Warner Music Group and Sony Music have confirmed that they are canceling their Grammy Week events due to the wildfires still raging in Los Angeles, a rep for the company confirms to Variety. The moves come a day after Universal made a similar announcement. Sources say Warner’s decision was made over the weekend, when WMG […]
‘Stranger Things’ Creators the Duffer Brothers to Receive Variety’s Showrunner Award at 2025 SCAD TVfest
The Duffer Brothers, creators of Netflix’s hit “Stranger Things,” will receive the Variety Showrunner Award on the opening night of the 13th annual SCAD TVfest. The festival returns in Atlanta from Feb. 5 to Feb. 7. The Duffers write, direct, and are executive producers on the series, which is Netflix’s most popular English-language series of […]
One Piece: Luffy’s Bento Panic Board Game Review
With over 1100 chapters, nearly as many episodes of the anime, movies and OVAs, a live-action Netflix series, a card game, and much much more, One Piece has become its own media empire. The tales of the Straw Hat Pirates are beloved all over the world, and now One Piece: Luffy’s Bento Panic, a new board game from Kess Entertainment, brings the crew to your tabletop! This party game is fun for even those that haven’t hopped on the pirate ship themselves.
Designed by Anthony Thorp, three to nine players take on the roles of crew of the Straw Hats, returning after a successful adventure. In typical fashion, Luffy and his crew decide to celebrate the only way they know how – with a giant feast full of the crew’s favorite delicacies. What follows is a mad rush as each person tries to eat as much as they can before Luffy devours everything and the party’s over. The goal of Bento Panic is to amass the most points (finished piles of food) by the time the bag of food is empty or Luffy wakes up the third time. This is a fast game where a full session, even at larger player counts, won’t take you very long, making it perfect for parties.
Each turn is fairly straightforward, with each player being able to take one of five possible actions: grab food from the bag, eat piles of food that are in front of them, try to steal your neighbor’s food, block someone trying to steal yours, or use your character’s special ability. Each action is associated with a simple one-handed gesture that each player performs two at a time. Stealing, for example requires you to point at one or both of the players to your left or right while grabbing food tokens from the bag requires you to simply reach out towards the bag. It makes for a silly time, and it’s the fact that everyone performs the actions together that makes the game so quick to play.
When I first saw the player count of Bento Panic could go up to nine people, my immediate concern was that this game would quickly spiral into chaos. Few games manage player counts so high, but luckily I never found this to be the case here, because you really only need to worry about the people on your immediate left and right. It’s only your neighbors that you have to worry about attempting to steal from you, so regardless if you are playing with only three of you or the full roster of nine, your risk of being stolen from never increases beyond those two people.
One of the ways the game can end is when Luffy wakes up for the third time. In the grab bag that contains all of the food tokens (a nice fabric drawstring bag adorned with the iconic Straw Hat pirate logo no less) are special “juicy meat” ones that move Luffy down his sleep track. Once that track hits zero, Luffy wakes up and will steal all the food that hasn’t been eaten yet from whomever has the biggest pile of meat in front of them.
Fans of One Piece know just how “on-brand” it is that Luffy would lose control when meat is involved. This mechanic also provides the game with a good “push your luck” feeling, where you have to risk waking up Luffy and losing your piles of uneaten food, or do you play it safe and try to eat a smaller pile or two first, and have others take the risk?
Another aspect to take into account when making your choice of actions are the special abilities that your other opponents have at their disposal. Each Straw Hat has an ability that can be activated by striking a dramatic pose as your action, with abilities like Jinbe’s “Fishman Karate” that cancels out any steal actions being taken against you while letting you then take a food pile from any pirate that attempted to steal your food. Once these are used, they can’t be used again until you’ve been stolen from, which means sometimes you want someone to steal from you. Using these skills is completely optional, and the game is fun with or without them.
