Author: Trafficblast

A new title update for Mario Kart Live on Nintendo Switch has added some more features to the game–a nice surprise for those who may have picked the game up at a discount during the Prime Day sales we saw in June.

As revealed in patch notes on Nintendo’s website, Mario Kart Live now includes the Mario Cup event in the Grand Prix, and completing certain challenges in the cup will reward you with an extra gate and three more environments. Those, according to VGC, are the Donkey Kong-themed Barrel Temple, the oily Slip Circuit, and the rocky Fossil Field.

The Super Yoshi and Yoshi Horn items have also been added, and require you to complete certain challenges in the Mario Cup, as well.

The last update for Mario Kart Live arrived all the way back in October, and it adjusted some settings on the physical kart’s camera to make it work better in indoor areas with direct sunlight or bright lights. Mario Kart Live requires the use of physical gates that the camera can identity in order to make sure you’re staying on the “track,” with both virtual hazards and whatever real-world obstacles you place standing in your way.

The Mario Kart Live software is actually free to download from the Nintendo eShop. However, it’s useless without the physical components.

Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games who played a central role in the GTA and Red Dead franchises, is apparently setting the stage to create some kind of new company. After leaving Rockstar in 2020, Houser appears to be starting some kind of new company called Absurd Ventures in Games. The UK’s registrar of companies said in a filing (via VGC) that Absurd Ventures in Games will work in the area of “ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development.”

Absurd Ventures LLC and Absurd Ventures in Games LLC companies have also been registered in the United States, dating back to February. In any case, it sounds like it’s early days for Houser’s new company, whatever it might be.

Houser had been away from the company on an “extended break” since spring 2019 following the intense workload of Red Dead Redemption 2 before officially leaving in 2020. Houser said he and a small team worked 100-hour work weeks during some stages of the game’s production, for which he was a writer.

Dan’s brother, Sam Houser, is staying with Rockstar as its president.

The departure of Dan Houser came after another high-ranking Rockstar employee, Leslie Benzies, left the developer in 2016. He went on to sue Rockstar for $150 million before the case was settled in 2018. Benzies started his own studio, Build a Rocket Boy, which is now developing a game called Everywhere.

Dan Houser was a key creative figure in the development of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises. In 2018, Dan Houser said it would be tricky to make GTA 6 in the world’s political climate.

“It’s really unclear what we would even do with it, let alone how upset people would get with whatever we did,” Houser said about GTA 6. “Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry. It is scary but it’s also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd. It’s hard to satirise for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire. It would be out of date within two minutes, everything is changing so fast.”

A recent report said GTA 6 is in development for release in 2025 and that it could have a Fortnite-style evolving map.

Another prominent Rockstar developer, 17-year veteran Imran Sarwar, left Rockstar in May 2019, according to his LinkedIn page. Just this week, it was announced that Sarwar sits on the Expert Council for Matthew Ball’s new Metaverse investment fund.

Things are getting exciting in the home arcade world. Arcade1Up, one of the most popular purveyors of home arcade machines, is coming out with two remarkable cabinets this October: Street Fighter II Big Blue (see it at GameStop) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (see it at Best Buy). Both machines are now available for preorder now.

Nineties kids will remember these machines were some of the most popular destinations in arcades a couple decades ago, particularly for multiplayer. Now you can set them up in your game room, office, bedroom, or heck, even kitchen.

Preorder the New Arcade1Up Machines

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These machines cost a bit more than previous Arcade1Up hardware, but they do come fully featured. The Street Fighter II Big Blue machine includes a riser, light-up marquee, light-up deck protector, and a Street Fighter II stool. It also supports free online multiplayer via Wi-Fi.

Another thing that might not be obvious is that it includes a lot more than just Street Fighter games. You get three versions of SF2, including Championship Edition and Hyper Fighting. It also has games like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Darkstalkers, Knights of the Round, and more. You can find a complete list below.

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As for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time machine, it comes with an expanded control panel featuring four control inputs so you and your friends can relive your glory days huddled around a machine giving the Foot Clan a beatdown. It includes a riser, light-up marquee, light-up deck protector, and a Turtles-themed stool. It also sports free online play.

