harm’s way. It all happens quickly, and you can chain together your attacks and abilities in combos.
Since magic fuels your capabilities, you have access to moves you won’t find in traditional shooters.
If you’re taking damage, you can cast a shield spell for extra protection, but that slows your movement speed. When enemies use shields, you can break through them by unloading a barrage of magic of the same color. There’s blue, red, and green magic in Aveum, and each one represents a particular category of spells. All told, you can learn and upgrade 25 spells during the course of the campaign, and work through a skill tree to learn 80 talents for use in combat and other situations.
I have to say, the magical combat at the very least looks incredibly stylish, with colorful swirls, beams, and explosions of sparks going off all over the battlefield.
Put on Your Thinking Cap
Unlike some shooters, combat is only part of the picture in Immortals of Aveum. The developers say there’s plenty of room for exploration, and those who poke around the levels might discover hidden areas and helpful items.
There’s also an emphasis on puzzle solving. One of the gameplay demos showed Jak, the protagonist, in a room with no apparent exit. To proceed, he had to figure out how to raise two pillars, use the Lash spell to reach an otherwise inaccessible area, and solve a light beam puzzle.
His reward for doing all that? A giant, terrifying golem-like creature rose out of the ground and attacked, starting a tense battle before the demo came to an end.
The World of Aveum
While magic is what makes Immortals of Aveum stand out in the FPS space, the world of Aveum isn’t a typical fantasy setting. The demo did show Jak fighting a dragon, but there’s also a strong sci-fi element here that coexists with the more traditional fantasy trappings. The denizens of Aveum are space-faring people, with access to futuristic aircraft and modern military techniques like combat drops into warzones.
And conflict is rampant; for as long as anyone can remember, the denizens of Aveum have been engaged in an Everwar. Your character is from the nation of Lucium, whose interests are protected by the Immortals, an elite group of battle mages. Lucium’s main foe is Rasharn, whose forces are led by Sandrakk, a powerful armor-clad mage who bears a suspicious resemblance to Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. Sandrakk’s goal is to take control of all magic in order to dominate the entire planet.
There’s also a strong sci-fi element here that coexists with the more traditional fantasy trappings.
You play as Jak, a Triarch, or a mage with the rare ability to control all three colors of magic. Because of his abilities, Jak gets recruited by the Immortals as a relative novice, and players guide his progression through the ranks as he becomes an elite battle mage himself.
Immortals of Aveum is about 25 hours long and, from the demo I saw, features some high quality acting talent. It stars actors like Gina Torres and Daren Barnet, who you may recognize from Firefly and Never Have I Ever, respectively.
FPS Chops
If you watch the trailers for Immortals of Aveum and think the combat looks like Call of Duty but with magic, there’s a good reason for that. It’s being developed by Ascendant Studios, led by Bret Robbins, who was creative director on the original Dead Space before heading to Sledgehammer to work on numerous Call of Duty games in the 2010s. The rest of the development team is made up of people who worked on franchises like BioShock, Halo, and Call of Duty, as well as a number of former Telltale Games folks.
The one obvious thing that’s missing from Immortals is multiplayer. This is a single-player-only campaign, and when asked if the team had considered a multiplayer mode, Robbins said the thought had occurred to them, but he had nothing to announce at the time.
In any case, I’m eager to get my hands on Immortals of Aveum when it releases on June 20 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Until then, this looks like a new FPS to keep an eye on.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed or on Mastodon @chrislreed.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is bringing back more familiar (albeit scary) faces as a classic Zelda enemy looks to be a boss in the new game.
Though a two-headed version last made an appearance in 2007’s Phantom Hourglass, the three-headed Gleeok shown in the new trailer (below) hasn’t been seen since The Legend of Zelda, as in the very first game in the franchise that launched in 1987.
It’s two-headed variant also appeared in Oracle of Seasons, but this version of Gleeok will be making its return after 36 years. It’s also not the only boss-looking beastie shown in the new trailer, suggesting Tears of the Kingdom is returning to a classic Zelda boss formula instead of Breath of the Wild’s more systematic approach.
The final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally gave us a proper look at the King of Evil: Ganondorf.
The three-minute look at the Breath of the Wild sequel was packed with new enemies, bosses, returning characters, and hints at some of the changes Hyrule has undergone in the time since the original.
While he hasn’t been named yet, the character we can only assume is Ganondorf shows up in this trailer. There’s also a character with flowing red hair that stares directly into a blood moon early on in the trailer, but this character bears closer resemblance to Skyward Sword’s Demise rather than Ganondorf.
The final trailer began in the sky, keeping in line with much of Tears of the Kingdom’s marketing so far. We saw some establishing shots of the Sky Islands before seeing Link skydive onto the land of Hyrule below. Very quickly, we see Link running through Hateno Village, a returning location from Breath of the Wild that was previously host to the Ancient Tech Lab.
