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Field of Dreams Is Being Turned Into a TV Series By Peacock

It turns out the “it” in “If you build it” is Peacock, and the “he” in “he will come” is a Field of Dreams TV series. Peacock announced the straight-to-series-order for Field of Dreams today, alongside news that this series will “reimagine the mixture of family, baseball, Iowa, and magic that makes the movie so enduring and beloved.”

First released back in 1989, the Kevin Costner vehicle has been in the zeitgeist of late thanks to a recent MLB tribute game that saw the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox play in an Iowa corn field. The original movie is a sports movie staple, a tale of an Iowa farmer hearing voices and building a wooden stadium in an attempt to reconcile with the ghosts of his father and Shoeless Joe Jackson. It includes a roadtrip to Fenway and one of film history’s finest monologues, delivered by the great James Earl Jones.

“Through the years, Field of Dreams has remained a fan favorite, maintaining its rightful position in the zeitgeist,” NBCUniversal Television and Streaming president, Lisa Katz, said. “It’s whimsical and grounded, a space where [the series’ executive producer and writer] Mike Schur excels, and we’re looking forward to bringing a new version of this classic to Peacock.”

Lawrence Gordon of The Gordon Company will executive produce the series alongside Schur, David Miner, and Morgan Sackett. Field of Dreams marks the second Peacock series for Schur, who also created the Rutherford Falls series, which was just picked up for a second season. For those not familiar with the original movie, it’s actually currently available to stream on Peacock.

This new Field of Dreams series is what Universal calls the latest collaboration between NBCUniversal’s television and film studios. Before that, the most recent was the upcoming TED television series from Seth McFarlane, also set to debut on Peacock.

While waiting for Field of Dreams, check out our thoughts on its soon-to-be home in IGN’s Peacock streaming service review and then read IGN’s list of the best and worst Peacock originals after that.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Dead By Daylight Stranger Things DLC Getting Delisted Later This Year

Dead By Daylight‘s Stranger Things content will become unavailable for purchase later this year. Announced on the game’s official Twitter account, the two survivors and killer in the Stranger Things pack will be delisted on November 17.

Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington, and the Demogorgon–along with all related cosmetics–will all become unavailable later this year, but players who already own the characters will be able to continue using them in Dead By Daylight. To help out players who don’t have these characters yet, they will all be 50% off starting August 18, with the sale running until the characters are delisted.

The Stranger Things Chapter, which includes the characters and some exclusive cosmetics, will be 60% off on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Stadia from August 18 through September 1. All Stranger Things cosmetics will be 50% off from August 18 through September 8.

In addition to the Stranger Things characters and cosmetics, November 17 will also see the Underground Complex map removed. Dead by Daylight recently teased that another horror crossover is coming, this time with Hellraiser. Dead by Daylight also features content from other horror video games, like Left 4 Dead and Silent Hill.

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.3 Details Revealed

Cyberpunk 2077‘s next big patch is on the way. While we have yet to receive a release date, CD Projekt Red has shared details on what players can expect in the upcoming update.

Patch 1.3 will included several updates to the gameplay, the most notable of them being adjustments to the minimap, which now be a bit more zoomed out and will display more road ahead. This makes it a lot more convenient when driving and navigating Night City, especially if you prefer to drive fast in-game.

Cyberpunk 2077’s next major update also lowers how much it costs to reset your character’s perks, making it a lot easier to experiment with perk points without too many repercussions for experimentation. In the game, if you regret investing in a perk for your character, you can revert the perk points you used by purchasing a Tabula e-Rasa, which refunds you all your perk points. Once patch 1.3 arrives, the price of the item will decrease from 100,000 eurobucks to 13,200 eurobucks.

Other changes arriving in patch 1.3 include some small tweaks to an early in-game quest where players visit Clouds. In this particular mission, you get a private room and have the option to get intimate with either a male or female sex worker.

The patch will display images of both sex workers with a dialogue option throughout the entire conversation. In contrast, before patch 1.3, the images for both sex workers briefly appeared on screen before disappearing, which caused some players to choose the wrong gender by accident. CD Projekt Red even showed the subtle change to the mission in a new YouTube video with a side-by-side scene comparison.

