Thankfully, these issues are finally now going to be patched through a hotfix. The update went live at 8 PM PT on May 21, Microsoft announced in a blog post. The patch passed Microsoft’s certification process earlier in the afternoon on May 21, and now it’s finally out.
This hotfix will specifically address projectile issues with Halo 2, the general stability of Halo 3 matches, and crashes that could occur on the Halo 3 map Valhalla. Those are the big-ticket items, but the patch also fixes a series of other issues as well; you can see the full patch notes and file sizes below.
The projectile issues with Halo 2 specifically were very bizarre. Players were encountering projectiles and grenades that teleported. In some cases, players were able to simply point their weapon at the ground and rack up kills. Thankfully, this issue and others are being fixed.
In other Halo news, Microsoft will showcase Halo Infinite–which is being worked on by a separate team within developer 343 Industries–during the Xbox 20/20 event in July.
MCC May 21 Patch Notes
Update File Size
Xbox Game Pass for PC/Microsoft Store — 7.74 GB
Steam — 175.9 MB
Xbox One — 1.96 GB
Bug Fixes
General Bug Fixes (PC)
Fix to the Easy Anti-Cheat splash screen on launch
Halo 2 (All Platforms)
Improved stability when leaving or ending Campaign Missions
Fixed an issue that caused projectiles and grenades to teleport to players elsewhere on the map
Halo 2: Anniversary (All Platforms)
Updated Shrine Map Variants for the H2A Team Hardcore playlist
Flag return time in Big Team Battle CTF set to 15 seconds from 5
Halo 2 (PC)
Resolved Installation issue for Extended Language Pack voice not being installed
When playing on a high FOV the LOD textures now render more consistently
A connection interrupted issue has been resolved when entering the final cutscene on co-op Campaign
Big Team Three Plots score now accurately requires 600 seconds to win
Halo 2: Anniversary (PC)
Textures now appear appropriately on “The Oracle” for those with AMD GPUs
Fixed a memory leak on the pause menu during Campaign
Forge variant maps now have correct lighting applied
Halo 2: Anniversary (Xbox One)
Fixed an issue causing the HUD to be off-centered when zooming while playing splitscreen multiplayer
Halo 3 (Xbox One)
Resolved a Crash when loading into the multiplayer map Valhalla
Resolved an issue causing Rubber-banding, desynced vehicles, objectives, and objects, missing effects, and overall instability during Halo 3 multiplayer sessions
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After a month of ongoing connection and server issues, the team behind Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is now investigating a cheat that kicks players from games, often incurring abandon penalties in ranked matches and occasionally even crashing the entire game.
We are currently investigating a cheat where players are being kicked out of games. We have released a hotfix to reduce some of the impact of the cheat for certain cases while we look into it further.
While Ubisoft haven’t given too many details about the cheat, players in the comments have elaborated on the problems it’s been causing. While only some players have been experiencing game crashes as well as being kicked, the support team confirmed they were related to the cheat in question.
My screen just freezes mid-game and I get kicked. It doesn’t take me back to the menu either. I have to fully restart siege again. Usually it only happens once but there was a day where I had to do it 2-3 times.
Thank you for the clarification! This seems to be related to the cheat we mentioned. While our team is still looking into it, feel free to send any videos you have of this to our Support team for further investigation.
From the account’s reply history, it looks like this issue has been affecting some players since at least May 14.
It only happened twice but the first it dragged me and a random, then my friends were left out. Later I was kicked from it then it counted as an abandoned game. The second time my friend stopped the match and we went to play a casual then in the middle of it we got an abandonment
For most players, the biggest issue resulting from this cheat can stem from the automatically applied abandon penalties, especially for players in ranked games.
Rainbow Six Siege is currently looking towards its next big update, with Year 5, Season 2–Operation Steel Wave arriving soon on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Check out everything we know about Steel Wave’s two new operators here.
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Actor Jeffrey Wright, who will play commissioner James Gordon in upcoming Batman film, The Batman, has provided some new insight on the upcoming comic book movie. He said in an interview with SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show (via The Hollywood Reporter) that the movie aims to offer the “next evolution” of Batman, while he also praised the film’s Batmobile.
“Like with any film, we’re working together to create a mood, to create an idea, a setting, a tone,” Wright said. “This is the next evolution since 1939 when these stories began.”
The actor said he’s working with director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson on making The Batman stand as a unique version of the character and the series.
