EA showed off its new multiplayer shooter, Rocket Arena, in last month’s EA Play presentation; now, you can dive in for yourself. Rocket Arena is out today on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, featuring a cartoonish art style and 3v3 competitive matches where you play as distinct heroes, similar to Overwatch. However, it’s also akin to Super Smash Bros. in that your goal is to knock your opponent hard enough that they fly off the side of the battlefield. And, of course, there’s rockets. Lots of them.
Rocket Arena features 10 playable characters, 100 levels of progression, 10 maps, and hundreds of cosmetics at launch, with more content coming to the live game soon. The game also includes 4 PVP modes along with one cooperative mode, and there’s an in-game currency (“Rocket Fuel”) you’ll use to buy season passes, which are called a Blast Pass. Notably, Rocket Arena has launched with full cross-play support across all platforms. Season 1 will officially kick off on July 28, adding a new hero, limited-time events, a ranked season, and more.
Is Rocket Arena free?
Rocket Arena isn’t a free-to-play shooter like Apex Legends or Fortnite. Instead, there’s a base game you’ll have to purchase, with a slightly pricier edition that gets you digital bonuses. If you’re curious to check out Rocket Arena, we’ve rounded up the purchase options and pricing for it below.
A physical Mythic edition is available for $40 (you can buy it digitally too). Similar to physical editions for games like Overwatch or Apex Legends, the Rocket Arena Mythic edition gets you digital bonuses, including cosmetics and in-game currency. Here’s everything it includes:
Guardian Phoenix Jayto Mythic outfit
Frost Princess Kayi outfit
Cyber Sailor Blastbeard outfit
Stone Temple Izell outfit
Pulsar Megablast trail
Fragment Return trail
1,000 Rocket Fuel (which you can use to buy a Blast Pass or customizations)
Smite‘s mid-season update 7.7 adds the Avatar: the Last Airbender battle pass and makes changes to the game’s main mode, Conquest. Aang, Zuko, and Korra are all being added to the game as skins for existing gods Merlin, Susano, and Skadi, respectively.
The Avatar: the Last Airbender battle pass includes two skins for Aang, Zuko, and Korra, along with announcer packs, animated avatars, and more cosmetic items. All of the items are exclusive to the battle pass, which can be purchased for 750 Gems (about $14 USD). Gems can also be earned–slowly–by playing Smite.
The Zuko skin is unlocked upon purchasing the battle pass, with the Korra skin unlocked at tier 20 and the Aang skin unlocked at tier 60. The variant skins are all unlocked post tier 60. This is the second crossover battle pass Smite has done, the first being a RWBY crossover back in November 2019.
The update also brings changes to the Conquest mode, Smite’s standard MOBA game mode, specifically changing how the jungle camps function. Jungle camps will now have special abilities they use against players and have received an overall difficulty increase.
Halo 3 is remembered fondly by many Halo fans. Originally released in 2007, the game remains a fan-favorite to this day, in part for what is considered by many to be Halo’s best multiplayer offering to date.
Everyone who enjoys Halo probably has their own story about what Halo 3 meant to them. And this includes developers from 343 Industries, the new stewards of Halo after taking over the franchise from Bungie in 2007. Twenty-two developers from 343 Industries shared with us their memories of Halo 3 and why it was so special to them.
Halo 3 represents a bygone era for Halo and FPS games overall. There was no sprinting. No loadouts. No perks. No XP grind. Whereas newer entries in the Halo series–and across the wider industry–have focused on engagement through things like battle passes, microtransactions, and live events, Halo 3 kept you playing because it was damn fun and all your friends were playing it. Plain and simple. No gimmicks.
It feels surreal that a game from 2007 still performs and looks so good in 2020, and remains all kinds of fun thanks to Halo: The Master Chief Collection. But Halo 3 isn’t done growing yet. The game is finally out now on PC through The Master Chief Collection, and it’s a big deal because–unlike Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2–Halo 3 was never released on PC. Coming to PC opens up a new audience for the beloved game, and it offers another opportunity for existing fans to revisit the game on a new platform with crisper and more fluid gameplay.
The developers tell tales of late nights playing Grifball and Duck Hunt; of cultivating family and personal relationships through the game. They are stories of putting in the work and earning your first 50. One developer, Sean Cooper from the Master Chief Collection publishing team, tells a story of playing the Halo 3 public beta while he was serving overseas in the military to pass the time when he wasn’t on duty.
Halo Infinite multiplayer designer Fernando Reyes Medina says he didn’t have enough money to buy an Xbox when he was living back at home in Mexico City. So Medina went to an internet cafe and rented an console for $1 per hour to play Halo 2. The story only got more interesting when Halo 3 came out in 2007
“The owner of the cafe that was surprisingly not very tech savvy asked my group of friends and I to set up Xbox Live so people could play Halo 3 there online. We set the whole thing up and my first online match was just magical,” Medina said. “Playing with people from all over the world made me realize how impactful games can be in terms of bringing people together, because no matter who you are or what part of the world you were in, when you were in game you were just another Spartan. That moment was the eureka moment for me where I decided to become a game developer because I wanted to bring people together that way through my own games, and here I am now, 10 years later, as a multoplayer designer on Halo Infinite.”
You can check out all of their testimonials down below.
We also have some brand-new screenshots of Halo 3 on PC for you to feast your eyes on. The first is immediately below, while the other two follow further down the page.
The next Halo game is Halo Infinite, and it’s due for release later this year as a launch title for the Xbox Series X. Microsoft will showcase the game during the Xbox 20/20 event on July 23.
