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Minecraft Dungeons is a family-friendly dungeon crawler, but there's more to it than might be immediately obvious from a casual run through the game. It actually houses a handful of hidden levels, which are great opportunities for more loot and gems. Like regular stages, these hidden stages can be repeated as often as you'd like, but you'll have to find and unlock them first.

There are five hidden stages in all, in addition to the nine standard campaign stages, for a total of 14. One element that makes the hidden stages difficult to find is that the levels in Minecraft Dungeons are randomly generated. The entrances to these dungeons can be difficult to pin down to one location, and they don't even populate into a stage consistently. That means you could enter a stage that doesn't actually have the entrance at all, and not realize it until you've searched high and low and come up empty.

Generally, though, the hidden stage entrances are marked by some telltale signs and tend to populate in a few reliable areas. We've outlined where to look below, and if you don't see it, just exit back to Camp and try again. These can be found on any difficulty and that will unlock them across all difficulty levels, so set it to the easiest difficulty so you can rush through to look for the entrance without worrying too much about enemies. And if you need to comb a level thoroughly, as is the case in some, make sure to turn on your semi-transparent mini-map and don't follow the yellow directional arrow.

The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series inspires more nostalgia than most games of its era. It's been five years since the last THPS game, and Pro Skater 5 was seriously underwhelming. Well, Activision has heard the calls from fans and is set to release a remastered bundle featuring Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 on September 4 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC as an Epic Games Store exclusive. The remaster is already available to pre-order on PC and Xbox One, and PS4 pre-orders shouldn't be far behind. The game includes a couple of special editions, including a surprisingly affordable and very cool Collector's Edition.

Rebuilt from the ground up by Vicarious Visions, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 will have all of the great levels, skaters, and modes you remember, rendered in modern graphics with an updated list of tricks. Some of the music from the original games' beloved soundtracks will return, including Goldfinger's "Superman." The remasters will only be sold as a bundle. For more details on the remaster, check out our interview with Vicarious Visions boss Jen Oneal.

Terra Battle, a 2014 mobile game from developer Mistwalker and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi--best known as the creator of Final Fantasy--will soon shut down all services. An upcoming termination of service has been announced, which will effectively end support for the game.

Service for the game will terminate on June 30, at midnight UTC. The in-game Energy currency has already been discontinued, so you cannot spend money on it in-game. On June 15, players will be unable to transfer or recover game data, and at the end of the month the game will end.

Sakaguchi wrote a note to fans alongside the announcement, expressing his "deep regret" that Mistwalker has to terminate services for the game. "I am so grateful for all the fans who played Terra Battle for nearly six years," his statement reads. "I personally learned a lot from this experience, and am constantly reminded that 'there are no paths that aren't worth taking.' I am very thankful to have had such an experience."

Mistwalker is currently working on Fantasian, a new game for Apple Arcade. They also previously released Terra Battle 2 in 2017, but it proved less successful than its predecessor, and was shutdown one year later.

It's June and love is in the air in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The 1.20 update laid the groundwork for the wedding season event, which allows you to decorate a happy couple's nuptials for special rewards. It will last through June 30, 2020, so you'll have a few weeks to take part in the festivities.

If you've met Harvey he'll call from Photopia suggesting you come on over. You can go to the Dodo Airport in your town and head to Harv's Island to begin the wedding festivities for Reese and Cyrus. The event centers around helping to decorate Harv's photo studio for the happy couple.

The event is simple enough--just listen to the theme of the day and make your photo decor match their wishes. You'll be rewarded with a special currency called "heart crystals" and sometimes they'll give you special wedding furniture. You can collect other pieces of wedding furniture throughout the event, and you can exchange the heart crystals you earn for even more themed furniture, decorations, and clothing items.

Bungie has been somewhat more tight-lipped about where Destiny 2 is heading at the start of Season 11 and into its upcoming fourth year, but we're starting to get some hints. A new teaser trailer hit Destiny 2's Twitter account, showing Jupiter's moon of Europa and the Drifter making his way there.

