Spring is in the air and that can only mean one thing: monsters to hunt. Monster Hunter World has kicked off its Spring Blossom Fest event, which adds seasonal decorations, daily activities, and of course, some new loot to obtain with special Blossom Tickets. It runs until April 19 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET.
During the festivities, the Gathering Hub is decorated with flowers and other springtime accoutrements. Event Quests will be running throughout the festival, starting with a quest for the community-designed Wyvern Ignition Great Sword. Starting on April 13, players can start an Event Quest to earn the Mega Man armor. It gives your Palico a boxy look and it plays classic Mega Man tunes according to your selected weapon.
The Spring Blossom Fest will also be running daily Limited Bounties. These should give you a reason to continue logging in, even after you’ve gotten your hands on the new weapon. You’ll receive Blossom Tickets throughout the event–both for logging in and for completing Limited bounties–that can then be cashed in for rewards, including armor. You can also equip the Handler with a new outfit, as pictured below. We’ve also got a guide on how to get the new greatsword and armor.
Capcom is keeping the Monster Hunter World train rolling with pretty frequent updates. Its first big update added the fearsome Deviljho, but the game has sported plenty of smaller updates and events besides that one. We’ve seen fairly constant changes, tweaks, and rotating costume events, like the launch event for Horizon Zero Dawn gear. Most recently it added a very odd helmet for the discerning monster hunter who has everything.
We’re just days away from WWE’s biggest event of the year, Wrestlemania. The company’s most important PPV of the year will also be the largest in terms of the number of matches on the card, and one of the battles with the most hype behind it is John Cena vs. Undertaker, even though the match has yet to be officially announced. The biggest question on everyone’s minds is, “Who is going to win?”
In addition to Cena beating down Taker, we ran some more simulations in WWE 2K18 for as many matches as we could. However, some wrestlers, like Mustafa Ali and Ronda Rousey, were not in the game, and there was no way to run a three-team tag team match, so those were skipped.
The lead up to this year’s real-life event has been crazy. From Daniel Bryan being cleared for a return to the ring, to Shane McMahon fighting in the event–even though he’s been hospitalized–to Macaulay Culkin challenging Rusev, the buildup may be more exciting than the actual PPV itself. That’s saying a lot, since there are quite a few huge matches on the show that have the potential to be legendary. This is especially true for both Smackdown championship matches featuring Royal Rumble winners: Asuka vs. Charlotte (c) and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles (c).
Wrestlemania 34 comes to PPV and the WWE Network on Sunday April 8 at 7 PM ET/4 PM PT. The Kickoff Show will start at 5 PM ET/2 PM PT on the WWE Network and streamed live on YouTube, with the second hour appearing on the USA Network. You don’t have to watch through YouTube or on USA Network, as there are multiple ways to watch Wrestlemania 34 this year, which includes on your consoles. It’s going to be a long show, with at least seven hours slotted on the Network for the show to run.
If you’re interested in more on Wrestlemania–including live coverage of the event itself–stay tuned to GameSpot in the upcoming week, leading into Wrestlemania 34.
Wrestlemania 34 is filled with matches that could serve as the main event of the show. However, to me, there are two matches that stand above the rest in terms of anticipation, buildup, and potential to be instant classics: AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Charlotte vs. Asuka. And while Styles/Nakamura will be fantastic, it’s Charlotte/Asuka that will take the proverbial cake.
The rivalry between the two is new, as the match is built entirely around a Royal Rumble win, but both women’s journeys to the top is just as important. Here is how Asuka and Charlotte got to the main WWE roster and into this Wrestlemania match.
Asuka travelled back and forth between Japan and the United States, beginning in 2004 under the ring name Kana. Most notably, she wrestled for Shimmer, although she never won a title at the promotion. In August 2015, she signed with the WWE and changed her name to Asuka. Early on, she was unstoppable and put on some stellar performances, with her battle against Emma at NXT Takeover: London being the first of many in WWE. In April 2016, Asuka won the NXT Women’s Championship and held onto it until August 24, 2017, when she had to relinquish it due to injury. She did not lose the title once, and her reign lasted an astonishing 510 days. While Asuka was–and still is–undefeated in singles competition, she did suffer three losses and five no-contests in tag and four-way matches. Otherwise, she has been undefeated for two and a half years, racking up 250 wins without a loss.
