The knight storms forward, hammer swinging on his back, armor gleaming in the sun. He barrels through the crowds in Windsward, a village bustling with arrivals every day, just one of the million people clamouring to start a life on the lush island of Aeternum. This is New World, the new massively multiplayer RPG from Amazon Games. The knight's name is 'Judge's Verdict' and he is on the warpath.

"How are we doing on the fort?" he shouts into the chat. "Do I need to come over?"

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He's already running. Judge is a disciple of a grand religious sect whose uniforms are dyed a zealous yellow. But this holy order, called Covenant, is not above violence. When I see Judge lumbering out the town gates, I stop dead. As a virtual war reporter, there's only one thing you can do when a big man thunders past talking loudly about a fort being under siege. You follow him.

New World opened to all in September. Its shores have since been awash with players. So many, in fact, that long queues formed online. Much of it is familiar to MMO players. You do quests, kill wildlife, harvest resources, earn XP. But there is a competitive element. Players chasing PvP murderfun can opt into a three-sided faction war, where companies small and large fight in skirmishes or massive battles to dominate the map. The colors are Yellow, Green and Purple. Choose your flavor.

It's only been a few weeks yet each faction is already forming its own subculture and stereotypes. The global chat channel is full of jibes. The Purples are a menacing horde, ask anyone. The Yellows are a fanatical cult, don't you know? The Greens are braindead barbarians, and that's a fact. To make matters more complicated, each faction is subdivided into companies of up to 100 people, which themselves vie for power and control of the land, even within their own chosen side.

I waded into this three-headed conflict to meet with leaders and underlings from each faction and get their perspectives on the war. What I found was gleeful gang warfare and jolly cooperation in a land defined as much by peace as by bloodshed.

A Matter of Faction

"Did the rats run off back to their sewers?"

Judge looks around. We've just done a patrol around the fort, finding no enemies. He enters the fort, scrambles up the walls and glances about. Empty. Judge clambers onto a crate and reclines with the 'sit' emote. He intends to wait here patiently for any attack.

"We lose this bastion, we lose our capital," he says.

"The Purples are the largest faction by far… but they are weak despite it. They roam in packs and that's the only really menacing thing about it. I do five times the damage that one of those rats do… Greens are a bit more honest but not much more."

As a player, you can earn titles that hang under your nameplate for all to see. Under Judge's username hangs the word 'Indomitable'. He is the leader of a small, three-person company. He signed up for the Yellow faction because the thought of fighting for a church seemed nice. Or maybe he just liked the uniform.

"Paladin aesthetic," he insists, breaking the world down into known fantasy archetypes. "Essentially, this faction is lawful good, Green is chaotic neutral and Purple is neutral evil."

He pauses.

"I like the uniform, yes."

But war in New World is not really about the color of your cloth. At the highest level, if a Yellow company controls this region they will earn taxes from the land. Whenever a player buys a house, whenever they buy bullets or materials from the marketplace, or craft an item at the workshops in town, the ruling company takes a cut. That gold goes into the coffers, to be used on upgrades to the town or buffs for all players of that faction. Essentially, if you can control a territory, you can make life easier for your own faction members. All these decisions are made by governors, the leading players of controlling companies. Governors get something the average player doesn't: their own office.

The Greens

AlphaTekk is trying to look official. He vaults over his desk a few times. He tries crouching behind it, but now it just looks like he's hiding underneath. As the Green chieftain of a ruling Marauder company and owner of Brightwatch Town, it seems a shame there's no animation to sit at his governor's desk. He gives up and inspects a scroll.

"Purple has been trying to fight us a lot but, due to their tyranny, has run out of money."

That's a bad sign for Purple. Each company collects donations from their members on top of taxes. The Purple regions have the lowest tax rate on the map. Good for homeowners, bad for the war effort. AplhaTekk says they've run dry.

"In the next week or so we will sadly enter the Age of the Marauders," he says, a little grandiloquently. "I have tried my best to slow the progress but expansion is inevitable."