Lisa Barber | Environment/World Building Artist, Halo Infinite
“Halo captured my imagination more than any other game I’ve played, and Halo 3 really opened my eyes to exploring creativity and community in games. Being able to utilize Theater mode and Forge mode let me express myself in a really innovative new way. It also was the first ever title I got to play on Xbox Live, and I still have long-time friends I made during that time. Not to mention, countless nights staying up playing custom maps like Duck Hunt and Grifball with my best friend! My love for Halo has never stopped, and I’m really proud to be a part of 343 and help bring Halo Infinite to life. ”
“This game changed my life forever. Besides the incredible Campaign and multiplayer suite, there was an additional way to play the game through a new mode called Forge. This allowed players to go behind the multiplayer curtain and create their own experiences within the game. While I didn’t know it at the time, this was the very beginning of my journey into game development. In fact, 10 years later, on the anniversary of Halo 3, I was offered a position on the multiplayer team to develop ‘Halo Infinite.’ I’ve spent thousands of hours playing Halo 3 over the years, and it has given me so much in return. I owe my greatest friends, my relationship with my brother, and my entire career to this game. I’m honored to have the privilege of working on this franchise, and I hope that Halo continues to inspire a whole new generation of people, the way it inspired me.”
“This game changed my life forever.” — Tyler Ensrude, Multiplayer Designer, Halo Infinite
Ben Madlena | Sandbox Quality Analyst, Halo Infinite
“Halo 3 holds a lot of special memories for me because I played it as a kid and before I had Xbox Live, so it was usually just my brother and I playing split screen together. Halo 3 was a big deal for us because it introduced Forge mode – we used to spend countless hours making 1v1 maps and different custom game modes. The Sandbox being opened up in Forge really made the game seem endless, and it’s one of the reasons I grew to love Halo so much and wanted to work on the Halo team someday. It’s really fun to see how Forge has continued to evolve over the years – my brother and I mainly keep in touch via Xbox Live these days and we love playing all the unique maps/modes made by the community on Halo 5: Guardians!'”
Nick Bird | Forge Quality Assurance, Halo Infinite
“Halo 2 is where I started, but Halo 3 Forge is where I flourished. Every day I would get online with my friends and either mess around in Forge or play some crazy custom game we constructed. There are countless memories and stories to share of the fun we had, ranging from driving a warthog through an obstacle course to games of random weapons with superspeed and low gravity. I spent hundreds, probably thousands of hours in Forge, so much so that I had to create a second profile just to keep additional maps I created. Even then I would get friends to come into the session to save a map so I could figure out what to delete to clear some space. My time in Forge and the Forge community eventually led me to pursue a career in the industry, and ultimately landed me a position to work on what I love in a franchise I love.”
Halo 3 on PC looks stunning for a game from 2007
Hunter Young | 3D Environment Artist, Halo Infinite
“From 2007 to 2012, I played Halo 3 nearly every single day. 291 campaign missions, 2521 ranked matches, 5374 social matches, and a whopping 10197 custom games. Halo 3 was not just a game to me – calling it a game would be a disservice to what it meant to me. It was a way to talk and hang out with some of my best friends. It was also a sport – and one that showed me that I could actually be good at something. It was a story that I could re-live as much as I wanted, and it was a creative tool letting me forge bases with friends and share them with the community. Halo 3 was not a game – it was my entire life.
While I played and loved both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, Halo 3 was the perfect storm of an experience. Looking back, it let me escape everything that was going on in my life at the time, but most of all ‘Halo 3’ introduced me to real friends. Even then, I knew game design was exactly what I wanted to do in my life. My only goal was to make games one day, so that I just had to put my head down and get through the difficult times
After a short time went by I started my own Halo 3 clan – FSC: Fire Stealth Courage. I made a ranking system, hierarchy of power roles, multiple squad-based tier systems that revolved around different areas of the game and more. We grew to 210 members with a competitive team, forge team, screenshot team, and my 7 officers that served below me to help administrate the entire clan – all headed by me, some 8th grade kid from Tennessee. I had a legitimate double-life. Despite having a hard time in school, I could go home and be a leader and someone that 210 people looked up to. Starting that clan was the best thing that I could have done. While we were incredibly active with a litany of activity and contents, most of all FSC and ‘Halo 3’ paved the road for many life-long friendships with some of the best friends that I’ve ever had. We made real friendships that went beyond the screen.
Although I spent my entire time from 2007 to 2012 playing Halo 3 every single day, it didn’t take me away from life, Halo 3 GAVE me a life. It gave me something to look forward to every day, paving the road to where I am now. I look back on those days as being some of the best years of my life, and it was all because of Halo 3.”
Richard Meier | Associate Producer, Halo Infinite
“Between Halo 2 and Halo 3, I’ve played over 14,000 matchmaking matches and custom games. Halo 3 released the year that I graduated high school, so it was an awesome way for my high school friends and I to stay in touch and continue to game together. I remember finishing college classes or work, hopping on Halo 3 and gaming well into the following day. Some of my best friends today are people who I’ve never actually met – but are people who I played Halo 2 and Halo 3 with. Between different Forge Maps and Modes and ranked MLG and TS, Halo 3 was the perfect combo of social and competitive gaming. The Halo franchise is what inspired me to work in games. I vividly remember the LAN parties, late night custom games, and earning my first 50. Halo gave me an opportunity to hang out with my friends, even when life pulled us in different directions, and it connected us to so many more awesome people. I’m truly blessed to be able to work on the franchise that provided me with countless memories and I’m excited to be able to try and deliver the same experiences to both the old and new generations of Halo players.”
Patrick Wren | Multiplayer Modes and Systems Designer, Halo Infinite
“I had played a lot of Halo 2 and couldn’t be more excited for Halo on the next generation console at the time. Halo 3 brought so many memories with it and in ways I couldn’t even imagine. I played everything from Campaign, to competitive tournaments, to wacky minigames. At this point in time I knew I wanted to get into game development, but Forge pushed that desire to a whole new level. I tried to create in Halo 3 as much as I played, hounding my friends to test my creations. Years later I am now working on ‘Halo Infinite’ and can’t wait for people to get their hands on it. Halo 3 created many late nights of laughing with friends, that I can’t wait to play again on PC.”
