Month: December 2019

As usual, Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2019 brought on a whirlwind of deals this past weekend, with numerous appealing console bundles, accessory deals, game discounts, gaming membership markdowns, and much more. As usual, some of the most popular deals, like a PS4 Slim holiday bundle with console-exclusive games, quickly sold out, but fortunately for budget-savvy gamers who may have had other plans this weekend, there’s still a chance to cash in on some of Cyber Monday’s best gaming deals this week. Over time, the shopping bonanza has expanded, converting the week after Thanksgiving to Cyber Week.

Quite a few good console bundles are still available. Notably, a great Nintendo Switch bundle just went live at Walmart, featuring the newer model Switch with Mario Red Joy-Cons, $20 Eshop credit, and a carrying case for $299. You can also find a PS4 Pro with Marvel’s Spider-Man GOTY Edition for $300 and the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition for $149.

To help you snag some of the best Cyber Week deals and hopefully cross some more names off your holiday shopping list, we’ve rounded up all the best gaming deals at participating stores like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, GameStop, and more. Overall, the best Cyber Week deals we’ve seen are at Amazon, Walmart, and Ebay–the pickings are slim elsewhere.

Cyber Week gaming deals to grab now

Best Cyber Week game deals

Best Cyber Week console deals

Best Cyber Week accessory deals

Arcade machine deals

Super Mario Maker 2’s second post-launch update arrives this week, and it’s a big one. With the Ver 2.0 update, Nintendo is introducing a slew of new tools to the level creation game. On top of new enemies, the company is adding a handful of new course parts for you to tinker with, such as frozen coins that can be thawed out by fire and a dash pad–exclusive to the Super Mario 3D World game style–that propels Mario forward at great speeds.

The biggest addition to the game, however, is the ability to play as Link, the elfin hero from the Legend of Zelda series. Mario can transform into the Hylian adventurer after grabbing the Master Sword, a new power-up that can be used exclusively in the original Super Mario Bros. game style. Mario’s appearance isn’t all that changes when he picks up a Master Sword; he also gains access to Link’s repertoire of skills, such as the ability to Pegasus dash through enemies and deflect projectiles with his shield.

The most exciting aspect about the Master Sword power-up, however, is that it opens up a whole new range of gameplay possibilities. In the video above, we test out the new tools coming in Mario Maker 2’s Ver 2.0 update and share our thoughts on what they add to the game.Super Mario Maker 2 is available exclusively for Nintendo Switch. We gave the title an 8/10 in our Super Mario Maker 2 review and called it “a robust level creation tool and a fantastic open-ended platformer.” If you’re a novice course maker or need some inspiration, be sure to check out our tips on how to make a good level. You can also try your hand at some of the GameSpot staff’s best courses.

As 2019 comes to a close, GameSpot is looking back on the year that was. As usual, that includes coming up with a game of the year, but before that, we’re looking at what Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and the PC industry have done in 2019. First up is Microsoft.

In the video above, Jake Dekker, Peter Brown, and Jordan Ramée talk about Microsoft and the Xbox One family of consoles. The crux of the conversation focuses on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s console and PC service that allows subscribers to download a library of titles for a fraction of their total retail price. Game Pass is the best feature the Xbox One has going for it in the ongoing console war–the PS4 and Switch have nothing like it–and, this year, the subscription service let you download several stellar titles the day they launched, such as Gears 5 and The Outer Worlds, and promoted smaller indie games like Outer Wilds and Afterparty.

The trio are also intrigued by what Microsoft did with Project xCloud in 2019 and excited to see that all those studio acquisitions in 2018 are leading to a wide variety of first-party titles for Xbox One in 2020. Microsoft’s continued support of accessibility in games is nice to see too, and Xbox One now has one of the nicest controllers out there with the Elite Series 2. Overall it was a good year for Microsoft–the best it’s had in a very long time–and it left the group feeling optimistic about what is planned for Xbox One and Project Scarlett in 2020.

For more of GameSpot’s end-of-the-year content, check out our report card for Sony / PlayStation 4. We have two more report cards scheduled too: PC and Nintendo / Switch.