Interestingly, the trailer then cuts to a shot of the fountain just outside of Hyrule Castle. There’s a settlement of new tents here, indicating that the rebuild effort mentioned at the end of Breath of the Wild is in full swing.
Next, we see some sort of structure rising from the sand in the Gerudo area of the map. It’s still too early to call for sure, but this could be the classic dungeon many Zelda fans have been hoping for.
We’re officially less than a month away from the next mainline Zelda game. Tears of the Kingdom will be released on May 12, 2023, alongside a ton of Zelda-themed products. In addition to the game, Nintendo is releasing a special edition Switch OLED, Collector’s Edition, pro controller, case, and amiibo.
Developing…
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
Long gone are the days of Rare-developed Nintendo exclusives, but founder Tim Stamper still has pieces of gaming history from the studio’s early years. In a few short video clips, Stamper revealed development footage from Project Dream, along with other snippets from N64 classics.
Stamper has taken to Twitter to showcase development cartridges from the past, posting footage from unseen N64 titles – kind of. The clips include canceled projects or games that would live on through other iterations, like Dream 64 and Twelve Tales: Conker 64.
In the series of posts, Stamper shared a photo tagged as Dream 64 and Banjo-Kazooie featuring Captain Blackeye, a pirate who would later show up in the Banjo games. The image includes a SNES and N64, with the latter holding a development cartridge labeled “Latest Version of Dream 64” dated November 21, 1996.
“So it’s true,” Stamper wrote. “Dream 64 does exist after all…!”
The Rare Founder also added a 15-second peak at Dream, which he noted “was probably for the Nintendo Shoshinkai show [in] 1996”. It again includes Captain Blackeye, whose voiced lines harken back to Stamper’s earlier tweet with “so it’s true then, the Nintendo 64 treasure does exist after all.”
In 1997, Rare’s codename Dream game was officially revealed as Banjo-Kazooie at E3. Studio talent has spoken publicly about their time with Dream, and eventually Banjo-Kazooie, over the years. In 2015, the studio even documented the retooled Dream on YouTube, which featured a young boy named Edson in a more RPG-like adventure.
Stamper’s other footage includes an intro snippet of Twelve Tales: Conker 64, which debuted alongside Banjo at the same E3 in Atlanta. Twelve Tales would go down as another canceled project, and Rare’s fiery squirrel would see his first N64 release as Conker’s Bad Fur Day instead. Stamper’s clip shows off another development cartridge and a 48-second sequence of Conker and acorn-like enemies.
There’s a brief look at Battletoads character design documents, too. Another video from Stamper shows him thumbing through the “character design guide” for the beat’em series.
So you wanted to see more? Here’s a glimpse into the character design guide ??️
While the Battletoads art and descriptions are a cool little tidbit, the stuff lurking in the background seems just as neat. When Stamper’s video begins, you can see a room filled with binders, presumably all related to his gaming projects. Tim, along with his brother Chris Stamper, remained with Rare until 2007, so there’s no telling what treasures have amassed in that archive.
Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.
If you’re a Resident Evil 4 fan or are at all following the game online, you might have noticed some goofy art over the last month involving the character Ashley looking strangely rodent-like. Turns out, it’s a fantastic and hilarious trend that caught on upon the release of Resident Evil 4’s recent remake, where fans are drawing Ashley from Resident Evil 4 as a little tiny mouse obsessed with cheese. And it rules.
It all started with this tweet:
What if you booted up resident evil 4 remake and Ashley was just a tiny mouse, what would you do. pic.twitter.com/WNF0UNvKdQ
The artist, @Agrimmora on Twitter, followed up by explaining that “I saw a joke drawing that depicted ashley with big ears and this came to my mind, i never got past the boulder chase scene as a kid.”
This is pretty cute and funny, but it gets better: the Resident Evil 4 community has fallen in love with her. It’s been almost three weeks since the initial tweet, and Twitter is still awash in mouse Ashley art…or “Moushley” art, as she’s come to be called.
Moushley is an absolute delight, and there’s seemingly no end of adorable interpretations of her as a little rodent under Leon’s protection. Bring on the Moushley memes. And if you haven’t yet experienced the recent Resident Evil 4 remake, it’s none too shabby even without Ashley sporting a notable love of cheese. We gave it a coveted 10/10 in our review, calling it “the most relentlessly exciting Resident Evil adventure of all time that’s been rebuilt, refined, and realised to the full limits of its enormous potential.”
