Red Dead Online’s latest update isn’t much. While Rockstar plans on adding a big new island to GTA Online later this month, complete with a new heist and more, Red Dead Online’s end of the year update is far smaller. And while some small amount of this new update is good, including some new bounty hunter content and…
In addition to battling randos and dodging traffic in the streets of Japan, I’ve spent a lot of time in Yakuza: Like a Dragon browsing the wares of various pharmacies and convenience stores. But one store is always so crowded that it’s impossible to navigate without shoving my fellow patrons out of the way, which is a …
The more I think about Bastion, the more I’m glad I put the golden fields and star-dotted skies of that deceptively beautiful hell behind me for the pus-green, boil-covered and fleshy pastures of Maldraxxus.
With Halo 4 done and dusted and dropped onto PC, you’d be forgiven for thinking 343’s work here was done. But our big green pal still has some work to do, and the developers have been thinking of more ways to tinker with Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Speaking in a blog post this week, 343 laid out plans for cut content and future rewards, musing on how modders may eventually pick up the slack when it comes to keeping John Halo suited up for years to come.
[Update: The 40-person Naxxramas (Naxx) raid is now live in WoW Classic. Blizzard put out a trailer for the raid below, which is absolutely wild to see in 2020. So many memories are flooding back! Naxx felt like a punishing and proper end to Vanilla WoW, and a great way to usher in the new era of Burning Crusade. Now we see what Blizzard has planned next: a new announcement in February for BlizzCon online sounds likely.]
World of Warcraft Classic will eventually get to the point where it hits the end of Vanilla's lifetime: patch 1.12.2 (which is confusingly different from the nomenclature used for Classic, bear with me here!).
I mean, it's cruising there right now, as Classic just introduced the concept of Naxxramas to its Azerothian denizens, which heralds the end of the expansion and the lead-in to Burning Crusade, the best expansion: no need to at me, you know I'm right. It's also the point where a lot of my friends quit the game, as me and a few others got more into it starting with Burning Crusade on. It was an exciting time for WoW!
Let's break down where we're at right now. Classic just added the "Shadow of the Necropolis" patch this week, which is version "1.13.6" for Classic. In WoW terms, it's patch 1.11.0. After that, there are only five more patches to go until we start to get into 2.0 Burning Crusade territory. Most of them are minor fixes, before the "Drums of War" patch hits with 1.12.
If you are a fan of Apex Legends' support specialist Ajay Chae, better known as "Lifeline," then this new Nendoroid from the good folk at Good Smile Co. would make a perfect gift for yourself - or the Lifeline lover in your vicinity.
This super-cute realization of the double-tough combat medic stands just under four inches tall and comes bundled with a selection of dinky accessories. These include her a healthful syringe and her trusty D.O.C. droid, as well as her less-than-healthy Shock Sticks and a rapid-fire SMG. Additionally, Lifeline is packed with alternate arms and legs, as well as a clear stand for dynamic posing. Surprisingly, Lifeline only has one faceplate, which makes her unnervingly cheerful as she lets rip with the SMG.
If you want to add Lifeline to your shelf, then pre-orders are now open on the official Good Smile Co. website. Lifeline will retail for a typical $59 USD, not including shipping or any potential customs charges. Pre-orders close on January 6, with Lifeline expected to ship in the summer of 2021.
With My Nintendo physical rewards popping up like daisies every week, I've had a ton of requests from readers to explain what Platinum Points are, and how to earn them quickly.
Good news! This is that guide. It'll walk you through the entire process comprehensively, from starting a My Nintendo account to some of the more advanced ways of earning digital bread.
This morning, Microsoft let it slip that Doom Eternal would be hitting Xbox Game Pass on PC. But as it turns out, December is getting at least one other big release; and a few good ones.
As revealed today, Control is hitting Xbox Game Pass for consoles (and Android devices via xCloud) on December 3: the same day as Doom Eternal on PC. That's followed by Haven, Rage 2, Slime Rancher, Va-11 Hall-A, Yes Your Grace, and Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age.
