Author: Trafficblast

Pokemon Go is closing out the year with a variety of December events, including another Community Day weekend celebration. The two-day event takes place on December 12 and 13, and it brings back all the previous featured Pokemon not only from this past year, but from 2019 as well. To get you up to speed on the big event, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about December’s Community Day weekend below.

December’s Featured Pokemon

As has become tradition at this point, December’s Community Day brings back all the featured Pokemon from every Community Day this past year. Throughout both days of the event, the following Pokemon–and their Shiny forms–will appear in the wild much more often than normal:

Additionally, Niantic is bringing all of 2019’s featured Pokemon back for this month’s Community Day as well. The following Pokemon will appear in Raids and hatch from 2 km eggs throughout the weekend:

• Totodile
• Swinub
• Treecko
• Torchic
• Mudkip
• Ralts
• Slakoth
• Trapinch
• Bagon
• Turtwig
• Chimchar

Not only will you have another chance to catch 2020’s featured Pokemon again during this month’s Community Day, you’ll also be able to get their Community Day-exclusive attacks. Below, you can see what event move each Pokemon will learn if you can evolve them into their final forms before the Community Day weekend ends.

Featured Pokemon	Community Day Move
Piplup	Hydro Cannon
Rhyhorn	Rock Wrecker
Abra	Counter
Seedot	Bullet Seed
Weedle	Drill Run
Gastly	Shadow Punch
Magikarp	Aqua Tail
Porygon	Tri Attack
Charmander	Dragon Breath
Electabuzz	Flamethrower
Magmar	Thunderbolt

Any 2019 Pokemon that you catch and evolve during this month’s event will also be able to learn their original Community Day moves. You can see each of those below.

Featured Pokemon	Community Day Move
Totodile	Hydro Cannon
Swinub	Ancient Power
Treecko	Frenzy Plant
Torchic	Blast Burn
Mudkip	Hydro Cannon
Ralts	Synchronoise
Slakoth	Body Slam
Trapinch	Earth Power
Bagon	Outrage
Turtwig	Frenzy Plant
Chimchar	Blast Burn

Each day of December’s Community Day event runs from 6 AM to 10 PM local time, but certain Pokemon and Raids will be more common during specific hours. The following Pokemon will be more likely to be Shiny from 11 AM to 5 PM local time each day:

December 12

• Weedle
• Abra
• Gastly
• Rhyhorn
• Seedot
• Piplup

December 13

• Charmander
• Electabuzz
• Magmar
• Magikarp
• Porygon

Additionally, Mega Gengar Raids will be occurring more frequently from 11 AM to 5 PM on December 12, while Mega Charizard X Raids will happen more often during the same window on December 13.

Other Bonuses

On top of the increased Pokemon spawns, Niantic will offer a few bonuses during December’s Community Day weekend. From 11 AM to 5 PM local time each day of the event, you’ll earn twice the normal amount of Stardust for capturing Pokemon. Additionally, eggs will hatch at a quarter of the distance they usually require, and any Incense you use will remain active for three hours.

Call of Duty: Warzone player Garry2206 was running to pick up a contract in lumberyard when he turned a corner and was blinded by the bright lights that lined the building in front of him. He could barely see the enemy in his peripheral. He was gunned down a few moments later.

“Christmas came early in lumberyard,” they wrote on Reddit after getting killed. The lights were actually caused by a rendering bug and not anything related to old Saint Nick, but it’s pushed players to imagine what Verdansk would look like during the holidays.

Infinity Ward and Raven Software went all out with jump scares, special skins, and a night time mode for Warzone’s Halloween event, The Haunting of Verdansk. Players are hoping for something similar in December. They’re asking Santa for a new limited-time mode, special Elf cosmetics, and even a candy cane melee weapon.

“It’d be nice if we got a full snowstorm for Christmas time,” said Redditor OneTokeOverTheLine. “Throw some holiday lights on the buildings, build some snow men, and if you win you should get picked up by Santa’s sleigh instead of the Blackhawk.”

There haven’t been any leaks or announcements relating to a holiday event happening in Call of Duty: Warzone, but it’s something that previous Call of Duty games have had. Infinity Ward released a special re-skin of the Crash map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare–both the original game and the 2019 remaster–called Winter Crash. It had Christmas lights, a tree, and special holiday-themed air strikes.

This will be the first holiday season in Warzone’s existence and Activision, Raven Software, and Treyarch already have their hands full with merging the battle royale with Black Ops Cold War in December. Players are still hopeful that they’ll get something beyond cosmetics to help them ring in the new year in Verdansk.

