Key Note Gaming

As a life-long lover of sci-fi battle scenes, it is always a joy to order a fleet of dozens of starships of all shapes and sizes to hyper-jump to a neighboring planet, then zoom in and watch as they burst into existence on the other side, bearing down on the entrenched enemy as they scramble fighters and bring their guns to bear. It’s something we’ve seen play out many times in Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and more, though few games let you control warfare between interstellar powers on the scale of Sins of a Solar Empire 2. It often takes hours of slow and steady management across layers of intimidatingly complex grand strategy systems to build up to those major confrontations, but the payoff is spectacular. The important thing to know going in is that while this is a bewilderingly complicated real-time strategy/4X hybrid that lets you zoom from a view of an entire solar system down to an individual spaceship in a fleet of hundreds, you do not need to know everything...

The Razer Kraken Kitty V2 Gengar Edition gaming headset remains sold out everywhere except eBay, meaning you'll currently need to pay a premium to get your hands on this popular collaboration. Razer's Kraken Kitty family has been one of the most popular gaming headset lineups in recent years due to its unique cat ear aesthetic. And of course, the only way you can make something so cute even more appealing is to brand it with an equally beloved property like Pokémon. So, it makes sense that Pokéfans would be after the Gengar Edition, which decks out the Kraken Kitty V2 in the ghost-type Pokémon's iconic purple style. But high demand left the headset out of stock on Razer's website almost immediately after the product listing went live, leaving interested buyers having to head over to eBay for any chance at snagging this one even a month after its initial release. Razer sells the Kraken Kitty V2 Gengar Edition for $139.99 — which is already $40 more than the stan...

PlayStation 5 exclusive Ghost of Yotei has a day-one patch that adds a number of important features to the game. Sony confirmed the patch notes, below, to IGN and the fact disc owners will have to install the update. Sony asked players to ensure they're on Version 1.006 moving forward. It’s worth running through some of what the patch does for Ghost of Yotei, given its clear importance. There are various improvements to performance, fixes for issues with ray tracing, and crash fixes. On gameplay, a long list of bugs is patched, there are general camera improvements, and various balance adjustments. Meanwhile, there’s a long list of animation improvements, pretty significant improvements to the environments, and fixes for the user interface. It’s also worth noting that the patch includes new photo mode additions (stamps and some new particles like birds native to Hokkaido). Overall, Ghost of Yotei’s day-one patch is an essential download. Ghost of Yotei itself has an official...

Given that the LEGO brand has been slapped onto almost every kind of family-friendly multiplayer game you can think of at this point, from kart racers to Super Smash Bros clones and even a Rock Band spin-off, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for the world’s biggest brick maker to construct its own monument to Mario Party. LEGO Party is something more than a block-based knockoff of Nintendo’s long-running virtual boardgame series, though. Sure, it might use Mario Party’s fundamentals as a baseplate to build upon, with a host of wacky minifigs in place of the Mushroom Kingdom’s finest, but every last piece here is absolutely pulsating with personality and there isn’t a single stud-based dud in the 60 minigames on offer. If lots of laughter is what you’re after, LEGO Party has all the right parts for assembling a fun night in with friends and family. If you’ve ever played one of Nintendo’s party-starters before then the basics of LEGO Party will be as easy to grasp as a tiny c...

Resident Evil has been one of the video game industry's quintessential, flagship horror games for years now, delivering everything over the years from unsettling, atmospheric haunting to outright jumpscares. But as its development team continues to search for new ways to freak people out, a few of its leaders are admitting that they're not always 100% certain what elements of Resident Evil are actually scary anymore. This comes from our interview with director Koshi Nakanishi and producer Masato Kumazama at Tokyo Game Show 2025. We started by talking about Resident Evil: Requiem's new protagonist, Grace, and her differences from the more action-oriented Leon S. Kennedy . That led to a discussion of why the series was pulling back on the heavy action elements in Requiem, as Nakanishi explains: I think you can broadly classify Resident Evil titles on a scale of how much they're like Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 7 was definitely on the 2 side of th...

