Month: May 2020

Xbox Series X is scheduled to be released in Holiday 2020, and when it does, Microsoft should offer a service similar to the once prominent Xbox Live Arcade. Combined with the welcome practices and services that Microsoft has made since the release of Xbox One, something like Xbox Live Arcade could be a beneficial way of both promoting and curating the indie game library on Xbox Series X.

Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) launched with Xbox 360 back in November 2005. The service promoted and hosted games that weren’t a part of the rest of the Xbox Live Marketplace. Each game on XBLA was priced under $20 USD and had free trials, creating a library of games with a much lower bar for entry. You could try them out prior to deciding whether to buy them and they were much cheaper than the traditional $60 USD retail price of a AAA game. Right from the start, XBLA was used to promote games created by small teams and indie studios that were released for Xbox 360–a market that had traditionally only excelled on PC, not consoles.

I discovered plenty of cool-looking indie games and experimental titles through XBLA, like Mark of the Ninja, Minecraft (yes, really–I actually hadn’t tried it prior to its release on Xbox 360), and Telltale’s The Walking Dead. These games also released on other systems, but XBLA helped them gain traction on Xbox 360, the service prominently featured at least one new game every Wednesday. XBLA Wednesdays became this huge event (which, admittedly, began to peter out near the end of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle), where new games were spotlighted and celebrated by the Xbox brand. If you were a small studio or solo creator and you could get your game to launch on Xbox 360, you were likely guaranteed to have your game promoted for a whole week.

Though not solely responsible, XBLA was a contributing factor to the indie game boom in the late-2000s and early-2010s. In July 2008, Microsoft held its first Summer of Arcade, which promoted Braid and Castle Crashers–both games are commonly cited for popularizing indie games for console users. Summer of Arcade would be held every year after that until 2013, promoting other indie games that went on to be very popular, like Limbo, Bastion, and Dust: An Elysian Tail.

With the transition to the current generation, no service on consoles has managed to match XBLA. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo will occasionally hold sales specifically aimed at the library of a certain indie game publisher or feature a new indie game as an incentive for subscribing to their respective online service–like PlayStation Plus and Rocket League–but none have a service that highlights a single indie game for seven days straight, with a guarantee that the game being featured is under $20 and has a free trial or demo. And it’s not like the supply isn’t there. I frequently annoy my fellow GameSpot editors about upcoming indie games that are worth checking out (sorry y’all), so I know that enough release each month that you could feature a new title every week.

All that said, XBLA as it was shouldn’t return–the service had its flaws, specifically for the indie developers themselves. For instance, to get onto XBLA, a game needed a Microsoft-approved publisher–indie devs were not allowed to self-publish. It was a decision that many indie developers found restrictive, encouraging them to gravitate towards Sony, as there was no such mandate for releasing their games on PlayStation. As the release of Xbox One approached, several of these developers spoke out against Microsoft and how the company treated them when it came to XBLA. For example, in an email to Wired in April 2013, Braid creator Jonathon Blow (whose game is arguably somewhat responsible for kicking off XBLA’s success) even wrote, “Microsoft treats independent developers very badly.”

Thankfully, Microsoft has largely improved its treatment of indie developers since then. The release of ID@Xbox in 2014 and launch of Xbox Live Creators in 2017 allow and actively encourage indie developers to self-publish their games on Xbox One. Several of these games have even been prominently featured on the Xbox Live Marketplace–sometimes on the homepage, though usually on Xbox Game Pass. Thanks to these changes, the bigger indie games haven’t been lost in the shuffle of releases on Xbox One.

But not every indie game that releases for Xbox can be the next Hollow Knight, Celeste, Cuphead, or Outer Wilds. There should be a service for indie games that isn’t tied to an additional subscription like Xbox Game Pass or is reliant on players knowing what’s coming out because they keep up with press conferences. It should be something that can be accessed with a few buttons upon turning on your console, highlights interesting-looking indie games that are worth looking at, and provides free trials so those with a limited budget can better decide what they want.

At the very least, a service like this would help with game library curation–if you look back, separating Xbox 360’s marketplace into two halves, with XBLA specifically geared at indie games, made it easier to navigate and know where to go to find certain titles. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the games that release on Xbox One with indie games, AAA titles, other experiences that fall in-between, and DLC expansions all releasing into the same cluttered space.

