The creative team behind the popular mockumentary American Vandal are working on a similar project that skewers video games, and specifically eSports.
Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault have reached a deal with Paramount + for an “eSports mockumentary” called Players, according to Variety.
The show follows a fictional League of Legends professional team looking to win their first championship after a string of near misses. “To win it all, they will need their prodigy, a 17-year-old rookie, and their 27-year-old veteran to put their egos aside and work together,” reads a line from the show’s description.
Yacenda is directing the show, while Funny Or Die’s Joe Farrell and Mike Farah are executive producers. League of Legends developer Riot Games is in on the joke, as it’s also a producer.
American Vandal ran for two seasons on Netflix. The first season was a spoof on true crime, tackling a high school story about painting penises on faculty cars. The second season involves a person putting laxatives in lemonade. Before that, Yacenda and Perrault made mockumentaries poking fun at ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series.
Mario’s 35th anniversary has come and gone, but there’s never a bad time to play the best Mario games on Nintendo Switch. While the Switch lacks the deep Virtual Console library that defined the retro offerings of the Wii and Wii U, Nintendo’s hybrid console has built up a solid catalogue of Mario games over the years. Some of those are completely new games that are still receiving support. Some are Wii U games that got the port treatment. And many are NES or SNES games available through Nintendo Switch Online.
If you’re just getting into the overall-clad plumber’s oeuvre, we’ve got the biggest hits. And, if you’re looking for deeper cuts, we’ve got you covered. Nintendo has been making Mario games for nearly four decades, and many of the mustachioed Italian’s best games are available on Switch–if you know where to look.
The Nintendo Switch is home to some of the best Mario platformers, including the superb Super Mario Odyssey and enhanced ports of earlier greats like New Super Mario Bros. U.
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey
Four years into the Switch’s life cycle, Super Mario Odyssey remains the only entirely new 3D Mario platformer available on the platform. And that’s okay because it rules. In Super Mario Odyssey, the lovable plumber swaps out his standard red cap for Cappy, a living hat that can take control of anything Mario chucks him at. As a result, Super Mario Odyssey has terrifically varied gameplay. In any given level you could be playing as a T-Rex, a frog, a 2D version of Mario, a Goomba or a Chain Chomp (and many more). Add in the fact that the ability to throw Cappy greatly increases Mario’s roster of jumps and moves and you have a Mario platformer for the ages.
Released earlier this year, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury combines an excellent 3D platformer that was previously Wii U-exclusive with a bold new open-world take on the Mario formula. Originally released back in 2013, Super Mario 3D World is maybe the most underrated 3D Mario game. With a lengthy campaign that works just as well in single-player as it does in four-player co-op, Super Mario 3D World is tons of fun. Bowser’s Fury is significantly shorter and some of its ideas feel a little half-baked, but it’s a fun and interesting experiment that’s well worth checking out.
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe offers a pretty traditional Mario experience, carrying on in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” tradition of the New Super Mario Bros. games available on DS, Wii and 3DS. Basically, as we noted in our review, there isn’t much new here. But, it’s still a strong entry in a series with one of the most consistently high bars for quality in gaming.
Super Mario Maker 2 does what it says on the tin: it lets you make Super Mario levels. This sequel builds out the scale of creation, allowing players to move beyond individual levels in favor of entire worlds. Plus, an update added Zelda characters and art, as well.
The Nintendo Switch is home to a pair of Mario Kart games as well as a couple of fun Mario sports titles.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Like a kart boosted by triple mushrooms, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe just won’t stop. Despite being a port of a game already available on the Wii U, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the top-selling Nintendo Switch game, and only Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes close. It’s one of the best racing games of all time, and the fact that it stars Mario and friends is just an added bonus.
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit isn’t a traditional Mario Kart game. Instead, the 2020 racer takes the action into the real world, requiring that players assemble their own tracks, which they then can use to race RC Mario cars around their home. The game trades in the pulled back perspective of previous Mario Kart games for a behind-the-back camera positioned on your plastic car. It’s a unique experiment that isn’t quite as successful as the other Mario Kart game on this list, but still might be worth checking out if–for some reason–you find yourself spending a lot of time at home.
The newest game on this list, Mario Golf: Super Rush is a fun take on the sport, but doesn’t introduce too much that’s novel (aside from Speed Golf, which is pretty cool). But, if it’s your first time playing Mario Golf? This is great fun in single-player and multiplayer, though not as action-oriented as other games on this list.
The debut of the Mario Tennis series on Switch is a marked step up from 2015’s poorly received Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash. Aces offers deep tennis mechanics, a suite of modes, and competitive multiplayer.
This Nintendo/Sega collab was released way back in November 2019, half a year before COVID-19 made it to the States and nearly two years before the real-world Olympics actually happened. Despite the weirdness around its name, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is a pretty traditional entry in the long-running series. That said, it’s the best entry yet, with a slew of simple yet fun minigames and accessible design that makes this an easy game for people of all ages and skill levels to pick up and play.