The new teaser doesn't offer too much in the way of information, but it plays off another newly released cinematic. That short video, which was added with the weekly reset on June 2, shows Jupiter, with one of the black pyramid ships briefly appearing from its shadow. It seems the next front of Destiny 2's war with evil forces will take place in the orbit of Jupiter.

The Drifter isn't the only person headed to Europa, it seems. Another teaser video that briefly appeared on the Destiny 2 Instagram showed Eris Morn venturing to the Jovian moon. That video has since been removed from the account's feed, but is still available by direct link.

Rockstar Games is temporarily shutting down access to both Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online today to show support for Black Lives Matter and to honor the slain George Floyd.

The servers for both games will go down at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET and will return at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET. The offline components for the two games should not be affected.

In addition to the gesture, Rockstar asked its Twitter followers to find a charity they can donate to in order to show support for black communities, businesses, and civil rights. Charities on the list include the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Black Child Development Institute, and the Equal Justice Initiative, as well as broader civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

The interactive hidden-object game Hidden Folks has been given some new DLC. On Tour, a series of six musically-tinged areas, is out now on Android and iOS devices, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

With the release of this DLC, developer Adriaan de Jongh and company have increased the price of the game for new buyers. This price-hike brings the game's retail value to $13 across all platforms.

However, anyone who already owns the game will get access to On Tour, as well as every other piece of Hidden Folks' DLC, at no extra charge. Furthermore, apart from the Mouth Sounds DLC, Hidden Folks will have no more purchasable add-on content, with all of it getting folded into the base game following the price-hike. Jongh said this is to "unify all areas [of the game] into a single [purchase]." To be clear: Every piece of DLC for Hidden Folks that was sold separately is now free for all owners of the game.

Slay the Spire, the roguelike deck-building card game, is making its way to iOS later this month, developer Mega Crit announced. In a post on Steam Mega Crit announced that the iOS version will release sometime in June, with more information coming during the Guerrilla Collective show.

Slay the Spire will cost $10 and is the "complete, spire-climbing experience you have already enjoyed on PC." The game is also coming to Android at a later date and is currently available on Xbox One, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and Linux.

Valorant launched out of its closed beta this week. With the arrival of update 1.0 comes a host of additions, adjustments, and some big changes--including the new agent Reyna, the new Ascent map, the new Spike Rush game mode, and the temporary removal of ranked Competitive mode. We have all the info on what's new in Valorant and the full version 1.0 patch notes below.

Reyna is Valorant's new agent. "Straight from the heart of Mexico," Reyna has a host of vampiric abilities and thrives on getting kills. Her abilities allow her to feed off downed enemies for health and temporary invulnerability, obscure enemy vision, and employ a deadly rapid fire mode that can recharge her "feeding" abilities, creating a potentially vicious cycle that rewards kill streaks. Read our story on Reyna joining Valorant for more on her specific abilities.

The new game mode Spike Rush has launched in an early "beta" state, offering shorter, quicker matches next to Valorant's more serious and lengthy default game mode. Spike Rush eliminates the buy phase, randomizes weapons, automatically recharges basic abilities per round, and offers a range of random "power-up" orbs to change things up as players, each equipped with their own Spike, fight to plant. In our Play For All interview with Riot, we learned more about the design decisions behind Spike Rush and why Team Deathmatch will have to wait.

A new update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now available, but it doesn't make any major changes to the game. According to the patch notes on Nintendo's support website, the 1.2.1 update "addressed issues to further ensure an enjoyable gaming experience." The notes don't delve into any specific changes, but one of the issues that appears to have been resolved is the item duplication glitch.

You'll need to install the latest update to continue playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons online. If the update isn't installed automatically, you can do so manually by highlighting the game's icon on the Switch dashboard, pressing the Plus button, and then selecting Software Update.

That's not all that's new in New Horizons. Now that June has arrived, Wedding Season is officially underway in the game. Throughout the month, you can meet Reese and Cyrus at Harv's Island and help them take anniversary photos to earn some "wedding-themed" rewards. New bugs and fish have also emerged.

