Fortnite: Chapter 2 – Season 3 will be launching a little later than expected, giving players a few extra days to fill out their Season 2 Battle Passes.
Epic announced that Fortnite: Chapter 2 – Season 2 will be extended by one week, with Season 3 now set to launch on Thursday, June 11 instead of June 4. Epic also confirmed that “a one-time-only live event called The Device, now scheduled for Saturday, June 6 at 2 PM ET (please show up 30 minutes early to help secure your spot, space is limited!).”
A new update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now available, but it doesn’t make any major changes to the game. According to the patch notes on Nintendo’s support website, the 1.2.1 update “addressed issues to further ensure an enjoyable gaming experience.” The notes don’t delve into any specific changes, but one of the issues that appears to have been resolved is the item duplication glitch.
You’ll need to install the latest update to continue playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons online. If the update isn’t installed automatically, you can do so manually by highlighting the game’s icon on the Switch dashboard, pressing the Plus button, and then selecting Software Update.
New Horizons is in the midst of its Stamp Rally event to celebrate International Museum Day. The event runs through May 31 and has you collecting stamps from different stations that are hidden around the museum’s fish, fossil, and insect exhibits.
After the Stamp Rally event ends, Wedding Season will begin. Throughout the month of June, you’ll be able to meet Reese and Cyrus at Harv’s Island and help them take anniversary photos to earn some “wedding-themed” rewards.
From May 22-28, you can download the free Mr. Mime via Mystery Gift. This Mr. Mime has the Ice Body Ability, which allows it to restore a little health every turn during hail. Alongside the Pokemon, you’ll also receive a handful of rare Poke Balls, specifically one Lure Ball, Moon Ball, Heavy Ball, and Dream Ball.
To claim the free gifts, go through the following steps:
Select Mystery Gift from the menu
Select Get a Gift
Select the Get via the internet option
Follow the prompts to connect online and download the Pokemon
After the Mr. Mime distribution ends, The Pokemon Company will give out three more Galarian Pokemon along with other helpful items. You can see the distribution schedule below.
Free Pokemon Distribution Schedule
Date
Free Pokemon
Additional Gifts
May 29 – June 4
Galarian Ponyta w/Anticipation
1 Level Ball, 1 Fast Ball, 1 Love Ball, 1 Beast Ball
Isle of Armor launches sometime in June and is the first of two paid DLC expansions being released for Pokemon Sword and Shield this year. This one takes players to the eponymous Isle of Armor, where they’ll train under a former Pokemon League champion named Mustard and receive the new Legendary Pokemon Kubfu.
The second expansion, The Crown Tundra, is slated to launch sometime this fall. This one is set in an arctic region and likewise introduces a variety of new Pokemon to games, including a new Legendary named Calyrex. The expansion will also add a new co-op gameplay feature that lets you explore Pokemon dens with other players.
In the meantime, the previously exclusive Gigantamax Eevee is appearing in Max Raid battles until May 25. Previously, the only way to get one was if you had save data for Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee on your Switch. Another previously exclusive Pokemon, Gigantamax Meowth, will appear in Max Raids for a limited time after the Gigantamax Eevee event ends.
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Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition arrives on Switch tomorrow, May 29, but an update for the game is available before it’s even launched. Nintendo has rolled out Xenoblade Chronicles’ 1.1.1 update. The company has yet to release English patch notes, but the update appears to resolve two fairly specific issues concerning the Arts Palette that could arise when using a Chain Attack.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is a remaster of the classic Wii RPG, featuring improved character models, a redesigned UI, and other visual touchups. The game also boasts a new epilogue story called Future Connected, which is available from the outset and takes place a year after the main game. According to game director Tetsuya Takahashi, Future Connected’s story is about 10-12 hours long, while those who clear all of its side content can spend upwards of 20 hours with the epilogue.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition has been very warmly received by critics, including GameSpot. We gave it a 9/10 in our Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition review, with critic Jake Dekker writing, “Although not every aspect of Xenoblade Chronicles has aged as well as others, Definitive Edition proves that Xenoblade Chronicles is still a fantastic JRPG with an immense amount of strategic depth that’s still impressive in 2020. Its bevy of improvements and additions, as well as its fantastic epilogue, make this an adventure worth embarking on a decade later.”