Since coming to Raw, she remains undefeated, and she won the first-ever Women’s Royal Rumble match on January 28. New rules for Rumble winners went into effect this past year, as the lone survivors of each match got to choose who they wanted to fight in a title match at Wrestlemania. It didn’t matter what show the superstar was on. After making the WWE Universe wait, Asuka announced on March 11, at the Fastlane PPV, that she was challenging Charlotte for her belt.
Charlotte Flair, the daughter of two-time WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair, had a very different journey on her way to becoming the Smackdown Women’s Champion. While she had a few appearances in the final years of WCW–as a teenager–she got her true in-ring start in NXT in 2012. In May 2014, Charlotte won the NXT Women’s Championship after beating Natalya. She was a heel during this time and a member of the BFFs along with Sasha Banks and Summer Rae. She dropped the title in January 2015 to Sasha Banks in a four-way match featuring the other Four Horsewomen Bayley and Becky Lynch. This was a golden era for women’s wrestling in NXT.
Later in July, Charlotte was called up to Raw along with Banks and Lynch as part of the Women’s Revolution. She was the Diva’s Champion for a short stint, and then became the first WWE Women’s Champion at Wrestlemania 32, which later became the Raw Women’s Championship after the brand split. Eventually, Charlotte headed to Smackdown and won the Tuesday night show’s championship as well. She will be the only superstar to hold every women’s championship in the modern era: NXT, Diva, WWE, Raw, and Smackdown. No one else will ever achieve that again, as the Diva’s title will thankfully never return.
That brings us to Wrestlemania 34 on April 8. Asuka chose Charlotte as her opponent, and there could not be a better matchup for the women currently in the division. They are polar opposites with their styles, as Charlotte is an American-trained athlete, who works much more like an ’80s or ’90s star with some modern-day pizazz thrown in. Asuka utilizes more kicks and punches and works with a stiffer Japanese style of wrestling–or “Strong Style” if you prefer. What the two do have in common is the use of submission wrestling and a “never give up” attitude. Charlotte is strategic and cunning, and Asuka is controlled chaos.
What we really have to weigh here is Asuka’s streak. Is Wrestlemania the perfect place for her to get her first single’s loss since coming to WWE? Yes. Is the time now? I don’t think so. Even when you ignore the rumors that Asuka’s win will set up a year-long run as champion, only to lose to Ronda Rousey at Wrestlemania 35–which I really hope isn’t true–Asuka and her streak are still new to the WWE Universe. Sure, NXT fans have been seeing her for a few years, but she’s only been on Raw for six months now. She’s still new to the average fan of WWE’s programming. There is still a lot of time to build up just how dominant Asuka is, to really put Goldberg’s WCW streak to shame–which Asuka broke almost a year ago, prompting a congratulations from Goldberg.
The whole match shouldn’t be about making Asuka look like a dominating force and Charlotte simply putting her over though. It’s going to be a battle, as both women are two of the best competitors WWE has to offer currently. Expect this match to be longer, filled with ups and downs, and for Charlotte to look just as tough as Asuka. This should be a clean, straightforward match with no shenanigans or controversial endings. It doesn’t need it.
It’s apparent that Asuka will beat Charlotte and win the Smackdown Women’s Championship, but what could that mean for Charlotte? Will she continue to feud with Asuka or jump ship to Raw during the rumored Superstar Draft happening at Backlash? If she does make the jump, she’ll more than likely take on Ronda Rousey before the former UFC fighter starts her slow build to the aforementioned story with Asuka. Regardless of future storylines, we’re in for an exciting match at Wrestlemania.
