Thursday, July 27, 2023

Best Xbox Deals Today (July 2023)

When it comes to picking up new games, hardware, or accessories for your Xbox, it feels good when you can find those items at a discounted price. Here, we'll keep you updated on all of the latest deals for Xbox, including during events like Xbox's Ultimate Game Sale or Black Friday. Below, you can find a wide range of items on sale. Not only does this include games, but also items like controllers and headsets. We even have information on how you can avoid the impending Xbox Game Pass price hike, if you really want to save some extra cash.

TL;DR - Our Favorite Xbox Deals

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Xbox: Budget to Best

Buying new items for your Xbox doesn't have to make a massive dent in your wallet, either. Here, we'll feature a variety of excellent games, accessories, and hardware that are available at more affordable prices regularly or are the just option available when gaming on Xbox.

More Xbox Budget to Best Picks

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How to Avoid Xbox Game Pass Price Hike ($39.99 for 3-Months of Ultimate)

To avoid the new Game Pass price hike, we recommend securing your current subscription for as long as possible. You can stack up to a maximum of 36 months of Game Pass, meaning you have the option to accumulate 3-month subscriptions up to 12 times. Amazon still hasn't upped the price of its Game Pass Ultimate listing yet, so you'll need to take advanatge of this ASAP.

Admittedly, this approach might put a strain on your wallet, totaling $479.88 if you purchase the 3-month codes via the enticing Amazon deal we've uncovered. However, when you compare it to the new cost of Game Pass Ultimate for 36 months at $16.99 per month, amounting to $611.64, you'll realize you're saving a substantial $131.76 on your subscription for the next three years. Otherwise, secure your membership for at least a year to lock in at least some savings overall.

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Call of Duty Games Resurgence on Xbox (Black Ops, Modern Warfare)

Reports indicate thousands of people are online playing the likes of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 3 (2011) and Treyarch’s Black Ops 2 (2012) on Xbox. Most of these old Call of Duty games are currently on sale on Xbox, so it's worth checking out if you want to hop on and play a game on the cheap. But, also be aware, when the Microsoft Activision deal goes through, these classic games will likely be on Game Pass soon enough as well.

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Dying Light 2: Stay Human is Down to $24.99

Right now, Xbox has a wide variety of games on sale through its Ultimate Game Sale. However, one of our favorite Xbox game deals actually falls outside of that. You can pick up Dying Light 2: Stay Human at the moment for just $24.99, which is 57% off its usual price of $59.99! To see more games, including excellent options in Xbox's Ultimate Game Sale, check out the links below.

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Electric Volt Xbox Core Wireless Controller for $50 (23% Off)

In need of another Xbox controller? Well, you're in luck, as there are a few great picks on sale right now. That way you can add player two (or three, or four) whenever the need arises. Plus, the colors are pretty great. In my opinion, you can never have too many controllers. You never know when someone will pop on by and want to play Overcooked or It Takes Two, or any local multiplayer game.

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Save $20 on SteelSeries New Arctis Nova 7X Headset for Xbox

Does your family complain when you stay up playing loud shooters late into the night? They'll stop complaining if you pick up an Xbox headset that lets no one but you hear the delightful explosions you cause on the screen. Right now, you can get 11% off the SteelSeries New Arctis Nova 7X headset for Xbox as well, bringing the price down to $159.99 from $179.99.

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When Should I Buy an Xbox?

In general, it is advisable to keep an eye out for sales and restocks throughout the year, as availability has improved since the initial launch of the console. Unlike the Nintendo Switch, there is no specific recommendation to wait for a sale regardless of the time of year. Instead, it's a good idea to monitor various retailers and online platforms for restock announcements and promotional offers.

However, certain events like Black Friday or other holiday seasons may bring about unique bundles, discounts, or promotional deals specifically for the Xbox Series X. These bundles may include additional games, accessories, or exclusive limited editions. While quantities for such promotions might be limited, they can provide an opportunity to get more value for your purchase.

Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S?

Choosing between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S ultimately depends on your gaming preferences, budget, and specific requirements. Let's compare the two consoles to help you make an informed decision:

1. Performance: The Xbox Series X is the more powerful option, offering native 4K gaming, higher graphical fidelity, and faster loading times. It has more advanced hardware, including a larger storage capacity. On the other hand, the Xbox Series S targets a lower price point and offers a less powerful performance, targeting 1440p resolution gaming and upscaling to 4K.