Plenty of great Mario spin-offs have released for Switch, including turn-based tactics games, role-playing games, fighting games, and more.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
This Ubisoft Milan-developed crossover event is a surprisingly great tactics game in which players assemble squads of Mario characters, Rabbids, and Rabbids who look like Mario characters for kinetic turn-based battles. A Donkey Kong Adventure expansion launched a year later, so there’s plenty of content here for strategy fans. Plus, a sequel, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, is due out next year.
Some longtime fans of the Paper Mario series were disappointed that, with The Origami King, Nintendo refused to return the series to its RPG roots. The Thousand Year Door this is not. But what this game does have is clever, funny writing and a unique ring-based battle system. The mechanics aren’t as deep as in early entries, but this game is far from paper thin.
Mario’s brother and perennial sidekick takes on a leading role in this ghost-hunting adventure, wielding a vacuum he can use to suck up ghosts. Rescue Mario for a change in this well-received 2019 Switch exclusive.
Whatever your opinion of Mario Party–the series in which the mustachioed plumber and friends take turns rolling dice, hopping around a board, playing minigames and collecting stars–Super Mario Party is unlikely to change it. The series’ 2018 Switch debut is pretty similar to previous entries in the series, but if you like what the series is, or, at least, think it’s a fine-enough time while hanging out with friends, it’s a good one of those.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a Mario game in the same way Avengers: Endgame is an Ant Man movie. Sure, he’s there , but it’s not really about him. Mario’s relative unimportance to the series notwithstanding, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of the best multiplayer games of all time, with the most expansive roster of any competitive game ever. Part party game, part museum tour, part action-oriented fighter, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is action-packed fun that can liven up any get-together.
A significantly more difficult arcade version of Super Mario Bros., which we discuss in more detail below.
Arcade Archives Mario Bros.
Arcade Archives Mario Bros.
This is the arcade game Mario Bros., which we discuss below. You can pay for this version, or play it as part of Nintendo Switch Online’s collection of NES titles.
Nintendo Switch Online Mario games
Nintendo Switch Online
There are tons of classic Mario games available to play for free for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Switch Online costs $20 per year for an individual membership or $35 per year for a family account that supports up to eight users. If you’re in a nostalgic mood, check out all of the SNES and NES Mario games you can play on the service below.
SNES Online Mario games
There are five Mario games available on Switch Online that originally debuted on Super Nintendo, including the wonderful compilation Super Mario All-Stars.
Super Mario World
Mario’s Super Nintendo debut boasted a generational leap forward in graphics, introduced Yoshi and the spin-jump and is just a ton of fun to play. Plus, it’s got save functionality built in, which sure is nice compared to its NES predecessors.
Super Mario Kart
The first Mario Kart game feels pretty different from every Mario Kart game that followed. While Mario’s racing adventures have been rendered in 3D since Mario Kart 64, Super Mario Kart fakes 3D with Mode 7–an effect used in a variety of SNES games to create faux 3D on a 2D sprite-based plane. As a result, rather than feeling like you’re driving through a 3D space, it kind of feels like you’re steering a toy car around a paper map. If you love Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and want to see the roots of the series, it’s worth checking out. Thankfully, you can do so at no added cost if you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.
Mario’s Super Picross
This game, a sequel to Mario’s Picross, was originally released only in Japan and the Switch version, puzzlingly, remains untranslated–despite being available on the North American eShop. The tutorial and all text are presented in kanji, so this one is a little difficult to get into unless you can read Japanese or already know how to play Picross.
Super Mario All-Stars
A remaster collection from decades before remaster collections became a common thing, Super Mario All-Stars gathers the NES Mario games (Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros. 3) and gives them a SNES coat of paint, with new graphics and music.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Despite the name, Yoshi’s Island is more spin-off than sequel. As Yoshi, the green dinosaur introduced in Super Mario World, you platform through colorful stages while caring for Baby Mario. Basically, the game is one long escort mission, but through inventive level design, gorgeous pixel art that foreshadowed the arts-and-crafts style of games like Paper Mario and Yoshi’s Wooly World, a killer soundtrack and exceptional controls, it manages to be one of the best games in the series.
NES Online Mario games
There are even more Mario games (including some you may not recognize) on NES Online.
Super Mario Bros.
The game that started it all. While Mario was introduced in Donkey Kong, and appeared alongside his brother, Luigi, in Mario Bros. and Wrecking Crew, Super Mario Bros. set the template for every 2D platformer that would follow. Aside from the one-off gimmickry of World 7-4, which requires extensive guesswork or an Internet walkthrough to complete, Super Mario Bros. still holds up and Nintendo Switch Online’s suspend save functionality means that you can much more easily see it through to completion.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
Originally released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levelsplays a dark joke on players who think they know what to expect from a Mario game. With extreme difficulty and in-game tricks (like poison mushrooms that look like power-ups), Nintendo decided the game was too difficult for North American audiences. As a result, players in the United States got the next game on this list instead, and had to wait until 1993 to play The Lost Levels as part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Instead of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, North American audiences got this series outlier as the sequel to Super Mario Bros. This sequel isn’t really a sequel at all. Worried that Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels wouldn’t go over well with Western audiences, Nintendo altered an existing Famicom game, Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, by adding Mario characters. The resulting game has mechanics, like picking up and throwing vegetables to hurt enemies and extensive vertical platforming, that would not be iterated on in successive entries. Instead, Super Mario Bros. 2 stands as a bizarre one-off, a numbered Mario game that wasn’t really a Mario game at all.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Platformer fans have long argued over which 2D Mario–Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3–is truly supreme. But if you have Nintendo Switch Online, you can play both superb titles at no extra charge. Problem solved.
