February 2022

Xur's inventory this week includes two of the rarer Destiny 2 Exotics, Hawkmoon and Dead Man's Tale, two weapons that were previously available from seasonal quests and challenging missions. While Xur has other Exotic gear for sale--such as Sunshot and Lucky Pants--these two items are well worth acquiring.

Dead Man's Tale is a lever-action scout rifle that combines classic style with satisfying perks if you're talented at landing headshots, while Hawkmoon is a hand cannon from the original Destiny that has been given a new lease on life in Destiny 2. The quests for both weapons are no longer active, due to the removal of the Tangled Shore location in Destiny 2. These Exotics are somewhat unique because you could previously run their missions again and again to receive new versions of the guns with different, random perks. While the missions are gone, you can still get randomized versions of Hawkmoon and Dead Man's Tale from Xur, who offers a new roll on the guns each week.

Weapon crafting has been introduced in Destiny 2's newest expansion The Witch Queen, allowing for robust customization of gear. To know more about the system, you can read up on it in our Destiny 2 weapon crafting guide.

The main takeaway is that you'll need several resources to shape and reshape weapons, the majority of which are easy to acquire from various world activity sources and extracting the materials from qualifying weapons. But one weapon-crafting resource that is fairly rare is Ascendant Alloy, which is used to craft enhanced perks on guns. Currently, Ascendant Alloy can be found from a handful of sources, and only one makes them easy to get--if you have ample Legendary Shards to burn on them.

Where to find Ascendant Alloy

Master Rahool

Ever since the launch of the Nintendo Switch in 2017, the perception of what a handheld gaming device can be has changed. No longer are handhelds relegated to good hardware trapped by inherently technologically limited games. Instead, they're now capable of letting you take console-quality experiences on the go. There's been an explosion of similarly compact PC devices attempting to mimic the success of the Nintendo Switch by letting you take your PC games library with you anywhere, with some mixed results. While there are great devices out there now, such as the Aya Neo Pro, they're still limited by the capabilities of mobile hardware while also costing a lot more than its performance suggests. However, Valve's Steam Deck addresses both pitfalls entirely.

With cutting-edge hardware, thoughtfully designed ergonomics, a satisfying controller layout, and a software layer that simplifies PC gaming, the Steam Deck makes it a breeze to link to your Steam account and get started with your library on the go. Better yet, it comes in at a reasonable price, starting at $400 and reaching only $650 for its highest-tier model--essentially half the price of its closest competitors. While that alone is impressive, it's in how well the Steam Deck performs that it becomes clear that it doesn't have much competition at all. With its AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 APU, it's head-and-shoulders above the Intel XE and Radeon Vega-powered portable gaming devices that made it to market first, creating a situation where you shouldn't really be looking at an alternative if you can get your hands on a Steam Deck.

Destiny 2 players are currently exploring Savathun's Throne World, preparing for the new expansion's upcoming raid event that will task six-person fireteams with overcoming some of the greatest challenges that the game has to offer. That raid will go live on March 5, and your Guardian will need to be sufficiently powered up for the fight.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen raid start times

• 10 AM PT
• 1 PM ET

According to Bungie, you and each member of your fireteam will need to have a Light level of 1530 for the raid when it arrives and is held in its Contest Mode. This Power level is pretty high, as the game has a soft cap of 1500 and you'll need to stat working through activities to earn Powerful Engrams to reach the game's hard cap of 1550. You can read about how that works in our Destiny 2 Witch Queen Leveling Guide.

This setting equalizes the playing field for new raids during their first 24 hours, as players race to be the first in the world to clear the new activity, locking everyone's Power at a certain level.

This in turn ensures that people who have had more time to play Destiny 2 don't have an unfair advantage and also means that the difficulty of the raid is the same for everyone for that first day.

The race to earn a "World's First" accolade in Destiny 2 normally makes for some fascinating viewing. Besides the bragging rights that a fireteam can earn from figuring out fiendishly difficult puzzles and energetic combat sections, there's some real loot at the end of a raid as well.

Fireteams in the past have been rewarded with one-of-a-kind jackets celebrating their achievements, championship belts that would make AEW superstars jealous, and a place in Destiny history.

