Month: August 2019

PAX West kicks off this Friday, and with it, developers CD Projekt Red have confirmed that new Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay will debut on the same day.

Cyberpunk 2077’s gameplay livestream is set to air on August 30. You can catch the livestream here, or on Cyberpunk 2077’s official Mixer and Twitch channels.

Cyberpunk 2077 Stream Start Time

• 11 AM PT
• 1 PM CST
• 2 PM ET
• 7 PM BST

GPU manufacturer Nvidia recently dropped a teaser video on Twitter, showcasing the scope of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City. CD Projekt Red gave a private look at some Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay at E3 2019, which was supposed to be made public during PAX West but will now be streamed from Warsaw at an unspecified time. There are no specifics on what will be shown during the livestream, but the developers did confirm that the stream will feature a 15-minute edit of the demo shown privately at Gamescom and interviews “from the studio for additional information.”

In other Cyberpunk 2077 news, the upcoming action-RPG has dropped binary male/female options in favor of inclusivity. “You know, we really want to make a video game that’s really inclusive,” senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers told Metro. “Of course, if you tackle certain subjects then you will expect people to have an opinion about it and we respect that. And it’s good that people give us feedback.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 16, 2020. The game is also scheduled to release for Google Stadia in 2020.

Pokemon Masters is a broad collection of famous trainers from throughout the Pokemon series–representing both the games and anime. Much of the collection aspect is a traditional mobile gacha-style game, where you trade in-game currency for a randomized spin that will earn you a Sync Pair–one Trainer and their partner Pokemon. But if you have your eye on one Sync Pair in particular, that’s where Scout Points come in.

Scout Points are earned by Scouting, otherwise known as purchasing new Sync Pairs. If you obtain the maximum number of Scout Points within a given time period, you get to choose any Sync Pair that is currently available through Scouting. It’s the sure bet to get the 5-Star team you’ve had your eye on.

However, it doesn’t come cheap or easily. The Scout Point Max, which you have to reach to get your pick of the litter, is set at 400 Points. You earn 3 Scout Points for each standard Sync Pair Scout you use (300 Paid or Unpaid Gems apiece), and 1 Scout Point for each Daily Discount you buy (100 Paid Gems). To earn 400 Points, you would need to purchase 134 standard scouts, or almost that many with a few Daily scouts mixed in.

Also be aware, the launch period offers a special bundle, exclusive to Paid Gems, with a guaranteed 5-Star Sync Pair in the bunch. This bundle does not grant any Scout Points.

134 standard scouts at 300 Gems apiece would cost you slightly more than 40,000 Gems, the in-game currency. Even the highest level of in-app purchases is 9,800 Gems for $80. Suffice to say, you would have to spend quite a bit of real-world money to earn enough Scout Points all at once.

To add another layer of complexity, Scout Points reset at the end of each Sync Pair Scout Event. The launch event ends on September 3, roughly a week after launch. Future event resets may last longer.

Earning so many Gems in a single week seems unrealistic, and buying your way in is prohibitively expensive. But while Scout Points expire, Gems don’t. If you really want one Sync Pair in particular, you may need to exercise a good deal of patience and gather Gems over the course of several weeks–and then blow them all at once to earn your Scout Points.

In the meantime, if you’d like to focus your energy on the team you already have, read up on how Evolutions and Mega Evolutions work in Pokemon Masters.

NBA 2K20 is a game about playing basketball, but there’s also a surprising number of activities in the game that have nothing to do with throwing a ball through a hoop. 2K Sports already revealed all of the new activities in 2K20’s The Neighbourhood social space, and now a new trailer is showing off all the ways its loot boxes and gambling mechanics work with what resembles an actual casino.

The trailer, which almost feels like a parody, revolves around the card collecting MyTeam mode. By opening card packs you’ll hopefully get rarer and more highly rated players that can even evolve like Pokemon in this year’s game. By racking up wins in the reimagined Triple Threat mode, you can earn in-game currency, more card packs, and a chance to “spin to win!” for various jackpot prizes.

There are also ball drops where you get to watch a pinball fall through a series of pegs, hoping it lands on one of the color-coded platforms on the way down to presumably win some kind of player card. There’s also a literal roulette wheel and a slot machine, just in case the gambling mechanics weren’t already obvious enough. Each of these activities has appeared in the series before in some form or another, but dedicating an entire trailer to cheap games of luck is particularly tone-deaf.

