Author: Trafficblast

DOOM Eternal forgoes the traditional DeathMatch multiplayer that DOOM (2016) had (and the original 1993 DOOM invented) and is instead trying something bolder and more original: Battlemode. This 2v1 asymmetrical mode pits two player-controlled Demons (choosing from the Revenant, Archvile, Pain Elemental, Mancubus, and Marauder) against one player-controlled Slayer. The Slayer has to kill both demons before either of them can respawn. It’s an intriguing game of cat-and-mouse, layered with strategy. In the video above, DOOM Eternal director Hugo Martin talks through a round with IGN’s James Duggan playing as the Slayer and two id Software developers controlling the Demons.

We’re covering DOOM Eternal all February long as part of IGN First, IGN’s monthly “cover story” of sorts. If you missed any of our coverage so far, get caught up! And keep checking back all month long for more!

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DOOM Eternal will be released on March 20 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia, with a Nintendo Switch version hitting later.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

After months of teasing a followup to 2017’s Dark Nights: Metal, DC Comics is finally peeling back the curtain on the next Justice League epic from writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo. It’s called Dark Nights: Death Metal, and the DC Universe is about to get its collective face melted off.

Death Metal is a new six-issue series reuniting the entire Metal creative team, including Snyder, Capullo, inker Jonathon Glapion and colorist FCO Plascencia. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at the covers and uncolored interior art from the first issue:

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While Death Metal is a sequel to Dark Nights: Metal, it also builds directly on the fallout of Snyder’s Justice League run and the miniseries Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen. The Batman Who Laughs has triumphed in his war against Lex Luthor, and now he and his corrupted minions – Shazam, Supergirl, Donna Troy, Blue Beetle, James Gordon and Hawkman – rule over a world swallowed up by the Dark Multiverse. And pulling the strings of The Batman Who Laughs is none other than Perpetua, the self-proclaimed mother of the multiverse and perhaps the most powerful villain the Justice League have ever faced.

As Snyder recently teased on Twitter, Death Metal is meant to be a Wonder Woman-driven story in the same way the original Metal was mostly Batman-focused. In this twisted version of the DCU, Wonder Woman and Flash have struck a Faustian bargain to preserve what remains of humanity, while Batman leads an underground resistance movement and Superman is trapped inside the heart of the sun. Only when a mysterious ally emerges with crucial new information is Wonder Woman able to rally the Justice League and take the fight to Perpetua herself. And, naturally, she’s bringing her new Chainsaw of Truth along for the ride.

“I’ve been waiting to do this story since we finished Dark Nights: Metal,” said Snyder in a statement. “As much as it was a complete event, we left some threads hanging there for sure. I’d hoped that if people liked the first series enough, we’d have a chance to set up something bigger, and that’s our plan for Death Metal.”

“For all of us, Dark Nights: Death Metal is about the fun factor,” said Capullo. “Comics should be fun, bombastic, and over-the-top. This series is going to be exciting and jam-packed with great ‘metal-esque’ moments that will make fans lose their minds when they see them.”

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Dark Nights: Death Metal #1 will be released on Wednesday, May 13. The series will continue to ship monthly through November 2020, though it’ll take a brief hiatus in August. DC is also teasing a series of “Metalverse” spinoff issues shipping this summer that expand on Snyder and Capullo’s story.

In addition to introducing The Batman Who Laughs and other nightmarish versions of Batman, Dark Nights: Metal is notable for featuring a rare crossover between the DCU and characters from The Sandman. We’ll be eager to see what Snyder and Capullo have planned for a followup. Let us know what you want to see from Death Metal in the comments below.

Death Metal isn’t the only major DC superhero epic in the works for this summer. A new Batman storyline called Joker War will chronicle what could well be the final battle between Batman and his greatest nemesis. Meanwhile, DC is celebrating Free Comic Book Day with the release of Generation Zero, a game-changing new comic that transforms Wally West into the new Doctor Manhattan. Check out all of IGN’s most anticipated comics of 2020 here.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

If you enjoy dying repeatedly while hauling around a big sack of ninja gear, your wait is almost over: Upcoming slash ’em up Nioh 2 has gone gold. Released in 2017, the original Nioh brought developer Koei Tecmo’s signature flair and deep mechanical complexity to the Souls-like mold, garnering substantial praise in the process. The game was also noted for its extreme difficulty, which rivals even that of the Souls series itself. Still, given that Koei Tecmo also produced the likes of Ninja Gaiden Black, perhaps it’s not that surprising.

In our latest preview, Alessandro Fillari wrote that Nioh 2 is shaping up to be similar to its predecessor, with many small improvements and tweaks, including AI-controlled summons to help you surmont particularly tough bosses and a new switch-glaive that transforms like Bloodborne’s trick weapons. “The game is still Souls-like to its core,” he wrote. “It’s the type of experience that can be an acquired taste, leaving some put off with its stoic adherence to the mechanics at work.”

Between 2019’s From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Nioh 2, and Ghost of Tsushima coming later in 2020, we’re living in a golden age for samurai action games. Let’s hope that Nioh 2 can live up to the high expectations that Souls fans are bringing to this hotly-anticipated sequel, which releases March 13.

Before this year, getting full minor league rosters in MLB The Show meant downloading a roster update that members of the community spent hours upon hours constructing, creating each player from scratch with as-close-as-possible player likenesses, batting stances, pitching motions, equipment, stats, and so on. Now, full minor league rosters are officially coming to MLB The Show 20.