Patch 1.3 is one of many updates CD Projekt Red rolled out to the game following a rough launch late last year, including its removal from the PlayStation Store seven days after its official release. The game would be relisted on the PlayStation Store in June of this year, but Sony advises players with a base PS4 not to play this game.

Although the latest blog post and video did not disclose every change arriving in patch 1.3, including how much will be added to improve overall performance for those playing on base PS4 and Xbox One consoles, CD Projekt Red plans to share more details tomorrow on a Twitch stream, which begins at 9am PT / 12pm ET. The live stream is also expected to reveal the first of many planned free DLCs coming to Cyberpunk 2077.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Intel Reveals Its Own GPU Line, Intel Arc, To Compete With Nvidia And AMD

Intel, a grandfather of the PC hardware industry, is joining the GPU wars. The company announced a new brand today, devoted entirely to graphics. Called Intel Arc, the brand includes hardware, software, and services, and yes, that includes GPUs for gamers.

Intel already has multiple generations of Arc planned, with the first being titled Alchemist (it was formerly titled DG2). The upcoming generations of Arc will be named Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid, names ripped straight from the pages of the D&D 5E player’s handbook.

We don’t have any details, like technical specifications, about any future Intel Arc products. However, according to a page on Intel’s site announcing the brand, first-generation Arc products will feature “hardware-based ray tracing and artificial intelligence-driven super sampling, and offer full support for DirectX 12 Ultimate.”

For the time being, Intel plans to get Alchemist-based products onto store shelves in the first fiscal quarter of 2022. More details on these products will be shared later this year.

Currently, the graphics market is largely dominated by two companies: AMD and Nvidia. The former has its GPUs in both the Xbox Series X and PS5, as well as a decent stake in the PC gaming market with its CPUs. Nvidia, meanwhile, is a darling for its DLSS tech, which gives PC gamers easy access to ray tracing at high resolutions. However, getting these graphics cards is a problem, one that may extend to Intel’s own hardware. According to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, the ongoing semiconductor shortage could extend well into 2023.

Osa Joins Rainbow Six Siege As Its First Transgender Operator

Osa will be Rainbow Six Siege’s first transgender operator when she joins the roster tomorrow.

First announced last week, she’s a two-health, two-speed, two-difficulty character that uses a Talon-8 Clear Shield to block incoming bullets. Her gender identity was not revealed during the announcement, nor was it discussed during previews for the upcoming Year 6 Season 3 content. However, GameSpot noticed a line in Osa’s biography that mentions a “transition” and the publication reached out to Ubisoft for confirmation. Here’s what Ubisoft had to say:

“The decision to create a transgender character was made early on, as part of our initiative to have an inclusive roster of Operators,” Ubisoft’s statement reads. “The consultants, all of whom are trans people, wanted to make sure that Osa was presented as authentically and organically as possible.”

That included hiring a queer person to write the character and a trans woman to voice her. According to the statement, Osa’s identity in the game is “certainly influenced by her gender,” but “who she is in the Siege universe is centered on her talents, her influence on Nighthaven, and her close friendship to Kali.”

GameSpot reports that the game makes no mention of Osa’s gender identity other than a line that mentions her transition in her biography.

“She followed her passion for creation and technology and studied electromechanics at a vocational school, and then military engineering at the University of Zagreb where she excelled at robotics engineering,” Osa’s biography in the game reads. “She found herself isolated due to her unorthodox approach and others’ attitudes toward her transition, so she focused on her work.”

Osa will join the large roster of Rainbow Six Siege’s operators tomorrow when the Year 6 Season 3 content goes live on the game’s test server.