Okay so where to begin with this?! I see you, Bethesda-Soft! With your Rage 2 addition, like all Bethesda games won't eventually end up on daddy's system. Also, Control! That's like, pretty recent, as far as AAA goes, and a nice get for the system that helped bring Alan Wake into this world. Oh, and Va-11 Hall-A, Yes Your Grace are fine indie editions, with Dragon Quest XI serving as one of the more interesting big budget JRPGs in recent years. It's a huge month for the service.
Nearly a week after that starting on December 8, you'll find Call of the Sea, Monster Sanctuary, Starbound, Unto the End, Assetto Corsa, Gang Beasts, GreedFall, Superhot: Mind Control Delete (!), and Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair. Again, it's a good spread! Racers, first-person puzzle shooters, cute mascot puzzle platformers. Game Pass is getting even better.
You can find the full schedule below. Happy holidays!
Coming Soon to Xbox Game Pass: Control, Doom Eternal, Holiday Offer, and More [Xbox Wire]
My Nintendo is getting into the holiday spirit with physical rewards like an ornament and set of three cards.
The post My Nintendo Rewards Now Include Cards and an Ornament appeared first on Siliconera.
Want to try Super Bomberman R Online? It's now free-to-play and lets you go through open battle royale matches with eight different bombers.
The post Super Bomberman R Online Is Now Free to Play appeared first on Siliconera.
It's a dirt road that kind of looks like a Roman numeral. In the doldrums of the Grand Theft Auto hype cycle, that alone is enough to get excited about. Here are the basics: Rockstar released a typically cryptic teaser for its next batch of GTA Online content. In it, the ever-elusive company revealed that the upcoming expansion will add a new landmass to the existing Los Santos map, possibly in the form of some offshore island. During that teaser, the coordinates "38.527,-79.6129" briefly appear on screen. Dump those numbers into Google Docs, and you'll see Middle Mountain Trail, right on the shaggy border between Virginia and West Virginia. Zoom out, and take it all in. There's a hairpin turn that, when viewed at a precise angle, seems to form a "V" and then an "I." V. I. VI.
Six.
Grand Theft Auto is a series filled to the brim with innumerable easter eggs, conspiracies, and urban legends. But this, a potential GTA 6 announcement confirmed through literal geography, seems like the most brazen by far.
Microsoft announced 17 games will be added to the Xbox Game Pass catalog for consoles, PC, and Android for the first half of December.
The highlight of the giant list of games is Control, the mind-bending action-adventure game from Remedy Entertainment. The game was initially rumored as coming to the service last year, and was teased on Twitter earlier this week.
The full list of games being added to Xbox Game Pass in the first half of December:
Dec. 3
Dec. 4
Dec. 8
Dec. 9
Dec. 10
Assassin’s Creed games have never pretended to be anything more than theatrical alternate history fiction, but over the years Ubisoft has certainly invested a significant amount of effort into accurately recreating the aesthetics of various historical time periods.
From the beautiful detailing of Italian renaissance buildings to the dingy, cobbled streets of Victorian London, taking a stroll through many of Assassin’s Creed’s many different settings often feels like history brought to life.
This has, of course, been a key aspect of the series’ development from its inception; the idea of digitally remodeling ancient cities as an interactive 3D space was novel and exciting back in the early 2010s. And despite the series’ evolution into ever-more fantastical stories over the years, this attention to detail from an architectural perspective hasn’t really changed.
In fact, it actually manifested itself into something educational back in 2017 with the release of Odyssey’s Discovery Tour mode. This was the first time the series had thought to turn the game’s sandbox into a scholastic platform, which in hindsight seems like an obvious and effective way to help illuminate history for students.
After all, if you remove all the fantasy stuff from sandboxes like Assassin’s Creed Origins’ then you’re essentially left with an enormous showcase of life in ancient Egypt, all to a level of interactivity and a degree of visual fidelity that far and away exceeds most of the educational documentaries many students are shown at school today.
Hell, I remember watching Troy as part of my Ancient Classics class at highschool! Looking back, I think even the local amateur dramatics theatre would have provided a better insight into life during the 12th century BC than Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom.
There's a new paid expansion coming for developer Motion Twin's majestic rogue-like action-platformer Dead Cells; it's called Fatal Falls and it's currently expected to arrive on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One early next year.