Nihon Falcom’s JRPG The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 3 will release on the Nintendo Switch sometime in Spring 2020. As the third entry in the sub-series, this marks the first time fans will be able to bring the game on-the-go. Set sometime after Trails of Cold Steel 2, you’ll continue the story of Rean Schwarzer and his fellow cadets as they take on more dangerous enemies while forming bonds with new allies.

In this exclusive gameplay video showcasing an early look at the Switch release, we dive into one of the game’s dungeons, battling monsters and learning more about our fellow party members. Running at 720p–in both docked and undocked modes–and at 30 frames-per-second, the game keeps things mostly consistent with the original PS4 release. The Switch edition of the game will also feature all DLC items release packed in, so players will get the complete experience with this version of the game.

For more on Trails of Cold Steel 3, check out our write-up on the Switch edition of the game and our full interview with the president of Nihon Falcom regarding the challenging localization process.

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In 2018, Microsoft made some big moves, such as acquiring seven different studios and launching an initiative to release all first-party titles on Xbox Game Pass. It painted a hopeful future for Xbox, one that seemed to promise the final years of the current console generation would be greater than a whimper for the Xbox One.

As 2019 comes to a close, Microsoft has largely met those expectations. There have been rough patches, of course–the year hasn’t been perfect for Xbox. But Microsoft continues to corner both subscription-based game services and backwards compatibility with Xbox One and has begun to deliver on the promise of more first-party titles. It all inspires a cautious optimism going into 2020, as Microsoft prepares to release its next-generation console–codenamed Project Scarlett.

So as we say goodbye to 2019, let’s look back at the type of year Microsoft and Xbox One had.

Game Pass Boosted Smaller Developers

When it comes to creating a subscription service for games, Microsoft is leaps and bounds ahead of both Sony and Nintendo with Game Pass. It certainly helps that Game Pass continues to deliver popular titles that arrive the same day they are released. The Outer Worlds is the most noteworthy of the lot, but Gears 5 and several others are solid additions as well. That said, the larger success in 2019 is in how Microsoft used Game Pass’s more noteworthy games to advertise the smaller ones.

Game Pass’s monthly fee essentially pays it forward–in terms of publicity–when it comes to indie games, marketing them by prominently featuring them on the service when they’re first added. Players may buy-in for the triple-A titles, but it allows them to download and try indie games for “free” so to speak as well.

This incidental marketing for indie games is the closest the Xbox One has come to featuring something akin to the Arcade section in the Xbox 360’s online store–a feature that helped catapult certain indie games to the popularity they have today. As more online stores (ranging from Xbox Live and PSN to the Nintendo Eshop and Steam) continue to clutter with a rapidly growing market of indie games, a more limited library of rotating titles is an excellent way of promoting select creators and ensuring specific indie games aren’t completely buried by major releases.

Additionally, in June 2019, Microsoft released Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a service that packaged together Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Live Gold into one, discounted subscription. It’s a wonderful bang for your buck if you play on both Xbox One and PC. And it’s only going to get better, as, during X019, Microsoft announced Project xCloud would be rolled into Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in 2020–allowing subscribers to try out Microsoft’s take on cloud gaming “for free.”

Recent Studio Acquisitions Are Paying Off

Microsoft acquired several studios in 2018 and acquired another, Double Fine, this year. As stated in GameSpot’s 2018 Microsoft report card, we didn’t expect first-party games to come from those studios in 2019. We did hope we’d at least get announcements–a guarantee, so to speak, that the future of Xbox would contain more first-party games than Microsoft has delivered in the past few years. And in this regard, Microsoft met expectations.

Microsoft is going into 2020 with 12 first-party titles scheduled: Battletoads, Bleeding Edge, Everwild, Flight Simulator, Gears Tactics, Grounded, Halo Infinite, Minecraft Dungeons, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Psychonauts 2, Tell Me Why, and Wasteland 3. At the very least, it’s a varied list, and that’s nearly as many first-party titles as Microsoft released between 2017 and 2019 (14 games within those three years).

It’s encouraging to see that Microsoft isn’t wasting the potential of its recent acquisitions–even more so that it’s allowing those studios to create games outside their relative comfort zone. Whether most of those investments pay off in 2020 remains to be seen, but this is the best Xbox’s future has looked in years.

