Deep Silver and Volition have today confirmed that Saints Row has officially been delayed. Volition’s Saints Row reboot is now due to arrive on August 23, 2022, seven months later than its initially-planned arrival date of February 25, 2022.
Volition chief creative officer Jim Boone announced the delay via the Saints Row Twitter account. In an extended post on the Saints Row website Boone conceded the team misjudged the impact the COVID-19 pandemic would ultimately have on Saints Row’s development.
“Our priority is to create the best Saints Row game yet and, if we released on the original date, it wouldn’t be up to the standards we’ve set ourselves, and that you’re expecting and deserve,” wrote Boone. “The team just need more time to do our vision justice; we’re doing some fine tuning and there won’t be much change in the game outside of overall quality and polish.
“In all honesty, we underestimated the impact COVID would have on our schedule, although everyone adapted very quickly to the working from home arrangement and continued to be incredibly productive.
“Rest assured, there will not be any changes to the story or the characters or anything that we’ve lovingly imagined over the last few years and already shared with you.
“Over the past two years, all corners of the entertainment industry have been affected/impacted in one way or another. As gamers ourselves, we know what it feels like to have something delayed which you’ve been looking forward to; it’s frustrating and you feel disappointed. But we also know that when we finally get Saints Row in your hands, it will have been worth the wait. It’s our absolute priority to get this right.”
Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.He loves Red Faction. Don't ask him stuff about Saints Row.
You could’ve tracked me down in any given year of my life and gotten me excited about the idea of running my own dinosaur park, and Jurassic World Evolution 2 makes good on a lot of the important parts of that promise. While it lacks the customization and management depth of Frontier's other recent, excellent park-builders, Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, getting to see these prehistoric beasts at eye-level from one of those stylish ‘90s tour Jeeps has never looked more enticing. At least until you lightly bump into a goat and the physics engine sends several tons of steel hurtling into the air like a Looney Tunes gag. Yeah, there are still some rough bits.
The stars of the show are, of course, the over 70 species of unlockable dinosaurs, aquatic reptiles, and flying pterosaurs you can put on display. And they are fantastic replicas of the models used in the movies, with lifelike animations and spot-on sound for everything from the iconic T. rex to more obscure, but equally cool, species like the Baryonyx. The armchair paleontologist in me is a bit disappointed that they don't reflect newer research on dinosaurs that has come along since 1994 – there’s nary a feathered velociraptor in sight – but on the other hand it's a Jurassic Park game, so I can understand why they wouldn't want to diverge from the look of the films.
Caring for them involves creating enclosures with food, water, and appropriate terrain, much like in Planet Zoo, but here their needs are quite a bit simplified and sometimes counter-intuitive. Raptors don't need trees or tall grass? What? Climate doesn't seem to play a role at all either, as any species can live perfectly comfortably in the Canadian wilderness just as easily as the baking Arizona desert with no heating or cooling facilities. It's cool that there are so many different terrain types this time around, but the fact that they don't present any unique challenges is a let-down. It's a trade-off, I guess, because the loose set of rules also gives you a bit more freedom with the overall look of your habitats.
Dinosaurs' needs are quite a bit simplified and sometimes counter-intuitive.
I wasn't that impressed with the other park management aspects, either. You can't even set basic costs like ticket and snack prices, and while I didn't miss that micromanagement too much, the park feels less alive when you don't have to hire or take care of souvenir shop cashiers or janitors.
Rangers, who are responsible for repairs, feeding, and capturing escapees, are nameless, faceless grunts whom you apparently have an unlimited supply of. Likewise, you can't click on individual guests to learn about them, so the simulation of their wants and needs is as deep as a puddle. So is all the water in the park, by the way, outside of special enclosures specifically for aquatic species. Your scientists, who bring back fossils, hatch dinosaurs, heal sick or injured specimens, and research new buildings, are the only hires you'll care about, and they can now sabotage your park if you don't allow them regular vacation time, which adds at least a little bit of tension to staff management.