An hourglass sits atop piles of paper. It seems odd for this spikily armoured chief of the Greens to say "sadly" about his own impending conquest. Isn't he a Marauder himself?

"I am," he says. "But I want it to be balanced so that everyone playing can enjoy the game."

It's a surprisingly magnanimous attitude to war. The server is on the eve of a big push. A critical battle is happening tonight. All factions could have expanded fairly into unclaimed fens and woodland. But with the Purple Syndicate's problems, that doesn't look likely now.

"Currently, Purple is having a crazy civil war due to poor leadership, or more over a bad monarchy."

It's the first report I will hear about Purple in-fighting, but it's hard to tell the scale of the problem. For the warlike Greens, discipline is a bedrock.

"I would say most of the Greens all work together to help each other," he says, "but there will always be those few outliers."

As for the chief, he has to run a hefty company, talk to other factions, and level up his own character, all while battling more than just his enemies.

"I got Covid," he says, in one of those moments where real life peeks out from beneath the feathered cap of MMO chit-chat. I worry for a moment, but AlphaTekk sees an upside.

"I have some time off work now to try and organise everything more than I could beforehand," he says. "The paid time off will be nice."

As I leave the relative luxury of the chief's candlelit office, all red drapes and home comforts, I realise I need to see things from a different perspective. The chief is concerned with diplomacy and high-level strategising. I need to find some players who are more grounded.

The Yellows

"Why are we crawling?" I ask the soldier ahead of me.

He picks himself out of the dirt, starts wading across a river.

"I saw someone," he says. "lol".

Once again, I stand up and try to keep pace. We've been running through the woods in the dead of night. Crawling in grass and shrubs is not just for roleplay. In the grass, your nameplate (normally visible to all who hover their crosshairs over you) disappears. With all the foliage in the world, full-on PvP ambushes are possible using this tactic. Right now, this Yellow soldier and I are simply using it to get safely to Keep Windsward.

We see another Yellow soldier in the distance. I recognise him as a gung-ho squad leader I've followed before. Each server in New World can be home to over 1000 players, a big population that's somehow confined enough for a "small town" feel. You see the same names popping up again and again in town squares, farms and battlefields.

The Keep appears on the horizon. The two soldiers blip through the gate, far ahead of me. I hear shouts, screams, and through the closed gate I see the life bar of my two new friends drop rapidly to zero. I pause a few meters from the gate. Then I turn and run the other way.

This is one way PvP happens. Players flag themselves as PvPers, then march out to attack a fort in a neighboring region, like the one I'm now running away from as fast as possible. Warmongers will often move in groups. This leads to chaotic brawls as bands of PvPers meet each other while criss-crossing the countryside – informal pockets of gang warfare on a larger world map. Bigger 50v50 battles, like the one happening tonight, are reserved for specific times and play more like their own instanced game mode. But on the world map, war simply looks like a Purple posse picking off a Yellow straggler, a trio of high-level Greens fending off a random attack by low-level opportunists. Or two soldiers entering a fort and getting cut down in seconds.

I hide in a bush. Before long I hear footsteps. More Yellow troops have shown up. But they too hang back from the Keep. I join them as they cluster together behind a log, crouched or crawling through stalks of lavender. Looking at the Keep with covetous eyes.

"There's no way we're gonna take this back with the people we have," says one soldier whose title reads 'Quartermaster'.

"Need more."

More arrive. When there are six of us, the Quartermaster decides it's enough. She bolts for the gate. Her men get up from the scrub and follow. Inside they're faced with a single remaining enemy Green. She is called 'Level 99 NPC'. A bold ploy. She is actually level 18 and dies quickly to the squad's axe swings and ice blasts.

The other Greens have run away. Capturing this fort won't give Yellow control of the region — you need to win a big battle for that — but it will activate a region-wide XP boost for all Yellow members.

