The 2020 NFL season has wrapped up its second week, and with that, EA has adjusted player ratings in Madden NFL 21 based on how the athletes performed on the field.
Some of the players who saw their player ratings rise included Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen, who rose from a 77 OVR to a 78 OVR after throwing for 417 yards and four touchdown passes in his team’s win over the Miami Dolphins.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver D.K. Metcalf also had a successful week on the field, thanks to his epic 54-yard touchdown reception against the reigning defensive player of the year, Stephon Gilmore. Thanks to his strong performance, Metcalf rose to an 80 OVR rating.
Another week two ratings riser included Dolphins tight end Mike Gesicki, who jumped two points to an 81 OVR rating after eight catches for 130 yards and a touchdown against the Buffalo Bills.
As for players who saw their ratings fall, New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees dropped three points to fall to a (still very impressive) 90 OVR rating after struggling in his game against the Raiders. Philadelphia Eagles QB Carson Wentz dropped one point to fall to 82 after failing to throw a touchdown in a loss to the Rams.
It appears Rocket League‘s conversion to free-to-play has been a success. Following the change in business models on September 23, the soccer-with-cars game reached 1 million concurrent players for the first time in its history.
Corey Davis, the co-studio head at developer Psyonix revealed the news, posting a screenshot of the game’s gigantic player population. This number seemingly counts players across all platforms–PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
According to Dot Esports, Rocket League’s previous peak concurrent player record was 120,000 back in March. The jump to 1 million showcases just how significant the impact of going free-to-play has been for the title.
On Steam alone, Rocket League reached more than 129,000 players on September 24, according to Steam’s publicly available data. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do not typically share that kind of information.
Alongside the free-to-play switch, Rocket League has kicked off its Season 1. This introduces three new ranks to Competitive, removes the Solo Standard mode, adds a level 10 requirement for Competitive play, and more.
Halo’s community director has spoken up to shut down rumors about Halo Infinite‘s release date. Retail listings recently suggested that the game was scheduled for release in Holiday 2021, which is later than some might have wanted, but Brian Jarrard told the Halo community in a tweet that such listings are not necessarily accurate.
“PSA: We haven’t locked on [a] release date for Halo Infinite yet,” he said. “Anything you see on a retail site is just placeholder / speculation.”
PSA: We haven’t locked on release date for Halo Infinite yet. Anything you see on a retail site is just placeholder / speculation.
Halo Infinite was originally lined up as a launch title for the Xbox Series X/S in November, but Microsoft pushed the game out to 2021 due in part to COVID-19 and the impact of working from home. The company has provided no indication yet as to when in 2021 the game may be released.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer element will be free, which is a big and exciting step for the series. Microsoft has not yet shown any gameplay for multiplayer, however, with the only footage we’ve seen so far focused on the campaign mode. This gameplay footage was not exactly stunning, and Microsoft has promised that the graphics will get better.
Destiny 2 is set to expand in a big way soon with the launch of the Beyond Light expansion in November. Bungie has now shared some additional details on what to expect in terms of changes, and this includes an update on how your Guardian’s face can look.
With Beyond Light, Bungie has rebuilt the character face system for Destiny 2 to provide more options for diversity and more. Bungie said in a blog post that it’s long-term goal is to allow all players to create a character that they want, whatever that looks like. The studio is working on more face shapes to come in the future, and the process was reviewed by Bungie’s own Diversity Committee and Employee Resource Groups. Bungie’s full statement follows.
“We know that how your Guardians look is important to you, and we’ve long wanted to add more player customization to Destiny. Our original system for player faces had some combinatoric content authoring problems–for example, every decal had to be authored completely custom for each player face permutation,” Bungie said. “This prevented us from extending this area of the game with more content and features. We’ve upgraded to a significantly more capable system (with e.g. runtime decal projection), which we hope to leverage for more player customization options in the future.”
Bungie added: “As part of this process we reviewed the existing player models with our Diversity Committee and Employee Resource Groups in the studio to make small tweaks to existing player heads. We’re also building a list of Guardian face shapes we should bring to the game in the future in order to increase Guardian diversity in Destiny, with the long-term goal of enabling everyone to imagine themselves as their Guardian.”