Sean Cooper | Software Engineer on the 343 Publishing Team, The Master Chief Collection
“2007 marked many firsts for me. First time living overseas. Hit my first full year in the military. First time playing the beta version of a Halo. Any time that I wasn’t on duty, I was trying to log some time in the Halo 3 public beta. It was a great way to checkout, forget about things for a while, and just have fun with my friends, many of which were thousands of miles away. Many years later, I’ve been fortunate enough to land a job not just working on Halo, but working on the original Halos. I’m on a team that’s keeping them alive and bringing them to PC. So now I’m the developer. I’m helping fans of Halo, both new and old, have an outlet that lets them play with their friends, whom they might not have seen for many months now.”
Turner Sinopoli | Technical Environment Artist on the Campaign team, Halo Infinite
“Back when Halo 3 came out I was in middle school and my dad took me to the midnight release. It was a big deal because A) it was a school night so I got to be up WAY past my bedtime and 2) my dad did not care about video games at all so it meant a lot he would take me. We sat out for hours with chairs in line and then finally checked out with Halo 3 and a case of that sweet Mountain Dew game fuel in tow. When we got home, we played split screen Campaign for hours and it was the first time I really played video games with my dad. It’s one of my favorite memories I have with him and the thought of creating moments and stories like that for others drives me to help ‘Halo Infinite’ be the best it can be and hopefully make a lot more warm and happy Halo memories. ”
Eric Richter |UI Artist, Halo Infinite
“The online friends that I play with today all found each other over 10 years ago, when Halo 3 launched in 2007. Our earliest memories together include territory battles on Valhalla, custom games in Sandbox, and playing (and replaying!) such an amazing story together. Once our community had gained enough members, we organized forums to stay in touch, and created a ‘Risk’-like gameboard comprised of all the multiplayer maps, splitting into red and blue armies to vie for control of the galaxy. This structure provided the basis for years and years of scheduled play sessions and kept us together through our toughest times. The re-playability of ‘Halo 3’ was the perfect catalyst and proving ground for our friendship, giving us endless ways to interact, unwind or get competitive, and have fun together above all else.”
Tahir “Tashi” Hasandjekic | Lead Esports Producer
“College wasn’t a great time for me, but it’s the memories of playing Halo 3 with my closest friends at the time that I still look back fondly on.” – Tahir “Tashi” Hasandjekic | Lead Esports Producer
“At the end of 2006 I moved away from home for the first time ever as a freshman in college. I didn’t know anyone except for my friends on Xbox Live and kept to myself most of the time. In the Spring of 2007 I was lucky enough to be invited into the Halo 3 Friends and Family Beta a week before any Crackdown players got in, and I’m pretty confident that I was probably the only one in the whole school who was playing Halo 3 early. So, I decided to leave my dorm room open in hopes of luring in potential friends. Sure enough, some folks came in to check it out, some of which would later become my best friends in college. We played Halo 3 quite often as a group and even ran through 4-player co-op together the night Halo 3 launched later that fall. College wasn’t a great time for me, but it’s the memories of playing Halo 3 with my closest friends at the time that I still look back fondly on. I even had the chance to reconnect with one of them at the 2018 Halo World Championship in Seattle for the first time in almost a decade where Halo once again brought us together.”
Halo 3 has never looked better
Fernando Reyes Medina | Multiplayer Designer, Halo Infinite
“Back home in Mexico City, my friends and I didn’t have money to have a proper console at home, so we would go to an internet/gaming café where we would rent a console for a dollar per hour and we would play Halo 2 in LAN for hours. But when Halo 3 came out, the owner of the café that was surprisingly not very tech savvy asked my group of friends and I to setup Xbox Live so people could play Halo 3 there online. We set the whole thing up and my first online match was just magical. Playing with people from all over the world made me realize how impactful games can be in terms of bringing people together, because no matter who you are or what part of the world you were in, when you were in game you were just another Spartan. That moment was the Eureka moment for me where I decided to become a game developer because I wanted to bring people together that way through my own games, and here I am now, 10 years later, as a Multiplayer Designer of ‘Halo Infinite’ ”
Alex Bean | Multiplayer Designer, Halo Infinite
“I had been a Halo fan since playing Halo: Combat Evolved co-op for the first time at a friend’s house, but Halo 3 was a turning point in my relationship with games. Leading up to its September 2007 launch, I was fascinated by Bungie’s willingness to give insight into the game’s development through the release of mini documentaries (‘ViDocs’), the multiplayer beta, and Bungie.net community interaction. When the game released and delivered on my immense expectations, the limited-edition bonus disc contained behind the scenes content that further detailed the making of the game. The depiction of immensely passionate creators working together to craft the game that I loved had a profound impact on me. By the end of that year, at age 14, I was determined to become one of them.”
Ben Frazier| Character Artist, Halo Infinite
“Halo 3 truly shaped my love for online gaming. Whether it was climbing to max level in ranked modes, or just playing custom games like Infection, the replay-ability seemed endless. The gameplay was tight, the graphics were great, and the social interaction had me consistently itching to join my friends for ‘one more game.’ Forge and the replay system were also super innovative. They brought me tons of fun, and this gem of a screenshot. Calculated.”
“Halo 3 was the first Halo game I played and I was instantly hooked. The experience of playing with all my friends was an amazing experience. With the innovation of the new Forge and Theatre modes, we were able to continue inventing new ways to have fun such as making levels, game modes, and short films. Playing Halo 3 with my friends for days at a time was one of the most fun memories I have from that period of my life. I’m super excited to be able to relive those memories and share them with a whole new group of players.”
Paul Bronowski | Game Editor Developer, Halo Infinite
“A long time ago, in conference rooms far, far away, we used to play a ton of Halo 3. Those were some very late nights. We had to hunt for conference rooms to play on that were on the same sub-net when sys-link play packets were restricted, and we were often reminded to return the room wiring to the state we found it. We had suitcases and backpacks with our hardware and Can-Am pizza on speed dial. There may have been adult bevs involved. In 2007, DevDiv held a Halo 3 tournament for the giving campaign and we decided to form a team. I wasn’t the strongest player on the team, but we somehow took first place.”
