Month: August 2020

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has just received a new patch with Update 8.1.0, and it has made a surprising addition–a new stage. Small Battlefield–which is like Battlefield, but smaller–is now available for all players.

As of this update, you will be able to pick Small Battlefield as a preferred rule for online matches, which is good if you want a tighter arena for you and your opponent to battle on. You can also now pick any usually stage-specific music for this level, as well as Battlefield, Big Battlefield, and Final Destination.

This update includes some adjustments to online, including a lower eligibility to qualify for Elite Smash in the quickplay menu. This means that more players will be allowed into this mode. “Additionally, the way initial values for Global Smash Power are calculated has also been adjusted,” the update reads.

Beyond this, several other tweaks have been made, but the patch notes do not get into specifics.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s last major update was 8.0.0, which added Min-Min from Arms as a new fighter.

Quantic Dream’s latest game, Detroit: Become Human, has reached a new sales milestone. The French developer said in a news release that the game passed 5 million sales across all platforms following its release on Steam. The game launched earlier on PC through the Epic Games Store.

Detroit started out as a PS4-exclusive, but Quantic Dream has since ended its publishing agreement with Sony and is now planning to be a multiplatform game developer and “boutique” publisher.

Quantic Dream also announced that Detroit’s Twitch extension, Community Play, was a big success. Nearly 500 streamers used the Twitch overlay to call on their viewers to vote for what decisions should be made in the game. In total, more than 1.5 million votes were cast.

Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere said in the news release that Detroit has enjoyed an “incredibly positive” response overall, though he cited Asian markets as being of particular importance.

The developer has no officially announced projects for the future just yet, but the company’s next game will be a self-published title for next-gen consoles.

Diablo Immortal, the mobile spin-off Diablo game, is still in the works despite lots of blowback from fans, and Activision Blizzard has spoken more about it in the context of their mobile strategy. As part of second quarter calendar 2020 results conference call, CFO Dennis Durkin has spoken about Activision’s mobile slate, citing the success of Call of Duty Mobile as a good model.

PC Gamer picked up on the comments from Durkin, who said that “there’s a lot more to come” for Activision’s mobile releases. “CoD Mobile is off to a really great start, but we’re just scratching the surface of what that franchise can be on mobile,” he says, in direct response to a question about Diablo Immortal and how Call of Duty has impacted it.

Durkin says that the success of Call of Duty on mobile serves as a good indicator of the success of franchise releases on mobile. “And it certainly applies to a lot of other franchises that we have,” he says. “We see that our current players really want more ways to engage with their favorite IP, be it through mobile or other platforms, and that offering authentic and really deep experiences on new platforms can drive much much higher engagement.”

“And to your question, it’s not just Diablo, but it’s also across all our franchises, and our teams see an opportunity to drive a greater reach, engagement, and player investment, greater than ever before, across our franchises,” he added.

The company has previously said that it is looking at all of its franchises and thinking about how mobile versions could work.

In Activision Blizzard’s PowerPoint presentation of these results, they said that internal testing with expand in the coming weeks, with a wider test happening across the company. Earlier this year, before COVID-19 struck, regional alpha tests were being planned for mid-year.

New footage from Diablo Immortal recently debuted. There’s an early BlizzCon coming in early 2021, where we’d expect to find out more about Diablo IV.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone are set to grow again, and in a big way, with the launch of the huge Season 5 update on August 5.

The update will go live by way of a very large patch. If history is any indication, the patch should start to arrive on PS4, Xbox One, and PC at around 11 PM PT on August 4. The patch notes will be released this evening, senior communications manager Ashton Williams said on Twitter.

The Season 5 update adds new multiplayer maps for Modern Warfare, a new Ground War map, and a new Mini Royale mode for Warzone. There is also a new Battle Pass and more Operators, while the Warzone mode is getting refreshed with new areas and a freight train.

For lots more on the Season 5 update, check out GameSpot’s breakdown of everything you need to know. You can also check out the image embedded above to learn more.

