The next Pokemon Go Community Day is right around the corner. The event takes place this Saturday, June 16, giving players another chance to capture rare Pokemon and earn some extra bonuses.
As Niantic previously revealed, the featured Pokemon in this month’s Community Day is Larvitar. The Rock-type monster will spawn much more frequently than normal during the event hours, and if past Community Days are any indication, players will also have a chance to encounter Shiny variants of the Pokemon.
Any Larvitar that evolves into Tyranitar before the Community Day ends will also learn a special event-exclusive move, which Niantic recently revealed is the Rock-type attack Smack Down. This also applies to Larvitar that were captured prior to the Community Day; however, the Pokemon will only learn Smack Down if it evolves during the event hours.
On top of increased Larvitar spawns, players who participate in the Community Day will earn triple the normal amount of XP for capturing Pokemon. Additionally, any Lure Modules that are activated during the event will last for three hours, rather than the usual 30 minutes.
As is typically the case, June’s Community Day will be held during a specific window of time rather than at a particular location. The event runs for three hours and kicks off at different times depending on where you live. You can find the Community Day schedule for each major region below.
North America
11 AM – 2 PM PT
2 PM – 5 PM ET
Europe and Africa
10 AM – 1 PM BST
Asia-Pacific
12 PM – 3 PM JST
On top of the new Community Day, Pokemon Go players can still participate in the ongoing Water Festival event, which runs until June 21. During the Water Festival, Water-type Pokemon such as Magikarp and Wailmer spawn more frequently, while 2km Eggs will hatch into Totodile, Mudkip, Corphish, and other Water-types.
The Legendary Water Pokemon Kyogre has also returned temporarily as part of the Water Festival. As before, the Pokemon can be found as a Raid Battle at Gyms, and this time, Niantic teases that players may have a chance to encounter its Shiny form.
Prior to E3, things weren’t looking great for Microsoft. Crackdown was delayed to 2019. Sea of Thieves launch got off to an unstable start. And the console’s list of exclusives looked lacking, to say the least. But the Microsoft press conference cracked open the shell obscuring what the Xbox has planned for the near future. And things are now looking much better. Matt Booty, the recently appointed head of first party studios, explained in an interview at E3 that he’s trying to do more than just put out sequels to existing franchises; he he hopes to do more “branching out sideways.”
“For example, you saw what we’re doing with Gears of War,” Booty explained. “We’re putting the game on three different platforms with three different games in three different genres. We’ve got a core Gears game on console. We’ve got a new exploration off in mobile. We’ve got a whole new kind of game off in PC with Gears Tactics, right? And that’s one way we’ll grow.”
But the other avenue for growth is equally headline-making: Xbox announced partnerships with five new studios, all of which will fall under Booty’s umbrella. “We’re going to bet on people, we’re going to bet on ideas. We’re going to go on, Phil [Spencer] used the word, a ‘quest’ to find creators. You think about the common thread with people like Guillaume [Provost] at Compulsion Games, Nina at Ninja Theory. These are studio leaders who really understand the craft of the game and the creativity.”
Booty says that he also has some “complete blank slates.” For the hiring of Darrell Gallagher, who heads up the newly formed Santa Monica studio, Booty gave him a “blank piece of paper,” and told him, “You go hire the team you want. You go work on the game you want. We’re going to get you a building you want, and we want to just start a studio from scratch.”
The future of Xbox games sounds promising, but 2018 still feels light on exclusives. In response to that, Booty boasts that the power of the Xbox One makes the console’s strong third party line-up an equally important selling point. “We saw partners of our stage, folks like Bethesda, who have decided to show their content many times first on our stage, and flat out have said, ‘Hey, we think this looks best on Xbox One X.’ So we’ve got some cool stuff coming from first party as we get into holiday, but we’ve got a whole bunch of partners that are bringing content over the next year that really plays best on Xbox.”
But the Microsoft gaming division is about more than just games. Spencer teased that a console streaming service is on the way. There’s the dedicated streaming app Mixer. And on the hardware side, there’s already a team at work on the next iteration of Xbox hardware. How does someone like Booty help elevate his teams while also making sure everything else Microsoft has coming up gets the attention it needs?
