Month: May 2020

If you appreciate the comedy in Rick and Morty, chances are you’d enjoy the writing in Trover Saves the Universe, a buddy comedy game from the mind of Justin Roiland. It’s almost one year old at this point, but if you haven’t checked it out, you can save a nice chunk of change right now during Trover Saves the Universe’s anniversary sale. At the moment, you can grab Trover Saves the Universe on Nintendo Switch and PC (as part of Epic’s Mega sale) for $18, which is a 40% savings.

The Epic Games Store deal is especially good, because Epic is currently offering $10 off coupons when you buy a game $15 or more. You can snag Trover Saves the Universe for $8 with the coupon, and then you’ll get a new coupon to use on another game in the Mega sale. You can even get a $10 off coupon by claiming Grand Theft Auto V, which is free right now as part of Epic’s free games program.

Based on the wording of the anniversary announcement, it sounds like Trover will be discounted on other platforms–probably PS4 and Xbox One–later this month. Squanch Games will also be hosting community challenges for fans on its Discord and Twitter channels next week, while giveaways are planned for the week of May 25 on the game’s social channels.

It should be noted that Trover Saves the Universe was designed with VR in mind. The camera angles and interactions are a tad awkward outside of VR, though the off-the-walls story is enjoyable nonetheless. If you pick Trover up at the Epic Games Store, you can also play it on VR headsets including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Valve Index. It’s available on PSVR as well, so we’ll have to wait and see if the PS4 version gets discounted, too.

Best game deals this week

Trover Save the Universe stars a bonkers purple alien named Trover–who is voiced by Roiland in the style of Morty–and you, a poor sap who had your dogs taken by a monster named Glorkon. Together, you have to save the universe, of course. It’s essentially a bright, colorful platformer with crude jokes and plenty of outlandish comments from Trover and the rest of the beings you encounter.

It earned a 7/10 in GameSpot’s Trover Saves the Universe review, with critic Justin Clark praising the character and world design, the hilarious story, while knocking it for its relatively simplistic platforming and combat.

Trover Saves the Universe — $18 ($30)

Blizzard is issuing a new update to Diablo 3 in the public test realm (PTR) to put the next update through its paces before it becomes widely available. The 2.6.9 patch will begin its two-week testing phase on Thursday, May 21. Those who participate in the test will be able to check out some new gear for Demon Hunter and Necromancer, with some special items to help speed you on your way.

The main draw of the patch is the two near gear sets, one for Demon Hunter and one for Necromancer. The Demon Hunter set is called Gear of Dreadlands, and if you manage to collect all six pieces, your primary skills do 10,000% more damage. Necromancer gets the Masquerade of Burning Carnival, which gives you a 3300% Bone Spear damage buff every time you consume a corpse.

Both classes also get a bunch of new other buffs and adjustments, and there are some skill changes for both Necromancer and Witch Doctor.

As usual, Blizzard recommends that you pick one particular specialty to assure you have time to really kick the tires. As an example, if you’re a Wizard player, Blizzard recommends you check out whatever changes would impact Blizzard so that your feedback can be tailored to your expertise. The company also recommends stocking up on Puzzle Rings and Bovine Bardiches before it starts.

You can check out the full patch notes below.

Diablo 3 Patch 2.6.9 Notes

Seasons

• The elements have deemed you worthy. With you as their champion, the burning hells will face the Trials of Tempests!
  • Your character will occasionally (every 2 minutes) channel an elemental power which unleashes into the environment for a limited time:
    • Meteors rain from the skies around you.
    • Breathe lightning.
    • A wall of flame engulfs everything.
    • Release twisters of pure energy.
    • Crush your foes under the weight of rolling snowballs.
• Two unique new rewards, a portrait frame and a pet, will be granted to players who complete the Season 21 Journey.

Items

Demon Hunter

• New Demon Hunter Set: Gears of Dreadlands
  • 2-Piece Bonus
    • Gain a Momentum stack when attacking with a Primary skill. Each Momentum stack lasts 2 seconds at a maximum duration of 10 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% more damage per stack of Momentum.
  • 4-Piece Bonus
    • Casting Strafe against enemies will automatically shoot your last used primary skill, and also give 60% damage reduction while strafing and for 5 seconds after. While casting Strafe, you move faster per stack of Momentum.
  • 6-Piece Bonus
    • Your primary skills deal 10000% more damage
• Leonine Bow of Hashir
  • Bolas have a 30% 100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deal 100-150% increased damage.
• Emimei’s Duffel
  • Bolas now explode instantly and deal 150-175% increased damage.
• The Ninth Cirri Satchel
  • Hungering Arrow has 20-25% is guaranteed to pierce and also deals 450-600% increased damage.
• Odyssey’s End
  • Enemies snared by your Entangling Shots take 20-25% 100-150% increased damage from all sources.
• Hunter’s Wrath
  • Your primary skills attack 30% faster and deal 45-60% 150-200% increased damage.
• Holy Point Shot
  • Impale throws 2 additional knives and deals 75-100% increased damage.

