Month: January 2021

Xbox’s Games With Gold typically features four free games each month, but Microsoft is kicking it up a notch for February. Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members who have an active subscription can get the excellent Gears 5 along with Resident Evil, Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, and Lost Planet 2. As always, the games remain free as long as you have an active subscription, and all of them are playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Set after the events of Gears 4 and featuring Kait Diaz in the lead role, Gears 5 is a horror-inspired entry in the series that digs deeper into the mysterious origins of the Locusts as well as the role humanity played in the conflict. Its excellent campaign is complemented by a beefy competitive multiplayer mode and several cooperative offerings, including Horde mode.

Resident Evil is a great choice for February, seeing as it’s only a few months before we get Resident Evil Village, and the version included with Games With Gold is the remaster from a few years back. It’s a tense and smaller-scale game than some of its successors, but it emphasizes classic horror over action for a less mindless experience. It also introduces us to some of the series’ best characters like Jill and Chris.

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343 Industries continues to expand on Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and now the latest substantial update has been announced and detailed.

Season 5 begins on January 27, and it sounds like yet another massive update for the compilation package of classic Halo games. The season will introduce a whopping 80 pieces of armor for Halo 3 and Reach that players can unlock through a battle pass-style system. There will also be more weapon skins and additional seasonal challenges to get more rewards.

Season 5 goes live on January 27 across all platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The seasonal refreshes usually also include a new menu screen, but this hasn’t been divulged yet.

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Genshin Impact was one of the biggest success stories of 2020, and the free-to-play action-RPG is showing no signs of slowing down this year. Beginning next month, the game’s Tayvat setting will celebrate the new year with the Lantern Rite event.

Starting February 3 with game version 1.3, all players will be able to participate in Lantern Rite at the Liyue Harbor. Those who participate will receive the free four-star Liyue character along with 1,600 Primogems, and you’ll see special lanterns float into the sky as the first full moon of the year appears overhead.

You’ll have to complete several different requests from the other people celebrating to help them prepare, and this will raise the “Festive Fever” level and let you complete even more quests.

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It appears Microsoft will make good on its promise to let people beta test Halo Infinite before the game releases publicly. Windows Central reports that developer 343 Industries is “actively drafting plans” for multiple beta tests for Halo Infinite to come later in 2021.

Microsoft refers to these testing periods as “flights,” and they have been and continue to be used by the studio for new Halo: The Master Chief Collection updates.

According to the report, the beta tests for Halo Infinite will begin small and grow in size over time. As was the case with the Halo: MCC flights, the feedback from the beta tests will help inform key decisions about Halo Infinite as 343 prepares to release the game publicly.

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Hitman 3 is finally out, and the stealth-action game is off to a strong start. Developer IO Interactive announced that Hitman 3 came out hot out of the gate, quickly becoming the “biggest digital launch” across the entire franchise dating back years.

IO did not share any specific sales numbers or other metrics that speak to Hitman 3’s sales story so far, however. Normally we’d be able to see how many players the game has on Steam thanks to the platform’s public stats page, but the PC edition is exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Microsoft and Sony similarly do not have public sales data available for digital console games.

Hitman 3 took a more unique path to release than the earlier games, as IO self-published the game. Previously, IO worked with Square Enix and Warner Bros. to publish the earlier games.

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Ahead of UFC 257 this weekend, UFC legend Conor McGregor is also returning to the latest UFC game with a classic look. You’ll even be able to get it for free.

EA Sports has announced that it is adding a new version of McGregor to UFC 4 that shows the former UFC featherweight and lightweight champion as he looked back in 2014 when he first squared off against Dustin Poirier.

The big thing you’ll immediately notice is that McGregor’s braided ponytail is back, while he’s wearing his white vale tudo shorts just like he did in 2014.