Allen Wilson | Campaign Level Designer, Halo Infinite
“When Halo 3 released I was fourteen years old and it was the only game I cared about at the time. My entire network of friends pretty much revolved around Halo 3, and it was a daily routine to hop online the second I got home from school. Halo 3 connected me to a community, not just within my group of friends, but also to people overseas! Which now-a-days doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but when you’re growing up in a small town like I was, it was a life changing experience. Going from a community member to actually working on and contributing to the next big Halo title in the series is an actual dream come true. Huge thanks to the MCC team for bringing a masterpiece to PC, can’t wait to get into some custom games!”
Daedra Christopher | Campaign Level Designer, Halo Infinite
“I have always had a special place in my heart for Halo, especially when my youngest son told me his new name was Green Armor. The Halo franchise for me has always been a part of my family whether it was my eldest annihilating me in almost every match or my husband laughing at me when I called the Elites, whoop whoops. My boys and I would play Halo 3 together and have a blast. When I left my native Texas to join 343i, it was difficult leaving my kids behind, even if they are no longer mom’s little boys. I know working on their favorite franchise of all time makes them proud every day. I am proud not only to be a part of Halo, but to be part of such an amazing, talented team of people who believe in what we stand for: hope, heroism, wonder, and community. We make Halo.”
John Louis Wilson | Environment Artist, Halo Infinite
“Halo 3 was the first Halo game I owned on an Xbox console. I always had to play Halo 2 at friends’ houses and I annoyed my mom with how much I’d play the ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ trial on PC during the school day. It was the game that taught me that the best memories don’t come from what you do but the feelings you have while doing it. When I was playing Fat kid, duck hunt or Jenga in a lobby full of people I’ve never met before, we’d be laughing and creating moments that I want others to have and share with the games I work on! It’s always so satisfying when you can say ‘I did this and that’ and it would instantly click in the mind of the person you’re talking to and they get it and can share that feeling!”
“When Halo 3 launched, I was in middle school. I will never forget the excitement of getting home after a long day at school and playing Halo 3 all night with my friends. Most of the time I would ‘forget’ that I had homework that was due the next day and would rush to get it finished in the morning before classes. ‘Halo 3’ was the start of my late-night gaming sessions that I still have every night. To think back then that I would be a Campaign Level Designer on ‘Halo Infinite,’ my younger self would absolutely lose his mind.”
Noah Benesch | Product Marketing Manager – Halo on PC
“I think everyone remembers the first video game they really engaged with. The first experience you simply couldn’t put down, the thing that made you realize the promise of gaming. For me, that game was Halo 3 because of the virtually limitless experiences it had to offer. From the astounding story, to nail-biting SWAT games, to the chaos of a Mongoose racetrack, Halo never could manage to leave me bored. In fact, Halo 3 was the first title I attempted to achieve 100% completion on –- though beating the game on legendary proved an insurmountable challenge at the time. Now, some 13 years later, I’m looking forward to completing that challenge on PC.”
“The first experience you simply couldn’t put down, the thing that made you realize the promise of gaming.” — Noah Benesch | Product Marketing Manager – Halo on PC
Amity Mathews | Senior Data & Applied Scientist, Halo Infinite
Back during Halo 3, there was an internal beta available to Microsoft employees. Being a long-time fan, I jumped at the chance and filed a number of issues. Unbeknownst to me, the top 16 bug filers across Microsoft would be invited to put Halo 3 through its paces in a weekly on-site playtest… and I made the cut! For several months, we would play Campaign, Customs, and have dialog with the engineers about why we felt a certain way or work with someone to repro an oddity that had just happened. This occurred in the cryptically unmarked (and no longer standing) building at 434 Kirkland Way.
My favorite story from that time: It happened on Isolation; a multiplayer map covered in vibrant vegetation. It would take the community a few months to discover that vegetation slowly withers over the course of a match as it becomes infected by the Flood. Our evenly matched teams were tied 49-49, as I faced off against someone with Rockets with my Shotgun. We both fired at the same time, and both our shields were knocked out. I was too far away with the shotgun, and he… was livid. ‘Point blank rocket didn’t kill him! WTF?!’ Tension mounted. He fired again, right as I meleed… and neither of us were damaged. ‘WHAT THE *%!*’ Because I’d meleed, I had a faster cycle time and clutched the win with my second melee, laughing. I had no clue how I’d survived. A Bungie employee promised they’d look into it as they saved off the film with the new playback feature.
Later, we both received screenshots… and an explanation that it was technically ‘by design?’ ‘Halo 2’ rockets used a ray (a line, shooting right from the tip of the rocket forward) to determine collision. At the precise moment it passed me, it managed to fit right through the few-pixel gap of my Spartan’s thighs. That made some sense, but what about the second, point-blank rocket?! It truly didn’t seem to fire. There was certainly no explosion. But, zooming out there was. Against a far wall of the map and behind the guy with rockets. As it was explained to me, early in development rockets had a habit of exploding in the rocket tubes. The rocket was originally armed immediately upon firing, and if you spun too fast the rocket tube would clip the ray and it would explode. Thus, the rockets were changed to be launched kinetically, then arm as they left the tube. There was a one or two frame window of time, in which I could swat the rocket onto a new trajectory. Which is precisely what happened! I immediately recalled the moment in The Fall of Reach where Master Chief deflected a Scorpion missile with Cortana’s help. The moment still brings a smile, not to mention wonder at the depth and nuance of the franchise. I’m honored to be a part of this legacy.
Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated producer Tony Cervone has confirmed that Velma Dinkley is a lesbian while James Gunn has revealed that the character was supposed to be “explicitly gay” in the 2002 live-action/computer-animated movie.