Dr. Mario
While younger fans likely know Dr. Mario from the Super Smash Bros. series, the character’s 1990 debut is a magnificent puzzle game that’s well worth checking out. Gameplay will be familiar for anyone who’s tried their hand at Puyo Puyo or, to a lesser extent, Tetris. Dual-colored medicine capsules fall from the top of the screen and must be arranged by color at the bottom to destroy sets of pre-arranged viruses. Match four and they disappear. To complete a level, you need to destroy all the viruses, and in later levels, those viruses venture much closer to the top of the screen. It’s a frantic puzzler with the perfect soundtrack for virus extermination.
NES Open: Tournament Golf
This NES golf game, starring Mario, is a little more difficult to parse than the mascot’s modern outings on the links. Picking this title up after spending some time with the recent Mario Golf: Super Rush, it’s striking how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. Play switches between an overhead perspective, which gives you a sense of the hole in its entirety, and behind Mario’s back, where you line up your shot and hit the ball in time with a moving meter; all pretty similar to the modern game. But completing a hole is much more confusing and there’s no tutorialization to help you understand the rules. If you end up checking this one out, be sure to also look up gameplay videos on YouTube.
Donkey Kong
These days, Mario is significantly more famous than his giant gorilla frenemy. But Donkey Kong gave Mario his big break. This proto-platformer cast players as Mario (then called Jumpman) on a quest to save Pauline (not Peach). As you might expect from an arcade game made in 1981, it’s tough as nails. But, thankfully, Nintendo Switch Online lets you create save states so you can topple Donkey Kong regardless of your skill level.
Mario Bros.
The first game to feature “Mario Bros.” in the title, this 1983 arcade game looks a little different than the platformers bearing those words today. Like Donkey Kong, all the action is confined to one screen, as opposed to the side scrolling action of Super Mario Bros. It’s a fine game, but in the Mario series, it’s a bit of an evolutionary dead-end; mostly worth checking out for historical curiosity.
Wrecking Crew
A fun early Mario spin-off–and the origin of Mario wielding a hammer–Wrecking Crew is an action-oriented puzzle game in which Mario must destroy blocks and breakable ladders while avoiding enemies and fireballs. It’s pretty fun and figuring out how to navigate each space–you may actually need that ladder you just destroyed–is an engrossing challenge.
Discontinued Mario games
Super Mario 3D All-Stars
Didn’t see a game you were looking for in the list? Unfortunately, it may have been discontinued. In celebration of Mario’s 35th birthday, Nintendo launched a pair of limited time games on Switch: Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which collected Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy; and Super Mario Bros. 35, a free battle royale take on Super Mario Bros. World 1-1. As of March 31, 2021, neither is available anymore, though you might be able to find physical copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars online or in the wild.
Cancellations do not exist in this dojo. Season 4 of Cobra Kai, Netflix’s TV series follow-up to the Karate Kid film franchise, won’t be here until December. And yet, the streaming service has already renewed the show for Season 5, with production set to resume this fall in Atlanta, Georgia.
While Season 4 is still months away, we have some idea about what to expect. It was previously confirmed that Thomas Ian Griffith would reprise his role as the villainous Terry Silver from Karate Kid 3. He’ll be teaming up once again with John Kreese (Martin Kove) to lead the Cobra Kai dojo down a dark path en route to the All-Valley Karate Tournament.
Cobra Kai picks up three decades after the original Karate Kid film, with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) now grown. In the first two seasons, the duo were once again rivals–Johnny resurrected Cobra Kai, while Daniel brought back Mr. Miyagi’s dojo to oppose him. In Season 3, though, with Johnny ousted from Cobra Kai, the two longtime enemies were forced to work together to bring down Kreese once and for all. Now, with the All-Valley coming up, the warring dojos are going to settle their differences at the tournament.
Cobra Kai first premiered in 2018 on YouTube Premium, then known as YouTube Red. That was the exclusive home of the first two seasons, before it shifted to Netflix with the launch of Season 3 on January 1 of this year. All three seasons are currently available on Netflix, with Season 4 premiering in December.
After pitting them against a fascist government, Ubisoft has a new enemy in store for Watch Dogs: Legion players: the undead. A new mode for the game, titled Legion of the Dead, launched today in a free update for players across all platforms. Legion of the Dead tasks small teams of four players against zombie armies as they try to escape the streets of London with as many supplies as they can carry.
