IGN

I’ve got a stack of opened booster packs and zero regrets. That’s how I know this deal is worth flagging. Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet Surging Sparks Booster Bundle is finally back at Amazon, and it’s actually selling at retail again; $45.02 for six packs. In 2025, finding Pokémon cards at their intended price feels like spotting a shiny on the first encounter. It’s rare. It’s thrilling. And honestly, I want more.

My Favorite Surging Sparks Chase Cards

Surging Sparks has some unreal chase cards, making a massive shift in art quallity in the Scarlet and Violet era. The Special Illustration Rare Pikachu ex is going for around $430, and Latias ex is even higher at nearly $500. Milotic ex is another banger at about $150 thanks to an ability that blocks damage from Tera Pokémon. Hydreigon ex is strong too, with a deck-discarding attack that’s super viable for play. Even the Hyper Rare Pikachu ex holds value at around $120. I don’t expect to pull any of these, but the odds keep things interesting.

In my opinion, this is the kind of deal that’s perfect for casual collectors like me, or anyone who enjoys the chaos of pulling something rare right after saying, “Just one more pack.” I know better than to promise a Pikachu EX SIR in every box, but I’ll absolutely take my chances when I don’t have to pay a third-party markup for the privilege.

Appearing at Sony Pictures’ CinemaCon presentation on Monday, Barbarian director Zach Cregger explained how his upcoming Resident Evil movie reboot will be “unlike any of the previous films” in the franchise.

“There’s a moment that comes in almost every Resident Evil game where you find yourself in a dark passageway, your health is almost zero and there’s no way around,” Cregger told the audience of theater owners and the press. “You have to go through but you know there’s something awful for you in the darkness.”

“That is a thrill that the Resident Evil games have perfected,” he added. “My movie will be built in the spirit of those games and follows one central protagonist from point A to point B, as they descend deeper into hell.”

Resident Evil is gearing up to shoot this summer in Europe with Euphoria and Wolfs actor Austin Abrams reportedly lined up to star.

Cregger co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s sources, “the new project is decidedly on the horror track. It is also said to have elements of a wilderness survival thriller.”

Producers on the movie include Constantin Film, Vertigo Entertainment, and PlayStation Productions.

Resident Evil will open in theaters on September 18, 2026.

Eric Goldman contributed to this report.

Adult Swim has not only revealed that Rick and Morty will return for its eighth season on May 25, 2025, but it has also shared a first look as part of its April Fools’ Day broadcast special. And don’t worry, we promise this isn’t a joke!

The big reveal happened during Adult Swim’s April Fools’ Day broadcast special, which was a 22-minute anthology special that celebrated some of the best moments from Rick and Morty by remaking them in wacky and wonderful live-action segments.

As for Rick and Morty’s eighth season, you can check out the first look below alongside some new images and an official description.

“Rick and Morty is back for Season Eight,” the official description reads. “Life has meaning again! Anything is possible! Look out for adventures with Summer, Jerry, Beth, and the other Beth. Maybe Butter Bot will get a new task. Whatever happens, you can’t keep Rick and Morty down for long. People have tried!”

For those who enjoyed the other part of the April Fools’ Day stream, Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen has a message for you.

“We hope you enjoyed our theater interpretations of ‘Rick and Morty,’ especially if you are well-off/impulsive and now want to back a Broadway version of the show,” Ouweleen said. “For the rest of you, we’re glad you now know when Season Eight is starting so you have time to stretch and get loose because the team has yet again made a totally great season of television.”

Season 7 of Rick and Morty ended on December 17, 2023, and many fans considered its finale to be the “best episode in years.” Season 7 was also a big one as it saw Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden replace Justin Roiland as Rick and Morty, respectively.

Rick and Morty series creator departed the series after charges of domestic violence were brought against him and subsequently dropped.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

At Sony Pictures’ presentation at CinemaCon on Monday, director Sam Mendes revealed the release strategy for his upcoming quartet of movies about The Beatles – dubbed The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event – and officially announced the actors playing the Fab Four.

Harris Dickinson (Babygirl) plays John Lennon, Paul Mescal (Gladiator II) plays Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan (The Batman) plays Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) plays George Harrison.

The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event will be in theaters April 2028. The exact release dates and the order in which each Beatle’s film will be released wasn’t disclosed. Mendes said he envisions the movies being seen in a particular order, but won’t reveal that yet.

The upcoming fourth Spider-Man film is officially titled Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Sony Pictures announced at their CinemaCon presentation on Monday. It will be released in theaters July 31, 2026.

The film’s logo can be seen below.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton was in attendance at CinemaCon while star Tom Holland appeared in a pre-recorded greeting to theater owners and the press. Holland is filming The Odyssey in Europe for director Christopher Nolan.

Cretton said the appeal of Spider-Man is his Everyman aspect and the idea that “the hero behind the mask wasn’t so different from me.”