Dan Houser, Rockstar Games co-founder and the writer behind the studio's biggest games, including the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, has said Bully 2 didn't happen because of "bandwidth issues." Bully was a humorous action game that put players in the role of high school outcast Jimmy while attending a pretentious private school. "Bully is a great, well-crafted action game that's been made even stronger with one of the best senses of humor around," IGN's Bully review read. Expect dozens and dozens of hours of fun." Fans have long-called for a sequel, which was once in development at Rockstar’s New England studio in the late 2000s . While Bully 2 was obviously never released, some of its ideas made it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption 2. In an exclusive interview with IGN on Saturday, September 27 at LA Comic Con, we asked Houser why we never got a sequel to 2006 fan-favorite Bully (also known as Canis...

Gearbox has revealed Borderlands 4’s first of two new Vault Hunters coming to the game as part of the paid Story Pack DLCs. C4SH, due out during the first quarter of 2026, is a playable character whose luck-based powers can make him either the best or worst character in the game, Gearbox development chief Randy Pitchford said during a panel at Tokyo Game Show 2025 . Here’s the official blurb, from Gearbox: A former casino dealer bot, C4SH is now a drifter who chases the probability-breaking highs of cursed eldritch artifacts. As luck would have it, Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned is full of cosmic horrors that harbor uncanny curios, some of which can surely bend the odds in C4SH's favor. C4SH has three unique Action Skills to choose from, as you’d expect, and three skill trees that each have three branches full of passives and other customization options. C4SH works differently to the other Vault Hunters, however, by having unpredictable Action Skills. Gearbox said the...

We've rounded up the best deals for Sunday, September 28, below, so don't miss out on these limited-time offers. PAC-MAN World Re-PAC for $10 Amazon has PlayStation 5 copies of PAC-MAN World Re-PAC on sale for just $10 today. This is the lowest we've ever seen the game, and this isn't a deal that will last for long. If you're unfamiliar, Re-PAC is a remake of Pac-Man World, originally released in 1999. This is a great opportunity to pick up and play a brand new 3D platformer at a low price. Apple Watch Ultra 3 for $734.99 The Apple Watch Ultra 3 just released, bringing a slightly bigger screen, better battery life, satellite connectivity, and more to Apple's premium watch line. Right now, Best Buy has Open Box Excellent units available for $734.99, which saves you $65 off the MSRP. If you're looking to upgrade but want to save some cash, this is a great deal to look at. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach for $59.49 For the first time since launc...

The Silent Hill series has been at the forefront of feel-bad survival horror storytelling for close to three decades now, and with the success of 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake and the recent release of Silent Hill f, it felt like the right time to take a look back through Konami’s catalogue of psychological horrors to see how each scarefest stacks up. Now, admittedly the series hasn’t been immune to the odd misstep here and there, and there have certainly been periods of time where things have gone more downhill than Silent Hill. Thus you won’t find the likes of forgettable mainline entries like Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour here, or the inappropriately aggressive shoot ‘em up action of Silent Hill: The Arcade, or indeed the co-operative dungeon crawling of Silent Hill: Book of Memories that absolutely nobody asked for. With all that in mind, here’s IGN’s picks for the very best entries in the Silent Hill series, from portable terrors to playable teasers. 9. Sile...

EA is reportedly closing in on a $50 billion deal to go private in what could become the biggest leveraged buyout of all time. Details on what could be a monumental shift for the Madden and Battlefield publisher come from a Wall Street Journal report. The site’s sources say investors include private-equity firm Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Affinity Partners, an investment firm led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is also said to be in the mix. Should the alleged deal be made official, an announcement could be made as soon as Monday. EA had a market value of about $43 billion before Wall Street Journal’s story was published. That jumped nearly 15% to around $48 billion since word of a move to go private first arrived. A $50 billion deal to remove EA from the public stock exchange would be about $18 billion more than the $31.8 billion buyout of Texas power company TXU , which occurred in 2007. Should the EA deal go through, it would likel...

It'd be fair to say that Magic: The Gathering is having a very busy year. From the record-breaking Final Fantasy set , to trips to space with Edge of Eternities , this year sees the release calendar split between Universes Beyond (using third-party IP like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Marvel's Spider-Man ) and Magic's own characters and settings. All of the upcoming new sets we know about are already available to preorder or buy on Amazon . That said, please also consult your local game store to find out when they're accepting preorders as well. MTG: 2025 Release Calendar - At a Glance Here’s your set-by-set guide to what’s dropping in 2025, breaking down release dates, when you can get your hands on everything, where you can preorder, and even includes a running list of every Secret Lair drop so far this year. We're starting off with a quick glance over the 2025 release calendar, but let's jump into a more in-depth look as well. Innistrad Remastered ...