Legion of the Dead was previously added to Watch Dogs: Legion this past June, albeit as an alpha release and just for PC players. Starting today, players across all platforms can face down the undead through the streets of futuristic London.
The game mode tasks players with escaping the zombie-ridden city with as many supplies as they can. However, not only are the undead in the way but so are Albion soldiers that have hoarded supplies for themselves. Players will have to navigate around the zombies that have flooded into the city and take on soldiers to gather supplies and new resources, including ammo and gadgets. After collecting a set amount of supplies, players can head to an extraction point and escape the city.
Following a successful extraction, the game will reward players with Z-Creds, a new currency that can only be used in Legion of the Dead. These can be spent on weapons and gadgets that can only be purchased, not found out in the field.
Along with zombies, Watch Dogs: Legion has recently brought Assassins into its dystopian setting. The game’s 5.5 title update added new game modes and a crossover with Assassin’s Creed.
Lenovo is kicking off its Intel Gamer Days Sale event today, and you’ll find some great deals on gaming laptops and PCs equipped with RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 video cards. Best of all, you won’t have to wait too long for most of these configs to ship out. This event runs for only 10 days, and it’s your best chance to score a great deal on a gaming PC before Black Friday. In other deal news, save on the newly announced Forza 5 Limited Edition Xbox controller or the high-end Xbox Elite Series 2 Xbox controller, get the lowest price ever on a pair of Sony active noise cancelling wireless headphones, or pick up the re-released Oculus Quest 2 with double the storage for the same price. These deals and more below.
Lenovo Intel Gamer Days Sale: Save on Legion Gaming Laptops and Desktop PCs
Lenovo’s “Legion” series of gaming PCs and laptops offer the latest and greatest gaming performance at a very reasonable cost. They’re equipped with the newest RTX 30 series video cards, which offer huge speed gains compared to the previous generation’s RTX 20 series cards, along with new technology like DLSS 2.0 (very useful) and ray tracing (not as much). Alongside these new GPUs are your choice of either AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series or Intel’s Rocket Lake/Tiger Lake processors. Lenovo also offers one of the best customer service experiences compared to other prebuilt PC makers, which is especially important if you haven’t built the PC yourself. Lenovo’s sale events can be hard to navigate, so we’ve conveniently rounded up a list of the best Legion deals going on right now.
Lenovo Legion Gaming Laptops
Lenovo Legion Gaming PCs
Intel Gamer Days Sale: Razer Blade 4K OLED RTX 2070 Gaming Laptop for $1399.99
If you want the best looking gaming laptop on the market, then look no further. This Razer Blade laptop is, in our opinion, Razer’s best deal during the Intel Gamer Days Event. It’s an amazing laptop for the price, featuring an anodized CNC unibody aluminum frame and a gorgeous 4K OLED display. There’s plenty of power under the hood too with an Intel Core i7 processor and an RTX 2070 graphics card.
Dell Intel Gamer Days Sale: Save on Alienware RTX 30 Series Gaming Laptops and PCs
It’s not surprising that Dell would throw its hat into the ring for the Intel Gamer Days Sale event. There are some great deals on the latest Alienware m15 and m17 gaming laptops and Alienware Aurora R12 gaming desktop PCs with the new RTX 30 series video cards.
Forza 5 Limited Edition Xbox Controller
This wicked looking Xbox controller went up for sale yesterday for $74.99. Today, it’s on sale at Walmart for $69, although we doubt it will last very long at this price. There’s also of detail given to this controller, like the transparent yellow finish with candy colored splatter, custom-colored, visible rumble motor and lighting effects, color shifting hybrid D-pad, asymmetrical thumbsticks in different bold colors, and textured controller grips. This is one of the best new Xbox controllers out on the market.
Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller
This is the controller to get if you want the most precise and customizable Xbox controller on the market. This professional-grade controller features adjustable tension thumbsticks, shorter hair trigger locks, wraparound textured grips, interchangeable thumbsticks and paddle shapes, custom profiles saved on your controller itself, and included USB Type C cable with charging dock. It boasts up to 40 hours of battery life and is compatible with the Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, and PC.
Sony WH-CH700N Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones and 4 Months of TIDAL for Only $69
When these headphones were first released, they boasted a steep $200 price tag. Today, Walmart has them for only $69, and that’s not even including the free 4 month TIDAL subscription you’d get ($32 value). The CH700N is far and away the best active noise cancelling headphone you’ll find for $100. Other features include wireless Bluetooth streaming, up to 35 hour battery life, and built-in microphone for hands-free calling.
New Release: Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset with More Storage, Same Price
The Oculus Quest 2 has so far been the best value when it comes to VR gaming. It’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than its competitors, it has phenomenal tracking, it doesn’t need to be tethered to a PC, and it boasts a huge library of games (even Half Life: Alyx is easily playable on the Quest 2). It’s also the best VR headset for Beat Saber. Now, Oculus has re-released its Oculus Quest 2 VR headset with double the storage (128GB vs 64GB) for the exact same price. There’s even less of a reason now to pick something else.