A gold circle on the ground expands to capture the Keep. To celebrate, the soldiers dive repeatedly into the dirt of the courtyard and roll about like hogs. Much more than a means of hiding in the undergrowth, the prone button has become something of a custom among New World players. Worm-like conga lines are frequent in towns. Even the Quartermaster joins in the fun. As Keep Windsward is captured, she dives into the muck with her soldiers.

The Purples

Purple is going to lose the war tonight. But Eve Lily, governor of Monarch's Bluff, won't be there.

"I haven't signed up," she says. "There's much higher level people and better PvPers than me. I also wouldn't want to take a spot from anyone who really loves participating!"

We're standing behind town hall, overlooking the settlement. As governor, Eve sets the tax rate for the region (very low) and decides what town projects to invest in. Should she upgrade the workshops to allow smiths to forge new weapons? Give woodcutting a buff so lumberjacks collect more logs? There's only one way to decide.

"I ask the people!" she says. "Of course, everyone has different ideas, like the crafters want one thing and the PvPers want another. But I try to alternate days on who I satisfy and so far everyone seems pretty happy."

Talk of a rebellion within Purple has been exaggerated. I meet one supposed revolutionary leader in a shady inn to discover his only act of sedition was to ask his Purple cohorts to stop spamming chat with caps lock on ("I don't take the war super serious," he said.)

Disorganization aside, the Syndicate is such a populous and nebulous group that to call anybody its leader seems foolish. Even Eve says being governor is "just a title." But she must have some deeper plan, right? Some scheme to ensure Purple supremacy?

"For me? I just love Monarch's. Working on getting a home here…"

Hang on. What home?

"Actually, I really like the one behind you a lot."

The house is small, it stands alone. Wooden beams, white walls, a red painted door. Two dogs laze on the porch behind a wicker fence. All tucked away from the bustle of the town's plaza.

I look again at Eve Lily. She is not the military leader of the Purples. I couldn't tell you who is. But she is emblematic of a sentiment shared by many in this MMO. Most people ignore the war. They just want to gather wood, cook stews, and earn the money to buy something everyone values, in both New World and Old. A new place to call home.

"The Game Hasn't Even Really Started"

Night has fallen over the empty fort in Yellow territory. Judge's Verdict, proud paladin, paces back and forth on the wooden palisade, taking practice swings with his gargantuan warhammer, which he assures me can kill a man in three hits.

"The real game hasn't even truly begun," says Judge. "It's when people reach [level] 60 and all territories are taken that things truly will heat up."

The stars shine above us. I've found New World to be a predominantly peaceful MMO. For every missionary with a literal axe to grind, there's a public administrator who just wants to calculate a fair tax rate. For every gank squad, there are a hundred people fishing for 'medium salmon'. New World is one of the most popular MMOs in a long time, the server queues can attest to that. I know one lonely Yellow sentry who has learned the value of waiting.

"I at first didn't think I'd enjoy this game," says Judge. "But it's easily turning out to be one of my favorite MMOs in years."

The night is still. Through the gate below us, a single Purple player is sneaking into the fort.

"And as I said, the game hasn't even really started."

Brendan Caldwell is a freelance writer. You can find him on Twitter, and he hosts Hey, Lesson, a podcast about asking smart people silly questions about games.

Beloved horror novelist R. L. Stine is best known for two long-running book series; Fear Street and Goosebumps. Where Fear Street can be grisly and gory, Goosebumps tames and reinvents horror tropes for a younger audience. If Dead by Daylight is Fear Street, then, Propnight is Goosebumps. Its skeleton is identical to the Twitch-favourite, but it wears a very different, much more vibrant skin suit. And beneath that skin is a new collection of guts and organs, freshly transplanted from shapeshifting hide-and-seek game, Prop Hunt.