Necromancer

• New Necromancer Set: Masquerade of Burning Carnival
  • 2-Piece Bonus
    • Your Simulacrums no longer take damage, gains all runes, and its cooldown is refreshed when you die.
  • 4-Piece Bonus
    • While you have a Simulacrum, damage is reduced by 50%. Damage you take is split with your Simulacrums as well.
  • 6-Piece Bonus
    • Your Bone Spear deals 10,000% increased damage. Simulacrums gain triple this bonus.
• Grasps of Essence
  • When an exploded corpse damages at least one enemy, Your Corpse Explosion deals 75-100%150-200% increased damage for 6 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
• Haunted Visions
  • Simulacrum now drains 5%1% of your maximum life every second and lasts twice as long forever. They can now duplicate Grim Scythe instead of Skeletal Mage.
• Razeth’s Volition
  • Skeletal Mage gains the effect of the Gift of Death and Singularity runes. You gain 35-50% damage reduction if your Essence is not full.
• Jesseth Arms
  • 2-Piece Set Bonus: While your skeletons are commanded to attack a target, you deal 400% increased damage.
• Grace of Inarius
  • 4-Piece Set Bonus: Bone Armor grants an additional 2%3% damage reduction per enemy hit.
• Pestilence Master’s Shroud
  • 6-Piece Set Bonus: Each corpse you consume grants you an Empowered Bone Spear charge that increases the damage of your next Bone Spear by 3300%. In addition, Corpse Lance and Corpse Explosion damage is increased by 1650%3300%.

Crusader

• Shield of Fury
  • This effect may stack up to 2010 times.

General

• Stone of Jordan
  • Added power: All elemental damage bonuses to skills are now equal to your highest elemental bonus to skills.
• Reaper’s Wraps
  • Added a 2-second internal cooldown to the Health globe effect.
• Mantle of Channeling
  • Now works with the Necromancer’s Siphon Blood.
• Convention of Elements
  • Added “non-static” to the wording of the legendary power’s description. The functionality is unchanged

Skill Changes

• Necromancer
  • Final Service
    • No longer consumes pets.
  • Bone Prison
    • Simulacrums now benefit from this passive skill.
  • Serration
    • Simulacrums now benefit from this passive skill.
  • Corpse Explosion
    • Damage increased from 350% to 1050%.
• Witch Doctor
  • Spirit Barrage
    • The Spectres from the Phantasm rune no longer benefit from pet bonuses.

Bug Fixes

• General
  • Fixed a rare issue where players could enter a locked party and become unable to enter games or change game settings
• Necromancer
  • Fixed an issue where Skeletal Mages were not attacking certain creatures

Bungie is dropping more and more details about its plans for Destiny 2‘s next content year, including how it means to change the progression of its weapons and armor. Starting in the fall season, Destiny 2 gear will come with a power cap that effectively gives them a lifespan, dictating how long you can use them–and when you’ll have to move on to something else.

The changes are detailed in the developer’s This Week at Bungie blog post, which runs down how weapons and armor will be shifted starting in Season 12 this fall. The gist is that weapons and armor pieces at the legendary level, which compose most of a player’s go-to equipment, will come with a new stat: a maximum Power level. That maximum will be whatever Destiny 2’s Power cap will be three seasons into the future, effectively marking the end of that equipment’s usefulness for endgame activities.

It’s an alteration to how gear works that effectively means you’ll need to farm up new armor and weapons every so often, instead of just relying on your favorite (or best) pieces indefinitely. Destiny 2 determines your character’s overall lethality and damage resistance as an average of the “Power” level of each piece of armor you equip, and you’re able to cannibalize new gear with higher stats to raise the level of your older, better gear with the game’s Infusion system. That allows you to increase the levels of your favorite gear so you use it in higher-level activities, such as Raids.

Bungie raises the Power cap in Destiny 2 periodically, requiring you to play to get better gear and increase your character’s overall strength to handle endgame activities. But an ongoing problem, according to director Luke Smith, is that Bungie is constantly adding new weapons and armor to the game, but players don’t necessarily need or use them when they already have what’s considered “best.”

