We’re giving away PS4, Xbox One, and PC codes for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 to fifteen (15) lucky fans! Scroll down to enter.
This is not an instant win. No purchase necessary. Competition ends at 12:00 PM PT on October 26, 2018, in which 15 winners will be chosen at random and emailed a code for the full game (MSRP: $60).
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Destiny 2 players eager to get their hands on some new Exotic items are (possibly) in luck. Xur, the mysterious merchant and servant of the Nine, has popped up once again in Bungie’s shooter with a refreshed lineup of Exotic items for sale, and he’s got something that may be of use for Titans, Warlocks, and Hunters. Here’s what he’s selling from now until the next weekly reset on Tuesday, October 23, as well as where to find him.
Xur is apparently a fan of moons of Jupiter; he was recently found on Io, and that’s again where he’s located for this week. Bungie continues to reuse his standard spot for each map, meaning he can be found in Giant’s Scar. Spawn in at that landing zone and make your way forward through the building in front of you, and then follow the path to the left. Just up on a hill, you’ll find a small cave he’s hanging out in.
Festival of the Lost and Iron Banner may be underway, but there’s nothing unusual about Xur’s lineup of items. He has a piece of Exotic armor for each class, as well as one weapon: Crimson, the hand cannon. This is an excellent gun, firing a three-round burst and featuring the Cruel Remedy perk, which heals you when you get a kill and refills the magazine when you get a precision kill.
On the armor side, Hunters can pick up The Dragon’s Shadow chest armor, which reloads your guns and provides a speed and handling buff after a dodge. Warlocks get the Crown of Tempests helmet, which speeds up arc ability recovery when you get arc ability kills. And Titans can get the Ashen Wake gauntlets, which improve fusion grenades by letting you throw them faster and causing them to explode on impact.
The full lineup and prices are as follows:
Also from Xur, you can pick up a Five of Swords challenge card for adding modifiers to Nightfall strikes (which is needed to do the weekly Powerful gear challenge to score over 100,000 in the Nightfall). Additionally, he has the Fated Engram, which is pricey at 97 Legendary Shards but is guaranteed to decrypt into a Year One Exotic you don’t already have.
As noted above, Xur’s lineup may not be thrilling (though Crimson genuinely is great), but there’s plenty else happening in the game. You can get curated Iron Banner rewards from taking part in the Crucible mode, and we’re still in the first week of the three-week-long Halloween event, Festival of the Lost. This features a new activity called the Haunted Forest that’s fun and offers a path to a 600 Power level auto rifle called Horror Story–just be careful when going for the chest at the end.
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It’s easy to assume that because Starlink: Battle For Atlas is geared toward younger audiences, it isn’t for you. The toys-to-life component and the cast of Saturday morning cartoon characters are both major aspects of the game that might fly right over your head–it’s definitely where I sat for much of the game’s pre-release marketing.
But after only a few hours with the game, Starlink’s strengths quickly pushed through to me: It’s a satisfyingly accessible spaceship combat game, with seamless exploration that takes the best cues from games like No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous, and comes with all the trimmings of Ubisoft’s brand of open worlds (for better and worse, according to our review.)
There’s one specific thing that’s really piqued my continued interest in Starlink, though: At E3 in 2018, I saw a behind-closed-doors demo of the then most recent technical demo of Beyond Good & Evil 2. And if you want to know what this mysterious sequel is going to feel like, playing Starlink is your best bet.
BG&E2 is a game that still has an air of mystery about it, especially if you haven’t been following the development blogs and livestreams very closely. There’s a lot to describe about what I saw (read the preview if you’re interested) but essentially, the game has an ambition to be a massive and multiplayer open-world space exploration game, and Starlink is just that.
The demo I saw at E3 showed a co-op duo exploring, sneaking, and fighting in an underground tomb, and over the course of 30 minutes, seamlessly transition into city, planet, space, and galaxy exploration and combat. They hoped onto vehicles and got into dogfights above the city, flew high in the sky to marvel at the enormous curvature of the planet, blasted off into the stratosphere to reach their mothership parked in space, and hit hyperspeed to start heading towards new planets.