For more about Osa, check out her debut in the Crystal Guard reveal trailer and then watch this two-minute Osa gameplay trailer. Check out this trailer for the game’s new time-limited PvP Containment event after that.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Daily Deals: Apple AirPods Pro for $179.99, 48″ LG CX OLED 4K TV for $989, Ms Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet for Under $300

Today you can grab a brand new set of Apple AirPod Pro noise cancelling earbuds for the lowest price ever, even lower than on Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day. For those of you looking to upgrade your TV (or gaming monitor), the highly rated 48″ LC CX OLED TV is under $1000 for the first time. It’s refurbished, but it includes a 90-day warranty and it’s sold by Woot, a reputable vendor (which is owned by Amazon). Finally, for retro gaming fans, the Ms Pac-Man arcade cabinet has dropped in price yet again this week, now under $300. These deals and more below.

Apple AirPods Pro Noise-Cancelling Earbuds

If you regret not picking the Airpods Pro up on Amazon Prime Day, here’s your chance to get it today for an even lower price. Today the price of the AirPods Pro has dropped $70, or 28% off. This is the lowest price we’ve seen, ever, for these highly rated earbuds. The AirPods Pro is considered by many to be the best truly wireless noise-cancelling in-ear headphones you can get, and a very big step up in quality from the standard AirPods.

48″ LG CX 4K OLED Smart TV for $989.99

Note that this is a refurbished model with a 90-day Woot warranty. That said, we’ve never seen this TV drop below $1000, ever. The cheapest we’ve seen a brand new set go for is $1300. The LG CX 48″ OLED TV is what I am currently using as my primary gaming monitor, and after 1 year of use, I still firmly believe that this is one of the best gaming monitors you can get right now, especially if you have an RTX 30 series video card. The CX OLED TV has HDMI 2.1 inputs, so you can output 4K at 120Hz when you pair it with an RTX 30 series video card. It also supports 4:4:4 chroma at 4K and G-SYNC technology. The OLED panel blows away any IPS, VA, or TN monitor in black levels, color rendition, response time, and HDR.

Arcade1Up Ms Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet

Save almost 30% off the rarely discounted Ms Pacman arcade cabinet from Arcade1Up. This is an even bigger price drop than the one we saw last week, and the lowest price ever for this particular arcade cabinet. This is a 3:4 scale replica that measures 4 feet tall. A themed riser is also included that raises the cabinet by an additional 1 foot, so you can choose to play comfortably while sitting or standing. There are multiple games preinstalled, including Ms Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Pac-Man Plus, and Galaxian.

Logitech C920S 1080p Webcam

The C920S is one of the most popular webcams on the market. It can stream 1080p video at 30fps and includes a privacy shutter when not in use. Because so many people are working at home and teleconferencing, this webcam had been sold out for a long time. Not only is it back in stock today, but it’s actually $10 off the retail price.

Price Drop on the WD Black SN850 2TB M.2 SSD

Best Buy is offering an additional $50 off the WD Black SN850 2TB M.2 PCIe SSD compared to the price on Amazon or WD Store. This is currently the most popular (and probably the best) SSD to get for your PS5 storage upgrade. It’s blazing fast drive with transfer speeds rated at up to 7,000 MB/s and a PCIe Gen4 interface. It’s also confirmed by Western Digital themselves to be compatible with the PS5. It doesn’t include a heatsink, but you can very easily install one yourself for a minimal cost.

Extra 12% Off Alienware Aurora R12 RTX 30 Series Gaming PCs with New Coupon Code

Dell launched a new coupon code yesterday that takes 12% off select desktop and laptop PCs. Unfortunately many configs aren’t eligible, including all the PCs currently on Dell’s Deals page. Fortunately, specific Alienware Aurora R12 desktop models are eligible, and they can be upgraded all the way up to an RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 3090. With the coupon applied, you won’t be able to find a cheaper prebuilt RTX 30 series PC on the market.

The 12% coupon is eligible with the Alienware Aurora R12 models below. These all have starting specs: Intel Core i5-11400F CPU, 8GB RAM, and 1TB HDD. You can upgrade to an 11th generation Intel Core i7 processor for an additional $150 (minus 12% off discount with code). I’d recommend upgrading your RAM and storage on your own because you’ll probably save money and you won’t be voiding the warranty.

