Amazon’s Best Game Deals This Week: Dark Souls, Borderlands 3, MK11, And More

PlayStation and Xbox’s mega summer sales have already come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you’ve missed out on the chance to snag some PS4 and Xbox One games for cheap this summer. Amazon offers great discounts on the regular, but it doesn’t follow the same weekly schedule for deals as other stores, so it can be harder to keep track of what’s on sale from week to week. Right now, we’re seeing quite a few notable game deals, so we’ve rounded them up here so you can see at a glance the best games on sale.

Borderlands 3’s Super Deluxe edition, which normally sells for $100 and includes the season pass plus cosmetic items, is on sale for $36.93 for PS4 right now. Several PS4 games are discounted to $15 each, including Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience, Tekken 7, Batman: Return to Arkham, Hitman: Definitive Edition, and Mega Man 11. Meanwhile, you can snag one of the greatest RPGs of all time, Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition, for $24.84 on PS4 and Xbox One, and Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath Kollection, which includes the base game and new Aftermath expansion, on sale for $49.94 for PS4 and Xbox One.

You’ll see some new releases on sale right now, too. Saints Row: The Third Remastered launched May 22, and you can already grab it for $33.88 (instead of $40) for PS4. The open-world shark RPG Maneater is also down to $30 (usually $40) for both PS4 and Xbox One.

Check out the best games on sale at Amazon below. Plus, don’t forget the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing right now, offering thousands of steep discounts on PC games. See our roundups of the best Steam game deals, best cheap games under $10, and the best PC exclusives on sale on Steam for a quick overview of the most worthwhile offers.

Best games on sale at Amazon

6479098 – Amazon Deals Roundup 6.30.20

Daily Deals: Today Only, Save on Memory Cards and Hard Drives for your Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox, or Gaming PC

Amazon has kicked off a one day sale on some of the most popular memory cards and hard drives for your gaming console. Whether you own a Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, or gaming PC, there’s an expandable storage option for you. Check them out, and more here!

App users: Don’t see the deals below? Click here.

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Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends 25% of his pay on stuff he posts.

Daily Deals: Today Only, Save on Memory Cards and Hard Drives for your Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox, or Gaming PC

Amazon has kicked off a one day sale on some of the most popular memory cards and hard drives for your gaming console. Whether you own a Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, or gaming PC, there’s an expandable storage option for you. Check them out, and more here!

1-Day Only Memory and Storage Sale on Amazon

Score the best deals of the year on Micro SD memory cards for your Nintendo Switch or portable hard drives for your PC, PS4, or Xbox. We’ve listed the best deals out below but click through for deals on internal hard drives, SSDs, flash sticks, and more.

Official Nintendo Switch 128GB Micro SDXC Memory Card for $22.35

SanDisk Ultra 256GB Micro SDXC Card for $31.99

SanDisk Ultra 400GB Micro SDXC Card for $47.99

WD Black P10 5TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive for $99.99

WD Passport 5TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive for $99.99

SecretLab Titan 2020 Cyberpunk 2077 Edition Gaming Chair

We rated the TITAN as our best gaming chair of 2020. This chair features PRIME 2.0 PU leather upholstery with cold-cure foam fill, lumbar support, full-length backrest recline, multi-tilt adjustability, full metal 4D armrests, and memory foam headrest.

Amazon Prime Card Holders Can Get 15% Cashback on Nintendo eShop Gift Cards, 5% Cashback on Everything Else

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, sign up for the Amazon Prime Card and get 5% cashback on pretty much everything at Amazon, and for a limited time 15% cashback on all Nintendo eShop gift card puchases. There is NO ANNUAL FEE.

Dell UltraSharp U2720Q 27″ 4K IPS USB-C Monitor with Bonus $100 Dell eGift Card for $485.99

Use code “STAND4SMALL”

For laptop users with an available USB Type-C port, this is the easiest way to connect an external monitor. The U2720Q is a gorgeous 27″ 4K monitor. If offers an impressive 99% sRGB and 95% DCI-P3 coverage and an amazing 1.07 billion color depth.

