Geralt of Rivia will be a playable character in SoulCalibur VI, Bandai Namco and CD Projekt Red have announced. In addition, a stage based on The Witcher series, Kaer Morhen, will be available as one of the game’s arenas.
The Witcher himself will, according to a statement, keep his “signature fighting style” in his transition from open-world RPG to fighting game. He’ll be able to utilize a “combination of swordplay, ability-enhancing potions, and combat magic.” In addition to having the character, his English voice actor, and his signature stage–based on the Witchers’ training ground–there will also be the “iconic” music track from the series, Hunt or be Hunted.
“We’ve collaborated with Bandai Namco artists to faithfully recreate Geralt, and shared original Witcher 3: Wild Hunt assets like Geralt’s model, animations, and weapons,” said CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot. “I think Bandai Namco did an outstanding job of capturing all the details and introducing The Witcher to SoulCalibur in a way fans of both series will enjoy.”
Other characters coming to SoulCalibur VI include Ivy and Zasalamel. Ivy Valentine makes her comeback wielding the tricksy Ivy Blade, which has the ability to switch between a solid sword or a barbed whip. Zasalamel and his Kafziel scythe, meanwhile, looks like they’re still just as devastating at mid-to-close range.
The last SoulCalibur VI characters to be revealed recently were Kilik, Xianghua, and Nightmare–all series veterans–and Groh, a newcomer. For more, read our hands-on with SoulCalibur 6’s new characters to find out what we thought of them. A release date for the upcoming fighting game has not yet been announced; all we know is that it’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC this year.
After a number of rumors and leaks, Square Enix has finally confirmed that the next Lara Croft game will be Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The company also announced the game’s release date as September 14. It will come to PS4, Xbox One, and PC simultaneously, rather than being a timed exclusive to Xbox One like the previous game.
Square Enix says the game will be “Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider,” but few other details are known about the project as yet. A full reveal has been dated for April 27, and fans will be able to try the game out early at one of three events by registering at the Tomb Raider website. A teaser trailer has been released to hold you over in the meantime; take a look at that below.
The new Tomb Raider movie, meanwhile, hits cinemas on March 16. We enjoyed the film here at GameSpot; critic Michael Rougeau called it a “great video game adaptation and a decent action movie on its own.” For more, check out our full Tomb Raider movie review or our review roundup.
Capcom has finally detailed the first major free update for Monster Hunter World. It arrives later this month and introduces the much-anticipated Deviljho monster–along with accompanying gear to craft–plus a variety of other changes and additions.
Prior to World’s release, Deviljho (a returning monster for the series) was confirmed to be the first big addition through free, post-launch updates. Aside from having a different foe to hunt, you’ll be able to use the parts from it to craft two full armor sets, Vangis α and Vangis β. Additionally, there will be a new “entry” for all 14 weapon types, which Capcom says on its blog include brand-new designs for Sword and Shield, Hunting Horn, Bow, Insect Glaive, and Charge Blade. You can see some of this gear below.
Deviljho will be released as part of a broader update launching on March 22 for PS4 (version 2.00) and Xbox One (version 2.0.0.0). The patch will also make balance changes to almost every weapon type, primarily those of the melee variety. For instance, Great Sword will get a buff to damage with Charged Slash abilities, while Gunlance will get an attack damage increase and a reduction to the amount of sharpness lost when shelling.
Capcom is also addressing complaints about online griefing, where players prevent their teammates from carving, thus robbing them of rewards. With this update installed, allies can no longer interrupt the carving animation, and players become immune to all hit reactions while carving after a quest is complete. Additionally, a new option to return to the gathering hub in single-player or to disband and return to the gathering hub in multiplayer have been added to the Return Destination menu after finishing a quest. You can see a full list of announced changes at the bottom of this post; full patch notes will be shared closer to the update’s release.
Before the update arrives, Capcom will distribute a free Character Edit Voucher on March 16. This will be available from the PlayStation Store and Xbox Store as a one-use item that lets you modify your character’s gender and physical appearance, but not you or your Palico’s name or your Palico’s appearance. Additional vouchers will be available for purchase “at a later date” if you decide you want to make changes again after using the freebie.
