The curious RPG Live A Live is a fascinating time capsule of an era when RPGs were still experimenting heavily with structures and ideas, and its long-awaited remake proves that the best, weirdest efforts of that experimentation can still shine today. Its unusual story structure of seven different vignettes ranging from prehistory to the far, spacefaring future, is immediately striking after decades of grandiose, linear RPGs. And its initial disparate story threads are upheld and pulled together by its ensemble cast of lovable characters. But what truly makes Live A Live a triumph is the way it pulls its disparate threads together to subvert expectations of JRPGs not only as they existed in 1994 when it was first made, but somehow still almost three decades later in 2022.

Most of the best things about Live A Live’s remake were present in its original form, which makes it all the more a shame it never made it to the West back in the ‘90s. That said, this remake would have been worth the effort even if we were already familiar with the story and gameplay. While the original was not the prettiest of Square’s RPGs even for its era, the HD-2D look pioneered by Octopath Traveler continues not to miss when it comes to wonderfully marrying sprite-based nostalgia with modern 3D capabilities. Live A Live is lovely, full of eye-catching color schemes and memorable snapshots where Square has used the depth of its 3D backgrounds to full effect. That could be in memorable moments like a shinobi running over rooftops against a violet twilight, or sparkling sunlight dripping into a castle throne room.

On the surface, all of Live A Live’s seven vignettes are disconnected, and it largely doesn’t matter which one you start or end with. You can even pick one up, put it down, start another, and return to the first later if it suits you; Live A Live will conveniently keep track of your progress in each story even if you save over a file, a feature I made a lot of use of as the discovery of numerous, fun hidden secrets prompted me to revisit chapters I’d thought I’d combed thoroughly.

Not only do the different chapters take place in different eras, but each one distinguishes itself with unique characters and mechanics to suit them. In prehistory, for instance, language has yet to be invented, so all the storytelling brilliantly takes place with animation and imagery. Here and only here, the protagonist caveman Pogo can use his powerful sense of smell to track down the whereabouts of NPCs or enemies he’s looking for. The Edo period shinobi Oboromaru can cloak himself in shadow to hide from enemies and complete his entire chapter without killing a single human, or he can brutally murder his way through the manor he’s infiltrating. The Sundown Kid, a Wild West gunslinger, doesn’t fight nearly as much as the others – instead, he works with the local townsfolk to lay traps for the bad posse on its way to wreak havoc. Near Future’s Akira can read minds and teleport out of battle, though his teleport ability is intentionally a bit unreliable. Though quite different from one another, Live A Live’s ensemble cast all manage to endear themselves in their respective stories; I still can’t pick a favorite.

The 2022 Live A Live remake’s characterization is further improved by the introduction of voice acting, which is present in all important story scenes. Both Japanese and English tracks are available, and while the English acting had some occasional awkwardness in chapters like Edo Japan, having voice acting at all was a net positive for an RPG so profoundly centered on building up an ensemble cast of interesting characters.

The unique flavors of each protagonist, era, and theme play out in battle, too. While all seven characters use the same grid system to move about the field and launch attacks at foes in turn-based combat, Live A Live manages to theme each protagonist’s moves in ways that effectively reflect their personality. Oboromaru – a ninja – uses lots of area-of-effect abilities to lay traps on the field and force enemies to either move or take damage. Sundown has a gun, so everything he does is long range. Imperial China’s Earthen Heart shifu master can pass on battle techniques to his students as he trains them, while Present Day’s Masaru Takahara learns martial arts moves from his enemies. In the Far Future, the supportive robot Cube doesn’t fight at all, except in an optional arcade game located on their spaceship. Learning the ways in which each of the seven diverse characters can take advantage of the same battle system over the course of Live A Live was one of its pleasures, and I was more than once impressed by the ways in which the marriage of combat and character either furthered the plot or told me something interesting about a character I loved.

Each chapter’s enemies are designed around the respective character’s unique abilities, and the deceptively simple grid system reveals plenty of tricks up its sleeves. The deeper I dug into each chapter, the more I was forced to reckon with the grid not just as a means to get my attacks lined up, but also as a tool for predicting enemy moves and avoiding them so my team wasn’t decimated. Some chapters have additional nuances, such as enemy weaknesses and resistances to certain types of attacks, or enemy captains that take the whole rest of the team with them when destroyed. Don’t underestimate Live A Live’s battle system, especially if you want to go after the well-hidden handful of ultrahard secret bosses scattered throughout several of its chapters.