Bento Panic can still offer up a good time for folks who may not be into One Piece and can’t tell one Straw Hat from the other. At its heart, this is a set collection game mixed with reading other players’ intentions. It’s fun, but it doesn’t offer much depth. However, it also never overstays its welcome, which makes it great as a party board game, or as a palate cleanser between other complex games. Bento Panic gets better with more people playing it – in my play sessions, even at the max player count of nine, everyone was still having fun, which a lot of other games can’t say.
Where to Buy
Aloft Early Access Review
Some of my favorite games are the product of mashing two seemingly incompatible concepts together. After all, where would we be if someone wasn’t crazy enough to combine deckbuilders with roguelikes to create Slay the Spire (or Dream Quest before it), first-person shooters and loot-heavy RPGs to create Borderlands, or cars and soccer to create Rocket League? Aloft aims to do something similar, mixing the relaxing principles of a cozy game with the generally uncozy mechanics of a survival crafting game amidst a floating archipelago akin to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. That odd combination certainly pays off in some ways, like its floating island-ship-hybrid building system that completely rules and the low-stakes cooperative exploration that makes for a very chill time with friends. But in its current early access state, it’s also quite short on things to do, has way more dull and repetitive combat encounters than it should, and suffers from numerous performance issues that really started to grate on me over time.
If you’ve played pretty much any survival game before, then Aloft will immediately feel familiar. It has you swinging both pickaxes and axes of the non-pick variety to gather stone, wood, and other materials in order to craft your way to greater power and security. But that familiarity quickly fades away as you discover the main thing that sets Aloft apart: the skyborn islands that serve as both places to explore and magically-mobile homes to navigate this floating landscape. You’ll use your trusty wingsuit to zip around the world in search of resources to harvest for your crafting efforts, then turn those islands into skysurfing ships that serve as your base of operations.
This unique twist goes a long way toward making the roughly 30-hours worth of adventure that are currently available feel like more than just another survival crafter, even when it falls short in other areas. Slapping a couple of sails, a rudder, and a steering wheel onto any island allows you to move it freely, taking whatever it carries (or that you’ve built on it) along with you – and when you get a bunch of your friends to join you, each of whom can import characters and customized island ships from their own worlds, it makes for an extremely amusing time. Most of the usual cozy life-sim activities like taking care of livestock, gardening, and decorating can all be done with friends from the comfort of a flying island, tricked out to your liking and functioning much like a sea vessel traveling at high speeds. You’ll likely get into all sorts of trouble, too, like flying into an asteroid field that tears holes in your sails and sends you careening out of control.
While the premise is unique, and building and piloting islands can be a lot of fun, Aloft is significantly less successful at being a good survival-crafting game on its own. There aren’t a ton of activities to play around with yet beyond farming, cooking, building, and raising animals, and even these are fairly barebones iterations of what other cozy games have done better. There’s only a very small handful of animals to domesticate right now, gardening is extremely straightforward, and building doesn’t have enough unique structures to choose from or even a good reason to attempt complex structures since islands have to maintain a healthy natural biome to be pilotable. I’m especially surprised there aren’t survival activities that take advantage of Aloft’s unique airborne setting! No fishing for birds with some bait attached to a kite? No special gardening mechanics that incorporate the altitude or temperature associated with each of the world’s biomes? Here’s hoping these systems get spiced up and fleshed out during the early access period.
The relaxed nature of Aloft means you’ll rarely worry about much of anything, which goes against the usual survival formula, but that’s not such a bad thing. Flying is never a challenge, as you’re allowed to move in any direction without concerning yourself with fuel or physics, even soaring nearly straight upwards, if you want. Combat is extremely simple, and dying has no consequences anyway as you’ll just respawn at your home island without losing anything but the time it takes to get back to where you were. Really the worst that can happen is if your sails are destroyed by crashing into something and you have to spend some resources to repair them, which isn’t so bad at all. This direction makes Aloft feel quite stress-free, allowing you to focus on exploration, customizing your island, and goofing around with friends – all of which I was happy to do.