Valorant launched on Tuesday, June 2, and with the official version 1.0 release of the game comes a brand-new game mode. GameSpot's Play For All interview with executive producer Anna Donlon provided more details on Riot's thought process when designing the short, but "chaotic" mode, which is called Spike Rush. While Valorant is fully launched out of its own beta, Spike Rush has been added in what Donlon describes as an early "beta state."

Unlike the default bomb mode, Spike Rush gives every player on the attacker side a spike--the objective is to plant just one. All agents' basic abilities are refilled for free and there's no pre-round buy phase, so every player is given the same random weapon at the start. On top of that, there are only seven rounds max. But to mix things up further, there are several orbs scattered around the map, which grant different power-ups if you pick them up. These abilities are not "core" to your agent's abilities and include things like "hyper speed" or a quick weapon upgrade, which "kind of creates a level of chaos and mystery into the mode," Donlon told GameSpot.

According to Donlon, a single match of Spike Rush should only take about 7-10 minutes to get through and provide "some really good in-between games downtime." Compared to the much longer and more competitive default game mode, which can take around an hour to finish, Spike Rush sounds like the kind of quick and casual mode players have been asking for on paper. But there's still another highly requested game mode that, according to Donlon, players won't get their hands on just yet: Team Deathmatch.

The Xbox studio Double Fine Productions has announced a donation of $12,000 to a series of charities that fight racism in response to the murder of George Floyd.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Double Fine said it condemns police brutality and calls for the immediate demilitarization of police forces in America. "Our message is simple: black lives matter, and the systemic oppression, disenfranchisement, and murder of black people must end," Double Fine said.

"This is a critical moment. There can be no justice for black people in America, or justice for any minorities, without the immediately demilitarization of police forces throughout the country," the statement goes on. "It is not enough to simply know this. Something must be done--not tomorrow, but now. It is not sufficient to be 'not racist.' We must all be anti-racist."

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us: Part II will feature more than 60 different accessibility options that are aimed at helping the game appeal to a wide audience. Audio lead Robert Krekel has now shared a little more light on some of the audio-focused accessibility features, while he also spoke about how Naughty Dog's future projects will go even further and offer more in the way of accessibility features.

Posting on Twitter, Krekel said The Last of Us: Part II can be "pretty much" completed with only audio. The audio team spent a good amount of time and effort to create a system that allows players who are blind or have limited vision to play The Last of Us: Part II.

"It's astounding how well it works," he said. "One small example is I was able to successfully complete combat sections of the game with my eyes closed. Including stealth kills and dodging in melee encounters."

House House, the developer of 2019's most viral game, Untitled Goose Game, has pledged donations to numerous charities between the US and their home country of Australia in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests that have taken place in the United States. The charities are all focused on black justice and legal rights.

House House has donated $10,000 to an initiative hosted on ActBlue that splits donations between over 70 bail funds around the US. "Complete solidarity with everyone across the US protesting against systemic white supremacy in the face of police violence," the tweet reads. "Abolish cops. Black lives matter."

An additional $10,000 has been split between four Australian charities and fundraisers in recognition of the white supremacy committed against the country's Aboriginal population. Reparations have never been provided to Australia's indigenous population for the atrocities committed against them, and land rights were never ceded.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is one of the highest-paid executives not only in video games, but across the entire entertainment media industry. He made more than $30 million in 2019. One of the company's shareholders, The CtW Investment Group, is now calling on other stakeholders to vote against a measure that gives the company freedom to pay Kotick high rates. [Update: Activision Blizzard has responded with a statement, which you can see below]

In a filing with the United States government, The CtW Investment Groups' director Dieter Waizenegger called on other stakeholders to vote against the "Say-On-Pay" proposal during Activision Blizzard's upcoming annual meeting scheduled for June 11, 2020.

"Despite repeated low approval votes from shareholders, Activision Blizzard maintains multiple, overlapping opportunities for its CEO to earn outsize equity awards, even when performance-related vesting thresholds have not been met," the note says. "Despite failing to disclose pertinent information on performance targets for its Short Term Incentive Plan, Activision Blizzard's proxy statement reveals significant human capital management challenges."