Razer Blade 15″ 144Hz Intel Core i7-9750H GTX 1660 Ti Gaming Laptop with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD for $1099.99

The Razer Blade is easily one of the nicest gaming laptops you can buy. It has the sleek build quality of a MacBook Pro, but with powerful gaming guts inside. It weighs only 4.5 pounds and measures 0.7″ thin.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 14″ AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS RTX 2060 Gaming Laptop with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD for $1349.99

Our review says it all “The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 surpasses any expectation we had about gaming on an ultrabook.” The AMD Ryzen 9 is ridiculously powerful. It’s leagues better than any Intel Core i7 mobile CPU. The RTX 2060 surpasses the GTX 1070.

Dell G7 15″ Intel Core i7-9750H RTX 2060 Gaming Laptop with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD for $1049.99

The G7 is Dell’s highest end G-series gaming laptop. Today you can score an RTX 2060 equipped Dell G7 for just a little over $1K. The RTX 2060 is actually faster than the previous generation’s GTX 1070.

Apple Watch Series 3 GPS 38mm Smartwatch for $169

Score the Apple Watch Series 3 right now at the lowest price ever. You’ll save over $200 compared to getting an Apple Watch Series 5 and let’s face it, most people probably won’t notice the ECG or cosmetic updates compared to the Series 3.

Razer Huntsman Opto-Mechanical Gaming Keyboard for $99.99

HP Envy 15″ 4K UHD Intel Core i7-10750H RTX 2060 Gaming Laptop with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for $1439

Use code “JULY4STACK10”

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Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends 25% of his pay on stuff he posts.

Netflix’s Dark: Season 3 Ending Explained

Dark may be one of the best original series on Netflix, but it’s also among the most confusing. Its vast web of interconnected characters and storylines, coupled with a plot centered around time travel and parallel worlds, all make it a very mind-bending and challenging watch. That certainly didn’t change with the show’s third and final season.

If the series finale of Dark has you scratching your head and wondering how it all fits together, worry not. We’ve got a full breakdown of what happened in the finale and what it means for the knot of time to finally become untangled.

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Dark: Season 3!

Finding the Center

Over the course of the series, we’ve come to understand that Dark hinges on a seemingly never-ending battle between “Adam” and “Eva” (older versions of teen lovers Jonas Kahnwald and Martha Nielsen). Eva is devoted to perpetuating the endless time loop that sustains both her version of Winden and its parallel universe doppelganger, while Adam is obsessed with finding a way to break the cycle and destroy both worlds. And between them is the White Devil (or the elderly version of Claudia Tiedemann), who’s sort of a chaotic free agent in this massive conspiracy.

Adam knows the way to end this time knot is to find its center – the moment where the time loop began – and prevent it from happening. However, he mistakenly believes the child of Jonas and Martha is that center, reasoning that a child born of parents from two different realities is the logical catalyst for a never-ending time war. That’s why Adam chooses to annihilate a pregnant Martha in the wormhole. The wormhole itself is the only thing with the power to destroy a being born of two worlds, and once the child is gone, the time loop will be gone with him. Or so Adam believes.

However, Adam finally learns he was wrong about Jonas and Martha’s son being the center. Claudia reveals that there’s a third version of Winden in existence – an original Winden that birthed these two divergent timelines. The time loop was actually created when the original H.G. Tannhaus built a time machine in the hope of preventing the deaths of his family. Instead, his machine triggered the apocalypse in his world and created the two alternate versions of Winden. As Adam finally learns, the key to undoing the knot is actually to travel to the original Winden and prevent the time machine from ever being created.

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How Did Jonas and Martha Alter Time?

The problem with trying to alter the past is that it’s easier said than done. Like a great many time travel-centric sci-fi stories, Dark deals heavily with the theme of fate vs. free will. Those rare times characters try to change their fate in this universe, they’re usually prevented from doing so. Jonas tried to commit suicide, but because his older selves already exist in the time loop, he was physically unable to change his fate. It’s only when the wormhole is activated and time stops for a brief moment that characters can act in ways that defy the established timeline. That’s why two universes exist within the same time loop. One exists because Martha saved Jonas just before the apocalypse, and the other exists because Jonas was left to die.