He added that he and the team “daily we’re just nerding out over the suit, how he swings, emotions, and how to create a ride we haven’t seen before.”

Holland said he knows that Spider-Man: No Way Home ended with a cliffhanger. “It’s a fresh new start. That’s all I can say.”

Spider-Man: Brand New Day 🕷️ July 31, 2026. pic.twitter.com/R6OY8tAHOb

— Spider-Man Movie (@SpiderManMovie) April 1, 2025

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is currently in prep for a summer shoot. No official word yet on who Sadie Sink will play in the film despite rumors that’s going to portray the X-Men’s Jean Grey.

Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse will be released in theaters on June 4, 2027, Sony Pictures announced at their CinemaCon presentation Monday. The first photos from the highly anticipated movie were also released (see the gallery below).

Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson are directing Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse from a screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller & David Callaham. The film is produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Amy Pascal, Avi Arad and Jinko Gotoh. Executive producers are Aditya Sood and Christina Steinberg.

Phil Lord, Justin K. Thompson, Bob Persichetti were all on hand at CinemaCon to present the first footage from Beyond the Spider-Verse to exhibition executives, theater owners and the press.

The filmmakers said of their delayed film that they needed to make sure they got it just right. Lord said the directors have decided to break the boundaries of animation again, while Persichettii said they mix more animation styles this time. Thompson said it’s going to be made for large format screens.

Lord said Beyond the Spider-Verse picks up the second where they left off in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales’ friends may or may not be enough to save everyone.

The footage screened for attendees began with voiceover from Miles: ““You can’t ask me… not to save my father.” The footage then pulled back through trippy sky colors and through images from the last movie with dialogue excerpts.

Miles is seen fighting his evil self and walking into dark tunnel with others behind him. Then his line from the last movie – “Imma do my own thing” – is heard before it cut to reveal the June 4, 2027 release date.

Daniel Day-Lewis has been hailed as one of the greatest actors in cinematic history. Indeed, he’s won three Academy Awards, which is exactly three more than fellow English actor Mr. Jason Statham. But has Daniel Day-Lewis ever choked a man with a handful of casino chips, K.O.’d a dude with a coin, killed a fella with a spoon, or punched a bloke in the fist with his own head? Jason Statham did all these in the same movie. There’s just no contest.

Statham has become one of the 21st century’s most dependable action superstars. That’s why it’s exciting that he’s got a new film out now, A Working Man. So to mark the occasion, here are our favourite moments from Jason Statham’s hard-hitting and hilarious career. Because let’s face it: Until they start giving out Oscars for walking through fire, water-skiing blindfolded, or successfully taking up piano at a late age, it’s the least we can do.

12. Homefront

You ever get the feeling that Jason Statham’s catalogue of action heroes are all the kind of guy who could take down three blokes with his hands tied behind his back? Well, you should, because in Homefront Statham annihilates three dudes while his hands are tied behind his back. What better way to kick things off than this?

11. The Beekeeper

If there’s one thing that stung about The Beekeeper, it’s that he’s too sweet on some of the scam call centre employees – letting them scurry out of the building before he blows it up simply because they apologised. We don’t watch Jason Statham movies to see him let the villains live, damn it! Fortunately, Statham partially makes it up to us by trailing the call centre manager, strapping him to his truck, and sending the empty vehicle off the end of a bridge, dragging the screaming scumbag behind it. They say bumblebees aren’t particularly efficient flyers, but at least they fly better than a 1967 Ford F-100.

10. Wild Card

Let’s double back to the movie alluded to in the intro, which is Wild Card – a film that criminally flopped at the box office despite being directed by the man who bestowed Con Air upon the world, boasting a bonus appearance from Stanley Tucci with hair, and honestly featuring some of the best fight scenes of Statham’s entire career. In the final showdown, Statham guts no less than five gun-toting goons – armed only with a spoon and a butter knife – and walks away without a scratch. Jason Statham: king of knifey spoony.

9. Death Race

Paul W.S. Anderson’s long list of video game adaptations haven’t exactly won the man fistfuls of prestige but, if we’re being honest, he deserves at least a pat on the back for his slightly-camp 2008 killer car feature, Death Race, where he vividly demonstrated a Mad Max: Fury Road-level commitment to crashing giant death trucks an impressive seven-odd years before George Miller actually made that movie. Statham getting the better of the Juggernaut by conspiring with his bitter rival is easily the highlight of the film. The score remains: practical effects – one million, CGI – zero.

8. The Meg

Of course, on the topic of taking down giant monsters, no list of Jason Statham’s most memorable movie moments would be remotely complete without the time the man literally murdered a megalodon with a metal spear in The Meg. After slicing its guts open from teeth to tail, Statham surfs the giant shark as it leaps skyward, shoving a stick straight into its eyeball in the process. Toppling back into the water, the prehistoric beast is subsequently devoured by dozens of its more diminutive descendants. It doesn’t matter where the predator comes from: If it bleeds, you can kill it.