At the time, my only points of reference were No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous—both games with impressive scope, and both games I thought of as outliers in terms of what to expect from massive, open-world games. But now, a few months later, Starlink has shown me a much closer example of what Beyond Good & Evil 2 looked and felt like to me, both technically and structurally. Starlink’s seamless and gradual transition between ground-based combat and questing, free-range dogfighting, and space travel has distinct parallels to what Beyond Good & Evil 2 is trying to achieve, though the BG&E2’s pace felt slower, making its scope–the world, the galaxy–feel much larger.
There’s other Ubisoft technology I could see in Beyond Good & Evil 2 pulling from, as well. The enormous, persistent map of The Crew 2 is an example of how they’re possibly going to systematically render their world, allowing multiple people to exist at opposite ends of a land mass. The sheer size of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s map makes me believe that populating the enormous planet I saw in the BG&E2 demo is a feasible feat–albeit one that could only be achieved with the enormous development manpower the company wields.
And if you’ve played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, released only a couple of weeks before Starlink, you might have noticed that Ubisoft is attempting to ape, or at least try their hand at integrating a lot of the major ideas from other open world games into their own. There were arguably various levels of success there, a lot of these components get me excited about how they might be adapted to the Beyond Good & Evil 2 narrative. Branching quests from The Witcher 3, with their varied consequences, has the obvious benefits of enriching world building. The recruitment system from Metal Gear Solid V would make sense in building your crew of Space Rebels. The nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor could potentially be incredibly exciting if you had bounty hunters tracking you down across the galaxy. In the same way, Starlink is the latest, and most directly analogous experiment into exploring Ubisoft’s capabilities in adapting the No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous model of open-world galaxies for their grand space opera.
Ubisoft is pulling Beyond Good & Evil out of the cult-classic status, and it’s likely to become a major flagship release for them in the future. But in the meantime, their open-world releases suggest that they’re taking steps towards learning how to build the enormous open-world galaxy they need to tell their story. The lofty ambition for the game that I saw in that E3 demo is now a much more palpable idea in my head, with Starlink providing a tangible jumping-off point. So, if you have any interest in Beyond Good & Evil 2, that Ubisoft toys-to-life game might be more exciting to you than you think.
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Barring a small handful of spin-offs, the Pokemon series is making its proper debut on Nintendo Switch next month with the release of Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee. Based largely on the classic Pokemon Yellow version, the Let’s Go games return the franchise to its roots in many ways. As in the original, the story is once again set in the Kanto region, and you’ll only encounter the first 151 Pokemon (plus the newly revealed Meltan) during your adventure.
The Let’s Go games also diverge from tradition in some dramatic ways, particularly in their connection with Pokemon Go. Not only are you able to transfer certain monsters you catch in the mobile game over to the Switch titles, they also employ Pokemon Go’s catching mechanics, meaning you’re no longer be able to battle wild Pokemon.
GameSpot recently had an opportunity to sit down with Pokemon: Let’s Go director Junichi Masuda and lead game environment designer Kensaku Nabana. Through an interpreter, we discussed what it was like reimagining the traditionally 8-bit world of Kanto in 3D, what changes the development team made in bringing the games to Switch, and how the new Mythical Pokemon Meltan came to be.
Despite being inspired by Pokemon Yellow, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee seem to introduce a lot of new elements not found in previous Pokemon games. What new things should we expect?
Junichi Masuda: The main flow of the story plays out very much like Pokemon Yellow Version. One of the reasons we wanted to do this is that we imagined a lot of fans of the original game were going to be playing through it. There are different parts, but I think they’ll recognize the main beats of the story and feel some nostalgia there.
At the same time, we did add a decent amount of sub-events that weren’t in the originals. It kind of gives it a different feel because there’s a lot of trainers alongside their Pokemon in the actual world itself, so it would be a different impression than the original game, while also covering the same story.