“It would be fun to have things like snow falling across the map, snowmobiles instead of ATVs, Christmas lights and decorations in and on the houses, and maybe even a gun that shoots snowballs,” said Redditor EverythingisTaken109. “Of course we would have Santa skins, too.”

Many players have said they’d like a return to the night mode that was introduced with the Haunting of Verdansk, with the addition of lights and presents spread all over the map. Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PUBG have all had or are currently having holiday events and hopefully Warzone follows suit this year.

Phantasy Star Online 2 is getting a significant update next week that will usher in the next chapter of the MMORPG’s storyline. Beyond new story content, Episode 6 will include Phantom and Etoile classes to check out and will raise the level cap to 95. All of the Episode 6 content releases on December 9 for free.

Episode 6’s story picks up after the alternate dimension Omega was able to get rid of the gigantic black hole. The victory doesn’t last long as the ARKS find a new foe in the form of the Goddess of Annihilation Shiva, who declares war upon the entire universe. It’s now up to players to go up against her fleets of spaceships in what Sega is calling “the most massive battle in the history of ARKS.”

Players will be able to take the battle to Shiva while playing as two new classes. The Phantom class uses rods, katanas, and assault rifles to damage enemies and are able to modify their Photon Arts by using weapon actions. Meanwhile, the Etoile class specializes in support and melee combat. Wielding blades and wands, these defensive-minded characters are able to restore party members’ HP and PP during combat.

As far as new quests go, PSO2 is adding in a new urgent quest called Armada of Annihilation: Interception. This ties into the new story content and will be a space battle waged by the Goddess of Annihilation. Additionally, there are new risk exploration quests and level up quests that will give players a special present upon completion plus 200% experience.

Players will find themselves going up against two new enemy types during these missions. The Luminmech packs quite the challenge as they are heavily armored and deal significant damage. Even more fearsome is the Ultra Enemy type, which is an evolved form of enemies and Falspawn found on each planet. These foes are found in risk exploration missions and are classified as being “ultra hard.” There’s a good reason to go up against them, though, as players can unlock powerful weapons by defeating them.

To help take on these new challenges, Sega is adding two summoner pets into PSO2. Herbie is the evolved form of Redran and has a genius personality type. That means Herbie will have increased PP recovery, Photon Arts performance, and normal attack damage against bosses. The other new pet is Vulcan, which is the evolution of Synchro and an aggressive type. Vulcan is able to use damaging kicks and does more damage with its bomb and strike attacks than its previous form.

Episode 6 will cap off a busy year for PSO2, which saw Sega’s popular MMO finally release in North America on Xbox One and PC, arrive on Steam, and put on memorable Persona and NieR: Automata crossovers. The New Genesis expansion is set to release next year, although it won’t replace the base game.

Any comic book character named after the murder hornet would have to be a villain. That’s just what it is.

At about two inches long when fully grown, the Asian giant hornets have striped bodies encased in a protective shell. Their bodies are black and orange-yellow. Their heads are dominated by large eyes and fearsome looking mandibles, which look like pliers that would hurt like heck if your finger got caught between them.

At the other end of the body is a quarter-inch stinger. It doesn’t detach, as with some bees, so the hornets can sting over and over. It’s like being, “stabbed by a red-hot needle,” Shunichi Makino, a researcher at Japan’s Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute told National Geographic.

Usually, the sting is merely painful – but it can be fatal. In Japan, an estimated 30 to 50 people die from the hornets’ stings annually, from anaphylaxis, cardiac arrest, or multiple organ failure. The hornets use their oral appendages to massacre honeybees, which are already under threat from pesticides, habitat destruction, and diseases. During the “slaughter phase,” as it’s called, murder hornets lay waste to entire beehives, decapitating the residents and harvesting the pupae for food. It’s grim, to say the least.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-25-best-sci-fi-movies&captions=true”]

Murder Hornets in North America

In Washington State, honeybees pollinate raspberries, blueberries, and other crops. That’s why experts were worried when the Asian giant hornets were spotted in the northern part of the state earlier this year. The species was first found in North America in Canada in 2019. It’s not clear how they made their way to the continent.

“It’s impossible for them to fly over from Asia,” entomologist Takatoshi Ueno, of Kyushu University, told The New York Times. One theory is that they found their way via a shipping container.

However they got here, local experts don’t want them to start multiplying. Washington entomologists went to extraordinary lengths to hunt down a hornet nest in Blaine, near the Canadian border.