7. The Transporter

Sliding in at number seven is one of Statham’s most iconic action roles: Frank Martin, the Transporter. Of course, the 2002 original is basically 90 minutes of Hong Kong-quality fight scenes from prolific action director Corey Yuen, so how do you choose just one moment? The container fight? The axe fight? The bus fight? There are a lot of fights. Well, the answer has to be the oil fight, where Frank greases himself up to literally slip through his enemies’ fingers before turning the tables on them with a set of bicycle pedals and a series of savage spinning heel kicks.

6. The Fate of the Furious

Speaking of heels, the villainous Deckard Shaw’s heel-face turn in the Fast and the Furious saga was controversial for a while, but ever since Fast 9 confirmed he never actually killed Han during Tokyo Drift, we can all enjoy his past exploits without feeling guilty. Naturally, one particular moment that’s hard to go past is the Hard Boiled-inspired airborne rescue of Dom and Elena’s infant son in The Fate of the Furious. Jason Statham has enjoyed action aplenty in the Fast saga since his post-credits appearance in Fast & Furious 6, but this mix of gun-fu and jokes about poo is arguably his greatest highlight.

5. The Expendables

Earning his spot alongside the heaviest of Hollywood hardmen in Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables franchise, Jason Statham’s Lee Christmas has had plenty of time to shine throughout the series, from kicking fellow countryman Scott Adkins into an idling helicopter to firing a flare from the front of a flying boat for a little fry-and-die. However, his most memorable moment is the brief but brutal basketball court beatdown he gives to his girlfriend’s abusive ex and every one of his useless mates. Christmas may only come around once a year, but when he does, he smashes the crap out of six dudes in about 16 seconds. He’s like Santa, only instead of a nice list he just has a knife list.

4. Spy

In an absolutely scene-stealing performance in what’s already an extremely funny film, Jason Statham fully flexes his comedy muscles in 2015’s Spy as Rick Ford: the unkillable secret agent extraordinaire who’s immune to 179 different types of poison and makes his own suits. Statham enjoys plenty of hilarious moments in Spy, but the best is when he regales Melissa McCarthy with tales of his legendary toughness: “I drove a car off a freeway, on top of a train, while I was on fire. Not the car. I was on fire.”

3. Transporter 2

Come on. You didn’t think we were going to forget the infamous Transporter 2 barrel roll, did you? Calm as a cucumber, Frank Martin flings his two-ton Audi upside down to dislodge the bomb strapped beneath it, all with the complete confidence of a man flicking a speck of soot from the shoulder of his suit. Tell your teachers: Physics are cancelled.

2. Crank: High Voltage

After surviving falling several thousand feet from a helicopter, Chev Chelios’ clearly superhuman heart has been stolen by Chinese gangsters. That is the plot of Crank 2. As such, you shouldn’t be surprised when, at one stage, Chev hallucinates an entire fight at a power station as a souped-up, 100-foot-tall kaiju version of himself, complete with a mask of… his own head. This is a real movie that definitely happened.

1. Snatch

What better choice for number one than Snatch, where Jason Statham – in only his second film appearance after he debuted in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – didn’t just shine amongst Hollywood heavyweights like Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, and the late Dennis Farina – he came away with a whole host of the movie’s most-quotable lines. It’s tricky to pick a favourite quip from a movie chock full of them, but Turkish’s iconic response to Tommy’s desire to carry a gun seems like a safe bet (“What is a gun doing in your trousers?” “For protection.” “Protection from what? Zee Germans?”). A safer bet than anything Brick Top suggests, at least.

Did we miss any of your favourites? Mean Machine? The Mechanic? Hobbs & Shaw? Let us know in the comments.

The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 is the company’s latest laptop designed for the upper crust of gamers-on-the-go. It comes to market with your choice of an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 (an RTX 5070 Ti version will be available later), while prices start at $3,099 and go up from there. Paired with its Intel Core 9 Ultra processor, it offers top-tier performance, gamer-friendly looks, and a great display. It’s not the laptop to choose for “thin and light,” but if you don’t care about that, it has a lot to offer.

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 – Design and Features

The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 is a flashy laptop with plenty of RGB and decorations to suit your fancy. Like many of the 16-inch launch models we’ve seen since Nvidia debuted its RTX 50-series laptop GPUs last week, it features a 2,560 x 1,600 OLED display with a boxier 16:10 aspect ratio than a normal widescreen laptop, and plenty of horsepower under its hood.

And AI, it has that too – and it wastes no time letting you know it’s there. Within minutes of booting it up for the first time, a notification was popping up from my “GiMate” assistant, letting me know that I should disable the Nvidia graphics card for better performance. AI is also interwoven with its configuration software, but more on that later.