Use code “SAVE12” to get the prices below:

Alienware Aurora R12 Intel Core i7 RTX 3080 with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1TB HDD for $2199.99

If you’re specifically looking for a prebuilt PC with an RTX 3080 video card, and you don’t want to deal with doing any upgrades yourself, this is the best Alienware deal to get. This PC comes equipped with an 11th gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, 512GB SSD, and a separate 1TB hard drive for storage. The RTX 3080 is more powerful than the previous generation’s best video card, the RTX 2080 Ti.

Alienware m15 Intel Core i7-10870 RTX 3080 Gaming Laptop for $2050.39

If you’re looking instead for a portable gaming rig, check out this Alienware m15 laptop outfitted with an RTX 3080 mobile video card. There’s something important to understand about RTX 30 series video cards in laptops. Even if two different laptops have the same RTX 3080, that doesn’t mean the video cards perform equally. The RTX 3080 performs depending on how much power you supply to it. Because of heat and cooling limitations, the RTX 3080 found in 15″ laptops have a TGP range from 140W to 90W. The Alienware m15 R4 boasts an RTX 3080 with a TGP of 140W. That means it has the most powerful RTX 3080 you’ll find in a 15″ gaming laptop. That’s incredible considering the fact that at this price, you probably won’t find ANY RTX 3080 laptop for cheaper.

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 16″ 3K Intel Core i7-11800H RTX 3060 Laptop for $1302.39

This is the perfect laptop for a student who’s heading back to school or a professional who needs to bring his or her laptop on the go. The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus weighs only 4.4 pounds and sports a gorgeous 16″ display with 3K (3072×1920) resolution, the newest 11th gen Intel Core i7-11800H processor and an RTX 3060 video card with a TGP rating of 60W. There’s also a generous 32GB of RAM and a big 1TB solid state drive. At a price price of about $1300 after the 12% off coupon code, this is an absolute steal.

Herman Miller Gaming Sale: 15% Off Gaming Chairs, Including the Herman Miller x Logitech G Embody

Herman Miller makes the best ergonomic chairs in the industry. They’re also not cheap, with several of their models easily topping over $1000 in price. Penny pinchers might find it a waste of money, but honestly, in this case you get what you pay for. Many of us could spend a majority of our lives stuck to our chair, it makes sense that this would be one of the most important purchases we make. Today, Herman Miller is offering 15% off their top-of-the-line gaming collaborations with Logitech. This is the first time we’ve seen a substantial discount on these outside of Sample Sales and employee-only offers. If you’ve got deep pockets, then you’ll save on what is probably the best gaming chair on the market.

Video Game Deals

More Daily Deals for August 16

Axiom Verge 2 Review — More Vania Than Metroid

Axiom Verge 2 is almost a sequel in name only. It’s still a metroidvania, and there are a couple of minor similarities between developer Thomas Happ’s latest game and its 2015 predecessor, but these are minor aspects when compared to everything that’s new and divergent about this unexpected sequel. Considering how revered the first Axiom Verge was as an affectionate homage to Metroid, presenting something that’s vastly different is a surprising approach when building on those original foundations would have been more than enough for most. Instead, Axiom Verge 2 is a bold, daring, and ambitious sequel that falters in a few select areas.

One such area is the game’s story, which starts much like the first game, as our human protagonist is transported to a bizarre alien world. This time around, you play as billionaire CEO Indra Chaudhari, who ventures into an Antarctic research base–and eventually another reality–in search of her missing daughter. This clear-cut story thread does just enough to keep the 10-hour adventure ticking along, but everything around it is coated in the kind of jargon-heavy lore that can only be fleshed out by finding all of the notes hidden throughout the game world. Reading each of these abandoned jottings does fill in some of the blanks left by the frugal narrative, but they’re mostly so dense with impenetrable technobabble that it isn’t worth seeking them out.

