Month: September 2020

Developer Pysonix has confirmed that once its soccar game Rocket League goes free-to-play later this summer it won’t require online memberships on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 systems.

A patch for Rocket League will be arriving “around mid-September,” with the free-to-play update following “shortly after.” While an exact date for when Rocket League will go free-to-play has not been disclosed yet, Psyonix made it clear that Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 players will not need active NSO and PS Plus subscriptions in order to participate in online matches against other competitors. This is just one of the many changes coming to Rocket League once it’s free-to-play.

Some other adjustments include the addition of a new difficulty for bots, the removal of the Solo Standard Playlist following Competitive Season 14’s conclusion, Heatseeker being playable in private matches, tweaks to Rocket ID friends and Quick Chats, and more.

Psyonix is also consolidating many of Rocket League’s offerings–Competitive Seasons, Rocket Pass, and Competitive Tournaments–into one Season that will all follow the same schedule and kicks off once the game goes free-to-play. Much like battle passes in other live service games such as Apex Legends and Fortnite, once one season of Rocket League ends, so too will that season’s Competitive Season and Rocket Pass. This is to streamline Rocket League’s content across the board so it’s all easier to track.

In addition to changes to Rocket League’s competitive offerings, Pysonix is also adding some new ranks to Rocket League. The current, highest-achievable rank, Grand Champion, will be split into three different ranks–Grand Champion 1, Grand Champion 2, and Grand Champion 3. Psyonix said current Grand Champions will “likely be placed in Grand Champion 1 (depending on placement matches)” so that it can make way for the newest, highest-achievable rank: Supersonic Legend. (No, not Sonic the Hedgehog.) Further, once Rocket League goes free-to-play and these changes are implemented, players will be required to reach Level 10 in order to participate in Rocket League’s Ranked Playlists.

Finally, as part of bringing Rocket League into the hands of new players once it goes free-to-play, Psyonix will be introducing a brand-new tutorial experience for players to get used to the game’s mechanics and HUD. Players will also have New Driver Challenges to unlock items that were featured in the base version of the game, though Psyonix didn’t extrapolate on these unlockables.

If you’re curious about what happens to your progress once Rocket League goes free-to-play, Psyonix has detailed how cross-platform progression will work, clarifying that players will need an Epic Games Account to transfer their data.

In other Rocket League news, players are getting creative and mashing the soccar game with rhythm-em-up Beat Saber to create an unlikely pairing that’s bizarre and satisfying.

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, the latest 3D shooter iteration of the franchise, will get its last update at the end of the month. EA announced what’s coming through this final month of content, which will culminate in an appropriately harvest-themed Fall Festival event.

According to the announcement, this month will add two new characters: Wildflower and TV Head Zombie. Those were previously exclusive to weekly events in August, but you can pick them up with Coins in late September. You can use your Prize Bulbs in the Fall Festival map to score cosmetics like epic hats, victory slabs, emojis, and special costumes for Chomper, Imp, and Z-Mech. The Ranked Battle Arena will return to an unranked mode and away from the seasons.

Moving forward, the game will begin rotating previous Festivals and their associated Prize Maps, so you can collect any cosmetics that you missed out on at the time. What’s more, each of the Festival Prize Maps will remember your progress from the last time it came around, so you can just pick up from where you left off.

Battle for Neighborville was the third shooter spin-off from the Plants vs. Zombies series, following Garden Warfare and Garden Warfare 2. It released in September 2019, so this month’s update gives it just over a full year of updates. It received generally positive reviews, according to GameSpot sister site Metacritic.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 releases this Friday, September 4, and if you want to preorder it ahead of time, you can do so for cheaper than its regular price. Amazon and Walmart have Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 for $33.88, down from its regular price of $40. Both retailers offer free shipping and can deliver the game as early as its release date, though this depends on where you live and when you order it.

If you’re interested in the collector’s edition, you’ll be happy to hear that GameStop currently has it in stock with release-day delivery. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s Collector’s edition costs $100 and comes with the game, Digital Deluxe content, and a limited-edition Birdhouse deck.

Alternatively, you can buy Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s Digital Deluxe edition for $50, which comes with access to the Warehouse demo, “The Ripper” skater, retro content for Create-a-Skater, and retro outfits for Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Rodney Mullen. It’s unclear if this content will be sold separately.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a remake of the first two Tony Hawk games, featuring all of their iconic levels and skaters like Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen. It also boasts a trick system made up of different trick types from throughout the series, but if you just want to play the way you remember it in those first two games, you can turn off all of the extra tricks and play with the original games’ move sets.