First-Party Lineup Still Lacks Single-Player Experiences

That said, even though we expected it, Microsoft still struggled on the first-party front for Xbox One in 2019. Granted, 2019 saw a sequel to the Gears of War franchise, Gears 5, which transformed the linear, cover-based shooter and gave it a more open-world-like twist. It’s a good game; Phil Hornshaw wrote as much in GameSpot’s Gears 5 review. But the only other first-party game Xbox One got this year is Crackdown 3–described as mediocre by Chris Pereira in GameSpot’s Crackdown 3 review. So it’s disappointing that Gears 5 is the only positively received first-party game Microsoft released on Xbox One this year.

And although several first-party games were announced in 2019, Microsoft hasn’t done much this year to waylay any concerns players might have when it comes to delivering single-player first-party titles. As impressive as it is that Microsoft’s studios continued to support their games-as-a-service titles in 2019, like We Happy Few and Sea of Thieves, it’s disappointing to go another year without concrete evidence that a Microsoft first-party studio is creating a more story-driven, experimentative single-player game.

Instead, we heard more about 343 Industries’ Halo Infinite, Mojang’s Minecraft Dungeons, Ninja Theory’s Bleeding Edge, Obsidian Entertainment’s Grounded, and inXile Entertainment’s Wasteland 3–several of which look good, but most of which are multiplayer-focused or encourage co-op play. Wasteland 3 is really the only exception, featuring co-op play but designed first and foremost as a single-player RPG.

Moon Studios’ Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Dontnod Entertainment’s Tell Me Why are, currently, the only Microsoft first-party games scheduled for 2020 that are entirely single-player. Rare’s Everwild could be as well, though its announcement trailer seems to suggest otherwise. None of Microsoft’s planned first-party titles offer something similar in scope to the cancelled Scalebound or match the creativity in the design seen in PS4’s Death Stranding or Switch’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Current Hardware Is Pulling Too Far Away From The Old

With Xbox One X, Microsoft still possesses the most powerful console. As impressive as the Xbox One X continues to be, however, the original Xbox One console has begun to struggle in 2019.

Though the original Xbox One can still run most games just fine–admittedly at a much lower pixel count and frame rate than the Xbox One X–Microsoft’s first Xbox One hasn’t been able to keep up with its younger siblings when it comes to certain titles. For example, if you’re playing Control on the original Xbox One, the gameplay will usually stutter when there’s a hectic fight with a massive amount of moving debris being thrown around. The original Xbox One also sees delays when going through menus in Borderlands 3 while playing co-op. The already long load times in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order are also significantly slower on the original Xbox One in comparison to Xbox One S and Xbox One X.

To put it bluntly, if you bought an original Xbox One and can’t afford to upgrade, then you’re in for a less ideal experience when it comes to certain games that released in 2019. It’s likely a problem that’s only going to be exasperated with newer, bigger games in 2020 as well. This isn’t likely a problem Microsoft plans on addressing, as it would need to expense on QA’ing and specing individual games to ensure each one is optimized for multiple hardware revisions. Microsoft isn’t alone in this either–Sony is facing a similar issue in the differences in performance between the original PS4 / PS4 Slim and the PS4 Pro.

New Tech, More Ways To Play

In May 2019, the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition released at a retail price of $250 USD / £200 / AU $350. Possessing a 1TB hard drive, it included all the features of a normal Xbox One S, minus the disc drive. The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is the first of its kind: a home console that’s completely reliant on downloaded games. For those who exclusively play this way, it presents an ideal way to save a little bit of money–a notion reinforced by Microsoft’s decision to base the new console on the cheaper Xbox One S as opposed to its much stronger but pricier counterpart, the Xbox One X.

Releasing in November 2019, the new Xbox Elite Series 2 controller may be Microsoft’s best controller to date. Sporting the same overall design as most Xbox One controllers, the Elite Series 2 is, like its predecessor, designed to appeal to players looking to up their game in competitive multiplayer–featuring numerous methods of customization. Like other Xbox One controllers, the Elite Series 2 will be compatible with Project Scarlett as well–removing the risk of buying a new controller a year before the release of a new console.

