Category: Video Games

Free Play Days – UFC 5, Rainbow Six Siege, Classified: France ’44 and Overcooked All You Can Eat

Get ready for an action-packed Free Play Day with an exciting lineup featuring the intense battles of UFC 5, the tactical operations of Rainbow Six Siege, the strategic warfare of Classified: France ’44, and the culinary chaos of Overcooked All You Can Eat! available this weekend for Xbox Game Pass Core and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play from Thursday September 12 at 12:01 a.m. PDT until Sunday, September 15 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Gamers can enjoy Rainbow Six Siege for an extra day with Free Play Days from September 12 until September 16.

Game Pass Core will give players access to our advanced multiplayer network, a select collection of over 25 games to play with friends around the world, and exclusive member deals! Read more about Game Pass Core at Xbox Wire.

How To Start Playing

Find and install the games on each of the individual game details page on Xbox.com. Clicking through will send you to the Microsoft Store, where you must be signed in to see the option to install with your Xbox Game Pass Core or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. To download on console, click on the Subscriptions tab in the Xbox Store and navigate down to the Free Play Days collection on your Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Keep The Fun Going

Purchase the game and other editions at a limited time discount and continue playing while keeping your Gamerscore and achievements earned during the event! Please note that discounts, percentages, and title availability may vary by title and region.

Free Play Days (Game Pass Core or Game Pass Ultimate Required)


UFC® 5

UFC® 5

Electronic Arts

☆☆☆☆☆
444
★★★★★


$69.99

$34.99
Get it now
Free Trial

EA Sports UFC 5
Powered by Frostbite, EA Sports UFC 5 is the next evolution of the fight game. From unrivalled graphics upgrades to all-new damage systems and doctor stoppages that affect gameplay in truly authentic fashion — this is as real as it gets.


Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Siege

UBISOFT

☆☆☆☆☆
2002
★★★★★

Get it now
Xbox One X Enhanced
Xbox Game Pass

Rainbow Six Siege
Play the new season of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege in Operation Twin Shells. This season introduces the Skopós, an Operator who deploys modern robotics technology to outmaneuver her foes. Operation Twin Shells also brings enhanced player protection against cheating, Siege Cup (Beta) a new competitive playlist, improved player comfort with a redesigned After-Action Report, and new items in the Marketplace.


Classified: France '44

Classified: France ’44

Team17

☆☆☆☆☆
50
★★★★★

$34.99
Get it now

Classified: France ’44
Command an elite team of allied special operators in Nazi-occupied France wreaking havoc in the run up to D-Day in this ambitious turn-based tactics game. Take on the might of Germany’s war machine and launch daring raids in occupied territory. Can you do enough to ensure Allied victory?


Overcooked! All You Can Eat

Overcooked! All You Can Eat

Team17

☆☆☆☆☆
124
★★★★★

$39.99
Get it now

Overcooked! All You Can Eat
The Peckish have risen again and it’s your job to satisfy their hunger, are you ready to save the world again? Overcooked! All You Can Eat is a chaotic cooking game where players need to work together (or alone) to serve as many dishes as they can before the timer runs out. Travel through the land cooking up a variety of recipes in evolving and dynamic kitchens.

Don’t miss out on these exciting Free Play Days for Xbox Game Pass Core and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members! Learn more about Free Play Days here and stay tuned to Xbox Wire to find out about future Free Play Days and all the latest Xbox gaming news. 

The post Free Play Days – UFC 5, Rainbow Six Siege, Classified: France ’44 and Overcooked All You Can Eat appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Exploring the picturesque city of Artia in The Plucky Squire

The Plucky Squire will leap from the page to PlayStation 5 on September 17, and one of the many magical places you’ll visit on your adventures is the colorful city of Artia, the creative capital of the land of Mojo.

Artia is the home of Jot’s best friend, Violet, and is full of all types of artists, some of whom you might recognize.

Shortly after arriving in the city, you’ll meet Rola Lightbrush, Violet’s proud mum, who informs the crew that Violet’s Uncle Umber has gotten himself into a pickle; his roly-poly Rubboinks have escaped! The gang offers to help and begins searching the city.