2. Price: The Xbox Series S is more affordable compared to the Xbox Series X. If budget is a significant factor for you, the Xbox Series S provides a cost-effective option while still delivering a next-generation gaming experience. For example, the Series S can play Starfield at 1440p 30fps (vs 4K 30fps on Series X).

3. Storage: The Xbox Series X comes with a larger internal storage capacity, allowing you to store more games directly on the console. The Xbox Series S, however, has a smaller storage capacity, which means you may need to manage your game library more actively or rely on external storage solutions.

4. Disc Drive: The Xbox Series X includes a disc drive, enabling you to play physical game discs and enjoy a wider range of media options, including Blu-ray and DVD playback. The Xbox Series S, in contrast, is a digital-only console, meaning you can only play games downloaded from the digital store.

5. Graphics and Performance: While both consoles support ray tracing, the Xbox Series X provides a more immersive and visually impressive experience due to its superior hardware capabilities. If you prioritize cutting-edge graphics and want the best performance available, the Xbox Series X is the preferable choice.

Consider your gaming preferences, budget, and whether you prioritize top-of-the-line performance or cost-effectiveness. If you have a 4K TV, want the most powerful console, and are willing to invest more, the Xbox Series X is the recommended option. If you have a lower budget, a 1080p or 1440p TV, and don't mind sacrificing some performance, the Xbox Series S offers excellent value for money.

With how expensive gaming is getting in 2023, we're trying to save you as much money as possible on the games and other tech you actually want to buy. We've got great deal roundups available for all major platforms such as Switch and Xbox, and keep these updated daily with brand new offers. If you're trying to keep costs down while maintaining your favorite hobby, stay tuned for more incredible discounts.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

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Hawked Hands-On Preview: It's a Less Serious Extraction Shooter

The extraction shooter is blowing up, and upcoming release Hawked might be the most approachable shot at the PvPvE genre yet. Where other games focus on an aggressively tight and hardcore experience, Hawked is importing some game design from the more approachable battle royales in order to get you into rounds of treasure-hunting mayhem with much less commitment.

The setup is simple. You and a team of friends pop up on an island overrun with lizard monsters to recover valuable seemingly-magical artifacts from the ancient ruins there before the lizards—or the other treasure hunters—can do the same. Taking out camps of lizards lets you loot new weapons and gear for this trip out, while going around solving puzzles gets you the key pieces of info you need to open up the treasure vault at the core of each round. Get the artifact inside, get out, and you win that round—unlocking or upgrading that artifact as a piece of gear for future runs.

Of course, that's not the only treasure around. The dang lizards have also already bogarted a piece, and hunting down their treasure-carrying dinosaur will let you nab a second artifact in each round. The problem with that route is that everyone else knows exactly where the dino loot is, so trying to nab that artifact is much more likely to put you in conflict with enemy teams—and there are ten teams of three out there gunning for the same two pieces of loot.

For all that, though, the map didn't feel crowded during the preview. Most of a match was exploring, taking down lizards to gear up, and finding clues to the vault. Lizards are all over the place too, meaning that if your team is willing to pick a few fights they can get their preferred gear pretty quickly. At the same time, some of those lizard packs have dangerous elites in them that hit much harder or have special abilities—the big crocodile guys pack a punch.

The island really is crowded with stuff, and broad open spaces are pretty rare. That means any fight with an enemy team ends up being a surprise meeting or an ambush by one side or the other. The thick jungle, constant ravines and cliffs, and densely placed ruins are all tightly placed and long lines of sight are hard to find while cover is plentiful. That's good, because while you do have a recharging shield, getting caught in the open under fire is a death sentence.

The PvP felt pretty good, emphasizing focus-firing and using your abilities and quick movement to avoid getting hit. Strong play will definitely emphasize knowing the terrain, mastering the sliding movement, where you can grapple to climb, and balancing waterways to move fast on your hoverboard with stealthier movement through the jungle. At the same time, abilities that do stuff, like drop a barrier or heal allies, are going to be clutch—you can revive your teammates, but it's a lengthy process that's not going to happen often mid-fight.

