As a part of its second-quarter earnings announcement today, Take-Two Interactive announced that Firaxis' upcoming Marvel strategy game, Marvel's Midnight Suns, is being delayed into the second half of next year.

This isn't a massive bump as the Midnight Suns was previously planned for March 2022. Now, it's looking at somewhere between July and December of that year. In a press release, the company implied that the delay was connected at least in part to increases in the difficulty of making games as technology has improved.

As it becomes possible to make bigger and more technologically interesting games, those games are also tougher and take longer to make.

"While we don’t take delays lightly, we know that our proven success has been rooted firmly in our 'player-first' approach and unwavering commitment to delivering the highest quality entertainment experiences," reads the press release. "We believe it is far better to provide the extra time needed for a product – especially a new IP – to reach its full potential and drive long-term success as a permanent franchise in our industry-leading portfolio."

Firaxis' Twitter account provided a similar statement moments prior:

We have an important development update to share with our fans pic.twitter.com/ycNDCVtbwD

— Marvel's Midnight Suns (@midnightsuns) November 3, 2021

In a conversation with IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick added a bit more detail about why Take-Two, 2K, and Firaxis opted for the delay:

"We think it needs more development time to be everything it can be," he said. "What we're known for doing is supplying the time and the resources so that the creative talent that's taken a big chance by coming to work at our company always has not only the ability to pursue their passions but every possible asset in service of allowing them to pursue their passions, and that's what generates the highest-quality titles in the business, for which we're known.

"We couldn't be more excited about the title. We don't love when we have to slip a title. It's not that common for us; it's been very uncommon in past years. This is a situation where we thought it made sense, and therefore we stand behind it."

Notably, despite Midnight Suns moving out of Take-Two's current fiscal year and into the next one, the company actually raised its projections for this year from between $3.2 billion and $3.3 billion in net bookings to between $3.3 billion and $3.4 billion, in part thanks to its second-quarter net bookings of $985 million – well above its expectations.

Marvel's Midnight Suns was revealed back in August, playing into Firaxis' strategy game strengths as a tactical XCOM-like with a customizable protagonist fighting alongside superpowered heroes like Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Wolverine against large numbers of enemies. It will include destructible environments, but no permadeath like in the XCOM series.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

It's that time of year once again. Time to gather up everyone's shopping lists and figure out what to get your loved ones for the holidays. Board games are a great gift choice as they can be enjoyed by the whole family and provide hours of fun for countless occasions.

Board games have only gotten more popular with everyone spending so much more time indoors, and there's plenty of different genres to experience from strategy games to party games, and everything in between. Many games can be enjoyed solo, while others are intended for group play. There's nothing like bonding over a great board game.

We've assembled a list of some of the most popular board games below from a variety of different genres so you can easily find the perfect gift for your loved ones this holiday season.

Top 3 Must-Have Board Game Gifts

These are some of the most popular board games available that are sure to please any fan of tabletop games.

Best Starter Game Gifts

If you're looking to introduce someone to tabletop games, these are some great options to start with.

Best Party Game Gifts

A handful of great games that are better with a group of people.

Best Horror Game Gifts

For fans of spooky games, these horror board games are sure to tickle their fancy.

Best Legacy Game Gifts

Legacy games feature campaigns that stretch across multiple playthroughs and are great for groups.

Best Strategy Game Gifts

These board games are great for those who like to solve puzzles or outsmart their opponents.

More Great Game Gifts

These additional popular board games span multiple genres and are an overall great choice for anyone.

Matthew Adler is a Commerce, Features, Guides, News, Previews, and Reviews writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch.

Insomniac Games' spectacular 2018 game Spider-Man was originally meant to end with the hero and Doctor Octopus fighting all across New York City.

Insomniac CEO Ted Price revealed the original boss fight plans at last week's Develop: Brighton conference per GamesIndustry.biz. But the scope of the finale the studio envisioned couldn't be realized without resorting to crunch, which would clash with the company's goals of increasing employee wellbeing and reducing burnout.

"The temptation is to just brute force it, put our heads down and run through the brick wall," Price said. "But the team took a step back and thought about what was important to the players, and that was the breakdown of the relationship between Peter and his former mentor, Doctor Octavius."

The fight was ultimately a one vs. one battle between Spider-Man and Doc Ock atop a Manhattan building. The team scaled back its ambitions and Price said the decision didn't just help the developers but improved the game itself.

"They rethought the fight and realized they didn't need to destroy half of New York to pay off the relationship," Price said. "In fact, it would have worked against what we were going for. As a result, the final battle is much more up close and personal, and has a far bigger emotional impact than planned — and it fit within the time we had."

Price urged other developers to seriously consider what players want and how they can deliver the best experience with the resources they have rather than pushing employees to their limits.