Tracking and Destroying the Murder Hornets

Over the summer, entomologists lay traps to start catching the hornets. They filled plastic bottles with orange juice and other sweet-smelling liquids. A couple of the insects were found drowned. Next, the scientists put out screened traps, to catch live hornets. Washington State entomologist Chris Looney finally managed to capture a living hornet, and the team was able to glue a tracking device onto it.

In late October, Looney and his colleagues followed the tracker’s signal to the hornet nest. To ensure no insects escaped, they wrapped the entire tree in cellophane. The hornets’ long stingers meant regular beekeeping suits wouldn’t work. Instead, Looney and rest wore special foam suits. They also had goggles on.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-best-deaths-in-the-jurassic-park-movies&captions=true”]

“I was more worried about getting permanent nerve damage in the eye from the squirted venom than being stung,” Looney told The Guardian. “They are pretty intimidating, even for an inch-and-a-half insect. They are big and loud and I know it would hurt very badly if I get stung. They give me the willies.”

This was the first removal of an Asian giant hornet nest in the U.S., but it probably won’t be the last. Scientists are modeling how the insects may spread. As large and unpleasant as the hornets are for humans, entomologists are more worried about their effect on the bees and other pollinators.

“It’s hard to say how they will behave here compared to their native range, but the fear is that there are large apiaries of bees that could be sitting ducks, while as the hornets move south to warmer weather their colonies could grow larger,” Looney said.

For more science news relating to insects, read about DNA being extracted from insects preserved in Amber and how a fossil found in Brasil uncovered the oldest meat-eating dinosaur in history.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Twitter will host a digital launch party for Cyberpunk 2077 on December 9. This includes a Q&A with Cyberpunk 2077 developers Miles Tost and Patrick Mills ahead of the official launch. This will likely be one of the last interviews with the devs before the December 10 release date.

The celebration kicks off at 6pm EST on December 9 with a Q&A hosted by Parris. Though not a traditional launch party, the event will celebrate the long road to Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, which has been delayed multiple times due to various factors.

Twitter will roll out a custom #CyberNight hashmoji (the fun little images that appear after special hashtags) and are promising some surprise elements for fans who attend the digital event.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=new-cyberpunk-2077-gameplay-screenshots&captions=true”]

Tost and Mills are CD Projekt Red’s seniors level designer and quest designer, respectively, and they have been fairly prominent on social media during the final months of Cyberpunk 2077’s development. They will hopefully be able to share some new and final information about the RPG hours before launch.

All of it will culminate in the worldwide launch of Cyberpunk 2077, where it will finally get into the hands of players who have waited months and then weeks for the RPG to be released following two, high-profile delays.

In the meantime, CD Projekt Red is urging caution as there appear to be some spoilers around the internet. The studio has said that it will shut down any streams featuring Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay before December 9. So be careful when browsing around for different Cyberpunk 2077 information.

Check out IGN’s final Cyberpunk 2077 preview for our take on nearly four hours of gameplay. And check back on December 10 when Cyberpunk 2077 is finally released.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

The festive season has commenced, and if you’re dreading hearing Mariah Carey’s annual Christmas jingle again, then perhaps a more gamer-orientated album will be more to your liking. Available right now, A Merry Hyrule Christmas is a Zelda tribute album that blends some of the classic tracks from the Nintendo series with traditional Christmas songs.

Produced by Eric Bucholz and the Seattle-based game music group Materia Collective, the album combines these tracks with orchestral and rock stylings.

“A Merry Hyrule Christmas is the first album to combine music from The Legend of Zelda franchise with classic holiday tunes of various genres,” Eric Buchholz said. “My goal was to create an album of videogame music that could blend in seamlessly with classic holiday tunes.”

You can read the full tracklist below:

1. Kakariko Village
2. O Sacred Light
3. Clock Town Sleigh Ride
4. Silent Knight
5. Carol of the Goddess
6. Dragon Roost Hymn
7. Din Rest Ye Merry Deku Scrubs
8. The Twelve Days of Christmas

If you’re interested in grabbing the album for yourself, it can be purchased and streamed from these storefronts. If you’d prefer a different Legend of Zelda experience, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is now out on Nintendo Switch.

“It’s strange to think of a bungled story leaving me so lukewarm on a Zelda game, even if it is a spin-off,” critic Suriel Vazquez said in his Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity review. “But paying off its premise is the burden a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is tasked with.”