Category: Video Gaming

After what felt like a couple of centuries in the making, EA has finally revived its classic Skate franchise with a new, free-to-play entry in the series. It’s an early-access title right now, so it’s fairly barebones in terms of its presentation, and the live-service aspect has sparked quite a bit of, ah, discussion among longtime fans of the series. But there is one thing that folks seem to be in agreement on with the new Skate: They nailed the feel of skating just like the original games did.

Out of the box, however, it may not feel exactly the way you remember. But there’s a pretty easy solution to that problem in the game’s settings, where certain “assists” are activated by default that make skating a much more forgiving experience. In addition to those must-tweak settings, we have some recommendations for other options related to custom ramps that most players will want to consider, and and audio option related to the game’s narrator that could make your experience just a little less irritating in the long run. Let’s take a look.

Best settings to make new Skate make feel like the old Skate

Navigate into the settings menu, then choose Gameplay, and then tab over to the Assists menu. For the true, old-school Skate experience, turn everything in the difficulty options section down. I did, however, allow myself to keep Allow Fall Height at 1, the middle option, for the sake of sick jumps.

But wait, there’s more! Below that you’ll also find On-Board Helpers, and it’s the same story here as it is above: turn them off. But if you’d like to ease yourself into it, you can leave on Prevent Low Air Spins, which makes it a little easier to maintain control at high speeds by preventing you from turning yourself when you’re bouncing slightly. But eventually you’ll want to turn that one off too.

There’s also an Off-Board Helpers section at the bottom of this menu, but you can do whatever with those since those settings make it easier to get around on foot. You can do far more on foot in this game, like climbing up the sides of buildings, than you could in the old ones, so we endorse anything that makes that go faster so we can get back to skating.

Congrats, you’ve turned the new Skate into the same sort of painful and unforgiving experience that the old games were. But there are a couple other very important settings you’ll also want to know about before too long.

Turn off other people’s quick-drop ramps

The new Skate brings back and improves upon one of Skate 3’s best features: the ability to place ramps and other objects anywhere you want in the world with a couple of button presses. The downside of this, however, is that this new Skate is an always-online game in which the world is constantly filled with other players, and they can also place ramps wherever they want, too. Knowing our fellow gamers the way we do, it’s not hard to imagine a number of different scenarios in which folks might be really irritating with their ramp powers.

Fortunately, this problem can be wrangled quickly in a way that you probably didn’t even know existed since you can’t access it from the normal settings menu. To find it, you’ll need to pull up the quick drop menu by pressing right on the d-pad, and then press the Options/Start button to open the quick drop settings menu. Scroll to the Multiplayer section at the bottom. Here you can govern whether you’ll be subject to ramps placed by other players–and, crucially, you can make it so other players can’t mess with the ramps that you place.

Once you’re done with that, there’s still one more setting you may want to keep in mind, particularly in the early goings.

How to turn off the narrator

Throughout your time in Skate, a nice digital lady called Vee runs you through the tutorials and missions as you learn the game and progress through, similar to the cameraman role that Giovanni Reda played in the original three games. Unfortunately, Vee is not as much fun to listen to as Reda was, and she really talks way, way more than she should, often repeating the same message over and over every time you return to your session marker, which is maddening. Fortunately, you can disable her idle chatter completely by turning off Gameplay Vee Comments in the Audio settings menu.

Mario Tennis Fever is set to release exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on February 12, 2026. Announced during the Mario 40th anniversary portion of the September Nintendo Direct, the game features a new Fever Shot mechanic, 30 Fever Rackets, and 38 playable characters – the most of any game in the series to date. It’s now available to preorder for $69.99 at all the usual retailers (see it at Amazon). Read on to see what this game is, where you can buy it, and more.

Preorder Mario Tennis Fever

Mario Tennis Fever Preorder Bonus?

So far, no preorder bonuses have been announced for Mario Tennis Fever. If that changes, I’ll update this section.

What Is Mario Tennis Fever?

Mario Tennis Fever is the latest in a series of Mario-themed tennis games dating back to the Game Boy era, and the first since Mario Tennis Aces arrived on the original Switch in 2018. Fever brings back familiar shots like topspins, slices, and lobs, but introduces some new defensive maneuvers like slides and dives to help you whack the ball back across the court.

