September 2020

Magic: The Gathering is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, and we're about to zoom headfirst into yet another set. But before we all crack open Zendikar Rising boosters together, Wizards of the Coast has announced a ton of new sets: basically filing their entire schedule throughout 2021.

First up, Zendikar is scheduled to be released on September 17 in Arena, with a September 25 release in tabletop form (the physical delay of previous sets like Ikoria seems to be over). Wizards has revealed new art for the set today, which includes Jace, Nahiri and Nissa planeswalker cards. The Kicker and Landfall keywords are also in, as are double-faced cards and the party mechanic.

But beyond that, a lot more is coming to Magic. Kaldheim (vikings) will enter the arena, as well as Strixhaven ("the most elite university in the Multiverse") in spring of 2021, Adventures of the Forgotten Realms (billed as "Dungeons & Dragons comes to Magic) in summer 2021 and Innistrad (across two named sets: this is the world of vampires and werewolves, a fan favorite) in fall of 2021. Time Spiral Remastered and Modern Horizons 2 are also teased, as well as new Secret Lair drops: including one that's "an exciting collaboration with AMC's hit show The Walking Dead."

Oh, and Magic: Arena is re-confirmed for mobile today, with more news "coming soon." Like I said, it's a big day for Magic! There's tons of new sets to look forward to with some classic sets returning, as well as hope on the horizon for meaningful news regarding Magic on mobile devices.

Get a look at some cards, and the timeline, below!

The curtain has fallen on the crowdfunding campaign for retro-infused RPG Eiyuden Chronicle. From a $500,000 target, developer Rabbit & Bear Studios successfully secured over $4.5 million USD in capital from just over 45,000 backers.

This incredible figure registers as the third-highest final total for a video game in Kickstarter history, behind Izanagi Games' Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ($5.5 million) and Ys. Net's Shenmue III ($6.3 million). Backers have smashed through a slew of stretch goals, securing extra maps and fortresses, voice acting, multiple language support, extra characters, mini-games, and many other fun features for the base adventure.

In addition, passing the $4.5 million mark has secured a standalone "companion game," which in this case will be a town-building/management sim co-created with Natsume-Atari. The companion title is expected to launch well in advance of Eiyuden Chronicle, and will not only star some of the main adventure's cast, but will give players the opportunity to get a head-start on crafting items and armour ahead of Eiyuden Chronicle's launch, tentatively set for 2022.

All of the Nintendo eShop sale game listings have a notation on them that let people know exactly how long they have to claim discounts.

The post Nintendo eShop Sale Games Now Show When Deals Expire appeared first on Siliconera.

Kate Bishop will also be an Avenger! Her Operation will be the first Marvel's Avengers post-launch release.

The post Marvel’s Avengers Kate Bishop Revealed appeared first on Siliconera.

The PlayStation Now game library now includes Final Fantasy XV. Resident Evil 7 is also part of the lineup as of September 2020.

The post Final Fantasy XV Joins PlayStation Now appeared first on Siliconera.

The Ubisoft Forward September 10, 2020 presentation will feature upcoming games like Watch Dogs: Legion and Immortals Fenyx Rising.

The post September 10, 2020 Ubisoft Forward Will Discuss Watch Dogs and Immortals Fenyx Rising appeared first on Siliconera.

The latest Nintendo eShop update allows you to cancel pre-orders up to seven days before release.

The post You Can Now Cancel Nintendo eShop Pre-Orders appeared first on Siliconera.

Nvidia has consistently maintained its status as the lead creator of graphics cards, pioneering the transition to fancy lighting effects like ray tracing in games. Now that Nvidia’s officially announced its next-gen GPUs and the rumor mill is put to rest, we know just how much fancier its GPUs are going to get from…

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In 2010, two Dutch students—Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman—founded an independent video game studio. It would start with some fishing, go on to release games like Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers, and now in 2020 is shutting down like a rock band deciding yeah, you know what, enough is enough.