In Serious Sam 4, the long-running FPS series may have finally found a workable identity. Through each entry, developer Croteam has held onto the core gameplay loop that defined Sam’s initial jaunt across Egypt. You will always back-pedal, you will always circle-strafe, and you will always fight dozens of Sam’s memorable cadre of alien enemies at once. But, at times, that loop has been obscured by some of the strange decisions Croteam has made with the series. It was never broken, but each game finds the developer trying to fix it.
Enter Serious Sam 4, yet another reinvention that seems to draw from every period of the series’ long life. As in Serious Sam 3, the graphics are realistic (though a little stiff). As in Serious Sam 2, there’s vehicular combat and humor to spare (and a surprising portion of the jokes land). And, as in First and Second Encounter, the gameplay is razor-sharp and front-and-center. It’s been nine years since the last mainline entry, and in that time we’ve witnessed the revival of circle-strafing shooters thanks to games both big (Doom) and small (Dusk). But, in this newly crowded landscape, Serious Sam 4 has a secret weapon. Croteam is simply willing to throw a ridiculous number of enemies at you at all times and it has the tech to pull it off.
In this outing, which functions as a prequel to The First Encounter, Sam and a small group of resistance fighters are attempting to push back the villainous Mental’s assault on Earth. The alien horde has already won, but the resistance hopes to score a strategic advantage by tracking down the Holy Grail, which is actually an alien artifact hidden somewhere among the art and architecture of an impressively unspoiled Italy.
As Sam embarks on this quest, he faces down a familiar horde of enemies with a familiar arsenal of weapons. If you’ve played Serious Sam before, you’ll recognize most of them. There’s the Sirian Werebull, a fleshy creature with horns that charges headlong at you, unless you can take it out with a few well-timed blasts from your double shotgun. The Beheaded Kamikaze, which boasts a pair of bombs in place of hands and a scream you can hear from a mile away, is also back, and will force you to pick it off before it gets close enough to explode. It can also be led into a larger crowd of enemies before you shoot, setting off a powder keg of blood and gibs. One of my personal favorites, the Reptiloid, often posts up on a tower, then hurls acid green homing missiles that will follow you until they find their target, or until you shoot them out of the air.
It’s an impressive roster composed of some of the most memorable and well-designed enemies in gaming. The Serious Sam model–drop a ton of enemies in an arena and dare you to come out on top–only works because each enemy is easy to recognize and, as a result, internalize and remember how to handle. Say you hear the Beheaded Kamikaze’s signature scream and switch to your assault rifle to handle the dozen the game throws at you before they get close enough to explode. Once they’re dispatched, you hear the ground rumble beneath the feet of the Sirian Werebull and pull out the rocket launcher to finish the herd off with a string of one-hit kills. But then a pair of Reptiloids appears on far off towers, so you switch to the sniper rifle to pick them, and their homing projectiles, off from a distance. All of this happens in the space of a few seconds and the game rarely does you the favor of sending each group separately. But the enemies are defined by distinctive designs, behaviors, and often audio cues, so you’re rarely caught by surprise.
As Sam manages these crowds, the chiseled hero draws on the same impressive arsenal he’s wielded since the beginning (and a few new tools, as well). The rocket launcher returns, now with an upgrade that allows you to lock on to multiple enemies. The minigun is essential for crowd control, ripping through dozens of aliens in a matter of seconds. And, my favorite, the portable cannon, is back, too, allowing Sam to launch massive cannonballs into enemies, destroying even the meanest minotaurs in a few hits. Each gun has its use, and I enjoyed the process of figuring out which gun worked best against which enemy. You can also expand your roster of tools by completing side quests–a new addition in Serious Sam 4. Sometimes these diversions grant you a weapon mod, like that rocket launcher upgrade. Other times, it might grant you a gadget, which can run the gamut from health kits to portable black holes or a bomb that slows down time for everyone but Sam. These gadgets can help turn the tide in battle, but you find them so rarely that you need to be choosy with how you use them. As a result, they don’t feel like a major addition; more like an interesting touch.
My biggest gripe with the game is that it rarely gives you space and time to marvel at a weapon’s power. As soon as you get the cannon, you’ll be launched into a fight that demands you use it against every enemy just to keep up. In this way, the game often robs you of any real feeling of power. Sure, you’re obliterating Reptiloids in one hit, which is cool. But the game overcompensates by throwing a dozen Reptiloids at you at once. Instead of providing an opportunity to appreciate the cannon’s one-shot one-kill power, Serious Sam 4 skips straight to making you feel like you’re barely scraping by, cannon notwithstanding. You’re constantly on your back foot, which can make the (otherwise excellent) combat begin to feel a little repetitive. I love the tension of Serious Sam 4’s fights, racing around hordes of enemies, attempting to pick the right weapon to buy myself a moment’s peace. But the game rarely gives that tension a release valve, and as a result, it can be exhausting to play.