Keeping rallies going builds up your Fever Gauge. Once full, you can unleash a powerful Fever Shot with an augmented effect based on the Fever Racket you have equipped. You can create an icy spot under your opponent with an Ice Racket, shrink your opponent with the Mini Mushroom Racket, and create a shadow self to play beside with the Shadow Racket.

The game has numerous modes to play, including a competitive Tournament mode and a Trial Towers mode that has you complete various objectives during matches. Then there’s Mix-It-Up mode, which introduces new rules as you play. That mode also includes Wonder Flowers you can touch to get some trippy additions to the court. There’s also an elaborate-looking Adventure mode that involves the baby versions of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Waluigi re-learning how to play the game. It looks pretty silly, in a fun way.

Online, you can play casual matches against opponents in the Online Room, or you can choose to play in Ranked Matches. And if you’re feeling nostalgic for the Wii era, you can also swing your Joy-Con 2 to hit the ball.

Other Preorder Guides

Looking for what games are now available to buy? Check out our guide to all of the Switch 2 game preorders now live after the September Nintendo Direct.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

This afternoon my Destiny 2 clanmate texted me to say: “If you die in Solo Ops or Patrol you can no longer respawn 😂”. That can’t be right, I thought. That would be such a fundamental bug that it would effectively break the game. Anyway, I loaded in, did some testing, and you can probably guess where this is going.

From my own experience, once you die the respawn button will appear after the usual countdown, but cannot be interacted with. In order to start playing again you either need to go to orbit (ie, leave the activity) or switch characters. Which is as big a problem as it sounds. The bug even seems to extend to Patrol zones, although I was occasionally able to self-revive.

From an outside perspective, I think it was probably fairly obvious that MindsEye was never going to do very well. There was barely any game to show off, so they mostly didn’t. What they did show didn’t look very good either, and when it came out, it was a glitchy mess. This all put 300 staff members at risk of being laid off, the full extent of which still being not particularly clear. And in a recent interview, the game’s lead actor Alex Hernandez has shared his own experience of being the face of the game (spoiler alert: it’s not great).

Speaking on the FRVR Podcast, Hernandez spoke of what it was like having his face attached to such a mess of a game, quite plainly saying, “It’s hard. I’m not gonna lie about that. It’s a difficult thing to spend two-and-a-half years on a project that you’re really proud of and you’re proud of your contribution to it… for the 300 or so employees at Build A Rocket Boy, you’re like ‘I hope this goes really well.’ I want them all to get raises and have a giant party and have this be the job that launches their career.”

Perhaps the more upsetting thing to hear Hernandez say was how his name will “now be associated with something that many people have regarded as pretty f*****g bad. And as an artist, as a man, as a gamer, that hurts, it’s wildly painful.” This is an aspect of an increased use of motion and facial capture we’re not really thinking of.

My best guess is that actors’ real faces are being used more and more to help get better and more believable in-game performances (those who know better feel free to sound off in the comments). The trade-off here is that you are then thrusting some of these actors into the spotlight, one which features a community that, as many of us know, isn’t always the kindest, and I am putting that as politely as possible.

Personally, I always prefer a tightly designed character over motion capture anyway – even if I did enjoy getting a first-person perspective of Mads Mikkelsen in Death Stranding – but perhaps there’s yet another lesson to be learned here in the need for safeguards to be put in place for the people that are being put at the front of high profile games.

There are a bevy of games available in the world that let you play as what can only be described as “a little guy.” However, you can throw all of them out of the window, because I have found the game that has the perfect iteration of such a creature. It is called Letters to Arralla, and in it you quite simply play as a turnip, who has the juiciest derriere I’ve ever seen in perhaps any game ever. Yes, even more so than one of those anime gacha games, this turnip’s rump has got some serious jiggle physics.

A turnip with a pleasant dumptruck does not a game make, though, so here’s the lowdown: you deliver mail! There are plenty of equally funny “little guys” who you can bring mail to on an Australian island, with the added benefit of being able to open said mail. As the game’s Steam page notes, this is a crime – no, really, don’t read other people’s mail, it’s not allowed – but apparently in Letter to Arralla’s world it’s encouraged!

Said pieces of mail include pictogram puzzles you have to solve, and throughout your journey you’ll also need to help the island’s inhabitants figure out personal problems. There’s no pressure to do anything at any particular time, you’re welcome to play around, “throw stuff,” and even “call your mum!”