The laptop is available in two configurations for now, separated by your choice of an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 and about $1,200. Both versions come with the following specs, apart from the 5090 version which adds a second NVMe SSD for 2TB of total storage (you can add a second drive to the 5080 variant on your own if you’re tech-inclined):

• Display: 2560 x 1600 (16:10), OLED, 500-nits
• Refresh Rate: 240Hz
• Processor: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 (Mobile)
• VRAM: 16GB
• Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 – 8000 MT/s
• Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD
• Connectivity: WiFi 7, 1G Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.4
• Ports: 2 x Type-A support USB3.2 Gen2, 1 x Type-C with Thunderbolt 5 (USB4, DisplayPort 2.1, and PD 3.0), 1 x Type-C with Thunderbolt 4 (USB4, DisplayPort 1.4 and PD 3.0), 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x MicroSD (UHS-II), 1 x Audio Combo Jack
• Audio: 4 x built-in speakers, Dolby Atmos with Smart Amp, built-in microphone
• Webcam: 1080p, Windows Hello Support
• Battery: 99wHr
• Dimensions (LxWxH): 14.05 x 10 x 0.9 x 1.14 inches
• Weight: 5.51 pounds

Both models are expensive, but that goes with the territory when it comes to flagship gaming laptops right after a new launch. The RTX 5080 version I received to test costs $3,099. The RTX 5090 version will set you back $4,299. There’s also a larger Aorus Master 18 version of each that swaps the OLED screen for mini-LED and includes 2TB of storage by default. The RTX 5090 version there also bumps total system memory up to 64GB, which really isn’t bad for only $100 more than the 16-inch version ($4,399). The Aorus Master 18 with the RTX 5080 is a bit more marked up at $3,299, but at this kind of price, an extra hundo probably isn’t going to be the big decision-maker.

The Aorus Master is certainly designed to catch your eye and tempt a purchase in other ways. It’s an RGB showcase with an illuminated falcon logo on the lid, a wraparound 3D light bar, and even a small RGB projector that beams Aorus branding down onto your desk. The keyboard is also RGB, but it’s not per-key, which is disappointing at this price. Instead, it is broken into three zones and includes seven translucent keys that include WASD as well as Q, E, and R, with bright light passthrough. Even without per-key customization, it’s more than a little showy.

Everything but the lid is made from plastic. Functionally, it doesn’t make a huge difference, though an aluminum frame would be far better matched to its high price (and would help dissipate heat at the same time) and would have made it feel a bit more premium. The lid is very nice, however, and has a ripple pattern creating a wave pattern across its surface. It’s microtextured with such fine detail that you can only see it when it catches the light just so and feels smooth to the touch.

In fact, I first realized it wasn’t bead-blasted purely from sound. It reminds me of the zip you get when you drag your nail across an old-school holographic Trapper Keeper. This quality makes it impervious to fingerprints in normal use, which immediately gives it a one-up on normal metal lids which tend to look grungy after a handful of uses.

The laptop isn’t thin and it’s not light. Unlike the Razer Blade 16 which checks off both of those boxes while toting an RTX 5090, the Aorus Master is much more to expectation, measuring 0.9 inches at its thinnest and 1.14 inches at the thickest. It also weighs 5.5 pounds. Compare that to the Blade 16’s 0.69-inch front lip and 4.7 pound weight: it doesn’t seem like much on paper, but it’s immediately noticeable. Those small dimensional changes make the difference between “wow, this is surprisingly thin and light” and “yup, that’s definitely a gaming laptop.”

That extra space has its benefits, though. The Aorus Master offers both upgradeable memory and storage. There are two memory slots, allowing you to increase its capacity up to 64GB or swap out to a set with faster clock speeds. There are two M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs, so you can add extra storage without needing to reinstall Windows and drivers to get running again. Only the pre-populated slot supports PCI-e 5.0, however, so you’ll be limited to PCI-e Gen 4 for anything you’d like to add without formatting.

It also allows Gigabyte to go full-on with its other components. This machine is packing an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU with a full, 175-watt RTX 5080 (or other 50-series GPU). The processor is fast, topping out at 5.4GHz to maximize in-game fps and offers 24 cores (eight P-Cores and 16 E-Cores) cores for great multitasking performance and workload efficiency. It’s enough to make you wonder why Gigabyte only outfitted the laptop with 5,600 MHz memory when higher speeds would seem like the better match. The Razer Blade 16 uses 8,000MHz memory, for example, and higher memory speeds can directly translate into high fps.

To keep this hardware cool, Gigabyte has opted for a dual fan solution with densely packed, 158-fin fans. These come in new housing that’s supposed to channel airflow better and also reduce their overall noise. It’s still a gaming laptop, however, which means you should plan on hearing those fans quite prominently when you’re running games. For web browsing and productivity use, it features a 0dB mode that relies on passive cooling when the components aren’t generating as much heat. Like the Razer Blade 16, it features a large vapor chamber that covers more than 50% of the motherboard for improved performance overall.

