gaming

After the Universes Beyond set The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth, Magic is once again returning to J.R.R. Tolkien's iconic world, this time featuring cards, characters, locations, and moments from The Hobbit. The new collaboration is available to preorder now before it comes out August 14. Like previous Magic releases, there are plenty of ways to get your hands on cards, from booster packs and bundles to a Draft Night kit and beautiful Scene Boxes. But for the hardcore collectors, Collector Booster packs are the way to go. Unfortunately, due to high demand, single Collector Booster packs are sold out on Amazon . If you're still interested in securing a few Collector Booster packs, TCG Player has them for preorder . The catch, however, is that they're marked up significantly compared to what Amazon was offering them for. Some listings on TCG Player go as high as $87.90, whereas when they were in stock at Amazon they were $37.99. So if you're ok with paying exorbitant prices and don't want to miss the boat or wait for an Amazon restock, TCG Player might be the route for you. Why are Collector Booster packs so expensive? Regardless of the expansion, these special booster packs function similarly to Play Booster packs in that they each contain 15 Magic cards. The difference is that Collector packs contain up to five or six Rare or Mythic rare cards, whereas a Play Booster pack contains just one or two. Additionally, cards found in Collector Booster packs are more likely to have alternate or showcase treatments (or whichever term the respective decides to use), and some treatments can only be found in Collector Boosters, increasing the expected value of cracking a pack to significantly higher than average. With The Hobbit specifically, you have the chance to open a one of 500 serialized Smaug, the Magnificent headliner gold card that are only available in Collector Boosters. TCG Player listings for the Showcase version of this card are around $149.99, while the base version of the card is around $90, and both of these are much easier to pull. There aren't any listings for the Borderless gold version quite yet, but with only 500 getting printed and the popularity of the Hobbit IP, I wouldn't be shocked to see this card break $1,000. Myles Obenza is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Bluesky @mylesobenza.bsky.social .

My first time going to an in-person Pokémon drop was disheartening, to say the least.

When you're a self-funded, self-publishing studio like Rebellion, the team behind the Sniper Elite series and last year's breakout new IP, Atomfall , you have to find a few ways to stand out from the pack. Steam has ballooned in size in recent years. In 2012, Steam would see about 30 new games per month , or an average of one per day. In March of this year, 2,472 new games hit Steam, or an average of more than 80 new games every day . Between tiny indie teams of as few as one person and mega AAA studios, there are studios like Rebellion trying to survive in the middle, and by many accounts, it's getting harder. But Rebellion has some battle-tested ways to push out of the crowd. "The key, I think, is controlling budgets and controlling ambition and having a very focused idea," CEO Jason Kingsley told me. "So a lot of our games are named in a way that would allow people to guess what they're all about. Sniper Elite is about being an elite sniper. Zombie Army is--guess what--about an army of zombies, you know?" This sort of simplicity, Kingsley believes, helps consumers quickly make up their minds as to whether a game is for them or not. "And, you know, even Alien Deathstorm , which we've announced recently, it's about a deathstorm with aliens," he continued. "I know it sounds a bit stupid, but when we don't have the marketing money of people, brilliant people like Ubisoft or Electronic Arts, or whoever it might be, we have to have all those things that will allow people to guess what we are." Continue Reading at GameSpot

Ever wished you could smell like your favorite medieval RPG? Well, that oddly specific dream is now a reality, at least for fans of the Kingdom Come franchise. Developer Warhorse Studios has partnered with Kintsugi Perfumes to create the Kintsugi Perfumes Kingdom Come Eau de Parfum , which is available for €156 (~$182 USD) via the Warhorse Studios webstore. The perfume comes in a 1.7-ounce bottle, but scent fans on a budget can opt for the cheaper Kintsugi Perfumes Kingdom Come Eau de Parfum Tester , which comes in a 2ml bottle and is available to purchase for just €8 (~$9 USD). If you're wondering what in Bohemia this perfume smells like, the answer is crisp apple, fresh herbs, lavender, mint, chamomile, rose, elderflower, sage, honey, olibanum, leather, papyrus, and birch. Created by perfumer Martin Švach, the Kingdom Come Eau de Parfum is meant to represent protagonist Henry of Skalitz's journey through Bohemia in Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its 2025 sequel, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. "Perfumer Martin Švach drew inspiration from the notes encountered by the main character Henry within the game," the scent's product description explains. "He gathers sage, chamomile, and lavender to brew healing potions, and consumes apples or honey to gain energy for fulfilling tasks assigned by his commander, Jan Zizka. These elements are reflected in the [perfume's] fragrance pyramid, featuring ingredients that accompany the player throughout the game world." Continue Reading at GameSpot