Our Resident Experts ™ are hard at work uncovering Resident Evil 4 Remake’s secrets in our Resident Evil 4 Remake Strategy Guide. Here are some of the most helpful links:
AEW Fight Forever, the officially licensed All Elite Wrestling game developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ Nordic, is supposed to be out this year. But a series of comments from AEW leadership and the game’s developers have left fans confused as to the game’s actual development status.
The confusion can be traced back to February when AEW wrestler and executive vice president Kenny Omega said on the Swerve City Podcast (via WrestleZone) that “the game has been done,” but was currently in limbo trying to get an ESRB rating finalized. This was then reiterated by AEW president Tony Khan during a media scrum following pay-per-view event AEW Revolution:
“I can’t say the exact release date,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that go into that, and I don’t want to step on anybody with that. It is coming very soon. The game is finished.”
All of this sounds pretty definitive, but THQ Nordic senior community manager Per Hollenbro has recently taken to Twitch and Twitter to debunk this. On Twitter, he wrote that AEW Fight Forever is “doing really well” but is “not 100% yet,” and called discussion that it was done “just another rumour on Twitter.”
I mean if you want an unfinished game sure we could release now ?
The game is doing really well and is getting there, but not 100% yet, so yea just another rumour on twitter I fear ?
On Twitch (via Wrestle Zone), Hollenbro went into a bit more detail as to why there was so much discrepancy between THQ Nordic and AEW leadership’sperspectives, saying the problem is that the two groups “see it very differently.” He explained that as a publisher, THQ Nordic doesn’t consider a game done until it’s ready to go out the door, including elements such as platform certification, retail distribution, and a lot more. He also said that AEW Fight Forever is “in a good state.”
“I do not believe anybody lied,” he said. “I do not believe there’s any kind of miscommunication in any shape or form. I believe that simply some people look at it differently because they don’t look at it through the eyes of a publisher. A lot goes into it. And for me, as somebody who is part of the publishing house, it’s very different for me what completes a game and what doesn’t.”
Speaking to Kotaku, Hollenbro clarified even further, offering a list of elements AEW Fight Forever still needs to finalize before it can be considered finished, including passing QA tests, localization in seven languages, “polish,” retail and shipping deals, certification, platform optimization, marketing plans, and yes, that elusive ESRB rating. An additional THQ Nordic spokesperson told the outlet that “AEW: Fight Forever will be released when it’s done.”
It’s also worth pointing out that AEW Fight Forever is also in the midst of a trademark dispute with Game Changer Wrestling, which has disputed AEW’s trademark of “Fight Forever” given its own use of the phrase for a 2021 charity event. GCW was granted an extension until May 31, 2023 to dispute the claim, and it’s unclear how this will impact AEW Fight Forever’s title or release date. But needless to say, this dispute is likely not speeding things along.
Sony has announced its PlayStation Plus Game Catalogue additions for April 2023, bringing a mixture of first-person shooters, sports, and horror with titles like Doom Eternal, Riders Republic, and The Evil Within.
According to the PlayStation Blog, over a dozen games join the April offerings for Plus Extra and Premium members on Tuesday, April 18. On May 15, Game Catalog will remove a handful of other titles, including Marvel’s Spider-Man, Resident Evil, and NBA 2K Playgrounds 2.
Among some of this month’s standout games are first-person shooters Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein 2. IGN gave both titles 9/10 review scores, calling Doom a “modernized reboot a breath of fresh air for the genre” and Wolfenstein 2 a “fantastically written and acted story.”
Sporty PVP sandbox Riders Republic and Shinji Mikami’s survival horror nightmare The Evil Within add a little more variety into the mix, plus the ultra-vibrant murder mystery Paradise Killer is always worth a spin. Check out the full list below.
PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium: Game Catalogue
Bassmaster Fishing (PS4/PS5)
Doom Eternal (PS4/PS5)
Kena: Bridge of Spirits (PS4/PS5)
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (PS4/PS5)
Paradise Killer (PS4/PS5)
Riders Republic (PS4/PS5)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS4/PS5)
Slay the Spire (PS4)
The Evil Within (PS4)
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (PS4)
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PS4)
PlayStation Premium: Classics
Doom (PS4)
Doom 2 (PS4)
Doom 64 (PS4)
Dishonored: Definitive Edition (PS4)
To score access to most of the latest in Sony’s library, you’ll need PlayStation Plus Extra at a minimum. To download the Classics like Doom and Dishonored, you’ll have to sign up for PlayStation’s Premium tier.
As for other Sony services, the platform holder announced its collection of PlayStation 5 PS Plus titles would be removed on May 9. The bundle includes games like Bloodborne, God of War, and Resident Evil 7, and members that redeem the offer can still download the collection even after it’s gone.
If Sony’s latest update isn’t of any interest, keep your eyes peeled for more PS5 news soon, as the company announced its plans for a new Final Fantasy 16 State of Play tomorrow.
Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.
