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In celebration of the Pokemon series’ 25th anniversary, The Pokemon Company is giving away a special Pikachu for Pokemon Sword and Shield. What makes this Pikachu different from other ones is that it knows Sing, a move that it’s normally not capable of learning in the mainline Pokemon games.

The free Pikachu is level 25 and comes equipped with a Light Ball, an item that boosts Pikachu’s Attack and Special Attack stats. The Pokemon also knows the moves Encore, Celebrate, and Electro Ball.

To claim the free Pikachu, fire up your copy of Pokemon Sword or Shield and follow these steps:

• Select Mystery Gift from the menu screen
• Select Get with Code/Password
• Follow the prompts to connect online
• Input the code P25MUS1C

Pikachu isn’t the only free Pokemon that Sword and Shield players can grab right now. To celebrate the launch of Pokemon TCG’s Shining Fates expansion, The Pokemon Company is also giving away a free Shiny Toxtricity at GameStop and EB Games in the US and Canada, respectively. You’ll need to head to a participate store and use the Pokemon Pass mobile app to receive a download code for that free monster.

Finally, Sword and Shield players still have a few more days to claim a free item bundle. As a reward for defeating more than 1 million Cramorant during a recent Max Raid event, The Pokemon Company is distributing a Toxic Orb, a Flame Orb, a Gold Bottle Cap, and a few other valuable items. Those freebies will only be available to claim until 3:59 PM PT / 6:59 PM ET / 11:59 PM UTC on February 28.

The Pokemon Company has other events planned for the series’ 25th anniversary this year, including a virtual concert featuring Post Malone on February 27. Before that, the company is airing a Pokemon Presents video broadcast on February 26 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET / 3 PM GMT.

Nickelodeon and Hasbro’s Entertainment One are set to roll out an all-new animated Transformers series.

The animated action-comedy series will consist of 26 half-hour episodes, following a new species of Transformers on a mission to find their place and purpose among Autobots, Decepticons, and the human family that adopts them. The series is being co-produced by Nickelodeon and eOne and will premiere exclusively on Nickelodeon in the US before debuting in other countries.

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The creative team is built up with several animated TV show veterans, including Ant Ward (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Nicole Dubuc (Transformers: Rescue Bots), who are both serving as executive producers, together with co-executive producer and developer Dale Malinowski (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Production will be overseen by Nickelodeon’s Conrad Montgomery and eOne’s Mikiel Houser.

“As soon as I read the creative concept, which at its core is about family, I knew we absolutely had to tell this story with our good friends at eOne and Hasbro,” said Ramsey Naito, President of Nickelodeon Animation. “The series will tell a reimagined story featuring both original characters and fan-favorites for a whole new generation of kids and families. The creative team at Nick, overseen by Claudia Spinelli, SVP of Animation Development, can’t wait to get started on building this new world.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with Nickelodeon to expand the Transformers animated universe and bring an all-new more than meets the eye story to life,” added Olivier Dumont, eOne’s President of Family Brands. “This new series is a fresh creative take on the brand, which will excite longtime fans around the world and soon-to-be fans alike, all being introduced to the robots in disguise by an A-list creative team led by eOne’s Mikiel Houser.”

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The Transformers have had a long history on television, all beginning with The Transformers that aired from 1984 to 1987 and is still one of the most beloved.

The new Transformers series is part of Nickelodeon’s strategy to be the home of the biggest franchises kids and families love, as it joins a growing animation slate that already includes SpongeBob SquarePants, plus the first-ever SpongeBob spinoff, Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Star Trek: Prodigy, amongst others.

As part of its expansion, Nickelodeon recently announced the launch of a new division dedicated to creating series and movies based in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. The division will be called Avatar Studios and will produce content for Paramount+, Nickelodeon platforms, and unspecified third-party platforms, as well as in cinemas.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

The latest weekly update for Grand Theft Auto V‘s multiplayer mode, GTA Online, has arrived. The centerpiece of the update is a brand-new vehicle–a Nagasaki weaponized dinghy.