If you’re interested in more breakdowns of upcoming Wrestlemania matches, check out all our predictions here and stay tuned to GameSpot for more Wrestlemania coverage.
Roman Reigns is going to beat Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 34. This much we know, with near 100% certainty. Sorry to disappoint you.
There will be contrarian predictions over the next two weeks, but those predictions will be wrong. There will be no Seth Rollins plot swerve. There will be no eleventh-hour booking change by Vince McMahon. Lesnar won the WWE Universal title from Goldberg at Wrestlemania 33, and since then, he has defeated every other conceivable threat to his dominance. He defeated Samoa Joe. He defeated Braun Strowman. Reigns is the only viable opponent left. Reigns vs. Lesnar is a rematch of the two men’s Wrestlemania 31 main event, which creates narrative closure to their feud. It would be impossible to duplicate the same level of excitement on a smaller stage.
Reigns is also winning because the WWE writers painted themselves into a figurative corner. Brock Lesnar, according to the storyline, is a spoiled, entitled champion who doesn’t care about the fans, blows off scheduled appearances, and coasts on the hard work of younger, hungrier, full-time wrestlers. Roman Reigns, meanwhile, is the man who loves the fans and sacrifices his health and happiness to put smiles on their faces. WWE has sold fans on the following premise: that so long as Lesnar is champion, Monday Night Raw is worse off for it. To have Lesnar beat Reigns is a tacit admission that the show will continue to be bad.
There’s every reason to believe that Reigns vs. Lesnar will be fantastic. The last time they faced one another, Brock ended the evening with blood running down his face. Reigns didn’t, but of the two men, he arguably got hurt more. Brock’s moves were stiffer than usual that evening; a particularly vicious lariat sent Reigns crashing off the apron. Reigns took so many German suplexes that Lesnar improvised a meme–“Suplex City, b***h!”–around it.
The more WWE makes Reigns physically suffer, the more people cheer him instead of boo him. You can see the exact moment the tide shifts during Wrestlemania 31, when Reigns is rolling on the ground in pain, laughing like a long-haired, greased-up Tyler Durden. This past year, Strowman threw Reigns into tables, hurled him against an ambulance and shoved him into any hard, unforgiving surface nearest to them. The crowds ate it up. And most recently on the March 19 episode of Raw, Lesnar beat Reigns with a steel chair before tipping over his stretcher.
Beating Reigns to a pulp satisfies multiple audiences in multiple ways. His fans empathize with his pain. His haters love to see him suffer. And everyone loves a good beatdown. The YouTube videos of Reigns getting pulverized are some of the most watched videos on WWE’s official channel.
Love him or hate him, one positive factor about Roman Reigns is indisputable: he is quite possibly the most durable man on the roster. The man can take a hard beating and keep coming back for more. Even his most venomous critics can concede that. Hurting Reigns to get him over isn’t a viable long-term strategy–he’ll have a truncated career if he keeps hurling himself into metal objects– but it might work in the short term for Wrestlemania 34.
Reigns is winning on April 8, and he’s going to earn the Universal Championship the hard way. Perhaps, that’ll be enough for the majority of fans to finally get on board with him. Lesnar, meanwhile, may be on his way back to UFC soon.
If you’re interested in more breakdowns of upcoming Wrestlemania matches, check out all our predictions here and stay tuned to GameSpot for more Wrestlemania coverage.
The Road to Wrestlemania is long, tough, and tiring, and not just for WWE superstars. GameSpot has been keeping you up to date with everything revolving around WWE’s biggest event in 2018, Wrestlemania 34. This year’s edition is coming to you from the Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday, April at 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT. Believe it or not, there are still tickets available for the event, with the cheapest going for $50 and the most expensive costing $7,350.
This year’s card is extremely stacked, with 14 matches–including Cena/Undertaker–happening over the course of seven hours. One of the biggest pieces of news to come out of the lead-up to Mania is Daniel Bryan being cleared to return to wrestling, which led to him teaming with Shane McMahon to take on Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. In addition, John Cena has been begging Undertaker for a match at Wrestlemania 34 for the past month, and no match has been confirmed yet, but it’s totally still going to happen, right?