Extended: Herman Miller Gaming Anniversary Sale: 15% Off Gaming Chairs
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.
Cobra Kai will keep on keeping on as Netflix announced it has renewed The Karate Kid continuation series for a fifth season.
Season 4 of Cobra Kai isn’t even out yet, but Netflix wants fans to stay in its dojo with the early season renewal announcement. Season 4 is set to premiere in December.
Cobra Kai stars Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso decades after LaRusso beat Lawrence in The Karate Kid. Older and washed up, Lawrence and LaRusso’s rivalry reignites after Lawrence begins teaching karate and re-opens the Cobra Kai dojo.
The series originally premiered on YouTube Red, YouTube’s shelved original programming service. While YouTube Red was eventually shuttered, Cobra Kai was regarded as one of the best shows on the platform and Netflix took over the series starting with season 3.
After years of teases, Destiny 2‘s scariest and most ubiquitous villain, Savathun, has finally made her appearance. She’s not only central to the Season of the Lost, Destiny 2’s current content season, she’s also making huge moves in The Witch Queen, the next big expansion for the game. Bungie revealed some of what we can expect from The Witch Queen in its recent Destiny 2 showcase, detailing one incredibly important new element: We’ll be facing Hive Guardians.
In the story of Destiny 2, this is a massive development. “Guardian” is the term for the sci-fi superheroes the players embody, and they wield specific powers granted by a physics-defying force called the Light. Those powers include the ability to resurrect from death and to use magic to shoot fire or create black holes. Up until now, only humanity has wielded the Light, thanks to its source, the giant machine god-thing called the Traveler, and its Ghosts, the tiny robots that follow players around.
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Now Playing: Destiny 2: The Witch Queen – What You Need To Know
The Hive, meanwhile, are perhaps Destiny 2’s greatest enemy. These eons-old aliens are a billions-strong cult that worships death and exists only for conquest and genocide. Where humanity embodies the Light and, we’ve always assumed, the will of the Traveler, the Hive embodies the Darkness, the other god-like power in Destiny’s universe. A Hive enemy that controls the Light and its attendant powers–including near-immortality–is an incredible threat.
But what Bungie hasn’t told us just yet is how Savathun and her Hive army came by these powers. In fact, that question seems to be a major mystery of the expansion. The description for The Witch Queen on Bungie’s store reads, “The Witch Queen awaits those who are driven to understand her inexplicable control of the Light.” It also sports the tagline, “Survive the truth.”
That instantly leads to some serious deliberations. Where could Savathun have gotten the power of the Light, and what could the “truth” we need to survive actually be? There are a couple of possibilities, but one we likely need to consider sooner rather than later is that Savathun got the Light the same way humanity did: from the Traveler.
That would be a world-shaking revelation for Destiny–definitely a truth we would have to survive. Just about everything in the world of Bungie’s game is predicated on the idea that human Guardians are righteous defenders of the innocent, more or less, and that we’re granted the power of the Light by the benevolent and all-knowing Traveler because wedeserve it. Everything we do is based on the presupposition that we’re the heroes. If the Traveler gave the Light to the Hive, a species who has spent its entire existence bent on the destruction of all other life, it would call into question all the assumptions humanity has made about itself, and all the actions we’ve taken since the series started.
But there’s a lot that’s happened in the story of Destiny 2, particularly since the Beyond Light expansion, that grounds this line of thinking. The Traveler may well be rethinking its past choices because it faces an unprecedented situation–it’s staring down the Black Fleet, the pyramid-shaped spaceships that are the physical manifestation of the Darkness, and it’s standing and fighting, rather than running away. We’re apparently watching the story of the Traveler’s last stand, and desperation changes priorities.
To understand what might be happening, you should check out a key batch of Destiny 2 lore called “Unveiling.” This lore book popped up back in the Shadowkeep expansion, when we first started discovering the pyramid ships and coming to understand the Darkness’s whole deal. Though we’d always believed that the Darkness had nearly destroyed humanity after attacking the solar system way back in Destiny’s history, when the Black Fleet finally arrived once again, it didn’t immediately start destroying everything.
Instead, the Darkness spoke to us, offered gifts, and tried to make us see its side. Unveiling plays on that idea: It’s a lore book written from the perspective of the Darkness but which explains the relationship between it and the Traveler, who are described in the book as the “Winnower” and the “Gardener.” The book gives a creation myth of the universe, where the Gardener (or, seemingly, the Traveler) created life, allowing it to grow unchecked, while the Winnower (or, seemingly, the Darkness) embraced death, paring back that life so that only that which was strong and capable survived. Over time, the Gardener became bored with the situation–the life it created always wound up becoming the same brand of strong and ruthless because of the Winnower’s influence. The Gardener wanted to create all sorts of different life that would be diverse and interesting, and develop in new ways. The Winnower disagreed, claiming that helping weaker life to flourish would ultimately lead to more suffering when the Gardener’s help was finally removed. The two forces made a wager about whose philosophy was better, and that conflict is apparently what we’re playing through now. The Traveler wanders the universe, uplifting life, before the Darkness shows up and attacks. So far, the Traveler has always lost these conflicts and fled. According to Unveiling, humanity and the Guardians are the Traveler’s ultimate answer to the Darkness–we’re its last, best attempt to prove that its view is the right view.