Plus, in addition to 1991’s Turtles in Time game, it includes the 1989 arcade classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

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Street Fighter II Big Blue Games List 

• Street Fighter II: Championship Edition
• Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo
• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
• Darkstalkers
• Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge
• Darkstalkers 3
• Saturday Night Slam Masters
• Knights of the Round
• Eco Fighters
• Capcom Sports Club
• Muscle Bomber Duo

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Chris Reed is a commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

Ubisoft released a new Assassin’s Creed Valhalla update this week that will fix issues that were ironically caused by the game’s last big update. While title update 1.2.2 added a new mode called Mastery Challenge, it also introduced “some lingering crashing issues” which Ubisoft says the new hotfix has addressed

Ubisoft has begun rolling out Assassin’s Creed Valhalla updates on a more monthly basis as of late so that they can go through more “thorough testing and refinement” before being released.

“Our community is at the heart of everything we do, and we always strive to provide you with great experiences,” Ubisoft explained in April. “That said, we recognize that some of our recent title updates may not have met your expectations or been up to our standards.”

Besides being the best-selling game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla may have the longest legs as Ubisoft announced at its E3 2021 press conference that the game will be supported by a second year of expansions through 2022. Wrath of the Druids recently launched for the game, and its second expansion, The Siege of Paris, will be released in the summer. Beyond that, Ubisoft’s concept art for year two teased a trip to Hel for Eivor.

CD Projekt’s mobile studio, Spokko, has announced that The Witcher: Monster Slayer will be available on iOS and Android from July 21.

The Witcher: Monster Slayer is a location-based augmented reality game. Set years before The Witcher games and novels, players take on the role of Witchers during a period when monster slayers for hire is a relatively new profession. Travelling around the real world, you’ll quest to actual locations and use the AR system to fight monsters rendered in your surrounding environment. Think Pokémon Go, but where you slay instead of catch the monsters.

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While monster slaying is a key part of the game, there are other RPG-style things to do, including talking to NPCs and conducting investigations.

Android users can pre-register on Google Play, which will net you the Kaer Morhen Steel Sword. This provides 10% more Experience Points for every monster killed.

For more from The Witcher, check out Netflix’s recently announcer WitcherCon, which includes chats with game developers and Geralt of Rivia himself, Henry Cavil.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Hey Ace Attorney fans, are you ready to get back in front of a bushy-bearded judge? Are you ready to cross examine a new cast of always quirky and often witless witnesses? And are you ready to do it all, as… a second-year university student? Wait, hear me out for a second. Sure, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is a prequel set more than a century before the original Ace Attorney games, and thus the likes of Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice aren’t even glints in the eyes of their grandparents’ grandparents. But if my first few hands-on hours with The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles are anything to go by, then this plucky new defence lawyer seems every bit as charismatic and his cases just as compelling as those in any of Capcom’s previous courtroom capers. Although it also appears to bring along some of the same grievances too.   

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The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles casts you as Ryunosuke Naruhodo, ancestor of Phoenix Wright born well before the time that giving children pun-based names seemingly became mandatory in Ace Attorney’s Japan. Ryunosuke is thrown into the defense attorney deep-end when he’s forced to represent himself in court after he’s accused of murdering a British professor on Japanese soil. Ryunosuke is a fairly bashful barrister to begin with – his two-handed table slams are met with more of a comedic slap as opposed to a dramatic thud – but by the end of his first trial he’s pointing effusively and sweating profusely just like a real Ace Attorney.

It’s in Chronicles’ opening trial that I got my first look at Ryunosuke’s unique ability to shift his focus between multiple witnesses on the stand in order to pursue them anytime they give a visible tell during a testimony. This brings a more dynamic feel to cross-examinations, and apparently expands to full-on interrogations of the members of the jury once Chronicles’ story shifts into England. 

