Month: April 2018

The second wave of this month’s original Xbox games have arrived on Xbox One. Following last week’s additions to the backwards compatible library, 10 more classic Xbox titles are now playable on Microsoft’s current-gen console, plus an additional one if you live in Europe.

This week’s batch of BC titles includes the alien adventure game Destroy All Humans; the military strategy game Full Spectrum Warrior; the motocross game MX Unleashed; and the third-person shooter Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. Xbox One owners in Europe, meanwhile, get an additional backwards compatible game in the form of Panzer Elite Action: Fields of Glory.

On top of those games, six classic Star Wars titles are also now playable on Xbox One. Those include the original Battlefront and Battlefront II; the Star Wars action game Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy; the first-person shooter Republic Commando; and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Obsidian’s follow-up to BioWare’s acclaimed Star Wars RPG.

As usual, if you still own the disc for any of the aforementioned games, you can now pop it into your Xbox One and begin playing. The titles are also available to purchase digitally from the Xbox Store. You can see the full list of this month’s original Xbox BC games below.

April has been a significant month for Xbox One’s backwards compatibility feature. Last week, Microsoft rolled out eight original Xbox BC games, including The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; Jade Empire; Conker: Live & Reloaded; and Panzer Dragoon Orta.

That marked the second batch of original Xbox games to support Xbox One; the first arrived back in October and consisted of 13 titles, including Black, Psychonauts, Prince of Persia, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. You can see the full list of Xbox One BC games here. Microsoft also recently rolled out Xbox One X enhancements for a number of BC titles, including Red Dead Redemption, Gears of War 2, and Portal 2.

New Original Xbox Backwards Compatible Games

April 17

• Blinx: The Time Sweeper
• Breakdown
• Conker: Live & Reloaded
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Hunter: The Reckoning
• Jade Empire
• Panzer Dragoon Orta
• SSX 3

April 26

• Destroy All Humans
• Full Spectrum Warrior
• Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
• MX Unleashed
• Panzer Elite Action: Fields of Glory (Europe only)
• Star Wars: Battlefront
• Star Wars: Battlefront II
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
• Star Wars Republic Commando

If you’re in the market for a new console, today might be the day to take the plunge. That’s because Ebay currently has an promo code that gets you 15% off a purchase of $50 or more. And since a number of Ebay sellers are already offering good deals on consoles, the 15% makes those deals even sweeter. The catch is that it’s only good until 1 PM PT/4 PM ET today.

If you want a 1TB Xbox One S, you can grab one for the terrific price of $204 here. That’s a fantastic deal on a bundle that normally retails for $300. It even comes with copy of PUBG, which is just about to get a second map next month.

Maybe you have a 4K television and you want to see what all the fuss is about with 4K gaming and Ultra HD Blu-ray movies. In that case, you’ll want to grab this deal, which gets you an 1TB Xbox One X, plus Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, for $400. Considering the Xbox One X normally retails for $500 without a game, that’s a great deal. If you’d prefer Assassin’s Creed Origins as your pack-in, the same offer applies to this deal.

If you’re a collector, you may be interested in the Project Scorpio Edition Xbox One X, which is no longer in production. It comes with a custom design and the words “Project Scorpio” inscribed on the console and controller. If you want that version, grab this deal for $450, which comes to $50 off the normal price.

To get the additional savings, you’ll need the Ebay app on your phone, and you’ll have to enter promo code PLAN2SAVE at checkout.

Some links to supporting retailers are automatically made into affiliate links, and GameSpot may receive a small share of those sales.

The next season of Fortnite: Battle Royale is right around the corner. With the last set of Season 3 challenges now live and the next component of the meteor mystery seemingly live, Epic Games has released a new teaser image for what Season 4 will have in store–and it might be superhero-themed.

Epic shared the image below on Twitter, accompanied by the text, “Battle. Adapt. Win. Season 4 coming soon.” The same image on Fortnite’s website is accompanied by the words, “Brace for impact!” The image itself shows what looks like a superhero, which may provide some hint at what kind of new skins and cosmetics to expect from the Season 4 Battle Pass. Season 3’s skins are largely space-themed, which ties in with the ongoing meteor and alien speculation. With Avengers: Infinity War just hitting theaters, Epic might be looking to capitalize on the superhero buzz in-game.

A start date for Season 4 has not yet been announced, but Season 3 is set to wrap up on May 3. It’s unclear if Season 4 will start right away, but you can expect there to be another Battle Pass for sale. Epic had planned to sell Season 3’s for real-world money but ultimately decided to offer it only for V-Bucks, an in-game currency.