Kart racing fans rejoice! KartRider: Drift's second closed beta is now live, and players who have been accepted can download the game and jump right into Nexon's latest free-to-play racing game.

If you've been wanting to get into the beta but haven't been able to yet, our KartRider: Drift beta code giveaway is still active for a few more hours so enter now! Players can continue registering for the game even while the beta is active—the cut-off date is June 8.

Those who experienced the first wave of beta testing for KartRider: Drift will notice a number of in-game improvements, including a totally redone UI, a cleaner HUD, a rearview mirror, and other balance changes to make your racing experience more realistic. This second wave of the closed beta also introduces a new character, Diz, and new courses for players to try out along with a variety of cosmetic upgrades.

Gwent, the card game spin-off of The Witcher 3, has a new expansion coming. On June 30, players will be able to play the Master Mirror expansion, which brings back the ominous Gaunter O'Dimm.

As the trailer below shows, O'Dimm has been pulling the strings behind the scenes for some time now, and this expansion will bring him to the forefront in the card battling game. The trailer suggests that this will have some major implications for Gwent's storytelling.

The expansion will add 70 new cards, including several faction-specific cards and a new Legendary card type. There are 11 new neutral cards coming, too, as well as new statuses and abilities.

Calling all those who are fans of both Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Tiger King. Yes, that's not a typo. There's a new Star Wars Battlefront 2 Mod that reskins Han Solo as the infamous Joe Exotic from Netflix's hit show.

Tiger King made our list of the biggest Netflix exclusives in 2020 and Joe Exotic's popularity has skyrocketed accordingly. While a controversial figure amongst viewers, there's no doubt that he's made it into this year's pop culture lexicon, so this Star Wars Battlefront 2 mod doesn't come completely out of left field.

This mod is currently available on Nexus Mods, and it reskins the in-game Han Solo model to look just like Joe Exotic. We're talking hairstyle changes, fashion faux pas, and more. Users who have downloaded the mod have been leaving comments requesting a Carol Baskin skin for another Star Wars Battlefront 2 character, but it doesn't look like the original creator has delivered on that particular front.

Days of Thunder, the 1990 Tom Cruise film, received a spin-off game on NES back in 1990--but a different game based on the movie that was in development was scrapped, and never saw the light of day. Now, 30 years later, this alternate version of Days of Thunder has been reconstructed into a playable title by video game historians.

Chris Oberth was working as a programmer at Mindscape in 1990, and thanks to The Video Game History Foundation a never-before-seen game by him has been reborn. Oberth passed away in 2012, and the VGHF was later approached by a friend of Oberth's family asking if its members could "make sense" of some of the materials Oberth left behind. In early 2020, the foundation was granted access to Oberth's materials, in which they discovered a disc labelled "NINTENDO HOT ROD TAXI FINAL".

Oberth was known to have worked on an unreleased Days of Thunder game, thanks to a three-part interview with The Retrogaming Times, and after some investigation and sorting through materials the team found close to 40 floppy disks, containing multiple encrypted and split files that would need to be reconstructed to get the game properly running.

Path of Exile's latest expansion, Harvest, has been announced. It will be available to PC players from June 19, and Xbox and PlayStation players from June 24. This expansion will introduce a new challenge league, feature extensive balance changes to the existing game, and also visual improvements on top of other additions.

Harvest will revolve around an area called the Sacred Grove, which will provide players with both rare items and formidable foes to face down. Exploring new areas will grant you with items called Seed Caches, and their contents will have to be planted by players within the Sacred Grove. Planting rare seeds will grant you with rarer monsters to fight or harvest, and each will have specific rewards. Players will be able to use the Grove to their advantage to customize their builds and to obtain beneficial items that suit their individual needs.

Wasteland 3's third dev diary is here, and it's focused in on the consequences of player choice. The video below delves into how player choices will impact the world of Wasteland 3, and what kind of role-playing is possible.

