Month: November 2019

Need for Speed Heat officially launches on November 8, but the racing game is playable right now for subscribers to EA Access and Origin Access on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

This is the full version of Need for Speed Heat, though there is a timer that limits gameplay to 10 hours. As with EA’s other “Play First” trials, all gameplay progress carries forward to the full game should you decide to pick it up. Additionally, EA/Origin Access subscribers save 10 percent on all EA digital content, so that knocks the price down from $60 USD to $54 USD.

EA Access costs $5/month or $30/year, and you can cancel any time.

Need for Speed Heat is an open-world racing game set in a fictional version of Miami called Palm City. There are more than 100 cars in the game, but no loot boxes.

GameSpot recently got some hands-on time with Need for Speed Heat, and our own Will Potter came away eager to play more. For more on his thoughts, check out GameSpot’s recent preview, “Why You Should Be Excited To Play Need For Speed: Heat.”

Once you get off the tutorial track, there are some activities you should consider doing first in RDR2 to get an early advantage.

Fortnite‘s second chapter has introduced many changes, including a new map, new challenges, and a new fishing mechanic that lets you catch and eat fish that will boost your stats. And now, in the latest update, there’s a new multi-purpose weapon that’s equally good for catching fish and killing other players.

As Polygon has noted, a new harpoon weapon has been added to Fortnite as of the latest patch, and players have had access to it since Tuesday morning. The harpoon can be used to grab fish or loot from a distance, and while you need to wait for the fish to snag your line with the rod, you can fire the harpoon off and snag sealife right away. This will make it easier to nab those healing Slurpfish.

You can also use the harpoon to shoot other players, and it’s quite an effective weapon. If you shoot a harpoon into an enemy it’ll do 75 damage, and it also pulls them towards you–make sure they don’t have a shotgun equipped, or that your squad mates are ready to fire their own. Players will no doubt learn which combat scenarios the harpoon is and isn’t good in as they test it out in live matches.

Epic does not publish patch notes for Fortnite, so the new harpoon has been a surprise for players. In fact, Fortnite has been full of surprises since its launch–even Fortnite Chapter 2 was kept under wraps before it launched.

While you’re exploring the bodies of water throughout the map in Fortnite, be sure to look out for all the motorboat locations as well.

Just like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, the Lord of the Rings MMO continues to receive new expansions many years after release. The newest expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online is called Minas Morgul, and as its name suggests, it takes players to the dark and scary Dead City.

Intriguingly, the expansion’s narrative focuses on discovering untold “secrets and visions of the Second Age.” That’s curious because the Second Age is also when Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV takes place, though the game and the show do not appear to be connected (more on that later).

“Players will infiltrate the city and visit other places of lingering evil in the region, such as the Houses of Lamentation,” reads a line from the press release. “With the defeat of Sauron and destruction of the One Ring, the remnants of Mordor’s armies struggle in the power vacuum, and it will be up to players to help ensure that the last traces of evil are routed from Middle-earth.”

When players visit the “Mordor Besieged” location, they can use Isildur’s shade to “participate in the visions of the Second Age.” In these visions, players will take on the role of a hero in a similar class to their own as they experience the events of the Second Age.

The new Minas Morgul expansion also raises LOTRO’s level cap to 130 and adds seven new instances. A new 12-person raid featuring Shelob the spider as the enemy is also included, as are 250 new quests. The Stout-axe Dwarf is being added as a new playable race.

The Minas Morgul expansion costs $40 USD for the standard version. The Collector’s Edition costs $80 while the Ultimate Fan Bundle runs you $130. Go to the LOTRO website to learn more about the various bundles.

LOTRO is developed by the Boston-based Standing Stone Games, which took over development on the game from WB Games Boston (formerly known as Turbine Inc.).

Amazon’s own game development studio is developing a free-to-play Lord of the Rings game that is based on the Lord of the Rings books. The game is separate from the Amazon show, despite Amazon working on both the game and the TV program. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO will have on LOTRO.

Minas Morgul is the seventh expansion for LOTRO. It follows Mines of Moria (2008), Siege of Mirkwood (2009), Rise of Isengard (2011), Riders of Rohan (2012), Helm’s Deep (2013), and Mordor (2017).

In addition to this new MMO, Daedelic Entertainment is making a Lord of the Rings game that focuses on Gollum.

Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Arrow: Season 8, Episode 4! If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 8, Episode 3.

In addition to being a Crisis on Infinite Earths prelude, Arrow’s final season is both a greatest hits album and a way of tying up all the remaining loose ends from Season 7’s finale. The season premiere balanced all three needs surprisingly well, thrusting Ollie into an unfamiliar world and providing him with a taste of the cosmic disaster to come. Unfortunately, none of the subsequent episodes have managed to live up to that standard. “Present Tense” comes the closest so far, but it still squanders a golden opportunity to dust off one of the Arrowverse’s greatest villains.

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Warning: this review contains full spoilers for The Flash: Season 6, Episode 5! If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 6, Episode 4.

The Flash would definitely have viewers believe Barry Allen won’t make it out of Crisis on Infinite Earths alive. That outcome seems unlikely, especially without a potential replacement speedster waiting in the wings, but stranger things have happened in the Arrowverse. And whether or not Barry is doomed to die in two months, “Kiss Kiss Breach Breach” serves as a test case. Can The Flash function without its lead hero? As it turns out, the answer is “potentially.”

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare got off to a great start with record-breaking sales and generally positive review scores. However, some players have remarked that the weapon balance isn’t exactly where it should be. Specifically, players are reporting that the M4 rifle and 725 shotgun are currently too powerful, and are negatively affecting the experience.

Modern Warfare’s multiplayer co-director, Joe Cecot, wrote on Twitter to confirm that “weapon tuning” changes are coming to the game in a future update. He did not say which weapons specifically will be addressed, but given the volume of feedback regarding the M4 and 725, it seems likely those weapons will be nerfed or changed in some capacity.

Some players have discovered that the 725, when augmented with special equipment, can actually act as a sniper rifle. Cecot replied to a video documenting this with the eyes emoji, which suggests the 725 may get nerfed in the new update to come.

There is no word yet on when the weapon tuning update will be released, but keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

Modern Warfare launched on October 25, and it needed just three days to bring in more than $600 million in sales. Its sales over its first three days were better than every other Call of Duty released during this generation of consoles.

Looking forward, developer Infinity Ward has plans to support Modern Warfare for a long time to come, beginning with a Battle Pass system that will add new cosmetic rewards on a regular schedule. The Battle Pass isn’t available yet but Activision says it will be live later in 2019.