Developer Sony San Diego put out a new trailer (which you can see above) revealing the exciting change coming to this year’s baseball sim–complete with footage of former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow hitting a home run for the New York Mets triple-A affiliate. This is an exciting addition for franchise mode and Road to the Show players in particular, where the journey up through the minors was previously full of fake players unless you downloaded one of the aforementioned roster updates from the community.

Speaking of which, one of the most popular updates each year was one created by the user RidinRosters and their team. The trailer credits RidinRosters (whose real name is Scott Spindler) for collaborating on the official minor league rosters with Sony San Diego, which is pretty cool.

We recently got a chance to check out some of the improvements and changes coming to MLB The Show 20. We’ve also got you covered with an extensive pre-order guide ahead of the game’s release on March 17 for PlayStation 4.

League of Legends developer Riot Games has been cagey with its team-based shooter “Project A” ever since the studio announced the game’s existence back in October 2019, but some information is starting to trickle out. Recently, Riot invited former Counter-Strike player Henry Greer (who goes by “HenryG”) to play a build of the game at its EU headquarters, and he had some interesting details to offer.

In a lengthy tweet-thread, Greer said that Project A resembles CS at a fundamental mechanical level, describing it as a 5-on-5 tactical shooter with elements of hero shooters like Overwatch and Apex Legends. He said that Project A has “super slick and satisfying” gameplay, while also noting that the mode he played was clearly inspired by Counter-Strike’s popular Defuse game type.

However, while Project A features character-specific abilities, such as enhanced movement abilities, Greer opined that these powers tend more toward utility than what he dubs the “overpowered spell/ultimate combinations that other class-based games suffer from.” In the current build, most of these powers are purchased with the same currency that you purchase guns with a la Counter-Strike, meaning that there’s a lot more room for strategic flexibility.

Given the fact that Greer is a former professional CS player himself, his opinions should be taken with a grain of salt, since it’s clear that Riot is patterning much of Project A on Valve’s ultra-popular shooter. That said, if it can truly excite the hordes of players who log onto Counter-Strike: Global Offensive every day, then it might have a fighting chance in the crowded shooter market.

After eight years away, EA is returning the Need for Speed franchise to Burnout developer Criterion Games. Current franchise leader Ghost Games is set to become EA Gothenburg once again.

Ghost Games has been the home of Need for Speed for the last four games in the series, developing 2013’s Need for Speed: Rivals, the 2015 Need for Speed reboot, 2017’s Need for Speed Payback, and last year’s Need for Speed Heat. While Payback marked a low point for the series, Ghost Games was getting the street racer back on track, with Heat earning 7/10 in GameSpot’s review.

Now the series returns to Criterion, the studio most well known for creating the Burnout series, and developers of 2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and 2012’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The UK-based studio downsized in 2013, with many employees moving to Ghost Games. Since then, Criterion has taken on a supporting role, helping DICE on Star Wars: Battlefront, Battlefront II, and Battlefield V.

“With a strong history and passion for racing games and vision for what we can create, the Criterion team is going to take Need for Speed into the next-generation,” EA said in a statement to Gamesindustry.biz.

All of this leaves Ghost Games to refocus, as the studio becomes an engineering hub supporting development across EA’s other projects. “The engineering expertise in our Gothenburg team, some of whom are architects of the Frostbite engine, is vital to a number of our ongoing projects, and they would remain in that location,” EA said.

The publisher is looking to transfer the creative team at Ghost Games to positions at Criterion and other studios within the organisation, but 30 roles still remain at risk. “Outside of the engineers and those that we plan to transfer to other positions, there would be 30 additional staff in Gothenburg, and we would hope to place as many of them as possible into other roles in the company.”

One of the key reasons for the change comes down to location. “Despite our best efforts to establish an independent development group in Gothenburg over several years, it’s become clear that the breadth of talent we need to maintain a full AAA studio is just not available to us there,” EA explained. Criterion is based in Guildford, which is one of the biggest hubs for the UK’s game development scene.

Much like the beginning of this generation, the Need for Speed series is moving house as the next-gen draws near. Criterion is a very different studio to the one that developed Most Wanted, with studio founders Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry departing in 2014. Nevertheless, it’s still exciting to see the studio back making a game that’s wholly its own, not to mention the first Need for Speed game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Ubisoft has announced that The Division 2 will return to New York City for its upcoming Warlords of New York expansion, but you can visit Big Apple tourist destination Coney Island now if you’re a season pass holder. Episode 3 goes to the Brooklyn neighborhood for a new story and gear.

The episode is called “Homecoming” and like the other episodic DLC, it’s exclusive to season pass holders first. It adds a new (returning) faction, the Cleaners, along with two main missions, and two classified assignments. It also adds two new weapons: the Honey Badger, and an exotic assault rifle that changes color with your surroundings called The Chameleon. The mission takes agents to Coney Island to rescue a renowned scientist from the Black Tusk faction.

This seems to be laying the groundwork for a more complete return to New York for the Warlords expansion. That will mark the beginning of the Year 2 content, and will be sold as a standalone expansion for $30. It has the agents pursuing series antagonist Aaron Keener through Lower Manhattan. It will also overhaul some major game systems including the loot and power level grind.

New players will be able to jump into the new content right away when it launches on March 3. You can check out our hands-on impressions of the Warlords expansion for more details. If you haven’t yet begun making your way through The Division 2, it’s on sale for dirt cheap this week.