Except, what if we’re not the Traveler’s last, best attempt? Lately, we’ve given the Traveler some pretty good reasons to be concerned about picking humanity to represent it in a final throw-down with the Darkness. After all, the Black Fleet arrived and immediately started offering gifts, and we Guardians took them. In Beyond Light, we started wielding the Darkness’s power alongside that of the Traveler with Stasis. The idea was that we would use the weapons of the enemy to defeat it, but there are lots of lore entries (specifically attached to the gear from the Trials of Osiris) that suggest plenty of Guardians are just falling to the Darkness’s side, growing cruel and corrupt.
The Traveler has tried to counter the pull of the Darkness with gifts of its own. That’s what the mission Harbinger, which rewards us with the powerful Light-infused gun Hawkmoon, is all about. But it doesn’t seem to be enough; Guardians all over the place are running around, wielding Stasis, and even among humanity, people are split on the best course of action.
One might think the Traveler is watching all this and getting a bit nervous.
Meanwhile, we’ve got Savathun. As revealed at the start of the Season of the Lost, the Hive’s Witch Queen is looking to get rid of her worm, the parasitic organism all Hive have inside them. The Hive’s origin myth is all about the species’ pact with these worm gods, which grant the Hive Darkness-borne powers and force them to adhere to what they call the “Sword-Logic.” It’s the same as the Winnower’s philosophy: The Hive try to kill everything they can, as a way of pursuing perfection, or the “final shape” of life in the universe. Anything that can be killed must be killed, by the Hive’s reckoning, including themselves. The idea is the relentless pursuit of strength until nothing exists but the absolute strongest life possible.
The Hive get their power from the worms in exchange for feeding the worms through constant conquest and murder, but the Hive can never stop conquering and killing, because their worms never stop being hungry. Stop feeding the worm, and the Hive who bears it is consumed instead. And the more you feed it, the hungrier the worm becomes. So Savathun asking for help getting rid of her worm, looking to break free from this pact, is a rejection of the Sword-Logic and the life of constant murder and conquest. It seems the Witch Queen is pretty tired of this whole “endlessly killing, conquering, and deceiving” existence, but she can’t stop doing those things without being consumed herself. If she wants to stop serving the Darkness, she needs help, and that’s what the Season of the Lost seems to be about.
So consider the situation from the Traveler’s point of view. You’re making your final stand against your greatest enemy. The Guardians, your greatest heroes, have been tempted by that enemy, and many of them are falling to its influence–or at the very least, are willing to take its gifts and listen to its requests and ideas. Meanwhile, your enemy’s greatest asset, the ever-conquering Hive, has grown tired of your enemy’s philosophy and is jumping ship. For the Traveler, suddenly an opportunity has presented itself to use the Darkness’s sharpest tool against it.
If we believe what’s written in Unveiling (which might be a bit foolish, since it’s a description of the Traveler given by the Darkness), then it’s fair to say that the Traveler doesn’t really care so much about the individual species it uplifts for their own sake, but merely that it’s interested in life in general. It does not, perhaps, have a particular soft spot for humanity. Unveiling paints a picture of the Traveler as caring primarily about beating the Darkness. If the Hive give the Traveler its best shot to do that, then it’ll take that shot.
But that’s also a massive betrayal for humanity and most of the characters in Destiny 2, many of whom haven’t just dedicated their lives to fighting the Traveler’s enemies, but who worship it as a deity, the physical embodiment of the concept of Good. If the Traveler gives the power of the Light to the Hive, a group of beings that are essentially the embodiment of Evil, it flies in the face of everything everyone has ever believed about the Traveler. It would, in essence, destroy Destiny 2’s notion of God. The repercussions would be enormous.
If you ask me, though, that’s the direction Destiny 2 is going. So much of this year’s story has been about the ideas of peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. According to Savathun, her many machinations this year have been about helping humanity, rather than harming it, and the results of those machinations do bear her out, at least to some degree. The Season of the Splicer in particular seemed to show Savathun testing humanity to see if it was capable of forgiving its enemies, and asking for help in destroying her worm suggests that Savathun may actually, potentially, be seeking forgiveness.
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Destiny 2 Savathun Animated Cutscene (SPOILERS)
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At least, Savathun working for our forgiveness seemed like a possibility before Bungie’s showcase for The Witch Queen. Perhaps, though, it isn’t our forgiveness Savathun is after.
We’re clearly going to fight Light-wielding Hive when The Witch Queen launches in February, at least at first. But it seems to me the question for the future of Destiny 2 is whether humanity can get over this. Can we recognize the benefits in making allies out of former enemies when taking on something worse? Can we forgive the Hive, at least enough to co-exist or fight side by side? Can we withstand the abandonment of our god, or the realization that its benevolence has limits?