The Bull Monster in Serious Sam 4
In tough fights, it helps that, at least some of the time, Sam has a team he can rely on. In this entry, you’re joined by a squad of soldiers who can help take enemies down in battle. Given how frenzied late-game battles are, I was always grateful to have any help I could get. Each member of the squad fits pretty neatly into well-known archetypes: the priest who’s handy with a shotgun; the paranoid conspiracy theorist; the female soldier who can kick just as much ass as the boys; the new recruit who can’t quite hold his own in battle yet. These are reliable stock characters, and I mostly enjoyed watching the group banter. A running joke has each of the squadmates attempting to proffer the best one-liner after dispatching baddies. These moments made me laugh out loud on a few occasions and, more surprisingly, the story actually manages to land a heartfelt beat or two along the way.
Serious Sam 4’s reliance on tropes isn’t always harmless, though. There are two men from marginalized backgrounds on Sam’s squad, and both fall pretty neatly into racial stereotypes. Rodriguez, a Mexican-American soldier, peppers his speech with words like “cajones,” “culo” and “pendejo.” This trope, which sees Latinx characters dropping Spanish words into otherwise English sentences, is common in games, employed by writers to highlight a character’s Latin-ness. But, as Latinx critics have pointed out, it’s an ignorant portrayal of the way bilingual Latinx people actually speak. Similarly, a Black character in this game falls into a well-known trope that feels dated and has for years. I would have loved to have seen Croteam put even just a little bit of thought into the ways they handled the writing around these character’s racial identities.
The story is also occasionally hampered by the game’s technical issues. While Serious Sam 4 on PC ran at or around 60 fps during frantic action, frequently hitched during cutscenes. Pop-in was also a consistent problem in and out of cutscenes, with background textures often arriving midway through a shot or a few seconds after a level began. Both of these problems plagued my initial playthrough and persisted even after Croteam put out a massive day one patch on Wednesday. I also experienced a corrupted save, which caused the game to crash to desktop when I attempted to load it.
Serious Sam 4 captured on PC
This all contributes to the feeling that this game is still a little rough around the edges. While Serious Sam 4 plays (and mostly looks) great in combat, its characters look pretty stiff. This fits Sam just fine; if you played The First Encounter back in the day, you’ll remember the moments when the camera shifted to a third-person view as Sam ran, ramrod straight, to the next level. It fits Sam’s specific variety of generic action hero cool. But for other characters? Not so much. One scene that shows a crowd of resistance soldiers cheering after the usually reticent Sam gives a rousing speech is particularly uncanny, with each character’s eyes bugging in their pale faces as they applaud woodenly. I’ve rarely been more aware that I was watching 3D models go through the motions they were rigged to perform.
Luckily, the combat is as fast and fluid as the cutscenes are slow and creaky. Thanks to Croteam’s impressive tech, Serious Sam 4 can now throw an even more ridiculous number of enemies at you at one time than ever before. Some late-game fights put Sam in the midst of the biggest fights I’ve ever experienced in a game; they’re the closest approximations I’ve seen in a first-person shooter to the actual size and scale of what a violent battle for the planet might actually look like. The only problem is the frequency with which Serious Sam 4 leans on this trick. I enjoy the combat a lot, but outside of watching the story unfold through cutscenes, it really is all that you’re doing. It’s a tense and exacting game that will often have you leaning side to side as you strafe, utterly engrossed in Sam’s bloody struggle for survival. But it’s precisely because that core is so tense that I wish Serious Sam 4 had something else to offer in between battles. With the fights forcing you into all-out war so often, most sessions I felt like I was ready to call it a day after a single mission.
Overall, Serious Sam 4 is a successful synthesis of the series’ disparate identities, with humor to spare and jaw-dropping large-scale battles. But technical issues, tired tropes and a lack of gameplay variety make it just a solid foundation rather than a new pinnacle for Croteam.