The keyboard and trackpad are both decent. The keys have a generous amount of travel at 1.7mm and good tactility to avoid typos. I didn’t find them to be especially mushy, but have experienced crisp typing experiences, such as the one on the Lenovo Legion 9i. Still, it gets the job done in a very familiar 75% layout that balances productivity and gaming performance.

The trackpad is also fine. It measures just over 5 inches by 4 inches and has a nice glide when swiping your finger across it. The integrated buttons work well, though I did find that left and right clicks could get a little confused the further up the trackpad you tried to make them. This is something that you get used to over time and is part of the process of learning a laptop. But taken together, the input experience is good but not particularly special in any way.

If you’re planning on using the laptop for work or taking online classes, you can rest assured that it comes with a built-in 1080p webcam. In proper lighting conditions, it can look decent and offers a crisp, if slightly over-sharpened image. If you have a bright window behind you or are taking meetings in low lighting, it struggles to balance lighting and noise/grain in the image. There is no privacy shade, so you will have to manually turn it on and off if that’s something you look for.

Audio quality is pretty typical for a gaming laptop. It uses four speakers total and they did a good job of getting loud enough to play games on, but their tiny size prevented them from sounding full for explosions or the bass register in music. You can use them if you need to, but a good gaming headset is going to be the better choice for audio quality.

The Aorus Master 16 sports a 99WHr battery, which is the largest that can be used in a laptop currently. In our Procyon Office Battery Life test, it was able to run for seven hours and 49 minutes. With Advanced Optimus, Nvidia’s system for automatically swapping between the RTX 5080 and the integrated GPU, it meant that the test ran in its entirety without the full-powered graphics card turning on. When actually playing games, I averaged around two hours depending on how demanding the game was. RTX 50-series GPUs really seem to be coming into their own for gaming on battery.

Finally, for connectivity, it offers a decent array of ports to connect different peripherals and accessories. On the left side, it has a gigabit ethernet port, a full size HDMI 2.1, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, and a USB Type-C port capable of both charging and video, as well as a dedicated charging port for its included power bright. On the right is another USB Type-A and Type-C, an audio combo jack, and a microSD card reader. Size has its benefits.

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 – GiMate Software

In what’s sure to be a trend this year, the Aorus Master 16 features a software suite that’s integrated with AI. It offers all of the usual functionality, including setting your performance modes and fan settings, as well as customizing the laptop’s RGB. For meetings, there are AI clarity enhancements as well as versions of the Windows Studio setting to blur your background and add artificial eye-tracking, as well as a privacy-enhancing feature that can turn off your screen when you’ve stepped away.

The most important feature that it offers is that it can intelligently control the performance of your system based on what you’re doing. When you load a game, it’s smart enough to know to use the RTX 5080 instead of the processor’s integrated graphics chip, and then to switch that back over when you’re done to save on battery life. There’s also a chatbot that you can engage with to get insights into your system, adjust settings, and converse with on troubleshooting, learning more about what settings do within Windows, and more. It’s essentially a local version of ChatGPT that knows about the specifics of your system.

While all of this is cool, it’s all pretty base level. Automatic performance switching is a nice feature, but if you’ve gamed on a laptop before, you already know to switch to its high performance mode. That the AI can detect a big workload also isn’t all that impressive, and swapping modes when it does isn’t something that requires “AI.” The chatbot can be fun, but unless you’re wet behind the ears when it comes to Windows gaming, it really feels like more of a novelty.

But we knew this was going to happen. AI is the trend of the moment and I expect most big laptop brands will follow suit with systems of their own. Use it if you like or ignore it if you don’t, both are viable options.

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 – Performance

The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 is in a class where performance is rightfully king, and whether or not it’s going to earn your dollars is going to depend a lot on what you’re coming from, what you’re hoping to achieve, and how much you have to spend.

Before sharing performance numbers, it’s worth mentioning again that we’ve recently upgraded our testing methodology to better assess new technologies, rendering methods, and the performance demands of current games. Because of this, much of our prior testing data doesn’t align and we’ll be building up our data set over time. For this review, I’ll be comparing it to the Razer Blade 16 in the performance charts, but I was also able to do some testing with an RTX 4080 laptop on loan to remark upon in the text.

All of our tests are conducted at maximum settings. Upscaling is frequently used and is set to Quality at 1080p and Balanced at 1440p (or 1200p and 1600p in this case). These settings are also included in the charts.

Beginning with synthetic tests, we can see that the Aorus Master 16 performs quite well compared to the Razer Blade 16, despite the fact that it is running an RTX 5080 instead of an RTX 5090. Between the two systems, the Razer Blade is running an AMD Ryzen CPU, while the Aorus Master 16 is running an Intel Core Ultra CPU. This accounts for some of the differences here. However, it’s also worth remembering that the Razer Blade 16 is power capped at 160 watts and frequently doesn’t reach that limit, whereas the Aorus Master 16 can dynamically boost to the full 175 watt rating of the RTX 5080, pulling in higher performance.