If the past few years are any indication, there are still indie games that released on Xbox One that didn’t get the recognition they should have–titles that did something incredibly clever like Full Metal Furies, Forgotton Anne, or Creature in the Well or were just really fun to play such as Coffee Talk, Moving Out, or River City Girls. I believe that if a service had existed that propped up indie games similarly to how Xbox Live Arcade once did, it would have encouraged more players to try and quite possibly fall in love with more of these deserving games. And with the library of games releasing for Xbox Series X already filling up with indie titles like Scorn and Call of the Sea, the next-gen console could use a service to help promote the games that likely won’t have as much of a mainstream buzz as something like Halo Infinite or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Borderland 3 developer Gearbox has unveiled the next DLC for the game, a “harsh” revenge tale called Bounty of Blood: A Fistful of Redemption. It’s a western-themed expansion that pits you against a bloodthirsty gang called the Devil Riders. Bounty of Blood will be released on June 25, and Gearbox also offered a slight taste of what to expect after that. It will feature one of the game’s most iconic enemy types.

During the Borderlands Show broadcast, DLC director Matt Cox called it a “harsh story of revenge and redemption” and teased an unseen narrator, who is said to be a new character. In fact, Bounty of Blood stars a new cast of characters, like the reformed brawler, Juno, and your guide, Rose. And no western epic would be complete without a steed, so you’ll get to ride a Jet Beast mount.

The main town Vestige, located on the frontier planet Gehenna, will change based on your actions in the DLC, like storefronts reopening and the theater showing lost film reels. NPCs themselves will change based on your choices in side-missions as well.

Cox also teased the eventual fourth DLC with an image showing a Psycho surrounded by plenty of havoc.

The Borderlands Show stream also announced the Revenge of the Cartels live event will end on June 4, and be replaced on the same day with the next one, Takedown of the Guardian Breach. Meanwhile, the game just received a new hotfix that will start to wrap up the Loot the Universe event.

Now Playing: Valorant Release Date Is Very Soon, Borderlands 3 DLC Goes Wild West | Save State

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Fortnite‘s Storm the Agency challenges have arrived alongside the game’s 12.61 update, giving you a few more tasks to complete before Season 3 of the battle royale shooter officially begins next week. One of the trickier challenges from the bunch asks you to open a faction locked chest at three different spy bases. If you’re having trouble tracking those down, this guide will explain where the spy bases are and how to complete the challenge.

Where Are The Spy Base Locations?

Much like the safe houses you need to visit for a separate Storm the Agency challenge, spy bases have been a fixture of the map since the start of Season 2. These are a bit more overt than the safe houses, however; while those are disguised to look like regular buildings, the spy bases are all named locations, so they’re much easier to track down. We’ve marked down where a few of the chests at these bases are located below:

The Grotto

Beneath the stairs next to the phone booth.

The Rig

On the second floor of the northwest building.

The Yacht

In the far corner of the lowest floor.

How To Complete The Challenge

Each spy base features a handful of faction locked chests, but to complete this challenge, you’ll need to open one at three different bases, so you can’t just hang around one location. You also can’t open the chests like normal; you’ll first need to hop into a phone booth and disguise yourself, which will then allow you to unlock them.

Fortunately, each spy bases is located very close to a phone booth, so once you know where the chests are located, you shouldn’t have much trouble completing the challenge. Open a chest at three different spy bases at you’ll earn a special Steel Shadow pickaxe.

We’re quickly approaching the end of Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2. Season 3 of the game is scheduled to begin on June 4, which means there are only a few days left to complete any weekly challenges you may have missed from earlier in the season. If you need help finishing up any of those, you can find all of our maps and guides in our Fortnite Season 2 challenges roundup.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

In a Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald wrote about backwards compatibility support for Xbox Series X. Microsoft’s next-gen console will support backwards compatibility for original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games and Ronald promises that thousands of those titles will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. New backwards compatibility techniques will allow the games to run at higher resolutions and with HDR support they originally lacked, too.

“With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites,” he wrote. “Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately.”

Series X won’t just play your old Xbox games–it will also improve how they look. “The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience,” Ronald wrote. “Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.”

Ronald added that Series X will incorporate innovations that backwards compatibility on Xbox 360 and Xbox One didn’t, including “brand new techniques that enable even more titles to run at higher resolutions and image quality while still respecting the artistic intent and vision of the original creators.” The Series X will have the ability to double the frame rate of certain games as well, upping titles that run at 30 FPS to 60 FPS and 60 FPS to 120 FPS.