Hawked's most unique thing is definitely the exploring and puzzle-solving that go along with the environment.

Hawked's most unique thing is definitely the exploring and puzzle-solving that go along with the environment. Each clue to the vault combination is found at a site that itself has some kind of puzzle to solve or event to do. The simplest just challenges your team to stay in a circle for a limited time while enemies spawn. The more complex ones have you solving problems like memory puzzles, where you have to remember a pattern and then recreate it. Or a puzzle where you have to align symbols to match a predetermined order.

For me that was actually the coolest part of Hawked. These kinds of many-player battle games engage a really specific part of your brain that wants to spot small details, tiny movements, and gauge environments for danger. You're often focused on which weapon you should use, or upgrade to grab, or what your teammate is doing. Having to then activate the more broad, analytical-creative part of your brain to match symbols or identify a pattern was a great change of pace and challenge in an otherwise pretty fast-paced shooter.

Hawked has an established aesthetic, riffing on what's popular now without too much of its own unique vibe. Whether that works for you is probably already decided. What's going to sell Hawked, then, is definitely the core gameplay. I wasn't totally sold there, but I wasn't totally turned off either. The guns were cool, with a decent amount of variety from melee weapons, normal assault rifles, energy guns with heat meters, and even weird things like minelaying weapons and a really nasty grenade launcher.

Having to then activate the more broad, analytical-creative part of your brain to match symbols or identify a pattern was a great change of pace and challenge in an otherwise pretty fast-paced shooter.

Despite the variety, though, the feel of moving and shooting wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd like it to be. Hawked has a lot of movement abilities with its traversal tool letting you grapple, swing, and climb lots of points around the map—but it's not always clear how you should approach them, and the experience of climbing or swinging upwards didn't quite flow into movement the way I'd want it to. Guns had the opposite problem, perhaps a little too smooth without enough feedback to differentiate the types of weapons.

I'll stick around to see how it changes and improves before and after release, because Hawked looks like it'll be a great game for casual rounds before and after games with long playtimes. Need a quick break from something more hardcore, or only have a half hour to mess around with buddies? If the games are flowing freely, then Hawked will fill that gap with something satisfying that also has long-term progression to buy into.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Developer Larian Will ‘Definitely’ Make a Divinity: Original Sin Sequel, but Not Before a Well-Earned Break

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most-anticipated role-playing video games of 2023, but fans of developer Larian’s previous, much-loved Divinity: Original Sin series are wondering whether its story will ever be continued. The answer: a Divinity: Original Sin sequel is a definite, although don’t hold your breath for an announcement.

In an interview with IGN, Larian boss Swen Vincke confirmed the studio will return to the world of Divinity: Original Sin and continue its story, but not before staff have taken a well-earned break following the launch of Baldur’s Gate 3 next month.

“It's [Divinity: Original Sin] our own universe we built, so we're definitely gonna get back there at some point,” Vincke said. “We will get back there at some point. We'll first finish this one [Baldur's Gate 3] now, and then take a break, because we will need to refresh ourselves creatively also. You’re seeing 400 developers putting their heart and souls into this. You’re getting the best of them and their craft into this game. And so I can tell you, it's quite a thing.”

Belgian studio Larian kicked off its Divinity role-playing series in 2002 with Divine Divinity. Beyond Divinity followed in 2004, before Divinity 2 launched in 2009. Divinity: Original Sin came out in 2014, but it was 2017’s Divinity: Original Sin 2 that propelled Larian into the bigtime, with millions in sales and universal critical acclaim. Ports and a Definitive Edition followed, with thousands still playing years later.

Baldur’s Gate 3, which Larian has developed under licence from Dungeons & Dragons owner Wizards of the Coast, launches in August 2023 six years after Divinity: Original Sin 2 came out. If Larian moves on to Divinity: Original Sin 3 next, it may well be years before we see or hear anything about it, let alone play it.

Larian announced it had brought the release date of the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 forward a month, from August 31 to August 3, in order to avoid a clash with the likes of Bethesda’s upcoming behemoth Starfield in early September. The PlayStation 5 version, meanwhile, is delayed slightly to September 6, and the Xbox Series X and S versions are without a release window (more on Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox hold-up here).