What I find even more interesting is that in anecdotal testing against my end-of-last-gen Falcon Northwest DRX RTX 4080 system, the results are almost all close enough that you can chalk it up to margin of error. It’s worth noting that the DRX system has a different processor, so the comparison isn’t exactly apples to apples. Still, the 40-series impresses. That doesn’t take away from the comparative performance of the 5080 versus the 5090, however, especially looking at that Night Raid score and its performance in real-world games.

Gaming benchmarks are just as revealing. Here we can see that at 1200p, the Aorus Master 16 outperforms the Razer Blade 16 with its power-capped RTX 5090. That’s shocking. At the same time, when I ran some of these tests against the Falcon Northwest DRX, the two went back and forth offering very similar performance in these games and beyond. The Blade 16 still pulls out some wins in a wider selection of playtests, averaging 62 fps in Black Myth: Wukong while the others hovered closer to 50, but there’s a serious value consideration here.

Now, an important caveat does need to be given regarding the Razer Blade 16. It intentionally trades performance for portability, so it’s competing with a handicap. If you don’t care about it being as thin and light as possible, another RTX 5090 laptop may very well be a better choice. I’ll be testing exactly that in the weeks to come.

Another important consideration is fan noise. A loud laptop can draw unwanted attention and the Aorus Master 16, unfortunately, falls into that camp. Essentially, anytime you’re gaming, its fans will be running full throttle, and it’s loud enough to disturb a partner trying to watch a show in the room with you. I certainly wouldn’t play games in a library with it unless I could move well away from other people. Compared to the Blade 16, it’s much louder, which illustrates the competing visions for these products held between Razer and Gigabyte.

Here’s the thing: Nvidia hasn’t been shy about tying the 50-series to its AI capabilities versus pure native rendering performance. Though the RTX 5080 performs disappointingly close to the RTX 4080, this disappears when you’re playing a game that supports multi-frame generation. While “fake frames” have become a bit of a meme, the fact is that when it works, it’s pretty amazing and dramatically improves performance. This varies game to game based upon how well it handles latency. Alan Wake 2, for example, tends to feel a bit more laggy at higher multiplier settings while Cyberpunk 2077 does not. With this technology and others, like neural shaders, coming to future games, there’s an argument to be made about buying into these future technologies. But, you’re buying on a promise while Nvidia and game developers work to add support to new and existing games.

When it comes to living with the laptop on a daily basis, it offered snappy performance for just about anything I threw at it, including photo and video editing. I tend to prefer a laptop that’s significantly lighter since I carry the laptop throughout my whole day; however, if you’re already used to carrying a gaming laptop, this won’t feel very different. But, I would highly encourage anyone considering this to purchase a separate GaN charger for anytime you don’t plan to play games. Its charging brick is big and heavy, and carried with the laptop brings the total weight to more than seven pounds. It was enough to leave me with a sore shoulder at the end of the day.

I’m exhausted after playing The First Berserker: Khazan. My hands ache, my brain is fried, and I’ve often had to step away in frustration. It’s a long, brutally difficult game, one often expecting near-perfection in its toughest encounters. Like a new military recruit, this Soulslike extension of developer Neople’s Dungeon & Fighter universe broke me down and, over time, built me back up into a lethal weapon that was prepared to take on whatever hellish nightmares it had in store. Even when I hit seemingly insurmountable roadblocks for hours at a time, I somehow found myself reveling in battles that enjoyably took me to the brink of my abilities.

The First Berserker: Khazan is a classic revenge tale. Khazan, a celebrated general, is betrayed by his empire and labeled a traitor. After being gravely injured while apprehended, he is revived and possessed by a melded legion of vicious warrior spirits who antagonize him into doing their bidding. The Blade Phantom, as the ethereal symbiote is known, is more concerned with advancing the objectives of the underworld from which it hails, while Khazan is out for the blood of those who wronged him. This setup provides plenty to build on, tying grounded medieval politics to the occult forces leeching their way into the world, but the story after that is mostly thin and underwhelming.

Khazan’s tour of vengeance is mission-based rather than giving you an open or branching area to explore freely, and he will routinely return to a sparse hub area known as The Crevice between them. Outside of being visually interesting as a floating stone sanctuary with mysterious broken staircases and far-off platforms, there’s not a lot to do apart from manage your inventory from time to time before pressing on to the next mission. Distressed villagers, otherworldly advisors, former military cohorts, and more add some minor connective tissue to the ongoing plot, but overall there’s shockingly little to learn here. Instead, it’s more a mechanical necessity to pick up optional quests or craft, upgrade, and augment gear for Khazan than an area to foster further flavor.