Spare No Expense
Maximizing income is a simple minigame of adding modules to your amenities to appeal to specific guest types, which boils down to mousing over the list, seeing which ones will add the most profit, and then building those. Streamlining the busywork so you can focus on the dinosaurs makes sense to a certain degree, but I feel like Evolution 2 takes it a dino-sized step too far. Even if it is a much richer experience than the first game, the gap between this and most other park sims is significant. The ability to speed up time is a really welcome addition, though, especially when you're just waiting to have enough money to hatch a new species or repair a critical facility. The absence of this feature created huge chunks of boring downtime in the original, especially when a storm knocked out power and your dinos ran up a huge bill by eating guests and you had to pay it off by just waiting it out; this lets you mostly skip over all of that.
Visual customization is also fairly lacking. While some buildings, like food and beverage stands, let you choose the style and color of every single piece individually, others have only one or two pre-made appearances. There's a terrain sculpting tool that works decently, but it's nowhere near as powerful as the one in Planet Zoo, and paths built along slopes don't even level themselves off, so you can end up with something like a sidewalk canted at a 30 degree angle with guests merrily strolling along when they should be tumbling to their doom.
Most species will come with genetic problems, like short lifespans or aggressive tendencies.
Breeding your own dinosaurs is at least a bit more strategic and meaningful this time around. Most species will come with genetic problems, like short lifespans or aggressive tendencies, and those have to be compensated for by your scientists by adding DNA from other species. It also provides an incentive to complete the genome of species you already have the ability to clone, since that allows you more room to add genetic modifications.
The personality of each dinosaur really matters, and when my star raptor, Victoria, kept getting into fights, I was left with a tough choice. Putting her with other raptors resulted in frequent, expensive vet bills for both her and whichever other member of the pack she had decided to bully. But raptors can't live comfortably in isolation, so I couldn't just place her in her own, separate enclosure, either. Ultimately, I just had to let nature run its course: she kept getting in fights, and I withheld treatment until she died of her injuries. As Ian Malcolm might say, "F- around, find out." In the next batch of eggs, I made sure to throw out the ones with that trait.
You Didn't Say The Magic Word
This sim is also packed with unlockables, which can be nice if you want help setting goals, but frustrating if you merely want to jump into sandbox mode and build the park of your dreams. There is, astoundingly, only one map available in sandbox at first, and all of the rest must be unlocked either in frustrating timed challenges or story-based "Chaos Theory" scenarios, which mostly follow the plots of the various Jurassic films. This is probably the place you’ll want to start, since they give you a reasonable amount of freedom to play how you want and feature cameos from major series characters, including some of the original actors like Jeff Goldblum.
You'll also have to unlock the vast majority of the available dinosaur species, but I didn't mind this as much. Most of the important ones from the original film are available very early on, and it was nice to still be discovering new species to mix things up even more than 30 hours in. Pterosaurs and aquatic species especially got a lot more love this time around (they weren’t included at all when the first game launched), with more customizable enclosures that let you focus your entire park on them more easily, if that's your thing.
There is also a campaign mode which changes up the formula in some interesting ways: after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service – and the CIA for some reason? – have recruited Claire Dearing and Owen Grady to help them capture wild dinosaurs and place them into non-profit sanctuaries. The former is voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard reprising her role, but Chris Pratt must’ve been too busy voicing literally every animated character and is nowhere to be found. It's only a few hours long and feels more like a tutorial than anything, because disabling the already meager economic aspects of Evolution 2 leaves you with even less to do. But the scenarios themselves are fairly novel, giving us our first look into a world where humans and dinosaurs have to coexist.
Riot Forge, Riot Game's third-party publishing label, announced three new games set in the League of Legends universe Tuesday, two of which are available now.
Ruined King: A League of Legends Story is a single-player turn-based RPG developed by Airship Syndicate, the same team behind Battle Chasers: Nightwar and Darksiders: Genesis. Ruined King takes place in Runeterra's regions of Bilgewater and the Shadow Isles, letting you form a party of League of Legends characters like Ahri, Miss Fortune, or Braum to investigate a blight known as the Black Mist and defeat a common enemy — presumably the titular Ruined King.
It’s time to save Bilgewater, Captain. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story from @AirshipSyn is available now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Playstation, Steam, GOG, and Epic Games.
Ruined King is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC (Steam, GOG, Epic) with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions "available soon." Existing PS4 and Xbox One users will be able to upgrade their versions to next-gen for free. The standard edition of Ruined King will cost you $29.99.
Next up is Hextech: Mayhem, which might sound familiar to anyone watching the shockingly good Arcane Netflix series.