The series has caught plenty of flack in the past for the number of microtransactions featured in both MyTeam and MyCareer. “Microtransactions are everywhere, and trying to advance without them feels nearly impossible,” our review for NBA 2K18 said. The in-game Virtual Currency flowed a little more freely in NBA 2K19, but microtransactions still loomed over everything. 2K even added seemingly unskippable pre-game ads in another move that rubbed some fans the wrong way.

Rather than temper controversy, NBA 2K20 seems to be embracing the contentious business model, which isn’t too surprising considering its microtransactions have proved to be incredibly popular. Whether wheel spins and slot machines constitute gambling or not when no actual money is involved is up for debate. But the result of these randomized games is sure to influence the lure of any available microtransactions if things don’t go your way. Not to mention the game is rated E for Everyone with only one slight mention of in-game purchases. Either way, marketing a game in such a way is more than a little disconcerting.

NBA 2K20 launches on September 6 for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. Check out our NBA 2K20 pre-order guide for all the info on pre-order bonuses and what’s included in the Digital Deluxe and Legend editions. You can also download a free demo for NBA 2K20 right now.

Update: Some tiny new images of Project Resistance have been grabbed using a YouTube video thumbnail grabber website. The last of the four images certainly seems to hint at a four-player cooperative game in the vein of Resident Evil Outbreak.

Original story continues

Capcom is unveiling a new Resident Evil project just prior to the Tokyo Game Show on September 9. Tentatively titled Project Resistance, little is known about the upcoming game but we do know that it’s coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. A teaser trailer should shed more light on what to expect from Capcom’s latest.

Following the teaser trailer’s reveal on September 9, Project Resistance will have a booth at TGS where attendees can watch members of the development team show off gameplay for the first time. There’s no indication on whether this footage will appear outside of the show floor, but residents of Japan will be able to get their hands on the game by advance registration.

The Resident Evil Outbreak website has been updated with a blank white screen that just says “OK” in the top left corner. This may prove significant, as the same thing happened to the Resident Evil 2 website prior to the remake’s release. Or it could mean nothing and this is just upkeep to maintain the web domain. Time will tell. A new four-player cooperative Resident Evil game would certainly be interesting, though.

All will be revealed on September 9 at 8:00 am PST // 11:00 am ET // 4:00 pm GMT.

Sega has officially unveiled the next chapter in the Yakuza series, which takes combat in a different direction to its predecessors.

Its full Japanese title is Ryu ga Gotoku 7, which roughly translates to Yakuza 7: Whereabouts of Light and Darkness – though its name in the West will likely be slightly different. Yakuza 7 is headlined by an all-new main character, Ichiban Kasuga, but the biggest shake up is its approach to how fighting plays out. The brawling action of past games is being swapped out for turn-based combat.

Gematsu has translated the Japanese press release which describes how the game uses a “”live command RPG battle” system that combines the series’ signature action with an RPG-style command system. It has evolved into a system in which anyone can easily enjoy exhilarating battles. In this completely new battle system, Ichiban Kasuga and his party will fight by selecting techniques with various effects such as attack, recovery, support, and more.”

Continue reading…

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Amid all the controversy surrounding the Epic Games Store that came to a head earlier this month, the digital game store has quietly continued to offer free weekly games for its users. Over the past few weeks and months, players have been able to claim critically acclaimed titles like Alan Wake, Hyper Light Drifter, Overcooked, and The Witness, and the best part is that they’re all yours to keep forever, no subscription required. This week’s offering of deals is no exception: For the next seven days, you can claim Celeste and Inside, two platformers with drastically different aesthetics but equally memorable stories. All you need is a free Epic account to snag the two titles.

First up is Celeste, a gorgeous platformer about climbing a mountain and conquering one’s inner demons. You control a young woman named Madeline, who has traveled alone to Celeste Mountain in the middle of winter, determined to reach its summit. As she climbs the mountain, she encounters a colorful cast of side characters who help (or hinder) her journey, including a fellow climber with whom she develops a close friendship. Celeste is an extremely difficult platformer, but also a forgiving one–there are settings you can adjust at any time to decrease the difficulty, even if it’s just to get past one particularly frustrating obstacle. Easily one of the best games of 2018, Celeste is a true gem worth experiencing.