Ending the time loop in the series finale requires the existence of a third Jonas and Martha. Just before the apocalypse happens, the first world’s Jonas intercepts the second world’s Martha and teleports away. The two characters are briefly stuck outside of time in a sequence not unlike the climax of 2014’s Interstellar, as they see and interact with younger versions of themselves. They finally emerge in the original Winden on the night Tannhaus’ family are fated to die in a car crash. No longer bound by the laws of the time loop, Jonas and Martha intercept the car and convince Tannhaus’s son to return home. The family is saved, and the elder Tannhaus never has the incentive to build his time machine and trigger the apocalypse.

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Did Jonas and Martha Get a Happy Ending?

For the most part, Dark can be said to end on a happy note. Certainly, it’s a happy ending for the Tannhaus family. And no doubt the world outside Winden would be grateful to know it was spared a civilization-ending disaster. But as with most things, victory doesn’t come without a heavy cost. The cost of ending the time loop is that both Jonas and Martha cease to exist.

The reason for this is that neither character could have existed without the time loop in the first place. Jonas was only born because a young Mikkel Nielsen (Martha’s brother) was dragged back in time and grew up to become Michael Kahnwald. Michael married Hannah Kruger and fathered Jonas. And because Jonas and Martha’s son is implied to be the father of Tronte Nielsen, Martha couldn’t exist without Jonas. Thanks to the magic of time travel, Martha is both Jonas’ aunt and his descendant.

The majority of the characters featured in Dark only exist because they’re part of this tangled, incestuous family tree. Once the wormhole is eliminated from the picture, they simply cease to be. The final dinner scene is significant because it shows us the small handful of characters who exist regardless of the time loop – Regina, Katharina, Hannah, Peter, Benni and Wöller.

Season 3 makes multiple references to 1999’s the Matrix and specifically the line “a glitch in the Matrix,” which is meant to be that film’s explanation for the sensation of deja vu. However, Dark suggests that deja vu may actually happen when a person experiences memories of an alternate universe. That seems to be what happens to Hannah in those closing moments, as she recounts dreaming about the end of the world and is inspired to name her unborn son Jonas. The time loop is gone, but some small trace of two alternate Windens remains.

Be sure to check out IGN’s full review of Dark: Season 3 and see what’s new to Netflix in July.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

These Upcoming Timex Pac-Man Watches are Double the Retro

In the age of smartphones and Apple Watch, a classic digital watch is retro without even trying. Timex has combined two great retro flavors together in a limited-edition run of its classic T80 line by combining it with the 1980s gaming goodness that is Pac-Man.

The Timex T80 x PACMAN line comes in three different styles, each with stainless steel watchbands and water resistance up to 50m. Originally introduced at ComplexCon in Long Beach, CA last November, the watches go back on sale July 7 in the US, with global distribution coming sometime in August.

Check out the gallery below to see this doubly-retro watch.

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The watch comes in three different colors: black, silver, and gold, and the face is decorated to celebrate 40 years of Pac-Man. There’s a pixelated Pac-Man chasing a ghost monster embossed in the clasp of the stainless steel band. In addition to all the normal features you find in the Timex T80 watch, like stopwatch, Indiglo lighting, and an alarm, this special-edition watch plays the “iconic PAC-MAN melody” too.

You’ll be able to order your own from Timex on July 7 for $79 in the US.

If you’re curious: yes, I am setting a reminder on my phone so I can order one for myself. I just can’t decide which color.

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Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Twitter @sethmacy.

Avengers Character Breakdown: 6 Heroes, Plenty of Possibilities

Marvel’s Avengers, at launch, will offer players six different Marvel heroes to play as — Black Widow, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, and Thor. Endeavoring to essentially create six different protagonists, who will all have their own authored single-player experiences and then be playable in multiplayer Warzone missions, is no small task. But lead combat designer Vince Napoli – formerly of Sony’s God of War team – walked IGN through how the Crystal Dynamics team is aiming to make each hero unique and fun to play.

As part of our IGN First coverage of Marvel’s Avengers, read on for how the team is crafting each hero’s playstyle, and be sure to check out our exclusive hands-on with Thor and Ms. Marvel for our thoughts on how two of the heroes play.

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Black Widow

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Napoli explained that Natasha Romanoff actually was the team’s starting hero because of her unique difficulties.

“We actually started with Black Widow. She made the most sense [to start with] because she provides so many challenges, especially going up against some of the crazier, god-powered, god-tier heroes,” Napoli said.

And so the team honed in on a few aspects of Black Widow to make her feel truly unique and fun to play — namely, making her more agile in combat than any of the other heroes.