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It’s there on the streets of London that Ryunosuke will also encounter the superbly spooneristic detective, Herlock Sholmes, whose eccentric methods of deduction would appear to be more of an hilarious hindrance than a help. Yet righting Sholmes’ faulty reasoning could well make crime scene investigations more puzzling than the fairly simple pixel hunts of the previous games.

But at least initially, Chronicles presents a similar gameplay structure to previous instalments in the Ace Attorney series, tasking you with pressing individual lines of testimony and presenting the right evidence at the right time as each witness tries to wriggle free of Ryunosuke’s grip. Despite the serious nature of the crimes, there’s still a healthy splash of silliness to each examination. I managed to successfully argue that the murdered professor’s last meal couldn’t possibly have been a steak by presenting records from his visit to the dentist from earlier that day that stated he wasn’t able to chew. I guess you could say the prosecution couldn’t handle the tooth. (Sorry about that, please have that joke stricken from the record.)

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That said, Chronicles also seems to be burdened occasionally by the same tangled webs of logic that have bogged down previous Ace Attorney trials. For example, I’d figured out that poison was used in Chronicles’ first murder case early on but still had to jump through a series of logic hoops and dialogue loops in order to finally be able to present it and move the case forward. While the funny writing and consistently wacky character animations prevented the opening trial from ever becoming a bore, I hope the rest of Chronicles’ cases bring some much-needed reductions to their drawn-out deductions. 

There is still a lot to litigate in the final Great Ace Attorney Chronicles package, since it features 10 episodes and roughly 50 hours worth of evidence gathering, witness interrogating, and convoluted courtroom toing and froing. There’s even an option to play the whole thing in Story Mode, which solves all the puzzles and makes all the decisions for you. Personally I don’t think I’ll choose to play the whole game in such a passive way, but I can see how toggling it on and off might be a convenient way to automatically pass through some of Chronicles’ more perplexing leaps in logic. 

We’ll give The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles a proper sentencing ahead of its July 27th release but for now, the jury is still out. 

As another weekend hits Destiny 2, you’ve once again got another chance at some of the best gear in the game in the Trials of Osiris. The player-vs.-player event might be one of the toughest activities that Destiny 2 has to offer, but it also provides weapons and armor you can’t get anywhere else.

Each week, the Trials of Osiris map and rewards are randomized when the event launches with Destiny 2’s daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Friday. We’ll update this post as soon as it kicks off with all the important details, including this week’s featured map and which rewards you’ll earn as you play.

The Trials of Osiris takes place every weekend, running from Friday to Tuesday. When taking part in the PvP event, your goal is to and win as many matches as possible before you suffer three total losses. You’ll need to recruit a fireteam of three, as there’s no matchmaking in Trials. Once you take three losses in the mode, you’ll be forced to reset your Trials run, or Passage, and try again. However, the more wins you earn, the more loot you’ll rack up. Rewards drop rack up as you earn a certain number of victories, so minimizing your losses is key to grabbing new gear. But the best rewards in the event come when you go on a winning streak of seven matches in a row–a “Flawless” run.

While your hope is to hit a flawless run in Trials, the requirement of avoiding losses makes the mode extremely tough. Most players may never achieve a flawless run. But the event isn’t just for the very best players in the game–you’ll still earn Trials rewards, some of the best weapons available, just by playing matches, win or lose. The End Game bounty from Saint-14 awards each week’s three-win reward just for participating.

If you can manage to go Flawless, you’ll visit the Lighthouse and earn exclusive rewards. Opening the chest in the Lighthouse now gets you an “Adept” weapon, which has extra stat boosts you can’t get almost anywhere else. Visit Saint-14 to pick up a Trials Passage and bounties to get started, but remember that you have to spend any Trials tokens you earn for wins with Saint-14 before the weekly reset on Tuesday, July 6. These tokens expire at the end of the weekend you earned them, so get your rewards while you can.

Destiny 2 is having a busy week. The Iron Banner is running once again, bringing higher-level PvP challenge and reward to the game. Next week is also the start of the Solstice of Heroes, Destiny’s summertime event that lets you earn even more unique gear. That means you’ll want to visit Xur again this weekend to check out his batch of Exotics and fill any holes in your collection to make sure you can continue to compete.