Xbox Series X is scheduled to be released in Holiday 2020, and when it does, Microsoft should offer a service similar to the once prominent Xbox Live Arcade. Combined with the welcome practices and services that Microsoft has made since the release of Xbox One, something like Xbox Live Arcade could be a beneficial way of both promoting and curating the indie game library on Xbox Series X.
Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) launched with Xbox 360 back in November 2005. The service promoted and hosted games that weren’t a part of the rest of the Xbox Live Marketplace. Each game on XBLA was priced under $20 USD and had free trials, creating a library of games with a much lower bar for entry. You could try them out prior to deciding whether to buy them and they were much cheaper than the traditional $60 USD retail price of a AAA game. Right from the start, XBLA was used to promote games created by small teams and indie studios that were released for Xbox 360–a market that had traditionally only excelled on PC, not consoles.
I discovered plenty of cool-looking indie games and experimental titles through XBLA, like Mark of the Ninja, Minecraft (yes, really–I actually hadn’t tried it prior to its release on Xbox 360), and Telltale’s The Walking Dead. These games also released on other systems, but XBLA helped them gain traction on Xbox 360, the service prominently featured at least one new game every Wednesday. XBLA Wednesdays became this huge event (which, admittedly, began to peter out near the end of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle), where new games were spotlighted and celebrated by the Xbox brand. If you were a small studio or solo creator and you could get your game to launch on Xbox 360, you were likely guaranteed to have your game promoted for a whole week.
Though not solely responsible, XBLA was a contributing factor to the indie game boom in the late-2000s and early-2010s. In July 2008, Microsoft held its first Summer of Arcade, which promoted Braid and Castle Crashers–both games are commonly cited for popularizing indie games for console users. Summer of Arcade would be held every year after that until 2013, promoting other indie games that went on to be very popular, like Limbo, Bastion, and Dust: An Elysian Tail.
With the transition to the current generation, no service on consoles has managed to match XBLA. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo will occasionally hold sales specifically aimed at the library of a certain indie game publisher or feature a new indie game as an incentive for subscribing to their respective online service–like PlayStation Plus and Rocket League–but none have a service that highlights a single indie game for seven days straight, with a guarantee that the game being featured is under $20 and has a free trial or demo. And it’s not like the supply isn’t there. I frequently annoy my fellow GameSpot editors about upcoming indie games that are worth checking out (sorry y’all), so I know that enough release each month that you could feature a new title every week.
All that said, XBLA as it was shouldn’t return–the service had its flaws, specifically for the indie developers themselves. For instance, to get onto XBLA, a game needed a Microsoft-approved publisher–indie devs were not allowed to self-publish. It was a decision that many indie developers found restrictive, encouraging them to gravitate towards Sony, as there was no such mandate for releasing their games on PlayStation. As the release of Xbox One approached, several of these developers spoke out against Microsoft and how the company treated them when it came to XBLA. For example, in an email to Wired in April 2013, Braid creator Jonathon Blow (whose game is arguably somewhat responsible for kicking off XBLA’s success) even wrote, “Microsoft treats independent developers very badly.”
Thankfully, Microsoft has largely improved its treatment of indie developers since then. The release of ID@Xbox in 2014 and launch of Xbox Live Creators in 2017 allow and actively encourage indie developers to self-publish their games on Xbox One. Several of these games have even been prominently featured on the Xbox Live Marketplace–sometimes on the homepage, though usually on Xbox Game Pass. Thanks to these changes, the bigger indie games haven’t been lost in the shuffle of releases on Xbox One.
But not every indie game that releases for Xbox can be the next Hollow Knight, Celeste, Cuphead, or Outer Wilds. There should be a service for indie games that isn’t tied to an additional subscription like Xbox Game Pass or is reliant on players knowing what’s coming out because they keep up with press conferences. It should be something that can be accessed with a few buttons upon turning on your console, highlights interesting-looking indie games that are worth looking at, and provides free trials so those with a limited budget can better decide what they want.