Team Rocket seems to play a more prominent role in Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee. Does this mean we’ll see more of Jessie, James, and Meowth during the story?
Masuda: Yeah, they definitely appear more in the game than in the original Pokemon Yellow Version. With these two games, we really set out at the very beginning with a main target in mind, which was younger kids who maybe didn’t own their own smartphones and weren’t able to really participate in the Pokemon Go craze that happened. They weren’t able to go out and join in on that fun, so really providing them with a really fun experience that also had some of that Pokemon Go gameplay. But at the same time, we wanted to introduce these new players, for whom this might be their first Pokemon game, through the original story, kind of ease them into the Pokemon experience that way.
Also, I thought it would be fun if players who maybe enjoyed the original game–they’re now much older, probably in their 30s–they’d be able to interact with maybe their own kids or other kids that they know that are playing the game. They would actually know the general flow of the story, maybe able to give advice like where to go next and things like that. With Team Rocket, because the animated series is popular–it’s in like 85-plus countries–I imagine a lot of those younger kids will have seen the animated series, even if they haven’t played the game. So, we’re trying to add in the elements like that to make it easier for them to get into the world and recognize the setup.
In the original games, your rival was a huge jerk, but the one in Let’s Go seems much friendlier. Why the change?
Masuda: I think the biggest reason that rivals were more of a jerk in the early days is that we were just limited with what we could express with the pixel graphics. There’s not much you can do with that kind of little sprite on the screen, so we worked harder to characterize them through dialogue and give them certain personalities. Also, because it’s just dialogue and there’s not a whole lot going on on the screen, it doesn’t give as harsh of an impression even if they’re jerks, I think. Now we have HD graphics and the visuals are much more impressive. If you also made him a jerk, the impression would be a lot stronger on players. Another thing, just my own personal take, is that it feels that people with those kinds of personalities these days are not as accepted by players, I think, as they were back then.
In the original games, there was text or some sort of setting where “Pidgey eat Caterpie,” for example. That was fine back then, I think everybody liked it. But, I think, as Pokemon has gone on, the fans kind of have their idea of what Pokemon should be. If we did that now, I think a lot of people wouldn’t really like it, it would give them a bad reaction.
What about the old man standing outside Celadon Gym who says he loves looking at the pretty girls? Did you have to tone that down as well?
Masuda: Yeah, we definitely re-evaluated all those kinds of things. But at the same time, the fact that you remember that means that it was something memorable. We had to be very careful about which things to change and which things to keep as they were. Definitely check it out for yourself and see if he’s still around.
What was it like having to reimagine the Kanto region in 3D? How hard was it to recreate the world for an HD console?
Kensaku Nabana: I was in elementary school when Pokemon Yellow Version came out, and I remember playing those games as well as a fan myself. So, when we were first starting out in the development of this game, we all went back and played Pokemon Yellow Version again, and I just tried to remember the world of Pokemon that was in my imagination when I was playing those games, because you had to fill in the gaps a lot back then. Really try and take what was in my imagination then and redesign the areas to look like that image I had in my head.
Also, keeping in mind that we put the focus on having a lot of Pokemon in the environment, walking around in the overall world this time around, so [we focused on] making the visuals look like something where that wouldn’t seem strange. We initially explored a more photorealistic direction, but we settled on this more anime style approach, these cuter visuals.
It definitely leaves a strong impression, seeing how different some very famous scenes from the old game are in Let’s Go, such as the first time you come to the S.S. Anne and see how much more majestic it looks. For some areas like Lavender Town, which was very creepy in the original games, how did you go about expressing that in Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee?
Nabana: Lavender Town is definitely one that I don’t want to talk too much about and have you discover for yourself, but I definitely have the same impression as you. It’s kind of this creepy, unsettling place. So, I initially approached it with that in mind and designed it to make it look like it would give that impression. But that wasn’t enough for Mr. Masuda. He was like, “You’ve got to make it feel even creepier.” He gave me a lot of specific directions to do that. So, I think it will be fun to see what it looks like.