It’s showtime in Hextech Mayhem: A League Legends Story, the most bombastic rhythm runner from @TotallyChoice. Cause musical pandemonium as you bomb to the beat and groove to the mayhem. Available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Netflix coming soon.
Hextech: Mayhem is a "rhythm runner" developed by Choice Provisions, the studio behind the BIT.TRIP series. In a 2.5D world, players will control explosives enthusiast Ziggs as he runs through a platformer-style world with special jumps and attacks powered by an arsenal of bombs, all set to the beat of music. That's out now on Switch and PC (Epic, GOG, Steam) for 9.99.
Riot Forge's third game, due out in 2022, is Song of Nunu, developed by Tequila Works, the studio behind Rime, The Sexy Brutale, and VR games like The Invisible Hours and Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son. Song of Nunu is a single-player third-person adventure game following Nunu, a young boy who befriends a yeti named Willump in the cold land of Frejlord. You'll solve puzzles with music magic, fight off wolves, and explore the frigid landscape. Riot Forge plans to release that on Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, and PC via Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store.
Riot Forge also teased a new game called "CONV/RGENCE," a single-player 2D action-platformer with time control mechanics. You'll play as Ekko, a character fans of Arcane should be familiar with, and explore the cities of Piltover and Zaun. That's being developed by Double Stallion, the studio behind other action games like Speed Brawl, OK KO Turbo, and Loud House: Outta Control. It's due out next year.
It’s been some time since we’ve given an update on CONV/RGENCE. Unfortunately, it’s hard to develop a game when your main champion keeps rewinding time, but luckily @dblstallion is still hard at work. pic.twitter.com/cMVGgimi1c
Finally, Riot Forge briefly teased an untitled game set in League of Legends' Demacia region, a great white stone city founded as a safe haven from sorcery after the Rune Wars.
It's all a big push from Riot Games and Riot Forge to introduce new players to League's world of Runeterra. While we wait for the newer games, why not check out the story behind K/DA, the K-pop/League of Legends sensation that took the world by storm three years ago.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/champion of breakfast for IGN.
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The newest Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer has arrived, and it teases that our MCU is "getting visitors… from every universe," including Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Electro, Sandman, and Lizard.
It also appears Doctor Octopus may, at parts of the film, be on the side of good, or at least trying to stop the madness that has ensued. While we see Spider-Man and Doc Ock fighting, there are also scenes of theme peacefully talking and discussing what is really going on.
We also catch a glimpse of various Spidey suits, including one that looks like a fusion of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.
Spider-Man: No Way Home will swing exclusively in theaters on December 17, 2021, and also stars Zendaya's MJ, Jacob Batalon's Ned Leeds, Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, Benedict Wong's Wong, J.K. Simmons J. Jonah Jameson, and many more.
While we've seen a lot of what this film has to offer, there are hopefully plenty of surprises waiting for us. As of this writing, we still have yet to have any official confirmation one way or another as to whether Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's versions of Spider-Man will make their way over to the MCU. Even though Garfield has said he's not involved in this film, anything is possible.
For those looking to secure tickets to Spider-Man: No Way Home, it was also revealed that they will go on sale on Monday, November 29.
Today there aren't too many new deals (you'll have to wait until this weekend for the next big wave), but the few that have gone live today are excellent. The highly rated Dell S2721DGF 27" gaming monitor was marked down earlier in November, but today Dell has sweetened the deal by adding in a $50 gift card. The Alienware S5000 gaming chair (a branded Vertagear design) is $60 off AND has a bonus $100 gift card attached to it. The newest generation Bose QuietComfort headphones with 4x the battery life of the QC35 sees its first discount ever. Dell and HP have big price drops on their RTX 3070 equipped gaming laptops. These deals and more below.
Dell S2721DGF 27" 1440p GSYNC Gaming Monitor
Update: A bonus $50 Dell eGift Card is now added to the deal!
This excellent monitor has hit a new price low for Black Friday. It's one of the best 27" gaming monitors you can buy for under $500. The S2721DGF boasts a high quality IPS panel (better than the VA panel found on the popular S3220DGF model). It features wide viewing angles and excellent color rendition including 98% DCI-P3 color coverage, a super fast 1ms response time and up to 165Hz refresh rate through the DisplayPort. It's also FreeSync Premium Pro and G-SYNC compatible.