All backwards compatible games will support Series X’s quick resume feature as well, allowing you to quickly navigate between multiple games across all four generations of Xbox. Quick resume will be a console feature–so all games that release for Series X will automatically be able to take advantage of it without developer input.

Of course, a new console needs new games too and Microsoft wants to assure its playerbase that it isn’t skimping on exclusives when it comes to the Xbox Series X’s library of games. “Led by Halo Infinite, our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams are hard at work creating the biggest and best line up of exclusives in Xbox history,” Ronald wrote. “We are incredibly excited to show many of the new games in development for Xbox Series X soon.”

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A Zoolander animated miniseries, which was released in the UK back in 2016, has finally made its way to the US after a long wait. The series is called Zoolander: Super Model, and has a total runtime of 84 minutes.

The series is available now on CBS All Access (disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company).

The show, which was created by Augenblick Studios (Ugly Americans, Superjail), features most of the original film’s cast, including Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Christine Taylor. The one exception is Will Ferrell, who played villain Mugatu across both Zoolander movies. It also features guest stars such as Tim Gunn, Jenny Slate, Nick Kroll, and Jon Daly. It’s also the final voice performance of Jerry Stiller, who passed away earlier this month.

You can watch the trailer for Zoolander: Super Model below.

2016 also saw the release of Zoolander 2, which was not well received. The sequel earned a mild $56 million worldwide, which makes a Zoolander 3 unlikely.

Cliff Bleszinski, the designer of the original Gears of War games, has reflected on the closure of his latest studio, Boss Key. Appearing on the Animal Talking show with Star Wars writer Gary Whitta, Bleszinski said the closure of his studio affected him personally in a serious and significant way.

“I was deeply, deeply depressed for about a year,” he said. “My doctor put me on Lexapro for a little bit. That messed me up, so I got off that. It was one of the hardest things to happen to me in my entire life. It was almost harder than losing my father when I was 15 years old.”

Bleszinski recalled that he had high hopes for Boss Key and their debut title, LawBreakers, but it did not all go to plan.

“I was cocky, I was brash, and I was just assuming if I faked it until I made it, even though I had already made it, that the game would be a hit. I’ll never forget, watching the concurrent users start to plummet,” he said. “We were trying to be AAA on a AA budget.”

Overall, Bleszinski pointed out that the failure of LawBreakers and Boss Key can’t be pinned down to one element or another. He’s spoken about how the game being “too woke” was one of the reasons why the game struggled. In his discussion with Whitta, Bleszinski said he wished he could have provided more backstory and lore for the game’s various characters.

After the closure of Boss Key, Bleszinski said he was unlikely to return to game development, but recently, he shared an idea for a new project involving dogs that could be a game, or something else. In his conversation with Whitta, Bleszinski said if he ever made a game again, it wouldn’t be a large-scale endeavor like LawBreakers or his previous titles. In his response, he also possibly teased the story of his dog game.

“If I were to make another video game ever again, it would be something small. The whole, kid-with-a-lost-dog thing. Where you’re the dog trying to get back to New Jersey from the Grand Canyon,” he said.

Overall, Bleszinski said he is feeling “a little bit disillusioned” and jaded about the gaming industry, adding that, the way he sees it, luck and virality is more of a factor than ever in terms of if a game is successful or not.

“This industry has been really, really good to me, but I also see the damage it can bring on game developers,” he said. “I’ve seen families ruined. I’ve seen people with substance abuse issues. I’ve seen people having to go to therapy.”

Bleszinski left Epic after 20 years in October 2012, prior to the release of Epic’s massively popular battle royale game Fortnite. He started Boss Key with former Killzone boss Arjan Brussee in 2014; the team shipped LawBreakers in 2017 and the early access PC game Radical Heights in 2018 before closing down later that year.

Bleszinski is now pursuing one of his other passions: theatre. He is an investor in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hadestown, which he is also co-producing. Hadestown earned a whopping 14 Tony award nominations, winning eight–including Best Musical.

Bleszinski is also writing a memoir with Simon & Schuster, and his pages are due in January 2021, he told Whitta on the show. In addition to the book, Bleszinski said he has ideas for new IP, but he’s not sure if it would be a game or a graphic novel or something else. He also said he’s writing a script for what could be a TV show or a movie, but he did not share any details about it.