It doesn’t seem like held items and abilities are in these games. What is the reason for that?
Masuda: Yeah, that was actually a conscious decision. We don’t have held items or abilities or eggs, or a lot of features that weren’t in the original generation that got added later on. We had to be very careful in selecting which things we would update from the original games and which ones we would keep the same. I did like the appeal of the simplicity of the original Generation 1 games, as this being an entry title for new players joining the franchise to really experience something very similar to what kids did 20 years ago, but [we also wanted people to] enjoy some of these new gameplay gimmicks, like the Poke Ball Plus and the connectivity with Pokemon Go.
But, of course, we did have to update some other things. For example, we added more types later on and Pokemon got re-typed, so those exist in the game. And, obviously, you weren’t able to run in the original game. We were only able to create four-way movement, so we decided that we probably couldn’t do that today and it made it much easier to move around, I think.
Even though held items aren’t in it, we’ve seen that Mega Evolutions are. Can you tell us how that’s going to work? Traditionally, your Pokemon has to hold the right item to Mega Evolve.
Masuda: No real details, but I can guarantee it’s very simple. We didn’t really think too much about it and just kept it very simple to trigger Mega Evolutions.
Please tell us more about the new Pokemon, Meltan. Was it always planned to debut first in Pokemon Go? And was it designed in collaboration with Niantic, or internally at Game Freak?
Masuda: We definitely planned to debut it in Pokemon Go from the very beginning. We had talked about in the early stages of even Go’s development that we want to debut a Pokemon, and we worked with Niantic to kind of figure out that functionality. I’ve been working on the development of Go since the beginning as well, so I’ve always had it in mind. But the design, that was done internally at Game Freak. I gave some specific setting directions to one of our designers who was also a fan of the original games and played them as a kid, so he had a really good idea of what I was looking for, based on this kind of very simple metal nut design. He definitely probably had the original Kanto Pokemon designs in his mind and tried to keep it as simple as possible. You know, they were more kind of basic back then compared to some of the more modern designs. He worked on that, and then once it was finished, we gave all the assets and everything to Niantic, we planned the event and had them execute on that, and it worked out.
Following up on Meltan’s design, here in the States he’s been given a joking/affectionate nickname of “Nut Boy.” I’m curious how you feel about that nickname and if, perhaps, he has a similar nickname in Japan?
Nabana: I haven’t really seen a lot of nicknames in Japan yet, but for the design, we really tried to make it look like it was kind of a more realistic-looking object, like something that maybe you could see it in real life. It would look weird, but it wouldn’t stand out too much. Initially, I thought this would be a very divisive design, like some people might like it but some people won’t. It looks really strange, but if you look at it more closely, it’s kind of cute at the same time. But it seems like the reaction has been generally really positive, and that’s been a lot of fun. There’s been tons of fan art already and it was revealed just recently, so it’s been exciting for us.
In the DS and 3DS games, there were a lot of events at stores that gave out free Pokemon via download codes. Is anything similar planned for Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee?
Masuda: The functionality from the previous games is in there, it’s called Mystery Gift. It’s in the game and I’m sure there’ll probably be something, but I think with the limited selection of Pokemon, they’re all fairly easily catchable in other games. I’m not sure how often or how frequent it’s going to be with these particular games.
We’ve talked about transferring between Pokemon Go and Let’s Go. When the “core” Pokemon game planned for 2019 arrives, will there also be transfer possibilities between Let’s Go and that title?
Masuda: We’re definitely always thinking of that kind of forward-moving functionality, especially since we’ve introduced the Pokemon Bank. Now, up to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, you’re able to store your Pokemon. We know they’re very important to everyone. I mean, obviously, people would be very sad if they couldn’t use their Pokemon in a future game. So, it does get complicated when you talk about the details and we’re still figuring it out, but we do have plans to find ways to let players use their Pokemon in the next game.
What are your favorite Pokemon games?