A few weeks ago, Epic released Playdead’s Limbo as a weekly freebie, and now you can play the studio’s follow-up puzzle-platformer, Inside. Similar to Limbo, Inside features a dark, monochromatic environment full of dangerous traps and monsters. The protagonist is an unnamed boy, who must navigate this hazardous environment without dying (spoiler: you’ll die a lot) and eventually stumbles upon a bizarre scientific experiment. In addition to normal platforming elements, Inside also introduces a mechanic that lets the boy control bodies to help him solve puzzles. Just as in Limbo, there’s no dialogue and the ending is a bit open-ended, but it’s one you won’t soon forget.

Both Celeste and Inside will be free to claim until September 5, when they’ll be replaced by the next round of freebies, The End Is Nigh and Abzu.

Claim this week’s free games at Epic

Blizzard Entertainment is suing a number of companies and individuals involved in the making of the free-to-play PC and mobile game, Glorious Saga. The Overwatch developer alleges that the game is a “massive infringement” of its Warcraft intellectual property, stating that “they created a game whose content is almost entirely copied from the Warcraft games and related products.”

Polygon reports that Blizzard is seeking a court order to stop the infringement and maximum damages for the “serious and irreparable harm to Blizzard and its business.

“Defendants did not just copy a few discrete elements from Blizzard’s Warcraft games,” the company claims in the suit. “Every character in the Infringing Game was copied from a character from the Warcraft games, and many even bear the names of popular characters from the Warcraft games such as Jaina Proudmoore, Gul’dan, and Malfurion.” Blizzard is seeking “$150,000 per infringed work.” The image below is taken from the lawsuit, showing side-by-side comparisons between the offending character designs.

“Every monster, creature, animal and vehicle in the Infringing Game was copied from the Warcraft Games. Weapons, amulets, and other objects were taken straight from the Warcraft games, without pretense. Audio cues and sound effects from the Warcraft games were reproduced for the Infringing Game.”

The suit claims that the defendants have “profited handsomely” from Glorious Saga and its alleged copyright infringement. Even the game’s mobile icon recreates the cover for World of Warcraft’s Battle of Azeroth expansion, depicting a human and orc locking eyes while snarling at each other. Blizzard alleges that the use of Warcraft material was “willful and intentional.”

Five companies and two individuals are named in the suit, including Glorious Saga developer InstantFuns, and Sina Games–a subsidiary of Chinese software and tech company Sina Corp. Blizzard alleges that this isn’t an isolated incident for the developer either, as it claims the company also advertises various unlicensed mobile games using the names and characters of well-known IP, such as Yu-Gi Oh!, Naruto, and Pokemon. Glorious Saga is just “among the latest” to have done so.

Blizzard believes many of the defendants are simply shell companies created “as part of an overarching scheme to deceive Blizzard or members of the public,” with the two individuals responsible for running them also named in the suit. Each of the defendants is based outside of the United States, but Blizzard has chosen to file the suit in the Central California US District Court as each company conducted its business through US- and California-based companies, using Google Play and Facebook to distribute and market Glorious Saga to US customers.

Hideo Kojima’s not the only one handing out cameos in his games lately. The enigmatic game director is a guest voice actor in Control, the latest action game from the surreal minds at Remedy Entertainment.

Back in March, Kojima’s publicist tweeted out that the Metal Gear Solid creator was doing “some voice recording for the other Sam.” Now we know this was referencing Sam Lake, Control’s lead writer and the former face of Max Payne, as opposed to the lead character in Kojima’s upcoming Death Stranding. Not only that, but Akima Saito, Kojima Productions’ Head of Marketing, also makes a cameo alongside his colleague, providing the English translation for Kojima’s Japanese lines.

Multiplayer First discovered the very missable easter egg, noting that Kojima and Saito both appear in Control’s end credits.

The side mission in question sees Kojima play the role of Dr. Yoshimi Tokui. As protagonist Jesse Faden climbs inside what looks like a sensory deprivation pod, Kojima narrates a peculiar meditative experience involving the flavor of a bag of potato chips, conversations with trees, and an army of hostile forklifts. You can see for yourself in the video below–just beware this will obviously spoil the side mission if you haven’t played it yet.

It’s a suitably surreal cameo considering the game it occurs in and Kojima’s own penchant for the bizarre.

You can read GameSpot’s review of Control right now, check out how long it takes to beat, and even grab a copy for $10 off on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.