If you want to experience the unparalleled freedom, creativity, and adventure of Dungeons & Dragons, now is an excellent time to jump in.
While you may not be able to visit your friends in person, you can hop on your favorite video conferencing software with your friends and have deep adventures set in a world of your choosing, and save some cash while you do it. Right now Amazon is having a sale on the core rulebooks, including a bundle that has everything you need to get started.
Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
Pokemon Go Fest 2020 is only a week away, but there’s still one more set of challenges to complete before the event arrives. The third and final batch of Go Fest challenges is now live in Pokemon Go, giving players around the world one more chance to unlock additional Pokemon to catch during Go Fest weekend.
Whereas last week’s challenges revolved around defeating Team Rocket (including Jessie and James), this final batch is all about friendship. The tasks for this set involve earning hearts with your Buddy Pokemon and sending gifts to friends. If enough players on all three teams are able to complete the challenges, Niantic will make three more rare Pokemon–Togetic, Dratini, and Litwick–available to catch during Pokemon Go Fest next week.
The Pokemon Go Fest friendship challenges will be available until July 22, 10 PM local time. Coinciding with the challenges, Niantic is also holding a summer event in the game right now. For the next few days, summery Pokemon–including the debuting Petilil, a summer-style Pikachu, and Shiny Bellsprout–will be appearing more frequently in the wild and in Raid Battles.
Pokemon Go Fest 2020 takes place July 25-26. Tickets for the event are available to purchase from the in-game shop and cost $15 USD. Unlike previous Pokemon Go Fests, this year’s event will be a digital experience open to all players around the world, and there will be global challenges to complete as well as rotating virtual habitats that will cause different types of Pokemon to appear at certain times. Niantic has also teased that the Mythical Pokemon Victini will make its debut during the second day of Go Fest.
Fans of The Sims can spend hours building their own storylines and perfecting their dream houses, but they’ve never been able to compete with each other on live television. That’s about to change, thanks to The Sims Spark’d, a reality competition show that stars fans and enthusiasts from The Sims community, all competing for a $100,000 prize.
Based on the trailer, the 12 contestants will be issued timed challenges to create in the world of the game. Their output will then be weighed by a panel of judges, including Maxis game developer Dave Miotke, YouTube personality Kelsey Impicciche, and singer-songwriter Tayla Parx. The competition will run for the next four weeks on TBS and Buzzfeed Multiplayer.
In addition to watching the show, fans can play along by participating in the Spark’d Challenge Program. Those who excel at the listed challenges may even be considered for future seasons of the Spark’d show. The first challenge, Destination Wedding, starts today, and you can check out the details at the game’s website.
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Tove Lo, a singer known for her songs “Habit” and “Talking Body”, is hosting a DJ set inside Animal Crossing: New Horizons this weekend. Six lucky players who show the artist their best in-game outfits will get to visit the island while the show is happening.
“Any of you babes Animal Crossing it?” the singer wrote on her Instagram. Tove Lo, like the rest of us, got hooked an Animal Crossing’s addictive and relaxing day-to-day gameplay.
Animal Crossing has been the replacement for all sorts of events while countries around the world are on lockdown due to the pandemic. Weddings, birthdays, family reunions and more have been hosted within the game despite its poor online multiplayer infrastructure. The life simulation game came out at the perfect time.
“New Horizons has a slower pace even than other Animal Crossing games, and at times, that can feel unnecessarily restrictive,” said GameSpot’s Kallie Plagge in her Animal Crossing: New Horizons review. “But there’s still plenty to do, and each of those activities feeds into the next brilliantly for a rewarding and relentlessly cheerful experience. New Horizons certainly came at the right time, and its strengths are particularly comforting right now. I’m as excited to see what random events await me each morning as I am glad to have it during hard times, and that’s sure to keep me coming back for the foreseeable future.”
Netflix has launched a Cursed Virtual Experience that invites users to discover more about the Arthurian legend series, created by comic book icon Frank Miller and writer Thomas Wheeler, which is available to stream as of today.