Fortunately, the narrative mostly takes a backseat to your exploration of its labyrinthian map. While your journey begins in the snowy tundra of the Antarctic, the adventure eventually takes you through several distinct biomes, such as an arid desert and flooded temple, that marks a clear departure from the subterranean expanse of the first game. These are detailed environments, too, with a sense of scale that extends far beyond the 2D foreground, with snow-capped mountain ranges and verdant forests stretching out into the horizon. If the first game was inspired by the “Metroid” part of the genre’s namesake, then Axiom Verge 2 leans more heavily into the “Vania” side of the equation, swapping out the dark confines of its underground maze for a more spacious and detailed environment.

The same is true of combat as well, with your previous arsenal of high-tech firearms being replaced by a pickaxe and boomerang combo. It’s a significant change for the series, but not one that’s entirely successful. In the early stages of the game there’s a degree of strategy involved. The axe deals more damage but requires you to get up close and personal, while the boomerang–and the range it affords you–makes it easier to sit back and dodge incoming projectiles. This forces you to weigh up your options when confronted with each of the game’s diverse enemy types, but as your health bar expands and your damage output increases, it becomes much easier to brute force your way through almost every situation. There’s a palpable sense of character progression inherent in this design, but the combat’s one-dimensional nature lacks the same satisfying punch and intensity of the first game’s bullet cacophony. Bulldozing your way through a room of robotic drones is innately thrilling, but it never challenges you to do anything more than adopt a simple hack-and-slash strategy.

The only other offensive tool at your disposal is the ability to hack mechanised enemies, but it doesn’t take long for this to become little more than an afterthought. Hacking gives you the option to slow down enemies or halt their weapon fire, but your hacking radius is so small that you’re going to be in slashing range anyway, so there’s no reason to deploy abilities that have a negligible impact on the outcome of a fight. Instead, hacking is more useful for passive tasks such as opening doors or moving platforms.

Combat is also somewhat downplayed, owing to the fact that the vast majority of boss fights are entirely optional. There are two outliers, including the final boss, but even these compulsory battles give you unlimited respawns to whittle away at the boss’ health bar. For a genre that often revolves around locking you in a limited space with a gargantuan foe, it’s a bold change of pace that puts a greater onus on the unimpeded flow of exploration. These optional scraps reward you with additional skill points that can go towards improving your attack speed and so on, but you can easily bypass these encounters if they’re too difficult or you just don’t fancy it, without suffering any sort of penalty. You’re not even missing out since the fights themselves reflect the rest of the game’s combat, with little in the way of strategy required to defeat each one. Facing off against a flying machine with a ram’s head might look interesting, but with no attacking patterns to memorise or adapt to, these encounters end up being entirely forgettable.

Gallery

The core combat takes a relative backseat because there’s a concerted focus on exploration in Axiom Verge 2. This is born from a significant rework of your traversal abilities that fundamentally alters the way you interact with this interconnected game world. Naming all of the ways you’re able to get around would ruin part of the surprise, but let’s just say you gain the ability to clamber up walls fairly early on and your options only expand from there. The standout feature, however, is The Breach: a separate map that sits behind the regular one, similar to the parallel worlds found in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past–although this comparison is fairly reductive in Axiom Verge 2’s case. Rather than mirroring the layout of both worlds, The Breach is an entirely new map; so much so that the only way to access its cramped, low-res spaces is by using a trusty drone. This robotic sidekick has its own attacks and makes use of a grappling hook to get around, but The Breach’s ingenuity is derived from the way it challenges you to solve navigational puzzles.

By using the map, you can see where you exist on both sides of the interdimensional divide. Axiom Verge 2’s level design has all the hallmarks of a quintessential metroidvania, with items and pathways tantalisingly out of reach. But reaching these places isn’t always about returning later on with the requisite power-up. Once the mechanic begins to evolve and you gain more freedom in travelling between the two parallel worlds, you’re able to exit The Breach in unexplored locations, thus increasing the amount of solutions available to you when trying to figure out how to navigate each blank space on the map. Gauging how to circumnavigate obstacles and utilize the various tools at your disposal is an enthralling challenge that’s consistently satisfying to solve. There may be moments when you hit a brick wall, and the lack of signposting on the map results in more than a few instances where you’ll backtrack to an obstacle you know you can’t yet bypass. But Axiom Verge 2 is more intuitive to explore than its predecessor. Its biomes feel suitably distinct from one another, and the game offers you a little more guidance this time around by displaying a magical compass that points you in the right direction.