Not all floating islands will be bright and happy zones to turn into a flying ship at the outset, though, as a fungal infection has taken hold of some of these mini-ecosystems and must be cured before nature can be rebalanced. Most of the time, that means you’ll first have to fight off a handful of mushroom creatures and destroy large fungal nodes to cleanse the island, then restore that place’s health by planting trees, introducing fauna, and repairing existing structures to return it to a livable state.
The problem is, at this time, there just isn’t a ton to do once you’ve crafted a ship and begun sailing around. The map is absolutely enormous, but largely empty. There are clusters of islands scattered here and there, but you only need to visit a handful of them to get the materials you need and unlock the upgrades required to progress. And since all the critical places you visit have an identical twin on the opposite side of the map, you can safely ignore half of what’s out there as you explore – in fact, not doing so really only makes exploration feel more mundane, as you discover that there’s nothing to be gained from finding these repeat islands and you’ve basically just wasted a bunch of time and effort (as I did). Obviously a big part of an early access launch is that we can safely expect more content to be added over time, and that will ideally alleviate the current drought, but there just isn’t much to do if you’re looking to dive in now aside from upgrading your sails so you can travel between the three regions that are currently accessible.
Curing infected islands also becomes quite monotonous after a short time thanks to a lack of enemy variety and extremely dull combat. There are only four enemy types: stout melee mushrooms, skinny and cowardly ranged fungi, flying squid spores that stun and debuff you, and giant fungal flowers that are the source of the infection and must be killed to eliminate it. Aside from the skinny ranged mushrooms which are always amusing as they scream and run away from you (even willing to jump off a cliff to evade you), the others are uninteresting annoyances to be quickly stabbed at before moving on. Fighting with melee weapons and a bow is as straightforward and bland as it gets, making most of my combat time feel like more of a chore. You eventually get to add enchantments to weapons and learn a few tricks, like one that lets you knock your foes in the air to juggle them for a couple seconds, but the enemies just aren’t challenging enough to make that investment worth it at this point.
Though this first early access draft runs out of things to do pretty quickly, those who stay long enough to get through the three areas will at least be rewarded with Aloft’s most interesting encounter as a final gauntlet: the leviathan. Somewhere out in the world is a giant flying tortoise-like creature whose body resembles a row of floating islands, all of which have been infected. Tracking down and curing this elusive beast serves as a placeholder finale of sorts (a proper ending is planned to be added later), and though it features the same tedious combat and four enemy types as every other island, it’s definitely one of the coolest activities available. This erratically flying good boy can be quite difficult to track down and will take a seasoned island captain to tame, which does give me some hope for what could still be in store down the line.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aloft’s other major shortcoming is that it performs pretty poorly most of the time. That’s not particularly surprising given its unfinished state, but I’d say this is on the more severe side of the spectrum compared to other early access games I’ve played at launch. The framerate gets extremely rocky on a fairly regular basis and crashing is a common occurrence, especially if you aren’t the host of a multiplayer world. Beyond that, my playgroup saw instances of items mysteriously disappearing from chests and sometimes I found myself staring at the inside of my avatar’s face, unable to rectify the issue until a crash inevitably came a short while later. This is one of those things I imagine will become less and less of an problem as time goes on, but at least for now these technical issues can be a real drag.
‘Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow’ begins filming in UK for Warner Bros
The latest DC/Warner Bros title stars Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa.
‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ Stays Atop U.K., Ireland Box Office in Fourth Week
The U.K. and Ireland box office saw Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” stay at the top in its fourth week, roaring to £2.2 million ($2.6 million) over the weekend and bringing its cumulative total to £24 million ($29.2 million), according to numbers from Comscore. In second place, Universal’s “Nosferatu” earned $2.4 million in its second […]
‘Winx Club’ Creator Rainbow Group Looks to Expand With Multimillion Cash Injection From Investors
Italy’s Rainbow Group, the company led by Iginio Straffi — creator of the hit “Winx Club” animation franchise — has announced a partnership with a group of Italian equity investors that are providing a roughly €90 million ($92 million) cash injection. Under the deal, TEC Movie — which is part of a unit within top […]
Horizon Could Be PlayStation’s Big Movie Win if It Stays Faithful to the Games
Following Uncharted’s 2022 cinematic outing and The Last of Us’ hit HBO show, it was only a matter of time until Sony announced that Horizon was coming to the silver screen. PlayStation Studios and Columbia Pictures recently formally confirmed that a movie adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn is in the works, which will bring to life both Aloy’s origin story and the video game’s vibrant, machine-filled world. And while development of the movie is only in the early stages, I’m already pretty confident that it could be Sony’s first major video game win at the box office… if it stays true to the games.
The last few years have seen several video game success stories grace both the small and big screens. The Super Mario Brothers and Sonic films, both skewed for family audiences, are the gold standard in terms of both critical reception and box office numbers. On TV, Sony’s own The Last of Us show sits alongside the likes of Netflix’s Arcane and Amazon Prime’s Fallout as fan favourites. And even adaptations that have had more middling reviews from fans and critics have been able to come out on top at the box office; the Tom Holland-led Uncharted movie grossed more than $400 million.
But while it’s true that the days of the “video game curse” are mostly long gone, there are still issues that persist in this field. Uncharted may have found its audience, but it is not the faithful adaptation of the original games fans were hoping for. More recently, we have seen poor critical and box office performance for the likes of last year’s Borderlands film and Amazon’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza series. Both seemed completely uninterested in staying faithful to the storylines, lore, or even simply the tone of the games they were built upon. They simply did not accurately depict the world of the games that fans fell in love with.
While such failures can occur in video game adaptations, they are part of a wider issue with adaptations in general. Netflix’s The Witcher has taken considerable liberties with its source material, significantly changing the original books’ events and characters, plus shifting the overall tone. While adaptations often need to make changes to fit their new medium, these examples feel like they have become different things entirely. And for fans of the original texts – the pre-baked audience that should be the first in line to watch a new adaptation – this can be not just incredibly disappointing, but also signal the project’s eventual downfall.
That brings us back to Horizon. The recently announced movie isn’t actually the first attempt at bringing Horizon to screens. Back in 2022 Netflix announced it was developing a series based on the game, and rumours began to circulate about a “Horizon 2074” project that was to be set during the pre-apocalypse period, perhaps trying to fill in some of the backstory the games touch upon and skirt around. This direction, while ultimately never confirmed by Netflix, certainly proved polarising for the game’s fanbase, who are clamouring for a story that is faithful to the one that made the original game such a resounding success. Plus, of course, they want to see huge robot animals, which a pre-apocalypse setting would naturally not feature.
However, such fans need not worry: whatever the plans were for that show, the project is no longer in development at Netflix and Horizon is now being reworked into a cinema release. Given the heavy CGI effects that any Horizon adaptation would need to realise its iconic visuals, this is a smart move, as the increased budget of a Hollywood movie is one of the keys to realising the story and world’s potential and make them shine on the big screen.
But there’s much more to Horizon than its incredible robotic creatures. Consider the success of Fallout, Arcane and The Last of Us in the past few years. These adaptations were praised for being worthy extensions of their source material and for their faithfulness to not just the visuals, but also the tone and stories of their original game franchises. Gamers care about adaptations having an authentic story. The Last of Us did, of course, craft new storylines that deviated from its source material, but most of the show stayed true to the narrative structure of the games. The result was a show that sailed on the proven strength of the game, which resonated with both fans and newcomers. And so if Horizon is given the same kind of treatment afforded to The Last of Us, Arcane and Fallout on the small screen, there is no reason it can’t be PlayStation’s first big cinema win.
