Image Composition: Ross Miller/PolygonRoss Miller (he/him) is Polygon’s Senior Commerce Editor for the summer. He has nearly 20 years of experience in media and was a founding editor of The Verge.We’ve formally said our goodbyes to October Prime Day, where we’ve spent countless collective hours sifting through literally thousands of deals to find a few hundred we think are worth your time across video games, board games, Lego, and more. And from there, we’ve noticed a few that stood out as the best of the best, according to our favorite tastemakers out there — you, dear reader.Looking at the most popular deals among our readers, it’s clear that folks are gearing up for the changing of the seasons. Board games like Azul, Mysterium, Whitehall Mystery, and Spirit Island have dominated — all perfect for the spooky season, some more literally than others. So, too, has the Hoto electric screwdriver, which is handy for any DIY plans, planned or otherwise. And as for the digital games, the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 deal is a clear favorite. Does this mean more people will soon become huge fans of Raiden? We can only hope.Here are the top Amazon October Prime Day deals according to Polygon readers. We say it every time and we truly mean it: y’all have have excellent taste.What Polygon readers bought for October Prime DayAzul$24$4040% off$24Azul is a board game where you work with friends to build an exquisite tile mosaic. The rules are simple enough to make it pick up and play but has endless strategic depth.Read More$24 at AmazonThe Complete Calvin and Hobbes Box Set$98$16039% off$98The story of a boy with a vivid imagination and his best friend (a stuffed tiger, naturally) defined many a childhood. This four-volume paperback box set features every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that appeared in syndication, which ran from 1985 until Bill Watterson’s retirement at the start of 1996.Read More$98 at Amazon (Paperback)$125 at Amazon (Hardcover)Catan: Starfarers Duel$28$3520% off$28Catan: Starfarers Duel is the unlikely reboot of an obscure 2001 game called Starship Catan. This two-player variant has solid reviews, but the 75-minute playtime seems like it might be a bit of a tough sell for all but the most dedicated players.Read More$28 at AmazonHoto electric screwdriver (12 bits)$40$6134% off$40With a long-lasting battery, adjustable torque (be gentle with your screws!), and a ring-light if you need, Hoto’s USB-C rechargeable electric screwdriver is one of our go-to tools for opening up your games and gear. The kit comes with a USB-C cord, case, and 12 steel bits.Read More$40 at AmazonJust One$12$2552% off$12Just One, the hit word-guessing game, is a snappy little gem that can easily kick off a night of longer games with a bang. Or kick back with a few beverages and play it all night, your call.Read More$12 at AmazonLego Super Mario Piranha Plant$48$6020% off$48The sassy, carnivorous plant from Super Mario is now available as a 540-piece Lego set. The LEGO Super Mario Piranha Plant comes complete with gold coins and adjustable limbs to give it some extra personality.Read More$48 at AmazonThe Lord of the Rings Illustrated$47$7537% off$47The single-volume hardcover includes thirty color illustrations, maps, and sketches (all produced by the author) sprinkled throughout its 1,248 pages. Inside, you’ll also find a pair of removable, fold-out maps of Frodo’s journey and of Middle-earth produced by his son, Christopher.Read More$47 at Target$47 at AmazonLove Letter$13$1513% off$13Love Letter packs all of the spicy drama and intrigue of Bridgerton into a deck of just 16 cards. Similar to Coup, Love Letter is a game of secrets as you attempt to deduce the contents of other player’s hands and uncover the single princess card among them. An easy game to tote around just about anywhere.Read More$13 at AmazonMTG Doctor Who Commander Deck Bundle$129$18731% off$129No need to pick a favorite when we have all of time and space. Pick up all four ready-to-play Doctor Who themed Commander Decks for Magic: The Gathering: Timey-Wimey, Paradox Power, Blast from the Past, and Masters of Evil.Read More$129 at AmazonMTG Commander Masters Deck – Planeswalker Party$60$10040% off$60Legendary Planeswalker Commodore Guff is the emcee of the Planeswalker Party Commander Deck, a ready-to-play, 100-card blue-red-white that boasts two foil legendary cards and a two-card Collector Booster Sample Pack “containing 2 special treatment cards from the Commander Masters set, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare.”Read More$60 at AmazonMTG The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Set Boosters Box$114$17033% off$114Legendary Planeswalker Commodore Guff is the emcee of the Planeswalker Party Commander Deck, a ready-to-play, 100-card blue-red-white that boasts two foil legendary cards and a two-card Collector Booster Sample Pack “containing 2 special treatment cards from the Commander Masters set, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare.”Read More$114 at AmazonMetal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1$20$4050% off$20Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 brings together the first Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 and its two PS2 sequels, Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater, in addition to the original Metal Gear, Metal Gear: Snake’s Revenge and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. This collection is available for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.Read More$20 at Amazon (PS5)$20 at Amazon (Switch)Mysterium$30$5545% off$30Mysterium, a favorite of the Overboard crew, will have you set up for a seance in no time. Up to 7 players can become psychics and interpret cryptic clues to solve crimes. Perfect for the spooky holiday!Read More$30 at AmazonSpirit Island$40$7043% off$40Everything you’ve heard about Spirit Island is true. We consider it at once one of the best cooperative games and one of the best solo games, so there’s no bad time to play. Take on the role of spirits fighting against colonizers. If you’re looking to upgrade your Spirit Island experience, the Jagged Earth expansion is on sale, too.Read More$48 at Amazon (Base Game)$40 at Amazon (Jagged Earth)Splendor Duel$28$307% off$28Finally, Splendor Duel turns the beloved gem-buying game Splendor into a taught little two-player experience knife fight of a strategy game.Read More$28 at AmazonTwilight Inscription$52$6520% off$52Twilight Inscription is a roll-and-write strategy game, featuring the space cats of the Twilight Imperium franchise. Playable solo, or with up to eight players, this clever game summarizes the epic galactic conquest of Twilight Imperium into a single afternoon.Read More$52 at AmazonWhitehall Mystery$30$313% off$30Whitehall Mystery is an overlooked gem of a hidden movement game, where one player secretly plots their course on a hidden map and everyone else tries to hunt them down. The theming here is key, however, as it puts players on the hunt for a mysterious murderer in Victorian London. It’s a fast-moving experience that rewards repeating the game after switching up roles at the table.Read More$30 at AmazonLooking for more deals? Check out all of Polygon’s favorite October Prime Day 2024 deals right here, and subscribe to our newsletter below to get great deals delivered to your inbox every week.
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Bonjour, Baldur’s Gate 3’s getting a nice new hotfix for all platforms today, October 16, and as you’d expect for the first one to drop since Patch 7 brought mods to everyone, it’s got a lot of fixes that should help those who’re keen to – or have already – unleashed a big load (order) of stuff on their game.Judging by the numbers Larian’s put out, it seems that’s plenty of people too, so it’s a good thing that the studio’s been quick to fix stuff that might impede us all giving Lae’zel a mohawk, finding dodgy ways to mess with Gale, and actually downloading a useful mod once in a while.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “Hotfix 28 addresses a few crashes and blockers, integrates a handful of gameplay bug fixes, and resolves some issues with the Mod …
Read moreGeforce Now is great. It’s a game streaming service that actually works. Amazing. Game Pass is great. It’s a game subscription service that offers an awful lot of choice, including many day one-release games, and a lot of those games are playable on Nvidia’s streaming platform. What could make this union better, you ask? It’s all about how you log in.While the two services combine brilliantly to let you play Game Pass games almost anywhere you have a good internet connection, there has been a problem: you have to log into your Microsoft account to play the games. “Big deal,” I am sure many of you are huffing to yourselves. “This guy doesn’t even know he’s born,” etc. Well, I do (sadly it was over 40 years ago now), and also, playing Game Pass games on a device that doesn’t have a keyboard …
Read moreWish you could play Goat Simulator 3 on the go? I’ve got great news, as it was announced during today’s Nintendo Direct that the comedy sim is coming to Switch.As always, no, you didn’t miss Goat Simulator 2, as 3 is actually 2, because there is no 2. Simple, right? Not really, but what is simple is that the game is finally coming to Nintendo Switch digitally later today, as confirmed during today’s Nintendo Direct. An exact time hasn’t been confirmed as of yet, so if you’re desperate to cause havoc as a goat and other animals in a not quite sim game, you’ll just need to keep your eyes peeled. For those that prefer physical releases, you’ll be able to pick this one up sometime in November, though again, an exact release date wasn’t confirmed.Goat Simulator 3 – Launch Trailer – …