InXile Entertainment studio head Brian Fargo says that reactivity is "the hallmark of a great roleplaying game," and that a lot of work has been put into making sure that the reactions of the word are "telegraphed"--so you know that events that play out are a direct result of your actions, minor and major.

An example is shown of a scene where you can steal a gun from a poor couple--the gun is going unused, as it has sentimental value to them, but it could be very useful to the player. As Fargo points out, "most players won't do it"--but the option is there, if you don't mind being evil in-game.

Infinity Ward is increasing their efforts to ban racist names from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone, the developer announced in a recent tweet. The post says that they already ban users with racist or hate-orientated names from the game but additional counter-measures are being put in place to make sure names don't slip through the cracks.

"There is no place for racist content in our game. This is an effort we began with launch and we need to do a better job. We're issuing thousands of daily bans of racist and hate-orientated names. But we know we have to do more - and we are," Infinity Ward said in the statement.

The tweet goes on to say that they will be adding additional resources to monitor and ID racist content and additional in-game reporting systems to increase the number of bans per hour. They will also be adding filters and greater restrictions on name changes in addition to increasing permanent bans to root out repeat offenders.

Battlefield V's last big content update--the Summer Update--is coming soon, and now developer DICE has shared more details about it. First and foremost, DICE said it will not publish promotional materials or trailers for the new update like it's done in the past so as to not distract from the more important issues in the world today following the murder of George Floyd.

"We're otherwise encouraging that we all take notice of what's happening in the United States, as well as other places around the world, and ask how we can all do more, as we must do more," DICE said in a blog post. "Racism should not exist in our society. We stand with all of our African-American / Black colleagues and partners, families and friends, and everyone around the world who is ready to see it end."

DICE is owned by Electronic Arts, which has pledged more than $1 million to organizations including the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, along with others to be announced. EA will also double-match employee donations.

Respawn has continued to make bold storytelling decisions when it comes to Apex Legends and that trend has continued in Season 5: Fortune's Favor as the battle royale game moves towards a true episodic experience. Apparently Season 5 is already hinting at upcoming content with the map changes made to Kings Canyon, like the addition of mysterious hatches that seemingly lead to bunker-looking areas that can't yet be accessed.

"The hatches are a fun way to sprinkle changes throughout the map," Apex Legends design director Jason McCord said, according to VG247. "We don't have to make massive changes everywhere, we can sprinkle these things around. We're doing something kind of new, where we have some stuff that is there, but is not unlocked yet. And we're going to unlock it at a certain time, that lines up with some other stuff that we have coming."

Some of this content could have already been teased in Season 5. McCord said he thinks there are still Easter eggs and secrets tied to the new content in Season 5 that fans haven't yet discovered, which may or may not be hinting towards Season 5's "pleasant surprise" for Titanfall fans.

Bohemia Interactive, famous for being behind DayZ, has not in fact been bought out by Tencent. It was reported earlier in the week that Tencent had invested a whopping $260 million in the studio, but this has since been refuted by the Chinese company.

The Information published an article earlier this week which stated that Tencent had acquired "between 70% and 80%" in Bohemia Interactive as part of the tech giant's expansion into the European market. However, this figure, as well as Tencent's involvement with the Czech company at all, has since been refuted in a press release by Tencent.

The last big investment made by Tencent in the region was in Sumo Group, a large British developer with a hand in titles like Forza Horizon 4, Team Sonic Racing, and more. Acquiring Bohemia Interactive would have added the Czech company to a growing portfolio of gaming investments where Tencent has controlling interests; the company would join the likes of Riot Games, Path of Exile's Grinding Gear Games, and Supercell.

With Half-Life: Alyx's release behind us, we're now looking toward future VR releases, such as the upcoming PlayStation VR-exclusive Iron Man VR, which releases July 3. Marvel's Iron Man VR puts you into Tony Stark's suit and has you controlling it with the PSVR headset and Move controllers. It's seen some delays over the past year, but now, we finally have a new release date. Iron Man VR is set for a July 3 release date, and if you're looking to invest into PSVR before then, you'll be happy to know the headset is in stock at some retailers--though, it's unlikely you'll find a deal any time soon.

