Month: August 2021

Pokemon Unite is a simplified MOBA, but a MOBA nonetheless. That means a lot of its high-level play is based around making strong character builds that have subtle differences from one another and counters to each other. Top players are already starting to come up with best practices for the gear loadouts and moves, but if you’re venturing out on your own, there are some rules of thumb you can use to optimize your character build.

In general, to make a decent Pokemon Unite build starts by envisioning your role in a typical game. At a high level that starts with your Pokemon’s class, like Attacker or All-Rounder. That will help determine the type of team role you’ll be fulfilling, and that helps the other parts fall into place. If you choose a Defender, for example, you’ll be far more effective if you build everything–from your move selections to your gear–around defense.

With that in mind, here’s how to make your best build. For more, check out our full list of Pokemon Unite guides, including detailed class breakdowns.

Choose Your Role

The most basic starting point is laid out for you in the game itself. There are five class types in Pokemon Unite:

• Attacker – strong Pokemon that specialize in offensive capabilities to defeat opponents
• Defender – hearty Pokemon that specialize in zone control and blocking
• All-Rounder – versatile Pokemon can switch tasks as needed in battle
• Speedster – quick Pokemon that specialize in reaching contested map points fast
• Supporter – helpful Pokemon that specialize in healing teammates or disrupting enemies

Each Pokemon also has one of two combat types, Melee or Ranged. That makes for ten total possible combinations, like Ranged Attacker or Melee Defender, though some classes do not have both combat options. For example, there are currently no Melee Attackers, Ranged Speedsters, or Ranged All-Rounders in the game.

Choosing your role will be the single most influential decision in determining how you’ll approach a typical match, and you’ll get a pretty wide selection for free as a newcomer. If you choose a Defender, for example, you should go into matches assuming you’ll spend most of your time keeping opponents from scoring on your own goals, or denying your opponents easy movement when tussling with your teammates.

Even within a role, though, there are subtleties that will make them play differently. For that, you’ll probably have to spend some time with your chosen Pokemon to get a feel for how they’ll play. A Ranged Defender like Slowbro is going to play very differently than a Melee Defender like Snorlax.

Prep Your Moves

Once you’ve picked your role, you’ll want to plan out your moves. Each Pokemon will get two choices during combat from a branching path of two moves. To see those, you can check the Progression tab from the Pokemon menu. These are oriented by direction, so with a little foresight and practice, you’ll be able to learn which direction to hit when the upgrade option arrives. For example, if you know you want Cinderace to learn Blaze Kick and then Flame Charge, you’ll know to press Right and then Left on the D-pad when those two options appear.

Knowing your moves will also help you know how long to stay in the jungle. “Jungling” is a MOBA mainstay practice of taking down low-level AI enemies for experience (and in Pokemon Unite’s case, some points). Some Pokemon level up faster than others, so if your Pokemon doesn’t reach its combat potential until it’s further leveled, you may need to hang out in the jungle picking off enemies, or stick close to your teammates for that much longer.

Attack vs Special Attack

Each Pokemon falls into one of two attack types: Physical or Special. It’s important to know which kind your Pokemon uses, because that will impact your build significantly. According to Serebii, the current roster includes:

Physical:	Special:
Absol Charizard Cinderace Crustle Garchomp Greninja Lucario Machamp Snorlax Talonflame Zeraora	Alolan Ninetails Cramorant Eldegoss Gardevoir Gengar Mr. Mime Pikachu Slowbrow Venusaur Wigglytuff

Equipping Your Gear

You can equip Held Items in the Battle Prep section during the countdown before each match, but we highly recommend equipping your builds from the main menu instead, where there is no countdown timer. To find it, press X from the main menu, and then go to Battle Prep and then Held Items. Your Favorite Pokemon will be highlighted by default, but you can swap by pressing X once you’re looking at the gear.

This is where you can equip items, and it’s where all the knowledge above comes into play. Your chosen combat role will determine what kind of gear is best, and your Pokemon’s attack type will make the difference to which kinds of stats need a boost. Lucario, for example, is a Melee All-Rounder. It will naturally benefit from gear that boosts attack, but you need to make sure those buffs are to its physical attack with gear like the Muscle Band. Meanwhile, Support Pokemon that don’t get into direct combat will benefit more from an item like EXP Share. Play with different ideas.

This Battle Prep screen is also where you can level up your gear using earned Aeos Tickets. This has been criticized as pay-to-win, but don’t worry about buffing all of your equipment slots to level 30 right away. Giving them any kind of boost is helpful, and the bigger stat changes tend to come at the start of the upgrade path.

Consult the Experts

If you’re truly stumped about what kinds of builds to create, you have options. One of the world’s top players has already outlined recommended builds for each Pokemon available in the game. You can also find Example Sets in the Held Items tab by pressing Y when you’ve highlighted the items. These recommendations include two sets created by the developers and three more generated from worldwide Master players of each Pokemon. The nice thing about the developer-created builds is that they’re recommended for different priorities like Offense or Scoring, so that will help further guide your targeted playstyle.

While players have been shooting up bots and swinging around maps during Halo Infinite’s technical preview, some have noticed an odd detail. Homes in the future are either being built for Lady Dimitrescu-sized people or Spartans are getting shorter.

A screenshot of the ongoing Halo Infinite beta taken by GamesRadar’s Leon Hurley shows just how wonky the game’s scaling is. In it, a Spartan stands right next to a door, which you’d expect them to basically scrape their head against. Instead, the armored super-warrior looks like a middle schooler, standing with their chest at the doorknob. That’s a little odd taking into account that Spartans are, on average, around seven feet tall.

Of course, the door being so tall, along with most rooms in Halo Infinite‘s beta being so large, was likely done to make players feel more comfortable. With a more fluid movement system, indoor environments have to be larger to accommodate more players running and jumping around a room. It certainly wouldn’t be fun if players could only jump half a foot before banging their head on the ceiling.

Since this is just a beta (technically not even a beta), it’s also possible that Halo Infinite’s scaling could change by the time it launches. The game is currently set to launch this holiday season, but a solid date has not been announced yet. It’s unlikely to be delayed again though, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer saying that Halo Infinite’s release window has been narrowed down to just “a few weeks.”

There’s no such thing as a perfect video game, but Tetris comes pretty darn close. The puzzle classic has been going strong for decades and remains just as fun now as it was in the ’80s, which makes it the perfect choice for a new strategy board game. You can get it now at Target, and it won’t break the bank, either.

Created by Buffalo Games, the Tetris “head-to-head multiplayer strategy game” is available exclusively at Target and only costs $20. It’s designed for 2-4 players to complete in about half an hour, and just like in the video game, you’ll earn points when you complete lines on the vertical board. Pieces slot into a piece of plastic so they can fit into spaces as they would in the original game, and you’ll need to pay attention to the upcoming piece to plan your next move.

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It is a little bit different from standard Tetris, however, as there are special achievement cards you can try to complete, and there are bonus icons on the board that correspond to certain pieces, giving you extra points if you match them. A little piece called a “Mino” can also be placed in single squares.

Designer Phil Walker-Harding is also responsible for games like Sushi Go! and Silver & Gold, and though his take on Tetris may not be a 1:1 recreation, it certainly seems like it will add some strategy to make it more interesting for multiple people.

Once again, rumors have suggested that Halo Infinite could get a battle royale mode–but don’t get too excited (or upset) just yet. This latest rumor is far from confirmed, but it’s exciting to think about in any case.

According to reports, a datamining effort from the Halo Infinite multiplayer preview has revealed a voice line from multiplayer announcer Jeff Steitzer where he can be heard saying “battle royale.” This appears to stem from the same or a similar datamine that revealed story spoilers for Infinite’s campaign.

Posted on ResetEra, the voice file has Steitzer–or someone who sounds just like him–saying “battle royale.” Following the theory, this is the announcement players might hear at the start of a battle royale match in Halo Infinite, not unlike how Steitzer says “Slayer” at the start of a game.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that Halo Infinite will find its way into the battle royale space in some capacity. First and foremost, developer 343 Industries has repeatedly shot down rumors of Halo Infinite having a battle royale mode. That said, the studio also distanced itself from reports of a grappling hook coming to Halo Infinite, but it did, and people are loving it.

In 2019, Halo franchise boss Frank O’Connor said it is not true that Halo Infinite will launch with a battle royale mode, though he did not rule it out that it could come later on.

Brad Sams, who has accurately reported on many unannounced Xbox endeavors, may be accurate in stating Microsoft has done some work on a Halo battle royale game. Game development is highly iterative. So it might be possible that 343 experimented with battle royale and decided not to pursue it further. Given the enduring appeal of the battle royale genre, it makes sense that Microsoft would at least consider a battle royale mode for Halo Infinite.

It’s also possible the “battle royale” voice line is an unused audio asset that 343’s audio team asked Steitzer to say to cover their bases should the studio ever want to put a battle royale mode in the game. Additionally, Steitzer has a public Cameo page where people can ask him to say anything, so in theory, someone could have paid him to say “battle royale” and then posted it online.

We don’t know for sure. As of publish time, it doesn’t appear that 343 has responded to this latest rumor about Halo Infinite and battle royale. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

For more on Halo Infinite and battle royale, check out GameSpot’s rundown of all the rumors and possibilities of what could happen.

The Halo Infinite technical multiplayer preview is available now for Halo Insider members who were chosen for the test–and already, they are competing for high scores in The Academy. The preview wraps up later today, August 2, but there will be additional trial periods coming up later, so if you didn’t get into this first one, you might receive an invite next time.

Halo Infinite launches this holiday for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The multiplayer is free-to-play, while the campaign is included with Xbox Game Pass. Beware that some story spoilers have begun to leak.

Star Trek Starships: 2294-The Future – Updated and Expanded offers an unprecedented and impressively detailed look at Star Trek’s Starfleet starships, and IGN can exclusively reveal its first look and that it will be available on August 17, 2021.

This new updated and expanded version of Star Trek Starships: 2294-The Future, which first released in 2018, includes 70 pages of fresh reference imagery from starships featured in season three of Star Trek: Discovery and season one of Star Trek: Picard.

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Edited by Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley, this encyclopedia of Starfleet ships presents a chronological history of Star Trek starships from the 24th century to the far future, including the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation, U.S.S. Voyager from Star Trek: Voyager, and Starfleet’s first true warship – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s U.S.S. Defiant.

The hardcover book also features some of Star Trek’s time-travelling ships like Star Trek: Enterprise’s U.S.S. Enterprise-J, Star Trek: Discovery’s U.S.S. Discovery-A, and the Eisenberg-class ship – Star Trek: Discovery’s U.S.S. Nog.

All of the previously mentioned ships and all others are illustrated with CG artwork and include the original VFX models crafted for each of their shows.

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Priced at $34.95 in the U.S. and $44.95 in Canada, Star Trek Starships: 2294-The Future – Updated and Expanded is available for pre-order now from EagleMoss ahead of its official release later this month.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

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

Apex Legends Season 10: Emergence begins August 3, introducing playable character Seer. Of Seer’s three abilities, his passive ability, Heart Seeker, seems especially valuable as it allows him to track enemy legends through the sound of their heartbeats. Of course, not all of the playable legends are human–Pathfinder is a MRVN and Revenant is a simulacrum–so a few of the characters in Apex Legends don’t actually have hearts. Don’t worry: Seer can sense them too.

“Seer’s passive Heart Seeker ability does work on Pathfinder and Revenant,” software engineer Travis Nordin told GameSpot. “During development, the issue definitely came up! Do we have an alternate sound for non-human legends? Do we have it not work at all? In the end we settled on having the same sound as everyone else for clarity of gameplay. The sound isn’t quite a literal heartbeat and is somewhat synthesized so I think it works. The comparison I’ve been using is that we suspend our disbelief/bend the rules for Pathfinder being able to ‘heal’ by injecting a syringe into his arm–the same can apply here.”

Heart Seeker seems to be a powerful tracking ability–you only get to hear the sounds of heartbeats up to a certain distance but there is no limit on distance when it comes to seeing the heartbeats. So for all those moments you’re trying to discern whether a far-off target is an enemy player or a floating flower petal (if you’ve played on World’s Edge, you know what I’m talking about), you can use Seer’s Heart Seeker to see whether that far-off target has a heartbeat.

“The range for hearing the heartbeats of any enemies within your viewport is 75m,” Nordin said. “The UI element will still work beyond that, but only for targets that you have a direct line of sight to–we wanted to avoid the situation where you’re looking right at someone far away and have the heartbeat sensor UI do nothing. We have some subtle VFX that turns on when you activate the heartbeat sensor as well as an overlay for the ‘vision cone’ on the minimap to help players get a feel for the range in the world.”

In trailers, we’ve only seen Seer use his passive amidst small groups but anyone who plays Apex Legends can tell you that some areas of each map can become chokepoints, forcing half a dozen squads into a major firefight. Respawn planned for that, limiting the scope of Seer’s passive ability so that it won’t overwhelm you with information when you’re surrounded by dozens of heartbeats.

​​”The heartbeat sensor can track up to 10 targets, but we only play the actual audio event for the enemy that is closest to your crosshair,” Nordin said. “During development, it wasn’t always this way but we found that hearing multiple heartbeat sounds at the same time ended up just creating too much noise to parse.”

Nordin added that the UI element to the heartbeat sensor that appears on your crosshair won’t always be there. “[The crosshair] is obviously a very important piece of real estate on the screen, so the UI will fade out as you fire your weapon and dims if there are no targets nearby,” Nordin said. “The goal was for it to feel useful, while at the same time not getting in the way during combat. The UI has pips that rise and fall in the direction of an enemy with the rhythm of the heartbeat sound for an enemy.”

According to Nordin, the lower an enemy’s health, the faster their heart will beat. This is important to note if you’re looking to pair Heart Seeker with Seer’s tactical ability, Focus of Attention, which tracks enemy legends for eight seconds and temporarily stuns them, stopping healing items and certain character abilities.

“With their tactical, [Bloodhound] has this very wide scan,” Nordin said. “You just tag a whole POI and see who’s there, whereas Seer is much more close and intimate. The primary case that I always think: You’re in a building and you hear some footsteps, and you’re like, ‘Is that my teammate? Or is that another squad?’ So you just aim down sights, bringing up the heartbeat sensor, and look around to see if you get a reading. And then, if you do, you can follow up with [Focus of Attention] to hopefully tag them.”

Seer is Apex Legends’ fifth recon character (alongside Pathfinder, Bloodhound, Crypto, and Valkyrie), making him geared towards information gathering and enemy tracking. Like all new legends, you’ll be able to unlock him by spending 12,000 Legend Tokens or 750 Apex Coins.

Apex Legends Season 10, titled Emergence, is about to start. That means the battle royale game is getting its tenth battle pass. In Apex Legends, every subsequent battle pass replaces the one before it and the old battle passes have never returned, a pattern that Respawn isn’t planning on changing (for now anyway).

“We’re always trying to make the content in the battle pass extra special for our players and currently have no plans to bring anything back, but it’s something we might be open to down the road to celebrate past seasons,” Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier told GameSpot.

So unlike the cosmetics initially tied to events that now repeatedly pop back into the game for short spurts of limited time, like Wraith’s Legendary Voidwalker skin and Bloodhound’s Legendary Youngblood skin, it looks as if the rewards tied to individual battle passes are going to stay that way for the forseeable future.

It’s worth noting, most free-to-play games with seasonal battle passes follow the same model that Apex Legends does, only keeping each battle pass in the game for a limited time. That said, it will be interesting to see if studios decide to change the course based on the reaction to Halo Infinite, as developer 343 Industries has revealed that Halo Infinite’s battle passes won’t expire to prevent players from feeling like they need to grind.

Apex Legends’ battle passes traditionally reward players with unique loading screens, intro and kill quips, skydive emotes, banner poses, stat trackers, weapon charms, Crafting Metals, Apex Coins, Apex Packs, weapon and character skins, and badges.

The notable rewards for each battle pass can only be unlocked via its paid premium track. Since the start of Year 2 with Season 4: Assimilation, the biggest four rewards have been unlocked at levels 25, 50, 100, and 110. Those rewards are two Legendary character skins, one tied to level 25 and the other to 50, and two reactive Legendary weapon skins, with the first unlocked at level 100 and a recolor of the first at 110.

For Emergence, the two Legendary character skins in the battle pass are for Horizon and Valkyrie. The reactive Legendary weapon skins are for the Volt SMG.

The developers behind several fan-favorite Devolver Digital games have joined forces to take a shot at gaming in meatspace.

Dustbiters is a two-player card game about gangs of Mad Max-style road warriors duking it out as they race to avoid being swallowed by a massive dust storm. The development team includes Jan Willem Nijman (MINIT, Nuclear Throne), Robbie Fraser (Broforce, Genital Jousting), and Terri Vellmann (SLUDGE LIFE, Disc Room) is working with iam8bit to publish the game, which launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter this morning.

You can check out an overview of the project and how the game plays in the video above, plus some samples from the deck in the gallery below.

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We received a prototype of Dustbiters and found it really lives up to its “light on rules but deep in strategy” marketing. The objective is simple: clear your opponent’s car cards from the board before they do the same to you. Each player starts with four cars in a convoy barreling away from a looming dust storm (you’ll have to use your imagination for that) which destroys the last car in the convoy at the end of every turn.

The deck consists of 21 unique cards, each hand-drawn in a grungy, back-of-your-metalhead-friend’s-8th-grade-science-notebook style that fits well with the absurdist mechanical take on these apocalyptic war machines. Each car – well, okay, technically it’s 20 cars and one horse – has its own special ability, like destroying or changing the position of another vehicle in the convoy, with some having more outlandish powers like the ability to teleport or mind control other drivers.

It definitely takes a few rounds to familiarize yourself with the rules (simple as they are) to get a good flow going, and we did run into some edge-case scenarios that called for us to make our own rulings – for example, what happens when the Mind Manipulator controls the enemy team’s Hijacker car, who’s ability normally takes control of an opposing vehicle? Would they still hijack a car on the Manipulator’s team, or one on their own? Who controls the hijacker after that? – but the raw mechanics were easy enough to pick up, and our initial sessions were still some good fast-paced fun (especially when we threw on the Fury Road soundtrack in the background).

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“We’ve been tuning up Dustbiters over the last five years to avoid a mechanically complicated setup without closing off strategic lanes, and the wide range of options players have throughout any given match is super exciting,” said Nijman in a recent press release.

“Dustbiters has all the hallmarks of a great card game: fantastic art, easy-to-learn gameplay that is endlessly replayable, with surprisingly deep strategy and a killer premise,” added Amanda White and Jon M Gibson, co-owners of iam8bit – which made the leap into publishing games in 2020. “We’re thrilled to be part of this project, and we’re certain that fans of the upcoming apocalypse will love it, too.”

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JR is a Senior Producer at IGN and now has a really bad itch to watch The Road Warrior. He’ll also tell you to play the Mad Max game on Twitter.

When it comes to choosing the right gaming headset, it’s hard to go wrong with a Turtle Beach branded peripheral. Years of experience has resulted in it becoming one of the more reliable third-party companies in terms of quality. 

This is evident in its latest effort, the Recon 500 headset. This midrange wired gaming headset is durable, easy on the ears, and is bundled with an excellent mic. As a midrange unit – sitting somewhere between the Corsair HS35 and Asus ROG Delta S, both of which are featured on our Best Gaming Headset list – the Recon 500 is one of the better options for economically priced headsets.  

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Turtle Beach Recon 500 – Design and Features

The Recon 500 is built to be sturdy, yet comfortable to wear. The headset’s metal-reinforced headband had a tight squeeze on my head. Though adjustable, the amount of pressure being applied could cause some discomfort if not for the super-soft ear cushions. Turtle Beach knows how to properly utilize memory foam; regardless of how long I wore the headset, my sensitive ears always felt fine.

The inner workings of each earcup goes beyond comfort, as enhanced acoustics and new 60mm dual drivers provide a solid audio-based experience. A wood pulp composite enriches natural sounds while the drivers separate high and low frequencies, improving overall detail. Gun fire, explosions, the revving of engines – everything sounded great during play.

When it comes to external functions, The Recon 500 is a bit barebones. The left earcup houses the microphone jack, master volume dial and a big microphone mute button. All work as intended. A few extra dials would have been nice but ultimately aren’t needed; a separate volume wheel to adjust the chat volume separately of a game’s audio isn’t required on the Xbox One and Series X/S for instance.

The Recon 500’s TruSpeak detachable mic features noise cancellation software. It can be rather stiff, only bending a little towards or away from one’s face. That said, the mic did a great job of delivering clear audio to teammates, regardless of whatever was going on in the background at the time. This was true in most cases thanks to the headset’s wired connection. Being able to connect via a standard 3.5mm audio port made the Recon 500 compatible with the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices. There weren’t any latency issues that one might experience with a wireless mic regardless of platform.

Turtles Beach Recon 500 – Performance  

The Recon 500 performed well. Using it with multiple consoles, I was able to communicate with my friends easily. The virtual surround sound options – Windows Sonic and 3D audio/Tempest for the Xbox X/S, PS4, and PS5 – allowed me to better pinpoint my rivals in games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Of course, the base use of surround sound software isn’t tied to the Recon 500. Any headset can utilize this sort of thing. The Recon 500’s other audio boons combined with this type of software to make for a great audio experience.

It’s worth noting: my consoles defaulted to these virtual surround sound options, and it’s possible to switch between the different headset audio variants on each console by going through their respective sound settings. For Xbox, you can switch between Windows Sonic, DTS, and Dolby Atmos for Headphones. I didn’t hear a big difference between them. The Recon 500 didn’t seem to have built-in Dolby Atmos support, for instance, so it sounded more or less the same as Windows Sonic.

With the PS4/PS5 (after selecting 3D audio), you’ll be able to alter the audio profile to adjust the position of sounds. You’d change this setting based on how your ears hear location-based audio. The Nintendo Switch doesn’t have these options, only TV-based surround sound, stereo and mono.

Connecting the Recon 500 to various devices is simple. Just plug its cord into the 3.5mm audio ports located on your console’s controller or directly into the Switch. You’ll need an adapter if using an older Xbox One controller or a splitter cable for PCs that use separate green and pink (headset and mic) audio ports. Once connected though, you’re good to go. No further adjustments are needed.

While most of my time with the Recon 500 was pleasant, I did notice a minor console-based issue. The headset worked great with my Xbox Series X as it offered the ability to change the chat and game volumes separately. Because the Recon 500 plugs directly into my controller, the Series X gave me access to this slider within the sound settings menu. This allowed me to tone down the explosions in favor of hearing my friends call out enemy positions. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is missing when playing on PS4 and PS5.

The only options given on Sony’s consoles is whether or not I wanted to hear all audio (chat and game) or just chat. There’s no slider to adjust how much of either sound is more or less prevalent. Thankfully, the default setting seemed to balance them both well, but some games are louder than others. Depending on what’s being played, not being able to fine-tune the audio coming through the headset could be problematic.

To be fair, this issue isn’t solely tied to the Recon 500. Xbox consoles share a similar problem when using wireless mics; for some reason, Microsoft’s consoles remove the option to adjust the chat and game audio if you don’t plug your headset directly into them. Unless the mic in question has a button or wheel that adjusts chat and game separately, like the Audeze Penrose X, then you’re stuck. This is why I previously made mention of the missing external functions. If the Recon 500 had a sound wheel that adjusted these settings on its own, then it would circumvent this issue on both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles. As of right now, it just happens to work better on Xbox.