One of the more interesting systems introduced in Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is weapon crafting, allowing you to use the mysterious new Relic to create and customize unique tools of destruction. You'll unlock the ability to create and tweak your arsenal early on in the game's campaign, but if the mechanics behind weapon crafting appear to be complicated, then this guide will break it down for you.

Where to start weapon crafting

At the start of The Witch Queen campaign, you'll visit Mars and Ikora Rey as part of the quest to stop Savathun's latest scheme. On Mars you'll have access to the Relic in the Enclave, where you can begin the process. But before you start adjusting the firing pins on your favorite submachine gun, you'll need to gather a few other tools.

You'll first need to acquire a new Darkness ability, Deepsight, to help you become a weaponsmith. This ability, which allows you to view memories of past events and unveil hidden objects, is unlocked within the first few missions of The Witch Queen and is free to all players. Once you have Deepsight, you'll then be able to obtain weapons with a red border in your inventory, indicating they have Deepsight Resonance. By using these enough, you'll be able to extract materials necessary for crafting.

Weapon patterns

To start shaping a weapon, you'll first need to unlock its pattern. This is primarily done by attuning red-border weapons, although completing some quests will unlock these patterns as a reward. If you need to see how far you are in your progress towards unlocking a weapon pattern, you can navigate to the Triumphs area in the menus and select Patterns & Catalysts.

It's been a big month for game releases, with Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Destiny 2's latest expansion, and more. All those big AAA games eating up your time may cause your Nintendo Switch to feel lonely. We've rounded up five cool new Nintendo Switch games that launched in February. Every game on this list is significantly less time-consuming than most of the massive AAA games that launched this month, so they could be great palette cleansers between open-world games. Some of these games are also available on PC, and a few released on consoles, but we think all of them feel like Nintendo Switch games.

Elden Ring is available now, and it's one of the best-reviewed games of all time, building on From Software's Souls formula with an open world, mounted combat, and more. However, the game has some technical issues to iron out, and publisher Bandai Namco has outlined what it's looking to fix.

In a message posted February 25, Bandai Namco said there were several "main items to be revised" in Elden Ring, primarily on the PC version. This includes an issue with the mouse sensitivity being too high, as well as anti-cheat software not loading when starting the game. Frame rate issues have also been reported, and Bandai Namco recommends updating PC drivers to improve performance.

On PS5, save data can be lost if the PS5 shuts off before closing the game--either when it was fully powered or in rest mode--so if you were using rest mode as an artificial pause button, you may want to reconsider.

"We are also working on a few other bug fixes and performances improvements as needed," the post added. Problems thus far don't tend to be too severe or game-breaking, though we heavily suggest turning on variable refresh rate (VRR) in your console's and TV's settings if they support it. The smoother gameplay experience goes a long way during hectic boss fights.

Despite it only being February, Elden Ring is already looking like a frontrunner for end-of-year awards. In GameSpot's 10/10 Elden Ring review in progress, Tamoor Hussain called it "a triumph in design and creativity, and an open-world game that distinguishes itself from what it doesn't do as much as what it does."

The Witch Queen is here in Destiny 2, and a whole lot of story stuff has happened. You should absolutely try the Legendary story campaign if you haven't. It might be pretty difficult, but luckily, Xur is here with a fresh batch of Exotic weapons to give you a leg up. Here's where you can find him and what he's selling.

Head to the EDZ's Winding Cove area to find Xur this week. For his weapon, Xur is offering the Sunshot hand cannon. Hunters can pick up the Lucky Pants leg armor; for Titans, there's the Doomfang Pauldron gauntlets; and for Warlocks, Xur has the Skull of Dire Ahamkara helmet.

This isn't a great week for Xur, though--You'll find that all three peices of Xur's Exotic armor are relatively low-stat, falling in the 48-50 range instead of the usual 58-66 range. That may well be to avoid giving any players an extra advantage in the race to complete The Witch Queen's new raid and become World's First. This week, you're only going to want to pick up one of his Exotic armors if you need it for your collection.

The 25th annual DICE awards have officially wrapped up and after months of speculating which games would come out on top, we now have our list of winners.