The online hub at DiscoverCursed.com offers an interactive and immersive experience for fans to virtually enter the rich world of Cursed from the comfort of their own homes, without having to download any apps to devices.
Image credit: Netflix
Augmented Reality Challenge
An augmented reality challenge can be accessed when visiting the website on a mobile device or by scanning the QR code on the homepage. From there, fans are presented with a quest of three challenges to follow the path of magic and discover their power. Users have the ability to channel their inner Nimue and conjure up roots or step into Merlin’s shoes and strike lightning from their fingertips to ultimately receive the sword of power. At the end, participants can share their challenge experience by taking photos and downloading videos of themselves trying the effects and filters.
Virtual Panel With the Cast
The website menu invites visitors to join “a conversation with the cast” hosted by co-creator and showrunner Thomas Wheeler, who is joined on the virtual panel by Katherine Langford, who plays the magical Nimue in the fantasy series, as well as Gustaf Skarsgård, who portrays the ageless and enigmatic Merlin the magician, Devon Terrell, who stars as the young mercenary Arthur, and Daniel Sharman, who plays the mysterious Weeping Monk. Over the course of the discussion, the cast reveals behind-the-scenes secrets, mysteries and fun facts about the making of the show.
Exclusive Content
From the menu, users can also discover more about the story and how it links to the classic Arthurian legend by clicking to learn more about the series, as well as its characters, who are showcased in a carousel of profiles on the site. There is also a library of videos featuring exclusive content from the cast and crew, including a tutorial from Frank Miller on sketching Nimue, a featurette about the process of adapting and crafting the series, and a Q&A with Miller who answers fans’ burning questions and offers fans a peek into the world fo the Netflix original series.
Netflix describes its newly-launched fantasy series as a coming-of-age story whose “themes are familiar to our own time: the obliteration of the natural world, religious terror, senseless war, and finding the courage to lead in the face of the impossible.”
The developers behind Ghost of Tsushima had to lengthen some of the game’s loading screens as Sucker Punch found that they were so fast, players couldn’t read the tips.
In an interview with Kotaku, Sucker Punch lead engine programmer Adrian Bentley noted that the team had to “artificially extend downtime” when the player died so that the loading screen tips could appear for “more than a fraction of a second.”
According to Bentley, this is down to Sucker Punch’s engine loading strategy, which requires “as few disk reads as possible.” “When you die, we only need [to] re-run this quick ‘spawn’ process with most of the data already loaded. In contrast, many other engines use serialization-based approaches, which require reloading a substantial amount of data to run again,” Bentley told Kotaku.
Having played the game myself, the window between even longer loading screens felt ridiculously small, even when jumping from one end of the map to the other. Kudos to Sucker Punch for the coding tech, but it’s still quite funny that the studio has had to make loading screens take longer so that players can actually read the flavour and tip text in the interim. It begs the question as to what loading screens will look like in the next-generation, as the PS5 and Xbox One adopt high-speed solid-state drive technology.
Twitch has blocked the U.S. Army from running controller giveaways after they were allegedly found to redirect viewers to a military recruitment page.
A report from The Nation dug into how the US Military is using online gaming to recruit teens. The Nation found that viewers watching the Army’s channel were being presented with chat prompts to “win an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller.” But when clicking the link to enter the giveaway, users were supposedly met with “a recruiting form with no additional mention of a contest, odds, total number of winners, or when a drawing will occur.” When reached for comment by The Nation, the US Army declined to answer.
A Twitch spokesperson issued a statement to Kotaku, announcing that the promotion had been removed. “Per our Terms of Service, promotions on Twitch must comply with all applicable laws. This promotion did not comply with our Terms, and we have required them to remove it,” the statement reads.
Last week, the same account came under fire after it was found to be banning users who asked about war crimes in the stream chat. The US Army issued a statement in response justifying its approach, noting that “the user’s question was an attempt to shift the conversation to imply that Soldiers commit war crimes based on an optional weapon in a game, and we felt that violated Twitch’s harassment policy.”
The developers of Paper Mario have revealed that they are no longer allowed to make characters “that touch on the Mario universe,” or modify existing Mario characters.
