Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s Crown Tundra expansion launches later this week, and new details about the DLC continue to trickle in ahead of its release. We learned some more tidbits about the expansion’s new Dynamax Adventures feature during a recent episode of Japanese show Pokenchi, including how Legendary Pokemon encounters will work.
Dynamax Adventures lets up to four players cooperatively explore Pokemon Raid dens together. As Serebii reports, players will battle three Dynamax Pokemon successively while exploring a Raid den. After each battle, you’ll get to choose which route to take through the den, which will determine which Pokemon you battle along the way. Any HP or PP you lose during a battle will also carry forward, but you’ll have the opportunity to heal your Pokemon by encountering certain characters or finding berries as you explore.
If you successfully defeat all three Dynamax Pokemon, you’ll encounter a Legendary Pokemon at the end of the den. These Legendaries will have a 100% catch rate, meaning you’re guaranteed to capture the Pokemon if you can successfully defeat them. Pokenchi also confirms that you can only catch each Legendary Pokemon once.
The Crown Tundra expansion launches on October 22. It introduces a variety of new content to Sword and Shield, including the eponymous Crown Tundra–an arctic region that’s home to a ton of returning and new Pokemon, including Galarian forms of Slowking and the Legendary birds Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. There will also be a helpful new item called the Ability Patch, which makes it much easier to get a Pokemon’s Hidden Ability.
Ahead of The Crown Tundra’s release, The Pokemon Company is giving away eight free Pikachu for all Sword and Shield players. Each of these comes wearing one of the different hats that Ash has worn throughout the Pokemon anime. Beyond that, Pokemon Go compatibility is also coming to Pokemon Home by the end of the year, and you’ll receive a free Gigantamax Melmetal in Sword and Shield for transferring a Pokemon from the mobile game.
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Like in Breath of the Wild, the Koroks will be hiding out in various places around the world map, and you’ll be able to run around and find them in between battling hordes of Ganon’s minions. The trailer also confirms that Hestu, the larger dancing Korok who expanded your inventory slots in Breath of the Wild, will be returning in Age of Calamity as well. You can watch the video below.
Nintendo has been sharing a variety of trailers for Age of Calamity since the game was first unveiled last month. Previous videos have given us looks at other returning characters, such as Impa and younger versions of BOTW inventors Robbie and Purah. The most recent trailer focused on the villainous Yiga clan and teased a new shadowy threat behind them.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild, during the Great Calamity that devastated Hyrule and sent Link into a century-long slumber. In addition to Link himself, the game lets you play as a handful of other characters, including the four Champions of Hyrule–Revali, Urbosa, Daruk, and Mipha–as well as Zelda and Impa.
Age of Calamity launches exclusively for Switch on November 20. If you have save data for Breath of the Wild on your Switch, you’ll receive a bonus weapon when you start Age of Calamity: the Training Sword. Nintendo is also re-releasing the four Breath of the Wild Champions Amiibo figures alongside the game on November 20. You can learn more in our Age of Calamity preorder guide.
While Peter Parker has dealt with a number of new challenges since Marvel relaunched The Amazing Spider-Man in 2018 – from the return of Mysterio and Kraven the Hunter to a long-distance relationship with Mary Jane – one villain has been at the heart of the series from the beginning. The mysterious Kindred has spent months plotting against Spider-Man, and now we finally know the identity of this twisted villain.
Keep reading to learn Kindred’s true identity and why they hate Peter Parker so much, but beware of full spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man #50 ahead!
Kindred has been one of the main, consistent focal points of the series over the past two years. From the beginning, it’s been clear Kindred is someone with both a close connection to and a deep-seated grudge against Peter Parker. He’s also seemingly a character with the power to raise the dead, travel between the living realm and the afterlife and command an army of undead insects. But who is Kindred really, and is he truly a master of death or merely a clever con artist?
With The Amazing Spider-Man #50 kicking off the “Last Remains” story arc, we finally have an answer to the first question. Kindred is none other than Peter Parker’s best friend and occasional enemy Harry Osborn.
Art by Patrick Gleason. (Image Credit: Marvel)
As longtime ASM readers will know, this isn’t the first time Harry has plotted Peter’s destruction. Harry inherited his father Norman’s mantle as Green Goblin way back in 1974’s The Amazing Spider-Man #136. That kickstarted a recurring pattern of Harry plotting to kill Spider-Man in revenge for Norman’s death, only to be stricken with amnesia and return to his normal life. Harry ultimately died in 1993’s The Spectacular Spider-Man #200 after consuming a lethal variant of the Oz serum.
The Peter/Harry dynamic was further complicated when Harry returned in 2008’s The Amazing Spider-Man #545 (one of several major changes to Spider-Man’s world caused by the infamous One More Day storyline). Harry’s return was explained with the reveal that Norman had staged his son’s death (with a little help from Mysterio) and sent him to a long-term drug rehab facility in Europe. Since his return, Harry has mostly been an ally to Peter, choosing to focus more on raising his son Normie than reviving old grudges.