We still don’t know what to make of Battle Royale’s meteor. Players have repeatedly expected it to crash into Tilted Towers, only for nothing to happen–something that Epic even acknowledged with a recent Tilted Towers update.

Shooting stars now populate the sky, and the game has seen the addition of a bars and tones image that can be seen on TVs in-game, further signaling that something is about to happen. Players think they’ve found what resemble UFOs in the sky alongside the meteor, and the game’s files apparently include sound effects for the meteor finally crashing.

Maybe aliens are coming and superheroes will have to face off against them. Maybe the meteor is somehow the superhero pictured above. Earlier speculation suggested this could all be tied to Fortnite’s original PvE component, Save the World, finally exiting Early Access. Whatever the case, Season 4 will be underway soon.

Mario is holding steady as the top seller on Nintendo Switch, enjoying two of the top three spots. The company shared updated global sales data in its earnings report, and Super Mario Odyssey has come out on top with more than 10 million units sold. The second spot is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, followed by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The iconic plumber is also riding high on 3DS, as Mario Kart 7 is the top seller just ahead of Pokemon X/Y and Pokemon Sun/Moon. Don’t cry for Pokemon, though. As a series it’s the biggest by far, showing up in four of the ten top spots for 3DS sales. That includes Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which reached 7.51 million units sold despite being both the newest one and an updated re-release of another Pokemon game already on the list.

These figures were released as part of the latest fiscal year earnings. That report also revealed the Switch has sold 17.79 million units, and Nintendo predicts it will sell 20 million more by the end of the fiscal year, which runs through March 2019. The company also took the opportunity to announce the retirement of president Tatsumi Kimishima, who will be replaced by the relatively young 46-year-old Shuntaro Furukawa as of June 28. Furukawa is a decades-long Nintendo veteran currently heading up the global marketing team.

Nintendo Switch

1. Super Mario Odyssey — 10.41 million
2. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — 9.22 million
3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — 8.48 million
4. Splatoon 2 — 6.02 million
5. 1-2 Switch — 2.29 million
6. Arms — 1.85 million
7. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 — 1.31 million
8. Kirby Star Allies — 1.26 million

3DS

1. Mario Kart 7 — 17.04 million
2. Pokemon X/Y — 16.29 million
3. Pokemon Sun/Moon — 16.10 million
4. Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire — 14.06 million
5. New Super Mario Bros. 2 — 12.61 million
6. Super Mario 3D Land — 11.96 million
7. Animal Crossing: New Leaf — 11.69 million
8. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS — 9.24 million
9. Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon — 7.51 million
10. Tomodachi Life — 6.20 million

Coming to PC later this year, this ’80s set stealth-action tactics game put you on the clock to take down a global conspiracy.

by Tony Wilson and Alessandro Fillari on April 26, 2018 at 8:13AM

Phantom Doctrine wants you to get comfortable with getting your hands dirty. In the style of XCOM, this stealth-action tactics game coming from developer CreativeForge Games–the same team behind the occult-western tactical-RPG Hard West–puts you in control of the last line of defense against an evil organization looking to attain world domination. Even though you’re fighting for “the greater good,” the decisions you’ll make will have you question whether the ends justify the means.

Channeling the works of notable fiction of the spy genre, including John le Carré’s Karla series, Atomic Blonde,and–oddly enough, according to the developers–Rocky IV, Phantom Doctrine is set during a period of immense distrust and secrecy. As the commander of the shadowy organization known as The Cabal, you’ll engage in the seedy and dark world of espionage during the tail-end of the Cold War in an alternate 1983. With a sinister threat known as The Conspiracy slowly expanding its reach across the world, your organization will need to counter its growth by launching operations to dismantle their control over criminal syndicates and even world governments. But in doing so, The Cabal will have to make some tough, morally ambiguous choices to wipe out The Conspiracy–possibly putting the world at even greater risk.

There’s a lot of focus placed on the actual investigation of The Conspiracy in Phantom Doctrine. During downtime in your base, you’ll be able to examine clues and interrogate captured assets to gain new data. In order to open the pathway to key operations, The Cabal will need to tackle smaller scale ops, such as sending your operatives on timed missions to other countries or build new tech and data-gathering networks for your operation. When unraveling the complex connections between persons of interest, you’ll engage in an interesting mini-game that emulates a paranoid conspiracy theorist’s crazy wall of connections. In Phantom Doctrine, you’ll need to examine all the data and clues in order to unlock the pathway to new operations and key assets.