Created by FNTASTIC, the developer behind upcoming zombie MMO The Day Before, Propnight is an asymmetric multiplayer PC game in which four teenage survivors must escape from a nightmare while being stalked by a player-controlled killer. Breaking free from this terror realm requires repairing five ‘Propmachines’ before time runs out, with each new device repaired further delaying an unsuccessful end to the match. Successfully repairing all five without being killed will open a set of doors through which everyone can escape to victory. I’ve played around a dozen matches and can safely say that if you’re familiar with Dead by Daylight, much of Propnight will be second nature to you. Repairing the machines even has the same brilliantly tense quicktime events, which if failed cause the gears to sputter and explode, alerting the killer to your location.

Propnight isn’t just a straight doppelganger of the streamer darling, though. It splices the concept with another cult multiplayer favourite: prop hunt. Originally popularised by a mode for Garry’s Mod, prop hunts allow players to transform into items in order to hide from enemies. In Propnight, all survivors have this ability. Hear a killer striding towards you? You can vanish by turning into a box and stacking yourself on a shelf; run into the corn fields and mimic a scarecrow; or even become a cabbage and roll to safety. So long as it's within your immediate grasp, you can become a clone of pretty much any item you can see.

This small change has a huge effect on how Pronight plays compared to its apparent inspiration. Where Dead by Daylight is a tense game of cat-and-mouse, Propnight is a panicked session of hide-and-seek. As a survivor, the learning curve demands you master how to effectively disguise yourself in the world, but the urgency provided by a match’s time limit means you can’t simply hide forever. You’re also forced to return to your human form to repair the machines, a process that takes an achingly long time and so ratchets up the tension.

While survivors do have their vulnerabilities, my initial impression is that their ability to transform into props is an outrageously powerful tool. They currently feel at a significant advantage over the killer thanks to the large amount of very small props. At least in the sole map I’ve been able to play (a classic American farm filled with corn fields and dusty barns) there are stones, soda bottles, and hammers, all of which are top-tier choices since they can be easily hidden in boxes or beneath shelves. Reducing the number of these props would dent the fun, though, and so I’d like to see FNTASTIC experiment with map design to find ways to balance out the near-invisibility that comes with turning into a rock. Better sightlines across the map, be that through raised geography or windows and gaps, could go a long way toward both aiding the killer and increasing the pace and tension of the game.

In order to combat the prop system, each of the four playable killers has something in their ability set to help seek out survivors. The Keymaster, for instance, can temporarily place spectral eyes that highlight nearby teenagers. Meanwhile the Imposter can not only disguise themselves as props – something no other killer can do – but also as other survivors, allowing the wolf to hide among the sheep. These tools help keep tabs on what the survivors are doing, but it seems abilities alone are not enough to carry a killer through a match. Map knowledge and learning the proper placement of every item in the world will almost certainly have significant tactical value – seeing a stack of crates that’s one too tall becomes a tell-tale indicator that a survivor is trying to hide from you. But even without the understanding of how every corner of the map is decorated, I quickly learned to become suspicious of oddly-placed items and listen for the gentle tinkle of a soda bottle rolling across the room.

In bonus points for Pronight, all of this is really funny; watching a killer hit everything in a room while you sit disguised as a pumpkin behind them is a punchline that consistently endured through my multiple matches. This is aided by an appealing visual style; the four different killers all look as if they just walked off the set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, while the survivors include a Billie Eilish doppelganger that Epic Games could lift wholesale if she ever did a Fortnite concert. It’s a style that scrubs away horror’s usual grime, but retains a distinct sense of character; there’s still a final girl, a confident jock, and a nun-like banshee ready to shriek until your eardrums burst.

What I’ve seen so far of Propnight is already a solid proof of concept. With just one map and four killers, it has already demonstrated itself as a fun and humorous alternative to other, more grisly multiplayer horror games. And while at this stage it’s probably impossible to knock its beloved progenitor from its perch, Dead by Daylight should probably start sleeping with an extra knife under its pillow.