In a Pride-themed Instagram post of Velma pictured with Marcie “Hot Dog Water” Fleach, Cervone jumped into the comment section to clarify that the bespectacled detective was written as a gay character in the classic cartoon series. All of the comments have since been deleted from the post.
Image credit: Instagram/tonycervone
“I’ve said this before, but Velma in Mystery Incorporated is not bi. She’s gay. We always planned on Velma acting a little off and out of character while she was dating Shaggy because that relationship was wrong for her and she had unspoken difficulty with the why,” he wrote, per BuzzFeed.
“If you follow the entire Marcie arc it seems as clear as we could make it 10 years ago. I don’t think Marcie and Velma had to act on their feelings during the main timeline, but post reset, they are a couple. You can not like it, but this was our intention,” he concluded in response to a fan.
Shortly after, James Gunn, who wrote the script for the 2002 film and its sequel, added to the conversation about the character, explaining that Velma was supposed to be “explicitly gay” in the live-action adaptation of the Hanna-Barbera animation, but “the studio just kept watering it down.”
“In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script. But the studio just kept watering it down and watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) and finally having a boyfriend (the sequel),” Gunn revealed during a Twitter Q&A.
In our review of Scoob!, we suggested that the latest Scooby-Doo movie serves as “a springboard for a possible Hanna-Barbera shared movie universe,” as the story gets “a lot of heartfelt mileage out of its exploration of the relationship between man and his four-legged best friend, even if its messaging is simplistic and superficial.”
A report suggests that Ubisoft is rebooting its pirate IP Skull & Bones, which will now follow a “live” game model with ongoing storytelling inspired by Fortnite.
Development sources told VGC that the game “had been struggling to carve itself a unique position among Ubisoft’s existing portfolio of open-world games”, leading the team to apparently reboot Skull & Bones last year, shifting away from “the premium box model” used by most of Ubisoft’s AAA franchises like Assassin’s Creed and The Division.
According to the report, the rebooted Skull & Bones will feature “a persistent game world with quests, characters and storylines that will drastically evolve and change over time based on the collective actions of the community.”
The team behind Skull & Bones, which is also now reportedly being led by XIII writer/director Elisabeth Pellen, have been heavily inspired by Fortnite’s success with “live storytelling.”
Skull & Bones was revealed during E3 2017 but was delayed until “2019-20” in early 2018, then delayed again in 2019, with no planned release date as of writing. In early 2019, Ubisoft unveiled a collaboration with Atlas Entertainment to create a TV show based on the game, a “female-driven drama set in the lawless frontier of the Indian Ocean at the end of the golden age of piracy in the 1700s.”
The popular Razer Kraken gaming headset features in the sale as well, including the green Tournament Edition with THX Spatial Audio, a retractable noise-canceling microphone, and cooling gel ear cushions. It’s down to just $65, normally costing $100. You’ll also find a couple of mouse pads for just 10 bucks each along with the Razer Tartarus v2 gaming keyboard with mecha-membrane key switches for $50 (was $80).
Below, check out the best Razer PC gaming accessories on sale as part of Amazon’s Deal of the Day, and remember: These deals will be gone by the end of today, with the possibility of selling out earlier.
Xbox Series X’s Velocity Architecture design should make for smaller game downloads, fewer loading bottlenecks and theoretically allows for the console to achieve performance beyond what’s expected of its raw hardware.
In a post on Xbox Newswire, Xbox Series X Director of Program Management Jason Ronald explained how the Velocity Architecture solutions work alongside the console’s processor to offer huge improvements over current-gen technology, and even over what could origianlly have been expected of the base Series X components. As Ronald puts it: “If our custom designed processor is at the heart of the Xbox Series X, the Xbox Velocity Architecture is the soul.”
Check out our exclusive interview with Jason Ronald about Velocity Architecture below:
Ronald points to four hardware and software innovations that make up Velocity Architecture as a whole:
Custom NVME SSD: The Series X SSD allows for 40 times the I/O throughput (essentially the amount of data transfer the console allows every second) of Xbox One, but has been designed not to drop in performance below a certain level. Essentially, developers can design their games without having to work around data transfer constraints (by, for instance, introducing the “loading tunnels” we’ve seen in open world games this generation).
Hardware Accelerated Decompression: Series X uses both an industry standard LZ decompressor, and a proprietary algorithm designed specifically for decompressing game texture data (typically the largest portion of over all game size). The result should be that storage size and download times per game are reduced.
DirectStorage API: This new addition to the DirectX family of APIs gives developers control over how they want to assign and prioritize I/O tasks in their game. According to Ronald, this should virtually eliminate loading times, and make fast travel systems actually fast.
Sampler Feedback Streaming: Games regularly use different qualities of texture depending on how far you are from them (you’ll often notice that and open world game’s trees are low-quality from a distance, and high quality up close, for instance). No matter how much of those textures are shown, current-gen games will need to load the entire texture in the background. SFS allows textures to be loaded in portions, meaning the I/O load is reduced, and can be used elsewhere to create more detail-packed worlds.
These four elements combined should, according to Ronald, allow the Series X to go beyond what’s expected of its own hardware components, even enabling “entirely new scenarios never before considered possible in gaming.”
“The Xbox Velocity Architecture fundamentally rethinks how a developer can take advantage of the hardware provided by the Xbox Series X”, continues Ronald. “From entirely new rendering techniques to the virtual elimination of loading times, to larger, more dynamic living worlds where, as a gamer, you can choose how you want to explore, we can’t be more excited by the early results we are already seeing.”
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Grant Imahara, best known as the MythBusters roboticist co-host, died suddenly Monday evening at 49. No details about Imahara’s death have been given, but the Hollywood Reporter is reporting he had a brain aneurysm.
Imahara’s co-hosts, including Kari Byron and Adam Savage, have taken to Twitter to offer their statements.
I’m at a loss. No words. I’ve been part of two big families with Grant Imahara over the last 22 years. Grant was a truly brilliant engineer, artist and performer, but also just such a generous, easygoing, and gentle PERSON. Working with Grant was so much fun. I’ll miss my friend.