Xur returns to the solar system every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET each Friday. The thing is, where he’ll land isn’t known until he actually arrives. Xur can hang out at one of several locations, including in the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ. Xur’s inventory also changes each week, so it’s worth revisiting him on the weekends for new weapons and rolls on Exotic armor. You can visit him any time between his arrival Friday and the weekly reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET the following Tuesday when Xur departs the solar system.

We’ll update this post as soon as Xur arrives with full details on where to find him and what he’s packing.

Each week, Xur offers one Exotic weapon and three pieces of Exotic armor: one for each character class. The inventory is random, as are the stat rolls you can expect on each of his armor offerings, so if you’re looking to fill out your collection or if you’re hoping for better versions of Exotics you already have, it’s worth visiting him. Xur also brings an Exotic Engram, which is guaranteed to drop something you don’t already have, if there are Exotics missing from your collection on that particular character–but that doesn’t include Exotics you have to earn through activities, including the new Exotic armors added each season, which can only be claimed from Legendary or Master Lost Sectors.

You know how Aliens works–scrappy scientists and workers get trapped with Xenomorphs in a spaceship or colony, and they have to fight to survive. The upcoming Aliens TV show, though, won’t be a simple retread, says show creator Noah Hawley in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Instead of trapping humans with aliens, the show will be about “What happens if you can’t contain it?” the Legion and Fargo creator said. The show will not re-cast or revisit Sigourney Weaver’s iconic character Ellen Ripley.

“It’s not a Ripley story,” Hawley said. “She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it.”

Instead, the show will head to Earth and tackle themes of class inequality. “What happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved?” he asked.

“[The Alien films] are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies,” Hawley continued. “They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future–and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings, and they can’t go forward, and they can’t go back.”

Hawley already has two scripts for the show ready to go, but don’t expect it this year.

“The entire film industry had to take a year off, and now they’re trying to jam two years of production into one,” he said. “Everyone is racing to make up for lost time. So I figure, let that bubble burst a bit, and we’ll do it right.”

In the meantime, you can catch up on Hawley’s other work, which includes three seasons of the visually-stunning X-Men spinoff Legion and four seasons of Fargo–proof positive that Hawley is the right creator to turn a movie into a long-form series.

Even though Spider-Man: No Way Home is less than six months away, official details about the upcoming sequel are still sparse. Since the film’s stars offered a cryptic tease about the movie’s official title, rumors have continued to swirl about the potential multiverse-spanning plot of the movie. Now, LEGO has offered fans a glimpse at the upcoming blockbuster, listing an official set on its website that features Spider-Man’s new costume as well as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange.

The slightly updated Spider-Man costume can be seen as the hero’s LEGO Minifigure, as well as in the promotional artwork along the side of the box. The costume features a black-and-gold coloring similar to the Iron Spider suit worn by Peter Parker in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. However, the black-and-red base of the costume more closely represents the hero’s outfit in Spider-Man: Far from Home.

The set also features Minifigures of Doctor Strange, Zendaya’s MJ, and Benedict Wong’s Wong. The four characters are featured in action inside a workshop at the Sanctum Sanctorum.

LEGO sets do not always represent the narrative events of a given movie, so it remains to be seen whether Peter Parker and MJ will find their way inside Doctor Strange’s headquarters and fight a giant scorpion(?) during the events of No Way Home.

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If Spider-Man: No Way Home ends up delivering on its various multiverse teases, there could be plenty more LEGO Minifigures on the way to tie in with the movie. Along with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, the movie will also include the return of Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus and Jamie Foxx’s Electro.

When previous Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield was asked about his potential involvement with the project, the star responded with a vague statement of “never say never.”

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For more about what could be in store for Spider-Man: No Way Home, read our explainer on everything we know about the MCU’s multiverse so far. Also, learn about how TikTok users uncovered footage of a young Tom Holland expressing his desire to play Spider-Man years before landing the role.

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J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

(Photo by LEGO)