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Last month, the mobile game Pokémon Masters underwent some changes. In addition to new story events and trainer pairings, it also received a new name: Pokémon Masters EX. But we’re not here to talk about any of that. We’re here to talk about how the game is getting promoted on Twitter, chiefly through a hashtag gone…

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Kate Bishop kicks off the first Operation in Marvel’s Avengers

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A look at the highly-anticipated RPG running on new Nvidia gear you can’t even buy yet

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Ninja and Mr. Beast join forces with G2 and Aim Lab for seven-figure contribution

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Rollout begins in September

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A detailed look at Destiny 2’s new Shadebinder

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Ultrabugs is still coming

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A better looking Fortnite is ‘coming soon’

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Also shotguns are going to be a lot less powerful now

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It's a time of change, of transition. With the arrival of the next generation consoles, the scale, scope and ambition of game developers will move onto the next level - and today, Nvidia revealed its new RTX 3000 line of graphics hardware, promising the biggest generational leap it's ever delivered, along with twice the ray tracing performance. This year, I've been privileged to have had exclusive access to next-gen architects and even hardware and I'm happy to say that I've also had early access to the new GeForce RTX 3080 - in fact, the card has been with me since late last week. So the question is, just how fast is it?

Full disclosure: I can bring you the results of key tests today, but there are caveats in place. Nvidia has selected the games covered, for starters, and specified 4K resolution to remove the CPU completely from the test results and in all cases, settings were maxed as much as they could be. The games in question are Doom Eternal, Control, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Battlefield 5, Borderlands 3 and Quake 2 RTX. Secondly, frame-time and frame-rate metrics are reserved for the reviews cycle, meaning our tests were limited to comparisons with RTX 2080 (its last-gen equivalent in both naming and price) and differences had to be expressed in percentage terms, meaning some slight re-engineering of our performance visualisation tools. This work actually proved valuable and the new visualisations will be used elsewhere in our reviews - differences in GPU power do tend to be expressed as percentages, after all.

Pendragon, the Arthurian-legend-inspired narrative strategy game from 80 Days and Heaven's Vault developer Inkle Studios, is coming to PC on 22nd September.

Inkle's latest endeavour transports player back to the year AD 673, with Camelot on the brink of destruction. Sir Modred's deceit has left the fellowship of the Round Table in disarray, leaving players with the task of traversing the treacherous Britain of the Dark Ages in order to assemble a ragtag band of knights, heroes, and peasants to aid King Arthur in battle.

Pendragon is something of a departure for the ever-reliable Inkle, whose previous output has largely remained laser-focussed on whipping up a wondrously compelling yarn. While the studio's latest does promise a story-rich adventure, full of "love, suspicion, revenge, sacrifice and murder", its narrative elements are this time intertwined with a "deeply strategic" turn-based combat system, pitting players against the likes of bandits, brutish knights, and deadly creatures as their adventure unfolds.

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Nvidia officially unveiled its latest graphics cards tonight, the RTX 30-series based around its new Ampere architecture. The new cards are the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070, and all will be available in a Founders Edition configuration - some with a radical new dual-sided fan design. Nvidia claims that the new architecture is up to 2x as performant and 1.9x as energy-efficient as its predecessor, Turing, as the result of the new 8nm process. Here's what you need to know about Ampere, the three new graphics cards and everything else Nvidia announced today - including pricing.

Update: Our hands-on RTX 3080 benchmarks are live here!

While all three of the graphics cards sound like powerhouses, the Titan-grade RTX 3090 looks set to be particularly insane. The card is capable of running games at 8K resolution - which has four times the pixel count of 4K - and at 60 frames per second with the help of DLSS. 4K is already hard enough to run for most PCs - even the RTX 2080 Ti manages only 69fps at 4K in our average of nine recent games - so a card that can actually grapple with 8K is unheard-of.

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Ubisoft's next announcement show now has a date and time, as well as a teaser trailer for what to expect. Ubisoft Forward will be held next Thursday, 10th September at midday Pacific time (that's 8pm UK).