All of Live A Live’s battle and field mechanics play beautifully in the context of each respective chapter, many of which lean gently, but not obnoxiously, into popular film, TV, and even gaming tropes. In their early hours, you might recognize the plot of Far Future from some popular science fiction films, Present Day is a clear homage to arcade fighting games, Near Future debuts with all the bombast of a mech anime, and Imperial China plays out like a stereotypical kung fu feature…until, suddenly, they don’t. While some of the vignettes are certainly stronger than others, they all manage in different ways to subvert the tropes they’re embracing. Were Live A Live merely a collection of its initial seven separate vignettes with loosely connected themes and ideas, I’d have walked away happy enough with my experience.

But, wonderfully, there’s more.

I don’t want to spoil Live A Live for those who are unaware of its biggest twists from the original ‘94 Japan release, and if you’re in that camp, I’m begging you to go in without looking anything up. What I can tell you is this: The best thing about Live A Live is the way it made me suspicious of what it was actually about, and then proved my suspicions correct before turning them on their head. As I played through these vignettes and reached their various endings, I quickly noticed a very obvious common thread between them, and expected that thread to reward me once I finished them all with something fairly obvious and RPG-like – an extra boss battle maybe, or a cutscene or two. What I got was a full 10 hours more of video game on top of the 15 or so it had taken me up to that point, stuffed with several major twists, deeply emotional and triumphant moments, multiple secrets and sidequests, and (heck yeah) multiple endings depending on the choices I made throughout. Thank you, Square Enix, for 20 separate save slots.

My biggest issue with Live A Live, sadly, lay in that second half. While most of the seven vignettes are fairly tight, concise stories (except perhaps Near Future with its unnecessary errand-running around an orphanage), its final act is full of obnoxiously grindy random battles that slow its momentum to a crawl. I cannot fathom why the last hours use this mechanism, when literally any other battle system, including avoidable enemies roaming the overworld or even just a toggle to turn encounters off, would have done fine. Hardly any of the other vignettes include random battles, and while there’s a certain amount of fighting I needed to do to face the final challenge, there was a clear point at which grinding became trivial and I was running from fights every five to 10 seconds or so. In Live A Live’s defense, I do see how the excessive random battles are playing on a genre trope it otherwise very effectively subverts, but at a certain point that trope falls away and is just exhausting.

Which is a shame, because this segment was the part of Live A Live where I was consistently on the edge of my seat, wanting to know what would happen next. I don’t think the excessive random encounters dramatically damaged my enthusiasm, but given how utterly un-grindy the first 15 hours are, it’s certainly a frustration I’d recommend that you prepare yourself for – especially if you (like me) want to visit all the optional dungeons and explore all the secrets available in the late game. Those just booking it to the final battle will have an easier time.

I can’t forget to mention the soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura of Kingdom Hearts fame and much more. Her original score for Live A Live was excellent on its own, and with modern audio capabilities and her own 2022 revisions it’s only gotten better. The boss theme, Megalomania, is rightfully remembered as being among her best work, and I’ve had the remake version playing on loop for days now.

When we got our first real look at Saints Row back in May, we said that the reboot feels like it sits somewhere between Saints Row 2 & 3. That was music to my ears, as I always preferred the (slightly) more serious tone of the second game to the straight-up zaniness of The Third. Now, after having played the first few hours of this new take on the Saints for myself, I'm glad to be able to say that it definitely feels more like an action-comedy from the likes of Matthew Vaughn or James Gunn rather than a straight-up farce from National Lampoon – though it also keeps a healthy dose of the bombastic action that made the later games so fun, too.

At this point, we’ve seen plenty about Saints Row’s extensive customization options, so I won’t spend too much time re-hashing that aside from saying Volition definitely doesn’t seem to be overselling that aspect of it. There are loads—from a wide variety of vehicles and weapons with their own mods, upgrades, and skins, to being able to completely redesign your entire character in a pause menu (technically it’s an app on your in-game smartphone, which has some horrifying in-universe implications, but we’re not going to think too hard about that).

