Month: February 2020

The official IGN Store is officially live, and we’ve just added 100 new designs from Disney’s Mulan and Pixar’s Onward.

New Mulan T-Shirts

The Mulan designs cover both the original 1998 animated movie, as well as the upcoming live-action version. Some of the designs for the Mulan shirts, particularly the ones inspired by traditional Chinese ink painting, are among my favorites in the store so far. I highly recommend checking them out for yourself.

 

Disney Pixar’s Onward Shirts

Onward is the latest Pixar movie, and we’ve added a huge selection of shirts based on its magical world. There are more than just Onward character shirts here: there are designs referencing day-to-day life in this fictional world of questing and trash-eating unicorns.

 

Be sure to check back often as we’re adding new designs every single week. We’re also running sales and discounts periodically, so make sure to follow the IGN Store on Twitter and Instagram.

Check out all the designs in the official IGN Store like this throwback Baby Yoda shirt, Zelda shirt, or this awesome TMNT pullover fleece.

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Predator: Hunting Grounds is going to have a trial weekend next month so you can give it a go yourself. It starts on March 27 at 4pm in the UK, 5pm in Europe, while North America players can join in at 5pm PST. You’ll be able to play all the way through to March 29, 2020.

The trial will be available to those PlayStation Plus on PS4 as well as PC players, and they’ll be able to play together with cross-play support. You can choose to play solo as the Predator, or you can team up against the alien menace as a human fireteam with three other players.

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This is an asymmetrical multiplayer game like developer Illfonic’s previous game, Friday the 13th. That means the Predator will have an advantage when it comes to one-on-one fights due to its arsenal and mobility, able to ambush its prey from all directions. However, the fireteam can come out on top if the squad is able to work together and cover each other’s backs.

IGN got to preview Predator: Hunting Grounds last year and found it to be “a blast.” Especially when playing as the Predator, using the plasmacaster, arm blades, cloaking ability, infrared vision, and more of the iconic tools from the films. Illfonic says that it’s built upon the feedback that demo got after taking it to events last year and so the trial version should be further refined.

The Predator: Hunting Grounds cover art has also been revealed with this announcement. Stare at it as much as you want right now – you might notice a familiar face in the trees – but bear in mind that you’ll be able to get an even closer look if you pick up the game when it’s expected to launch on April 24, 2020.

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Chris Priestman is a freelancer who writes news for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Now that the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro are a few years old, we’re finally seeing some great deals on these powerful consoles. Right now, for instance, you can snag a PS4 Pro or an Xbox One X bundle for just $299. That ought to tide you over with 4K delights until you’re ready to jump to the next generation. Here’s where you can score the deals.

PS4 Pro is 25% Off

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• Get it at Walmart – $299 (was $399)

It has an MSRP of $400, but right now you can save $100 off a brand-new PlayStation 4 Pro. Assuming you have a TV that can display such things, it pumps out gameplay in crispy 4K and bright HDR. It also improves the visuals in many PSVR games.

Xbox One X Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Bundle is 40% Off

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• Get it at Walmart with 1 Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – $299
• Get it at Amazon – $299

The Xbox Series X may be coming later this year, but it’s likely going to cost between $450 and $600, and it’s not going to have any games you can’t play on the much cheaper Xbox One X. So grab this deal to tide you over until whenever Xbox Series X exclusives start coming out. And by that point, you’ll probably be able to find one for considerably less than they’re priced at launch.

This bundle is particularly great because it comes with on of the best games of last year. And if you buy it at Walmart, you’ll get a free month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which normally would set you back $15.

Xbox One X Gears 5 Bundle is 40% Off

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• Get it at Amazon – $299

This bundle isn’t just the console and Gears 5. Instead, it comes with the console as well as Gears of War Ultimate Edition, Gears of War 2, 3, 4, and Gears 5. That’s the entire saga (if we’re going to ignore Judgment, which apparently we are!).

Xbox One X NBA 2K20 Bundle is 40% Off

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• Get it at Walmart with 1 Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – $299
• Get it at Amazon – $299

Sports fans can get the same deal on an Xbox One X bundled with NBA 2K20. Buy it at Walmart, and you’ll also get a free month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Pretty sweet deal.

3 Months Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is 44% Off

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• Get it at Amazon – $24.99 (was $44.99)

As far as I’m concerned, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is one of the best deals in gaming right now. It gets you access to well over 100 games, plus you get to play all first-party Microsoft games for free at launch. You can’t beat it.

