Month: May 2019

Following its release in New Zealand, Pokemon Go developer Niantic’s newest game, Harry Potter Wizards Unite, is available now in Australia and New Zealand for everyone. It’s just a beta at this stage, so you should expect some bugs and missing features, but it provides a really good look at what to expect from what could become the next big mobile game.

GameSpot explored downtown Sydney, Australia today with Wizards Unite. We joined a House (Gryffindor, of course), built a wand, and fought monsters in the augmented reality game. You can check out around 15 minutes of new gameplay footage in the video embedded above.

There is no word as of yet regarding when Wizards Unite will release in the United States or other parts of the world. It’s typical for big mobile games to have their “soft” launch in Australia and New Zealand as a test of sorts before a wider release around the world.

Wizards Unite is a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions. You can spend money to buy Gold, which can be spent on numerous different time-savers and more. For more on the game’s microtransactions, check out GameSpot’s breakdown here.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was originally scheduled to launch in 2018 before being delayed into this year. You can read more about the title in our hands-on impressions, and Android users can pre-register for it on Google Play. There is no word as of yet regarding when the final game will be available around the world.

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One of the most exciting and ambitious Xbox projects in the works is xCloud, which is Microsoft’s game-streaming service. It’s now reached a major development milestone.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer said on Twitter that the team working on xCloud recently completed the “takehome release” for xCloud. That’s a big deal because it means people at Microsoft are now able to test the service at home in a real environment as opposed to a studio lab.

Spencer added that xCloud remains on track to become available for more people through public trials later in 2019; that’s always been the plan.

According to Microsoft insider Brad Sams, Microsoft may plan to show off xCloud in a home environment during E3 2019 in June. The takehome release suggests that could happen.

xCloud is the working title of the streaming service. Microsoft is promising “console-quality gaming on any device” with xCloud, and we’ve already seen Forza Horizon 4 running on the service.

xCloud will go up against other similar streaming services like Google Stadia. Microsoft’s Mike Nichols recently said that Google lacks compelling content to make the service attractive.

Cloud-based gaming is a fairly new and complex technology; be sure to check out our detailed explainer on everything you need to know about cloud gaming.

Spoilers for Borderlands 2 follow.

Handsome Jack is one of the most acclaimed and beloved villains around, and his debut in Borderlands 2 cemented his place in fans’ minds even before he came back for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

However, Jack dies in Borderlands 2, and while he is seen in Tales from the Borderlands, it’s in hologram form. Now, Borderlands 3 developer Gearbox says Handsome Jack will return in the upcoming threequel, in some capacity.

“Handsome Jack is dead,” confirmed the studio’s narrative managing producer, Randy Varnell, in an interview with GameSpot. “He’s such a big character in our universe though. There’s always going to be some stuff–there may be a side mission or something and then we mention him a few times. It’s so hard to get away from that impact. But you’re not ever going to see Handsome Jack come back as a character.

“But it was a hard decision. Because he’s such a great villain. But when we were looking at coming up with new villains for Borderlands 3… we’ve got a lot of Jack–if you like Handsome Jack, you’re in luck because there’s a lot of existing content where you can play and enjoy him. He’s too important to the universe to never mention him again. But we wanted to be sure that the Calypso twins, the new villains, can stand on their own.”

The upcoming shooter includes plenty of new characters, so take a look at everything we know about Borderlands 3’s four new vault hunters. The game is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13.

If you’d like to see Borderlands 3 in action, you can watch the gameplay reveal stream here. We’ve also put together a preview on what it’s like to play the game solo (spoilers: it’s surprisingly good.)

It’s been over four years since Gearbox Software last released a Borderlands title and, in that time, the first-person shooter genre has changed in many ways. Similarly, what players expect from a shooter has evolved. For Borderlands 3, Gearbox Software seems to have kept the changing times in mind, as it has showcased a number of gameplay mechanics that draw inspiration from the likes of Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends, among other shooters.

During its gameplay reveal stream, Gearbox revealed that one of the notable gameplay additions made for Borderlands 3 is the ability to slide while sprinting and also climb up ledges so that elevated surfaces become reachable. Numerous games have used similar mechanics, but it’s perhaps most closely linked to Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends.