As for other VR headsets, they're a bit hard to find right now. Most headsets are sold out or available for backorder. You can find some headsets at a mark-up on Amazon, but we'd advise against purchasing any headset above its regular price.

Best VR headsets in stock right now

PlayStation VR Iron Man VR bundle

The Nintendo Switch always has some good deals on hand, with new ones refreshing every week. To kick off June, the Switch has a sale on almost every Resident Evil game on the console--the Revelations games are not included. Each game is discounted by at least 50%, and you have until June 17 at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET to take advantage of the lower prices.

The classic-style Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil Remake have both dropped their prices to $12.89, while the over-the-shoulder, more action-oriented Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, and Resident Evil 6 are down to $15. Almost every game in the Resident Evil franchise is quite good, and while Resident Evil 6 doesn't match up to the series standards, its Switch port is still pretty impressive.

Each one of these Resident Evil games scored at least an 8/10 in GameSpot's reviews, except for Resident Evil 6. Resident Evil 4 was even named GameSpot's Game of the Year for 2005. If you're looking for some excellent games to keep you busy, it's hard to go wrong with most entries in the Resident Evil series.

Last month, Nintendo partnered with Walmart and GameStop to offer a free Nintendo Switch 128GB memory card with the purchase of two select digital games. Now Nintendo has linked up with Best Buy to offer the same deal until June 7. This time around, far more games are eligible for the promotion. The list of 20 games includes most of the Switch's most popular exclusives as well as some stellar third-party titles.

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Splatoon 2
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
• Arms
• Fire Emblem Warriors
• Mario Tennis Aces
• Yoshi's Crafted World
• Super Mario Party
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Dragon Quest Builders 2
• Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2
• Pokemon: Let's Go
• Pokken Tournament DX
• Kirby Star Allies
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
• Daemon X Machina
• Octopath Traveler

The Pokemon Company is giving away another Pokemon for Sword and Shield. Until June 4, you can claim a free Galarian Ponyta via Mystery Gift. This Ponyta has its Hidden Ability, Anticipation, which will cause it to shudder when it enters the field if the opposing Pokemon knows a super-effective attack.

Alongside Ponyta, The Pokemon Company is also giving away a handful of rare Poke Balls. This gift bundle includes one Level Ball, one Fast Ball, one Love Ball, one Friend Ball, and one Beast Ball.

To claim the freebies, select Mystery Gift from the menu screen and follow these steps:

The worlds of Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI are coming together today for "The Maiden’s Rhapsody: Memories of an Unseen Realm" collaboration event. Final Fantasy XIV players can check it out now until June 22.

The event has players aid Harbor Herald reporter Remumu stay safe while investigating a story. Participating players will get to unlock the Amatsu set originally worn by Iroha, a character from Final Fantasy XI. The exclusive armor set includes an Amatsu hachigane, yogi, yekko, haidate, and sune-ate.

Players interested in the event need to travel to the Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks and speak to Remumu in order to start the 'A Journey to Remember' quest.

A new Itch.io games bundle with up to 20 games is giving all of the money it earns to multiple important causes this week. From now until June 17, the Black Lives Support bundle will be available to purchase with all proceeds going to Black Lives Matter, the organization fighting anti-Black racism and police brutality, as well as the National Bail Fund Network, which is paying bail for those arrested while protesting nationwide. When you buy this bundle, 100% of your money is split equally between the two organizations, and you can donate more than the minimum, of course.

The Black Lives Matter bundle includes two levels of games, with 11 games unlocked for $20 and another nine games available for $40. The bundle includes a variety of indie games from creators on Itch.io, so if you're looking to donate this week, here's a great way to not only support the fight for racial equality but also a group of indie game developers.