Other Matters, In Brief

• Microsoft revealed the first concrete details about its next-gen console, codenamed Project Scarlett, this year. It’s still far too early to make any definitive comparisons between it and PlayStation 5, but–so far anyway–Project Scarlett seems like it will have similar specs to Sony’s next-gen console. If true, then the battle between the two systems will mostly come down to brand loyalty, first-party exclusives, and services offered (such as Game Pass).
• Xbox One is still the only current-gen console to offer backwards compatibility. In 2019, Microsoft continued to add numerous games to its list of supported backwards compatible titles, though the latter end of the year saw the initiative slow and eventually cease.
• In October 2019, Microsoft released 23 chapters of accessibility guidelines that it wants all developers to consider when creating games scheduled to release on an Xbox platform. The Xbox Accessibility Guidelines are suggestions, but they’re all good ones–ranging from options to change the size of the in-game text to the implementation of difficulty adjustments that go beyond the traditional formula of an easy, normal, and hard mode.
• Also in October 2019, Microsoft launched the Project xCloud beta. Several companies have begun investing in cloud gaming–including Google, which released Stadia to mixed reviews. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft learns from these other services and how the company plans to implement Project xCloud into Project Scarlett.

Verdict

2019 has been the best year for the Xbox One in a very long time. Both the Gears of War and Crackdown franchises got their long-awaited sequels, even if one was far more positively received than the other, and Game Pass continued to impress with the addition of noteworthy third-party titles like The Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds. Microsoft also set the stage for an exciting 2020, announcing the scheduled release windows for over a dozen first-party titles.

All that said, Microsoft needs to come out and have a great year in 2020. 2019 felt too much like a better version of 2018, with the Xbox One excelling primarily via Game Pass. Game Pass is a great service–one that’s promoting smaller creators in a way Sony, Nintendo, and Steam aren’t–but Microsoft still needs a flagship single-player title for Project Scarlett to rally behind. After 2019, the stage is set for Microsoft to make big moves with Project Scarlett in 2020. It’s just a matter of whether the company will deliver on the goodwill it’s earned this year.

The Good	The Bad
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the best game-based subscription service on both PC and console	Microsoft goes another year with only one noteworthy first-party title for Xbox One
Xbox One X is still the most powerful console	The original Xbox One is showing its age and struggling to play certain games
Xbox One is still the only current-gen console to support backwards compatibility
Sending the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines to developers is an excellent follow-up to the 2018 release of the Xbox Adaptive Controller

Bethesda Will Relaunch Fallout 76 | Alessandro Fillari

Last year, I said that Bethesda would relaunch Fallout 76. It didn’t quite happen in the way that I expected, but I still stand by the theory that Bethesda would make a significant effort to retool the game into what people wanted in an online Fallout. Sure, it didn’t make it a free-to-play game or rework the overall story, but meaningful changes have been made that fundamentally altered the state of Fallout 76 for the better. At E3 2019, the developers at Bethesda Game Studios Austin showed off the newest additions to the game, which included a battle royale-style mode, new events, and other significant changes. In 2020, the developers even plan to add in actual NPC characters in the world, making it seem more like a traditional Fallout game.

Fallout 76 is leaps and bounds in a better state than what it was back at launch. With that said, the game is still in need of a significant rework. As is tradition with other Bethesda open-world RPGs, Fallout 76 is still rife with bugs and other unusual occurrences that are to the detriment of player progression and enjoyment. One of the recent updates introduced a premium service to 76, allowing players to pay a subscription for additional storage and other features. While this has afforded players who spent the additional funds with new resources to take advantage of, the more significant side-effect of this new premium service within 76 is that it’s created in-game conflict between the players who do have a special status, and those that don’t. Essentially, the recent updates have introduced socio economic unrest in the world of Fallout 76. It has gotten to the point where premium players are building strongholds to protect themselves from less well-off players who’ve taken to the “eat the rich” mentality.

It’s such an odd turn for the recent updates for 76 to unintentionally introduce a situation that shows off shades of Lord of the Flies. You could make the argument that the vault dwellers of Vault 76 are currently taking part in one of Vault-Tec’s controlled experiments, which is something that seems in-line with series lore. Still, Fallout 76 will need a lot more work to get to where it needs to be, and I believe a proper relaunch will be the only way for it to succeed going forward.

Verdict: Half-right!