The Discovery Channel also issued a statement, reading: “We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant. He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”
After MythBusters, Imahara co-hosted Netflix’s White Rabbit Project with fellow MythBusters alumni Byron and Tory Belleci in 2016. The show was a sort of spiritual successor to the popular MythBusters, and one that tried to “sleuth the truth” about “topics as diverse as jailbreaks, superpower technology, heists, and crazy World War II weapons.”
Before a career in TV, Imahara worked for Lucasfilm’s THX division and later joined Industrial Light and Magic. He worked there for nine years on movies including George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, The Matrix Reloaded, Van Helsing, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
In a 2008 MachineDesign profile, Imahara said he was attracted to an engineering career because he “liked the challenge of designing and building things, figuring out how something works and how to make it better or apply it in a different way. When I was a kid, I never wanted to be James Bond. I wanted to be Q, because he was the guy who made all the gadgets. I guess you could say that engineering came naturally.”
Fellow MythBusters presenter and jet-car racer Jessi Combs died at 36 in August 2019 trying to break a speed record.
Ever since Assassin’s Creed started leaping from ancient Jerusalem to renaissance Italy to colonial America and beyond, there has been a longstanding itch to see the open-world stealth-action series take on feudal Japan. Consider that itch sufficiently scratched with Ghost of Tsushima. Sucker Punch’s latest is an absolutely gorgeous adventure through one of history’s most strikingly beautiful landscapes, and that beauty is compounded by one of the best blade-to-blade combat systems the open-world action genre has seen. There are some stumbles when it comes to stealth, enemy AI, and a few general minor frustrations, but for just about every moment where Ghost of Tsushima falters, there are plenty more where it soars.
Ghost of Tsushima is a fictional tale told with fictional characters, but it’s based on the very real invasion of Japan by the Mongol Empire in 1274 that began on the Island of Tsushima. You take control of Jin Sakai, capably acted by The Man in the High Castle’s Daisuke Tsuji, who starts off as a samurai before a disastrous battle against the invaders quickly teaches him that perhaps the honorable but restrictive ways of the samurai code might not be enough to deal with this new and existential threat.
Ghost of Tsushima revolves around this inner conflict as Jin’s formative teachings push up against his need to save his homeland at any cost, and though it takes a little while to really get going, it’s a compelling struggle. Even if Jin himself isn’t the most charismatic of protagonists, his foil, Khotun Khan, played by Glee’s Patrick Gallagher, has charisma in spades. He’s one of the most memorable game villains of recent memory thanks to his soft intensity that is oddly calming despite his terrifying intentions. He’s extremely cunning, always one step ahead, and his presence as the “Big Bad” is a large part of why Jin’s 40 to 50-hour quest for vengeance works so well.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Khotun%20Khan%20is%20one%20of%20the%20most%20memorable%20game%20villains%20of%20recent%20memory.”]As good as the English voice cast is, though, it’s a shame that Sucker Punch wasn’t able to find a way to have the performance capture match the Japanese voice acting as well. As a result, if you choose to play with the excellent Japanese audio track, which features the outstanding Kazuya Nakai as Jin, it comes off as a comparatively cheap dub with wildly mismatched lip flaps and facial expressions that don’t mirror the emotion in the voice. It’s not a huge issue as it’s still well worth playing in Japanese – and you have the option of enabling the beautiful Kurosawa Mode, which puts a film grainy black-and-white filter over everything to match the style of the classic Akira Kurosawa movies that Ghost of Tsushima so effectively pays homage to. I wouldn’t recommend playing the whole campaign in Kurosawa mode, as there are some quests that demand some color recognition, but it’s a great visual effect to turn on every now and then.
What isn’t ever a bummer is the music. The dynamic score seamlessly shifts from quiet and ambient shakuhachi flutes during stealthy moments to thunderous taiko drums once blades start clashing; tense encounters are made even more palpable thanks to increasingly speedy strums of biwas and shamisens. Overall, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing – the music always fits and serves to enhance whatever emotion the gameplay and the cinematics are trying to evoke.
Fight Like a Samurai
Ghost of Tsushima’s combat is like a witches’ brew made with bits of the Batman Arkham series, the pre-Origins Assassin’s Creeds, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and the entire library of Kurosawa films. And, as witches’ brews tend to be, the result is magical. Like all great combat systems, it’s simple to understand on a surface level: there are light attacks to quickly deal damage and beat out slower strikes, heavy attacks that deal more damage and can break through enemy guards, a block button to guard against certain attacks, and a dodge button to avoid the attacks that can’t be guarded.
That probably all sounds familiar, but the glue that holds this combat system together and allows it to remain interesting the whole way through is the addition of the stances you can shift between at the push of a button. As Jin completes certain tasks, he’ll unlock new sword stances that each come with their own movesets, and, more importantly, their own strengths versus a particular type of weapon. The starting Stone Stance is ideal for dealing with swordsmen, as one charged-up stab attack can sneak through their guard and either kill them outright or deal massive damage. Later on you’ll learn the Water Stance, which uses slower but more powerful strikes that can break through the defenses of shield-wielding enemies.
There are four stances total, and once you have access to them all combat will challenge you to not only identify the greatest threat at any given moment but also to swap to the stance that is best suited to deal with them, all while balancing the very real need to play defensively. When it’s at its best, combat in Ghost of Tsushima is fast, chaotic, tactical, and is true to the fantasy of being a lone hyper-skilled but outnumbered samurai.
The little touches go a long way toward combat’s exquisite feel, in addition to bringing a bit of visual spectacle. The on-screen HUD is minimalist and the camera always stays really tight so you can get an up-close view of the action; enemies have clear audio tells so that even if you can’t see them you know when to dodge or block; fatal attacks often end with Jin spinning around to face the camera while your enemy stumbles around with blood spurting out before finally keeling over. Even smaller still, defeated enemies will sometimes crawl helplessly on the ground desperately trying to escape you, you can wipe the blood off your sword, you can bow to pay respect to your opponent, and the list goes on and on.