Jot and his friends quickly set about securing Uncle Umber’s pesky pigs, but they’ll need to uncover a portal lurking beneath the stubborn backside of a resident artist’s pet pooch in order to complete the task.     

Jot springs from the book to find the tool he needs to return Uncle Umber’s final piggy. Navigating the desk is easier said than done, however, with more and more of Humgrump’s minions manifesting in the real world.

Finally, Jot ascends to the puzzling Toy House to find his prize: The Turn Gauntlets! Once acquired, Jot can tilt the book to manipulate the characters inside, including one extra-large Rubboink…

Artia is just one of many magical locations you’ll discover on the pages of The Plucky Squire. You can experience this dimension-hopping adventure for yourself when the game launches on PS5 on September 17 as part of PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium.

Will brave Jot be able to defeat the wicked Humgrump and restore peace to the land of Mojo? The fate of the realm is in your hands.

How S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 moves the series forward – and why it reflects Ukraine’s “rebellious” spirit

Oh, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Mere weeks from release after years of delays, plopped in front of me at a cramped, lightly vibrating Gamescom booth, and you still won’t reveal your secrets. I did get to play a brief whizz through GSC Game World’s eerie FPS – enough to feel encouraged, even – but be it time constraints or the darkness of my nighttime raid into the radioactive Zone, I would have liked to have quite literally seen more.

Then again, keeping the mystery intact may have been the point all along. “As a game director, I want to hide everything from the player”, GSC’s CEO Ievgen Grygorovych had told me minutes earlier. “I’m fighting with the marketing team because they want to show as much as possible!”

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Hollowbody is almost a great survival horror game

Hollowbody’s introduction is masterful, and not just for a sallow skyline that captures the life-sapping dreariness of British coastlines. The horror nous required to impart unease in the middle of the day are somewhat eased up on when you’ve got all that serotonin-begone drizzle to work with, sure. But this feels more poignant than that. There’s a soulful drearines and utterly heartbreaking inevitability to the vibe here, as your character and rubber suited activist pals try to get the bottom of a horrific incident. It’s got best British indie horror film of the year written all over it.

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Tony Hawk Teases Pro Skater Anniversary Plans: ‘It Will Be Something the Fans Will Truly Appreciate’

Tony Hawk has said he’s talking to Activision again and is working on something Pro Skater-related with the company.

In an interview with Mythical Kitchen (via VGC), the world famous skater teased plans to celebrate Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s 25th anniversary later this year.

“I wish I could tell you more, but I can tell you that I have been talking to Activision again, which is insanely exciting. We’re working on something,” Hawk said. “That is the first time I’ve said that publicly.

“It will be something the fans will truly appreciate.”

Neither Activision nor parent company Microsoft has announced any new Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater plans. The series has been dormant since 2020’s well-received Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, a set of remakes developed by Activision-owned studio Vicarious Visions before it was absorbed into Diablo developer Blizzard in 2022.

Speaking in 2022, Hawk said a follow-up remake collection was planned (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4) before Vicarious Visions merged with Blizzard, but the dream died when Activision failed to find a video game pitch from other developers it was happy with.

“[Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4] was the plan, even up until the release date of [1 and 2],” Hawk said. “We were doing 3 and 4, and then Vicarious got kind of absorbed, and then they were looking for other developers, and then it was over.

“The truth of it is [Activision] were trying to find somebody to do 3 and 4 but they just didn’t really trust anyone the way they did Vicarious.

“So they took other pitches from other studios, like, ‘what would you do with the THPS title?’ And they didn’t like anything they heard, and then that was it.

“Who knows? Maybe when the dust settles, we’ll figure it out. You never know. I never would’ve thought we were going to do 1+2, 20 years later.”

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater released on PSone on September 29, 1999, and went on to sell millions of copies and spawn subsequent sequels. As well as working with Activision on something new video game related, Tony Hawk is making a kids-focused animated TV show called Skatebirds, a title inspired by Hawk’s ‘Birdman’ nickname.

Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Random: Smash Bros. Meets Battle Royale In This Upcoming Playable PC Prototype

“We hope you can see the potential”.

Development studio Odyssey Interactive has announced that it is working on a prototype combining Smash Bros-style platform fighting with 40-player battle royale gameplay. What’s more, it is releasing this prototype to the public (thanks, Eurogamer).

Byte Breakers, as the dev is currently calling it, initially looks a lot like Smash when it first appears in the above reveal trailer. But, as the screen gets bigger, you’ll see that this is a fair amount larger than anything we’ve seen in Nintendo’s beloved fighting series to date. Forget a brawl, this is an all-out battle.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Helldivers 2 The Chemical Agents Warbond launches Sept 19

Helldivers, when you’re on the warfront, emptying magazines into hordes of Terminids, do you ever feel like you’re a space bug exterminator? I know I do and that’s why I’m really excited to tell you about our next Warbond*: Chemical Agents! This one has some seriously deadly toys.


Helldivers 2 The Chemical Agents Warbond launches Sept 19

I’ll start with everyone’s favorite part of a Warbond: the offensive gear. The first thing a Terminid exterminator needs is a good, high-pressure sprayer. The TX-41 Sterilizer is the tool of the trade, ready to spray down the threat with chemical gas. 

A literal spray and pray with the TX-41 Sterilizer.

And in case the bugs got behind you, don’t worry–your gassy little pal the AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath won’t let them get the drop on you before it hoses them down with its corrosive gas sprayer. If there’s still some standing after the stratagems are done, hit ‘em with the G-4 Gas grenade. Cover the whole area in a cloud of noxious fumes, Helldiver!

The AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath gassed up and ready to go.

Adding stratagem variants to Warbonds is new with Chemical Agents, but our designers felt that since gas is a crowd control tool, it made more sense to release stratagems and let Helldivers choose the primary weapons they love the most. Not only that, but this is bringing some serious variety to Chemical Agents that we hope players will enjoy.

Breathe easy in the AF-02 Haz-Master armor.

Now let’s talk drip. The exterminators of Super Earth have access to some killer threads in Chemical Agents. Firstly, these armors have the Advanced Filtration passive, which gives the player resistance to the gas clouds they’ll be generating with their new toys, including the toxic cloud put off by the Orbital Gas Strike stratagem. The AF-50 Noxious Ranger is a lightweight armor, best paired with the Standard of Safe Distance cape. If you really want to go full on with your protective gear, you’ve got the medium AF-02 Haz-Master and the matching Patient Zero’s Remembrance cape. Each set also has a coordinating player card to match the capes.

The AF-50 Noxious Ranger can survive in the fumes.

Our players have been asking for more emotes, and the ones included with Chemical Agents are some of our best yet. Want to know how to tell a joke in Helldivers 2 with your microphone off? Use the co-emote Natural Gas Extraction of course. See if you can convince your whole squad to pull your finger. And once you all get back to your ship, they can express their disgust with the Ew victory pose.

I said pull my finger, Helldiver!

We’re adding another set of patterns for your Hellpods, Pelican-1, and exosuit in Mustard–not the kind that goes on a hot dog either–this is the deadly kind. If at any point your squad wanders into your toxic cloud, you can use the new utility P-11 Stim Pistol to give them a minor heal from a safe distance.

The friendliest of friendly fire: the P-11 Stim Pistol.

Finally, if you want to really lean into the role, Chemical Agents includes a new player title–Expert Exterminator. 

That’s everything, Helldivers. This could be a whole new theme for your squad as the galaxy’s elite peacekeepers and pest destroyers. Gas up for Chemical Agents, releasing September 19.

*Requires base game, paid purchase of Super Credits, and game progression to unlock.

Cyberpunk 2077 on PC Finally Gets Support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR3)

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt has finally added AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 with Frame Generation to the PC version of the game.