Masuda: Definitely Red and Green for me is the most memorable. It was a six year development with just nine of us, so we have a lot of memories from that time, both good and bad. One of the other things was that we didn’t have much expectation that the game would be played by millions of people at the time. We were just developing it. At any time the company could have gone under and it may not have been released. But yeah, a lot of memories from that time.
Nabana: Red and Green, that’s where I started as well. I played those games and I have great memories playing them, but over the 20 years as time went on, I think the memory got glamorized even more. It starts to just become this legend in my mind. Of course, we tried to make Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee, the re-imagining of that, to kind of live up to those. It gets more and more beautiful in your mind as time goes on, so that’s what we tried to do. So those are probably my favorite games, just in my memory.
But as a developer, I think being able to work on these games and try and update them for the modern time and work as a team lead on these games, that was probably my favorite experience so far.
Going back to Red and Green and how arduous the development process was. Is there anything from back then that you wanted to specifically address or implement when updating the adventure for Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee?
Masuda: With Red and Green and even games after that, at Game Freak we always wanted to have Pokemon appear in the overworld, in the field itself. But, specifically with the original games, there was no way of doing that with the Game Boy hardware. It just couldn’t handle it. We really wanted to make them feel like living creatures that are in the world with you, so you’ll see on Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee they’ll all have their own little unique movement characteristics. Some of them will run up and stop. They’re kind of curious. It’ll be fun to just discover how they all react to you.
One final question: any chance we see Pikachu’s scrapped evolution, Gorochu, someday?
Masuda: You’re probably not going to see it. None of the Pokemon that we worked on, got to a point, and then discarded them have actually ever re-appeared yet, so I would say the chances are low. One of the reasons for that is that we always have this base criteria at Game Freak of being able to explain why a certain Pokemon is in the world or why it exists in that world, trying to make it feel believable within the fantasy. And usually the ones that get rejected are Pokemon that we weren’t able to justify, I think. Usually there’s a reason for why they weren’t implemented, and as long as that reason still exists, they probably won’t be put in the game.
We always say Pokemon isn’t a “character game.” It’s not a game where it’s just the characters, but it’s a game that shows this world where these living creatures are existing in a space. That’s kind of a slight nuance, but that’s what we always try to go for at Game Freak. It’s not good enough that they’re just cute. (Laughs) They have to have something more to it.
Nabana: I’ve worked on Pokemon designs myself and it really is a very arduous, time consuming process. You’ve got to talk to a lot of people, a lot of back-and-forth and really be able to justify it before we get to a final design.
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By now it’s almost become rote to say that Finnish developer Remedy is a specialist in narrative-focused games. After all, the studio is best known for Alan Wake, Max Payne, and Quantum Break, games where narrative was squarely at the forefront (even down to the episodic nature of its most recent title). So it was somewhat of a surprise during this year’s E3 when Remedy revealed Control as its next big game. While seemingly still embracing some of the time and environmental manipulation mechanics of its previous titles, Control is apparently moving away from the strong linear narratives Remedy is best known for to instead be a more open-ended, free-flowing story experience.
That’s not to say, however, that Control won’t have a cohesive story. Rather, as Remedy creative director Sam Lake told us during a recent interview, the story won’t be told in a strictly linear way, with players interacting with the plot depending on how (and where) they move through the game’s strange environments. Control is also eschewing a simple, easily digestible narrative, according to Lake. Rather, this sci-fi story is aiming to emulate the uncertainty and doubt of films like Annihilation and shows like Legion. In the below interview, Lake talks to GameSpot about what experience Remedy wants players to come away with while playing Control, what the main influences for the game were, and Alan Wake’s move to the small screen in the form of a brand-new TV show.
In previous interviews you’ve used the genre term “new weird” to describe what you’re doing with Control. Can you tell us more about that?