The best part, though, is that there’s no traditional level-based stat progression. When you get stronger in Ghost of Tsushima, it’s not because invisible numbers went up and now you deal more damage and take less when you’re hit; it’s because your techniques got better and now you have new, better ways of dealing with tougher enemies. It’s so incredibly satisfying. When you level up you might spend a point to unlock the ability to block a previously unblockable attack from spear-wielding enemies, or you could choose the ability to block arrows so you can better deal with situations where you’re surrounded by archers. Or maybe you’ll unlock the ability to make enemies flee in terror when you execute a perfectly timed Sekiro-esque parry.
It’s fantastic because it means that you’ll never run into an area in Ghost of Tsushima where, all of the sudden, you’re getting one-hit killed by archers who you’d previously brushed off, or having to spend a week chopping away at the sword equivalent of a bullet sponge just because they’re arbitrarily several levels higher than you. Crucially, this removes the problem of being forced to grind sidequests in order to reach a certain level minimum in order to progress in the story, which is something that certain other games are notorious for.
Impressively, Ghosts of Tsushima’s difficulty always managed to be appropriate no matter what point of the campaign I was at. Enemies do get tougher, and you do need to improve your gear by upgrading your sword, armor, and charms to meet the difficulty curve, but the stat improvements from gear always felt secondary to the skills that you’d accumulate, but and the challenge always felt fair. Even when I bumped the difficulty up to hard mode, which makes enemies more aggressive, it never took away from the lethality of my sword.
On top of all of this, there are also the various tools and gadgets that you earn over the course of your adventure. As Jin gets more and more comfortable with bending his samurai code and using tools outside of his normal repertoire, his combat abilities also expand dramatically. He can use kunai much like Batman uses his batarangs to quickly interrupt or eliminate weakened enemies; he can throw sticky bombs to disorient a large crowd; or he can take out his trusty bow and land a headshot to bring down a heavily armored foe in one hitpotentially end the fight before it even begins. The sheer variety of ways to approach combat in Ghost of Tsushima is incredible.
Stealthy Stumbles
It’s a good thing that the blade-to-blade combat in Ghost of Tsushima is so good, because Jin’s ninja-inspired stealth does not hold up its end of the bargain. It works, on a very basic level, in all the ways that you’d expect it to: you can crouch-walk through fields of tall grass to invisibly sneak around enemy encampments, you can assassinate foes from above, and you can even buy upgrades that let you take out multiple enemies at once if they’re all foolishly clumped together.
The problem is what happens once you get spotted. Enemies just don’t know how to handle it. What if you climb onto a rooftop? They don’t follow you, they don’t hunt you, they kind of just yell and throw shurikens. What if you suddenly break line of sight and crouch into a nearby flower patch that they can still clearly see? They just turn around, look elsewhere for a bit, and then blow their little alarm horns. It’s as if you do anything other than just fight once you break stealth, the AI just throws up its hands and shrugs.
Jin’s stealth tools are also very rudimentary and don’t allow you any sort of creativity that might make stealth a little more exciting. They all kind of do the same things, just with different ammo types. There’s a wind chime that works as a distraction on a single enemy and a firecracker that works as a distraction for a group of enemies. Then there’s your bow that silently kills enemies, your longbow that silently kills helmet-wearing enemies, a dart that silently kills enemies and makes them puke blood, and another dart that makes enemies try to kill each other. There are also a handful of mandatory stealth segments which just boil down to finding the clearly laid out stealth route and occasionally using distractions to clear enemies out of the way. None of the flexibility and versatility of the melee combat is found in the stealth gameplay.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=By%20the%20late%20game%20I%20was%20taking%20five%20enemies%20out%20at%20the%20start%20of%20every%20fight%2C%20and%20it%20felt%20awesome%20every%20time.”]Fortunately, Ghost of Tsushima offers a way to make going loud right out of the gate just as advantageous as picking off a handful of enemies unnoticed, and it does so in the best possible way: by staying true to its samurai cinema roots. At the beginning of most combat encounters you can trigger a stand-off, which allows you to target one of your enemies in a classic showdown where you must wait for them to make a move to attack, and then strike with one of your own to take them down in one hit. If you nail the timing, that’s one fewer for you to deal with when the brawl begins. But that’s only the beginning: you can make these stand-offs a major part of your combat strategy by putting points into the stand-off technique and wearing armor that allows you to chain multiple stand-off streaks together. By the late game, I was taking five enemies out at the start of every fight, and it felt awesome every time.
Of course, there is a risk involved with stand-offs: they’re absolutely devastating if you lose. Your health is drained almost nothing and you’re put in a position where you’re surrounded by all of the still very much alive enemies in the area. That risk gets greater later on as enemies start throwing in feints to try to make you swing early. It’s an all-around fantastic mechanic that not only fits with the samurai theme, but also takes the fun but typically disadvantageous tactic of just waltzing in through the front gate of an enemy encampment and makes it potentially just as rewarding as silently going through an encampment and stealthily clearing out a bunch of guards.
Utsukushii
Open-world games can often feature some of the most beautiful virtual landscapes there are, and Ghost of Tsushima is right up there with the best of them. It may not quite meet the promise of its 2018 gameplay reveal trailer, but this is still a stunningly gorgeous game. Every scene is densely packed with grass, trees, leaves, and flowers all gently blowing in the wind every which way you turn. The island of Tsushima is teeming with natural beauty, which makes it a joy to explore even if you don’t have a particular destination in mind.
Sucker Punch’s design encourages exactly that, with traditional waypoints being integrated into the environment instead of a UI overlay. Following a plume of smoke will always lead you to something worth investigating; a tree with different-colored leafs off in the distance will always yield some sort of reward; and following a trail of Torii gates will never disappoint. It’s all refreshingly organic, much like how it was in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, especially considering that even when you do set a waypoint from your map to head toward a specific quest or location, instead of following arrows on the screen you’ll follow the direction of the wind.