“She’s incredibly fast. She’s incredibly agile. She has the fastest melee attacks and melee combos in the game. She is also able to alternate between her electric batons as her heavy attacks, and you use those differently than her melee attacks on the light button [and] switch between multiple ranged weapons as well,” Napoli said, noting she can choose from automatic pistols, dual-wielding rapid pistols, and a heavy-caliber Magnum pistol.

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But a defining aspect of this version of Black Widow is her stealth, and the ability to enter and exit an invisibility mode while in the midst of combat. Napoli explained how playing as Nat well, and really making use of her intrinsic stealth ability, is the key to success in battle with her.

“Some of the most interesting and fun play we see with her is the ability to enter stealth. You stealth very quickly, get out of it and then enter it again,” Napoli said. “If you’re playing her well, you do feel like you’re constantly escaping the battlefield, entering the battlefield, tricking the enemies constantly.”

The focus on stealth allowed the team to crack the code of Black Widow’s arsenal and the many abilities that could be layered onto her customization options. From her weapon arsenal to abilities to do multi-takedowns, instakills, affect teammates from stealth, and even possibly have them enter stealth mode — Black Widow became this unseen force among the Avengers roster.

“Then you add in her grapple ability to quickly move between targets, and you combine stealth, you make her this ninja on the battlefield where she’s rapidly moving between enemies. You can’t see here, she’s disappearing, she’s reappearing. Once we had all of those elements in place, she definitely started to play as something really, really special,” Napoli said.

Captain America

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Steve Rogers is the elephant in the room, the team member whose presence we don’t quite know in the scope of the full game because, well, as the A-Day demo shows…Captain America seemingly dies at the onset of Marvel’s Avengers.

Still, Crystal Dynamics created what is clearly a deep combat system that, presumably, we’ll eventually get to play in full. And while however Steve may re-enter the picture is being kept under wraps, Napoli did offer some details on how he plays, and how the team is making good use of Cap’s iconic shield.

“Throwing the shield is obviously so iconic and needed to feel so special,” Napoli said. “His shield throw actually has its own built-in ranged combo. It’s a unique characteristic the other characters don’t have, which is that his ranged attack actually works like a combo.

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“So perfect timing as you catch it and throw it will increment his throws and create different throws and reactions on the enemies. He also has a special counter kickback, which is when you use his charge throw, after it hits the last enemy, if you can time the kickback ahead of time, he’ll jump up and kick the shield back and meet it as it’s returning and he’ll kick it back out and hit once again all the targets that you were able to target with his charge throw.”

That depth and nuance came from, according to Napoli, a desire by the team to add skill and a sense of mastery to Cap’s abilities for players.

“How can you really feel like you’ve mastered the shield throw, what layers can we do where there is some amount of practiced and learned ability to the point where you actually do feel like an expert Captain America player?” Napoli said the team asked one another.

Hulk

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When I began speaking to Napoli about Hulk, I mentioned how perhaps the strongest and best gaming memory for myself and many others of Bruce Banner is the PS2-era Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. And Napoli noted that he has fond memories of that superhero outing and even went back to get a feel for what that game did for the character.

But in devising their own Hulk, the team at Crystal Dynamics wanted to think about a larger question — how could they imbue this force of strength with strategy?

“Other than being able to utilize his rage and smash through stuff and feel that overwhelming sense of power, what would my gameplay strategy be as Hulk, what would a realistic gameplay strategy be as him if you were a Hulk player?” Napoli said he and the team considered.

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“What if we took the idea of weaponization. Hulk is basically all about weaponizing the environment and weaponizing the enemies, or weaponizing the combat scenario around him. And what I mean by that is that that’s actually why he’s able to pick up and wield enemies as weapons,” he continued.

Napoli pointed to a specific example of using the environment as a giant boulder before going into a fight.

“I’m going to prepare at the beginning of this fight because I’m going to rip up part of the ground and turn it into a giant boulder,” he said. “And then I’m going to start the fight by leaping off the highest thing I can and dive bomb into the fight with my giant boulder. And for example, using the status effects, you can make that a cosmic-infused boulder. You can radiate the boulder with gamma,” he continued.

“[Playing as Hulk] rewards a little bit of preparation work there, which is a little bit of an antithesis to Hulk, but it does reward a little bit of slight preparation with even more over-the-top destruction.