Propnight is holding a PC open beta on Steam between October 15 and October 18.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

In 2012, a player going by the name of BarryMode completed the original version of Spelunky in 2 minutes and 30 seconds — setting a speedrunning record for the game that lasted almost a decade. Now, however, following efforts from the game's community it has been revealed that the player's blistering time was only made possible through cheating.

As reported by Waypoint, BarryMode's record-setting time had long since raised suspicions from members of the speedrunning community with doubts being raised for several reasons.

Not only was BarryMode an unknown player to the speedrunning community — raising questions over who he was in the first place — he also opted to take a number of routes in the run that seasoned speedrunners felt were illogical. This lead many to question whether he knew in advance the best path to take through Spelunky's sprawling network of caves.

In addition, speedrunners across the years have raised their doubts over the time of the run itself. BarryMode's speedrun wasn't just quick, it was almost too quick. Since setting the time in 2012, nobody has come within reaching distance of besting it. Despite efforts from the community, the closest time to BarryMode's sits at 2 minutes and 40 seconds — a noticeable margin of distance in speedrunning terms.

When contacted by Waypoint, BarryMode was quick to admit to cheating in the game. "I do apologize for that deception," he told the outlet. "It was bad character and I can admit that." Since speaking to Waypoint, the content creator has since removed the clip showing his attempt from YouTube.

The discovery of BarryMode's deception was published in a video by YouTube creator XanarGear, which gives a detailed account of the community's efforts to uncover the truth behind the cheater's fraudulent run. In short, it appears that BarryMode used a modded version of the game that would allow him to replay levels over and over to find optimal paths through Spelunky's cave-like maze.

Other players discovered the cheat thanks to a missing tile in BarryMode's run that features in all but the first level of his speedrun attempt. According to XanarGear, when using the mod, the game starts you at level two. With this in mind, it's believed that the player spliced in footage from a vanilla version of the game for the first level to avoid detection.

As Spelunky finally closes the chapter on its longstanding speedrunner scandal, players across a range of games continue to develop different tactics to shave valuable milliseconds off their speedrunning times. For more from the speedrunning community make sure to check out this article where a Portal speedrunner explains to Valve how he breaks their game.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

This is an advance, spoiler-free review of The Black Phone, which will debut in theaters on Feb. 2, 2022.

The Black Phone had big shoes to fill. Nearly a decade ago, the team of C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson debuted Sinister. Their terrifying spectacle would strike fear in our hearts, with one scientific study ruling it the “scariest movie of all time." Five years prior (nearly to the day) to Cargill and Derrickson scaring the pants off ofus with Baguul and several nightmare children, Joe Hill was publishing his short story “The Black Phone.” Now, the stars have aligned and The Black Phone is making its way to the big screen with horror maestros Derrickson and Cargill adapting Hill’s chilling story — and their take thrillingly exceeds the already high expectations they've set up for themselves.

The first third of the film follows Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen Shaw (Madeleine McGraw) as they navigate pre-teen suburban life in the '70s. Unfortunately for these siblings, bullies and scraped knees aren’t all they have to contend with. In addition to their drunk and sometimes abusive father (played by Jeremy Davies), there’s a kidnapper on the loose in their town, and he’s snatching up little boys left and right. It’s not long before Finney finds himself trapped in the basement of the terrifying mask-wearing Grabber (Ethan Hawke), and Gwen finds herself in a race against time to find her brother before it's too late.

This story is personal to both Cargill and Derrickson, a fact that's highlighted not just by the relatability of the kids’ story, but through the stark set pieces of the ‘70s that play a more pivotal role than some may expect. While some viewers from the younger generation may balk at parents' use of belts and fists, plenty born before 1990 may sink back in their chair and recall some not-so-fond memories from their childhood. Was it monstrous? Sure. Was it commonplace? More than “kids these days” will ever know. The Black Phone feels like a time machine with no interest in stereotypical nostalgia. It doesn’t look like the '70s. It feels like it. There’s a grit there, and it’s not just because of the dirt basement. The authenticity of the backdrop paired with the honest portrayals of youth in that era make it clear that there’s a connection here between the creators and their story. Said authenticity is what makes it so easy to find yourself lost in and subsequently terrified by the world that they’ve created.