Once the new changes are in place, you’ll only be able to infuse gear up to its set maximum Power level, which will match the Power cap three seasons after the item is first released. After that, the Power cap will keep going up, but you’ll need new gear to match it, effectively retiring the old stuff. Bungie says that should encourage players to try new guns and armor and experiment with new character builds, instead of just sitting on the same old gear they’ve been playing with for years.

We’ll start to see the new system in play next season, when weapons and armor get the new Maximum Power stat, but the actual changes won’t go into effect until Season 12 and the start of Destiny 2’s Year 4. It’ll start to have effects pretty soon, though–everything from before Shadowkeep will have its max Power level set to the Season 11 Power cap, which means it’ll start to be obsolete in the fall with Season 12. Everything from Shadowkeep forward will be viable for a full year from when it was released, so Season of Dawn gear will last until the Winter 2020 season, Season of the Worthy gear will be good until Spring 2021, and Season 11 gear will last until Summer 2021.

The good news is, Exotics are exempt from this new change–they won’t get a max Power cap. Armor and weapons from the Last Wish and Garden of Salvation raids also get an exemption to make them last longer than most other legendary gear. But for everything else, the timer of planned obsolescence is about to start.

Ubisoft’s educational Discovery Tours for Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey are currently free to download and keep on PC.

The educational expansions go beyond the mythological heights of the main games and let players explore the ancient history behind the worlds you may have explored as Alexios/Kassandra and Bayek. You can take part in guided tours curated by historians and learn more about Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece from the experts.

Take a historic journey from home with Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece & Discovery Tour: Ancient Egypt FREE to download and keep  #PlayApartTogether

https://t.co/UVftq2CaBr

— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) May 14, 2020

Discovery Tour: Ancient Egypt and Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece can be redeemed via this link, alongside a host of over Ubisoft games, including Rabbids Coding! and Might & Magic Chess Royale.

This is part of Ubisoft’s Play Your Part, Play at Home campaign, which is offering free games to fans in an effort to help keep people busy as they stay safe at home under quarantine. The promotion will run from today, May 15th until May 21, so head on over to Uplay to redeem it.

We don’t yet know if Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will include a Discovery Tour mode, but we know 44 other details about the upcoming Viking-based entry in the series.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN who wishes Ubisoft would hire him to make a discovery tour for Black Flag. Ask him about pirate archaeology on Twitter.

CBS All Access has announced a series order for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a series featuring Star Trek: Discovery’s Captain Pike, Number One and Spock.

Strange New Worlds will be based on the years that Captain Christopher Pike commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise, and will feature the returning Anson Mount as Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One, and Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock. These actors portrayed these same characters in CBS All Access’ Discovery too.

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“The series will follow Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One in the decade before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise as they explore new worlds around the galaxy,” according to CBS.

The series premiere was written by Akira Goldsman with a story by Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet. These three will serve as executive producers for the series in addition to Henry Alonso Myers, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry, and Trevor Roth. Aaron Baiers, Akela Cooper and Davy Perez will serve as co-executive producers. Goldsman will remain an executive producer on Star Trek: Picard as well.

“Fans fell in love with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck’s portrayals of these iconic characters when they were first introduced on Star Trek: Discovery last season,” CBS All Access Executive Vice President and Head of Programming Julie McNamara said. “This new series will be a perfect complement to the franchise, bringing a whole new perspective and series of adventures to Star Trek.”

Only last year, we asked Anson Mount what he wanted from a Captain Pike show, given the huge fan response to his work in the role – here’s hoping he gets at least some of what he wanted.

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Strange New Worlds will join Discovery and Picard on CBS All Access when it launches on the streaming service. The franchise will get its first-ever animated series with Star Trek: Lower Decks on the service as well. A CG-animated Star Trek series for younger audiences is also in the works at Nickelodeon.

No release date was announced for Strange New Worlds. For more Star Trek, read about how we thought the season finale of Picard was good, giving it a 7 out of 10. For Season 2 of Picard, Star Trek actor Jonathan Frakes will return to the director’s chair. Elsewhere in the Star Trek universe, William Shatner said not to expect a Kirk series after Picard.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Nioh 2 has received its first big update, bringing with it a robust Photo Mode and additional missions as Team Ninja prepares its three DLC expansions for later this year.

The update, which you can download now, includes a Photo Mode with all the bells and whistles you’d expect. That means filters, exposure controls, lighting adjustments, and more. You’ll also have access to nine new sub-missions which Team Ninja says is a small taste of a larger commitment to post-release content that starts this summer.