Finally, Capcom unveiled details of the game’s Mega Man crossover gear (available through a quest from April 13-27) and the winner of the community’s weapon design contest (available starting April 6). These will come during the Spring Blossom event that runs from April 6-20 and offers “daily fun activities” and a new look for the Gathering Hub, as seen in the images below.
Monster Hunter World March 22 Update
Weapon Balance Changes
Great Sword: increased the damage for Charged Slash abilities.
Long Sword: improvements to Foresight Slash input timing and hitbox detection.
Sword & Shield: Roundslash damage increased and improved slinger usability
Dual Blades: adjustments to help maintain Demon Gauge active
Hammer: adjusted the stun values on charged attacks
Hunting Horn: general attack power increase
Lance: Counter-thrust adjustment to increase ease of use
Gunlance: Reduced sharpness loss for shelling, and made some attack power increases
Switch Axe: Zero Sum Discharge adjustments to increase ease of use
Charge Blade: balance adjustments to Impact Phial and Power Element Phial
Insect Glaive: improvements to extract attack power increase and extract effect length
Bow: fixed various bugs
Light Bowgun: no adjustments were made
Heavy Bowgun: no adjustments were made
Other Changes
Attacks from allies no longer interrupt you during the carving animation. Additionally, players are now immune to all hit reactions, including bombs, during carving animations after quest completion.
Added “Return to Gathering Hub” (single player) and “Disband & Return to Gathering Hub” (multiplayer) to the options for “Select Return Destination” after a quest has been completed.
Added the “Text Size” setting for changing subtitle text size, under Start Menu > Options Game Settings.
Street Fighter V has begun its Monster Hunter World crossover event, offering a rad alternate Ken costume in exchange for going on a very Monster-Hunter-like quest for armor pieces. The ultimate result will be a Rathalos Armor set, but you’ll have to take part in special events every week through April 12 to unlock it all.
Completing the armor will work much like it does in Monster Hunter World. You’ll need to collect each piece to finish the whole set. Each piece will be available in Extra Battle Mode on a rotating basis every week. This week, the boots are available. Next it will be the gauntlets, then chest-piece, and finally, the helmet. Once you’ve gotten all four pieces you’ll unlock the alternate costume.
This is the third and final announced Street Fighter 5 crossover, after Ibuki and R. Mika received similar monster duds. There’s a catch: each attempt at one of the challenges costs 2,500 in Fight Money per attempt. Assuming you can finish them all in one try, it will cost you 10,000 FM. If you need to retry some of the challenges, it could be significantly more.
The Monster Hunter series is well known for its crossovers with other famous video game franchises, and World offered a special Horizon: Zero Dawn crossover costume soon after launch. Just recently it detailed plans for its Mega Man crossover event, and announced a Devil May Cry event will be following sometime after. For most of its lifespan these extras seemed like a nice way to reward fans and raise interest in the niche RPG franchise. Now that Monster Hunter World is breaking company sales records, it may just be the other way around.
Grand Theft Auto V can be a visual showpiece on a PC at max settings, thanks to its well-realized world and sheer impressive scope. But what if you took all those standout graphical features and made them awful? What nightmarish body horror would ensue? Unfortunately, we now know the answer.
On this episode of Potato Mode, Joey and Rob intentionally muck up the city of Los Santos. The pair start by turning all the graphical settings down as low as possible, but the result is a surprisingly decent-looking version of the game. Not content to accept defeat in their quest to destroy beautiful things, they start editing background files to manually edit the level-of-detail settings. And that’s when things get weird.
From N64-like textures and fog to cars disappearing into the ground to character models becoming faceless clay-beasts, this particular tour of the fair city is not for the faint of heart. It all ends up the only place it could end: at a strip club, where the talent has morphed into vaguely human, vaguely naked blobs.