If we look at many science fiction and fantasy things, they give you a relatively safe world where there is an answer and there is a chosen one and it’s simplified. But new weird, even though it uses the same elements, approaches them more from real-world perspective where maybe there is no answer. Maybe there is a mystery. Maybe we are dealing with unexplainable forces that go beyond current human understanding. Maybe there is a theory for what this is. Maybe there is a competing theory. Maybe they both make sense. There can be answers, I think. But you still need to make up your own mind and do your own interpretation and piece these things together.
One inspiration for us going into this was Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, and the book especially. The movie came out and it’s definitely cool as well. Other sources of inspiration for me for maybe this fragmented, hallucinatory, trippy storytelling world are Legion as a show, and Mr. Robot in some ways. Mr. Robot especially does interesting things with the voice of narration. And always for me, Twin Peaks.
How big a risk do you think it is for you guys to try to break away from the stuff you’ve done before and experiment in this more free form, different approaches type of narrative?
It’s a challenge, certainly; but we always want to try out new things with every project. We also had the perspective that we’ve now done a couple of games that were very linear, structured episodically, and it feels like the right time to break away from that, to try creating a deeper world where the player can keep coming back to and find new things and keep on playing. So that was a starting point for me and Mikael Kasurinen, who is our game director. A challenge? Yes, but you need to have that. You need to keep it interesting.
Is Control the size or style of game that you see Remedy focusing on in future projects?
We definitely strive to learn from every project. And I feel that we are always taking a step back and looking critically at the idea of, what is a Remedy game? And what are the ingredients we feel are working really well for us? And what are maybe some things that we would put into a lesser role and come up with something new at the same time? There are definitely new elements here that we feel excited and positive about, and I can see them being elements in our future games as well. But it’s always also game-specific and project-specific. This is Control and this is the style for that. For something else, we’ll see.
That’s an interesting question that you just brought up. What is a Remedy game? We’ve talked a lot about the new things you’re trying in Control, but do you see any through lines from all your previous projects into this one?
They have all been, in some ways, the model of a hero’s journey. Which I like a lot and I think it works, especially well in this loose framework for an action game. It’s a very strange, weird dream-like hero’s journey, but it’s one nonetheless. [There’s also the] idea of a family in some ways, and a family that has been broken. We have those ideas and themes in Control as well.
Are there any nods to your previous games in this? Is there a chance of having a fully-connected Remedy games universe at all?
Well, if you are familiar with our games, there always are nods [to other games], such as Easter eggs or other things. To me, that’s always been a natural way somehow to approach this, and it doesn’t go any further than that. I think that’s part of the mystery to be discovered in this game.
Recently there was news about an Alan Wake television show moving forward. What’s your involvement with that?
Alan Wake is important to us, and important to me, so we want to be involved because it didn’t make any sense to just sell the rights and see it go. It just felt like there are interesting ideas that we could pursue of how to have a dialogue between the game and the show. And it also feels like, through the years, there is so much Alan Wake lore that’s up here that is really good potential material for the show. So yeah, definitely we’ll be involved. I guess the official role is executive producer, which is a very kind of crude, loose term but yeah, Peter Calloway, who is the showrunner, we have a dialogue going on. And we are sitting down together and brainstorming on this.
Are you interested in telling the story of the game again or do you want to start from a different path?
Yes and no. It doesn’t make sense to me to tack them to a show just because they were part of the game. I think that we want the show and we want certain core ideas but first and foremost, it needs to be a great show. But also at the same time, I think it will give us opportunities where we had certain ideas in the game that we didn’t have an opportunity to really explore or go deep into. And I’m looking forward to the idea that in the show, we can actually expand and go a lot deeper into certain things that were important, or I felt were important, but we couldn’t really do a lot with them.
Will this get us to an Alan Wake sequel?
Yeah, I hope so. I would love to do more Alan Wake, but yeah, nothing to tell you about that.
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Microsoft has announced four Xbox One backwards compatible games have been X-enhanced. This means that these Xbox 360 titles run at a higher resolution and nine times the original pixel count on an Xbox One X.