This boat carries a .50 caliber machine gun at its front that you can use to defend your turf or bring the attack to enemies. “This little dinghy will send a clear message to trespassers,” Rockstar said in a blog post.

You can buy the new dinghy from the Warstock Cache & Carry store. That establishment is also selling the Dinka Versus off-road ATV, and you can get it for free until March 3.

In terms of sales and specials, GTA Online players can get double GTA$ and RP in Special Cargo Sell missions this week, while Stunt races are paying out double GTA$ and RP as well. What’s more, missions from the NPC Simeon are paying double GTA$ and RP, as are DJ Request missions.

Players looking for a fight this week can earn double GTA$ and RP in the Sumo and Sumo (Remix) modes where players jump into a car and try to push other players off the map.

Rockstar also announced that everyone who completes an import or export sell mission this week will get the blue and magenta “glow” shades for free. Additionally, the Diamond Casino & Resoort is offering free drinks and free Penthouse parties. “If you wake up in a trashed Penthouse or bathroom stall, don’t worry–it was free, remember? No harm, no foul,” Rockstar said.

Finally, GTA Online is offering up a series of discounts this week. You can save 40% on the Pegassi Zentorno car, 60% off executive offices, and 25% off vehicle warehouses.

GTA Online Weekly Deals

• Pegassi Zentorno — 40% off
• Executive offices — 60% off
• Executive office customizations and add-ons — 60% off
• Special cargo warehouses — 50% off
• Vehicle warehouses — 25% off
• Garages — 50% off

Fortnite has launched its Season 5, Week 13 challenges, and one of the goofier ones tasks you with throwing fruit at Hunter’s Haven. It sounds like a simple enough task, and it is once you know where you need to go. However, not knowing the location of the fruit could make it difficult, as several other tasks are at Hunter’s Haven this week and you could get ambushed. Here’s how to complete it quickly.

Once you’d jumped out of the Battle Bus and have reached Hunter’s Haven, look for a building in the southeastern part of the location. Head inside and go into the kitchen to find a box of produce on the counter.

Search the box and you’ll get a few different items. In our case, it included a few bananas and a mushroom. Of the two types, only a banana is a fruit, so pick the fruit up and aim before throwing. Don’t simply pull the right trigger or you’ll eat it by accident.

The best part of this quest is you can actually throw the same item three times in order to complete it. Just toss it around the room a few times and you’re all set for 20,000 XP.

For more challenges from this week, check out our Fortnite Season 5, Week 13 challenge guide. You can also check out a full guide on how to bathe in the purple pool at Steamy Stacks.

Fortnite’s Season 5, Week 13 challenges are available now, and they are much less frustrating than last week’s. However, there are still a few of them that can give you some headaches. One of these challenges tasks you to bathe in the purple pool at Steamy Stacks, but this can be confusing based on where you’d expect to need to go. We’ll show you how to do it in this guide.

Of course, start your Fortnite battle royale match by gliding toward Steamy Stacks itself, which is located in the northeastern corner of the map, but don’t go to the titular stacks. They do have purple liquid underneath them, but you’ll get shot up into the air before you can take a dip.

Instead, head to the western part of the area and look for a big building with industrial-grade doors inside. Go through a few of these and you’ll end up in a room with a purple pool. Jump in and you’ll complete the challenge. For us, it took a few seconds to pop up, but it did register after we swam around a bit.

And that’s all there is to it! It’s just one of several challenges available for Season 5, Week 13, and you’ll get an easy 20,000 XP for completing it.

Square Enix has revealed that it is shutting down its mobile title Kingdom Hearts Union X Dark Road, but an offline version will be made available, so players can still enjoy the story.