"In the stress of hectic production, we often feel we can't take our foot off the gas pedal — but that's often what it takes," he said. "The team needs to have permission to pause and come up with a better way, instead of bulldozing through the problems and causing potential health problems."

Insomniac is currently working on Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which the team says will be "darker" than the last two Spider-Man games, including Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Furthermore, Insomniac is also working on a Wolverine game to add to its Marvel bonafide.

Samantha Nelson is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter @samanthanelson1.

Spoilers for Chucky episode 4, “Just Let Go,” which aired on Syfy Nov. 2, follow.

Going into “Just Let Go,” I was concerned Chucky was going to repeat the dynamic of its first two episodes: a wildly eventful mini slasher movie followed by a slower episode to unpack what just happened and fill in gaps in the lore. Last week’s chaotic cliffhanger certainly primed this week’s episode to be another breather… which, given the fact that a kid gets their ventilator unplugged by Chucky this week, was a figurative and literal misprojection on my part. Even as the characters regroup in the hospital, “Just Let Go” wastes no time getting its foot back on the gas, forcing Jake and Lexy to confront their transgressions against each other as Chucky’s motivations become clearer.

With Chucky’s (Brad Dourif) attack on Lexy’s (Alyvia Alyn Lind) party nearly burning the Cross home to the ground, most of the characters find themselves at Hackensack’s hospital, with Devon (Björgvin Arnarson) and Junior (Teo Briones) among several kids being treated for smoke inhalation. Jake (Zackary Arthur) and Devon spend most of the episode dealing with Chucky in the present and past, respectively, so their time together is brief, but impactful. Their mutual crush is an earnest bright spot in a show which so gleefully celebrates mayhem.

Junior’s interaction with dad Logan (Devon Sawa) is a lot less sweet. Just like his dearly departed twin, Luke, Logan has a dark side which comes to the surface as he practically coerces Junior into saying he likes cross-country and doesn’t do it because he’s forced. It’s sinister work from Sawa that sets up Logan as a more villainous figure going forward.

“Just Let Go” finally forces Jake and Lexy to work together as they attempt to put a stop to Chucky. Even in the midst of a truce, the teens have serious problems with one another and Arthur and Lind’s performances keep that disdain just under the surface of their teamwork. Even though some of their arguments veer hard into melodrama, Arthur and Lind’s chemistry smooths out a lot of those rough patches and elevates the clunkier dialogue. Impressive, considering Lexy totally has a point about how messed up it is that Jake kinda sorta sent Chucky her way.

Even with the chaos going on in the modern day, Chucky still finds time for another vignette from Charles Lee Ray’s childhood, which shades in the killer’s attempts to mentor Jake nicely. Devon’s research reveals details of Charles’ stay in an orphanage after the man who invaded his home murdered his father, inspiring him to do the same to his mother. That Charles wanted to pay forward that spark of inspiration from a young age is a smart way to add to Chucky’s backstory in a way that’s still relevant to Jake in the present.

While just that’s enough to make these scenes worthwhile, the identity of the boy Charles takes under his wing will delight longtime Child’s Play fans in a way that’s unobtrusive for newcomers. But “Just Let Go” does cut corners as Devon researches Charles Lee Ray’s early life. Google as a vehicle for exposition is never a satisfying way to keep a story rolling, and basic floating text headlines around Devon’s head only get worse when images of soon-to-return Child’s Play alumna — images that are obviously promo images from previous films — are none-too-subtly left on-screen for longer stretches of time, each in turn captioned blandly as being a “known accomplice” and a “escaped psychiatric patient.”

Chucky — Two-Faced by the fire at the Cross house — spends much of the episode in the shadows, adding tension into an already hostile atmosphere. This week’s showstopper kill, the insufferable Detective Peyton, sets a new bar for Chucky going forward, and deserves a place in the upper echelon of Child’s Play deaths. Start with Chucky managing to sever Peyton’s spinal cord by throwing a scalpel, pepper in Brad Dourif at his pithy best, cap it off with a hilariously inefficient murder weapon: that’s a textbook piece of camp slasher gold.

That energy’s present throughout the episode. As the bad blood between Jake and Lexy boils over and Lexy slips over a bannister, Jake catches her, while a knife-waving Chucky below deviously tries to convince Jake to “just let go.” We all know Jake’s no killer, and as he exclaims it himself, the drama gives way to the farcical competition of what’s funnier: that Lexy’s only three feet off the ground or that Chucky still can’t reach her with his knife. Blending horror and comedy is no easy feat and, with little surprise given its pedigree, Chucky’s tone is a consistent strong suit.

Back in 2007, when the original Galaxy Trucker came out, real-time tabletop games were still a novelty. As a result, the novel ship-building system it used where everyone grabbed tiles from the same pile and raced to finish first, made it a big hit.