All four games–Portal: Still Alive, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2–are developed by Valve. When all is said and done, it’s technically five games, as Half Life 2: The Orange Box is a combined collection of Half-Life 2, Portal: Still Alive, and Team Fortress 2. You can buy the games digitally from the Xbox Store or use the original Xbox 360 discs. The addition of these four games brings the number of Xbox One backwards compatible X-enhanced titles to 21, a list that also includes games like Red Dead Redemption and Skate 3.
First releasing in 2007–as part of Valve’s The Orange Box bundle–Portal: Still Alive is a 3D puzzle platformer that focuses on a battle of wits between the silent protagonist Chell and the psychopathic A.I. antagonist GLaDOS. Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 have had long-standing effects on the video game industry, such as the former playing a huge part in the success of Steam’s launch and the latter inspiring titles like Overwatch. The Left 4 Dead series temporarily revitalized interest in zombie video games with campaigns centered around teamwork-based first-person shooter combat and a multiplayer horde mode.
Starting today, four more Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles will be enhanced for Xbox One X. Enjoy playing Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Portal: Still Alive, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2 with enhanced visuals and higher resolutions on Xbox One X https://t.co/7q7myPS0gC pic.twitter.com/bdUjeDvnhG
— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) October 18, 2018
All of these games have received near perfect scores on GameSpot for their impressive gameplay and well written stories. In our Portal: Still Alive review, we gave the game a 9/10. In our Half-Life 2 review, we gave the game a 9.2/10. In our Team Fortress 2 review, we gave the game an 8/10. In our reviews for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, we gave the former an 8.5/10 and the latter a 9/10.
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In Update 2.0.4, the most recent patch for Destiny 2, data miners discovered evidence that Thunderlord, an Exotic machine gun from the original Destiny, could be returning. Not only that, but players might be adventuring to the Cosmodrome, the opening area of the first game, to earn the weapon.
According to Polygon, the data miners have discovered Feeding Frenzy, one of Thunderlord’s original perks, in Destiny 2’s database. The perk isn’t currently attached to any weapon in the game, which matches up with an earlier pattern established by Destiny 2’s Whisper of the Worm, an Exotic sniper rifle. Whisper of the Worm is a renamed variation of Destiny’s Black Spindle, a gun with an original perk called White Nail. The White Nail perk appeared in the data of Destiny 2’s Warmind expansion prior to Whisper of the Worm being added to the game.
The data miners also found audio files that suggest a future Destiny 2 update might send players back to the Cosmodrome, further hinting Thunderlord is on its way to Destiny 2. Thunderlord is the first Destiny Exotic weapon ever revealed to the world, shown off during Destiny’s E3 2013 gameplay reveal demo. When Destiny launched, the mission was tweaked so that players wouldn’t earn such a powerful weapon right at the game’s start. However, these data mine leaks could be hinting that Destiny 2 will allow us to replay that mission as it happened back in 2013, and we’ll earn Thunderlord just like the Guardians did in that first demo.
Bungie has not revealed whether or not any of this is true, although some players believe that if the Cosmodrome mission and Thunderlord weapon are coming to Destiny 2, it will be a part of the Festival of the Lost, a limited-time Halloween-themed event currently going on right now. As part of the event, on October 30, you’ll have access to a new quest line where you can track down Master Ives’ killers. Bungie has remained rather coy on what these quests are, simply stating in a blog post that there will be “powerful” rewards.
Destiny 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Festival of the Lost continues until November 6 at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST / 6 PM BST.
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EA has announced that four of the voice actors from Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series will be reprising their roles in Battlefront 2. Each of the four Hero characters will be rolling out separately over the next several months, starting this October.
In a blog post on Battlefront 2’s website, EA DICE editorial writer Daniel Steinholtz revealed Matthew Wood, James Arnold Taylor, Corey Burton, and Matt Lanter will return to voice General Grievous, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Count Dooku, and Anakin Skywalker respectfully. Grievous comes to Battlefront 2 on October 30, while the remaining three Hero characters don’t have exact release dates. As of right now, Obi-Wan is scheduled for November 2018, Dooku for January 2019, and Anakin for February 2019.