You can read the End of Service Announcement on the Union X Dark Road website. The game’s story will conclude in April, and the servers will shut down on May 30, 2021. As of February 24, players will no longer be able to purchase the in-game currency Jewels, though any that have been purchased prior will be available to use up until the end of service.

A message from KINGDOM HEARTS series director Tetsuya Nomura: pic.twitter.com/ENWyoRBbyN

— KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ[Cross] (@kh_ux_na) February 25, 2021

It’s not going away forever though, as an offline version of the game will also launch on May 30, and this will then be updated to include the Dark Road content later in September 2021. “KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ Dark Road will be playable offline and KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ will be available as a theater mode,” the announcement reads. Players can also transfer their data to the offline version to continue their progress.

In a tweet from the Union Cross Twitter account, Series Director Tetsuya Nomura thanked fans “for taking the journey with us for over 5 years,” and said that they will be able to enjoy the story at their own pace in the offline mode. “The excitement and intensity of the remaining chapters is really going to ramp up, and I think you’ll all enjoy what we have planned,” his statement reads.

In other Kingdom Hearts news, the series is coming to PC in March.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

The Razer Naga is finally tightening its belt. The new Razer Naga X officially brings the MMO mouse into lightweight territory, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following gaming mice over the last year. It’s been a rat race to trim every spare gram, making gaming mice lighter than ever. The Naga X comes in at only 85 grams, more than 30 less than the Naga Pro. The changes don’t stop there, but at $79.99 does it do enough to warrant an upgrade if you already own a Naga?

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Razer Naga X – Design and Features

The Razer Naga is an iconic mouse for MMO players. It’s been a popular choice across MMORPG and MOBA communities since its original release more than a decade ago. In all that time, the core design hasn’t changed much. Today’s Naga X has more in common with the 2009 Naga than it has different, at least externally, and that’s been the case for the majority of Naga refreshes over the last decade. If it’s not broke, why fix it?

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That isn’t to say there haven’t been changes and upgrades throughout that time. The trendsetting 12-button thumb grid was pared down to a circle with 2012’s Naga Hex. In 2017, Naga Trinity introduced swappable side-panels, a design which was continued with the Naga Pro last year. We’ve seen wireless and wired versions, upgraded internals, and tweaked ergonomics. Razer even released a left-handed version last August, finally addressing an audience that’s gone unserved for far too long. But fundamentally, the Naga has been the “MMO mouse,” the online gamer’s right hand, with enough inputs to move entire skill bars off the keyboard and under his thumb.

With the Naga X, Razer is scaling the Naga back and trimming it down, bringing it up with the times while also simplifying it for a more accessible price point. It features the same design as the standard Naga (or Naga side-plate on the Pro and Trinity) with its 12-button side grid and large, easy-to-palm ergonomics. It features the same dimensions as the Pro and, from what I can see and feel, the exact same contouring. By appearances, they’re very similar mice, though the Pro features a second DPI button under the mouse wheel.

The biggest change is that the Naga X dramatically reduces the weight of the Pro, dropping from 117 grams to a mere 85 grams. It’s not quite an ultralight, but still feels surprisingly meager given its large size. At the same time, it’s solid shell is structurally solid, with no creaking even when I’m trying to make it happen. This slimming down is a welcome upgrade from the Pro which felt downright heavy in comparison to Razer’s other recent mice.

My daily driver is the Razer Viper Ultimate, which weighs in only 74 grams and made the Naga Pro feel like a brick in comparison. The Naga X finally provides an option for MMO players that want something in-line with the trends in gaming mice today and it’s good to see Razer offer something for this space.

The changes aren’t limited to weight, however, and the few I noticed first were downgrades. There are no swappable panels, for one, so shifting to a traditional 6-button setup is out of the question. Razer has also changed the finish to a more gritty matte plastic that feels more grainy under the fingers. The rubber grip on the right side of the Pro is now textured plastic and really doesn’t work well to support a mouse of this size, constantly causing my pinky to slip anytime I need to lift it up. That said, this is also a much cheaper mouse and concessions have to be made. Leaving the interchangeable side panels for the higher tier mouse is an acceptable trade-off, but making the Naga X more slippery is not.