The games in this bundle span a wide range of topics and genres, from Moon Hunter, a co-op action "personality test" RPG, to Herald, a choice-driven adventure game set during an alternate 19th century. It also includes Emily is Away Too, a fantastic visual novel that takes place entirely within a mid-2000s-era instant messaging chat. Another one of my favorites, Coffee Talk (which just released this year), is up for grabs too. Coffee Talk is set in an alternate-future Seattle where fantasy creatures like werewolves and vampires live among humans, and you'll play as a cafe owner who listens to their problems and watches relationships develop over a cup of coffee. It's a cozy sort of game, but it also touches on topics like racism, the struggles of interracial relationships, and even crunch within the games industry.

In the recent State of Play presentation for The Last of Us Part II, there's a bit where returning protagonist Ellie sneaks up on a woman playing a PlayStation Vita, interrogates her at knifepoint, and then stabs her in the neck when she tries to retaliate. Ellie says something like "that was dumb" under her breath while wiping the blood off her switchblade.

I winced the first time I saw that scene during my own playthrough of the game, and I winced when I saw it again during the State of Play. Not just because I was bummed about the loss of a fellow PS Vita appreciator, and not just because the violence was so shocking and ruthless (I mean, I'm also playing a ton of Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath now so a simple throat-stab is probably something I can handle). It's the way the kill was choreographed and framed to be so cold and understated that made it feel almost nauseating. The close-up, the gurgles, the way the camera lingers after the stab really made me squirm in my seat. They're really going to devote this much gory detail to the death of a super minor character? A big part of why it felt so uncomfortable is because it was an ice-cold move from Ellie, a character who I first knew and still kinda see in my mind as a young, relatively innocent teenager. But at this point in The Last of Us Part II, she's obviously not the same person--she's seen a lot of shit. And I mean a lot of shit.

After launching on Xbox One and the Microsoft Store more than two years ago, Sea of Thieves is now available to download on Steam. Rare's swashbuckling launch on Valve's platform includes all content previously released in the game.

Sea of Thieves, hailed as Microsoft's most successful IP of the generation, has received a steady flow of content since it launched in March of 2018. That includes the Ships of Fortune update released last April that introduced a new emissary system, allowing players to carry out special diplomatic missions in-game.

The launch also includes the latest Sea of Thieves' update, Lost Treasures. It dropped on May 27 and includes a number of changes to the story elements in the game as well as Daily Bounties to ensure that you've always got coin on hand.

Update: Reyna is now available to play as of Valorant update 1.0. Her two basic abilities are Dismiss and Devour, which allow her to consume a downed enemy's "life force" to temporarily become invisible and invulnerable, and restore her health, respectively. Her signature ability Leer sends out a destructible orb that obscures the range of vision of any players that look at it. This ability can be deployed through walls and barriers, which makes it quite powerful. Her ultimate ability is Empress, which grants her rapid fire for a limited period of time, but resets the timer per kill. Getting a kill as Reyna also recharges her basic "feeding" abilities.

Original story follows...

Developer Riot Games has shown off the first post-launch character that will be added to Valorant. Reyna, a kill or be killed kind of Agent, has no definitive release date but will supposedly drop sometime around the game's June 2 launch.

With a little more than two weeks to go until the highly-anticipated The Last of Us Part 2 hits PlayStation 4, Naughty Dog and PlayStation have shared a brand-new extended commercial for the game.

The spotlight, which is only about one minute long, shows Ellie serenading her love interest, Dina, by a campfire. The song, a brief acoustic rendition of "True Faith" by the synthpop band New Order, is interspersed with a scene of Ellie running from human pursuers. It's a much more sobering look at the journey Ellie will undertake throughout The Last Of Us Part 2 when compared to other trailers we've seen.

Naughty Dog has been much more vocal about The Last Of Us Part 2 in recent months, with the studio showing off 20 minutes of gameplay footage during a late-May State of Play livestream. We also had the opportunity to check the game out during a hands-on preview, where editor Edmond Tran said his experience was satisfyingly brutal and uncomfortable in the same breath.