Fatal Falls is Dead Cells' second paid expansion, following on from January's The Bad Seed DLC, and introduces two new biomes, new enemies to occupy them, a new boss, plus new weapons.
Motion Twin - or rather, subsidiary Evil Empire, which now handles Dead Cells' development - is keeping some of the specifics under wraps for a later reveal, but has offered an early glimpse of Fatal Falls' new biomes, Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores, in the teaser below.
Guerrilla Games' open-world action-RPG Horizon Zero Dawn leads a fresh batch of on-demand additions to Sony's PlayStation Now subscription service in December, with the likes of Wreckfest, Darksiders 3, The Surge 2, Broforce, and Stranded Deep bringing up the rear.
Horizon Zero Dawn, which seems as good a place as any to start, sees outcast and hunter Aloy embarking on a journey across a sumptuous future version of Earth, where wonderfully designed robotic wildlife roams free. It's an experience that blends exploration and (sometimes stealthy, sometimes bombastic) combat with solid results, and PlayStation Now subscribers can continue Aloy's adventure in its sizeable wintery expansion, The Frozen Wilds.
Next on the list is Wreckfest, a game Eurogamer's Martin Robinson called "a true successor to the brilliant Destruction Derby" before slapping it with a Recommended badge last year. "Wreckfest offers primal pleasures, and offers them up with little by way of pretension," he wrote. "It also offers them with a little bit of that Bugbear class that made those older Flatout games so treasured, and what a thrill is to have that back after far too long."
Click to watch embedded media Join Alex Van Aken, Marcus Stewart, Jay Guisao, and Alex Studnik as they fight their way through the Fortnite Galactus event. We aren't exactly sure what to expect, but this special in-game event not only marks the end of Fortnite Chapter 2, but promises spectacle as millions of players face off against Marvel's Devourer of Worlds.
We'll start streaming just before 4:00 PM Eastern on the Game Informer YouTube channel, so be sure to join us on time so that you don't miss the start of the Fornite event.
The massive Arecibo Observatory radio telescope, made famous in the James Bond movie GoldenEye and paid homage to in the classic Nintendo 64 game, completely collapsed early Tuesday morning. This breaking news comes just a few weeks after the announcement that the invaluable astronomy tool would be demolished due to…
Truly, not even the festive cheer of the Christmas season is enough to shoo away the low-poly scare-makers working under the Haunted PS1 label. This week, the collective kicked off their latest collaborative project, the Haunted PS1 Madvent Calendar, a delicious selection of 24 bloody treats unlocked over the 24 days running up to Christmas. Trust me, there’s no chocolate waiting behind those blurry, low-res doors.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition developer Bert Beeckman talks about the process of updating the original game and adding new content inspired by new civilizations. ...
The first time was so nice, that we're gonna do it twice. In February, Dead Cells got its first premium add-on, Bad Seed, at a very affordable $5. It was so good that Jordan said in his review "I could go for a few more DLC packs with this exact structure."
Good news, buddy. Motion Twin has announced Fatal Falls, another $5 expansion to Dead Cells that's slated for release in the first quarter of 2021. Fatal Falls adds two mid-game biomes (The Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores) alongside some boss area parallels and alternate paths. Basically, it brings new content while shaking up the structure of any given run.
If you're the visual learning type (or just too lazy to read and process the information), there's a teaser trailer up top and seven screenshots in the gallery below.
Accompanying the DLC announcement, Motion Twin revealed that Dead Cells has cleared 3.5 million copies sold across all platforms. That's approximately 238 trillion deaths, assuming everyone died about 68 million times. The all-timers always leave you coming back for more, and Dead Cells definitely fits the bill.
It’s not TV, it’s a high-fidelity cinema experience
The December Xbox Game Pass additions are coming, and Dragon Quest XI S is leading the pack on consoles and PCs.
The post Dragon Quest XI S Xbox Game Pass Debut Set for December 4, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.
Publisher Humble Game and developer Sector D2 revealed the launch trailer of the air combat game Project Wingman.
The trailer focuses on what we can expect to see from the gameplay, which most certainly wears its Ace Combat inspiration on the sleeve.
You can check it out below and find the game available for PC on Steam and on the Humble Store.