Not every element of previous games’ creators have made it over—you can no longer adjust the pitch of your chosen character's voice, for example, and there’s no “Nolan North” option anymore—but beyond that, it seems the sky’s the limit. I also appreciated that the different voice actors for each option seem to bring a lot of themselves to the performances—sometimes even changing what language your character speaks in.

The overall setup for your takeover of the fictional southwestern burg of Santo Ileso looks to be staying true to the series’ DNA. A blend of real-world cities like Reno, Nevada, and Austin, Texas (“Keep it Strange, Santo!” is plastered on graffiti and billboards all over town), and Las Vegas, there's already plenty of crime plaguing Santo Ileso's streets. There are the Panteros, old-school brawlers with a penchant for monster trucks, a group of technopunk-anarchists calling themselves The Idols, and Marshall Defense Industries, the billionaire-backed private military company. As the unnamed boss of a gang of underdogs, you and your motley crew of would-be crimelords will have to bring them all down in order to take control of the city’s criminal underworld.

This time, however, your anti-hero feels designed to be instantly identifiable to Millennials and Gen-Z: you begin the game reluctantly working as a Marshall grunt in order to pay off your student loans, while two of your NPC roommates have joined the other gangs to subsidize their aspirational careers as an influencer/DJ and art historian. These “new” Saints are born out of a relatable blend of desperation and disdain for the status quo—though, thankfully, the writers don’t seem to be trying to sell us on the Saints as the beloved public heroes that they eventually became in the original run.

Not every gag landed—we get it, "Millennials like brunch," and the quick-time event to motivate during a depressive episode went on a bit too long—but I definitely walked away wanting to see where the next chapter of these plucky psychopath’s story would take them next—and most of the missions the story strings together were equally enjoyable. While there’s definitely an abundance of ‘drive here and/or shoot these guys,’ my demo also shuffled up the action with setpiece encounters or particularly wild scenarios fairly regularly.

Jumping onto the roof of moving cars to fire RPGs at pursuers or clinging to the back of a harrier jet all felt right at home—and Saints Row is clearly not afraid to pull more blatant inspirations from a variety of pop-culture sources, either. One lengthy chase was reminiscent of the convoy sequence from Uncharted 4, while another mission had me tearing through city streets with a shipping container tethered to my bumper like in Fast & Furious. There were some story seeds planted about some sort of mysterious ancient relic, too, though I’m hoping we can avoid a Crystal Skull-style alien encounter.

The more bombastic of these sequences were easily where the reboot feels closest to the later games in the original series, though the developers say the balance between gameplay grounded in realism versus straight-up ridiculousness is about 80/20. While there was plenty of wild fun to be had in The Third and Saints Row IV—whether in huge setpiece missions or wreaking havoc in the open world—the undisputed source of most of those madcap shenanigans was you. 2022’s reboot seems to be much more focused on dropping you in the middle of that mayhem and letting you blast your way out.

For instance, while the more recent Saints Row games were perhaps best known for their insane arsenal of slapstick weaponry, I didn’t see one dildo bat or a single gun that shot bears, or bees, or bears with bees in their mouths (so when they roar they shoot bees at you). That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, of course, but in my roughly four hours of playtime about the craziest thing I fired was a rocket launcher. There were some wild weapons being used against me, though—for example, the Idols show up to battles dressed in rave gear and hurl neon-trailed boomerangs at me, and kept using something that looks inspired by SR3’s dubstep gun to stun and deal damage over time.

Your own arsenal, at least based on what I was able to unlock, seems a bit more traditional. I was mostly strapped with my trusty 9mm and assault rifle, though I also picked up a shotgun from the local Friendly Fire gun store and enjoyed a couple of opportunities to turn one of the miniguns used by the Marshall faction against its owners.

Controlling combat was roughly what I expected: gunplay that’s more about explosive, stylish action than precision aiming or expert timing—though that doesn’t mean any/all strategy has been thrown out the window. Many of your abilities are now tied to skills and perks that require you to fill meters as you fight. The infamous “Awesome Button” from Saints Row: The Third, for example, has been functionally replaced by a takedown meter that charges as you get kills. When it's full, you can perform one of those cool finishing moves as well as refill a portion of your health bar if you’ve taken damage (don't worry, you can still steal cars by just sprinting as fast as you can at them and smashing through the driver's side window).

