Halo: The Master Chief Collection will get crossplay between Xbox One and PC in 2020 alongside a custom game browser, PC fileshare, per game graphics and audio options, mouse and keyboard support on Xbox One, and more.
343 Industries published a new Halo: The Master Chief Collection development update on Halo Waypoint and gave an update on some of the biggest features the team is working on for 2020.
While none of these have specific dates besides 2020, the list includes Crossplay, Input Based MM, Server Region Selection, Custom Game Browser, Per Game Graphics Options, Per Game Audio Options, M&K Support for Xbox, PC Fileshare, Double Keybinds for all games, Viewmodel adjustments for all games, In game FPS Cap/Adjustments, Steam Account Linking.
343 did confirm that when Crossplay is released, it will arrive with Input Based MM and Server Region Selection. It also stated that Custom Game Browser will release with Per Game Graphics Options and M&K Support for Xbox.
In addition to these, 343 is committed to bring Halo 3: ODST’s campaign and Halo 4 to MCC to PC, as well as ODST Firefight (with updated networking) to both Xbox and PC, in 2020.
While the first part of Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ summer update added swimming and diving, the second part of the update brought with it a very different kind of summer activity: fireworks! Every Sunday in August, there will be a fireworks show on your island, hosted by Jolly Redd. You can exchange bells for raffle tickets in order to win festive items, and you can even use your own custom designs for fireworks. Below is everything you need to know about the fireworks shows.
The fireworks shows take place every Sunday in August at 7 PM your time–this applies to both Northern and Southern Hemisphere islands. They’re hosted in the plaza outside Resident Services by Jolly Redd, the one Animal Crossing character who’s sure to have a good fireworks hookup, as well as Isabelle. But while the plaza is the epicenter, you’ll be able to view the fireworks from any location on your island that has a good view of the sky.
In 2020, there are five Sundays in August. That means that there will be five fireworks shows throughout the month:
August 2
August 9
August 16
August 23
August 30
What Happens During A Fireworks Show?
The main event for the fireworks show is, of course, fireworks! Like with any good summer festival, your villagers will be hanging around the plaza and may even give you fireworks-related presents. Make sure to speak to Isabelle, too–she’ll give you a bopper headwear item. The possible boppers are:
Bulb bopper
Heart bopper
Flower bopper
Star bopper
You can even include some of your own custom designs as fireworks (details below). There’s also a raffle hosted by Redd; read on to see how Redd’s Raffle works and a list of all the prizes you can get.
How To Set Up Custom Fireworks
Ahead of the fireworks show, you’ll be able to add some of your own custom designs to the fireworks lineup. Simply speak to Isabelle and she’ll let you pick up to 10 slots for your own designs; you’ll see the designs you picked in the fireworks show.
Redd’s Raffle: How To Enter And Prizes
Jolly Redd, purveyor of fine and not-so-fine arts, hosts a raffle in your plaza during the fireworks show. Through the raffle, you can get a number of exclusive items, including fireworks and balloons, that you can only get during the fireworks shows.
To enter into the raffle, click on the raffle box by Redd. It costs 500 bells each time you’d like to enter, and there are 12 prizes you can win in total. They are:
Ghost of Tsushima has been out on PS4 for less than two weeks, but already the game’s player base has put some serious time into Sucker Punch’s samurai adventure. Now PlayStation has released some of the stats from the game’s first 10 days, showing off how many times some of the game’s activities have been enjoyed.
In a tweet, PlayStation revealed 11 stats about the game across three images. Players took a lot of photos with the game’s excellent photo mode, it seems, and went out of their way to pat a lot of foxes.
You can view the tweet below, but here’s the full rundown of stats released:
156.4 million standoffs
57.5 million duels
139.4 million enemies collapsed in fear
810.3 years on horseback
16.2 million onsen visited
14.2 million haikus written
28.1 million flute songs played
8.8 million foxes petted
17.1 million bamboo strikes completed
37.5 million Inari shrines honored
15.5 million photos taken
Ghost of Tsushima sold over 2.4 million copies in its first three days on sale, making it the fastest-selling new IP for PlayStation this generation. The game contains a great Easter egg for fans of PlayStation-exclusive games, too.