Sidequests are interesting in Ghost of Tsushima because there are actually several different types. The first and most common are your typical garden-variety tasks called Tales of Tsushima, which are short stories that have Jin going off and being the good and honorable samurai that he wants to be by helping people with their problems. Though the stories and characters in these sidequests are largely forgettable, at the very least they don’t seem like they’re just being churned out and used as padding. These are often thoughtful enough to be more special than they might initially let on thanks to some often unexpectedly dark turns and occasionally interesting gameplay scenarios. One, for example, is really the only time where I was literally surrounded by archers and nothing else. They were all spaced out on different levels of two opposing cliff sides, making it a fun and unique challenge that’s not replicated elsewhere.
One level above that e Tales are multi-part, character-specific sidequests that basically span the entire campaign and serve to give each major character their own story arc. This includes Sensei Ishikawa, the renowned samurai archer searching for his missing student; Masako, a grief-stricken mother out for revenge on those who murdered her family; or Yuna, the thief who saved your life at the very beginning of the story and will do whatever it takes to save her brother from the Mongols. Each of these sidestories reflects an aspect of Jin’s own journey, and it’s very interesting to see both how they develop and the impact they have on his development. Some of the later ones that I’m not allowed to talk about due to embargo restrictions are especially touching and deal with some pretty heavy subject matter, with one in particular that makes exceptional use of Ghost of Tsushima’s scouting mechanic in a very clever and emotional way.
Tales of Tsushima typically reward you with charms that boost a certain aspect of your character, allowing you to spec into specific character builds like stealth, tanky, or a focus on critical hits, and so on. In the early going these charms were a great incentive to complete sidequests, but once I had pretty much all the charms that were needed later on, these Tales of Tsushima sidequests lost much of their appeal from a reward standpoint. I lost the desire to seek them out.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20Mythic%20Tales%20sidequests%20are%20some%20of%20the%20best%20moments%20in%20all%20of%20Ghost%20of%20Tsushima.”]Finally, there are the Mythic Tales. These are epic sidequests that have you hunting down legendary techniques or pieces of gear, and they’re obtained by listening to a musician tell the legend of whatever it is you’re seeking to earn, shown through some extremely cool animated sumi-e cutscenes. From there, they sprawl out to epic quests that each vary wildly in their design, but all are well worth playing through. Especially because their rewards are among the best boons you can get, whether it be the Heavenly Strike special move that has you channeling your inner Kenshin Himura as you dash through an opponent with a lightning-fast sword strike, or a new piece of high-quality armor that grants powerful perks like stand-offs having a chance to terrify enemies and cause them to run away. But even without those incentives, these quests are still some of the best moments in all of Ghost of Tsushima.
My favorite thing about exploration, though, and something that I especially appreciate as someone who’s not typically big on collectibles, is that every major collectible has both a worthwhile reward and a fun mini challenge tied to it. I was always extremely eager to find new Bamboo Strikes, not only because they gave me more resolve (a resource needed to heal and use special moves) but also because I just loved doing the little button-press minigame required to collect them. Shrines are even better because in addition to being the only place where you can find major charms (which offer dramatic buffs and perks strong enough to potentially design a whole character build around) they are also the only areas that you’ll be able to find those signature Sucker Punch platforming sections familiar from the Infamous or Sly series.
The minor collectibles, like Mongol artifacts, journal entries, sashimono banners, and pillars of honor, are less exciting – they only offer some minor cosmetic items or flavor text. But they are plentiful enough that they still provide some added value for trophy hunters – and at least Ghost of Tsushima makes hunting them very easy thanks to the ability to quickly fast-travel to any discovered point of interest on the map.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=After%20reaching%20the%20credits%2C%20I%20still%20eagerly%20put%20in%20another%2015%20to%2020%20hours%20to%20finish%20up.”]It took me between 40 and 50 hours to play through Ghost of Tsushima (it’s hard to say for sure as it doesn’t track your time played), which included completing all of the Mythic Tales, a complete liberation of Tsushima from Mongol control, all of the multi-part supporting character sidequests, and most of the of the standard Tales of Tsushima. After reaching the credits, I still eagerly put in another 15 to 20 hours to finish up the remaining sidequests (except one that is apparently bugged for me, but Sony says will be fixed in a pre-release patch) and find all of the collectibles in the hopes that the final reward would be worth it. It wasn’t, which is a bummer because there’s otherwise not much to do in the post-game – no New Game+ and no unlockable difficulties for a second playthrough. It’s a bit aggravating that even if I did decide to just play it again (in Kurosawa mode, for instance), you still can’t skip any of the cutscenes.
Finally, can we talk about photo mode for a second? Because Ghost of Tsushima’s photo mode is the one of the best I’ve ever seen. Partially because the world is just so pretty that it lends itself well to being captured in its natural beauty, but also because of the unique touches that Sucker Punch added, like the ability to have animated background environments or to add a large selection of particles like leaves, fireflies, or even songbirds. You can change the weather, alter the time of day, add clouds, create a camera flight path to create short videos – and all of this on top of all of the essential photo mode options like exposure sliders and filters that have become standard. My one disappointment is the fact that the customizable emotions that you can put on Jin’s face could stand to have a little more… well, emotion. But nonetheless, Ghost of Tsushima’s photo mode sets a new high water mark.
The Steam Summer Sale is behind us, which is a bummer, but there are plenty more chances to save on PC games going forward, so why not make sure you’re equipped with a solid gaming PC now rather than later?
Thankfully Newegg’s big summer sale on tech is in full swing, and there’s a lovely selection of prebuilt gaming PCs on sale so you can live out your glorious gaming dreams.
Newegg is holding its FantasTech sale right now, so if you want to save on PC accessories like monitors or expand your storage with HDD deals, now’s a great time.