Hulk can of course also grab enemies, and Napoli explained that picking different enemies will change Hulk’s swing with them, allowing players to further plan their combat by choosing which enemies to go after first.

Iron Man

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A lot rests on Iron Man’s shoulders. After kickstarting the MCU into one of the biggest movie franchises of all time, the character and his moves have become a lot more iconic to a lot more people. Napoli said that leaning into that iconography, rather than limiting the scope of his moveset, allowed the team to figure out their take on Tony Stark.

“What if he could use his weapon selection, not just in his range attacks, but integrate that into his melee combat, really make that a part of who he is?” Napoli said.

He explained how they took Iron Man’s repulsor gloves and, instead of limiting them to a couple of moves, integrated his iconic weapons into his entire combo system.

“That way you can actually see him do a lot more of the iconic posing that you see in the movies and the comic panels,” Napoli said. “And once we had that down, I was like, ‘Well, let’s do the same thing with lasers. Let’s give him two dozen laser attacks that he could use in melee combat.’

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“So for example, his heavy combo finisher you can unlock is a pinning missile, which pins the enemy and takes them off and propels them into the air and then does different like loops into the air and runs different patterns and sends them flying,” he continued.

Napoli estimates that there are about 36 different attacks incorporating his ranged moves, which can be brought into combos that focus on his standard hand-to-hand combat abilities.

Ms. Marvel

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Kamala Khan, who serves as a major entry point for the story, offered a unique challenge for Crystal Dynamics.

“Her abilities for a melee game are a dream and a curse at the same time, because you can do anything with them. You can make any weapon attacks and motions with them, but at the same time… you can do anything with them,” Napoli said, noting how that freedom offered a unique set of challenges.

But in aiming to stay true to the characters within combat, Napoli and the team found that honing in on Kamala’s fandom for the other Avengers offered a special opportunity for her moveset.

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“One of the approaches we took was to look for any influences we could from the rest of the Avengers with her actual moves. Almost all of her moves are based off of attacks that the other Avengers can do,” he said.

“So you’ll notice, she’s got a version of Black Widow’s light trip kick, where she sweeps the enemies. She’s got a version of Hulk’s shoulder ram attack. She’s got a version of almost every character’s attack [with] the Kamala spin on it; just to give it that feel of, ‘She is learning, and where would she be learning from? Where would she actually draw inspiration from? Of course, it’d be from the other Avengers.’”

Thor

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Having gotten to go hands-on with him a couple of times, Thor undoubtedly shares some DNA with Kratos in the recent God of War, with his Mjlonir hammer standing in for the Leviathan Axe. That’s assumedly no mistake, given Napoli previously worked on that PS4 exclusive, and it’s a great lineage to see continue in the god of thunder.

But, of course, in playing within the Marvel sandbox, there is plenty of comics and film inspiration to pull from. (I noted in my preview how Thor’s Odinforce powers wonderfully channel the Thor: Ragnarok action scene set to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”) And in designing Thor, Napoli noted that Ragnarok played a large influence not just in his playstyle but in the studio’s pitch to Marvel for the character.

“There’s a scene in Thor: Ragnarok where Odin tells Thor that he’s not the god of hammers,” Napoli said, explaining that the team pitched, for Marvel’s Avengers, that he would be both the god of hammers and the god of thunder and lightning.

“The coolest thing about his combat is that you can trigger his Odinforce and [Thor can] electrify himself, protect himself, counter enemies,” Napoli said. “But it also has a unique property that it adds to every single one of his attacks. And it isn’t just as simple as, ‘Oh, it just adds lightning damage.’ It completely changes the impact or the effect that it will have on the enemy. So you can see what it does and modify each of his attacks.”

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Napoli explained that the Odinforce “starts to create a storm of lightning everywhere,” that offered both defensive and offensive opportunities for Crystal Dynamics to build into Thor. And as for his hammer attacks, Napoli said they took a similar approach when it came to creating various uses for Mjlonir, rather than just hueing to one possible mode of combat for it.

“You can change [Mjlonir] into this lobbed grenade-style toss, where it creates a lightning explosion and creates cluster bombs. Or you can change it into the ability to seek out targets in the battlefield, which is not the way its base throw works,” he said.