The Season 5 update comes at a strong time for Modern Warfare and Warzone. The battle royale game recently crossed 75 million players, while Modern Warfare is enjoying incredibly strong sales of the game and microtransactions, due in part to stay-at-home orders keeping people inside, playing games, and spending money on them.

Even with Modern Warfare and Warzone doing so well right now, Activision will release the next mainline Call of Duty game later this year. It is now confirmed to be a new title from Black Ops creator Treyarch. And while there are no official details on the game yet, it’s rumored to be Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Activision management said on an earnings call today that this new game from Treyarch will connect to Warzone in some capacity.

Wargroove, a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Advance Wars, received free DLC earlier this year–but only on Switch, Xbox One, and PC. The Double Trouble expansion, which added a co-op campaign, was missing from Sony’s system back in February, but now, six months later, that has been rectified.

The Double Trouble update has come to the PS4 version of Wargroove, adding a new, lengthy campaign, three new Commanders, two new units, and several other features to the game. Developer Chucklefish says that the campaign takes about 15 hours to complete, and it supports both couch and online co-op.

The DLC also contains new arcade missions, a volcano map theme, and new music.

Furthermore, the PS4 version now finally has cross-play. This feature was available at launch for the Switch, Xbox One, and PC versions, but PS4 players missed out until now. This means that players diving into the DLC will be able to team up with their friends on other systems.

“We’re very happy to finally complete our vision of one big happy Wargroove community as PS4 Wargroove players can now play with those on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PC,” Wargroove lead programmer Rodrigo Braz Monteiro said in a statement. “Thanks for your patience, and hope you’ll have fun!”

Wargroove received an 8/10 in GameSpot’s review, well before the free DLC launched. “Chucklefish could have offered up a prettied-up take on Advance Wars with online multiplayer and called it a day,” wrote reviewer Chris Pereira. “Instead, it’s made meaningful improvements that make this both a satisfying answer to starved Advance Wars fans’ wishes and a genuinely great experience on its own merits.”

This article and video contain very mild, early spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.

The Last of Us Part II is a fairly grim game, but it isn’t all doom and gloom. One early section flashes back to a happier moment in Joel and Ellie’s lives, when Joel gives Ellie an incredible gift: a trip to an abandoned museum, full of dinosaur skeletons. Now, Game Maker’s Toolkit, has dived deep into how that section was made

Evan Hill, a former Naughty Dog level designer who led the creation of the museum (the level is called “The Birthday Gift”), says that he was given a brief two-paragraph summary of the museum’s narrative function from director Neil Druckmann, but was given freedom from there.

The video shows some of the early 3D block mesh designs for this level and others, and Hill talks about the importance of being able to experience the space in 3D before you know if it’s working. He even shows off the very early, very blobby form the first dinosaur statue took in the initial mesh.

There’s a wide range of design philosophy points discussed here, as Hill digs into how Naughty Dog uses level design for pathfinding, and how geometry is used for cool camera reveal moments. He also says that levels are generally built before the dialog is fully scripted, so the writers and actors are able to frame their reactions to spaces only once those spaces have been built. The writing is often based on the level design, not the other way around.

You can watch the video below.

Hill also explains the decision to let you skip certain parts of this level, and the possibility that players will miss out on certain parts. “It’s okay if there isn’t this perfect singular experience of this level,” he says, as it’s important that players feel that they are driving the action. “If you forced everyone to do everything, for some players it would drag,” he explains.

Hill says that this section almost ended with the discovery of the lunar landing module, but it continued to grow and become more important as development continued.

All up, the level–which contains three distinct “acts” within its short running time–took “two solid years” to fully build, Hill says. He believes that you only reach this level of quality through extreme iteration, which happened here too. “There are some sequences in this game that were redone, like, 25 times,” he says.

There are numerous parts of the game that changed a lot during development–in fact, The Last of Us Part II almost had a much darker ending. A spin-off show is coming to HBO, courteosy of Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin, and it will expand on the world established in the games.