The event teaser features a lot of Watch Dogs Legion, as well as recently-released battle royale Hyper Scape. Perhaps most excitingly, there's also a look at Gods and Monsters, which is set for a re-reveal.

Over the weekend, word leaked from the Taiwan ratings board that Gods and Monsters was now titled Immortals: Fenyx Rising (thanks, Gematsu). Ubisoft has previously said it would be renaming the game.

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To those who are regular viewers, the Democratic National Convention looked a little different this year. With large gatherings made impossible due to coronavirus, organisers looked for virtual ways to host the event over Zoom and livestreams. And it seems the Democratic party is continuing to use more modern methods to reach voters, as the Biden campaign has created a series of official yard signs for fans to download in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

As reported by The Verge, the Biden campaign has released four designs, including a Joe Pride logo, a Team Joe logo, the Biden-Harris logo and aviators in red, white and blue. The campaign team is sending the designs to a number of influencers who will share their gameplay footage of the merch, but you can download the designs yourself using the accompanying QR codes and the Nintendo Switch Online app.

"Animal Crossing is a dynamic, diverse, and powerful platform that brings communities together from across the world... It is an exciting new opportunity for our campaign to engage and connect Biden-Harris supporters as they build and decorate their islands," director of digital partnerships for the Biden campaign, Christian Tom, told The Verge. "As we enter the final campaign stretch towards November, this is one way we are finding new creative and innovative ways to meet voters where they are and bring our supporters together."

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Developer Texel Raptor's superb theme park management sim Parkitect is upgrading its guest experience for the autumn season; from tomorrow, 2nd September, its newly announced Booms & Blooms expansion will bring fireworks sequencing, new rides, fancier flora, and more.

Booms & Blooms marks the second dollop of paid DLC to come to Parkitect, following on from last year's Taste of Adventure expansion, and introduces a range of customisation options enabling players to create parks with even greater degrees of personalisation.

Budding theme park moguls will, for instance, have the option to play their own music through a new speaker tool, or trigger their own sounds via the effects controller. Additionally, special effects can be synchronised to trigger in tandem with rides and it'll even be possible to create and sequence fireworks display to light up the night, as seen in the announcement trailer.

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The third episode of Marvel’s Avengers’ War Table streamed earlier today, revealing Kate Bishop as the first of several post-launch heroes set to be added to the game in the coming weeks.

Kate’s Operation, “Taking AIM,” kicks off in late October and features a new villain and new mystery. Bishop, who is mentored by Clint Barton, comes with distinct Heroic Skills and takedowns.

The story picks up shortly after the conclusion of the game’s Reassemble campaign and is just the first half of the two Hawkeyes’ Story Arc. Clint Barton’s Hawkeye takes the stage in November to complete the double-feature and lay the groundwork for what’s next.

As Twinfinite reported last week, all post-launch heroes added to Marvel’s Avengers will be free for all players, but they also offer a $10 per character battle pass for those that want to grind toward cosmetic rewards.

You can check out a first glimpse of Kate Bishop in the reveal trailer below.

You can watch the full War Table episode here for new details about the game’s daily and weekly missions, as well as four new high-level mission types they’ll encounter as they progress through the Avengers Initiative: Villain Sectors, SHIELD Vaults, AIM’s Secret Lab, and Mega Hives.

Today Bungie gave fans the first look at the new customizable Stasis subclass for the Shadebinder Warlock which will release alongside the Destiny 2: Beyond Light expansion on Nov. 10.

Unlike current subclasses that require players to lock into one of three paths with no other customization, the new Stasis subclasses will feature the ability to customize and appears to be something a little familiar to the system seen for subclasses in Destiny 1. Let’s take a look.

Today, during a presentation hosted by Nvidia, Activision presented a new trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War.

The trailer features the visuals of the game enriched by ray tracing, which is, of course, Nvidia’s crown jewel.

You can check it out below and see if it tempts you to purchase one of the brand new RTX 30X0 graphics cards announced today.

If you’re unfamiliar with Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, here’s how Activision describes the game. 

The game will launch on November 13 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also coming.