“The job of first party, really at the core, is to be kind of a beacon and a lighthouse for a lot of our things,” he explains. “So when we first said, ‘What if we put games into Game Pass at the same time that we put them into retail and digital?’ There were some questions about that. Does that mean that people are only going to play it in the Game Pass? Is that going to impact retail sales?
“Sea of Thieves was our first game to go day and date into Game Pass, followed by State of Decay, and what we have found is that we’ve had great success with both of those games at retail and digital, and we’ve got a bunch of people inside Game Pass engaging with the game either because they were already subscribed to Game Pass, or they might not have engaged with that game before, but because it’s available to them inside Game Pass, they try it out. It’s about exploration, and about discovery. We’ve had over two million people play State of Decay so far just in its short time since launch, and that really is, I believe, because Game Pass has opened up a bigger audience. There is some inherent risk in there, but the job of Microsoft Studios is to go first, and to really be that lighthouse.
“When you think all the way back to the very first Xbox: Halo as a shooter–it’s almost hard to believe now, but at the time, there was all this debate about whether shooters would work on console. ‘How can you possibly play a shooter on a console? Are you going to be able to have the internet? Multiplayer, how does that work?’ And yet Halo took the risk and was there first, really made it work, and it was obviously a great success.
“So when you think about balancing those priorities, the thing we’ve got to remember and that we’ve got to orient to is that’s our job. Our job is to sort of be there first, and I sit in the same meetings in the same rooms with folks who are the leaders for Game Pass, for Mixer, with our hardware engineers, and we all collaborate very closely. One of the advantages of being part of first party is that we have access with them and we have the ability to influence those decisions.”
The balancing act is not an easy, and the coming year will show how well Booty is going to be able to execute on his plans for coordination and expansion. But whether or not it’s ultimately successful, Microsoft is going to have some exciting announcements in the next few years.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is three years in the making; Ubisoft Quebec conceived this entry into the long-running franchise as the team wrapped up development for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate back in 2015. Ubisoft Montreal was in the process of transforming the series with Origins (that released in 2017) which gave the Quebec studio a foundation to further evolve Assassin’s Creed into a full-fledged RPG the team envisioned. It’s not just about the inclusion of branching dialogue or seemingly arbitrary choices during quests, though. Consequence is at the heart of making the journey through Ancient Greece something more than just another historical fiction.
During a visit to Ubisoft Quebec’s studio, I had the opportunity to spend around five hours with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, starting at a point deep into the story. Many of its features jumped out immediately, like choosing to play as the female protagonist Kassandra through the entire game. Regardless, I’m a mercenary on the search for lost family members in the midst of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. Docked ashore the Delos Islands following a storm, I’m immediately posed with conversation options with my shipmate Barnabas. At first, it’s striking to see this in an Assassin’s Creed game, but considering Odyssey’s full RPG approach, having agency in what I say to others is to be expected. While I could tease out more information or evoke different responses, words can have a much larger impact in certain situations.
The ability to steer your own course was abundantly clear when I could affect the rebellion on the Delos Islands. Would I endorse a brute force approach suggested by Thelatas or devise a more subtle, strategic plan with Kyra? Thelatas offers naval combat missions while Kyra points out enemy camps where you destroy weapons and supplies to weaken them. Siding with either ally on how take down the unjust ruler Podarkes would lead to liberation, but in this case, it’s about changing the journey, not the destination. You won’t be able to go through both missions in the same playthrough.
Decision-making in Odyssey is taken a step further when factoring consequences. A side-quest given by the philosopher Socrates tasked me with handling a prisoner situation. This particular prisoner could aid the rebellion, but he’s known to be dangerous and unhinged. I could straight up kill him, save him, or just ignore the quest altogether. So, as a dedicated paragon all throughout Mass Effect, I’m willing to give others a second chance. Little did I know that saving him would impact the conclusion to the main quest line. After taking down Podarkes, the Delos Islands erupted in celebration. However, the man I saved went rogue and assassinated an ally that he believed to be a threat to maintaining independence. It was an unforeseen consequence, but I quickly realized that Assassin’s Creed is now asking us to think twice, watch our backs, or anticipate the effects of our actions.