Halo 4 is coming to PC soon, marking the sixth and final game in The Master Chief Collection that will complete the package. In developer 343’s latest weekly blog post, the studio announced that Halo 4’s first public beta tests will be held “before the end of October.”
That is the current plan, but 343 admitted that beta dates are “always subject to change.” If history is any indication, the beta tests will start with a small group before expanding to a larger audience as 343 ramps things up. You must be a Halo Insider member to have a shot at participating in the betas–sign up for the free Halo Insider program here.
When Halo 4 does arrive, it will complete The Master Chief Collection on PC. The games in the package have been released in chronological order, including Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST.
Halo 3: ODST just recently came to PC on September 22. It kicked off Season 3 on PC and Xbox One, and it brought with it a series of other changes such as improved hit-registration for Halo 3, new weapons, more customization options, and more. Check out the full MCC Season 3 patch notes to learn more.
In today’s news, the expansion cards for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S have been detailed. The 1TB cards, which will have the same performance as the consoles’ internal SSD, will set you back over $200.
Square Enix has revealed that a remake of Nier Replicant will be launching next year. Nier Replicant ver. 1.22474487139 will be released on April 23, 2021, and is a remake of the 2010 game, but with updated animation to bring it more in line with 2017’s Nier Automata.
Sega is reportedly making a sequel to Sonic The Hedgehog, as well as interested in greenlighting a Yakuza movie. Save State is your fix of the biggest gaming news stories, airing on youtube.com/GameSpot from Monday to Thursday each week
Destiny 2 developer Bungie is making some changes to how it updates the game, and for the upcoming Beyond Light expansion, this means you’ll need to re-download the entire game.
Bungie said in a blog post that it recongizes this could be a “painful” problem for people with slow internet or caps on their data. “We’re sorry about that,” Bungie said.
To help make this sting less, Bungie will start pre-loading for Beyond Light on the evening of November 9 PT, so people have at least 10 hours to download the expansion before it officially goes live.
The reason for the re-download requirement is that Bungie has “revamped [its] content building and patching pipeline” to help make downloads get smaller and install faster. Due to Destiny 2’s “tremendous size,” it currently takes more than 24 hours for the developer to get new patches ready, but with the Beyond Light expansion, this drops down to below 12 hours.
Additionally, Bungie is removing content from Destiny 2 that has since been upgraded or replaced. Bungie refers to this as “dead” content, and it’s being removed with the Beyond Light expansion. As a result, the total install size for the game will drop by 30-40 percent.
The game will now be between 59 GB and 71 GB depending on your platform.
Beyond Light launches on November 10 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it will also be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X. The expansion takes players to Jupiter’s frozen moon, Europa.
Welcome to Nintendo Voice Chat! Just hours after last week’s episode was recorded, Nintendo dropped a ton of news in the latest Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase. Hear Casey’s reactions to Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Stories 2, plus discussion on all the other big announcements from the Direct, including why we’re loving Hades on Switch. Then, Nintendo ended production on the 3DS, so to honor the end of Nintendo’s beloved handheld, the panel picks their top three 3DS games.
This episode was recorded before Nintendo dropped Kirby Fighters 2 on the Switch eShop.
Timecodes!
00:00:00 Welcome!
00:01:20 Monster Hunter and the Nintendo Direct Mini
You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.
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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.
Vought International is continuing its domination over Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service. The second season of the comic book adaptation The Boys is currently airing weekly on Prime, while the series has already been renewed for a third season. What’s more, The Boys even has its own aftershow. Now, the universe of the show is looking to expand even further.
According to a report from Variety, a spin-off of The Boys is in development. It’s set at a college for young supes, which is run by the ominous Vought International–the evil corporation that controls The Seven. A description of the potential spin-off from Variety calls it “an irreverent, R-rated series that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the best contracts in the best cities. Part college show, part Hunger Games–with all the heart, satire and raunch of The Boys.”
It essentially sounds like a dirty version of the antics at the Xavier school, as young supes learn to control their powers in a way only The Boys could portray.
The pilot is being written by The Boys writer and executive producer Craig Rosenberg, who would also serve as showrunner. The Boys’ executive producers Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and James Weaver will also serve as executive producers, alongside Neal H. Moritz and Pavun Shetty.
There’s no telling when fans of The Boys would actually see this series, should it move beyond development. Still, this makes it clear that Amazon sees plenty of stories left to tell when it comes to The Boys.
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