Being a well-honed instrument of war, Khazan has a handful of tools at his disposal to slaughter his enemies – although it took a long time before I felt like I was on his perceived level of capability. An early mission introduces you to The First Berserker’s three types of weaponry: You can choose to use the powerful but slow and defensive greatsword, a nimble stamina-draining spear, or the whirling assault of the dual blades. I enjoy how unique each weapon type is from the others, offering transformative move sets ranging from defensive and methodical to all-out aggressive.

Each weapon is further expanded with a full skill tree that enhances Khazan’s effectiveness in battle. Nodes on these trees modify your basic attacks, like altering how your charged Potent Blow (or heavy attack) works, changing the stamina depletion for actions like dodging and blocking, or providing new moves entirely that spend a resource called Spirit Points in combat. My Khazan felt way different to play by the end of the roughly 85-hour campaign than he did at the start, but it took dozens of hours to get to that point and plenty of experimentation. There are a lot of ways to kit out Khazan as you level him up, and it’s rather fun figuring out which moves and perks best fit my playstyle to help me slice my way out of its hardening conflicts.

The First Berserker lets you swap between your three weapons freely, but with little overlap between their various abilities, what’s normally a quick switch is actually a dramatic change and a hassle. For instance, in Dark Souls, most weapons boil down to having light and heavy attacks, with maybe a special ability available when switching to a two-handed grip. Weapons in The First Berserker, on the other hand, allow for up to six of the previously mentioned Spirit attacks and further optimization of their skill trees. It’s too much to deal with when equipping what is essentially a bespoke class. That’s why I dedicated myself to the dual blades during my playthrough, which I continued to tweak and learn about with every big fight I picked. Thankfully, if I did ever want to make the big jump to the greatsword or spear, you can reallocate skill points at will, but the process is just obtuse and annoying enough to make doing so on the fly unappealing.

Once you embark on any of The First Berserker’s mainline missions, the structure is extremely close to what’s expected in a Soulslike. Each level, whether that’s a ruined village, a crumbling castle, or the obligatory poison swamp, plays out similarly: You’ll slay dangerous enemies patrolling the area, figure out how to survive with limited healing items, collect spoils of the dead, and use them to level up at this game’s version of a bonfire, called a Blade Nexus. It’s an overly familiar formula that’s certainly inoffensive in its design, but it recreates that loop well enough, with levels smartly built to weave back to prior respites via shortcuts. Exploration is sadly almost non-existent, making each level more about getting from point to point. There’s a lack of cool optional areas to stray into or bosses to stumble across while adventuring that could have given main levels some much-needed spice.

Capping off each mission is a tooth-and-nail fight with that area’s boss, each of which represents a potentially substantial roadblock before you can continue to enjoy The First Berserker. The first big encounter I struggled with was the end boss of Mission 2, a manifestation of souls like the ones inhabiting our newly possessed hero. Its aggressive melee attacks would quickly kill me, and after several unsuccessful attempts and unforeseen weapon swaps from my adversary, I needed to try another strategy to finally break through. Another early boss, a bipedal goat demon wielding a flaming spike and hammer, caused plenty of grief as well by hitting hard and often, occasionally lighting the battlefield ablaze with a carpet of flames. At first, I tried to grind weaker enemies around the level to collect Khazan’s version of souls, called Lacrima, to boost my stats and give myself a better chance of living. It helped, but ultimately didn’t do enough to tip the scales. I then took a close look at my gear and opted for a tankier build. Still no dice.

Khazan’s bosses are just painfully tough, and the early ones are like a brick wall, with some burning upwards of five hours of my time alone. Smaller enemies leading up to a boss will somewhat teach you how to deal with certain aspects of them, but there’s little to ramp you into what is continually asked of you moving forward. There’s also no easy way to smash your way through these early walls in The First Berserker, like finding an overpowered item or excessively juicing your stats. Even in a brutal game like Elden Ring, a notorious early boss like Margit can be overcome more easily if you spend some time getting stronger in the areas before him, but while grinding out Lacrima and levels early on helps, it’s not the cure to every situation. In turn, this immediate difficulty spike genuinely made me want to stop playing after the first few levels – but these encounters began to win me over, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

What was once a peak point of frustration became my favorite part of The First Berserker; the bosses are ultimately what make it worth playing. While they are incredibly hard to take down, every one can eventually be read like a book, telegraphing the moves they’re about to make and predictable strategies they’ll use throughout the fight. The process of learning each oppressive bosses’ moves and tells, figuring out when it’s ideal to dodge or block, is extra important in The First Berserker, and it’s how I ultimately figured out how to enjoy the experience in the face of overwhelming odds. Every death that was once met with confusion and irritation became a learning experience I looked forward to absorbing. Every restart was a chance to land my attacks and survive with newfound knowledge. Yes, there are plenty of cheap attacks, one-hit kills, and groan-inducing mistakes, but I enjoyed studying each big boss I came across as much as the catharsis of finally taking them down.

