Author: Trafficblast

Developer Xaviant has announced that its battle royale game, The Culling, is getting a second wind on May 14 for Xbox One. The studio said that the PC release will follow sometime later.

This new version of the game is dubbed The Culling: Origins and features a number of improvements, including adjustments to A.I. behavior, graphics enhancements on Xbox One, gameplay tweaks (like stamina reduction), and more. In addition to all of this, Xaviant has removed premium items and purchasable loot boxes from the game. However, as a result, the studio notes that “past saved games will be wiped and all previous unlocks have been reset.” Check out the official relaunch trailer below.

What’s most notable about The Culling: Origins, however, is the price of entry. Those who already own it will be able to get into the game at no extra cost. Anyone who doesn’t have the game will only need to pay a nominal $6 to jump into the battle royale action. However, it’s not that simple. In order to continue playing The Culling: Origins, players will need to win matches or purchase tokens. These Online Match Tokens, which can be bought in packs or earned by winning a match, grant you access to another match. If you have no Online Match Tokens, you can’t play The Culling: Origins online. It seems there is offline play, though.

This surprise relaunch of The Culling: Origins comes after Xaviant closed the servers on the battle royale game in 2019. The studio released a sequel to the game in the form of The Culling 2 but quickly pulled the game from digital storefronts after a rough launch week.

The Culling: Origins Relaunch Details

• Players can play one free match online each day. Players can play additional matches through the following means:
  • Winning an online match grants an Online Match Token.
  • Packs of Online Match Tokens can be purchased (3 tokens = $0.99, 10 tokens = $2.99, 20 tokens = $4.99).
  • Online Passes providing unlimited online play can be purchased for 7 Days ($1.99) or 30 Days ($5.99).
• Xbox One graphical quality improved dramatically, rendering at 30% higher resolution with the addition of anti-aliasing and an improved framerate.
• A.I. behavior has been overhauled to provide a much more compelling and challenging offline experience.
• Player stamina system has been tweaked – reducing the time it takes for stamina to fully regenerate.
• The game no longer includes premium items or charges for crates. Players can level up, earn crates, and unlock airdrops through offline play.
• In order to keep the game alive indefinitely, a great deal of effort has been spent streamlining backend systems to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
• A side effect of this effort is that past saved games will be wiped and all previous unlocks have been reset.

Niantic has detailed Pokemon Go‘s next Community Day event. May’s Community Day will take place next Sunday, May 24, and this time, the featured Pokemon will be the Grass-type Seedot.

Like April’s Community Day, this month’s event will run for six hours instead of the usual three, from 11 AM to 5 PM local time. During that window, Seedot will appear in the wild much more frequently than normal, and you’ll have your first chance to encounter a Shiny Seedot in the game.

If you can power up Nuzleaf (Seedot’s evolved form) into Shiftry by 7 PM local time–two hours after the Community Day ends–it’ll learn the event-exclusive move Bullet Seed, which it normally can’t otherwise learn in Pokemon Go. This applies to any Nuzleaf that evolve within the designated time frame, even if you’ve caught them prior to the Community Day.

Just as last month, Niantic will also hold an exclusive Special Research story quest during May’s Community Day. The questline is called Seeing Double and will offer rewards like Incenses, Golden Razz Berries, and other items. However, you’ll need to purchase a virtual ticket for $1 USD to gain access to the story quest.

Rounding out May’s Community Day are a few other in-game bonuses. First, you’ll earn triple the usual amount of XP for catching Pokemon during the event. Any Incenses you use will also last for three hours rather than the usual 30 minutes.

During the Community Day, Niantic will host its first-ever 24-hour livestream on the Pokemon Go YouTube channel. The stream kicks off at 6 PM PT on May 23 and gives you a chance to “watch Seedot and other Pokemon play in the wild.” You can read more about May’s Community Day on the official Pokemon Go website.

In other Pokemon Go news, the Legendary Pokemon Virizion has returned to five-star Raids until May 19. Niantic is also holding Pokemon Go’s second Incense Day on May 17. During the event, you’ll have a chance to encounter Shiny Carvanha. You can catch up on other Pokemon Go news below.

Ubisoft has revealed that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will see the return of the instakill hidden blade. Killing any enemy–regardless of who they are–with a single hidden blade assassination was once a staple of the franchise, but that aspect of the game has been a bit restrictive in the past few entries.