Other changes are much better. The X now represents a middle-ground between 2017’s Naga Trinity and last year’s Naga Pro, featuring a new 18K DPI 5G Optical Sensor. It’s fast and accurate with a maximum speed of 450 IPS and 40G of total acceleration. Each of these is slightly less than the Pro, but other than the acceleration, all are a hefty improvement over the Trinity. Functionally, I can’t tell a difference between the two, so the scale-back doesn’t feel like a big loss. The switches are also downright excellent with a solid tactile click and 70 million click lifespan. They’re also Razer’s own in-house optical design, which means they’re theoretically faster (no debounce delay) but meaningfully less prone to failure over time since there are no mechanical contacts to degrade and cause the dreaded “double click of death.”

The Naga X is wired-only but honestly doesn’t feel like it. It comes with Razer’s Speedflex cable, which offers next to no resistance and is ultra-flexible. Pair this with the same brand of PTFE mouse feet found on Razer’s highest-end mice and you have the recipe for an MMO mouse that glides like a dream, even on a bare desk.

Razer Naga X – Software

With a mouse like this, programming is more important than ever. Assigning skills, abilities, and macros is done through Razer Synapse, exactly as I described in my review of the Pro, as is lighting (minus the palm lighting zone which was removed). Razer makes setting up the Naga easy, including choosing popular shortcuts from a preset list. In my use, though, I found it best to stick to the standard number pad keymap with only small changes thrown in.

Razer Naga X – Performance

I have long been a proponent of MMO mice, even if you don’t play MMOs. That sounds counter-intuitive, but as someone who used only MMO mice before the last few years, believe me when I say that it’s hard to come back from the versatility they provide, especially for first-person shooters.

In the previous section, I mentioned that I found it best to stick to the standard numpad keymap. That’s because most PC games keep important commands on the number row, which allows them to automatically be mapped to the Naga X’s thumb grid. In many games, it also allows you to combine them with keyboard modifiers to double, triple, or even quadruple your keymaps. In World of Warcraft, for example, I was able to map my skill bar to 1-12 (-, =) and then three other ones all to the thumb grid by combining shift, ctrl, and alt with each of those numbers. That’s 48 keymaps, directly accessible under my thumb, all without giving up a key to HyperShift.

Playing World of Warcraft with the Naga X felt great. The light weight really does make a difference in how airy it feels to use. More importantly for MMOs, it allowed me to keep my hands on WASD and keep all of my attacks right under my thumb. As a mage, being able to run, drop an AOE on a crowd, Blink out of harm’s way and straight into a new rotation was freeing in a way that a normal mouse just can’t be.

The Naga X also gave me a profound advantage in competitive first-person shooters. The Naga X, like the Naga Pro before it, is the Scuf controller of gaming mice. Smartly mapping weapons and positions to the number pad makes them faster to access than even a normal keyboard because your thumb is already touching those buttons. In Call of Duty: Cold War, mapping prone to 5 allowed me to score more drop shots than I’ve ever been able to with a normal keyboard. In shooters, milliseconds matter and being able to quickly pop out a pistol or leap behind cover can literally make the difference between a win and a loss.

Shooters are also where the other upgrades come into play. The improved sensor felt pixel perfect. I wasn’t able to get it to spin out or lose tracking no matter what I tried. Just as importantly, the improved weight and glide let the mouse fade away and become an extension of my arm. The only drawback was the slipperiness of the right side which forced me to give it an extra grip anytime I needed to lift the mouse.

Like all Nagas, there is a learning curve but Razer has done a good job of mitigating the time it takes to learn the position of each of its thumb buttons. Each row is uniquely angled to make it easy to identify without having to take your eyes off the game. The bottom row remains quite a stretch, however.

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