Remaining faithful to the original game isn’t something to do just for the sake of fan expectation, though. Horizon Zero Dawn received the Best Narrative award at the The Game Awards in 2017, as well as the Outstanding Achievement in Story award at the 2018 DICE awards, which shows how highly regarded the game’s story is. It is a tale worth staying faithful to. Set in 31st century North America, it follows Aloy, a member of the Nora Tribe, as she explores the mystery surrounding her origins and how they link to an old-world scientist, Elisabet Sobeck, who is Aloy’s perfect doppelganger. These characters and the world they exist in are captivating: Aloy in particular is a brilliant anchor, and her allies Erend and Varl are easy to root for thanks to relationships that are massively fleshed out across Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel, Forbidden West. Further depth is added through the examination of how attempts were made to save Earth’s climate, with a rogue AI expanding to create the creatures that now populate so much of the Earth. Complimenting this is the mysterious Sylens, a constant presence and an enigma we want to get to the root of.
The intricacy of each community and settlement Aloy uncovers along her journey makes for an expansive, immersive world that feels completely unique. This worldbuilding is fuel for a compelling film franchise. Much like how James Cameron’s Avatar series has explored the culture and traditions of Na’vi tribes, a Horizon film could dig into the ways tribes like the Nora protect themselves from Earth’s robotic hunters. The unique combat encounters are a highlight of both Horizon games, and with the likes of the saber tooth tiger-like Sawtooths, the towering Tallnecks, and sky-bound Stormbirds, there’s the potential to litter the landscapes with impressive visuals. Alongside rival tribes and those loyal to the rogue AI Hades, these creatures ensure the games are full of action and suspense. Those same elements would provide interesting challenges for Aloy and her allies in a movie adaptation, too. All combined, Horizon is a rich source of creative and visually-rich storytelling that needs very few changes to suit the current cinematic landscape.
Horizon’s story is compelling from the offset, and if followed faithfully, I believe its film adaptation could be, too. What makes Horizon stand out from other would-be franchises is the diligence in its story, crafting a world that is unique, timely, and fresh with an aesthetic that feels distinctly cinematic. There are so many nuances to the world and the storytelling that it is easy to imagine a Horizon adaptation being a resounding success both critically and at the box office. And with the more expansive story of Forbidden West, there is a huge canvas for the franchise as a whole to work with – if adapted carefully, this could be a long-term proposition for Sony. There is a huge opportunity to make a film franchise that can match the success of its source material, which has proven to be tremendous success across the last two generations of PlayStation consoles, captivating gamers worldwide.
If the film can take the ingredients that have made the game such a success and keep them intact, then the basics are in place for a compelling adaptation. And with more Sony titles set to become film and TV franchises, such as Ghost of Tsushima and Helldivers 2, such an approach would set PlayStation up for success in an entirely new medium. But forgetting what made Horizon great in the first place – or, even worse, purposefully diverging away from it – could put Sony not only in the firing line of negative fan feedback, but also the same kind of financial difficulties suffered by Borderlands. Bad adaptations have been overwhelmingly rejected by fans, and as a result often audiences as a whole. Let’s hope that Sony (plus the writers and directors it chooses) recognise what they have on their hands and do right by Horizon.
Chris Connor is a coffee and whisky driven culture wordsmith, with work published at NME, Radio Times, Yahoo, and others.
Select First-Party PS5 Games Are on Sale at Best Buy
Best Buy’s been on a roll with their video game sales lately. Alongside a general sale on select video games for each platform, the retailer’s now offering discounts up to $30 off on select first-party PS5 games as part of its Deal of the Day. This includes games like Stellar Blade, LEGO Horizon Adventures, and Rise of the Ronin, but there are quite a few more that are worth checking out.
You can see the full list of available games from this sale below. Again, this is part of Best Buy’s Deal of the Day program which means the discounts will only last through today. So, if something catches your eye, you’ll want to act fast to pick it up. Some of these games have been price-matched at Amazon as well.