Of course, time will tell. But it’s worth keeping in mind what else we know of the future of Destiny 2’s story: namely, the titles of its last two expansions. The first is dubbed “Lightfall,” which is self-evidently ominous. The last, straight of the philosophy of the Hive and the Darkness, is “The Final Shape.” At the very least, things are set to get a lot, uh, darker.
In a blog post, Microsoft’s Joseph Staten revealed why Halo Infinite’s campaign was absent from Gamescom and Opening Night Live. Meanwhile, community manager John Junyszek revealed how XP will work in the game’s multiplayer.
Location descriptions from Bethesda’s upcoming game Starfield have been revealed in new developer update videos. These locations include, the United Colonies capital city of New Atlantis, the pleasure city of Neon, and the capital of the Freestar Collective, Akila.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia brings together the latest in VR technology with an epic story about saving the environment. Revealed during Gamescom, ROTU Entertainment announced that its award-winning VR game, Ionia, is coming to Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR, and SteamVR on September 23, 2021.
Ionia is set in a fantastical world overgrowing with nature. Unfortunately, it’s in danger, and in order to keep the environment safe, you’ll need to embark on a journey to save the mystical Harpa.
ROTU Entertainment specializes in music, and it plays a key part in Ionia. You’ll need to solve music theory-based puzzles and interact with virtual flowers scattered throughout the Ionian forest that emit musical sounds like drums and bells. You’ll also be able to traverse the massive virtual forest by climbing trees or ziplining across ravines.
Ionia won the Cannes XR Development Showcase award in 2020 for its immersive technology, and environmental message. ROTUE Entertainment announced that it will donate five percent of the proceeds to the non-profit Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, an organization founded in 2002 by Terri and the late Steve Irwin.
For more, check out IGN’s full Gamescom coverage including new announcements, trailers, and news.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
Welcome to No More Heroes 3! Whether you’re a seasoned assassin or a beam katana rookie, there’s a lot to consider and understand before going into this ultraviolent action-packed adventure. To start off on your journey to climb to #1 on the UAA charts, we’ve prepared some advice to help you get on your feet.
For more about how the game stacks up, be sure to read our No More Heroes 3 review. Otherwise, read on for our essential tips and tricks around the game.
Throughout the various areas of NMH3, you’ll find sushi carts offering a variety of eat-in and take-out dishes for Travis to snarf on. Eating sushi provides various benefits depending on the type you chow down on, ranging from simple health and power restoration to boosting Slash Reel odds.
Take-out sushi can be used during battle, except for special fights where Travis dons his armor. Travis can hold up to five of each kind of sushi and snarf pieces mid-fight to get their effects. You’ll always want to keep health and power restoration sushi on hand, but having a few pieces of the other types at the ready is also a good idea–having tension and attack-power boosts you can activate at any time is always great. (How does the sushi stay fresh so long? Don’t ask.)
Eat-in sushi acts differently. You can’t take it into battle, but eating it confers some really great boosts–reducing Death Glove skill cooldown, augmenting your health and damage output, and even granting you an on-the-spot revival should Travis die (with a few exceptions). It’s expensive but worth it. Before major boss fights, you should always grab an eat-in bowl of sushi. Fortunately, most big boss fights have a sushi cart located right outside, so you can stock up on take-out and get a meal in before the big showdown.
DON’T FORGET TO GO DOWNSTAIRS
It’s surprisingly easy to miss the fact that Travis’s hotel room has a lab in the basement. You get there by sliding down the pole from the room with Jeane, the wardrobe, and the toilet. Here, you’ll find numerous functions that will be immensely beneficial to your assassination experience.
The first is the power-up machine, which lets you spend WESN to upgrade Travis’s health, attack strength, beam katana power, and death skills, and even unlock new moves. Investing in Travis’s stats goes a long way towards making the tougher boss encounters significantly less of a nightmare. If you want to change your build, all you have to do is press the X button to reset your current stats and get the WESN you’ve spent returned to allocate elsewhere. Nifty!
You’ll also find a machine that makes chips for Travis’s Death Glove. Making chips requires money and specific items, which can be earned through sub-quests and combat. Up to three of these chips can be equipped to customize Travis’s abilities further. We recommend making the 80 chip as soon as possible, as it will assist you immensely in the item-hunting subquests by indicating when something you’re looking for is nearby.
There’s a time machine here, too, but its use is rather limited: You can only use it to re-fight bosses you’ve previously conquered. However, you can choose to fight them at higher difficulty levels for a challenge and to earn some rare loot–several chip-creation items are only available as drops from boss battles. Depending on the difficulty, you’ll get some money and WESN on the side, too! Finally, there’s a room where you can review various in-game tutorials if you so please. Make full use of the lab facilities to augment your assassination capabilities!
