Category: Games

Ten years after its original release, the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is finally getting camera controls as part of the upgraded HD version launching this week on Nintendo Switch.

Dropping this information somewhat out of the blue, Nintendo has announced, via the Japanese Legend of Zelda Twitter account, that the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD will include camera controls as part of the game for the first time. This was one of the major points of contention for the original release – due to the limited button configuration of the Wii remote and Nunchuk controller and lack of a second stick, it was often tricky to get the game’s camera to sit where you wanted it to be.

【カメラのみまわし】#スカイウォードソードHD では、カメラを自由に回せるようになりました。いろいろな角度から世界を見渡してみてはいかがでしょうか？
（Joy-Con 2本持ちならRスティックを回す。ボタン操作ならLボタン＋Rスティックを回す。） pic.twitter.com/I4g94H2SNi

— ゼルダの伝説 (@ZeldaOfficialJP) July 13, 2021

It was particularly annoying in some of the more enclosed spaces in the game’s dungeons for example, which sometimes required Link to be in a very particular position in order to actually view an item or object that would help to solve a puzzle or progress.

This feature wasn’t included in the HD remaster’s Quality of Life Improvements trailer released a couple of weeks ago, which detailed additions such as autosave, skippable cutscenes, and running at 60fps. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome extra, even if it is controlled a little weirdly when playing without motion controls. Due to the right Joycon stick controlling Link’s sword, you’ll have to hold down the L button before moving the stick in order to control the camera.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword launches this week on 16 July. Are you looking forward to the HD version of Skyward Sword? Will you be playing the game for the first time, or are you jumping back in after a decade? With Breath of the Wild 2 launching next year, and fans speculating that the game will have some links to Skyward Sword, now seems like the perfect time to jump in.

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Liam Wiseman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @liamthewiseman

Square Enix has announced a delay to Just Cause: Mobile, a mobile spin-off game set in the Just Cause universe. Just Cause: Mobile was originally scheduled to launch this year on iOS and Android devices.

Announced in a tweet from the Just Cause: Mobile Twitter account, the game has now been delayed into next year. Like a lot of developers this year, the statement cites the shift to home working due to the COVID-19 pandemic having an impact on the development pipeline.

On the plus side, the team also said that it will be continuing to provide updates on the game via social media, so hopefully we’ll see more of the game soon. Just Cause: Mobile isn’t the first game to have been delayed by the pandemic and changing ways of working, and it likely won’t be the last.

We have an important Just Cause: Mobile announcement to share. pic.twitter.com/zYW8csSSUs

— Just Cause: Mobile (@justcausemobile) July 12, 2021

Just Cause: Mobile was originally announced at the Game Awards last year, and unlike the main single-player Just Cause games, the game is a free-to-play action shooter with co-op and PVP game modes. For the first time in the series, players will not be playing as series mainstay Rico Rodriguez, and will be able to create their own characters from scratch.

The focus of the series has clearly been shifted from single player to multiplayer for this instalment, as the game features 30 player competitive multiplayer alongside a story campaign. But the game will still feature series staples like grappling hooks and wingsuits as well as the series trademark destruction and explosions.

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Just Cause: Mobile is being developed by a new team within Square Enix that doesn’t yet have a name. Avalanche Studios, developers of the mainline Just Cause series seem to have moved on from the franchise, partnering with Microsoft on a new co-op action game called Contraband. If you want to know more about what Avalanche are up to now, check out this story which reveals why they partnered with Xbox – and it’s in part down to Game Pass.

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Liam Wiseman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @liamthewiseman

The long-awaited update for Nier: Automata’s controversial Steam version will finally arrive on July 15 and will include borderless video settings, a Fidelity FX CAS feature, 4K UI textures, and much more.

Shared on Steam, the update notes also reveal that Nier: Automata on Steam will detect if your system has HDR and will boot the game in HDR mode if it does. It will also adjust anti-aliasing functionality, improve the bit rate on cutscenes so they will play in 60 FPS and display in the correct aspect ratio, add a Global Illumination feature, and add ambient occlusions/bloom settings.

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There will also be various bug fixes, including switching between display modes for screenshots, the mouse cursor no longer being displayed when using a controller, stabilizing the frame rate at 60 FPS under defaults settings, and more stability related fixes.