According to Kotaku, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla creative director Ashraf Ismail said that Eivor’s hidden blade will be lethal enough to instantly kill any target in a single blow–provided you’re assassinating them.

“We wanted to look at the old games and see the greatness that those games had and acknowledge what’s great about the updated formula,” Ismail said. “There was an identity and a uniqueness that we wanted to bring back for Valhalla.”

The hidden blade hasn’t been a one-hit-kill wonder in Assassin’s Creed for a long time. Though Assassin’s Creed’s leveling system predates Assassin’s Creed Origins, the 2017 game was the first that required you to both level up your character and your hidden blade in order to maintain the attack power of your assassinations. If you didn’t, then more powerful enemies would withstand your attack, essentially negating the usefulness of assassinating.

Upgrading the blade required you to hunt down animals for crafting materials–which wasn’t a very popular activity in Origins. 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey continued this trend but tied the upgrade for assassinations to collectibles as opposed to crafting materials.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is scheduled to release in Holiday 2020 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is one of the most beloved action-adventure games of the PlayStation 1 era. However, it’s also well-known for its underwhelming ending, which makes Halo 2’s “finishing this fight” cutscene look generous by comparison. If you’re familiar with Soul Reaver, you probably know that the game’s final third was slashed due to time and budget constraints, and evidence of that cut content has trickled out over the years.

Now, however, a group of die-hard Legacy of Kain fans have uncovered a large trove of unused content for the game, thanks to the discovery of several alpha versions of Soul Reaver. These include several areas that are missing from the game entirely, as well as unused boss fights with a human priestess and Raziel’s conspicuously-absent brother Turel. According to the Lost Worlds, Soul Reaver was originally supposed to end with Raziel defeating Kain for a third time, absorbing his soul, and using the Silenced Cathedral to destroy all of the vampires for good. Many of the concepts cut from Soul Reaver were later used in the franchise’s fifth entry, Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

Though fans have clamored for a remaster or a port of Soul Reaver to modern consoles, series owner Square Enix has voiced no plans for any such projects. According to reports, a sixth entry in the franchise, Dead Sun, was under development for three years by British developer Climax, but Square Enix cancelled it. The multiplayer portion of Dead Sun later became the ill-fated free-to-play game Nosgoth, which was cancelled in 2016.

If you play games on PC, Humble Bundle offers the chance to grab a bunch of great games for cheap while also benefitting charity. The latest Humble Bundle is dedicated to indie games on Steam, including Hotline Miami, Starbound, Gato Roboto, and more. By default, Humble Indie Bundle 21 benefits Traveling Stories, a nonprofit that builds libraries in underserved villages across the world. You get to choose how to allocate your money, though, whether that be to the publisher, a charity you like, or a mix of both.

If you pay just $1 or more, you’ll unlock Hotline Miami, Beat Cop, and Dustforce DX. If you haven’t played Hotline Miami, the $1 tier is more than worth it for Devolver Digital’s punishing and stylish top-down action game. Beat Cop is an investigative adventure that harkens back to ’80s TV shows and features gorgeous pixel art. Meanwhile, Dustforce DX is an endearing platformer starring a handy janitor.

The second tier of unlocks requires you to pay the average contribution (currently $7.33) to also get Moonlighter, Gato Roboto, and a mystery game that will be revealed next week. Moonlighter is a lovely mash-up of town simulation and roguelike dungeon crawling. You play as a shopkeeper by day, but by night you restock your shelves by waging war against monsters. Gato Roboto, another Devolver Digital title, is an adorable monochromatic platformer in the vein of early Metroid games.

Pay $15 or more, and you’ll also get Hypnospace Outlaw and Starbound. Hypnospace Outlaw takes place in an alternate history 1999, where you play as an Enforcer tasked to police the internet (known as the Hypnospace). It earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s Hypnospace Outlaw review for its witty writing and clever puzzles. The highly-regarded Starbound is a sandbox side-scroller set in space that lets you build the world and explore as you see fit.

More PC game deals

Even if you already own a couple of these games, Humble Indie Bundle 21 is a stellar deal seeing as most of these games regularly go for $10 to $20 each. It also feels great to help a good cause, which sweetens the pot even more. There are tons of great gaming deals this week beyond the latest Humble Bundle. Fanatical is hosting a huge May Madness sale; GOG is discounting a bunch of zombie games; the Xbox Store has dozens of racing games on sale; and a mix-and-match Steam bundle lets you get three great games for $10.