EA recently revealed its process for how new Star Wars Hero characters are chosen for Battlefront 2. For the developer, every “hero must counter a villain, and vice versa” so after deciding to add Obi-Wan and Anakin to the game, Grievous and Dooku–villains that share a “natural rivalry” with the two Jedi–were also chosen.
Grievous, Obi-Wan, Dooku, and Anakin are part of a Clone Wars DLC road map scheduled for Battlefront 2. The updates started in August, first focusing on adding a wider variety of cosmetic appearances for the Republic Army, such as Yoda’s 41st Elite Corps and Windu’s 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps. A Prequel Era playlist was also added to the game, which limits multiplayer matches to Galactic Assault on Clone Wars era maps. More multiplayer locations, like Geonosis, are scheduled for future updates.
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The Clone Wars animated series, once believed to be cancelled for good, is returning with a seventh season that sees Anakin and Obi-Wan once again teaming up with Ahsoka Tano to aid in the Siege of Mandalore.
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Square Enix has announced that you’ll be able to replay The Quiet Man–a game about a protagonist who’s deaf–on a second playthrough with sound. The choice to do so is optional, according to Gematsu, but Square Enix’s decision to add the feature is slightly puzzling, as it appears to undermine the whole point of the game.
On The Quiet Man’s Steam page, Square Enix writes you “play as a deaf character, Dane, and experience the world as the character does–with very little distinct audio and no subtitles: it’s up to you to make up your own interpretation of the story as your search for the masked man unfolds.” The developer also adds that one of the game’s key features is its soundless world. Experiencing what it’s like for someone who’s deaf to interact with the world seems to be the selling point of The Quiet Man, so it’s a little odd that there’s an option to replay the game with sound.
The Quiet Man made waves at E3 2018 with a reveal trailer that blended together live action cutscenes and animated gameplay. Despite the excitement, Square Enix didn’t announce any further details about the game until early October, when a gameplay trailer revealed The Quiet Man’s release date was a month away.
The gameplay trailer showcases Dane moving through a noiseless Manhattan, using his quick reaction time to respond to threats. Dane appears to have above-average strength, easily flipping around and delivering devastating beat downs on the enemies he encounters. The trailer also reveals the hooded man who serves as the game’s primary antagonist. This mysterious villain kidnaps a songstress that Dane seems smitten with and desperately wants to save.
The Quiet Man launches on November 1 for PS4 and PC, and will release as a digital-only title. Square Enix advertised the game as an “immersive story-driven cinematic action experience” that can be completed in one sitting.
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The annual Haunted Hallows has returned to Rocket League. This limited-time Halloween-themed event adds a new currency to Psyonix’s game that allows you to buy special cosmetic items for your battle cars.
During Haunted Hallows, playing in and completing online matches allows you to earn Candy Corn currency. Candy Corn can be redeemed for Halloween-themed battle car decals, toppers, wheels, and other cosmetic items. One of the limited items, called a Golden Pumpkin, unlocks one random battle car customization from the Nitro, Turbo, or Player’s Choice crates.
Haunted Hallows continues until November 5 at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST / 10:00 PM BST. Even if you can no longer earn Candy Corn once the event ends, you’ll still be able to spend any leftovers you might have for a limited time. You’ll have until November 8 at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST / 10:00 PM BST to spend your leftover Candy Corn before they’re gone for good.
We think Rocket League is superb. In our Rocket League review, Miguel Concepcion gave the game a 9/10, writing, “The joy of Rocket League rests on the countless plans that are conceived and discarded every other second in any given match. Trying to predict where and how the ball will bounce next is a game within the game. Despite the use of cars, Rocket League emulates the emotional surges typical of The Beautiful Game, such as the rush of an unexpected fast break or a well-timed header into a goal. With Rocket League, the promising concept of combining two wonderful things–cars and soccer–is equally magnificent in execution.”
Rocket League is available on Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch. The game supports cross-play between Xbox One, PC, and Switch.
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