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Finnish developer Housemarque has been one of PlayStation’s most reliable partners over the years, with exclusives like Resogun and Dead Nation offering best-in-class arcade-style shooting. The studio stopped developing arcade shooters a few years ago in favor of larger-scale projects, but its PS5 game Returnal hasn’t abandoned its roots. Now, we have more information on how it will make use of the console’s features to enhance its gameplay.

As explained in PlayStation Official Magazine, the PS5’s extremely fast NVMe SSD enables players to respawn nearly immediately after getting killed. Because it’s a rogue-lite game that emphasizes repeated runs as you enhance certain abilities and try to progress further, this is should mitigate the frustration we often see in the genre.

Additionally, the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers are used for quickly switching between firing modes on the game’s weapons. Given the frenetic pace of the action in most Housemarque games, it should help to keep things manageable. We’re also seeing a similar alternate-mode firing feature in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart later this year.

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Some details have been revealed about the new project coming from the creators of Limbo and Inside.

Playdead’s currently untitled project will be a “3rd-person science fiction adventure set in a remote corner of the universe,” according to the job listings page on the studio’s website. Within the Technical Director listing the ‘Who We Are’ section is slightly altered, adding that the game is being “built for multiple platforms on Unreal Engine.”

The openings also mention Playdead’s company culture, noting that the studio’s approach to development “does not include crunching towards arbitrary deadlines.” Some new art from the game has also been found in the listings, which you can see in the gallery below.

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It also notes that the game will be published by Epic Games, which we’ve known since March of 2020, when it was revealed that the publisher would be responsible for publishing the next games from gen Design (The Last Guardian), Playdead and Remedy Entertainment via its Epic Games Publishing division.

The game was first teased back in March 2018, via postcards given out at the Game Developer’s Conference. We still don’t have a name or a release window for the game, but as the studio gears up for development, we’ll be sure to let you know if we hear anything more.

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

Nintendo is the subject of yet another class-action lawsuit over its Switch console’s ongoing Joy-Con drift issues, this time in Canada. It means Nintendo is now facing down potential legal trouble in Canada, the US, and across Europe.

Québec-based law firm Lambert Avocat filed an application to bring a class action suit against Nintendo on January 15, seeking to “obtain a compensation for all Québec consumers who bought the Nintendo Switch™ and Nintendo Switch™ Lite gaming systems, as well as Joy-Con™ and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers.”

The firm says that drift – which sees Joy-Cons registering analog stick movement, even if they’re not being touched – represents “an important, serious and hidden defect” that was not properly revealed by Nintendo. Lambert Avocat is now asking Québec residents to register as part of the suit on its website.

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The issue of Joy-Con drift has been rearing its head since the Switch’s release in 2017 – last year, we called it a disaster for the Nintendo. It’s become a widespread enough issue that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa formally apologised for the problem.

This latest class action suit is just one of a slew of potential issues for the company surrounding the defect. Nintendo is facing down at least four drift cases in the US, with class action suits in Illinois, California, and two in Washington. Two of those suits are now in arbitration, with a judge in the earlier Washington case refusing Nintendo’s request to dismiss it.

In Europe, Nintendo is being sued by a French consumer organisation because of potential planned obsolescence, compounded by Nintendo’s ongoing repairs of Joy-Cons while not providing a more permanent fix. That was followed by a joint investigation by 9 organisations based in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Greece, Norway, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia. The findings of that investigation could lead to further action. At a smaller scale, in the UK, a single customer recently took Nintendo to small claims court and won back the cost of their defective Joy-Cons, and their legal fees.

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Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser recently said that Nintendo is ‘focusing’ on existing Switch models, rather than the much-rumoured Switch Pro model. Bowser addressed Joy-Con drift in that discussion, but made no promises about a more permanent solution to the ongoing issue, saying, “We’re always looking at what is being sent in and for what reasons, and understanding that better. And without going into any details, it always gives us an opportunity to make improvements as we go forward.”

While not 100% effective, we have a guide on how to fix Joy-Con drift in some situations, as well as a list of known Switch and Joy-Con problems that could help you diagnose problems.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.