Here’s a collection of our biggest stories revolving around Wrestlemania to get you pumped up for the April 8 event on the WWE Network. Make sure to come back to GameSpot for live coverage of Wrestlemania and individual full match recaps right after they air on Sunday.
If you’re planning on watching Wrestlemania 34 on Sunday, April 8, you might want to make sure you have comfortable seat, food on hand, and a bedpan ready because this is going to be one long show. Last year’s show–including the preshow–was rumored to run for six and a half hours and actually ran for over seven. This year’s Wrestlemania 34 is on track to run just as long, if not longer.
According to the upcoming schedule on the WWE Network, Wrestlemania’s Kickoff Show will start at 5 PM ET and run for two hours. Then, at 7 PM ET, Wrestlemania will begin and is slotted to run until 12 AM ET. In total, that’s 7 hours, but since WWE Network obviously controls its own programming and a replay of the event is scheduled to follow, Mania going over the seven hour mark shouldn’t be a problem if the time is needed.
The “Big Four” of WWE PPVs–Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, and Survivor Series–all tend to be longer shows, with each of them lasting at least six hours, including the preshows. Mania always pushes the envelope in terms of the amount of time it wants to keep you glued to the television.
While Wrestlemania 33 was the longest WWE event to date, 2018’s PPV will surely top that. As of this writing, there are 13 confirmed matches on the card, with at least one more expected to be added this week: John Cena vs. Undertaker. Even though this is going to be a long event, it should move pretty quickly to fit in all these matches.
This year’s event will be held in New Orleans at the Superdome, and in addition to Mania itself, WWE will air an NXT Takeover on Saturday and the Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday. It will be a jam-packed weekend, but we have you covered. Make sure to keep checking back with GameSpot during the week for more Mania news and predictions, and come back Sunday for live coverage of the event.
Given the massive popularity of games like PUBG and H1Z1, you might be familiar with the battle royale genre. However, Fortnite: Battle Royale is a tad different from its competitors. The game takes the base premise of the genre and gives you the ability to rapidly construct fortifications, like walls and stairs, allowing you to protect yourself and create your own tactical environmental-based strategies.
Since its debut as a free-to-play mode last year, Fortnite: Battle Royale has been quickly increasing in popularity. As a result, there’s no shortage of new players jumping into the game for the first time every day–you might be one yourself. To assist those looking to come out on top, we’ve detailed in the video above some of the common mistakes new players make, as well as ways to improve.
The most common mistakes we highlight in the video above include:
Not Mapping Building Actions To Hotkeys
Forgetting To Build Under Fire
Forgetting To Knock Down Enemy Forts
Landing In Hot Spots
Forgetting To Share Health Items
Picking The Wrong Weapon
Of course, preparation and being a team player when playing cooperatively are proper solutions to these starting behaviors, but if you want more specific details on each of these points, be sure to watch the video above.
These past few years have yielded an amazing roster of games that we personally love. With so many fantastic experiences out there, we began to grow curious over what games developers particularly enjoy. During our time spent at this year’s GDC, we had the opportunity to interview a wide variety of game developers and key figures in the industry, so we decided to ask what current game they find inspiring and admire the most, and why.
As you’ll see from the responses below, the games each developer adores might not come as a surprise to you, especially if you’re familiar with their work or tastes. Others had some surprising picks that you probably wouldn’t expect. What current games do you admire the most? Let us know in the comments below. And be sure to check out feature detailing the 25 best games you might’ve not heard of that we saw at GDC 2018.
Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, Directors of Cuphead
Jared Moldenhauer (left) and Chad Moldenhauer (right)
Jared Moldenhauer: I have a library of 100+ games that I’m working towards currently. But one of the earlier games that I chose and found very rewarding was Hollow Knight. It’s an interesting and challenging Metroidvania. And the visuals and the universe that they created, and the feeling within all the characters; I was happy playing every minute of it.