Read moreMassive Entertainment has decided to offer up its stance on the ‘who shot first, Han or Greedo’ debate in Star Wars Outlaws and has quickly proven itself wrong.Pretty much every Star Wars fan under the sun has a take on whether Han or Greedo shot first in A New Hope. It’s an argument as old as time, and there is a correct answer if you like good storytelling, though creator George Lucas, ever the fan of retcons and alterations, did make it so that later versions of the film saw Greedo shoot first. In the very original, before Lucas made his wholly unnecessary changes, Han Solo shoots first, which is important because he’s not meant to be a hero yet, and allows him to go on a character arc (storytelling, a novel concept). But Massive Entertainment has decided to go with what is technically …
Read moreOh dear, players have been continuing to give the devs behind Once Human their feedback for season 2, and apparently it’s been “quite demoralising.”Once Human hasn’t exactly had the smoothest of starts for a live-service game, with players not being the happiest about those seasonal resets, as well as some frustrating server queue times, but that just comes with the territory sometimes in the field. However, it seems like the game’s second season hasn’t gone down all that well with players, with Starry Studio responding to complaints on Once Human’s Discord server (thanks, Eurogamer). In a statement, the developer explained, “Since the start of Season 2, we’ve received a lot of feedback.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “Some of it has been quite de…
Read moreGreat news for all you Concord players out there, official merch is now avialable for sale or pre-order. Listed on the US version of the PlayStation Gear store, you can pick up a Concord mug, t-shirt, hoodie or beanie to show your love for Sony’s hottest live service release. If they’re anything like the game, they’ll be flying off the shelves, so buy ’em while you can.As we all know, Concord is one of the more interesting games to be released in recent memory. The hero-shooter was released and promptly shut down about two weeks later. It was pulling in only a few hundred players on Steam on launch day, with those figures dropping down below the three digit mark around its death. Still, nothing screams high fashion like irony-rich clothing.To see this content please enable targeting cookie…
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Read moreNot long after Larian released its official modding toolkit for Baldur’s Gate 3, it took next to no time for modders to find out how to unlock extra functions that’ve helped get the ball rolling on the likes of custom maps and possibly full custom campaigns further down the line. Using a modified version of those official tools, one modder’s now put together what looks to be one of the game’s first fully-custom quests.To my knowledge this isn’t the first attempt at adding a quest to BG3, with Family Legacy being a pre-modding example that accomplishes its goal using notes and some unique items, but it does appear to be one of – if not the first – to make use of both the custom location creation and in-depth tweaking of NPCs/quest mechanics that these new tools can make possible. To see thi…
Read moreHelldivers 2’s most recent patch helped trigger a nice turnaround in player feeling towards the game, as well as an uptick in player numbers. As you might expect, this been a boon for Arrowhead’s devs, with one saying morale at the studio has been “much, much better” lately.Previously, Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt had described the difficulties of keeping the spirit at the studio positive while it was facing criticism from players over the direction it had gone with its changes to the game, writing: “It’s a tricky situation. The criticism is valid, but it causes low morale, and low morale causes slow development speed. Talk about negative spiral.”To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Thankfully things sound much rosier in a recent response Arrowhead co…
Read moreVoltron is formed again. Amazon MGM Studios has locked down the starring role for its upcoming live-action Voltron movie with a young newcomer named Daniel Quinn-Toye.The Hollywood Reporter shared the news, also stating the big-budget project will begin shooting this fall in Australia.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Though Quinn-Toye has no film credits so far, he’s appeared on television, getting credits on BBC Three’s Badults and one episode of Starz’s Outlander. Apparently, it was his stage work that landed the 21-year-old the role. He’s attended London’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts as well as the Dance School of Scotland, and was the main understudy to Tom Holland “in the West End production of Romeo & Juliet.” With that production,…
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