These fixes address many of the complaints levied at this port, although some may still be hoping for an official way to play the game at higher than 60 FPS.

When the Steam version of Nier: Automata was released, it received notably poor reception due to many of the features that will be added in this patch not being present. Square Enix offered no immediate solution, and many fans took it upon themselves to fix many of these issues.

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The problem was made even more bizarre when Nier: Automata was added to Xbox Game Pass on PC, and it was quickly discovered that it was the updated Become As Gods edition rather than the ‘vanilla’ Steam release.

This update will be free to all owners of Nier: Automata on Steam, and you can see the full patch notes below;

Nier: Automata Steam Version Patch Notes

Changes Made

• Borderless Video Settings
  • Borderless video settings have been implemented.
• Fidelity FX
  • A Fidelity FX CAS feature has been added.
• HDR
  • The system will now detect whether HDR has been activated in the Windows display settings, and automatically boot the game in HDR mode if it has.
• Anti-aliasing
  • Adjustments to the anti-aliasing functionality
• UI textures (4K)
  • Approximately 270 UI textures for icons, backdrops and UI elements etc. now support 4K resolutions.
• Cut scenes
  • The bit rate has been improved and all pre-rendered cut scenes adjusted, so they will now play in 60FPS and display in the correct aspect ratio without stretching the picture.
• Global illumination
  • A new “Global illumination” feature has been implemented. This can be set to three different levels; High, Medium or Low.
• Ambient occlusion/ bloom
  • The rendering targets for ambient occlusion and bloom effects have been changed to dynamic resolution based on the game’s resolution.

Bug Fixes

• It is now possible to switch between recently selected display modes for screenshots, such as between full screen and windowed mode or between borderless and windowed mode, by pushing the Alt + Enter keys together.
• The mouse cursor is no longer displayed when using a game pad controller.
• The frame rate has been stabilized at 60FPS under default settings.
• Other stability related fixes have also been implemented.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The next DLC for the killer shark game Maneater will be released on August 31, Tripwire Interactive has announced. The Truth Quest DLC will launch that day across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, as well as PS4 and Xbox One.

Tripwire announcing the date this week is likely no accident, as this is Shark Week. You can check out a brand-new trailer for Truth Quest below.

As announced previously, Truth Quest features additional narrative elements that continue the storyline of journalist/narrator Trip Westhaven, who is performed by Chris Parnell of SNL, 30 Rock, Archer, and Rick & Morty fame. Westhaven believes he has uncovered new secrets and conspiracies about a killer shark created by the government.

In Truth Quest, you’ll swim through a new location–an island off the coast of Port Clovis, and you can make your shark even deadlier with more evolutions to grow into. The level cap is increased to 40, while there are new enemy creatures to take on. What’s more, the game’s bounty hunter system–which calls in the government to take you down–sees some updates with the Truth Quest DLC. Helicopters will now come after you, while the military forces hunting you down now have more weapons and vehicles.

There are new objectives, too, including “Failure to Communicate” (tail-whip objects to destroy a target) and “Time Trial” (swim through rings in the allotted time).

Truth Quest costs $15/€115/£13. It is not a standalone expansion, so it requires the base game.

Maneater launched for Nintendo Switch in May, but the Truth Quest DLC has not been announced for Nintendo’s hybrid platform.

GameSpot’s Maneater review scored the game a 7/10.

“With the sharply written, hilariously delivered narration and story beats to freshen up the experience as you go along, Maneater becomes a goofy, fish-flopping romp, with a good balance of limbs to sever, boats to wreck, and challenging creatures to render into bite-sized chunks,” reviewer Phil Hornshaw said. “Maneater isn’t a perfect shark simulator, but it is a fun and funny one whose positive adaptations outpace its drawbacks.”

Following a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 selling for $1.5 million, collectors are looking for the “next big thing” that will make them a ton of money. One buyer in particular believes The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim may be it as they have purchased a sealed copy for $600.

As spotted by Axios, this copy of Skyrim sold on Heritage Auctions on the same day as that Super Mario 64 one and is the first time the popular auction site is selling a sealed copy.