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, your Sims had a dream about starting their own Star Wars adventure. With the new upcoming game pack, Journey to Batuu, they finally can! On September 8, the new Star Wars expansion for The Sims 4 will be released. That’s just a week away, and today a brand-new gameplay trailer was released. It showcases some of the features Simmers will see with the new pack, such as the ability to have your very own droid.

Check out the new gameplay trailer and some of its highlights below.

The trailer seems to bring up a lot of RPG elements such as missions and companions. Perhaps The Sims 4 will feel like a combination of a life simulator and a role-playing game? It also seems as though your Sims will be able to rank up or progress while completing the Journey to Batuu storyline, giving Simmers a nice break from simply building, creating, and storyelling themselves.

Nvidia just announced its next generation of graphics cards, the RTX line from 3070 to 3090  based on the new Ampere architecture.

The announcement was made during a Geforce Special Event presentation hosted on the company’s Twitch channel.

The new cards will be based on the Ampere RTX architecture. 

Below you can see a comparison with Turing, claiming performance multiplied by 1.9 in FPS per watt. 

Today, during a presentation hosted by Nvidia, CD Projekt RED presented a new trailer of Cyberpunk 2077.

The trailer is rather brief, but it showcases scenes from Night City embellished by Ray Tracing.

The trailer claims that the game is running in 4K with RTX and DLSS in 4K at maximum settings.

You can check it out below.

Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it has recently been delayed to November 19, 2020. It has also been confirmed to be coming for Xbox Series X and PS5 down the line with upgrades available for those who purchase the game for the current generation of consoles.

Ubisoft’s next Ubisoft Forward finally has a firm streaming date, and the company has let slip some info on what will be shown at the event.

In a video posted to its official YouTube account on Sept. 1, the publisher and developer offered a glimpse at some of the titles that will be on display during the event. Some of the biggest titles shown include Rainbow Six Siege, Watchdogs Legion, Hyperscape and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, while snippets of footage from other titles like Gods and Monsters also made brief appearances.

Other titles like Far Cry 6, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Beyond Good and Evil 2, though, were notably absent from the reel, though the former two did headline the last Forward event.

As footage of these games played, info on the show was also revealed. Kicking off on Sept. 10 with a pre-show starting at 11 a.m. PDT and an official show starting at 12 p.m. PDT, the Ubisoft Forward will cover news related to titles both announced and unannounced. However, specifics on what would be shown from each title were not specified.

Fans of currently available titles can likewise earn a number of free bonuses, though specifics were not revealed as to when or how they could get their hands on them.

More details on the show and what will be shown can be found on the official Ubisoft Forward page of Ubisoft’s website.

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced four new titles now available on the PlayStation Now service for September.

The first title is Capcom’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which will also be added to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service later this week. The first-person horror game will only be available on PlayStation Now for a limited time until Nov. 30, 2020.

The second game is Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XV, which is also available on the service for a limited time until March 1, 2021.

The third game is WWE 2K19, while WWE 2K Battlegrounds launches for PlayStation 4 and other platforms later this month. WWE 2K Battlegrounds forgoes the series simulation-style gameplay of WWE 2K19 and is more of an arcade brawler.

The final game added this month to the service is Observation, an adventure-puzzle game where the players assumes control of a space station’s AI system and must work with a lone crew member to discover the fate of the station and its crew.

PlayStation Now offers over 800 PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 titles to stream either on PS4 console or PC alongside over 300 PS4 games that can be downloaded to the console for $9.99 per month.

Ubisoft has today released a new trailer for its upcoming open-world action game, Watch Dogs Legion, as part of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX event. It’s essentially a showcase of the game’s performance using the new card, touring various parts of the game’s London setting with ray tracing in full effect.

As you’ll see below, it’s more of a presentation of Legion’s fidelity on PC rather than any sort of gameplay overview.

And if it’s Watch Dogs Legion gameplay you’re after then head over to some of our other coverage, including a recent trailer that detailed a recruitment mission in which we try to bring one of the NPCs into the fold of our resistance group. 