Resident Evil Requiem protagonist Grace Ashcroft seemed to be an instant hit with series fans following the game's launch back in February; so much so that when Nvidia unveiled an AI-powered DLSS 5 makeover for the character just a few weeks later, the pushback was strong and swift. And speaking to Eurogamer in the aftermath of that controversy, Requiem game director Koshi Nakanishi has said he sees the passionate response as positive, suggesting it means the development team got Grace's original design "right". Read more

Sony PlayStation users in the US could be due a collective $7.85 million (£5.8m) in refunds after a judge primarily approved a class-action settlement in an antitrust lawsuit. Read more

Back in March, Nvidia revealed unto the world DLSS5, the next version of its upscaling and frame generation tech. It was ugly as sin, turning Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft into, in the words of our own James, yassified Instagram models . The response from developers and onlookers alike was overwhelmingly negative, but of course Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn't see it that way (he's still wrong, by the way). Yet amongst the mess is a glass half full outlook from Requiem's producer, Masato Kumzawa. Read more

A little while ago our deputy editor James 'RAM-bo' Archer said he wanted us all to get more involved with hardware criticism, because we all appear to think that videogames are powered by telluric currents and swearing. He offered me specifically the chance to write about a laptop - the relatively affordable (I stress, "relatively") MSI Cyborg 14 , loaned to RPS for a few weeks by Swipe Right PR. It was a grievous imposition, dealt out by somebody I had thought a friend. I do need a gaming laptop, and I am interested in the monstrous convolutions of the hardware industry, but I'm not really your guy for hot chat about keyboard depth and graphics card benchmarking. I care about that stuff a lot less than, to pick an example at random, climbing mountains. By happy coincidence, when James came knocking I was about to go on a 105 mile hike through the Eryri national park in Wales, including an ascent of Yr Wyddffa, the country's highest peak. The compromise was as obvious as it was irresistable: I would attempt to review the MSI Cyborg 14 while hiking up Welsh mountains. Read more

Unknown Worlds have released the PC system requirements for Subnautica 2 , the ocean exploration and survival game hitherto defined by extravagant legal clashes between publishers Krafton and certain ousted and/or reinstated UW executives. I fear they are going to make you cry. The system specs, not the executives. Read more

The Outer Worlds . It's a game I haven't thought about much since reviewing The Outer Worlds 2 last year, and it's just gotten its first patch in about three years. That's because Obsidian are planning to delist its base version from storefronts at the end of this month, leaving the more polished Spacer's Choice edition as the definitive Outer Worlds going forwards. They're also adding grenades to it, as an apparent make good aimed at pyromaniacs. Read more

Yep. May 1st 2002. You came and looked upon the Heart and Akulakahn for the first time. You brought Wraithguard, because the nice guy in the mask and loincloth had need of it. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind came out. It's now raised a glass of sujamma to salute its 24th anniversary . If you're looking for ways to celebrate, a fresh Morrowind modathon 's just kicked off on Nexus Mods, and one of its early entries adds more tax-adjacent missions than the average accountant tackles on a yearly basis. Read more

After an earlier leak , we now have an official release date for Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the high-stakes, runs-based racing adventure set in a galaxy far, far away from developer Fuse Games . Read more

Publisher Krafton's removal from the Subnautica 2 Steam page may have been "blown up a little bigger than it was meant to", as developers from Unknown Worlds have reaffirmed that the partnership is ongoing. Read more

Capcom cut an entire chapter from Resident Evil Requiem ahead of its release, as part of a "rigorous process of selection and elimination". Read more