HELP THE PEOPLE OUT
Even when you’ve cleared enough of the Designated Matches to get access to that chapter’s boss fight, you still might find yourself short on cash for the entry fee. When that happens, it’s time to get to work! You’ll find folks all over the various open-world areas who need a helping hand. When you enter a new area, look on the map for “?” signs–these are points of interest you have yet to visit. Some of these spots will be opportunities for volunteer work, which usually involves playing a short minigame.
The first time you encounter a minigame, you’ll usually play a basic “tutorial” level to acquaint yourself with the controls. You’ll get a small reward for completing this. Afterward, a small star in a circle will appear on the ground near the person asking for help. These are additional levels of the minigame at a higher difficulty, which can be completed for better rewards (and, sometimes, unlocking even tougher difficulty levels.) You don’t need to talk to the quest-giver every time if you’ve already finished the “tutorial”–just head for the star mark and confirm. Exceptions are the item-hunting minigames (like Deathman cards and Jeane’s kittens), the toilet-unclogging minigame (which opens up save points), and the highway driving battles.
There are several minigames scattered throughout, like lawn-mowing, mining, and cleaning up garbage in an alligator-infested water pit. When you find one you like, you can repeat it infinitely for extra money, WESN, and materials.
GO ON THE DEFENSIVE
But maybe you don’t want to help people out. Travis Touchdown doesn’t have time to mow lawns when he’s got alien scum to kill, you say. Well, thankfully, you can also earn extra cash, materials, and WESN through fighting at Defense Mission points, marked with a pair of green crossed swords on your map.
During these Defense Missions, you’ll take on a pre-set number of enemy waves. Defeating all the enemies from one wave summons the next until you’ve cleared them all. Each wave will have a different set of enemies to fight, so be prepared to change up your strategies when needed–and don’t forget to bring some sushi if things go south.
Like the other minigames, Defense Missions can be repeated infinitely, so if you’d rather earn your wages through bloodshed, that’s a perfectly valid option.
DEATH KICK IS YOUR RELIABLE BEST FRIEND
Travis’s Death Glove gives him special abilities he can use by holding down the L button and pressing one of the face buttons. You’ll fill out all four of the abilities over the course of the game, but the skill you start the game with, Death Kick, will remain amazingly useful and versatile from start to finish. This dropkick has a lot of great properties: It does a good chunk of damage, knocks an enemy down, and, with proper timing, it can interrupt enemy attacks. If you see an enemy winding up for a really damaging attack, it’s good to have a Death Kick at the ready to knock them out of it.
The Death Kick, like all Death Glove skills, has a cooldown timer attached, so you’ll need to wait a little bit before you can use it again. Fortunately, its timer is pretty short compared to other Death Glove skills, and the cooldown can be reduced by augmenting Death Skills with the Power-Up Machine or eating certain sushi. Having a Death Kick ready to go in a pinch is always a good plan.
KNOCK ‘EM OUT AND GO FOR THE THROW
It’s a giant pain in the ass when your beam katana juice runs out, and you’re forced to run away and recharge mid-fight. There are two much easier ways to replenish its juice, however! The first is to eat a power-restoring sushi, but those are limited, and you could likely run out during a particularly long battle. The second option–using Travis’s wrestling moves–is a lot more fun and badass.
During a fight, you can stun enemies by hitting them with a lengthy combo. Ways to catch them off-guard and go into a long combo include executing a dodge to activate slow-mo, successfully winning a sword-clash, or simply getting to their sides or behind where they lack the ability to defend. Then go to town! Hit them with a flurry of normal and heavy strikes. When you see small stars pop off their bodies, that means that they’re almost stunned, so keep at it! You’ll know that they’re fully stunned when you see a bunch of stars circling their head.
Once you’ve stunned them, stop attacking normally and go in for the throw! By performing a wrestling move on a stunned enemy, you’ll recharge the beam katana power to max. If your grapple lands the killing blow, you also stand a good chance of starting up the Slash Reel. You should try to go for throws on stunned foes whenever you can to avoid having to recharge manually–feeling like a totally awesome death machine is just a nice little side benefit. Be careful, though: If you knock down an enemy that’s stunned (for example, with a Death Kick), they will no longer be stunned when they get up.
CROWD CONTROL TIPS
Travis is just one guy who often finds himself up against multiple enemies at once, but fortunately, he’s got a couple of nice skills to help with keeping the hordes at bay. The simplest of these is the jumping heavy attack: Travis will fall down and create a small shockwave when he hits the ground, causing enemies in the radius to stagger. It won’t work on guarding enemies, though, who can retaliate as Travis recovers. For a group of attack-happy enemies, however, it works great–do the attack, focus on one enemy as they’re all recovering, then work to isolate that enemy from the pack with attacks and movement for an easier kill.
Sometimes, however, you might find yourself assaulted on all sides by enemies with sturdier defenses. A good option for these situations is the Death Rain attack you will learn a little ways into the game. This opens up a small portal above an enemy, raining down energy blasts that do a constant stream of damage. It’s good for both mostly stationary enemies and large groups in a small area. Finally, Death Force allows you to clear a path for Travis by knocking one or more enemies back a good distance, leaving them on the ground and vulnerable.