However, it would seem Harry hasn’t forgotten the past or forgiven his BFF for all the losses the Osborn family has suffered. In fact, writer Nick Spencer hints this plot twist builds directly on Harry’s 2008 resurrection and the fact that his rivalry with Peter was buried and forgotten far too easily.
“When Kindred first appeared back in the very first issue of our run, with very few hints given, people were already guessing it was Harry,” Spencer told CBR. “And that tells you everything you need to know about why it had to be him, funny enough. There is something about that wound that did not quite heal right. And as a writer, that’s the kind of thing I find myself drawn to.”
Spencer continued, “I’ve said before, but Amazing Spider-Man is the only comic I’ve read throughout basically my entire life without pause. So it’s the one where I have the best aerial view, and what really struck me is how, for a book that is driven so much by a moral lesson about responsibility, there are so many things that have been sort of swept under the rug, never to be mentioned again. There was something fascinatingly meta about that conflict, and the longer I looked at that, the more drawn to it I became. To my eyes, Peter Parker was in need of a fearless personal inventory. And Kindred is very much the personification of that.”
As for Harry’s ultimate goal and whether his powers over life and death are what they seem, we’ll surely learn more as “Last Remains” plays out over the next several months.
NASA has awarded Nokia Bell Labs $14.1 million to bring a 4G/LTE cellular network to the moon.
NASA has given Nokia and over a dozen other companies a portion of $370 million as part of its 2020 NASA Tipping Point competition, as originally reported by Mashable. This is the fifth Tipping Point competition and one of the highlights of this latest edition was the $14.1 million awarded to Nokia so that the cellphone company can build a 4G cellular network on the moon.
“Inspired by terrestrial technology, Nokia proposes to deploy the first LTE/4G communications system in space,” a blog post about this year’s Tipping Point reads. “The system could support lunar surface communications at greater distances, increased speeds, and provide more reliability than current standards.”
This means your astronaut partner can no longer use being on the moon as an excuse to leave you on read. Typical astronauts. Beyond that, this cellular network will be constructed in such a way that an eventual transition to 5G — which we’re only just now seeing become more widely available here on Earth — can happen. This 4G/LTE network will allow for a more sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.
“Working with our partners at (Intuitive Machines), this groundbreaking network will be the critical communications fabric for data transmission applications, including the control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation over lunar geography, and streaming of high definition video,” a Nokia Bell Labs tweet about the $14.1 million award reads. “The mission critical LTE network we have developed has been specially designed to withstand the extreme temperature, radiation and vacuum conditions of space, as well as the sizable vibrational impact during launch and landing on the lunar surface.”
Original Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce will be available throughout the main campaign of Watch Dogs: Legion as a fully customisable character, with the single player story adapted to fit his personality.
Speaking in a Reddit AMA, the game’s live producer Lathieeshe Thillainathan answered a number of questions about the returning character, who’ll be added as post-launch DLC. Thillainathan made clear that, “Aiden can replay the full game and will have a dedicated DLC with Wrench. You don’t need to finish the DLC to play as Aiden in the single player story.”
Asked how Aiden will slot into the main campaign given that he’s a set character – unlike Legion’s NPC-recruited protagonists – Thillainathan explained that he’ll be treated like any other character, but will have his personality and character written into the main campaign’s cutscenes:
“Aiden will be treated as another member of the team. We are writing the full single player story again with [Aiden’s] personality. When you replay the main missions again, Aiden will be integrated into all the original cinematics.”
Aiden will be added alongside three other playable characters – Wrench from Watch Dogs 2, Darcy, an Assassin, and Mina, a victim of transhuman experiements who has psychic powers. It’s not clear if the other three will be playable in the main campaign, but Thillainathan confirmed that all of them will be playable both in single player and online modes.
He also responded to a question about customisation, saying that all four new characters can be altered to the players’ taste: “Once they are on your team, you can customize them as you wish. can’t wait to see everyone’s version of Aiden and Wrench.”
Watch Dogs: Legion will be released for PS4, Xbox One and PC on October 29, and will be a launch title for Xbox Series X and S on November 10. It will arrive on PS5 digitally on November 12, and physically on November 24. Buying the current-gen versions will allow for a free upgrade to the next-gen equivalent.
We recently played a near-final version of the game, saying it had a “potentially staggering amount of rabbit holes to tumble down as you take a very hands-on approach to recruiting new comrades for the uprising.” We also poijnted out that the Census System powering its Play-As-Anyone mechanic feels next-gen on its own.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
With Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in cross-platform open beta now, it’s inevitable that dataminers will be in the game’s files, trying to find more juicy secrets and exploits before the game’s release on November 13. It seems the dataminers have been anticipated by developer Treyarch, however, with a number of the game’s files leading to rickrolls, as picked up by Dexerto.