Of course, the demo was just a small slice of a much larger open world, and if Odyssey can weave all the variables into a cohesive RPG experience, it’s easy to see the game stand with some of the genre’s best, which have also served as inspiration for the new approach. Director Scott Phillips said it himself; The Witcher 3, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout are among his favorite games, and stated “that’s what we wanted to push Assassin’s Creed as a franchise into: more choice for the player.”
Everything that’s new is layered on top of the foundation Assassin’s Creed Origins built. Franchise staples still permeate the game like climbing up to vantage points for synchronizations, stealth assassinations, and a modern day tie-in story. Genre trends such as weakening an enemy presence in specifically mapped zones to take control runs core to the game. Traversal holds Odyssey back from feeling fluid, though. Unintentionally leaping off building and scaling walls in the wrong direction happens more often than you’d hope. Hand-to-hand combat, in particular, is similar to Origins in feel, cumbersome targeting system in all. It’s somewhat sluggish, but stays varied through different weapon types. However, Odyssey stands on its own with the number of abilities available in combat.
The skill tree gives players access to many more options this time around. Yes, the Spartan kick is thrilling to use for launching enemies off cliffs or into the sea during ship combat, but comes in clutch when you just want to create more distance. A shield rip makes defense enemies less irritating and much more manageable. The multi-arrow show helps tack on more damage per shot, which was really useful when fighting a burly bear with a whole lot of HP. These skills are easy to access because of how they’re seamlessly mapped to the face buttons when you either hold the left trigger or left bumper. That’s eight skills at your disposal at any time.
Trekking the open deserts of Origins wasn’t the most exciting part of the game. Odyssey replaces that with the dangerous waters between Greece’s collection of islands. In a similar vein as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, ship combat plays a large role. Fire arrow barrages, waves of javelins, or full-speed naval rams tear enemy ships, and hopping aboard to finish off the last of an enemy crew yields useful loot. It makes all the in-between more interesting and the game feels full.
The initial impression is that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey makes meaningful strides for the franchise by going all in on being an RPG, and it seems to be better for it. By looking at the genres frontrunners, Ubisoft adapts the web of choice and consequence for the first time in franchise history while building on established mechanics. It’s a bold move for a series that traditionally tells you a story; soon you’ll be telling your own.
During Bethesda’s E3 2018 press conference, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard announced yet another version of Skyrim: Skyrim Very Special Edition for Amazon Alexa. It was presented as a joke, complete with a skit starring Key & Peele’s Keegan-Michael Key, but it’s actually a real thing you can get on the Alexa store.
It took a lot of people by surprise, including us, but this version of Skyrim is definitely playable. We asked Bethesda Senior Vice President Pete Hines about the multilayered joke, and he explained how it came to be.
It all starts with the sea of jokes about Skyrim being on everything, which picked up steam after Bethesda announced both Skyrim on Nintendo Switch and Skyrim on PSVR last year. “We know we get a lot of flak [like] ‘What else are you gonna put Skyrim on,’ so we’re like, ‘Well, we’re just gonna own it and have fun with that and make fun of ourselves and make fun of everybody else,” Hines said.
“This, by the way, was entirely Todd [Howard]’s idea from the beginning, but it just started off as a joke and then it evolved into, ‘Actually, we could make the game that we’re joking about and then just troll [you] one layer deeper where [you] think [it’s] really funny…and then you find out that it’s a real thing, and we got you twice.”
It certainly got us–we had to update our original story once we realized Skyrim Very Special Edition was real–and it also seems to be somewhat of a hit among fans, with 85% five-star ratings on the store page as of this writing.
“It started out simple,” Hines said. “But like a lot of Todd things, it turned out to be way crazier and more complicated and awesome as a result.”
In addition to Skyrim Very Special Edition, Bethesda also announced mobile game Elder Scrolls Blades as well as the long-awaited Elder Scrolls VI. To catch up on anything you missed, be sure to check our roundup of all the news from Bethesda’s E3 2018 conference.
Actor Steve Downes has voiced Master Chief in every mainline Halo instalment to date, and it appears that’s going to continue with Halo Infinite. During E3, Downes strongly suggested on Twitter that he is coming back to voice the super-soldier in 343’s upcoming game.
The Xbox Twitter account asked Halo fans, “Are you ready to get back to work?” Downes replied, “I was born ready.” While not confirmed, it really sounds like Downes will be back to play Chief again.