Alienware S5000 Gaming Chair
Factor in the gift card and you're basically paying $239. The Alienware S5000 gaming chair is produced by Vertagear and is modeled after Vertagear's best selling model, the SL-5000. This chair features a breathable PVC leather upholstery with extra dense foam padding, included neck rest and lumbar pillows, adjustable seat height, tilt, and recline (up to 140 degrees), adjustable armrests, 360-degree swivel, and 260-pound weight rating.
Bose QuietComfort 45 Noise Cancelling Headphones
The Bose QuietComfort is the most recent addition to the legendary QuietComfort lineup. The biggest upgrade has been the battery life. The QC45 boasts up to 24 hours of battery life, which is a whopping 4x more than the QC35's 6 hours of runtime. The QC45 has finally been upgraded with a USB Type-C port with the ability to fast charge. Noise cancelling has been slightly improved this time around and pretty much everything else has remained the same. This is the first time we've seen the QC45 discounted at all.
$50 Nintendo eShop Gift Card for $45
Save 10% off your next $50 worth of purchases at the Nintendo eShop. This is actually great timing since we already know there there's going to be a great Nintendo eShop Black Friday Sale coming up very soon. You can combine this with the "no tax" trick you can perform in the eShop (by using an Oregon zip code). If you're in California like me, you'll be saving 15% off.
Alienware Aurora R12 RTX 3060 Ti Gaming PC
Not only is this the best Alienware gaming PC deal right now, it's probably the least expensive prebuilt gaming PC equipped with an RTX 3060 Ti video card anywhere. With the RTX 3060 Ti video card selling for over $800 on eBay, getting a fully built Alienware system with an 11th generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SDD storage for $1399 seems like an absolute steal. The RTX 3060 Ti is much more powerful than the standard RTX 3060; in fact, it's as powerful as the RTX 2080 SUPER.
HP OMEN 17" RTX 3070 Gaming Laptop for $1395
Not only is this HP OMEN 17t the least expensive RTX 3070 equipped laptop so far, it's also one of the very few 17" gaming laptop deals we've seen. It had been discounted to $1549.99 but a new 10% off coupon code: "WINTER10" drops it further down to under $1400. The RTX 3070 is paired with an 11th gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD.
New! Alienware X15 Gaming Laptop
Dell has launched two new Alienware laptops for 2021, the 15" X15 and the 17" X17. They succeed the m15 and m17 as Alienware's flagship gaming laptops. They also happen to be the thinnest Alienware laptops ever despite the fact that they're equipped with the next generation RTX 30 series video cards. In fact, they are thinner than the "ultra-thin" Razer Blade 15" laptop. The X15 model measures in at only 0.63" thin and 5.2 pounds and the X17 model is 0.84" thin and 7.05 pounds. The laptops also feature the newest Intel 11th gen H-series processors and a powerful quadruple fan active cooling system that keeps all the components nice and cool.
This is the latest SSD that's specifically designed for your PS5 storage upgrade. It also happens to be the lowest priced PS5-compatible 1TB SSD with heatsink available. In fact, it's even less expensive than most compatible SSDs without heatsink. The S70 Blade boasts transfer rates up to 7,400 MB/s and a PCIe Gen4 interface. It includes a PS5-compatible low-profile aluminum heatsink, but you'll have to put it on the SSD itself (which isn't hard, it's just adhesive).
Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller
This is the controller to get if you want the most precise and customizable Xbox controller on the market. This professional-grade controller features adjustable tension thumbsticks, shorter hair trigger locks, wraparound textured grips, interchangeable thumbsticks and paddle shapes, custom profiles saved on your controller itself, and included USB Type C cable with charging dock. It boasts up to 40 hours of battery life and is compatible with the Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, and PC.
Black Friday Video Game Deals
Our Definitive Black Friday Roundup
If you want a complete list of the best early Black Friday deals that are live right now, check out or definitive Black Friday megapost article. We keep it constantly updated with the best early Black Friday deals we've found from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Dell, and more.
Posted inGames, video game|TaggedGames, Video Games|Comments Off on New Black Friday Daily Deals: Dell S2721DGF 27-Inch Gaming Monitor, Bose QuietComfort 45 Headphones, Alienware S5000 Gaming Chair, and More
