Month: April 2018

The latest Fortnite update has brought with it a new addition to Battle Royale in the form of Vending Machines. These present players with an opportunity to buy items using the materials they’ve gathered during the match, and you’ll tend to see them in the same locations–but not always. Here’s where to find them and exactly how they work.

You’ll find Vending Machines all around the map–typically indoors, if our experience is any indication, though we’ve also found one that was outdoors. Each one has three items for sale and will gradually rotate through them. You can wait for it to change to the item you want to purchase, or you can hit the machine with your pickaxe to make it jump to the next of the three.

Vending Machines are each randomly assigned a rarity level at the start of a match, as the patch notes explain. They then sell items at that specific rarity–one for each material type (wood, stone, and metal). You’ll need a specific amount of that material to buy the corresponding item, though you’re free to buy as many items as you wish, provided you can afford it. That may put a renewed emphasis on collecting materials with the pickaxe, even for players who don’t care about building. Here’s how much items will cost at each rarity:

• Common (white) items — 100 materials
• Uncommon (green) items — 200 materials
• Rare (blue) — 300 materials
• Epic (purple) — 400 materials
• Legendary (gold) — 500 materials

In terms of finding the Vending Machines, they’re scattered all across the map, but they don’t always appear in the same spots. You can see what it’s like to interact with some in the video above, and we’ve also compiled the map you see above, which combines the discoveries of Reddit user clizzythegod with those we’ve found ourselves. As you’d expect, you’ll most easily find Vending Machines in high-density areas like Pleasant Park, Tilted Towers, Salty Springs, and Retail Row, but there are others in unnamed parts of the map.

Vending Machines were added as part of Fortnite’s 3.4 content update for mobile, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. This is part of developer Epic Games’ new plan to roll out new content every other week. These content updates won’t individually require you to download anything, as it seems the additions will be included as part of earlier patches. The 3.4 content update has also kicked off a new limited-time mode, High Explosives v2, and made weapon balance changes.

After Gillian Anderson announced she would not return for the second season of American Gods, following the departure of co-showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, it now seems as though her role as Media will not be recast. Instead, the character is being outright replaced.

According to TV Line, producers on the series are looking to fill the new regular role of New Media, which will represent social media as Anderson’s character did for pop culture in the first season. Though no official announcements have been made, the report says the series is looking for a 20-something Asian woman to play the role.

Including a god of New Media is an intriguing addition to the show, given that the Neil Gaiman-authored novel that serves as the show’s source material was first published in 2001. That’s before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media was able to take hold of the world. It should be interesting to see how the new character impacts the series.

While production of Season 2 has yet to begin, a new showrunner has been found to take over for Fuller and Green. Jesse Alexander–an alum of shows that include Star Trek: Discovery, Hannibal, Heroes, and Alias–has come aboard as executive producer. He will work alongside Gaiman in bringing the new episodes to life. It’s believed that American Gods may return in early 2019.

Astro made a name for itself by creating high-end gaming headsets with audio quality and comfort that matched the accompanied asking price. Both the A40 and A50 models led that charge, but the company recently began to offer more budget-friendly products. The wired A10 was the first sub-$100 headset from Astro and caught our attention due to its unparalleled durability. Now we have a wireless iteration with the Astro A20.

This headset goes for $150 USD / £150 GBP / $250 AUD for the standard design, which is available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and come in platform-coordinated color accents. Here, we have the Call of Duty Edition for Xbox One and PC with a silver camouflage touch, which tacks on an extra $10.

Feel free to jump to breakdowns of specific aspects of the A20 headset or click through our gallery above.

A new patch is on the way to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. This marks the ninth major update the game has received since it left Early Access on PC last December, and it introduces a new spectator mode and a few bug fixes.

The biggest addition to the game is a new Killer Spectate mode. Following the update, you will be able to watch the player who killed you during a match by clicking on the button from the result screen. If your killer ends up dying, you’ll be able to continue spectating the player who killed them.

Additionally, you can spectate the player who was nearest to your death location if you die by the Blue or Red Zones or from fall damage. You will also have the ability to report the player you are watching in Killer Spectate mode by pressing R. However, you won’t be able to use Killer Spectate if you’re watching the Death Cam.

Beyond that, the new update addresses a small handful of bugs. Namely, it fixes an issue that would cause your vehicle to suddenly flip over or return to its starting point while driving, as well as one that prevented the username of your killer from appearing in Death Cam. You can find the full patch notes on Steam.

The update is scheduled to arrive to the game tonight, April 4, following a round of maintenance. Developer PUBG Corp. is taking servers offline for three hours beginning at 7 PM PT / 10 PM ET to move its current test build to the live game. A smaller map, Codename: Savage, is also currently in testing; you can see it in action in the video above.

Wildly popular game Fortnite is suffering from server issues once again. In this case, matchmaking has been impacted, which could prevent you from joining a match on mobile, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Epic has taken some measures to address the problems, which include disabling a newly added playlist for the time being and matchmaking in general. [Update: Epic says the problems have been resolved. Matchmaking has been reactivated, as has the Squads version of High Explosives v2.]

The status page on Epic’s website shows that matchmaking is suffering from a “major outage.” The page adds that matchmaking has been disabled as the studio works to resolve the problem, though there’s no ETA for how long this will last. This move came shortly after the studio took two other steps to deal with the situation: It’s turned off the Squads version of the High Explosives v2 playlist and instituted a cooldown in between attempts to join the matchmaking queue.