Other abilities, which are unlocked as you level up your Boss, can be assigned to hotkeys and used when you gain enough “Flow” in combat. These include active abilities like the “Pineapple Express” move that’s been shown off in trailers (where you drop a frag grenade into an enemy’s trousers and toss them a few yards before it goes off), as well as passive buffs like a bigger health pool or being able to use more Flow. It's worth noting that it seems like (aside from some scripted events) these active abilities are the only options we have for thrown explosives, with the ability to simply toss a frag grenade—without dropping it down some guy's pants—being locked off until you hit level seven.

That doesn’t feel like a particularly frustrating hurdle, though, as I unlocked it towards the end of my demo – which covered what essentially felt like a lengthy prologue, ending right around when my Boss and their band of misfit pals actually start their journey up the criminal ladder in earnest. And those early hours definitely weren’t spent bemoaning the lack of a “throw grenade” button. Not only was tossing a bad guy into a crowd of other goons and/or their cars to create a gooey, fiery mess pretty great every damn time, but there was (as you might expect) a ton of side content to check out as well.

As we’ve seen in trailers and other exclusives here on IGN, franchise favorite side jobs like Insurance Fraud and Mayhem are returning alongside plenty of new activities like the wave-defense mode with difficulty determined by how poorly you rate a business on Santo Ileso's equivalent of Yelp. Other activities were more bite-sized, earning me tiny cash/XP bonuses for visiting local landmarks or stopping other criminals mid-crime – or just literally digging them out of dumpsters. Others still had you riding shotgun for delivery drivers (or, maybe more accurately "clinging to the roof with a shotgun"), pinching cars to strip at your pal JR's (no relation) chop shop, or using a big magnet to steal an armored car with a helicopter. This last one was great fun, as its bonus objectives that really challenged me to work against the exaggerated physics at the heart of so much of Saints Row's chaos.

That madness isn’t just reserved for the moments when you’ve got a Brinks truck or shipping container tethered to your ride, either. Even with four wheels on the ground and nothing dragging behind me, there was no shortage of spectacular crashes, flips, and jumps—which I suppose is to be expected from a game that awards you extra XP for driving on the wrong side of the road or almost hitting other cars. That said, while the addition of Burnout-style shunting, ramming, and sideswiping is definitely a big plus, driving did feel a little floaty at times, and I never really figured out the difference between using the handbrake button to perform what they call a “Quick Turn” and just drifting until I slam my car into the nearest building and whatever poor trees or NPCs happen to be standing in front of it.

I’ll mostly blame my mishaps on it being my first time behind the wheel, or not knowing where the Wingsuit button was—I opened it once, entirely by accident, and never managed to again—though there were some technical bumps that I can’t take credit for. Mostly some LoD pop-in and framerate hitching, though we did at one point get frozen in a menu and have to restart our PC build, and once randomly ended up with a weapon wheel devoid of any weapons, Ultimately, though, these errors were mostly just inconveniences and didn’t detract too much from what was overall a good time.

On the whole, Saints Row is shaping up to be an action-packed mix of satire and slapstick mayhem, which—for me, at least—sounds like a great recipe for some much-needed destructive escapism. My time with it might not have been perfect, but the life of a career criminal never is (especially one sharing a 2-bedroom apartment with three other people) but any game that lets me raise hell in a bulldozer is one I’m eager to play more of.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

If Shredder's Revenge wasn't enough, you'll soon be able to play virtually every major Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game released to console thanks to the new Cowabunga Collection, which now has a release date.

IGN can exclusively reveal that The Cowabunga Collection will be releasing August 30 on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch. The collection will bring with it 13 games from the franchise's 8 and 16-bit days, including beloved staples like Turtles in Time for the Super Nintendo.

Developed by Digital Eclipse, The Cowabunga Collection caused a mini-sensation when it was announced back in March, not the least because many of the games in the collection are difficult to impossible to obtain on modern consoles. Many of them, such as Hyperstone Heist for the Sega Genesis, are becoming available to current audiences for the very first time.

