Leana Hafer

Colorado

Games Journalist at Freelance

Indie Developer. Strategy/RPG/Horror/Narrative games freelancer @IGN, @PCGamer, and others. Producer @3ma. I love languages, folk metal, and history. she/they

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Articles

Tron: Catalyst Review

1 week ago | sea.ign.com | Leana Hafer

Mid-spec. This post might contain affiliation links. If you buy something through this post, the publisher may get a share of the sale. Updated: June 17, 2025, 10 p.m. The VerdictTRON: Catalyst pulls you back into the world of Disney’s TRON to battle multiple opposing factions in the latest imaginative story from Bithell Games (Thomas Was Alone, Subsurface Circular, TRON: Identity).
Tron: Catalyst Review

1 week ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

It's easy to get drawn in by the unmistakable chrome and neon look of the Tron movies. It definitely made Tron: Catalyst, a top-down action game set in a different virtual world than those we've seen in the films, catch my eye. But in this case, those aesthetics only carried me so far. It doesn't make any critical system errors, but almost every part of it seems like it could have used a little more compute time.
EVE Frontier Wants to Fully Hand the Galaxy Over to the Players

2 weeks ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

EVE Frontier Wants to Fully Hand the Galaxy Over to the Players - IGN
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Lets You Channel Your Inner John Hammond

2 weeks ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

I never stopped thinking about wanting to repeat all of John Hammond's mistakes since the first time I saw him make them in 1993's Jurassic Park. And I've had many opportunities to do so in various park-builder games in the decades since, ranging all the way from pretty disappointing to pretty great. The latest, Jurassic World Evolution 3, is looking to deliver more features than we've ever seen in a dinosaur park management game before.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Lets You Channel Your Inner John Hammond

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Leana Hafer

1 hour agoRon Howard's daughter had 'messed-up' childhood fixation that worried her parentsFor Bryce Dallas Howard, growing up in Hollywood had its pros and cons.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - Brushes With Death Review

1 month ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

I'm still not sick at all of galavanting around Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's idyllic Bohemian countryside even after the more than 100 hours I logged in February. So I was delighted to be given a reason to return to it with the first story DLC, Brushes With Death. I was greeted with more of the strong dialogue writing and open-ended adventuring I've come to expect, so I’m not overly disappointed. But I wasn’t wowed, either.
Europa Universalis 5 Is a Ludicrously Large, Dense Strategy Sequel

1 month ago | sea.ign.com | Leana Hafer

Paradox has an established tradition of putting out very complex, richly detailed historical strategy games. But I've never seen anything like the just-announced Europa Universalis 5 from them – or anyone – before. If the previous games in the franchise were your undergrad, this is a PhD game.
Europa Universalis 5 Is a Ludicrously Large, Dense Strategy Sequel

1 month ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

Paradox has an established tradition of putting out very complex, richly detailed historical strategy games. But I've never seen anything like the just-announced Europa Universalis 5 from them – or anyone – before. If the previous games in the franchise were your undergrad, this is a PhD game.
EVE Vanguard Makes A Lot of Big Promises, But Delivers Good Gunplay

1 month ago | ign.com | Leana Hafer

It's almost surreal to ride a drop pod down to the surface of one of EVE Online's tens of thousands of planets in the upcoming shooter tie-in, EVE Vanguard. I've flown by them hundreds of times in the many years I've been playing the venerable spaceship MMO, but usually at astronomical distances. I always wondered about what was going on down there. I would make up stories about it in my head. Now I have a high-powered space rifle in my hands and I'm experiencing the universe up close and personal.
Kaiserpunk Review

Mar 21, 2025 | ign.com | Leana Hafer

Kaiserpunk has an immediately interesting premise: rebuilding society from the ashes of an alternate timeline World War I that raged so much longer and more mercilessly that it left the survivors in a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. When it leans into being a city builder with a roaring 20s flair, that scenario can really shine.