One of the game’s players is Yakuza series director Toshihiro Nagoshi, who has been loving it.
Fight Crab, a game about crustaceans fighting other crustaceans, begins innocently enough. You start as a plucky young snow crab, defending his rock pool from other, invading crabs. The next thing you know, that same snow crab is now kaiju-sized, fighting in city streets against a similarly kaiju-sized lobster wielding a giant knife and revolver pistol. Things, incredibly, only escalate from there.
What if crabs had weapons? That’s the ridiculous notion that Fight Crab bases itself on, and it commits to it wholeheartedly with an involved combat system and a variety of scenarios that grow increasingly bizarre. The game often exceeds your expectations of what you might anticipate from a game that pits these hard-shelled creatures against one another. At times the joke can start to wear thin, but it’s hard to forget the delightful, laugh-out-loud surprises it continues to throw at you.
A third-person, physics-based fighting game, Fight Crab is reliant on your ability to flip your shelled opponents onto their backs and make sure they don’t get up. Damage dealt by striking with your claws, environmental objects, or weapons is tracked by a percentage meter, and higher percentages make it harder for crabs to regain their upright posture–a system that draws from Super Smash Bros., and one that allows for the occasional, unbelievable near-death comeback and matches that come down to the wire.
Each of your crab’s pincers is assigned to your controller’s left and right analog sticks, allowing for a free range of movement to push, lift, and swing. Left and right triggers thrust your claws forward, and bumpers pinch them–it’s used as a blocking maneuver or to grab your opponents and other objects. Movement is assigned to the D-pad, where you command your crab’s little legs to automatically move in a direction until you tell it to stop again, which feels like manipulating a conveyor belt. A combat mechanic that boosts your damage and allows for an area-effect attack is mapped, bizarrely, to the View/Select button. Turning your crab requires you to move both arms either left or right, and you turn the camera by clicking the analog sticks. It is no doubt a convoluted and inelegant system that makes any kind of maneuver feel like a hard task–you’re never entirely in control of all your functions at once, and it often feels like you’re trying to steer a runaway tank. But from all that awkwardness is where the beauty of Fight Crab blooms.
Those clumsy controls, combined with a combat system informed by object physics, create a wonderful kind of chaos together. Fights are often ungraceful, like a desperate slap fight between two drunkards who have never thrown a punch in their life before. There are a lot of extended arms trying to keep flailing limbs at bay and bodies crashing into each other, with a considerable mess being made in the process. It sounds pitiful, but these are giant crabs we’re talking about, which makes the spectacle of it something fascinating to behold. Throw in some environmental weapons like trees and cars, a sword or two, boomerangs, rocket boosters, and maybe a lightsaber, and it’s hard not to light up in a confused glee when witnessing the pandemonium.
Never feeling like you’re completely in control can take its toll though, especially on harder difficulties. The inability to quickly react can be frustrating; often, it feels like you’re fighting in slow motion, and there were times I had to double-check that my game’s frame rate hadn’t tanked. You’ll sometimes find yourself in uninteresting stalemates with both crabs disarmed, bashing their arms together, trying to find a clear opening or advantage. Fight Crab makes it difficult to break the lock-on camera in order to survey the environment to rearm yourself; the rules of crab combat dictate that you always have to stare your opponent in the eyes.
But the system still allows for some wonderfully rewarding maneuvers if you can anticipate your opponent. Having such control over your limbs let me do things like grab an enemy crab’s arm as it was bringing a ridiculously large war hammer down onto me and hold it up as I pummeled and pinched its beady little eyes with my other arm. I once managed to pry away a crab’s raised shield with the hook of a crowbar and follow up with a point-blank gunshot, which was magical. Even the relatively simple act of snatching a sword from your opponent’s claws or successfully table-flipping them onto their back is immensely satisfying, given the finesse required. These beautiful moments make you want to shout in joy.