Avengers: Infinity War dropped its official trailer today, and right on cue movie ticketing sites have flung open their virtual doors to pre-sales. Fandango and AMC have both begun taking ticket orders for the April 27 premiere, with competing tchotchkes for using their services.
Fandango users can choose one of five stylized posters from artist Kaz Oomori, while AMC viewers who catch the first 3D viewing at 6 PM will get a collectible coin displaying the Avengers logo and Infinity Gauntlet. You can check out the range of posters and the collectible coin below.
Infinity War is the culmination of Marvel’s years-long cinematic universe. It brings in a veritable gaggle of heroes from across various Marvel cinematic properties into one film to fight their looming big-bad, the space warlord Thanos. The story will be based on the Infinity War comic series from the early 1990s, and Marvel films have been hinting heavily at this ultimate story direction since Thanos appeared in a cameo in the post-credits sequence of the first Avengers film.
The new trailer (above) shows several characters across the Marvel spectrum interacting for the first time, like Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. The comics were similarly chock full of heroes, but it being a large event book against a foe with god-like powers, that also meant some high-profile deaths. We expect the movie to follow suit, so prepare yourselves accordingly. You can check out our trailer breakdown of all the easter eggs while you wait for the big day.
Square Enix is holding a sale on Nintendo’s Eshop, offering discounts on several Switch and 3DS games, including a few surprisingly recent ones. The headliner of the group is Lost Sphear, which released less than two months ago. It is discounted to $35 from the usual $50.
We had a lukewarm reaction to Lost Sphear, having enjoyed the strategic combat options but finding it too overstuffed with busywork. It was the second retro throwback from Square’s new Tokyo RPG Factory, after I Am Setsuna–which had similar ups and downs. The standout of the group on the GameSpot scale is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, which we felt was a charming and unique tribute to the series’ iconic music.
There was a wealth of amazing games to play in 2017. However, it seems 2018 is primed with its own roster of exciting new games, including big-budget adventures like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Sea of Thieves, Kingdom Hearts III, Crackdown 3, and a whole lot more. To help you keep track of all the games coming out, we’ve compiled all the release dates for the biggest ones confirmed to come out in 2018 so far.
Be sure to check back often as we update this article with more release dates or any potential changes to any of the dates below. And if you’re eager to figure out the release dates from games last year, you can also reference our feature on the game release dates of 2017.
Below you can find a list of the biggest games that don’t have explicit release dates but are confirmed to release sometime this year. There are also games listed that we expect to launch in 2018. We’ll be moving each of these games into the release date sections above as soon as official dates are announced.
To infinity, and beyond! This looks like a massive movie. Disney + Marvel have dropped the second official trailer, and most likely final, for the Russo Brothers’ latest epic Marvel Studios installment – Avengers: Infinity War. Now opening around the world at the end of April, this Marvel movie is being billed as the game-changer, one of the most epic superhero movies yet, with everyone fighting everyone, and everyone fighting Thanos. What’s going to happen? Who’s going to die? How will the Marvel world change forever? We’ll know in just a few months. This stars everyone from the Marvel movies: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Tessa Thompson, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Pom Klementieff, Robert Downey Jr., Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, Sebastian Stan, Chris Evans, Cobie Smulders, Dave Bautista, Paul Rudd, Chadwick Boseman, Gwyneth Paltrow, & Paul Bettany. Get ready for Avengers mania. ›››
“Do you want to hear a story about the Wildling?” IFC Midnight has released the first official trailer for a new werewolf horror film titled Wildling, which just premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin this last week. The film stars Bel Powley (from The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Carrie Pilby) as a young woman who seems to be a she-wolf, discovering the truth about her origins and who she really is. The cast includes Liv Tyler, Brad Dourif, James Le Gros, Mike Faist, Troy Ruptash, and Charlotte Ubben. This actually doesn’t look so bad, more of a drama than a horror, but it looks to get into some werewolf action by the end. The final shot in this trailer is cool, and they of course don’t want to reveal much else besides that for now. But it grabbed my interest, and I think this might be worth a watch. Fire it up below, werewolf fans. ›››