Chad Moldenhauer: I recently started and really enjoy The Witness. I was looking forward to that for a long time!
Yoshinori Terasawa, Danganronpa Series Producer
Yoshinori Terasawa: I love the Persona series. I adore the sense of personality that those games have. I really like how cool and stylish they are.
Rami Ismail, Producer of Nuclear Throne
Rami Ismail: So many games have really sparked me. Games that really stand out to me are Engare and Farsh, by Mahdi Bahrami, both games based on this Iranian heritage. I was very impressed by This War of Mine, which gives a unique perspective on war. Just seeing that tremendous shift in perspective translated into a game that is so powerful and poignant, that reminds me that there is so much more out there.
Tom Kaczmarczyk, Producer of Superhot
Tom Kaczmarczyk: Our game director [Piotr Iwanicki] who actually came up with the idea, he often cites an indie flash game called, Time4Cat, as one of the inspirations, because it did have the same sort of time automation mechanic. For me, I love Hotline Miami because of its action sequences. A lot of what we pick up come from action movies, and from the way people design cinematic experiences where you fall into a certain archetype of a situation, and you immediately understand what’s going on.
Tim Schafer, Founder of Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend)
Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer: Lately, a game that really made a big effect on me–it sounds really cliché–but Breath of the Wild was a huge thing. I just loved it. Everyone loves something different about games, there’s no one game that’s perfect for everybody, but it made me realize that my number one thing is exploration. I’m constantly exploring and surprised and I just love it and I play it all the time. I also love Loot Rascals, which is a great roguelike, and I’ve recently been playing Persona 5, which is just amazing. Amazing style and tone, it’s so polished.
Jason Roberts, Director of Gorogoa
Jason Roberts: In 2017, I was a big fan of Inside and Night in the Woods; those were big games for me. I’m big on tone, mood, atmosphere. These are important to me. And I love those games. And I also, this year, I think Florence and any game from Annapurna are just very carefully, precisely created with tone and atmosphere. That’s what I value.
Dean Ayala, Hearthstone Senior Game Designer + Dave Kozack, Hearthstone Lead Narrative Designer
Dean Ayala: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It’s a roguelike released back in 1997. A lot of the Hearthstone design team plays it. It’s super old-school.
Dave Kozack: It has been in continuous development; it’s one of those community projects. That’s why the name, Stone Soup. But we played a lot of rogue-likes while we were working on Dungeon Run, and that was one of our favorites. It’s just something we keep coming back to as a team. It’s a lot of fun.
Ian Dallas, Creative Director of What Remains Of Edith Finch
Ian Dallas
Ian Dallas: For me, the last game that affected me emotionally in a strong way was Universal Paperclips. A game about clicking on buttons and manufacturing paperclips that I just found myself lost in for 8 hours. It was really like a troubling emotional experience, and it’s amazing that it comes out of just text on a webpage. It reaffirms the power of video games and the way that they can teach you things about yourself and about the world that you couldn’t really internalize in any other way.
Chelsea Hash, Technical Artist of What Remains Of Edith Finch
Chelsea Hash: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Their commitment to the multimedia format and drawing from different rendering styles to support their vision was something that I was glad to be able to experience, something that was willing to think outside the box.
Damon Baker, Nintendo Publisher and Developer Relations
Damon Baker: I can’t choose one game. It is like choosing my favorite child! There are so many different types of experiences. Most recently I am working my way through Night in the Woods. I haven’t been able to play that previously, and having a lot of flights lately has given me more flexibility to get through a lot of indie content. Of course, I totally enjoyed Celeste. I vowed not to use assist mode on that game at all and beat it; but it took me 1800 deaths or something to get through it, but it was a beautiful game.
Matt Thornson, Director of Celeste
Matt Thornson: I’ve been really enjoying my time with Into the Breach. It’s amazing!