If you’re unfamiliar with Project Wingman, it was funded via a Kickstarter campaign back in 2018 and it certainly wears its Ace Combat inspiration on the sleeve. You can also read more about the campaign mode and check out the latest screenshots.
Here’s how the developers describe the game:
Dead Cells developers Motion Twin and Evil Empire announced a new downloadable content pack will be coming to Dead Cells early next year.
The Fatal Falls expansion will add two new biomes, The Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores, that will appear in the mid-game of the roguelike action platformer. The two levels will be placed parallel to the Stilt Village, Clock Tower, and Time Keeper levels and their alternate paths.
It will also feature a new boss and weapons that the studios plan to reveal soon, though did release a small teaser trailer posted below. The new DLC is scheduled to launch in Q1 2021 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch for $4.99.
It will be the second paid expansion for Dead Cells after The Bad Seed DLC was released earlier this year at the same $4.99 price. The developers have continued to support the game with free updates and content since it launched in 2018 following a year in Steam Early Access.
The studios also revealed that the game has sold over 3.5 million copies since its initial release. That is a half a million more copies after reaching the three million milestone last July.
The Deep Stone Crypt has been out for a while now in Destiny 2: Beyond Light and players are starting to get their hands on the new set of raid weapons. These weapons are perhaps the most unique and game changing raid weapons since probably the Vault of Glass in the original game. Let’s go through all of them and rate the best raid weapons to have from the Deep Stone Crypt raid in Destiny 2: Beyond Light and which god rolls you should be shooting for.
With PS5 and Xbox Series X in its hands, developer Gearbox's first port of call it seems is to give Borderlands 3 the next-gen treatment. Through a sizeable patch, the studio taps into the strengths of each machine with two modes - targeting 60fps and 120fps respectively. But how close does the game come to its performance targets and, as ever, where does Xbox Series S slot into the line-up?
Targeting 4K at 60fps is the primary objective for the new version of the game, with plenty of behind the scenes tweaks in improving performance, beyond leaning into the raw horsepower of the hardware itself. Collision detection is extensively revamped, for example, but Gearbox also leans into more traditional optimisations - such as the use of dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) meaning that the game engine adapts its pixel counts based on GPU load. It's something that in practice doesn't show up too often, with few deviations from the target 4K - to the point where my pixel counts showed very little variance from 3840x2160, even when the game was dropping frames (2016p was the minimum resolution I found).
Xbox Series S on the other hand, lives up to its spec by targeting 1440p as the maximum resolution, with more obvious drops in resolution, down to a 2112x1188 lower bounds. Crucially though, it's a well-worked version that holds to 60fps just as well as the two premium machines - in fact, I think it actually runs a touch better. One big catch to Series S is that there's no toggle between resolution or performance modes, as there is on PS5 or Series X. It's 1440p60 with DRS and there is no 120Hz support at all.
December is officially here, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can snag a couple of new seasonal items in the Switch life sim this month. Two new wintry items are now available to purchase from the Nook Shopping catalog: the Aurora wall and the Midwinter sweater. Like other seasonal items, however, these will only be available for a limited time.
The Aurora wall costs 7,000 Bells and lets you gaze at a beautiful aurora borealis localized entirely in your own kitchen or other room at any time of year. The Midwinter sweater, meanwhile, costs 1,200 Bells and features a cute reindeer design. Both items can be found under the Seasonal tab in the Nook Shopping catalog and will be on sale until December 31.
In addition to the new seasonal items, Nook's Cranny has begun selling festive toys ahead of Toy Day, the game's Christmas event. You'll find a different toy on display in the seasonal corner of the store each day until December 25. Toy Day itself falls on December 24, and as part of the event, you'll need to dress up like Santa and help Jingle the black-nosed reindeer deliver presents to your villagers.
Continue Reading at GameSpotFortnite's Season 5 officially started on December 2, and now lots of details surrounding the update have arrived. Here's what we know about Fortnite Season 5 and what to expect from the update, which should be hitting your system now.
Fortnite's Galactus event has taken place, and it concluded with a countdown revealing the start time for Season 5: 9 PM PT on December 1 / 12 AM ET on December 2. Server maintenance took place after that and Fortnite Season 5 is available now.