Simple combat, forgettable boss fights, and a reticent narrative–not to mention an overly vague map–are the only dampeners on what is an impressive sequel, despite never quite feeling like one. The unsuspected changes and additions are bold and mostly pay off, with consistently engaging and rewarding exploration that’s propelled forward by an ambitious central mechanic. Axiom Verge 2 is a game that constantly evolves and delights, but just lacks the same bite as some of its contemporaries.

Fortnite: Best Landing Spots – Season 7

In Fortnite, like all battle royale games, you can sometimes win or lose based on where you land to start a match. The best landing spots can be thought of in different terms depending on the player. Dropping into heavy fire will sink your survival odds, but you could walk out as the sole survivor loaded with loot. Landing someplace quieter, far off the Battle Bus trajectory, may allow for a peaceful start, but will it get you optimal inventory to make it to the end? In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the best landing spots in Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 7. Make sure to check back each season as the map changes and we update this article regularly with new and emerging favorable locations.

Steamy Stacks

Steamy Stacks has been a reliable drop ever since Chapter 2 launched. It’s not changed much at all across these seven seasons, but that just makes it a reliable landing spot with each new season of Fortnite. We love Steamy Stacks for its abundant loot, its weapon upgrade station, and especially its titular stacks, which you can ride out of the northeast corner of the map in a hurry. Whether you travel by stack or the everpresent UFO located in the parking lot, you’ll leave Steamy Stacks with a full inventory and a quick getaway. It’s the only location where you can drop in, loot up, then use its natural features to re-drop into a new area.

Lake Canoe

This quaint locale packs a lot of loot into a small space. With one main building plus a few sheds surrounding the small lake, this landing spot already has plenty of loot to open in chests, but if you’re not satisfied, it also has tons of fishing spots and fishing rods, which should translate into full shields and great weapons. On top of that, it’s unnamed on the map, so it doesn’t usually get too crowded unless the Battle Bus is going right over it. There are always boats nearby too, and the lake feeds into the river that will take you south as needed.

Corny Complex

This central farmland seems to be reborn with every season, but it’s a mainstay of player activity thanks to it currently housing Doctor Slone and several IO henchmen. Taking out Slone will grant you her Mythic Pulse Rifle, a unique weapon that is always sought after–but crafty players are known to let others do that hard work for them, then swoop in and grab the overpowered rifle for themselves. As if that’s not enough, there’s also always a UFO in the barn as well as plentiful IO chests offering Season 7’s special weapons. Given how centralized it is on the map, you’re also virtually guaranteed to catch several early circles before finally being pushed out by the storm.

Catty Corner

While Catty Corner has plenty of weapons, health items, and even a bounty board for earning some bonus gold bars, it’s best used for another purpose: foraged items. You wouldn’t know it from the outside as the locale consists of a small machine shop and a gas station and little else, but inside the trailer and small snack shack alike are bountiful boxes of foraged items such as mushrooms, apples, bananas, and coconuts. The contents of these boxes are randomized, but they’re always a huge help in completing your seasonal milestone challenges for eating each of those items.

Camp Cod

Perhaps the most underappreciated location in the entire Season 7 map, Camp Cod gives up optimal early-game distance from the center in favor of tons of loot in a typically totally vacated area. You’ll leave Camp Cod with everything you need, including a car or UFO, and likely never even see anyone else drop there. We overlooked it ourselves until Season 6 featured an NPC and helped us appreciate the region for its loot and tranqulity. Just be sure to grab one of those vehicles, because most rounds will see Camp Cod land outside the first circle.

Durrr Burger

Fortnite veterans may notice a theme in this story, one that reveals favoritism for places with UFOs. That’s because the ships are still pretty OP even after two nerfs this season. Even if you’re not going to use them offensively, UFOs are a great, relatively quiet way of moving across the island quickly. Before you head off, be sure to load up on wood outside, where large pallets will quickly max out your inventory for late-game builds. Just watch out for the alien eggs in the basement. You’re not the only one heading to the restaurant for a quick bite.