Speaking to IGN, Vincke said the developer is seeing a standard playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 take 75 to 100 hours. However, players who want to “do everything” should expect to double that figure.

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.

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Remnant 2 Dev Still Working to Address PS5 Friend Invite Issue

Gunfire Games has said it is still working to address a PlayStation 5 friend invite issue that has blighted Remnant 2’s launch on the console.

Remnant 2 is meant to let players invite friends from within the Friends menu under the System tab, but for some reason this screen was absent from the PS5 version of the game.

In a tweet, Gunfire said it had identified the issue and planned to release a fix for it soon. The first step is the addition of a friend’s list players cannot currently interact with. Gunfire said it’s working on making it so players can invite friends from that list. “Sorry for the trouble!” Gunfire said.

The well-received looter-shooter soulslike is currently the third best-selling game on Steam, although earlier this week it topped the chart. It enjoyed a significant launch on Valve’s platform, with close to double the amount of concurrent players than Remnant: From the Ashes had at launch. At the time of publication, Remnant 2 was the 12th most-played game on Steam with 50,679 concurrent players and a peak today of 83,792.

While the first Remnant did well enough to justify a sequel, it’s clear Remnant 2 has attracted a much larger audience across PC and console. IGN’s Remnant 2 review returned a 9/10: “Where Remnant: From The Ashes was a strong first draft, Remnant 2 is a revolutionary sequel and a sterling manifesto for the looter-shooter soulslike,” we said.

One of the most-requested features so far is crossplay. At launch, Remnant 2 does not have crossplay between PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. Gunfire has yet to announce plans to add the feature.

If you’re playing the game, it’s worth bearing in mind Remnant 2 has a post-credits scene you won't want to miss.

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.

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Blizzard Issues Stark Warning to Diablo 4 Players: Stop Using Game-Modifying Software or Risk a Permanent Ban

Blizzard has told Diablo 4 players to stop using game-modifying software or risk their account suffering a permanent ban.

In a message posted to the Blizzard forums, Diablo community chief Adam Fletcher made clear the developer’s position on unauthorised modifications, many of which it said are used to cheat. Fletcher even called out one piece of software, called TurboHUD4, which has proved a popular option among the community, especially hardcore players pushing against the outer edges of Diablo 4’s endgame.

Here’s Blizzard’s statement in full:

“We are committed to keeping the world of Sanctuary a safe and fair place for all players, and our Game Security team constantly monitors for cheats and unauthorized modifications.

“All Diablo 4 players agree to the Blizzard EULA as a condition of playing the game. The Blizzard EULA explicitly prohibits cheating, bots, hacks, and any other unauthorized software which automates, modifies, or otherwise interferes with the game. This is important to players’ security as well as the game’s long-term integrity.

“With that in mind, we want to make it clear that TurboHUD4, like any game-modifying software, is prohibited for use with Diablo 4. Players who install this kind of software will put their accounts at risk for disciplinary action, which can include permanent suspension.

“Thank you to our players for helping to keep Sanctuary fair for all.”

According to its website, TurboHUD4 adds a customisable overlay to Diablo 4. This lets you make changes to the world map, add aspect names to the character sheet, and configure plugins. You can also use it to reveal dungeon maps, add a missed items counter to the screen, and add a resource counter.

While many of these features are considered useful quality of life changes Diablo 4 could do with in an official capacity, Blizzard’s concern is software such as TurboHUD4 can also be used for cheating in its always-online game.

It’s an interesting statement in the context of Blizzard’s philosophy for its other games. World of Warcraft, for example, has for many years let players use add-ons that modify the experience. And TurboHUD4 itself has been around for years, used by some Diablo 3 players to boost their play.

In other Diablo 4 news, Blizzard is set to host another Campfire Chat on July 28 at 11am PDT. This much-anticipated livestream will dig into changes coming with the upcoming patch, 1.1.1, expected to launch in the next two weeks. Blizzard staff will discuss balance changes, various quality of life updates, and hold a Q&A segment at the end.