These issues come on the same day that Epic rolled out the 3.4 content update for Fortnite. This did not require a download but did add new content–namely, the Vending Machine–and make weapon balance changes. Meanwhile, the PS4 version received a new update to resolve a crash, although that patch was mistakenly much larger than intended.

High Explosives v2 is the latest limited-time mode to be added to Battle Royale. As the name suggests, it plays out like the earlier version of High Explosives, as players are restricted to explosive weapons only. This iteration includes some of the more recently added weapons, including Remote Explosives and the Guided Missile.

Last week’s big Pokemon Go update introduced a new research quest system to the game, which gives players additional objectives to complete while playing. The system launched alongside a new storyline tied to the Mythical Pokemon Mew, but it appears that isn’t the only Legendary players can discover by completing quests.

On Reddit, Pokemon Go players are reporting that the reward for their first “research breakthrough” is another encounter with the Legendary fire bird Moltres. Previously, players could only encounter Moltres in Raid Battles at Gyms. This required physically going to the location of a Raid and teaming up with other players for a chance to capture one, which is particularly a hassle for players who live in rural areas. Thanks to the new research quest system, players now have another avenue for getting Legendary Pokemon.

Research quests come in two varieties: Special Research and Field Research. The former are story-driven quests assigned by Professor Willow himself, the first batch of which leads to an encounter with Mew. Field Research, on the other hand, are distributed via PokeStops. Players can complete as many of these as they want in a day, and they will receive one stamp for the first Field Research task they do each day.

Completing research quests rewards players with a variety of items, while amassing seven stamps leads to a “research breakthrough.” Niantic teased that achieving a breakthrough would unlock additional rewards, including a possible encounter with another Legendary. The developer hasn’t announced what other Legendary Pokemon players will have a chance to capture through the quest system.

In addition to Mew and Moltres, another pair of Legendaries recently began appearing in Pokemon Go. For a limited time, the Eon Pokemon Latios and Latias will be available in Raid Battles in different parts of the world. The former can now be found in North America, South America, and Africa, while the latter is available in Europe and Asia. The Legendaries will swap regions beginning May 8, where they will remain until June 5.

The next Pokemon Go Community Day event takes place later this month, on April 15, and features the Electric-type Mareep. Beyond that, Niantic is partnering with Playmob to host a series of Earth Day Clean Up events on April 22. The events focus on cleaning up litter in public spaces and reward participants with in-game bonuses.

Far Cry 5 has become the fastest-selling game in franchise history in its opening week, according to Ubisoft. The company claimed $310M USD in its first week, double the opening sales of previous franchise record-holder Far Cry 4. That also makes it the second-biggest launch ever for Ubisoft, behind The Division.

The announcement also mentions a few other launch week stats. Far Cry 5 was streamed for more than 55,000 hours. Players were were ambushed by 8,651 skunks, caught 5.1 million fish, and spent 1.1 million hours with Cheeseburger the bear. The most popular gun for hire was the pilot Nick Rye, while the most popular animal companion was Boomer the dog–which makes sense, given that he’s a very good boy.

We heard just this week that Far Cry 5 had hit the top spot on the UK sales charts, so this announcement isn’t too surprising. This is the first time the open-world series has taken place in America. It’s set in the fictional Hope County, Montana after an attempt to arrest the leader of a doomsday cult goes awry.

In GameSpot’s Far Cry 5 review, Edmond Tran praised the vast open-world exploration and precise gunplay, though he found some story missions to be a chore. Fortunately there appears to be lots to see and do, including some clever Easter eggs to find. Currently the first live event has you burning animals to a crisp. If you’re thinking of picking it up, make sure to check out our tips for beginners.

Video game films have a bad reputation for being…well, bad. While there have been some films to come out recently that have performed better at the box office and with critics, video game franchises have mostly failed to break through to the film world the way comic books have. Often, bad scripts and worse plot adaptations have been to blame. In the video above, GameSpot Universe’s Dave Klein takes us through the some of the worst video game movies of all time and breaks down where things went so wrong.

It all starts, of course, with the very first live action video game adaptation. Super Mario Bros. started the trend of dysfunctional film productions that resulted in not-so-fantastic films. As Dave explores in the video, there were disagreements between directors, producers, and Nintendo from day one. The script was a mishmash of rewrites from various writers and casting issues too. Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, and John Leguizamo, who played Luigi, were so unhappy with how the film was going that they started drinking on set, which (unsurprisingly) produced disastrous results.

But Super Mario Bros. quickly had company in the ‘bad video game adaptation’ department. A series of films in the 90’s, like Wing Commander, Street Fighter, and Double Dragon, failed to do their games justice. Others, like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Mortal Kombat, did better, but were by no means film triumphs. This continued further into the 2000’s, when director Uwe Boll (then bolstered by favorable German tax laws) became Hollywood’s director-of-choice for video game films. From House of the Dead to Far Cry, none of them turned out well.

The industry itself is changing, and video game studios themselves are getting involved. Nintendo has announced an animated Mario feature is coming, and Paramount is making a Sonic film. With more studios taking responsibility for how their games are featured on the big screen, one can only hope we’re seeing a shift that will result in better video game adaptations to come.