The remake also includes many new skaters, including Aori Nishimura, Leticia Bufoni, and Lizzie Armanto as well as Leo Baker, Nyjah Huston, and Tyshawn Jones. You can take any of these skaters–or even your own custom character–into all of the modes, including multiplayer and the single-player Skate Tours.

PAX Online, a virtual event replacing both PAX Australia and PAX West due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, is set to go live from September 12-20. For the event’s first day, Borderlands 3 creator Gearbox Software has teased some sort of announcement related to the Borderlands franchise.

Starting on September 12 at 12:45 PM PT / 3:45 PM ET, Gearbox will unveil “what’s coming next” in Borderlands and from its publishing division, Gearbox Publishing. It’s unclear how long the broadcast, titled the Gearbox Digital Showcase, will last or what specific announcements will be made. In either case, you can watch the presentation on Gearbox’s official Twitch and YouTube channels.

Before the Gearbox Digital Showcase goes live, though, the company will launch Borderlands 3’s next DLC on September 10. Titled Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck, the new DLC will also increase the level cap again, add more mini-events leading up to its launch, and introduce new gear, among other things.

In other Borderlands 3 news, Gearbox has partnered with Direct Relief, an international humanitarian organization, to provide aid to workers responding to COVID-19 by giving away in-game masks whenever you donate $5 or more through Gearbox’s merch site.

September is here, and a lot is happening in Pokemon Go this month. On top of all the September events taking place over the next few weeks, new Field Research tasks are now live in the game, along with a new Research Breakthrough encounter: Alolan Raichu.

Each time you achieve a Research Breakthrough in September 2020, you’ll get a chance to catch Alolan Raichu. There’s a possibility this Raichu could be Shiny as well, giving you another incentive to complete as much Field Research as you can this month.

While you’ll receive one bonus Field Research task in the game each day, Field Research is typically obtained from PokeStops. There’s no limit to how many tasks you can do daily, but you’ll receive one stamp for the first task that you complete each day. Once you amass seven stamps, you’ll achieve a Research Breakthrough, leading to the aforementioned encounter with Alolan Raichu.

The Field Research tasks you receive will be randomly drawn from a larger pool, which is refreshed at the start of every month. You can see September’s Field Research tasks as well as their potential rewards, as compiled by The Silph Road, below.

Beyond the new Field Research tasks, there are many events to look forward to in Pokemon Go this month, including Mega September–three weeks of activities that revolve around Mega Evolutions. A handful of Legendary Pokemon are also returning to Raids this month, while September’s Community Day takes place on September 20 and features Porygon.

Pokemon Go September 2020 Field Research

Catching Tasks

Field Research Task	Rewards
Catch 3 Pokemon with Weather boost	Slowpoke encounter
Catch 5 Pokemon with Weather boost	Poliwag or Vulpix encounter; 200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls
Catch 10 Pokemon with Weather boost	500 Stardust, 6 Razz Berries, 2 Pinap Berries, or 5 Great Balls
Catch 3 Psychic-type Pokemon	Abra encounter
Catch 10 Pokemon	Magikarp encounter; 200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls
Catch 10 Normal-type Pokemon	500 Stardust, 6 Razz Berries, 2 Pinap Berries, or 5 Great Balls
Use 5 Berries to help catch Pokemon	Exeggcute encounter; 500 Stardust, 6 Razz Berries, 2 Pinap Berries, or 5 Great Balls
Catch a Dragon-type Pokemon	Dratini encounter; 1,500 Stardust, 3 Rare Candies, 2 Gold Razz Berries, or 10 Ultra Balls
Catch a Ditto	1,500 Stardust, 3 Rare Candies, 2 Gold Razz Berries, or 10 Ultra Balls

Battling Tasks

Field Research Tasks	Rewards
Win a Raid	Bronzor encounter
Win 5 Raids	Aerodactyl encounter
Win a level 3 or higher Raid	Kabuto or Omanyte encounter
Defeat 2 Team Go Rocket Grunts	Drowzee encounter