In similar fashion to XCOM, you’ll micro-manage the ins and out of your operation, its resources, and expand the scope of The Cabal by recruiting new members to take on bolder missions. With command over The Cabal, you’ll have to accomplish your goals by any means necessary–which includes local and state-level espionage, assassinations, and even disrupting foreign governments. From your secret base, you’ll be able to customize, upgrade, and command your group of operatives made up of soldiers, spies, tacticians, and scientists recruited over the course of the campaign. Eventually, you’ll find special engineers and scientists that can craft rare equipment and even dabble in performance-enhancing drugs for your agents.

While these members can join The Cabal willingly, there may be some cases where you’ll need to forceful methods–such as sending captured targets through a round of brainwashing to bring them into the fold. While you can place them onto your strike team of operatives or keep them in your base, you can also turn them into sleeper agents and send them back to their countries of origin. When the time comes, you can activate these agents with a trigger phrase, allowing you to gain intel and even have an extra hand during field-ops. In such cases, sleeper agents will turn against their group when the need for it comes.

While out in the field, you can command your crew of operatives to tackle the missions in anyway you see fit. Within a turn-based tactical structure, you’ll guide the team’s actions and execute their moves to accomplish several goals throughout the operation. Each choice you make in the field, whether it’s choosing to hack a computer to disable CCTV cameras, send one of your operatives into cover, or take out a guard, matters. While some assignments will recommend a specific approach such as stealth, Phantom Doctrine is pretty loose with how you choose to go about each mission. Before each operation you can outfit your crew accordingly, either going full tactical action, or opting for the quieter approach. In addition to your main strike team, you can also bring in support members such as snipers stationed on nearby roofs, or helicopter gunners for when things get hectic. But above all, it’s important to accomplish your goals quickly and get out of dodge since you’re under the pressure of a limited turn count, otherwise, you lose valuable assets that’d compromise your agency.

Phantom Doctrine brings together a lot of clever ideas and concepts for its take on the tactical RPG. Many of your choices have a lasting impact on the campaign; perma-death and the loss of valuable resources are a looming threat for your agency. This strategy-sim gives off a perpetual vibe that the world is one failed mission away from the brink of chaos. The setting of the mid-1980s also offers a refreshing change of pace for the genre, giving a strong feeling of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that was prevalent during the era. Phantom Doctrine’s approach to the tactics genre within a more realistic and grounded space makes it feel like the stakes are all the more real–which should undoubtedly make for tense and exciting campaign come late 2018 when it releases for PC.

John Wick and last year’s John Wick: Chapter 2 are two of the most-acclaimed action movies of recent years, and expectations are high for the third movie in the series. John Wick: Chapter 3 will star Keanu Reeves as the former hitman once more, and it’s set to hit theaters in May 2019. A first promotional poster and synopsis have now been released.

The poster was revealed at CinemaCon, the annual convention for theater owners in Las Vegas. Unsurprisingly, given the movie is more than a year from release, it’s not very exciting–it is literally just the name of the movie on a black background. Check it out over at Collider.

The synopsis, meanwhile, reveals that John Wick: Chapter 3 will focus on Wick’s attempts to escape from New York with a huge contract on his head and presumably dozens of trained killers out to get him. It reads, “John Wick is on the run for two reasons… he’s being hunted for a global $14 million dollar open contract on his life, and for breaking a central rule: taking a life on Continental Hotel grounds. The victim was a member of the High Table who ordered the open contract. John should have already been executed, except the Continental’s manager, Winston, has given him a one-hour grace period before he’s “Excommunicado”–membership revoked, banned from all services and cut off from other members. John uses the service industry to stay alive as he fights and kills his way out of New York City.”

Last year, director Chad Stahelski spoke about his plans for John Wick: Chapter 3. “We want, not so much to go bigger on the third one, but to show you more of the intricacies of the world,” he said. “I feel like there are all these different subtleties that I skipped over in part 2, that I’d like to go back to [with part 3] and show you the inner workings of different parts of New York.”

In related news, development of the long-rumored John Wick TV spin-off The Continental was confirmed by Starz in January. The channel’s president Chris Albrecht said that the show will “include the thunderous fight sequences and intensely staged shootouts between professional assassins and their targets that fans have come to expect in the John Wick movie franchise as well as introducing some new, darkly compelling characters who inhabit this underground world.” The Continental does not yet have a premiere date.