Humble Indie Bundle 21

Pay $1 or more to unlock:

• Hotline Miami
• Beat Cop
• Dustforce DX

Pay the average contribution ($7.33) or more to also unlock:

• Moonlighter
• Gato Roboto
• Mystery game

Pay $15 or more to also unlock:

• Starbound
• Hypnospace Outlaw

The Guardian Games are over in Destiny 2, and while the grind to earn the Heir Apparent Exotic machine gun has ended, a new big weapon quest has kicked off in its place: The Lie.

Hop into the game after the most recent weekly reset and you’ll be able to hit the first step in the quest, which sends you to talk to Ana Bray on Mars. Ana suggests that something is going on with Rasputin, beyond just the thing with using his huge network of satellites to shoot down the Almighty. That’s been the story thrust of this season since its start, but we’ve been getting hints that there might be more going on with Rasputin since last season, the Season of Dawn. Now, it seems, that story might be developing further.

But getting to it is going to take a while. The first step in The Lie is for players to finish the Season of the Worthy’s Seraph Tower events on Earth, the Moon, and Io. This isn’t your usual quest that requires you to complete an event a certain number of times, though: The tracker for The Lie is actually taking into account all players and their completions. It looks as though it’s going to take a while to get through these, as well.

According to Destiny dataminer Ginsor, it’s going to take 3 million completions on each planet to advance The Lie to its next step.

After that, the quest apparently becomes a bit more manageable, although with some significant grind. The datamine also says we’ll return to Vostok, the location of the Iron Lords’ fortress from Destiny 1, and learn more about Rasputin in a secret room in its bunker on the Moon. The reward for the quest, once it’s completed, is Felwinter’s Lie, a powerful Legendary shotgun from back in the days of Destiny 1.

More interesting than the grind, though, is what we might learn about Rasputin through the course of the quest. Information about the warmind has been pretty thin throughout both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. We know Rasputin was involved in the Collapse and fought for humanity during that invasion–it also knows more about what happened during that time than any other character in the game, and so far, it hasn’t shared. That might be about to change, though.

Through the course of the Season of the Worthy, we’ve seen that Rasputin’s bunkers are tracking the return of the pyramid ships, first teased at the end of the Destiny 2 vanilla campaign and then elaborated upon with the Shadowkeep expansion. Those guys are about to reach the solar system, and it seems that Rasputin will be a key figure in dealing with them. We’re probably about to learn some new info about the pyramid ships and the race that uses them once we work through The Lie.

There’s also a big theory developed from Destiny lore about Rasputin’s role in the Collapse that might finally get confirmed (or definitely denied): that Rasputin was the one who attacked and disabled the Traveler way back during the Collapse. At the end of the Season of Dawn, Osiris confronted Rasputin about its actions during the Collapse but didn’t elaborate on what they were. It seems very likely that “The Lie” this quest refers to could be the one we’ve been told about who was responsible for the Traveler’s fate–and what the Traveler had planned to do during the Collapse before it was disabled.

We’ll have to wait for the other steps to see where the story might take us, though. And getting to those other steps is probably going to take at least a couple of days. As of this writing, the completion tracker on The Lie has only been moved 1% for each of the three locations. Get out there and launch those satellites, Guardians.

It seems Quantic Dream’s interactive action-adventure game, Beyond: Two Souls, is headed to Steam sometime soon. This is according to a Steam Database listing posted by Twitter user Nibel.

The listing has no specific information relating to Beyond: Two Souls, such as the game’s name or a suggested retail price, and searching for the game on Steam pulls no results for it. An exact release date for this PC version of Beyond: Two Souls remains unconfirmed for now.

This is not Beyond: Two Souls’ first foray on the PC platform, though. In May 2019, Quantic Dream confirmed that Beyond: Two Souls–as well as its other titles such as Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain–would launch on PC through the Epic Games Store. All three games are now available through Epic’s proprietary storefront, and each title has a free playable demo available to download.

Earlier this year, Quantic Dream announced it’s now independent after working with Sony exclusively for a number of years. In doing so, the studio confirmed plans to “provide investment” for other developers.

Originally a PlayStation exclusive, showing up on both PlayStation 3 and 4, Beyond: Two Souls launched in October 2013 to largely favorable reviews. We scored it a 9/10 in our original Beyond: Two Souls review, saying, “Beyond: Two Souls is a gripping adventure that doesn’t get lost in its supernatural setup.”