Throwing Tasks

Field Research Task	Rewards
Make 3 Great throws	Gastly, Anorith, or Lileep encounter; 200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls
Make 5 Nice throws	Voltorb encounter; 200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls
Make 3 Nice throws in a row	500 Stardust, 2 Pinap Berries, 5 Great Balls, or 2 Ultra Balls
Make 3 Great throws in a row	Onix encounter; 1,000 Stardust, 1 Rare Candy, 9 Razz Berries, 3 Pinap Berries, 10 Poke Balls, or 5 Ultra Balls
Make 3 Great curveball throws	1,000 Stardust, 1 Rare Candy, 9 Razz Berries, 3 Pinap Berries, 10 Poke Balls, or 5 Ultra Balls
Make 3 Great curveball throws in a row	1,500 Stardust, 3 Rare Candies, 2 Gold Razz Berries, or 10 Ultra Balls
Make 5 Great curveball throws in a row	Spinda encounter
Make an Excellent throw	500 Stardust, 2 Pinap Berries, 5 Great Balls, or 2 Ultra Balls
Make 3 Excellent throws in a row	Larvitar encounter
Make 5 curveball throws in a row	500 Stardust, 6 Razz Berries, 2 Pinap Berries, or 5 Great Balls
Make 2 Nice curveball throws in a row	200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls

Hatching Tasks

Field Research Task	Rewards
Hatch an Egg	Beldum encounter

Misc. Tasks

Field Research Task	Rewards
Transfer 3 Pokemon	Baltoy encounter
Trade a Pokemon	Ralts encounter
Evolve a Pokemon	Eevee or Wobbuffet encounter
Power up Pokemon 5 times	Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle encounter
Send 3 Gifts to friends	Woobat encounter
Spin 10 PokeStops or Gyms	200 Stardust, 3 Razz Berries, 1 Pinap Berry, or 5 Poke Balls

Buddy Tasks

Field Research Task	Rewards
Earn 5 Hearts with your Buddy	3 Silver Pinap Berries
Give your Buddy 3 treats	Natu encounter

It’s been a busy year or so for the Kingdom Hearts franchise, with the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 finally releasing in 2019 and a follow-up expansion arriving earlier this year. The story will continue with Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory on November 13 for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The rhythm-action game is available to preorder now at multiple retailers.

Kingdom Hearts is essentially getting the Theatrhythm Final Fantasy treatment in Melody of Memory. You move along an on-rails track and execute timing-based moves to the rhythm of beloved Kingdom Hearts and Disney tunes. All told, there will be more than 140 songs from the series, and gameplay takes place across Disney worlds such as Agrabah and Atlantica as well notable series locales like Twilight Town.

You’ll get to play as more than 20 different characters from the Kingdom Hearts series, including Sora, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, Aladdin, and Mulan. And even though this is a spinoff, Melody of Memory will tell Kairi’s story after the events of Kingdom Hearts III. You can play the levels solo or with a friend in co-op mode.

Outside of the story mode, Melody of Memory will have an online battle mode, and the Nintendo Switch version will support up to eight-player local multiplayer in its Free-For-All mode.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory preorders are live in both physical and digital formats. Check out the details below.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory Preorder Bonus

At this time, the only preorder bonus for Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory is exclusive to the PlayStation Store. You’ll get a Melody of Memory PlayStation theme–which unlocks at launch–by purchasing a digital edition for PS4.

This is the second time I’ve played Scavengers, the third-person PvEvP “co-opetition” shooter from Midwinter Entertainment, led by Halo veterans Josh Holmes and Mary Olson. The first time, I came away very impressed with the mix of gameplay on offer. In its most basic form, Scavengers is a more evolved version of Halo’s Warzone Firefight – building off of its large-scale player-versus-player-versus-enemy formula with a fleshed-out world, a lot more players, and crafting elements. This second play session over a year later showed off a few smart design improvements and left me even more convinced that Scavengers could be exactly what players burned out on either battle royale games or traditional arena shooters are looking for, because it’s a refreshing mix of both.

The biggest and most obvious change is the sheer scale of the game now. Scavengers is up to 60 players per match – in 20 teams of three – which has necessitated an upscale of the frozen, post-apocalyptic Earth play spaces as well. You’ll now battle in a nine square kilometer tundra (with occasional storms that necessitate you keeping yourself warm to survive), and there are more AI foes to contend with as well. In my experience, it felt pretty good – not too big or too small. We saw other groups of players around that we needed to keep an eye out for, but as we weren’t looking for a fight, we had enough distance that we weren’t forced to duke it out with them. Though we were nevertheless close enough that we most definitely could’ve if we’d wanted to.

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And you just might want to, in fact. Another new addition to Scavengers since I last played it is the ability to bank resources. See, the whole goal of the match is to, yes, scavenge as many resources as possible and bring them back to Mother, the AI that runs the orbiting ship the remnants of humanity live aboard after an ice comet brought the Scourge, a virus that’s mutated many of Earth’s remaining fauna. In a convenient narrative twist, Mother has a bit of a competitive and sadistic streak, and so she sends competing teams down to see who can gather the most resources from the snow and ice storm-ravaged surface; there’s only one dropship, so you’d better be on it when it leaves. But you can now bank those resources at select upload points in the world, meaning you won’t lose everything if another team beats you down and takes what you have.

Those are the pieces of the PvPvE experience: you’ve got to watch out for Scourge-infected humans just as much as you do fellow non-infected competitors – not to mention bears and wolves – all the while gathering materials to upgrade your class weapon or craft items like grenades or armor. And by the way, there are eight player classes who each have custom weapons and special abilities.

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I wasn’t able to bank any of our team’s resources in my match – nor was I able to get a vehicle, which is another addition to Scavengers during the past year – but we did make it to the dropship at the end of the match after clearing out some Scourge bases, sliding down snowy hills we encountered in order to move a bit faster. And that end-of-match dropship moment has changed too. Instead of just being an exit door, essentially, it’s now its own combat space, offering teams one last relatively close-quarters chance to duke it out for one last crack at upping your resource count to try and win the match.

We didn’t win, but we placed respectably. More importantly, I am now even more intrigued by and interested in Scavengers. It’s part co-op shooter, part survival, and part battle royale, and I’m incredibly impressed by it so far. It heads into closed beta near the end of the year before its Early Access release in early 2021.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has a portion of its team working on a “huge, ambitious” new project.

In an interview with Polygon, studio founder Sean Murray explained that Hello Games is now made up of 26 people. 3 have been working on new “Hello Games short” The Last Campfire, with the remaining 23 split between working on new updates for No Man’s Sky, and a brand new project, which Murray calls “a huge, ambitious game like No Man’s Sky.” He also made clear that it isn’t a sequel.

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Practically nothing is known about the new game, but Hello Games confirmed to IGN that it is “very early” in development. Murray is seemingly unsure about how much to discuss the game in advance, after No Man’s Sky’s controversial release (and eventual redemption):

“I think about it a lot and I don’t know where I come down on it,” he told Polygon. “There is a really positive thing about talking about your game a lot. Where you get people interested in it who wouldn’t have played it otherwise. […] But I look back, having done a lot of different press opportunities and things like that. And I reckon about half of what we did — and a lot of where we had problems, I think, where we were naive — we didn’t really need to do and we would have had the same level of success, you know?”

It seems like we’ll have quite a wait for the new game, but Hello Games isn’t done with No Man’s Sky, with the developer telling IGN there was “plenty” more to come from the space exploration sandbox. The Last Campfire was released last week, and it seems likely that we’ll see other Hello Games shorts – designed with a similar creative impetus as Pixar’s shorts – come in future too.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Developer Double Damage Games has announced that Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is launching on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam on September 22. The action-packed space combat sim was previously an Epic Games Store exclusive, but it’s now making its way to other platforms.

If you were unaware, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a prequel to 2015’s Rebel Galaxy. While the first game cast you as the commander of a powerful star destroyer with combat akin to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag‘s naval skirmishes, Outlaw drops you straight into the cockpit of a nimble spaceship piloted by outlaw and smuggler, Juno Markev.

There’s a full single-player story campaign for you to play through, but you’re also free to tread off the beaten path to meet and befriend a cast of sketchy characters, gamble some of your hard-earned cash and equipment at the local watering hole, or simply cruise around the vastness of space listening to over 21 hours of Subspace Radio.

The blue-collar Americana-infused space combat sim earned a score of 8/10 in GameSpot’s Rebel Galaxy Outlaw review. “There is a lot to do in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw,” said critic James Swinbanks. “So much so that it’s easy to lose yourself among the myriad of activities beyond flying around and shooting things. Juno is a great character despite her sometimes jarring movements, as are much of the rest of the charming cast. The combat is fast, frenetic and consistently challenging, although that challenge can sometimes feel impossible without stepping back and grinding out some progress elsewhere, which quickly gets frustrating. Thankfully the core of the game–its combat, trading, and space flight–are all superb and had me launching into the stars for many hours of galactic trading and explosive firefights.”

You can pick up Rebel Galaxy Outlaw for $30 USD when it launches later this month.