As time went on, however, the concept proved to have big staying power. While other games explored the real-time design space, Galaxy Trucker carried on selling in droves and received several expansion sets. Now it’s back in stores with a new, tweaked formula to try and appeal to a whole new generation of gamers.

What’s in the Box

While the cartoon art style might not be to everyone’s tastes, there’s no denying it’s a fresh look that suits the game. The bulk of this weighty box is taken up by card punchboards from which you pop the array of ship-building tiles and other tokens. Joining them are a sand timer, some wooden dice and a deck of cards.

But it’s the plastic components that are the star of this show. Some fun little plastic astronaut and alien figures are here, along with lots of marbled plastic cubes to represent cargo. But best of all are the batteries, little tubes of neon plastic that look like they ought to be sour candy. Don’t eat them.

Rules and How to Play

Galaxy Trucker is literally a game of two halves. In the first, everyone takes tiles from a central pile and tries to construct a ship as fast as possible, following a set of connection rules. In the second, players then take those ships and fly them through an intergalactic obstacle course, trying to collect loot and get it across the finish line.

Ship-building is an absolute blast. There’s a dizzying array of ship components you can add: lasers and shields to protect your ship, thrusters to give you speed, batteries to power them. There are also more esoteric elements including life support for alien crew members that can give bonus speed or strength to your ship.

Despite the array of components at your disposal, it’s easy to learn because the building rules make literal and visual sense. Cannons that don’t point outwards and thrusters anywhere other than the rear of your ship aren’t allowed. You can’t connect an edge with two pipes to an edge with a single pipe, and so on. There’s a time limit, applied by the included sand timer.

Yet however easy the rules are to follow in theory, following them in the heat of snatching face-down tiles from a pile as fast as possible, discarding those you don’t want, is quite another. Let alone the fact that you’re racing to do it against your opponents. Let alone that you want to discard as few as possible since you do so face-up, gifting them to other players. It’s frantic, frenetic and fun, yet still allows cool heads and clever builders to prevail.

Not only are you being distracted by the race aspect, but you can also spend valuable ship-building time looking at the cards which will constitute the upcoming race. This gives you vital information about how you might want to build your ship. If there are a lot of planets or space stations, for example, you can add extra cargo holds to keep the loot you can find there.

Fast players are also in control of when to flip the sand timer, upping the pressure on the other players. Trying to split your time between tiles, cards, and timer while making the best use of both is information overload of the best kind, mental plate-spinning with discs of fire. It’s this combination that makes Galaxy Trucker still stand out among real-time games after thirteen years. Getting the right balance of speed and information is rewarding in every sense, and very hard to do.

Your reward for finishing your ship first is to start the race in pole position, and each other player queues up behind as they finish. But beware! Before you can launch, the other players get to check that you’ve followed the shipbuilding rules. Failure to do so means you have to remove components until it’s legal. In extreme cases, this can almost cripple your ship if you’ve got a connector wrong in the middle of the structure. Worse, the discarded tiles will count as a penalty once the race is finished.

Racing is where the most changes are in this new edition. It’s nothing major: some encounter cards are less drastic, and you now fly a single, longer race with your ship instead of three different ones with new ships. That decreases downtime, making for a shorter, tighter game. If you want to play in the old style, it’s included as a variant.

However, despite the tweaks, racing is still the poor cousin to the ship-building aspect. You flip the top encounter off the shared deck, and then all the players apply the effect in race order. So if you’re leading the pack, you’ll get the first choice of whether to stop to loot cargo or take on crew, with those who do so losing race position as a result. But you’re also first in line for attacks by smugglers or pirates, although there’s a reward for whoever can see them off.

Despite a good variety in the encounters, from meteor swarms to galactic plague, applying the effects feels static and processional compared to the madcap ship construction. The race leader guides everyone through the appropriate actions such as rolling dice to see what part of the ship a meteor strike hits. Sure there’s some excitement, especially when a roll could split your ship in half. But there’s still a sense you’re watching things happen instead of being directly involved.

For your first few races, it’ll also be tempting to believe that between the dice rolls and cards your construction skills won’t count for much. But this is where getting that balance of checking cards while grabbing parts becomes important. If you know there’s a lot of open space in the deck, you go heavy on engines. If there’s a lot of pirates, be sure to build in guns and shields. You can’t check all the cards, so there’s always some surprises even for the best prepared.

At the end, you get a credit bonus depending on your race position, as does the best-built ship. Then everyone totals their proceeds from the race in terms of selling cargo or bounties from defeated pirates to see who wins. Play length is influenced by your choice of ship size – there are three – but you’ll be done in 30-45 minutes, which is spot on for this relatively lightweight title.

Where to Buy

Galaxy Trucker (2nd edition) is available at a variety of retailers for an MSRP of $29.99.

• See it on Amazon
• See it at Walmart
• See it on Game Nerdz