A screenshot of the game’s .exe file shows a number of bit.ly links disguising rickrolls–a link to the YouTube video of Rick Astley’s 1987 classic Never Gonna Give You Up, for those of you who somehow don’t know what a rickroll is.
Dataminers have led to a number of high-profile leaks related to the Call of Duty franchise this year, which is even trickier for the developers to dodge when dealing with cross-promotion in already-released games like COD’s battle royale Warzone. This discovery shows someone is at least having fun trying to deter dataminers, with the links attached to popular configs like god mode or a season 1 test.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is coming out on November 13 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, as well as next-gen platforms PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. Check out everything you need to know about the game’s different versions and cross-play here.
With a roster of esports teams and content creators already under its belt, FaZe is moving into a new role in the entertainment industry: film production. The organization just released the first trailer for horror film Crimson, starring FaZe’s own Brian Awadis, aka FaZe Rug.
Crimson’s conceit is actually pretty clever, and makes sense for an organization with some huge online personalities to lean on. It stars FaZe Rug as himself, moving into a new multi-million dollar smart home thanks to his success as an influencer. What could be a regular YouTube vlog showcasing his new home is then twisted into a horror story, thanks to some creepy new neighbors.
The found footage film is directed by Gregory Plotkin, an editor who’s worked on films such as Get Out, Happy Death Day, Game Night, and a bunch of the Paranormal Activity films. He also directed Paranormal Activity spinoff The Ghost Dimension.
Crimson is produced in collaboration with Invisible Narratives, which is also distributing it on Inviz.tv. The film also features a collaboration with producer Beam, who worked on the soundtrack. With “brand partners” like Beats by Dr. Dre and Apple, Crimson is a curious mashup of Hollywood and influencer culture–but it should be interesting to see how FaZe’s debut in the film world goes when Crimson releases on October 29.
A Total War Saga: Troy will receive a major update on October 22, and it’ll add a new god and a photo mode to the game. This free update will expand the game out a bit, and let you capture some of the imagery of the Trojan War that the game conjures.
If you’ve been playing Hades (or you’re simply a fan of the Greek classics), you’ll recognise Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Artemis will be added to the game’s Divine Will system, and each faction will have access to her temple building chain. Pray to Artemis and you can unlock a light archer unit, and new missions are being added as well
A new Epic Agent is being added, too–Orion, who is available at the highest worship tier. He’s an incredible hunter, with the abilities Sudden Ambush (which gives guaranteed kills on enemy heroes) and Foe Tracking (which lets you track enemy heroes across the map).
The new Photo Mode, meanwhile, will come with 20 customization options to let you tweak your screenshots as you see fit. There are four main options to let you set up your shot: scene, camera, filters, and frames.
A shot from A Total War Saga: Troy’s photo mode.
It’ll contain all the usual options you’d expect from a photo mode, including a range of frames and the ability to stamp the game’s logo onto photos.
A Total War Saga: Troy scored a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Perennial issues aside, with Thrones of Britannia and now Troy, the spin-off Saga series has proved adept at delivering a kind of Total War that is more focused, flavourful, and even experimental than the mainline series,” wrote reviewer David Wildgoose.
Is there one Fall Guys round you really just can’t stand? Let developer Mediatonic know about it and maybe you’ll never have to play it again. Fall Guys has opened up a new survey about the game’s various rounds and match variants so players can help shape what gets added in future updates.
Please may you fill in another survey? 🥺👉👈 This one is all about rounds! 👀 Which you like 👀 Which you dislike 👀 How many new ones you expect to see each season It will REALLY help shape Fall Guys moving forward if you could fill this in FANK 🐸https://t.co/bKenxWohlr
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is almost two weeks into its second season, with the medieval-themed season arriving with four new (or partly new) levels. The new survey asks how many new rounds players expect with each season–suggesting some players may have wanted more than four out of season two.
Mediatonic has also shared a feedback survey asking about themes and seasons, if that’s another area you have strong opinions about.
I’ve got a spicy feedback survey for you all to fill in 👀 It’s all about themes and seasons for Fall Guys We’d love it if you could fill it in and help us shape future Seasons! 👌https://t.co/r6CAu87HGn
Fall Guys’ second season had an uneven launch, with a number of new rounds and game styles, but also a handful of frustrating bugs. Most of those have now been fixed, and Mediatonic has launched a new bug tracking board to show what issues they’re aware of and are working on fixing.
Fall Guys’ second season will finish up on December 7, meaning you still have plenty of time to try out the new levels and unlock new cosmetics. You could also save your crowns for the (cursed) new Sonic the Hedgehog skin, which will set you back 10 whole crowns for the full set. Time to get winning!