Taking home the ceremony's prestigious Game of the Year award was none other than Hazelight Studio's It Takes Two, a quirky, cooperative adventure game all about a divorce gone terribly wrong. It Takes Two also won Game of the Year at the 2021 Game Awards, a pretty impressive accomplishment for the small studio.

Other big winners include Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which took home awards for Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, Outstanding Technical Achievement, and Family Game of the Year, Marvel's Guardian of the Galaxy (Adventure Game of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Story), and Returnal (Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design and Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition).

In addition to announcing the various award recipients, the show also honored multiple industry leaders. Those recognized include NetherRealm Studios Ed Boon, the 2022 Hall of Fame inductee, as well as Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.

You can see all the categories, and their nominees, below. The winners are printed in bold.

2021 DICE Awards Nominees

Winners in bold

To celebrate Pokemon’s anniversary, a new music video was released for the song “Reconnect” by Yaffle featuring Daichi Yamamoto and AAAMYYY. The song was released last year on the Pokemon 25 album, and this new music video feels like a blast to the past.

The video takes place in a Japanese convenience store and features popular things from the time Pokemon first released in 1996. The dancers hold up Game Boys to gain entry into the store, which sells a wide variety of nostalgic Japanese candies.

Throughout the video, we see Pikachu dancing to the music along with other Pokemon friends, such as Charmander, Clefairy, Squirtle, Cubone, and even Snorlax.

If you listen carefully, you’ll be able to hear many sound effects from the original Pokemon game. The lyrics to the song “Reconnect” also have plenty of references to Pokemon, such as catching them all, traveling across regions, rare candies, HP, and more.

It’s a pretty catchy and uplifting song, and the music video is well-made with adorable Pokemon CGI. You have to watch it for yourself to see what we mean, and we dare you to not dance along as it plays.

You can watch the entirety of Yaffle’s “Reconnect” music video below.

I get locked out of my house quite a lot. By "I get locked out," I mean that I contrive to accidentally lock myself out. By "quite a lot", I probably mean it happens two or three or four times a year. Which is absolutely enough, thanks. (Maybe five times a year.) Anyway, the best part of a decade ago I got locked out of my house quite late at night, and the only locksmith who would come and help was from Newhaven, which was a fair distance away.

Hero! The locksmith's name was Matt, and I am so happy I met him. Matt got into my house using a thin sheet of plastic, which is pretty alarming now I think about it, but while he worked, he also took the time to talk to me about his job, and I began to learn what a fascinating, generous, unusual person he is.

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The Steam Next Fest ends on Monday, so do check out the bevvy of demos while you can. We've already recommended loads but I still have a dozen or so I want to play. Which other demos would you recommend to everyone, gang? And what are you playing this weekend?

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The CEO of development studio Pocketpair gave the entire team the day off yesterday so that they could play Elden Ring.

According to a tweet from the company's official Twitter account, CEO Takruo Mizobe offered the paid "Elden Holiday" leave in recognition that staff will be "unable to focus on work" on the day From Software's latest saga is released.

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With Koei Tecmo and Gust’s potion-concocting RPG sequel, Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, finally out in the wild for PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC, the Japanese companies have dropped a brand new launch trailer to help whet fans’ appetites.

Feel free to check out the new video for yourself down below:

Gust’s latest is all set to be a direct continuation of 2016’s Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book. Featuring classic turn-based combat, its signature puzzle-like synthesis system, and new weather-controlling mechanics, Atelier Sophie 2 is poised to be a familiar RPG adventure for the fans.

Valve boss Gabe Newell has confirmed that the company has no plans to develop a first-party game pass system for its new handheld, Steam Deck.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Newell said the company saw no need in "building a subscription service at this time", stating "I don't think it's something that we need to do ourselves".

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How to get Apex Shadow Ho-oh and Lugia

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When is a school-shooting movie not a school-shooting movie?

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Ryan Reynold’s sci-fi videogame action comedy lands on Disney Plus and HBO Max this week

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Steam Deck keeps looking better and better

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Thrilling, on-the-edge racing across multiple vehicles; why has no one thought of this?

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Warning: Major Destiny 2: The Witch Queen spoilers ahead

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