The game’s primary mode is a campaign which throws you into different arenas to go up against a series of opponents one after the other, survival style. If you find yourself on the back foot and losing your grip on the controls, the constant onslaught can be disheartening. Thankfully, the game allows you to simply resume your progress beginning from the opponent who beat you. More importantly, the game’s escalating ridiculousness with regard to its enemies and stages is certainly enough of an incentive to keep you pushing through it–some fond memories of mine involve fighting a nunchaku-wielding crab atop a table located in a Chinese restaurant, going against a pair of ninja crabs equipped with shuriken and sai, tumbling around in a daycare with a couple of chainsaws, and going up against two crabs riding Vespas swinging around chains.
There are certainly many parts of Fight Crab that leave a lot to be desired–the UI and menus are garish at best, and outside of the crabs themselves and the energetic J-rock theme song, the audiovisual work is only serviceable. The game’s currency, levelling up, and weapon shop system are left unmentioned; you stumble across them on your own. Fight Crab also features online co-op for its campaign, online competitive ranked multiplayer and casual lobbies–all modes which I unfortunately failed to find a match for during the launch week. Perhaps not enough people have heard about how great the act of fighting crabs can be, and that needs to change.
Like the crab combatants themselves, Fight Crab feels like it smashed its ridiculous concept into a clunky, physics-based fighting system with gusto and didn’t let up until something kind of worked. And a lot of the time, it does work. There’s magic here–it’s impossible not to be charmed by the silly, uproarious dynamic of watching two crabs having a knife fight. It’s sloppy and ugly at times, but so is life. Fight Crab taught me that sometimes you just need to stop, take a minute to appreciate the beauty that lies within those colliding carapaces, and let yourself smile.
“We’re not starting to work on that movie right away,” Jenkins had said. “I’m hoping to do this Amazon movie before we do the third Wonder Woman. And I may not do either of them. You never know what will happen in this world, you know?”
Now, in a recent interview with Geek, a German publication (translated and tweeted out by @DCMovieNews2), Jenkins revealed that Wonder Woman 3 will most likely be her final go at the character.
“[Wonder Woman 1984] gave me a chance to do a lot of things that I couldn’t accommodate in the first movie.” Jenkins shared. “I was so happy to tell the Wonder Woman origin story. It was almost her birth, but we really haven’t seen what she is capable of. It is exciting for me to show her at the peak of her strength. But it is also very important that she fights an internal struggle: she is a Goddess and tries to help humanity. She is not only someone who fights evil, she tries to show bad people how to improve. It’s an interesting dilemma.”
“The next one is probably my last Wonder Woman movie,” Jenkins continued, “so I have to put everything I want to show there. We have to think carefully.”
Virtual panels will feature interviews from the cast and creators of many current and upcoming DC projects, including Wonder Woman 1984, The Batman, The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, and more.
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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
Microsoft has updated its branding for both Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass PC by removing the word “Xbox” from its social channel’s logos.
As reported by Thurrott, this change has been made for both @XboxGamePass and @XboxGamePassPC, although the names of each account are still Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass For PC, respectively, and the Xbox logo is still present. Additionally, the Xbox Game Pass website still uses the full name.
While this could be a simple rebranding of the logos, it also could be a hint of things to come in regards to Microsoft’s future plans for the service.
This xCloud support in Xbox Game Pass could be a reason behind the rebranding, as it will allow subscribers to play their games on not just Xbox, but on PC and mobile devices as well.
Suicide Squad director David Ayer recently responded to an online Joker/Harley Quinn theory regarding mysterious females, wearing red, who briefly appear in the background of some of Joker’s moments of emotional torment.
First, here’s the full “Woman in Red” theory from @ColdBloodedJoke…
Taking cues from an episode of The New Batman Adventures, where Joker hired a woman to look like Harley and then almost killed her when he tired of her, the theory puts forth that these women are meant to be a Harley surrogates for Joker during the time of Harley’s incarceration. Then, of course, with this not being an animated series, he does kill them when he eventually snaps.
When presented with this theory, by a #ReleasetheAyer Cut advocate, Ayer confirmed the idea.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
The Samsung sale continues at Best Buy this Sunday, and is still our number one deal we recommend checking out. There are dozens of items on sale, including TVs, home appliances and more. Amazon now has listings for two amazing Final Fantasy art books, as well as a crazy deal on Hint Flavored Water. If none of that is for you, then keep looking down our page as we’ve got dozens of great deals on offer.