Conquering many of the early insurmountable feats was also thanks in part to two great quality-of-life decisions Neople has implemented into The First Berserker. First, dying repeatedly at a boss isn’t for nothing, but rather grants precious Lacrima based on how far you took their life down. Each upgrade that helps you afford gets you a little bit further the next time, and gaining levels by grinding the boss you need to beat is far more valuable than breaking away to farm elsewhere. Second, skill points are awarded separately from the levels you get from cashing in Lacrima, and are instead earned through a more traditional experience bar that is filled simply by being in battle. While not necessarily an increase in stats, unlocking new moves to use or enhancing your favorites can be just the thing needed to beat a stubborn encounter.

While my earlier struggles were overcome by learning to dodge, block, and attack properly, equipping Khazan with more powerful gear became hugely important in the latter half of the campaign. Weapons, armor, and accessories have attributes to increase stats like fire resistance and stamina regeneration, or decrease incoming damage when blocking, among many other varieties of buffs. The most powerful items come in sets; each set gives Khazan an awesome new look, but more importantly, provides a set bonus when equipped together that nudges you toward specific ways to play. For instance, the Beastslayer set amplifies the Whirlwind spirit attack as well as increasing damage while taking swings at an enemy head-on. Others, on the other hand, may be better defensive options that provide certain elemental damage reductions. They don’t quite go far enough to wildly change the way I played, but they are still great options to consider.

Another helpful way to get stronger later on is by taking on the ample side quests that are available after completing main missions, which are tied to either a refugee in The Crevice or the original mission’s boss. These extra challenges remix the sections you’ve previously fought through, sometimes adding new enemy types and concluding with alternate versions of bosses to add a fresh challenge. They help provide gear blueprints, crafting materials, and healing item upgrades, as well as the texture and context to how the people you meet relate to Khazan’s past, adding character to the world in a way that’s sorely missing from the central story.

Once I finally rolled credits, I fired up my New Game+ save file and was greeted with a whole new class of weapons not available in the first playthrough. These options grant elemental statuses to attacks, which would have been a blast to build around up until this point. While I get that the post-game requires a new spin on gearing to make it more fun or challenging, I wish more items in my initial run provided unique effects like this to inspire drastic changes in my approach to combat.

Batman is as popular as ever, with multiple movies in the works, a recent animated series gaining traction, and the nearly endless LEGO set releases. There’s never been a better time to be a fan of the Dark Knight, but what if you’re one of the few people new to the DC comics hero? The best place to get into Batman is where he got his start – the comics. We’ve broken down every upcoming Batman-focused comic series and graphic novel coming in 2025.

Even if you’re a comics veteran, it can often be hard to keep up with current releases and the hottest new story arcs, so we’ve got you covered. Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman and legendary duo Jim Lee’s and Jeph Loebs’ return to Batman with Hush 2 are must-read ongoing stories this year. We’re also getting some other great collections of the best Batman graphic novels in both hardcover and trade paperback, like Year Zero and Haunted Knight. Read on for every upcoming Batman single issue, collection, omnibus, and more coming for the rest of this year.

April

Graphic Novels:

• Absolute Batman: Zero Year by James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, and Andy Clarke, April 1
• Batman: Offworld by Jason Aaron and Doug Mahnke, April 1
• Gotham by Gaslight: The Kryptonian Age Vol. 1 by Andy Diggle and Leandro Fernández, April 1
• Gotham City: Year One by Tom King and Phil Hester, April 1
• Batman/ Elmer Fudd: The Deluxe Edition by Tom King and Lee Weeks, April 8
• Batman: Justice Buster Vol. by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi, April 22
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold Vol. 2 – Out of the Darkness by various creators, April 22
• Dark Knights of Steel: The Deluxe Edition by Tom Taylor and Yasmine Putri, April 22
• Batman & Robin Vol. 2: Batman vs. Robin (2025 Edition) by Grant Morrison and Andy Clarke, April 29

Single Issues

• Absolute Batman #7 by Scott Snyder and Marcos Martín, April 9
• Batman: Dark Patterns #5 by Dan Watters and Hayden Sherman, April 9
• Batman and Robin #20 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Javi Fernández April 9
• Detective Comics #1096 by Tom Taylor and Mikel Janín, April 16
• Batman/ Superman: World’s Finest #38 by Mark Waid and Adrián Gutiérrez, April 16
• Batman #159 by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, April 23
• Detective Comics Annual by various creators, April 30
• Batman/ Superman: World’s Finest Annual by various creators, April 30
• Batman The Long Halloween: The Last Halloween #7 by Jeph Loeb and Dave Johnson, April 30

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

Graphic Novels:

• Little Batman: Month One by Morgan Evan and Jon Mikel, November 6

Single Issues:

• Solicitations not yet released.

December