Continue Reading at GameSpotTwitch streamers hoping to get in on the Fortnite excitement today faced an unexpected hurdle. Epic Games announced that it had no way of preventing clips from today's Galactus event from getting flagged by Twitch's copyright detection systems, and it turns out it was due to the use of an AC/DC song. This led to streamers such as DrLupo temporarily cutting the game's audio in order to avoid encountering any issues.
"For Twitch Creators streaming the Galactus event: Due to a lack of solutions similar to Lickd, we cannot prevent your VOD/clip content from getting flagged by the platform's copyright detection systems," a tweet from Epic Games read ahead of the event. "The general recommendation is to either mute your VoDs or turn off VODs/clips entirely to protect yourselves against any kind of claims or strikes as best as possible."
Hypex, a notable Fortnite leaker, said in advance that the copyright issues would only come from a small segment of the event, and that proved to be true. "Fun-Fact for streamers: Not the whole event is copyrighted music, just a 20-30 seconds part, and its gonna be so obvious to notice," they tweeted. "So I suggest you to prepare some hotkey to mute the game audio in OBS!"
Continue Reading at GameSpotA new Max Raid event is now underway in Pokemon Sword and Shield. All December long, certain Ice- and Fire-type Pokemon will appear in Max Raid dens more frequently than usual across the Wild Area, Isle of Armor, and Crown Tundra, including Gigantamax forms of Lapras and Centiskorch.
From now until December 31, players will be more likely to encounter Weavile, Avalugg, Lapras, Turtonator, and their pre-evolved forms in Max Raid battles in both Sword and Shield. Kantonian Ponyta and Rapidash will be appearing in Raids during the event as well. These forms are rare in the Gen 8 games, making this a good chance to add them to your collection if you haven't already.
As previously mentioned, Gigantamax Lapras and Centiskorch will also be appearing more frequently during this month's Max Raid event. Gigantamax Pokemon are normally incredibly hard to find outside of these events (although you can teach compatible Pokemon how to Gigantamax in the Isle of Armor), so you'll want to take advantage of their increased spawn rate if you haven't already caught them.
Continue Reading at GameSpotAfter a cheeky tease on Twitter, Microsoft has announced that Remedy Entertainment's third-person action-adventure game Control will come to Xbox Game Pass on December 3, alongside a slew of other titles like Doom Eternal, Haven, and Va-11 Hall-A. And plenty more will be coming to Game Pass in the following days and weeks.
This follows a similar tease the Xbox Game Pass Twitter account made of Doom Eternal before the brutal first-person shooter arrived on the service a week later. And like Doom Eternal, Xbox dropping the critically acclaimed action-adventure game onto Game Pass is a big win. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the version of Control available through Xbox Game Pass is the Ultimate Edition, meaning players won't have access to the next-gen version once it's out.
Co-creators Evil Empire and Motion Twin have announced that their side-scrolling roguelike RPG Dead Cells will receive a brand-new piece of DLC early next year.
Fatal Falls is the next major update for Dead Cells and retails for $5 USD when it drops in 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It adds two new biomes (The Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores) as well as additional bosses, enemies, and rewards. While specifics about Fatal Falls have not been shared, the studios said parts of the DLC are "parallels to the 'Stilt Village,' 'Clock Tower,' and 'Time Keeper' areas and their alternate paths." More details about Fatal Falls, including the new set of weapons, will be revealed soon.
In the meantime, the co-creators shared a teaser that briefly shows off the new areas players will explore come early next year. An exact release date for Fatal Falls has not been revealed.
Continue Reading at GameSpotRed Dead Online is now available as a standalone download, meaning you can embark on your own wild west adventure without needing to buy into Red Dead Redemption 2.
The multiplayer game is out on Xbox One, PS4, and PC (Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Rockstar Games Launcher). If you've picked up an Xbox Series X, Series S, or PlayStation 5, Red Dead Online is playable via backwards-compatibility.
Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus will be required to play on consoles, but do entitle you to a 75% discount, letting you jump in for just $5. The special extends to PC, too, and will run until February 15, 2021. There after the standalone mode will retail for $20. The announcement of Red Dead Online standalone also mentioned an upgrade path to the full Red Dead Redemption 2 version at a later date, but a price hasn't yet been revealed.