Xbox One S All-Digital is 33% Off

• Get it at Amazon – $159 (was $250)

The Xbox One S All-Digital isn’t as powerful as an Xbox One X, but this deal is so good I had to include it. For less than the cost of a Switch Lite, you can have a full-powered Xbox One S (without at disk drive) that comes with Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, and Fortnite.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Riders on Disneyland’s Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run can now ‘hack’ the ride to turn on Chewie Mode.

If you’ve been on the ride before, you know that every right and wrong move is met with a line from Hondo, the famed smuggler who sends you on the mission in the first place. You meet him in the queue before entering the Millennium Falcon.

But with a specific set of inputs, you can activate Chewie Mode, replacing all of Hondo’s verbal cues with responses from Chewbacca in the form of his famous yell. But be warned, making this happen isn’t easy and will require a group of friendly strangers or a full crew of friends willing to help you.

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Fresh Baked completed this hack and you can see it in action if you want to see it for yourself. If you’re looking to hack into the system yourself, you’re going to need to follow a very specific set of instructions:

When you enter the ride section of Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, do not activate your position, which could be pilot, gunner, or engineer. This means that nobody on the ride should press a button or touch a lever.

The left and right pilots need to push their steering controls to the far left and right respectively. Once they’ve done that, they can hit their activation button. The engineers and gunners need to now hit one of the white buttons on their interface before pressing the orange activation button.

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All of this must be done before the cast member hits the button that starts the ride. A good way to ensure you’ve done what you need to do in time is making sure everyone completes their steps, or hack as it were, before the cast member assigned to your unit finishes the seatbelt check.

If you’ve completed these steps in time, you’ll know you’ve successfully hacked the ride when you hear Chewie yelling at you and explaining what you need to do instead of Holdo.

If you haven’t had the chance to go to Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland to ride Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, we’ve got a review of it with footage from the ride you can check out. We also recently reviewed the newest ride in the land, Rise of the Resistance, and spoilers: it’s amazing.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN that loves Disney and is eagerly anticipating the day he can try this at Disney World in Florida. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Platinum Games has released the first teaser for Project G.G., a new IP that will be the first game both developed and published by the independent studio.

Game director Hideki Kamiya revealed the new title in an interview with Famitsu, where he compared the ideas for it to Ultraman. The teaser trailer backs that up, with a shot of an obscured hero with blue eyes facing off against a colossal kaiju in the downtown streets of an unnamed metropolis. Check it out below.

In a blog post, Kamiya stresses that Project G.G. is only a working title, and that the project itself is still in the very early stages of production. He explains that acting as a publisher affords him and his team far more creative freedom than before, but also invites new risks that Platinum Games will need to manage.

“We’ll be taking on new risks that we’ve never had to assume before as a contracted developer,” says Kamiya. “Having full control over the Project G.G. IP gives us a ton of freedom, but also a ton of responsibility. Still, I think we can harness that sense of responsibility and turn it into motivation to make Project G.G. the best game it can be.”

Project G.G. is the second game announced as part of Platinum Games’ Platinum 4, which kicked off with a Kickstarter campaign for a Wonderful 101 port. It has since reached its goals for ports to Nintendo Switch, PC, and PS4, among other new features.

The creator of the Konami Code, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, has died. The news was announced by composer and former Konami collaborator Yuji Takenouchi.

Takenouchi shared a message on Twitter that states that Hashimoto died last night (February 25), and that the composer hopes the legendary programmer and developer continues to “keep making games in heaven”. He was 61 years old.

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Hashimoto worked at Konami in the 80s and 90s on classic games such as Snatcher, Gradius, Life Force, and ISS, but he is best known for the creation of the Konami Code; a combination of button inputs used to activate powerful cheats.

The code – up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start – was first implemented by Hashimoto into the NES version of Gradius as it was found to be too difficult during playtesting. The code would give players a complete set of power ups. The code was subsequently added to dozens of other games over the years. It is perhaps best known for its use in Contra, where it would grant players 30 lives.

The Konami code can be found outside of Konami games, too, thanks to its evolution into a pop-culture icon. Fortnite, League of Legends, and Rocket League all have a Konami code, and even Netflix has a secret settings menu that can be accessed by inputting an almost identical code. It also is referenced by Disney’s video games themed movie Wreck-it Ralph.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

PlatinumGames has announced The Wonderful 101: Remastered will be released for Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Steam on May 19 in North America and May 22 in Europe (no Australian release date available at time of writing).