Nioh 2 has three expansions in the works, with the first launching on July 30. Titled The Tengu’s Disciple, this first expansion will take you to Yashima–a place which has seen numerous wars in the past. As a result, the shadows of yokai can be seen roaming the land, as fallen heroes wielding the Sohayamaru rise again to reestablish peace.

Team Ninja says that each expansion will present players with new stories, yokai, weapons, skills, and, of course, bosses to defeat. The new content will also usher in additional difficulty modes and end-game content that Team Ninja hopes will give players incentive to continue playing after seeing Nioh 2’s new content. The remaining two expansions don’t have dates yet, but Team Ninja says to expect them in the coming months.

Back in March we were impressed with Nioh 2’s demanding combat and unrelenting challenging. In our 8/10 Nioh 2 review, critic Mike Epstein wrote, “Though it sometimes feels like a curse as you play, it is a testament that Nioh 2 successfully grabs and holds your complete attention so close for so long.”

Scorn was one of the surprise hits of last week’s Inside Xbox showcase, its blank storytelling and H.R. Giger-inspired aesthetic standing out from the rest of Series X’s third-party slate. We’ve known about the game, as a PC title, for several years at this point, and it turns out the lure of Series X for developer Ebb Software was the fact that a console version could now match the vision it has always had for its PC project.

“It was about bringing it in line with the PC version”, says game director Ljubomir Peklar when I ask what the thinking was behind releasing Scorn for the new Xbox. “We don’t want to make any compromises and Series X certainly enables us to do just that.”

I ask what, specifically, Series X offers the team that current-gen consoles couldn’t: “It’s mostly evolutionary improvements that are going to make the biggest difference. The most important one is elimination of the CPU bottleneck that exists in the current-gen consoles and much faster loading of assets thanks to the SSD. It’s all about responsiveness and not having to wait on things.”

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For Scorn’s developers, compromise seems to be out of the question, and Series X’s power is a draw. Scorn is being built in Unreal Engine 4, and appears to be an exercise in pushing those tools as far as they’ll go – Peklar doesn’t say it outright, but Ebb appears to be aiming for high resolution and framerates as much as it is shiny (or should that be slimy?) new looks: “If developers decided to opt for lower resolutions and 30fps they could get more spectacular results, like in the new Unreal 5 showcase few days ago. What you have to remember is that responsiveness and motion clarity are also part of the overall presentation, so you would still be losing detail in a sense.”

The last direct gameplay we saw from Scorn came in 2017, and Peklar assures me that the game has changed significantly since then: “That pre-alpha level we showed is about 80% different right now. That demo was created to show backers we can develop a proper game and an overall potential of what the game could be. It wasn’t supposed to be a final representation of the game.”

What remains less clear is whether Series X is the only console platform on which Scorn will arrive. When I ask if this is a Series X exclusive, or if it could hit PS5 sometime after launch, Peklar says he can’t discuss that information. We still don’t know if the game will come to Steam and Windows Store simultaneously with Xbox Series X, either.

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A slightly more interesting mystery is what story Scorn actually aims to tell. Ebb has been purposely mysterious about what Scorn is about, to the point where, when I innocently ask what the initial pitch for the game was (intending to mean the look and gameplay ideas), Peklar says it feels like I’m trying to be “clever” and get him to tell me what the story’s about, and refuses to answer directly. “The initial pitch hasn’t changed that much,” he tells me, “but we will never disclose it.”

He will, at least, divulge what the gameplay will be made up of. The 2017 demo showed off exploration and puzzle-solving around one of Scorn’s several promised nightmarish areas, and a touch of gunplay as the local, disgusting wildlife subsequently turned hostile. That mix will seemingly remain the case in the final product: “It’s pretty much 50/50 when it comes to gunplay and puzzles,” says Peklar, “all wrapped up in an atmosphere that will elevate it much further than the sum of its parts.”

Despite that early gameplay, most people watching Inside Xbox won’t have seen Scorn before, and its sheer blankness of vision, and the team’s unwillingness to give too much away, must have made this very public showing slightly nerve-wracking. Thankfully, Peklar and his team emerged pleased with the experience: “We were interested in seeing if people were reacting to the specific beats we expected them to. Failing to adequately realize and present the mood is always our biggest worry. Thankfully it all went as expected. The overall reaction was pretty good too.”

Scorn will be released for Xbox Series X during the console’s “launch period”. Windows Store and Steam versions are also planned, with no release date specified.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News, and Scorn makes him feel deliciously grim. Follow him on Twitter.