We might be heading into autism in this hemisphere, but Australian developer Little Pink Clouds will slowly be making their way towards summer, and that’s exactly the kind of vibe this game gives off. Summer is arguably a video game genre unto itself, with games like Super Mario Sunshine, Outrun, and Boku no Natsuyasumi all being peak examples of such a thing. I think Letters to Arralla could fit quite neatly into that, so it’s one I hope to be able to make time for. Even if it’s only to warm myself back up again.

It’s also out today! And you can pick it up on Steam right here.

Our expert Hollow Knight players are hard at work adventuring through the depths of Pharloom to unearth everything Silksong has to offer, updating IGN’s Hollow Knight: Silksong Walkthrough as they go. While it’s still in Act 1, we still have you covered with our latest findings, along with the recommended Silksong progression route to get the most out of the game.

Here’s every Silksong main quest and Wish (side quests) that we recommend doing, in the order we recommend, so far. The newest ones are at the bottom.

Silksong Act 1 Progression Guide and Boss Fights

The latest walkthrough updates start you off on your adventure across Pharloom as it helps you through the beginning of Act 1, passing through The Marrow, Deep Docks, and Far Fields. We’ll update this list with more Walkthrough updates as soon as possible.

During Act 1, there are a handful of Wishes and items you can hunt down for rewards, and despite being mostly optional, some of them are very important! We recommend the following:

If you’re just starting out in Silksong, we have guides to help, whether it’s tracking down a specific item or Ability, or simply wanting to learn about core mechanics. We recommend the following guides for beginners:

Meg Koepp is a Guides Editor on the IGN Guides team, with a focus on trends. When she’s not working, you can find her playing an RPG or cuddling her corgi.

Borderlands 4 is now out, and amidst several issues that players have reported, it looks like there’s a bug that could cause you to lose all of your skill points. So what’s causing this glitch to trigger? Gearbox says that disconnecting and rejoining a multiplayer session or a game crash in single-player could be the problem here, and it says that it has noted here. There is currently no way to restore those lost skill points, and there’s no indicator yet of when a fix for this bug will be released.

“Players may lose skill points after disconnecting and re-joining a multiplayer session, or crashing in single player. In these instances, they have lost all or most of their skill points. Leveling up more and using the Respec machine do not restore the lost skill points,” Gearbox wrote on its support page.

Some players have unfortunately encountered this bug, causing them to lose hours of progress. While the game is still playable, doing so without any skill points invested in your Vault Hunter makes it much more challenging, given that the game features level-scaling in its world. Skills help to even the playing field and can unlock powerful skills to help you survive longer in a fight, and Borderlands 4 places a bigger emphasis on building a powerful Vault Hunter with these abilities and the right gear.

This is just one of several issues plaguing Borderlands 4 players currently, leading to the game being slammed with negative reviews on Steam. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has responded to the complaints through his X social media account, but his replies have not been well-received by the Borderlands fandom.

Gearbox has been monitoring issues with the PC build of the game and has posted several suggestions for players experiencing issues while it works on addressing problems in Borderlands 4. If you’re still planning to play, you can check out our Borderlands 4 guides hub for several helpful features, tips, and tricks.

Finding The Heart of the Woods is one of the three main objectives you’ll have to complete in Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s later Act 3 section. After you emerge from the abyss with your new spectacular Silk Soar ability, the snail shamans will put you to work again, hunting down three ancient hearts from across Pharloom.

The Old Hearts sees you heading to three previously uncharted areas, and finding the entrance to each is actually rather tricky. The Heart of the Woods, especially, has a somewhat nonsensical entrance you could theoretically spend hours trying to find. That, or you could check this guide and be on your merry way towards the area’s challenging bosses instead.

The Crew Unlimited, a fan project making Ubisoft racer The Crew playable again following its unceremonious shutdown last year, released yesterday, September 15th. There’s been some early issues to rectify, with the developers having put out two hotfixes already and emphasised that they’re “not responsible” for any problems caused by people having grabbed “broken/corrupted game files” from “shady sources”.

As we reported earlier this month, The Crew Unlimited’s devs started working on it not long after Ubisoft pulled the racer’s official servers offline in March 2024, rendering it unplayable. Cue a group of fans deciding to set up a server emulator that’d allow them to get it up and running again for players who still had the game files installed.

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