In an interview with VGC, Nintendo veteran Kensuke Tanabe was asked about the process behind designing new villains for a franchise full of iconic antagonists like Bowser and Kamek. In response, Tanabe noted that “since Paper Mario: Sticker Star, it’s no longer possible to modify Mario characters or to create original characters that touch on the Mario Universe.”
This means that the team behind Paper Mario: Origami King had to come up with new characters from outside of the existing Mario Universe for the game, as they couldn’t riff off of established Mushroom Kingdom villains. New characters seemingly can’t even resemble Mario characters: “We need to create original characters with designs that don’t involve the Mario universe at all, like we’ve done with Olly and the stationery bosses.”
This resulted in the game’s main villain King Olly and his younger sister Olivia, who serves as a helpful sidekick during Mario’s journey. It seems like other developers dealing with the Mario property will have had to follow similar rules, as Nintendo wants to retain the current cast of Mario characters as-is for the foreseeable future.
“Whether a character becomes an all-time hit or not isn’t up to us on the development side; I think it’s more the case that characters that fans truly accept naturally end up that way,” Tanabe added, suggesting that fan demand will decide whether we see Origami King’s new characters in another game. “I hope that the origami siblings in Paper Mario: The Origami King will stay in players’ memories, even if they do only end up appearing in this title.”
A new Max Raid event has begun in Pokemon Sword and Shield. This one only runs for this weekend, until Sunday, July 19, and it features a variety of different Water-type Pokemon, including Shiny Wailord.
Throughout the event, Kingler, Sharpedo, Pyukumuku, Jellicent, and Mantine will appear in Max Raids much more frequently than normal. Wailord will also be a common sight, and you’ll have a chance to encounter a Shiny variant of it in five-star Raids. You’ll need to be pretty persistent to find one, however, as it has lower odds of spawning than the other featured Pokemon.
The Sea Pokemon Max Raid event ends at 4:59 PM PT / 7:59 PM ET / 11:59 PM UTC on July 19. Before the Pokemon can start appearing in your game, you’ll need to refresh your Raid dens. You can do so either by connecting the Y-Comm online or going into Mystery Gift from the menu screen and selecting Get the Wild Area News.
That’s not the only Max Raid event underway in Pokemon Sword and Shield right now; the ongoing Rock and Steel Pokemon invasion is also still underway. Until July 31, Steelix, Perrserker, Rhyperior, and other Rock- and Steel-type monsters will appear more commonly in Raids, and you’ll have a chance to encounter Gigantamax versions of Coalossal and Copperajah.
Pokemon Sword and Shield’s first expansion, The Isle of Armor, launched last month, and it introduced a new Wild Area to explore, along with a variety of returning Pokemon to catch and a storyline centered on the new Legendary Pokemon Kubfu. The games’ second expansion, The Crown Tundra, will follow sometime this fall. You can learn more about the expansions in our roundup of everything we know about the Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC.
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The Last of Us Part 2 was June 2020’s best selling game and has now become the 3rd best-selling game of the year, the 8th best-selling game of the twelve month period ending in June, and has the highest launch month dollar sales of any 2020 release to date.
As revealed by The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella, The Last of Us Part 2’s first month sales have surpassed other games as Final Fantasy VII Remake, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Doom Eternal to claim the top spot.
Rounding out the top five for June 2020 are Call of Duty: Modern Wafare, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Grand Theft Auto V, and Mortal Kombat 11. Perhaps the most impressive jump, however, was Ring Fit Adventure, which made it to #7 after ranking #835 last month due to stock shortages. The full list of June 2020’s Top 20 Best-Selling Games is as follows;
June 2020’s Best-Selling Games
The Last of Us Part 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Grand Theft Auto V
Mortal Kombat 11
Red Dead Redemption 2
Ring Fit Adventure
NBA 2K20
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Minecraft Dungeons
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Minecraft: PlayStation 4 Edition
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Borderlands 3
Need for Speed: Heat
Persona 4 Golden
Spongebob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated
June 2020’s tracked spending across video game hardware, software, accessories, and game cards totaled $1.2 billion, which is a 26% increase from June 2019.