Because a good chunk of The Black Phone takes place in the aforementioned dirt basement, the film has to rely on the talents of its cast to keep us intrigued more than some other stories. Thankfully, Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw were up to the challenge. At the film’s Q&A at Beyond Fest, Derrickson revealed that they held the production for McGraw when scheduling conflicts arose. The studio wanted to recast, but Derrickson refused. It's easy to see why the director was so staunch, and it was absolutely the right move. A lot of attention — and thus, a lot of the praise — will rightfully be for Thames’ stellar performance as his character is forced to stand up for himself in the face of a monster. But McGraw’s contributions to The Black Phone cannot be understated. The fierce little sister trope may have become more common of late, but this kid’s comedic timing is impeccable. She effortlessly switches between snark, despair, and fear.

Hawke — who doesn’t typically play villains — has to emote solely through his eyes while relying on the painted expressions of whichever mask his character was wearing at the time. Given his filmography, we’ve always known what the actor was capable of bringing to the table, but The Black Phone presented new challenges that Hawke rises to meet on every occasion. The dude is terrifying. Playfulness shifts to sinister intentions on a dime, and it’s all showcased by a guy with a hidden face, a terrifying voice, and haunted, emotive eyes.

The scares here are never cheap. You’ll jump, to be sure, but every ounce of distress is well earned. The supernatural element supports the terror, but it’s the reality of Finney’s situation and Hawke’s unnerving Grabber that keep the tension throughout the story. Though abuse plays a role in The Black Phone, there’s never anything overtly sexual. You never have any question about the Grabber’s sick impulses, but the film expertly illustrates that you don’t have to show something so explicit for it to be real to the audience. It’s the threat of what he will do that keeps the story grounded. A more overt approach would've cheapened the story.

The Black Phone is remarkable for a host of reasons — some of which we won’t discuss here because they’re best experienced in the film — but something that stands out is how much it feels like Sinister’s sibling. There are so many similarities between the movies, from creepy kids, home videos, and less-than-perfect parents. Despite those similarities, though, this film manages to be something completely independent. It’s hopeful in ways that Sinister never was (and shouldn’t have been), but there’s also seemingly no solution to the horrors that Finney and Gwen face. You’ll see strong parallels between the Grabber and the kids’ alcoholic father. One hurdle can be leapt if the kids play their cards right. The other, though, lays in wait even if Finney manages to be the first kid to escape his captor. The aforementioned hope is less in Finney and Gwen’s circumstance and more in their connection and power as a team, and it cannot be stressed enough how well these children play siblings. You’re going to care about a kid escaping this situation no matter what because, well, you’re a decent human being. But their relationship and relatability is what keeps you engrossed in their story.

DC has released two new posters for The Batman ahead of a new trailer premiering at DC FanDome. One is a moody shot of the caped crusader while the other gives a better look at The Riddler.

It's no surprise that the new Batman trailer is set to be the highlight of DC's digital fan event. The company has been hyping up the new reveal with new teasers all week, and now these two posters. These posters keep to the film's black-and-red aesthetic, and this might be the best look at the Riddler we've had since the first trailer.

Check out the posters below.

The Riddler doesn't appear to sport some kind of extravagant costume like the last time the character was portrayed on film (played by Jim Carrey in Batman Forever). Instead, he's wearing what looks like a raincoat with a question mark painted on it, while covering his face with some kind of mask. He still wears his glasses over it, which only adds to the creepiness.

The second poster gives a better look at Batman's silhouette, which is a bit slimmed-down from previous versions of the Batman cowl.

Along with a new Batman trailer, WB and DC will be unveiling a bunch of new first-looks and announcements for upcoming films and shows. Check IGN for all the latest news and reveals from DC FanDome.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.