“This is the next evolution of Gotham,” he said. “So I am working off the stage [director] Matt [Reeves] is providing and also working off what [star] Robert [Pattinson] is doing. We are trying to create something together that is our own, but is also Batman.”
In regards to the Batmobile specifically, Wright said it’s the “most badass muscle car you could imagine.” Indeed, the first photos of it shared by Reeves give off classic muscle car vibes. “It’s grounded in Gotham. It’s grounded in Americana,” Wright said.
This latest tease for The Batman follows comments from Colin Farrell, who spoke about the movie’s “tasty scenes.” Filming on the movie is currently paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to Pattinson, Wright, and Farrell, The Batman stars Andy Serkis as Alfred, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, and Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon. John Turturro plays Carmine Falcone, while Peter Sarsgaard is playing a character named Gil Colson. The movie is coming to theatres October 2021.
Xbox is partnering with the Special Olympics USA for a new virtual event featuring the Xbox One racing game Forza Motorsport 7. The organizations are working together for a new tournament that will air on May 30.
More than 35 competitors from 11 states will take part in the competition, and you can watch the action live on Mixer, Xbox YouTube, or Twitch. The awards ceremony will take place inside of Minecraft.
“With athletic training and competitions currently postponed due to COVID-19, Special Olympics are looking for new ways to connect, compete, and just have fun,” Microsoft said in a news release. “Enveloping this event will be stories of the athletes themselves–allowing a broad fanbase to know who they are, what they care about, how they are feeling– and cheer them on as they discover new community and excitement in playing Forza Motorsport 7.”
As part of this partnership, Xbox users can donate their Microsoft Rewards points online and through your console through the Microsoft Rewards app. For this special charity drive, Microsoft will match Rewards points donations until the end of June.
Microsoft has been a partner of the Special Olympics since 2014. In 2017, Xbox helped coordinate the first-ever gaming tournament at the Special Olympics USA Games in Seattle, Washington.
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Sabrent has announced an 8TB M.2 solid state drive to join its Rocket Q family, featuring double the capacity of the next largest model, PC Gamer reports. While pricing hasn’t been released yet, it’s very likely to be out of the budget for most PC gamers–however as Steam libraries grow and game installs take up more space, it’s tech to keep an eye on.
While there are already 8TB drives available in the 2.5 inch market, Sabrent’s is the first to fit it into the smaller, cable-free M.2 form factor. As with Sabrent’s other Rocket Q SSDs, the 8TB drive uses NVMe technology with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. While not many details are available about the new model yet, we can expect it to be quite fast based on the smaller Rocket Q models.
While we can all look forward to this tech being developed further and eventually coming down in price, Sabrent’s first 8TB M.2 model is unlikely to be that affordable for enthusiast gamers. The company’s 4TB M.2 SSD sells for $759.99, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the 8TB model will retail for over twice that price.
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Minecraft Dungeons offers a new dungeon crawling-based interpretation of the block-building game. Though the basics of Minecraft still apply, you now need to reinterpret that Minecraft knowledge into how to build the ideal warrior or mage, forge a party of adventurers, and journey into monster-filled labyrinths in search of loot and bosses to defeat.
In the video above, David Ahmadi fights one such boss. With his trusty bow and dagger in hand, the young rogue journeys into a Tier VI level dungeon, exploring the Redstone Mines until he encounters a blocky boss.
After a brief delay, Minecraft Dungeons is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch on May 26. The game will be available through Xbox Game Pass on both Xbox One and PC day one, so if you’re already a subscriber, you’ll be able to go ahead and pick up Minecraft Dungeons “for free.”
Just because David goes it alone doesn’t mean you have to. Minecraft Dungeons supports both local and online four-player co-op. It’s drop-in and drop-out co-op too, so you can call up a friend while in the middle of a dungeon if you’re having trouble.
It’s been 10 years since the release of Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar’s much-loved ode to the wild west, and the team behind it is feeling nostalgic. IGN has published an extensive interview with many of the folks behind the game, including insights into the challenges the team faced when creating the iconic Xbox 360 and PS3 title.
One of the running themes of the interview is that the game, which was technically a sequel to the PS2 game Red Dead Revolver, faced a lot of challenges ahead of release. Art director Josh Bass, who is also co-studio head for developer Rockstar San Diego, says that while the game was in development, they “would often hear from external sources that a Western game was never going to be a success.” Ultimately, this motivated the team “to solve the challenges and create something new.”