Deep Woods Dish

Stealthy Stronghold lost its name but gained better loot in Season 7.

You can’t go wrong landing at any of the dish stations in Season 7, because they all helpfully contain a jump pad and several IO chests–not to mention their super speedy sedans. But of all the satellite command centers run by the IO this season, we most enjoy Deep Woods Dish because it gets neglected a lot. Formerly Stealthy Stronghold, this locale is no longer named on the map, so people overlook it more often than they should. That leaves you in a great position to grab a recon scanner, a pulse rifle, and maybe an Inflate-A-Bull before you launch yourself back to the center.

Holly Hatchery

Holly Hedges has always been one of our favorite drops, and though its recent “Hatchery” makeover is extreme, we still can’t resist heading there first in many rounds. Alien nanites give the locale some fun low-gravity gameplay that can be mastered to your advantage, and though the space is patrolled by hostile “trespasser” aliens, they’re not too tough to take down and always drop a Kymera Ray Gun, which is a versatile energy rifle that fires a continuous beam of “rays” at enemies near and far. Take down the aliens, grab a car, and–if you’re playing with a team–ride off in shotgun, firing rays at unsuspecting enemies on the road.

From left: Holly Hatchery, Durrr Burger, Deep Woods Dish, Corny Complex, Camp Cod, Catty Corner, Lake Canoe, Steamy Stacks

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Johnny Depp Says He’s Being Boycotted By Hollywood

In a new interview, actor Johnny Depp says he’s being boycotted by Hollywood since losing his high-profile libel suit against Britain’s The Sun tabloid newspaper in 2020. The highly-publicized trial resulted in Depp being asked to resign from Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts franchise, and according to the actor, work has largely dried up ever since.

Although Depp’s interview with Britain’s The Times–part of the same Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing group as The Sun–was ostensibly to discuss his new film Minamata, about a Life magazine photographer, USA Today reports that Depp’s comments kept drifting back to a “surreal five years” due to the litigation. Depp reportedly speaks in often incomplete thoughts, described in the article as “riddles” and “broken sentences.”

“Whatever I’ve gone through, I’ve gone through,” said Depp. “But, ultimately, this particular arena of my life has been so absurd.” Depp added that careers in entertainment are “long road[s] that sometimes get clunky” and “sometimes just plain stupid.” He also criticized the “absurdity of media mathematics.”

Depp was asked to leave the Fantastic Beasts franchise after the UK tabloid called him a “wife-beater,” which has sparked ugly and predictable patterns of fan behavior online–especially against his ex-wife Amber Heard (Aquaman). In 2022, Depp has another legal battle ahead against the Washington Post for an opinion piece about domestic abuse, which in this new interview said “he could not talk about.”

NHL 22 Will Be Announced On August 19 With A Reveal Trailer

EA Sports has announced that NHL 22 will be revealed this Thursday, August 19, which happens to be the same day that Activision is formally revealing Call of Duty: Vanguard.

NHL 22 will be revealed at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET that day through a reveal trailer, which we’ll post on GameSpot as soon as we see it.

This year’s NHL game is expected to be the first built for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, though it’s also presumably set to launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well. EA has confirmed the game’s existence, but hasn’t said anything about what to expect in terms of improvements and updates over last year’s game.

A big question we hope to see answered on Thursday is which pro skater is on the cover of NHL 22. Whoever it is has big shoes to fill, as one of the greatest NHL players of all time, Alexander Ovechkin, graced the cover of NHL 21.

If history is any indication, NHL 22 should launch around September or October, timed with the start around the time the new NHL season begins in October. The NHL gets its 32nd team this season with the Seattle Kraken, and it’s expected this team will appear in NHL 22. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on NHL 22.

EA’s next big sports game is Madden NFL 22, which launches on August 20. After that, FIFA 22 releases on October 1. EA also has a new PGA Tour golf game coming, but not until early 2022. A new college football game is in the works as well, but it doesn’t have a release date yet.