To refresh your memory, here's the complete list of games in the collection.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• TMNT: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
• TMNT II: The Arcade Game (NES)
• TMNT III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
• TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (SNES)
• TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis)
• TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan (Game Boy)
• TMNT II: Back from the Sewers (Game Boy)
• TMNT III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)
• TMNT: Tournament Fighters (NES)
• TMNT: Tournament Fighters (SNES)
• TMNT: Tournament Fighters (Genesis)

In addition to a slew of classic releases, Digital Eclipse is including a trove of original design documents. The collection will also support local and online co-op for TMNT 2: The Arcade Game, TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project, and TMNT 4: Turtles in Time. Hyperstone Heist will feature local multiplayer.

The announcement was part of San Diego Comic-Con 2022, where The Cowabunga Collection has a large presence. Stay tuned for lots more Turtles related content on IGN's live show as well as everything else shown during SDCC 2022.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Nintendo's former managing director of sales, planning, and strategy has joined Bayonetta and Nier: Automata developer PlatinumGames as vice president.

Announced in a Famitsu article featured on Platinum's website, Takao Yamane will also take on the role of chief business officer after spending his last 27 years at Nintendo. Yamane became managing director back in March 2004, meaning he was there for the release of the Nintendo DS, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch. He had other roles at the company previously, including as vice president of Nintendo France.

Yamane made clear he didn't leave Nintendo with any ill-feelings, but he had just turned 50 and wanted a new challenge. "My resignation was very smooth," he said. "My desire to take on something new and what PlatinumGames was aiming to do lined up perfectly. And to be perfectly honest, I felt like my last company would be perfectly fine without me."

Platinum has been steadily expanding in the last few years but the company isn't ready to stop yet, as its goals are "simply not possible with the numbers we have now", Yamane said. "I’m building an organization capable of tangible action from the ground up," which includes "self-publishing and promoting Project G.G. and other titles globally".

Nintendo's philosophy of prioritising game development over sales will also be brought over. "When it comes to sales and development, development takes priority," Yamane said. "Even if I come up with a schedule and think, 'this will be a hit,' if [vice president and chief game designer] Kamiya says 'sorry, but development is running six months late,' I’ll just smile and say, 'I understand'."

Platinum currently has two games in development that we know of: Bayonetta 3 for Nintendo Switch (which arrives this October) and the aforementioned Project G.G. The latter is the developer's first self-published game, and Yamane promised more details would be revealed about it in June next year.

Thumbnail Image Credit: PlatinumGames

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell have joined the cast of Apple and Legendary's upcoming live-action Godzilla and the Titans series.

According to Deadline, Kurt and Wyatt have signed on to star in the Monsterverse series alongside previously announced cast members Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe, Kiersey Clemons, Joe Tippett, and Elisa Lasowski. Details on their two roles are being kept under wraps for now, so it's not currently known whether their on-screen characters will be related or not.

Kurt Russell is a legendary actor known for his frequent collaborations with John Carpenter throughout the 1980s, starring in films like Escape from New York, Escape from L.A., The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China. He's also featured in several other notable projects during his lengthy acting career, including playing Ego in the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and What If…?

Wyatt Russell is coming off of FX's true-crime drama series Under the Banner of Heaven alongside Andrew Garfield. His other acting credits include movies like 22 Jump Street and Overlord, as well as TV shows such as Lodge 49 and The Good Lord Bird. He is also part of the MCU, having portrayed John Walker in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Solider.

Apple's new Godzilla series is part of Legendary's growing Monsterverse franchise. The show will explore the aftermath of the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that levelled San Francisco and the shocking new reality that monsters are real, as one family sets out to uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to the secret organization known as Monarch.

The series is being co-created by Chris Black, a writer on Star Trek: Enterprise and Outcast, and Matt Fraction, writer of comics like Hawkeye, The Defenders, and Sex Criminals. Black will also serve as showrunner on the project. The first two episodes will be helmed by WandaVision director Matt Shakman who is also on board as an executive producer.

The untitled series about Godzilla and the Titans stomps in the footsteps of 2014's Godzilla, 2017's Skull Island, 2019's King of Monsters, and 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, which brought the kaiju legends to a head against each other and eventually Mechagodzilla. There's also a Godzilla vs. Kong sequel film currently in the works and an animated Skull Island series, which is being produced for Netflix.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.