Based on our experiences with Borderlands 3, we noticed that these traversal abilities look and behave a lot like they do in Titanfall 2. However, since you don’t get the little extra jump jet boosts, they are perhaps more comparable to Apex Legends, Respawn’s battle royale title.

The need to make Borderlands 3 feel like a modern shooter was something that Gearbox paid special consideration to, and director Paul Sage cites Titanfall 2 as one of the game’s inspirations.

“We’ve got to hit that mark of making this feel this good, making it feel like a modern shooter,” Sage told GameSpot. And so even though it seems really simple when you’re talking about, ‘Hey, how fast can I move my controller?’ Or, ‘How much … will it actually just kind of slow down when I’m moving across a target?’ All of those things take time to really tune and get right to make it feel like a modern shooter. So there are definitely things that I would say are inspiration from like all shooters.

“One of my favorite games from, what was it three years ago, is Titanfall 2. Dude, I love that game. And I thought the shooting was just fantastic. And so, yeah, I think there’s inspiration we take from all the games we’re fans of, because we’re all gamers and I think that’s true of the entire industry. I hope it is.”

Borderlands 3’s release date has been confirmed as September 13, 2019. It will be available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. On the PC, it will be distributed through the Epic Games Store and remain exclusive to Epic’s storefront until April 2020. This decision proved to be quite controversial with fans and, in response, many began review bombing previous Borderlands games on Steam.

For more on the game, read our Borderlands 3 hands-on gameplay preview, which explores what the sequel is like to play solo.

Somewhere between the sassy robots and trillions of guns, Borderlands has built a respectably complex world. A big part of that are the Sirens, super-powered women given mysterious tattoos and powers. Gearbox’s narrative managing producer Randy Varnell promises they’ll play a major role in Borderlands 3 as well.

“The Sirens are a very, very important theme of this game,” Varnell told GameSpot. “You’ve got Lilith, you’ve seen Maya returning, and we know Amara, the brand new playable Siren, is there. The villain of Borderlands [Commandant Steele] is dead. She’s dead dead. She’s gone. Angel is dead dead. She’s gone. There’s three more [Sirens] unaccounted for.”

In Borderlands lore, only six Sirens can exist in the universe at any given time. Between Lilith, Maya, and Amara–all playable characters in the main games–we know about three of them. Steele and Angel took two of the additional spots, but Varnell’s comments suggest that when one Siren dies, another appears somewhere in the universe. That would mean there are two more relatively new Sirens, and one remaining that may have been a Siren for quite a while now.

“I would just say for all the fans out there: we are absolutely sticking to that canonical lore,” Varnell continued. “There are only six Sirens in the universe at any one time. And in this game, we’ll delve a little bit more into how all that happens and what’s going on, and we’ll ask some interesting questions. I don’t want to spoil anything because there’s so much fun to be had there.”

Borderlands 3 releases on September 13 for PC via the Epic Store, PS4, and Xbox One. If you’re still on the fence about who you might want to claim as your class, read up on all we know about the four playable characters. Check out our pre-order guide for more details.

Gearbox showed off Borderlands 3 gameplay during a stream, which you can watch here. One of the things showcased was the unique skill trees, something that we found really helps improve the solo experience. Read more about that in our Borderlands 3 gameplay hands-on preview.

Borderlands 3 might be bringing back Handsome Jack in some way, but he’s not the game’s main villain. That title belongs to a duo named the Calypso twins, who developer Gearbox says are based on “really, really annoying” streamers.

In an interview with GameSpot, the studio’s narrative managing producer, Randy Varnell, explained more about the evil pair: “We all know those streamers who are really, really annoying and think very, very highly of themselves–and we just took that to the next level. Imagine if they became malicious, evil people who suddenly wanted to take all the bandits and turned them into their own personality–[what if] they militarized their following?

“We stylized [the Calypso Twins] like Handsome Jack. At the time Handsome Jack came out, memes were just starting to get popular and Handsome Jack [embodied] that. Now, looking at the culture–how we play and consume and enjoy games together with social media and streaming–we wanted villains and topics that were a little bit more relevant to this release. So [the twins] definitely delve into that.”

The upcoming shooter includes plenty of new characters, so take a look at everything we know about Borderlands 3’s four new vault hunters. The game is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13. You can also check out Borderlands 3’s first trailer and everything else we know.

For more on Borderlands 3, check out the gameplay stream and read our hands-on preview.