At the very least, a service like this would help with game library curation–if you look back, separating Xbox 360’s marketplace into two halves, with XBLA specifically geared at indie games, made it easier to navigate and know where to go to find certain titles. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the games that release on Xbox One with indie games, AAA titles, other experiences that fall in-between, and DLC expansions all releasing into the same cluttered space.
If the past few years are any indication, there are still indie games that released on Xbox One that didn’t get the recognition they should have–titles that did something incredibly clever like Full Metal Furies, Forgotton Anne, or Creature in the Well or were just really fun to play such as Coffee Talk, Moving Out, or River City Girls. I believe that if a service had existed that propped up indie games similarly to how Xbox Live Arcade once did, it would have encouraged more players to try and quite possibly fall in love with more of these deserving games. And with the library of games releasing for Xbox Series X already filling up with indie titles like Scorn and Call of the Sea, the next-gen console could use a service to help promote the games that likely won’t have as much of a mainstream buzz as something like Halo Infinite or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
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Borderland 3 developer Gearbox has unveiled the next DLC for the game, a “harsh” revenge tale called Bounty of Blood: A Fistful of Redemption. It’s a western-themed expansion that pits you against a bloodthirsty gang called the Devil Riders. Bounty of Blood will be released on June 25, and Gearbox also offered a slight taste of what to expect after that. It will feature one of the game’s most iconic enemy types.
During the Borderlands Show broadcast, DLC director Matt Cox called it a “harsh story of revenge and redemption” and teased an unseen narrator, who is said to be a new character. In fact, Bounty of Blood stars a new cast of characters, like the reformed brawler, Juno, and your guide, Rose. And no western epic would be complete without a steed, so you’ll get to ride a Jet Beast mount.
The main town Vestige, located on the frontier planet Gehenna, will change based on your actions in the DLC, like storefronts reopening and the theater showing lost film reels. NPCs themselves will change based on your choices in side-missions as well.
Cox also teased the eventual fourth DLC with an image showing a Psycho surrounded by plenty of havoc.
The Borderlands Show stream also announced the Revenge of the Cartels live event will end on June 4, and be replaced on the same day with the next one, Takedown of the Guardian Breach. Meanwhile, the game just received a new hotfix that will start to wrap up the Loot the Universe event.
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Fortnite‘s Storm the Agency challenges have arrived alongside the game’s 12.61 update, giving you a few more tasks to complete before Season 3 of the battle royale shooter officially begins next week. One of the trickier challenges from the bunch asks you to open a faction locked chest at three different spy bases. If you’re having trouble tracking those down, this guide will explain where the spy bases are and how to complete the challenge.
Where Are The Spy Base Locations?
Much like the safe houses you need to visit for a separate Storm the Agency challenge, spy bases have been a fixture of the map since the start of Season 2. These are a bit more overt than the safe houses, however; while those are disguised to look like regular buildings, the spy bases are all named locations, so they’re much easier to track down. We’ve marked down where a few of the chests at these bases are located below:
The Grotto
Faction chest in The Grotto
Beneath the stairs next to the phone booth.
The Rig
Faction chest in The Rig
On the second floor of the northwest building.
The Yacht
Faction chest in The Yacht
In the far corner of the lowest floor.
How To Complete The Challenge
Each spy base features a handful of faction locked chests, but to complete this challenge, you’ll need to open one at three different bases, so you can’t just hang around one location. You also can’t open the chests like normal; you’ll first need to hop into a phone booth and disguise yourself, which will then allow you to unlock them.
Fortunately, each spy bases is located very close to a phone booth, so once you know where the chests are located, you shouldn’t have much trouble completing the challenge. Open a chest at three different spy bases at you’ll earn a special Steel Shadow pickaxe.
We’re quickly approaching the end of Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2. Season 3 of the game is scheduled to begin on June 4, which means there are only a few days left to complete any weekly challenges you may have missed from earlier in the season. If you need help finishing up any of those, you can find all of our maps and guides in our Fortnite Season 2 challenges roundup.