Best Buy Deal of the Day: First-Party PS5 Game Sale
As mentioned earlier, Best Buy has even more game deals for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch that are worth checking out right now alongside these limited-time PS5 deals. Games like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Sonic X Shadow Generations have all gotten nice discounts that are worth taking advantage of. These discounts just scratch the surface of what’s out there, though.
To see even more gaming deals, check out our overall roundup of the best video game deals. There you can see even more physical game deals we’ve come across recently, including a great sale on Nintendo Switch games right now at Woot, alongside some excellent PC game deals and discounts on hardware.
Another great place to find the best deals at the moment is our Daily Deals roundup. This highlights everything from game deals to discounts on tech that have caught our eye. At the moment it includes offers on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora for Xbox and an Anker Zolo Power Bank.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remake Details Reportedly Leak Online
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remake, reported to be in the works and set for release in 2025, has seen an alleged list of details leak onto the internet.
Mp1st reported that details for the unannounced game were accidentally released by a former employee at video game support studio Virtuos. Microsoft declined to comment when contacted by IGN.
According to Mp1st, Virtuos has remade Bethesda’s much-loved open world role-playing game using Unreal Engine 5, which suggests a significant rework rather than a more straightforward remaster. Gameplay changes were also allegedly detailed, including tweaks to Stamina, Sneak, Blocking, Archery, Hit Reaction, and the heads-up display (HUD).
As reported by Mp1st, Blocking was changed with action games and Soulslikes in mind because the original system was too “boring” and “frustrating.” Sneak icons are now allegedly highlighted, with damage calculation revamped. The knockdown that comes from Stamina being depleted is reportedly harder to trigger. And the HUD was redesigned to make it easier to understand. Elsewhere, hit reactions were added to make response clearer, and Archery was reportedly modernized in both first and third-person perspectives.
Word of an Oblivion remaster emerged in 2023 when documents published as part of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) versus Microsoft trial over the buyout of Activision Blizzard revealed a number of unannounced Bethesda games set for release in the years ahead. The list, put together in July 2020 ahead of Microsoft’s March 2021 purchase of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media, included the following:
Financial year 2022:
- Oblivion Remaster
- Indiana Jones game
Financial year 2023
- Doom Year Zero and DLC
- Project Kestrel
- Project Platinum
Financial year 2024
- The Elder Scrolls 6
- Project Kestrel: Expansion
- Licensed IP Game
- Fallout 3 Remaster
- Ghostwire: Tokyo Sequel
- Dishonored 3
- DOOM Year Zero DLC
Obviously a number of these games were either delayed or outright canceled. Doom Year Zero is now Doom: The Dark Ages and set for launch this year. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle didn’t launch until December 2024. And The Elder Scrolls 6 got nowhere near financial year 2024.
That Oblivion remaster is what we’re concerned about now, though. And it’s worth noting it was called a remaster in the Microsoft document. Perhaps the scope of the project changed and Bethesda went big on a remake. We’ll find out when the company finally unveils what has become one of the worst-kept secrets in all video games.
Meanwhile, which platforms will the Oblivion remake launch on? Microsoft is all-in on multiplatform releases now, and with the Nintendo Switch 2 waiting in the wings, Oblivion may open its gates to more than just PC, Xbox, and PlayStation players.
Leaker NateTheHate, who this week reported on the alleged release date of Nintendo’s Switch 2 reveal, has said the Oblivion remake is set to launch this June. If the Switch 2 comes out around that time, as has been reported, perhaps Oblivion will make the console’s launch window.
Microsoft has an Xbox Developer Direct set for next week, and there ZeniMax-owned id Software will reveal more on Doom: The Dark Ages. Microsoft has teased it will also reveal a brand new game from a mystery developer, but it doesn’t sound like it will be Oblivion. Windows Central’s Jez Corden has teased the game is “a new entry in a legendary Japanese IP which has decades of history, and should make a lot of fans happy.”
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.