Valorant has officially launched out of its closed beta, but players who were part of its early access period or tuned into streams of it might be surprised to find out that its ranked Competitive mode, which was offered alongside its default unrated game mode after a big update, is missing. According to Riot, this is both to give new players a chance to learn the game before being matched against players who may have an advantage from playing the beta, and to make sure the mode is stable. Competitive will be added back "a few patches" later after it has time to make some adjustments. The following Competitive explainer was written pre-launch, during Valorant's beta period, so it may contain information that is subject to change based on how Riot moves forward with its ranked system, but we'll keep it mostly intact for players curious about how it worked in the beta, and how it may work in the future.

Similar to games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant's Competitive mode had to be unlocked after it was initially added to the beta. From there, players could start playing for a competitive rank, which serves as a reflection of their current skill level and affects how Valorant's matchmaking system pairs them with other players in future ranked play. But not everything about Valorant's ranked system is clear from the start. How many Unrated matches do you need to play before ranked mode unlocks and how do you earn your first rank? And what are the Valorant ranks anyway? Note that any or all of this information is subject to change as Riot continues to update Valorant in future patches.

The first official look at Destiny 2's next content season is here, with Bungie announcing more details with a reveal next week. The developer shared a teaser trailer on Twitter that gives some new hints about where Destiny 2's story is headed, while also confirming that a reveal live stream will take place next week.

The reveal is set for 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET on June 9, although we don't know yet what it'll cover. The timing is significant, though--Destiny 2's next content season kicks off on the same day at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET, and we've gotten almost no details about what is set to happen in it, outside of some changes to gear systems Bungie has talked about in past blog posts.

Bungie has also suggested that the reveal could go beyond talking about Season 11 to discuss bigger things on the horizon: namely, the start of Destiny 2's fourth year. Destiny typically gets big expansions in the fall, as it did with the Shadowkeep expansion in 2019. We're quickly approaching the start of Year 4 this fall, so the reveal might cover the next major addition to Destiny 2 as well as the smaller content offerings that come with a typical season.

The Nintendo Switch has been sold out almost everywhere online (and in-store at many popular retailers) for more than a month, even as some of its biggest games continue to gain popularity. With global supply chains reacting to the rapid spread of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, stock shortages of numerous goods are expected. If you've been tempted by the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you might be out of luck already, as stock of Nintendo's handheld console has become almost impossible to find beyond third-party sellers--and the prices for those are surging up to $600. According to Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, supply won't return to normal until the "end of Q2," and we're already reaching that point rapidly. The Nintendo Switch Lite comes back in stock periodically, but those also sell out quickly, and you won't be able to connect them into a TV.

If you've been waiting for any news on the much-delayed Avengers game set to release later this year, we've got the next-best thing. Footage of a cancelled Avengers game has emerged in the wild, hosted on the YouTube channel of gaming historian Andrew Borman. The game was originally scheduled to release alongside the first Avengers film back in 2012, but Marvel cancelled the contract with embattled publisher THQ, leading to its cancellation.

Based on the footage, it's safe to say that the Avengers game followed much in the mold of four-player co-op games first inaugurated by Left 4 Dead, with each player controlling a different member of the squad: Captain America, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man. A short trailer featuring gameplay was released on YouTube back in 2012, but this is a much more complete look at what the game might've looked like.

Square-Enix's long-in-development Avengers game is set to release this September, following a delay. According to a recent announcement, there will be a special stream for the game on June 24 as part of the publisher's replacement E3 event.

Humble Bundle is a great resource for saving on collections of games and donating to worthy causes, but it's also a publishing label with its own digital storefront. And in support of Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests in the U.S., Humble Bundle is starting a fund for Black game developers.

Humble Bundle is starting a fund of $1 million that will help publish games created by Black developers. Details on how the fund will be established and how qualifying developers can apply for it will be communicated in the future, with Humble Bundle encouraging its customers to donate to funds like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Race Forward in the meantime.

"We stand in solidarity to condemn racism and violence against the Black community," Humble's statement reads. "Humble believes in empowering and uniting communities through gaming and will leverage our platform to help achieve racial equality everywhere."