In 2015, just before Halo 5: Guardians launched, Downes sent out a tweet that sounded like he might be retiring from the Halo franchise. This was the same year that he retired as a radio host, so some believed Downes might be taking a step back from professional work, including Halo.
Thankfully, it sounds like he’s coming back to Halo at least once more. We have followed up with Microsoft in an attempt to get more details on Downes’ involvement in Halo Infinite.
No release date has been set for Infinite, but it sounds like it won’t launch anytime soon. The game has a new art style and goes in “new and unexpected directions,” while 343 has also teased that you’ll get to play early in beta tests. For lots more on Infinite, check out GameSpot’s breakdown of everything you need to know from E3.
“The dogs that we’re considering are really the best of the best.” IFC Films has debuted a new official US trailer for the documentary Pick of the Litter, a film that follows puppies as they grow up and are trained to become Guide Dogs. This premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year, which is when we posted the original trailer in January. “Cameras follow these pups through an intense two-year odyssey as they train to become dogs whose ultimate responsibility is to protect their blind partners from harm. Along the way, these remarkable animals rely on a community of dedicated individuals who train them to do amazing, life-changing things in the service of their human.” Oh my goodness, as a dog lover I can’t wait to see this. This looks like more than just a cute doc, about how hard it is to find the right dog for this tough job. ›››
“So you’ve come to change my mind, My Lady?” A24 has debuted a new official US trailer for a court drama titled The Children Act, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. We posted the UK trailer for this a few weeks ago, now there’s a new US trailer for another look. The film’s title is a reference to a particular law in England: “When a court determines any question with respect to the upbringing of a child, the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.” It stars Emma Thompson as an eminent high court judge, who is asked to rule on the case of Adam, a brilliant young boy who is refusing a life-saving blood transfusion on religious grounds. It’s a complex dilemma especially for a judge to rule over. The film’s cast includes Fionn Whitehead, Stanley Tucci, Ben Chaplin, Jason Watkins, Rosie Cavaliero, and Nikki Amuka-Bird. This looks very dramatic and emotional, certainly worth a watch for Thompson alone. ›››
“You probably thought you’d drop dead peacefully in your sleep… And then, this happens?” More zombies! An official UK trailer has debuted for a new French zombie film titled The Night Eats The World, from first-time director Dominique Rocher. The plot involves a man who ends up at a party at his ex-girlfriend’s place, only to wake up and discover he’s alone and the rest of the people in Paris have turned into zombies. He has somehow survived unharmed overnight, and now must figure out how to survive and what to do next. Not the most original zombie plot, but this film does look pretty cool. Anders Danielsen Lie stars, along with Golshifteh Farahani, Denis Lavant, Sigrid Bouaziz, and David Kammenos. This doesn’t look as scary as it does wild and entertaining, which makes me want to watch it more. Always more zombies. ›››
“All these camera moves are really scrambling my eggs!” Pow! Zam! Boom! In honor of the Annecy Film Festival for animation this week, I’m featuring a few animated short films that are worth watching. Next up is a fun one titled Rebooted, a 3D animated short film made by Sagar Arun and Rachel Kral from Ringling College of Art and Design. The concept of this involves a retro comic book superhero being introduced to the gritty, dark “rebooted” version of himself. It’s an amusing riff on Batman and all the current DC superhero movies with dark, brooding characters. It’s not the best short ever, but it’s a very clever idea executed well. ›››
“I feel alive again.” Cohen Media Group has released an official US trailer for the film Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti, originally known as just Gauguin in its released in Europe last year. The film is finally hitting limited US theaters this summer. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti stars Vincent Cassel as famous French artist Paul Gauguin, a painter who decided to leave behind his wife and child and civilized life to travel out to Tahiti in 1891. The film is about his decision to go to Tahiti and his romance and connection with a young Tahitian girl named Tehura, played by Tuheï Adams. The cast includes Malik Zidi, Pua-Taï Hikutini, Pernille Bergendorff, Marc Barbé, Paul Jeanson, Cédric Eeckhout, and Samuel Jouy. This looks quite good, with a compelling performance by Cassel as the inspired painter. I would really like to see this. ›››
