Month: December 2020

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A new Space Jam game will be coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2021, though there’s two things you should know. Firstly, the game will be based on the upcoming sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy with LeBron James, and secondly it’s going to at least partially designed by fans.

Microsoft has announced the game, and its associated competition, in collaboration with next year’s Space Jam sequel. It says the game will be an “arcade-style” video game, with games based on two of the competition’s winning ideas to be brought to life.

The competition gives entrants a number of pre-made concept screens based on combinations of genres like action, adventure, sim, strategy, shooter, and more, then asks for an in-depth description of how the game would play. It’s not clear whether the winning games will make up the entirety of the final Space Jam game, or if they’ll just be a few options among a selection of other mini-games.

The finished game will be available as a perk to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members in 2021.

With the competition seemingly targeted more at young fans (though it does have a minimum age of 14), Microsoft is also using the Space Jam collaboration to run a series of themed virtual coding workshops for young people looking to get into game development.

The original Space Jam also got a tie-in video game back in 1996, though according to GameSpot’s review, the combination of 16-bit basketball gameplay and poorly-implemented cartoon-themed mini games was not a winner.

In 2020, when leaving the house and being with friends and loved ones has been harder than usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic, socially distanced game nights have become part of many people’s social routine. The newly released Jackbox Party Pack 7, and the six earlier games in the series, are excellent games to play with friends–and doing so through Twitch just got a little easier.

Twitch has announced the Jackbox Audience Kit, an extension for streams that makes it possible to join Jackbox games without needing to open a separate browser. This extension lets audiences join the game through the Twitch app, making it easier to join in on games.

As long as the Twitch streamer has installed and enabled the extension, joining a game is a simple process of following the on-screen instructions.

Right now, the extension is supported by the majority of Jackbox games, although some cannot be played with an audience. Monster Seeking Monster currently does not support the extension, but support is “coming soon”; The Devils and the Details and You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream will not work with it, now or in the future.

Hopefully this means that your next friendly game of Quiplash 3, Trivia Murder Party, or Mad Verse City will be easier to set up and play than before. All 7 Jackbox games are available on PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.

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After years of anticipation, the release of Cyberpunk 2077 has been soured by bugs ranging from funny graphical glitches to game-breaking crashes. The bulk of these are occurring for players on PS4 and Xbox One, which led CD Projekt Red to suggest that players who are unhappy with the game should seek refunds.

Depending on what country you’re in and where you bought the game, however, this might not be the easiest task. In a tweet, CD Projekt Red admitted that the game had performance issues on PS4 and Xbox One, and recommended seeking a refund at your point of sale. “For copies purchased digitally, please use the refund system of PSN or Xbox respectively. For boxed versions, please first try to get a refund at the store where you bought the game.”

As Lifehacker reports, online retailers like Amazon and Walmart have extended their returns periods for the holidays, which may be a bonus for unhappy Cyberpunk 2077 players. However digital storefronts like Steam, the PSN Store, and Microsoft store often have more restrictive refund policies.

Reports say customers have nevertheless been successful in getting refunds from both Sony and Microsoft, though some players have had to spend over an hour on the PlayStation support line to get one. PC players unhappy with how the game performs on their computers can also submit refund requests through Steam even if their gameplay has passed the two hour limit, while CD Projekt’s GOG platform will also allow refunds.

Getting a refund from physical stores may be more difficult depending on the individual store’s policy, though reports from Australia–where customer protections explicitly entitle players to a refund when a game is broken or buggy–say multiple game stores are honoring refunds.

With all these refund methods, it’s worth mentioning game crashes and game-breaking bugs in your refund request, just as you would if you were returning a faulty piece of hardware. If all else fails, CD Projekt Red has set up the dedicated email address [email protected] for players looking for help refunding its game.

The Hong Kong Massacre, a stylish, brutal, difficult top-down action game that hit PS4 and PC in early 2019, is coming to Switch. The shooter, a tale of revenge that wears its Hotline Miami influence on its sleeve, will release on the Nintendo Switch Eshop on December 26.

The reveal trailer below shows off how the game looks on Switch–and it looks very much like the PS4/PC versions of the game. The game will cost $20, but it can be preordered at a discounted price of $16.

Warning: the trailer below is very violent, as is the game itself.

While this version of the game won’t add any new features, it’s the only way to play the game on a portable system. In the meantime, you can get yourself a free digital copy of the game’s soundtrack by signing up for the developer’s mailing list through the game’s website.

In GameSpot’s 7/10 review of The Hong Kong Massacre, it earned praise for its stylish action. “It’s a game that sticks with you when you’re not playing it, as you think through different approaches to the room you died in last time,” the review states. “You’ll fail frequently, and the repetition can wear you down, but it’s hard to resist the temptation of bursting through a window and perfectly lining up three kill shots.”

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy director Peter Jackson has revealed that his favorite scene from the three films was not written or directed by him.

As reported by IndieWire (via The Independent), Jackson was speaking to Stephen Colbert and was asked to pick his favorite scene. While there are many iconic choices, it wasn’t Helm’s Deep, it wasn’t Sam helping Frodo climb Mount Doom, but it was Gollum’s monologue where he was having a conversation with himself as Sméagol from The Two Towers.

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“We were shooting ‘Two Towers’ and it was introducing Gollum,” Jackson said. “A key thing with Gollum is that most people know he’s Sméagol and he’s Gollum, it’s like a split. But we hadn’t got a scene where you really got the idea of it…‘This guy is two people.’ So we knew that we needed it but we had no time to shoot it.”

Jackson was busy with other parts of production at the time, and had asked his co-writer and co-producer Fran Walsh to create this scene where the two halves of Gollum were interacting with each other. Not only did Walsh write the scene, she also went on to direct it.

“Fran wrote a scene where Sam and Frodo are asleep, so they can be just lumps in the bed, we don’t even have to have Elijah [Wood] and Sean [Astin],” Jackson said. “We didn’t have anyone to direct it, so I said to Fran, ‘You wrote it, you should shoot it.’ So she went in for a day and she wrote and directed a scene which has become pretty famous now.”

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Jackson was out helping promote the 4K released of both The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit, both of which we included in our Best Gifts for Movie Lovers for 2020.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.