Patch 2.13 for Cyberpunk 2077 and expansion Phantom Liberty is being rolled out now on PC only (patch notes are below), but despite the version mismatch between PC and console, cross-progression will still function properly.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR3) combines image upscaling with frame generation technologies to generate high resolution frames at fast frame-rates. You can enable it in Settings → Graphics in the Quick Preset section, CD Projekt explained in a post on its website.

There’s also a separate setting to enable FSR Frame Generation. Note that FSR Frame Generation can only be used when AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 upscaling is enabled.

CD Projekt had told IGN back in May that Cyberpunk 2077 would get the long promised FSR3 support at some point, despite announcing it no longer had a dedicated Cyberpunk 2077 team.

Fans were left questioning whether the promised update would ever arrive after the developer told investors its Cyberpunk 2077 team had migrated elsewhere following the release of what was assumed to be the final update in version 2.12.

CD Projekt wound down development on Cyberpunk 2077 after the release of its first and only expansion, Phantom Liberty, back in September 2023. It came after the game-changing Update 2.0, which completely revamped Cyberpunk 2077 with features such as a new perk system and improved AI, and was followed by another big update in 2.1 but only minor changes afterwards.

Patch 2.11 addressed myriad bugs and balance issues in the open-world role-playing game, while 2.12 applied what was thought to be a final layer of polish. CD Projekt is now looking firmly forward towards Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel, codenamed Orion, and its myriad incoming Witcher games.

“We’ve decided to keep support for both FSR 2.1 and FSR 3 to give players the flexibility to choose their preferred setting for visual quality and performance,” CD Projekt explained. “This allows them to experiment and find what fits their gaming style best.”

Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty update 2.13 patch notes:

  • Added support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 with Frame Generation. More information can be found in this article on the Support website.
  • Added support for Intel Xe Super Sampling 1.3.
  • It will now be possible to enable both DLAA and DLSS Ray Reconstruction at the same time.
  • Added a new “Utilities” tab in Settings and moved HDD Mode, Hybrid CPU Utilization and AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) options there.
  • Other stability and visual fixes.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Microsoft toss another 650 jobs onto the layoff pyre in the name of “sustainable future growth”

Not enough Microsoft jobs have been splayed and flayed atop the Altar of Growth, so High Priest Spencer must once again perform the Rite of Strategic Repositioning. According to a leaked memo, Microsoft are laying off around 650 people “to organize our business for long term success”. This is the same Microsoft that parted with around 1900 employees in January, and the same Microsoft that washed their hands of around 10,000 staff in January 2023, all in the name of shoring up the business for future prosperity. That “long term success” is certainly taking its sweet time. Or at least, it is if you’re one of the poor saps in the trenches of, in this case, “corporate and supporting functions”.

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Thieves Allegedly Steal $70,000 Worth of Pokémon Cards After Asking Store Staff Which Were Valuable

Thieves are once again targeting the Pokémon Trading Card Game, with a duo in Japan allegedly making off with $70,000 worth after asking staff which ones were valuable.

As reported by NHK and translated by ComicBook, a Pokémon TCG store in Osaka was allegedly broken into at 3:30am while a pair of employees were closing up. The perpetrators tied the workers up and demanded not the Pokémon cards themselves, but insight into which ones were worth taking.

Pokémon card thefts are on the rise given how valuable some cards are (the rarest sold in 2022 for more than $5 million), but as tens of thousands of individual cards exist, not to mention countless copies of most of them, it can be hard to differentiate between the good cardboard and the bad cardboard.

The alleged Osaka thieves seemingly didn’t do their research, similar to a group in the California who were mocked by staff in January, and had to ask the employees which cards were valuable.

The staff seemingly knew their stuff though, as the thieves made off with more than 100 cards valued at ¥10 million, roughly $70,000.

Tokyo police reported an unprecedented number of trading card thefts in the latter half of 2022. High profile examples include a Minnesota store reportedly having around $250,000 worth of cards stolen, a Tokyo man allegedly launching a full on heist to acquire cards, and even an Alabama policeman was allegedly fired for pocketing cards in Walmart.

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