Yesterday, Blizzard released Diablo 4 patch 1.1.0c, which addressed the menu screen user interface issue that was causing some players to inadvertantly activate the premium battle pass. This activation now has a confirmation pop-up, and the default focus (the button the controller will first highlight) on the battle pass screen is now the Season Journey button.

Despite various issues, Diablo 4 enjoyed an enormous launch that saw over 10 million people play in June. Diablo 4 is Blizzard’s fastest-selling game of all time, and has fuelled record revenue and profits for the company. If you're still playing, check out our interactive Diablo 4 map to start tracking your progress as you play.

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.

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Nintendo Switch Online Adds Two Classic The Legend of Zelda Games

Nintendo Switch Online has added The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons.

The Game Boy Color Classics are now playable for everyone with a Nintendo Switch Online membership as part of the Game Boy – Nintendo Switch Online library.

Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages are two action-adventure The Legend of Zelda spin-offs developed by Flagship, a subsidiary of Capcom, and released in 2001 for the Game Boy Color handheld and re-released on the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. This release marks both games’ debut on Nintendo Switch.

In Oracle of Ages, Link battles to prevent Veran, Sorceress of Shadows, from plunging the Land of Labrynna into an endless night. In the game, Link can bend time (if a river blocks Link’s path in the present, he can travel to the past and move a stone, redirecting the flow of water). He can even plant a seed in the past and, in the present, see full-grown trees and vines. Impa and the giant Maku Tree make an appearance.

In Oracle of Seasons, Link fights general Onox in the land of Holodrum. Link can change the seasons to help prevent the land from dying. For example, if Link finds a small plant at the bottom of a cliff, by transforming the season to spring he can use the newly grown flower to get to the top. He can also turn lake water into ice by shifting the season to winter.

What’s cool is by linking the two games through their password system, some characters and enemies change between the two stories. Items can be upgraded or transported, and you can discover the evil force moving behind the scenes.

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.

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Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons Review

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons teaches an important lesson: when a strange man walks into your office carrying one of your friends, tells you he’s the new mayor, and that he needs your help to bring peace back to your fallen city, don’t believe him. It also teaches that melding roguelike elements and tag-team combat (a la Marvel vs Capcom) can make for a great foundation for an otherwise old-school side-scrolling beat 'em up. Of course, without being particularly remarkable in any other way, and occasionally just straight-up bad, there may not be much more to learn that other recent games couldn’t also teach you more effectively.

Compared to the likes of Streets of Rage 4 and River City Girls 2, DDG’s combat is very simple in execution. You won't have to be familiar with platform fighters like Super Smash Bros to find the single-button combos and direction-plus-button special moves that games like it made popular to be very comfortable. Canceling normal attacks into big special moves feels great, and I liked the extremely generous windows you’re given to juggle enemies. This is fine on its own but the true depth lies in the tag system, which allows you to pick a pair of characters to clobber the streets with instead of just one.

The variety of fighters available to unlock and choose from is remarkable, less because there are 14 of them and more because they are all meaningfully distinct from one another. Boss characters can be unlocked for your use, and retain all of their unique actions that they used against you. Only a handful of characters can wield dropped enemy weapons; some can alley-oop enemies into their own air attacks; some can pick up objects in a room and bash heads with them.

The variety of fighters available to unlock and choose from is remarkable.

If there’s any mechanical exploration to be done in DDG, it's in how you can combine these characters into tag teams that complement one another. The most effective pairs cover for one another’s weaknesses and give you the most options of attack for any scenario you might come across. My favorite pairings, like Abobo and Matin, aren't very effective at all as a team as they have the same grappling strengths and weaknesses to zoning, but are fun nonetheless because a guy like me can’t get enough of putting dudes over my head and launching them into oblivion.

Without a dedicated block or a dodge, defensive tools such as they exist are extremely character-specific, so if you choose a pair of ass-beating-focused individuals, one wrong move will make you the helpless guest of honor at the juggle party.

Another fun twist is mission structure. At the start you can choose one of four missions, color-coded and themed after each zone’s signature gang boss. Borrowing from Mega Man’s classic playbook, you can attack these in any order, and when you beat one the remaining missions get longer and the enemies get stronger as each gang further fortifies itself against the inevitability of their coming butt-kicking. At first, this appears to be an opportunity for tactical decisions to be made about what kind of threats you'd rather face first and last; however, well past a dozen runs and over 10 hours in, I can’t say there’s much to think about outside of, “Which boss is the most annoying when she reaches full strength?” It’s Okada, by the way.