Victor Kislyi, Wargaming CEO (World of Tanks)
Victor Kislyi: Civilization. All of them, because I started playing from Civ I. Now, believe it or not, before playing World of Tanks last night I was playing Civilization and I was playing on the plane on my way here. Civ 6 is amazing, and it was my MBA. I’m a physicist by education but, playing Civilization, all those layers, economy, exploration, politics, military, science, religion–your brain is trained to juggle those multiple layers like almost instantly, or at least very, very correctly. And, that’s a good analogy with business, people, finance, media, failures, exploration, etc., etc. I think Civilization, as a concept, as a game, actually, is more valuable to humanity than Mona Lisa.
Yoko Taro, Director of Nier: Automata
Yoko Taro: I think that Grand Theft Auto IV and Super Mario Bros. are two big games that influenced me when making Nier. But with games from the past–not modern games–I felt more freedom or challenge as a player. Let’s say we have a black background with a white dot on it and let’s call it the space. I feel like that really creates freedom, especially in terms freedom of imagination, and challenging the dev team to create a world without really being able to express that world visually. In that sense, I feel that in the past, game developers were trying to create a new frontier. They were trying to expand the world, expand the universe of gaming industry.
Yoko Taro (left) and Takahira Taura (right)
Now that the game industry has matured pretty much now, a lot of people actually go for a more safe game. They try to make all the consumers happy with that one game. I think that that actually limits to what they can do and I feel that no one is really trying to expand that arena or expand that world anymore. I am a little bit sad about that.
Takahisa Taura, Designer Of Nier: Automata + Metal Gear Rising
Takahisa Taura: When The Witcher 3 came out, we all played it and had fun with it, but we also looked at it to see what would we do if we created a game like this. We were using The Witcher 3 as a learning experience on how to create an RPG. I think that’s where it all started. Well, that’s where we came from, so it wasn’t too difficult of a task to create a JRPG.”
It’s pretty well established at this point that Fortnite is popular–like, ridiculously popular. So popular that schools are having to ban it from class, and hip-hop artists and professional athletes are talking about it and playing it. But the hours and hours of gametime that some players are logging is creating a bit of a backlash to the game–and some people have banded together to try and resist it.
Frustrated with how engrossed their loved ones have become with Fortnite, hundreds of people have signed a petition simply titled, “Get rid of Fortnite.” Its mission is to ban the game so that significant others’ free time can be reclaimed.
As reported by the Washington Post (which, it should be said, is itself evident of Fortnite’s popularity), the Change.org petition has accumulated about 730 signatures at the time of this writing. Most express frustration that their loved ones are neglecting them in favor of the game; as Chloe DePalma wrote, “It’s taking over our boyfriends lives and brainwashing them.”
This petition is obviously meant in jest; Fortnite will in no way be banned, and it’s likely that the majority of petitioners know that. But it’s a testament to the Fortnite phenomenon that this petition has resonated with many people across social media. As for the anonymous creator of the petition, they updated the change.org site with an explanation that it was started as a joke–and, recently, they’ve begun playing Fortnite and actually enjoy it.
Conan Exiles has been playable for some time through Early Access on PC and the Game Preview program on Xbox One, but its full launch is rapidly approaching. The open-world action game has a bunch of supernatural creatures as well as various mechanics, such as castle-building.
Recently, we were able to check out Conan Exiles’ pre-launch build and see some of its more complex systems. In the video above, you can see gameplay from a castle siege and the scale of combat that you can expect.
Specifically, the video shows off the GameSpot team defending its fortress from enemy players with the help of enormous demi-gods. In the full game, you can also lay siege to cities yourself, utilizing an array of different siege engines. These are pretty high-level, late-game mechanics, however; Conan Exiles’ gameplay initially focuses on survival, combat, and crafting.
Conan Exiles fully launches on May 8 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC; it’ll be the first time the game is available to PS4 players. It’ll cost $30 on PC and $50 on consoles. If you pre-order Conan Exiles, you’ll get the Conan’s Royal Armor when the game is released.