Elsewhere, another recent trailer focused a little bit on the story, but for the most part, it showcased different types of citizens you can recruit to fight the private military (Albion) that has occupied London.

Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series of next-gen graphics cards are official. After unveiling their new Ampere GPU architecture back in May, Nvidia have finally lifted the lid on the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and their Titan-class RTX 3090 GPUs, detailing their specs, price and release date in their online GeForce event. Here’s everything you need to know.

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Wait, you don’t know the Party Baron of Crusader Kings 3? Aw, mate, he’s only an absolute ledge. Best bants in all the kingdom, I tell ya, throws the best parties from here to the Holy Roman Empire. While it looks like he’s scarpered from the game’s final release, tales of the legendary host (and some fantastic placeholder art) appear to have helped shape the grand strategy’s tangle of plots, intrigue, and colourful characters.

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High Chieftain Andyamo doesn’t ask for much in life. In fact, he wants only two things. To live forever, and to bang every giant in Christendom.

Crusader Kings 3, which comes out today, is a game where you very much get out what you put in. You get something, anyway. The sheer density and interconnection of the medieval RPG’s many simulations mean that, pretty much whatever you do, some consequence will come back to surprise you many years down the line. A butterfly flaps its wings; moments later, it is the pope.

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Last Friday, actor Chadwick Boseman lost his life to cancer at age 43. Best known for his role as the Black Panther in Marvel’s blockbuster flick of the same name, Boseman has now been memorialised in Fortnite by way of a colossal obsidian panther statue just west of Misty Meadows – turning the crossover event into an informal tribute spot for mournful fans of the late actor.

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Dynastic scheming and disgruntled courtier disposal simulator Crusader Kings 3 is finally out. It is of course a sequel to the legend that welcomed many newcomers to the world of grand strategy games back in 2012, and the first game since then to really cover the same ground.

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While Marvel's Avengers is finally available for deluxe edition buyers (it's out fully on September 4), Square Enix has been prepping for this moment this past week. In addition to explaining how the cosmetics system works, there's also this rundown of co-op that's fairly informative.

Basically, players can go at it with the campaign on their own, but eventually they'll unlock certain missions on the War Table hub that can be played with folks online. That list includes War Zones ("expansive, explorable spaces") and Strike Teams (four-player missions with no duplicate heroes).

Beyond those frameworks, you can also embark upon different War Zone mission types, like the quick in-and-out drop zones, longer faction missions, explorable vaults (kind of like mini-dungeons), training rooms (HARM rooms), Hives and Villain Sectors. Most of these can be played solo with an AI or with other people through matchmaking or via your friends list.

One big caveat is that there is no drop-in play at launch. Here's the full statement: "Marvel’s Avengers doesn’t support Join in Progress Matchmaking at this time." So it could come in the future, but it's not in right now and there's no guarantees. Cross-play also isn't supported. You can, however, mute individual players.

Everything You Need to Know about Co-op Play [Square Enix]

In the launch-week War Table stream for Marvel's Avengers, Crystal Dynamics confirmed that Kate Bishop (played by Ashly Burch) will arrive as part of the game's first post-launch operation with a new story and villain. She's up before Clint, and their operations can be thought of as a "double feature."

Kate's campaign operation, Taking AIM, will launch in "late October." Clint's story is aiming for November.

The developers said they knew they "couldn't do one [Hawkeye] without the other." And while there are some inherent similarities, Kate will have her own "set of skills, gear, and moves to unlock."

The presentation also covered the ongoing Avengers Initiative, which will cover limited-time events (some week-long, others seasonal), Mega Hives (a weekly mission type with a "gauntlet of descending floors" that uses your whole hero roster), and the AIM Secret Lab (a mission for near-maxed-out, power-level-150 players that requires "the full cooperation of a seasoned four-player team"). The latter mission will show up "once a week" and "must be completed within a set time window." FOMO strikes.

If you aren't overwhelmed yet, the PlayStation Blog has more details about the game's many activities.