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Marvel’s Avengers is set to hit PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 4, and all throughout July IGN will have an in-depth look at what Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel adventure will deliver. In the meantime, be sure to check out the full Avengers War Table presentation for more details, and stay tuned to IGN for more.

Destroy All Humans! Remake – The Final Preview

The very first thing you see when you start a new game in the 2020 remake of 2005’s Destroy All Humans is a message that reads While the experience has been upgraded, the content and historical record of the original invasion of the Furons remains a near-identical clone! In short, it’s a reminder that this is a game from “another time”.

And while that’s certainly true in some respects, after spending more than a few hours with the 2020 version, it’s clear that the updates to its visuals and gameplay are trying hard to modernize the end of the world as we (used to) know it in some fun and intuitive ways.

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If you never played the original, here’s the short version: you’re Crypto 137, a clone of Crypto 136 who crash-landed on earth in the 1950s – where you now need to wreak havoc to help secure the future of the Furon empire. You do so with a host of classic sci-fi weaponry, ranging from disintegrator rays to anal probes (we never said this was Shakespeare) and flying saucers with death rays, plus some more unique abilities like mind control and telekinesis.

All of those elements are back, and have all been tweaked and updated to feel and function like a game that didn’t launch alongside the first Guitar Hero. The development team’s go-to line since they revealed the game last year is that they’re “not making a remake of the original game, we’re making remake of the memories players have of that game.” And that targeted nostalgia works – for the most part.

As I said, the “of a different time” disclaimer definitely rings true, and while that mostly comes through in the form of jokes that were clearly targeted at players a generation above my own (I’d be surprised if most modern gamers knew who Milton Berle was, let alone why he’s famous), it’s a bit surprising to see some of the jokes that were questionable – even for 2005 – have still made the cut. There’s nothing as overtly offensive as the notes about “outdated cultural depictions” on Disney+ cover, but it was still jarring to hear so many “don’t ask, don’t tell” jokes whenever I was around the military.

That said, most of this send-up of the ‘50s Cold War craze remains accessible, in part thanks to the more cartoonish designs of the updated art style, but also because of the enduring talent of the original voice cast. J. Grant Albrecht’s Crypto sports an off-brand Nicholson impression that helps reinforce the satiric undertones with every line, and while I’ll never not think of the Angry Beavers or Invader Zim when I hear Richard Horvitz, his bombastic delivery as Orthopox makes even the most exposition-ey exposition enjoyable.

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The biggest features the remake focuses on are modernization and replayability. Most notable in terms of the overall structure is that now, after completing each area’s story missions, you can revisit each sandbox to zap, probe and disintegrate earthlings to your heart’s content – or tackle a series of challenges, most of which revolve around some form of zapping, disintegrating, and probing. Causing chaos in each area was fun (though not endlessly so), and while the challenges seemed like a good way to earn some much-needed upgrade points, some of the later ones in my demo felt a little unbalanced against my modestly-upgraded arsenal… though I suppose that’s why they call them “challenges.”

In terms of the moment-to-moment gameplay, all of the mechanical updates I saw appear to serve that purpose of “remaking the memories” well – though I’d forgotten just how much one could choose to focus on stealth through a lot of the missions. Being able to use multiple abilities simultaneously – not having to swap between weapons and telekinesis, for instance – is a welcome addition, and I honestly can’t imagine not being able to control the height on my spacecraft during the flying sections, even if they did still feel a little stilted. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the original gameplay ideas – like being able to assume the form of humans and read their minds or hypnotize them – all hold up, and even seem to benefit from the more intricate environmental redesigns.

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I’m mostly curious to know whether or not these modernizations will hold up throughout the entirety of the new Destroy All Humans. I played through roughly half of the main story, if memory serves, and despite some occasionally repetitive mission structure – it was 2005, after all – for the most part, it had yet to wear out its welcome. Whether or not this remake will serve as just a one-time novelty or a reboot for the entire series remains to be seen, but at the very least it’s been fun to jump back into the little green gray boots of Crypto 137 again.

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JR is a Senior Editor at IGN who still can’t believe that the Pentagon basically said “yeah, aliens are real” and we all let that slide in less than a day. 2020 is crazy; to that end, please consider donating o the ACLU or NAACPLDF if you’re able.