“Purely the apotheosis of role-playing games, Skyrim is a game that one could never possibly tire of,” The official description on Heritage Auctions reads. “Fans sink countless hours in the land of Tamriel, and the love for this game runs deep. We’ve yet to offer a sealed copy until now, so we would imagine this will be a tough lot to claim!”

This copy of Skyrim boasts a Wata score of 9.2 A+, which is a good score that means it is in “exceptional condition,” but its not quite to the levels of the copy of Super Mario 64’s 9.8 A++.

It will be interesting to see if the value of Skyrim skyrockets like some of these other games, especially considering it is a much newer game (it released in 2011) and is available on every platform ever created ever (ok, not really, but it feels like it!), including Amazon Alexa.

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To compare it to other games sold on July 11, a Wata 9.4 A sealed copy of Tomb Raider sold for $144,000 and a Wata 9.0 A sealed copy of Red Dead Redemption sold for $384.

A couple days before, someone purchased an early-90s U.S. Army training device for $18,600 that “amounts to a replica M16 that can plug into a Super Nintendo.” This rifle was used for SNES’ Multi-Purpose Arcade Combat Simulator, which was specifically developed for the U.S. army as a cheaper way to train shooting skills.

This Skyrim story is another instance of the increasing value of video game-related goods. This craze can be seen in its fullest in the Pokemon Trading Card Game, with U.S. retailers limiting or suspending Pokemon card sales due to safety concerns caused by this huge upsurge in demand. Besides the popularity of opening blind packs on Twitch streams, an original Pokemon Trading Card Game Booster Box sold at auction earlier this year for $408,000.

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If you’d like to know how much money your Pokemon cards are worth, check out our guide on how to appraise your collection.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Mattel delivered what was easily one of the most memorable Comic-Con exclusives of all time last year with their ingeniously packaged “Barbasol Dennis Nedry” figure. What can the company do for an encore in 2021? Why, shift focus to Nedry’s equally ill-fated colleague, Ray Arnold, of course.

IGN can exclusively reveal Mattel’s latest Comic-Con-exclusive Jurassic Park figure, one which pairs Samuel L. Jackson’s intrepid programmer with a hungry velociraptor. Like the Nedry figure, Arnold is a 3.75-inch figure with a movie-accurate likeness. The raptor, meanwhile, clocks in at 2.4 inches tall and 7 inches long. The two figures come packaged inside a deluxe box modeled after the maintenance shed where Arnold meets his violent end in the movie.

Get a closer look at the “Jurassic Park Final Scene Ray Arnold” set in the slideshow gallery below:

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Like the Nedry set, the packaging also includes some interactive elements, in this case several light-up and sound effects inspired by that memorable showdown between prehistoric beast and chain-smoking engineer. Plus, Arnold’s arm is removable. Horrified Ellie Sattler figure sold separately.

The Jurassic Park Final Scene Ray Arnold is priced at $25. While the release is timed to the Comic-Con@Home digital event in July, you’ll need to head to the official Mattel Creations website to order one. Pre-orders open on Thursday, July 22 at 9am PT, and we suspect they won’t last long.

Will you be battling the horde of collectors to score your own half-eaten Samuel L. Jackson figure? Let us know what you think of this set in the comments below.

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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.

Hunt: Showdown will add a new map in its next update, and it comes with a reference to a very different kind of monster to its usual mix of grim creations – Shrek.

As pointed out by JackFrags (below), the new DeSalle map (which is live in test servers right now, before a release later this summer) includes a very familiar swamp-house in the far south-west. Not only does the house look almost identical to Shrek’s house, but it includes an outhouse that will undoubtedly become home to a thousand Smash Mouth-soundtracked meme videos very soon.

They added Shrek’s house to a video game as a cool Easter Egg! pic.twitter.com/Hr49ZzBDLq

— JackFrags (@jackfrags) July 13, 2021

It’s far from the first referential Easter Egg in Hunt: Showdown – the game includes everything from Evil Dead’s cabin to a scene from Django Unchained. Hell, the new DeSalle map is brimming with even more references, including the mysterious Utah monolith and The Godfather.

Hunt: Showdown is a competitive, monster-killing bounty hunter shooter. We called it a “palpably tense and terrifying shooter that’s equal parts survival and competition” in our original review.

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