“I knew in my heart that it was going to exceed those expectations,” Bass continues, “but at the same time we had to ask ourselves if our fans would make the emotional connection with this experience that we all had.” The game’s eventual reception was important, he says, because it proved that players had connected to protagonist John Marston.
He also says that the game appealed to fans of westerns who might not typically play games. “We heard stories of consoles and games bought by people in their late 50s and 60s, not as gifts for their grandchildren but for themselves,” he says.
Bass also says that it took a long time for the game’s world to really come together. “For a long time, the in-game landscape was fairly barren and lacked the incredible vistas that Red Dead Redemption would later become so well respected for,” he says. Once the first motion capture sessions happened, it became clear that they would be able to capture the feeling of a western in their game.
According to designer Ghyan Koehne, the team was “small” at the beginning, but “very tight and excited”. There was also a concern that the game would not be as “fun” as Rockstar’s flagship franchise, Grand Theft Auto. “We were all looking at GTA–which was my favourite game and reason for joining Rockstar–and thinking, ‘How are we ever going to make this fun like that?,'” he recalls.
The full piece is long and full of insights, and it’s worth reading in full, especially if you’re a fan of the game or its more recent sequel.
Red Dead Redemption is playable on Xbox One thanks to backwards compatibility–and you can also jump into the second game in the series now through Xbox Game Pass.
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The original series follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl), an alienist (or psychologist) investigating a series of murders involving young male sex workers. He teams up with newspaper illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans) and police secretary Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) at the behest of Teddy Roosevelt, depicted during his days as Police Commissioner.
Season 1 is based off Caleb Carr’s novel The Alienist, while season 2 will adapt the book’s sequel, “The Angel of Darkness”. The new series will see Howard, Moore and Kreizler teaming up again amidst the dark underbelly of turn-of-the-century New York, this time trying to find the missing infant daughter of the Spanish consular, Ana Linares.
While each character’s circumstances have changed since the first series, the show will still look to dig into the deeper issues of corruption and inequality in the world they inhabit, which are still sadly pertinent today.
Alienist: Angel of Darkness Season 2 will premiere on TNT on July 26 at 9 PM ET.
On Wednesday, May 27 a new streaming services launches called HBO Max. The latest service is from WarnerMedia, and while “HBO” is in the title, it’s far more than just programming from the cable network. In fact, it includes content from Warner Bros., Crunchyroll, DC, TNT, and more. But what is HBO Max, how much will it cost, and what does it include?
HBO Max is one of the big streaming service launches in 2020, right alongside NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which already had a soft launch and will be available nationally in July. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max will have some tough competition going up against streaming giants Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu. However, it’s huge back catalog should give it a good head start.
One of the more confusing things about HBO Max, for some people, is its difference between the already established HBO Go and HBO Now.
What’s the difference?
HBO Go-A service available to cable subscribers, streaming HBO content to internet-connected devices.
HBO Now-The same thing as HBO Go except it’s a standalone streaming service, not attached to your cable provider.
HBO Max-WarnerMedia’s platform. While it does offer HBO content, it also includes original programming and content from a variety of other networks and movie studios.
Those who subscribe to HBO Max prior to launch will also get access to HBO Now, and current HBO Now subscribers will get access to HBO Max at launch. If you access HBO Now through a third-party apps Apple, Google Play, Samsung, Verizon Fios internet, Optimum, Consolidated Communications and Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico, you will also get immediate access.
Pricing:
Unlike Peacock, Netflix, and Hulu, there is not a tiered pricing system for HBO Max. The service will cost $15 a month, which is $1 less than Netflix’s premium tier. Currently, you can get it for $12 a month for the first year, if you sign up before the service launches. This is for an ad-free experience as well. Both Peacock and Hulu have cheaper tiers, but you’ll have to watch advertisements.
At this time, there is no listing as to what platforms the service will be on. There will be a full rundown once that information has been made public. Currently, the HBO Max site states the service will be available on “many popular devices: phones, tablets, Mac and PC browsers, streaming media players, smart TVs and game consoles.”
Available content:
HBO Max is more than just HBO. It contains television and movies from many different places under the WarnerMedia property banner. There will be over 10,000 hours of curated content, and celebrities–like Zac Efron–will offer up suggestions for what to watch on the service in personal curation videos.
Here are some of the properties you’ll be able to find on HBO Max. Many of these are in the Max Hubs section of the app.
Warner Bros.