Which boss is the most annoying when she reaches full strength? It's Okada.

Visually, the four locations feature some creative backdrops, but those are often stand-outs in otherwise less impressive maps. It’s fun to fight on a casino floor between rows of slot machines, but moving on to lifeless back offices right afterwards is disappointing. Sometimes a level goes for gimmicks that would have been better left in the realm of theory than practice, like a full stage in the Pyramid gang’s mission that is covered in darkness save for a little spotlight following you around. I understood the vibe it was chasing, but I don’t know that it was worth the hard time I had keeping track of the enemies who were chasing me.

Aside from how they look, levels are littered with obstacles that hinder your progress. These are mostly trivial, like some spiked floors that are easily hopped over, but almost any extended stretch of platforming feels awful. Besides the fact that jumping between the background and foreground is always awkward, enemies can spawn in places you’ve already passed, meaning you’ll have to work backwards through the bad sections and it just extends the painful experience. I purposefully tailor my runs to include the worst offenders, Killer’s Fortress and Okada Clan HQ, as early as possible so that I can avoid as much of their later mission nonsense as possible, and it doesn’t feel great to choose my path to avoid annoyances rather than to work toward a desirable goal.

At the end of each stage, you can spend some of the money you beat out of people on roguelike-style buffs that tweak things like your maximum health, make specific special moves stronger, or give one partner buffs when the other is knocked out. I don’t know that the build paths feel as intrinsic as with more dedicated roguelikes, and I didn’t notice the design tugging me in certain directions based on previous decisions as modern roguelikes tend to do. Most of the time I stuck to the ones that felt immediately beneficial, or forewent buffs altogether to just stockpile cash.

While their quantity ramps up regularly, enemy variety doesn’t expand much.

Enemies swarm pretty relentlessly on the regular difficulty, and both their strength and numbers grow even more as you press on through the missions. You can adjust settings like your or your enemies’ starting health or how aggressive baddies are before starting a run, but it can be tough to gauge how much good any of it will do you down the line, and you can’t change it on the fly. And while their quantity ramps up regularly, enemy variety doesn’t expand much. Each mission may have a signature unique kind of mob, but all of the enemies start showing up everywhere as you progress through your run, so you’ll be sampling the entire short menu of bad guys by the later stages. Playing in co-op with a friend can mitigate this some, but with no online co-op to speak of, finding a real person to sit on the couch and game could be it’s own sort of difficulty barrier.

Bosses themselves do evolve when you choose to fight them later in the sequence, though. For example, fighting Anubis early involves waiting out his magical staff attacks and then wailing on him in the down time, but if you wait to take him on last he’ll have fully become one with purpley ghost god, teleporting around the map and spitting poison at you. Not every boss has such a dramatic late-game transformation, though, and it’s disappointing to fight Duke and see that it goes almost identically no matter when you fight him.

These bigger boss fights, though comparatively more extravagant, are also where Double Dragon Gaiden's balance seems to fall off an off-screen cliff. Besides the endless storm of goons meant to keep you moving and uncomfortable, the bosses themselves can easily mix you up inside ability chains with super-tight windows of opportunity to avoid. They’re also very mobile, making them tough to hit at all, and when you do hit them they recover so quickly – if they’re even stunned by you in the first place – that all the work it takes to touch them feels like wasted effort.

When your run is done excess cash is turned into tokens, which can be spent at the token shop to unlock characters, art, music, and tips. That last one feels the most ridiculous because (for an admittedly small amount of tokens) you can unlock instructions on how to play at a higher difficulty level. Paying to be told that you can cancel specials into other specials – information that you can stumble into just by playing, or reading this review – will never feel good, even when you’ve bought everything else and have nothing left to spend the tokens on besides them.

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Nexon's Medieval Fantasy Brawler Warhaven Shutting Down 6 Months After Launching in Early Access

Nexon's medieval fantasy brawler Warhaven is shutting down on April 5, 2024, just six months after it launched on Steam in Early Access...