This is being referred to as a “general” release date and, to our knowledge, backers of the game’s Kickstarter that paid to receive a copy of the game will still be receiving it in April as stated on the crowd-funding campaign’s page.

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In a message to fans, the original version’s director, Hideki Kamiya, thanked fans for supporting the game after its commercial failure on Wii U, saying, “I’m considering this a chance to show it to the world again. I’m looking forward to seeing how it measures up.”

He adds: “This isn’t just a simple port, either. We’ve tuned the controls for each new platform and made several adjustments that should make it easier to grasp and play. On top of that, we’ve improved the image quality and frame rate to suit modern hardware. On the whole, I’d say The Wonderful 101: Remastered is the definitive edition of the game!”

The Wonderful 101: Remastered has seen a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, asking for just under £38,000 ($50,000 USD) and receiving £1.4 million ($1.8 million USD) with 9 days still to go. That success has unlocked a number of stretch goals, including a separate 2D game, Luka’s First Mission.

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The Wonderful 101: Remastered was the first of 4 annoucements teased by PlatinumGames. The second has also been announced today – Project G.G. is a new Hideki Kamiya game, a spiritual follow-on from TW101, and is the studio’s first fully self-published game.

We awarded the Wii U version of The Wonderful 101 a 7.4 review, calling it “a charming, boisterous and deceptively complex action game”.

Correction: This story originally stated that an Astral Chain PC port was part of the Kickstarter stretch goals for TW101. This was a mistake – we apologise for the error.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News, and he loves The Wonderful 101, aside from its horrific use of Wii U rumble. Follow him on Twitter.

5G connectivity and 8K video seems to be the running theme of the most recent smartphone announcements and the LG V60 ThinQ 5G promises to deliver both of these features at a bargain.

Okay, the exact pricing for the V60 ThinQ 5G is still under wraps, but LG told us it should cost less than the existing V50 Thin-Q, which originally retailed for $999. If the final pricing falls somewhere between $699 and $899, this could be one of the best value devices around.

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Even without knowing what the price tag will look like, the LG V60  ThinQ 5G looks like a great smartphone and an impressive upgrade. For starters, it features a 6.8-inch OLED display with an extra tall 20.5:9 aspect ratio and FHD+ (2,460 x 1,080) resolution. LG has also replaced the wide notch found on the V50 ThinQ 5G with a waterdrop notch similar to the one found on the OnePlus 7T.

The LG V60 ThinQ 5G display gets even better when you double it with the Dual-View case that will be included for free during its initial release. This special case gives you a second 6.8-inch OLED display to run two apps at the same time, play games on one screen with a virtual game pad on the other, or just split what you’re viewing across the two screens.

Around back you might notice the LG V60 ThinQ 5G only has two cameras, whereas the previous version had three. Well LG has simplified its camera setup with a 13MP Super Wide and a 64MP main camera. The main camera does the most heavily lifting of letting you shoot photos at full resolution, pixel binning low-light shots to 16MP when you need to capture more light, and giving you the ability to crop in 2-10 times with only a marginal loss in image quality.

Normally we’re not fans of digital crop zooming, but we were genuinely impressed by how much image quality was retained as we punched in.

LG also promises the two cameras can capture more realistic 3D photo effects and attain accurate focus faster thanks to a newly integrated time of flight sensor array.

Aside from stills, the LG V60 ThinQ 5G will allow you to shoot 8K videos with HDR10+ colors. Additionally, the phone comes equipped with four microphones to power Voice Bokeh, which sets the microphones to pick up in a faux-cardioid pattern to minimize background noise and boost the subject’s voice.

In terms of specs, the LG V60 ThinQ is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor you’ll find on all of the major 2020 flagship phones. This central chip is also backed up by 8GB of  RAM and 128GB of storage that comes standard, and you can further expand your data storage space with an up to 2TB microSD card.

Lastly the phone comes with a 5,000mAh battery, which LG promises can regain 50% of its charge by plugging it in for just 30 minutes.

LG plans to release the LG V60 Thin-Q with a dual-screen case in the coming weeks.

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Kevin Lee is IGN’s Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam