Author: Trafficblast

One of Microsoft’s strengths when it comes to Xbox One is its commitment to backwards compatibility. New backwards compatible games are being added all the time. As with the latest bunch–GRID, Sensible World of Soccer, and Fable Heroes–these are routinely announced by Major Nelson on Twitter at 9 AM PT on Twitter, although there’s no particular schedule for how many are released (if any) on a given day.

Even in lieu of any specific schedule for new additions, the past few years have seen the list of backwards compatible games grow quite long, and it can be extremely difficult to find those that are worthwhile. Not only are there 400+ Xbox 360 games that can be played on Xbox One, but more than 30+ original Xbox titles are also supported.

Beyond the consistent rollout of games, Microsoft has publicly made it clear that backwards compatibility is a real priority for the company. “I see games as an art form,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said last year. “Console games can get lost when hardware generations go away. It can become more challenging to play the games of our past … There’s something to be learned from experiencing what I played as a kid. There’s good business there for the content owners, but as players, it’s nice to be able to understand how our art form has progressed.”

Spencer subsequently made it clear that backwards compatibility is–despite reports suggesting it’s ignored–a feature that people do use. He wrote off data that said otherwise and pointed to an example of strong sales for an old Call of Duty game when it was added to the service: “I think the best signal we had so far is when Black Ops II landed and that month it hit NPD’s Top 10 that month for game sales. An Xbox 360 game that’s years old, that shows that people care.”

The feature has only gotten better with the release of the Xbox One X, as it offers much sharper visuals in these old games; some even have specific enhancements on top of a resolution increase. But whether you play on an X, an Xbox One S, or even the standard Xbox One, you’re treated to a feature that is currently unmatched by both PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

While not providing access to everything available on Xbox 360 and the original Xbox, the supported backwards compatible games from the two include classics ranging from expansive RPGs and thrilling adventures to XBLA gems and old arcade games refined for the big screen. Among these are all-time greats like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Mass Effect Trilogy, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to name a few. But if you want a challenge that’s faster to jump into, the likes of Ikaruga or Super Meat Boy will do the trick.

To help you parse through the giant list of supported games, we’ve compiled a list of our personal favorites to highlight which backwards compatible titles are worth your time. If you want to pick something out yourself, you can peruse the entire list of Xbox One backwards compatible games. Which Xbox One backwards compatible games do you love the most? Are there any games would you like to be added in the future? Let us know in the comments below.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is bringing back an enormous roster of previous Smash characters along with a handful of new additions, and some are getting the Amiibo treatment. Ridley, Samus’ arch-nemesis, is getting one of his own, along with the new Inkling and Daisy. Apparently they’re bringing friends.

The Japanese Nintendo site (via Nintendo Everything) confirmed that the company is planning Amiibo for other returning fighters. Specifically, they’ve named Ice Climbers from the game of the same name and Pichu from Pokemon, though there may be others in the works as well.

That’s not to say that the entire roster will necessarily be represented. There are already 66 confirmed characters and likely at least another few on the way. Producing all new Amiibo for all of them would be a daunting task. That said, we may see some new sculpts and poses for some of the more popular characters.

Smash Bros. Ultimate will feature every character to ever appear in a Smash Bros. game, even if they were added later as DLC. That includes the classic roster of 12 mainstays like Mario and Link, more recent third-party additions like Bayonetta and Solid Snake, and even more obscure one-timers like Palutena from Kid Icarus.

NBA 2K19 will feature its first international star on the cover of the standard version. Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, who earned the nickname “the Greek Freak” for his country of origin and his preternatural basketball skills, will be this year’s standard featured player. Pre-ordering the standard edition also gets his Sapphire MyTeam card, 10 more MyTeam packs, and 5,000 in virtual currency.

Antetokounmpo was the first player to finish in the top 20 for total points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. He also quickly earned honors like All-Rookie Second Team, NBA All-Defensive Second Team, All-NBA Second Team, and Most Improved Player. Similar to the 20th Anniversary cover featuring LeBron James, the cover sports phrases that are significant to Antetokounmpo’s life, like “Father’s Legacy,” “Athens,” and “Phenom.”

“I am honored to be the first international player featured on the cover of NBA 2K19,” said Antetokounmpo. “I love playing NBA 2K so this means a lot to me. I have worked hard to earn recognition in the NBA and being on the cover of NBA 2K19 is a dream come true.”

NBA 2K19 will be available September 11 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The 20th Anniversary Edition will launch a few days earlier, on September 7. You can download “The Prelude” starting on August 31 for PS4 and Xbox One, to get a jump on the MyCareer mode. Check out our pre-order guide for all the details.

Hitman is a game that offers immense freedom within its episodic sandbox levels; you’re presented with a target to take out, and for the most part, you’re free to use your environment to your advantage in any way you see fit to execute your mission. But what happens when we give Hitman the Potato Mode treatment? A mess, that’s what.

In the video above, Joey and Jean-Luc take us to France and Italy, which have never looked worse. In Paris, Agent 47 must infiltrate a fashion show to take out a target. As we sink the graphics, things get considerably weirder as faces disappear, backgrounds turn to blobs, and objects morph into textureless white shapes. Be sure to check out the horrifying buffet, too. It’s nothing compared to Agent 47’s trip to Potato Mode Italy, which ends with a particularly comical death by a spaghetti can.

If you haven’t already, you should really play Hitman in its intact form. In GameSpot’s 2016 review of Hitman, Brett Todd called it a “brilliant game,” praising its massive levels, huge replay value, scalable difficulty levels, and “nearly limitless possibilities for how to stage–and then pull off–assassinations.” While the game took a while to get going (thanks to it being divided into six episodes and slowly being released over time), Brett gave this “globe-trotting delight” a 8/10. The game was repackaged earlier this year in the Hitman: Definitive Edition, which includes all of the episodes at once.

Now, Hitman 2 is on its way. It will release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 13, and pre-orders are already live. The game is a continuation of Agent 47’s adventures from 2016’s Hitman, taking him to the rainforest and a Miami motorsport track during a big race, but developer IO Interactive says this game will not be episodic like the previous entry.

While it’s been two years since American fans watched the Season 1 finale of Robert Kirkman’s Outcast, it won’t be long before they’ll be treated to more. On July 20, Outcast will finally return to Cinemax, though these new episodes already aired in the UK last year.

When Season 1 of Outcast came to a close, Kyle (Patrick Fugit) had finally escaped the small town of Rome, West Virginia with his daughter Amber (Madeleine McGraw), set on finding a new home where people didn’t know about their supernatural connections. Meanwhile, Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister) believed he was killing mysterious preacher Sidney (Brent Spiner) by setting fire to his trailer, only to learn it was another poor soul that suffered from the consequences.

Now, with the show returning, it’s time for the characters to own up to the decisions they made last season. “I think some of the most exciting stuff that I was looking at where we were getting into season two is seeing the fallout of the decisions made at the end of season one,” Fugit says in a group interview. “There’s some stuff that’s extreme decisions, good ones, bad ones, really bad ones. And then horrible accidents and stuff like that. So season two is trying to get back to level, trying to get everybody back to where they can fight the darkness and that sort of thing. So there’s a lot of consequence that has to be dealt with.”

The fallout from those decisions will bring two characters back to a very familiar setting, as Kyle and Amber both return to Rome in the Season 2 premiere. “At the end of the season, you start to realize, as Amber and Kyle try to bail out, that this possession phenomenon is much more broad spread than Kyle would’ve thought,” the actor teases. “And so obviously he goes back to Rome, because he’s like, ‘Well, leaving town isn’t going to work…'”

According to Fugit, that small town is paramount to executive producer Robert Kirkman’s idea of the series and the comic book it’s based on. “Robert’s always liked the idea that this takes place in Rome, West Virginia, that we’re not cutting to the Vatican having some expert exorcists flying to America to investigate this stuff,” he explains. “I think he likes the idea that it’s a large scale but a small town. And that sort of thing. And so all the evolution of the characters and everything happens in Rome.”

As for what the evolution of Rome will look like after Season 2, that remains unknown. While a third season of Outcast has not been ordered at this point, Kirkman does have in mind how he wants the story to end–unlike his TV adaptation of The Walking Dead. “It’s not gonna go on, as many seasons [as The Walking Dead]. But that’s by design; like this is a story that has a beginning, middle, and an end,” Kirkman says. “I knew the ending of the story before I started the first issue before I started the pilot, and we’ve been working towards that, every minute along the way and so it’s just a much more contained story. It’s not a sprawling zombie epic and crazy apocalyptic world.”

Outcast Season 2 premieres Friday, July 20, at 10 PM on Cinemax.

While Marvel is known for being highly secretive when it comes to its storylines, lately this has extended to its plans for future movies. The fourth Avengers film is less than a year from release and its title is still to be officially announced. However, a possible name has now emerged, via the movie’s cinematographer.

The title Avengers: End Game appeared on a list of credits on the website of Trent Opaloch. Opaloch has served as Director of Photography on several Marvel movies, including Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. The credit has since been changed to Avengers 4, but you can check out a screengrab of the original page over at Omega Underground.

The term “end game” actually appears in Infinity War, when Doctor Strange tells Iron Man, “we’re in the end game now.” However, as Comicbook.com points out, co-director Joe Russo had previously denied that the title will be a line of dialogue from Infinity War. Either way, Marvel has, unsurprisingly, not commented on the story.

This isn’t the first time a someone involved with Avengers 4 has seemingly leaked the title. Back in April 2017, Guardians of the Galaxy star Zoe Saldana called the movie Gauntlet during an interview, which is presumably a reference to the Infinity Gauntlet. And of course, the Russo brothers are known for trying misdirect fans from finding out too much about their movies, as shown by the various tricks they used in the Infinity War trailers.

In related news, we do at least know the title of the Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel, which is released shortly after Avengers 4. Last week, Tom Holland “accidentally” revealed that it would be named Spider-Man: Far From Home. It hits theaters on July 5, 2019.

Fortnite developer Epic has provided another update on the status of the delayed Playground mode. The limited-time game mode was originally scheduled to launch alongside Fortnite’s 4.5 update last week, but it appears there are still a few issues that need to be ironed out before it can be implemented in the live game.

In a post on Reddit, Epic explained that its work on the mode is progressing well, but there remain a few “data anomalies” that need to be resolved. “We have some system performance goals that we believe are required in order to relaunch the Playground LTM,” the developer wrote. “We’ve continued working towards these goals over the weekend and our most recent load tests look promising, but there are some anomalies in the data that we still need to understand.”

The developer also says that it needs to conduct further tests to ensure Playground mode is in a state that can be released. Specifically, Epic says it needs to test how the mode fares in certain scenarios, such as when server capacity has been exhausted, before it can be added to the rotation.

“It’s hard to know whether we’ll have to make any additional system changes in order to meet our test goals right now,” Epic wrote. “We won’t know that for sure until after we complete our current testing phase, which will be done in a few hours. Once this phase has completed we will know more about where we stand and be able to provide a status update. The team is hard at work and we’ll let you know when we have anything else that we can share.”

As previously mentioned, Epic intended to launch Playground mode alongside Fortnite’s 4.5 patch last Wednesday; however, shortly after the mode went live, it was pulled from the rotation due to technical issues, and it has remained unavailable since. According to Epic, the mode is now slated to launch sometime this week.

Unlike previous limited-time game modes in Fortnite, Playground mode is a “low-pressure environment” that acts much like a private server. Players can freely explore the map and devise strategies with their friends in Playground without having to worry about being eliminated by other players.

Season 5 of Fortnite: Battle Royale is scheduled to begin this month, on July 12. Ahead of the new season, players began noticing some ominous warning signs in the game, including a countdown clock that culminated in the launch of a rocket this past weekend. The launch resulted in a number of a mysterious cracks appearing in the sky over the island, with additional rifts opening up over the map in the days that followed.

PC and Xbox One owners have a chance to play Rocket League for free this weekend. Between Thursday, July 5 and Monday, July 9, you can download the game on Steam or Xbox One without paying a cent. The free version includes all game modes, playlists, features, and arenas. The one caveat is that Xbox One owners will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play.

To encourage players to buy the game, Rocket League and select DLC will be available for 50% off on Steam and Xbox One starting this weekend and running through July 9. That brings the core game down to $10.

• Free Weekend Start Time: Thursday, July 5 at 10am PDT (1pm EDT, 7pm CEST)
• Free Weekend End Time: Monday, July 9 at 10am PDT (1pm EDT, 7pm CEST)

Rocket League is a team-based online competitive game that’s basically indoor soccer with cars. That might sound like it would be a clunky game to play, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll probably find that it’s surprisingly nuanced and highly competitive.

From GameSpot’s 9/10 Rocket League review: “The joy of Rocket League rests on the countless plans that are conceived and discarded every other second in any given match. Trying to predict where and how the ball will bounce next is a game within the game. Despite the use of cars, Rocket League emulates the emotional surges typical of The Beautiful Game, such as the rush of an unexpected fast break or a well-timed header into a goal. With Rocket League, the promising concept of combining two wonderful things–cars and soccer–is equally magnificent in execution.”

Last year the game came out on Nintendo Switch, where it remains very good. Rocket League developer Psyonix announced earlier this year that Rocket League had passed 40 million players.

While horror movies have never really gone out of style, their popularity has never been higher than it is right now. 2017 saw the release of the most successful horror movie of all time–the blockbuster Stephen King adaptation It–while the Oscar-winning satire Get Out was the year’s most profitable movie in terms of the budget to box office ratio.

This year has already had one massive horror hit in the shape of A Quiet Place, with a worldwide gross of $214 million to date, and a sequel is already in the works. In all, it’s a great time to be a horror fan, and there are plenty more terrifying treats to follow over the rest of 2018.

So from serial killers and demonics nuns to ghosts, ghouls, and witches, here’s a look at the must-see chillers heading our way over the next eight months…