New Line Cinema
HBO
Crunchyroll
Studio Ghibli
DC
Looney Tunes
TNT
TBS
truTV
The CW
CNN
Turner Classic Movies
Cartoon Network
Adult Swim
Crunchyroll
Rooster Teeth
Originals at launch:
HBO Max is offering a decent amount of original content at launch, but there isn’t a lot of hype surrounding its original content–even though Elmo’s late night talk show looks delightful. Six originals have been announced for launch–five series and one documentary–and below, you’ll find the full list. You can find more details about the original series here.
Doom Patrol Season 2 (Live-action superhero series)
Expecting Amy (Amy Schumer documentary)
The House of Mo (Non-fiction series)
Search Party (Comedy series)
Fall 2020-
The Monster at the End of this Story (Sesame Street animated special)
Sesame Street
Unpregnant (Film)
Equal (Docuseries)
The Event (Unscripted docuseries)
The Flight Attendant (Thriller series)
Friends Reunion Special (Unscripted special)
Full Bloom (Competition series)
Hot Dog (Comedy competition series)
Let Them All Talk (Film)
Raised By Wolves (Sci-fi series)
John Early (Stand-up comedy)
Superintelligence (Film)
White House Card (True Crime drama series)
Future-
Adventure Time: BMO
Adventure Time: Obsidian
Adventure Time: Wizard City
Adventure Time: Together Again
Aquaman: King of Atlantis (Animated series)
Don’t Let the Pigeon Do Storytime (Live action family special)
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai (Animated series)
Jelly Stone (Animated series)
Little Ellen (Animated series)
Mecha Builders (Animated Sesame Street spin-off)
15 Minutes of Shame (Documentary)
Brad & Gary Go To… (Non-fiction series)
College Girls (Comedy series)
DC Super Hero High (Docuseries)
Generation Hustle (Drama series)
Gossip Girl (Drama series)
Grease: Rydell High (Musical series)
Green Lantern (Superhero series)
Strange Adventures (Superhero series)
Tooned Out (Comedy series)
12 Dates of Christmas (Unscripted series)
Americanah (Drama series)
The Big Shot With Bethenny (Unscripted series)
Birth, Wedding, Funeral (Docuseries)
Bobbie Sue (Film)
The Boondocks (Animated series)
Bourdain (Documentary)
Boys (Period drama series)
Charm City Kings (Film)
Circe (Drama series)
Crime Farm (Drama series)
Dune: The Sisterhood (Drama series)
Duster (Drama series)
Ellen’s Home Design Challenge (Competition series)
First Dates Hotel (Unscripted series)
Gen: Lock (Animated series)
Generation (Dramedy series)
The Greatest Space (Non-fiction series)
Heaven’s Gate (Docuseries)
Justice League Dark (Superhero series)
Overlook (Horror-thriller series)
Persona (Documentary)
The Prince (Animated series)
Rap Sh*t (Comedy series)
Santa Inc. (Animated comedy series)
The Scoop (Documentary)
Tracy Morgan (Stand-up comedy)
Rose Matafeo (Stand-up comedy)
Ahir Shah (Stand-up comedy)
Stand-up Specials Presented By Conan O’Brien (Stand-up comedy)
Starstruck (Comedy series)
Station Eleven (Drama series)
Tokyo Vice (Drama series)
The Unthinkable Earth (Anthology series)
While there is a lot in the works, HBO Max is offering subscribers to rewatch many of their favorite shows, including HBO’s vast back catalog of TV shows like Sopranos to NBC favorites like Friends as well. HBO Max launches on May 27.
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Since details about The Last Of Us Part 2 leaked in April, developer Naughty Dog’s social media posts have been a minefield for fans trying not to be spoiled. As some accounts have consistently posted spoilers as replies to any of Naughty Dog’s tweets, the studio has now made use of a new Twitter tool allowing them to essentially turn comments off, as picked up by IGN.
The latest promotional tweet posted by Naughty Dog today appeared without the option to post a reply, though users can still like, retweet, or quote retweet.
The feature is currently being tested by Twitter, and is available to a limited number of users worldwide. Users with this tool can choose to allow anyone to reply, to allow only the people they follow to reply, or only the people tagged in the post–so if no one is tagged in the post, it will effectively disable comments.
While at its core the feature has been designed to curb abuse by limiting who can interact, the feature has had a mixed reception among Twitter users. Naughty Dog’s use of the tool proves how it can be helpful to prevent abuse from a few bad actors–though unfortunately it means the rest of the community is no longer able to interact as they normally would.