Author: Trafficblast

The Oculus Quest is one of the best VR headsets you can buy today, and it’s clearly driving many of the decisions around how Oculus thinks about its products–both hardware and software–and their future. Which explains why today the company is discontinuing its other portable headset, while laying out plans for a more open ecosystem for the Quest.

The Oculus Go was the first of Oculus’ attempts at an all-in-one VR headset, primarily aimed at a market that was being dominated by headsets that required you to use your smartphone as the screen. The Oculus Go put all of that hardware into the headset itself, but also omitted features that made it more suitable for more passive VR experiences, as opposed to those you can find on the Oculus Quest.

It wasn’t a hit like the Quest, and today Oculus is discontinuing production on the Oculus Go. Oculus has ceased production on the headset, and will shut down new app submissions this December. After-sales support will continue through 2022, with security updates ceasing after that.

In tandem with this announcement, Oculus is also committing to a more open software ecosystem for the Oculus Quest, starting in 2021. Although the blog post omits finer details, Oculus states that it is looking into ways for apps to be submitted and sold outside of the Oculus Store–the single storefront you have to go through for Oculus games and apps. Oculus says this should reduce the need to sideload applications, which has become common as users search for additional software Oculus isn’t directly selling.

The Oculus Quest is still difficult to come by, even months after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx. We’re constantly keeping an eye on stock, so check out our Oculus Quest buyer’s guide for the best options to pick one up.

The Isle of Armor is the setting of Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s first expansion, but aside from the Master Dojo–where you’ll earn the new Legendary Pokemon Kubfu–the island lacks many of the facilities you’d find around mainland Galar, such as a Pokemon Center and an item shop. And while you can’t build a Pokemon Center on the island, you can at least add some more amenities to it.

After you reach a certain point in the story, you’ll have the option to upgrade the Master Dojo with additional features and supplies. These upgrades can be rather pricey, but they are generally useful, especially if you have a few thousand Watts to spare. We’ve broken down what all the Master Dojo upgrades are and how much each costs below.

If you’ve just picked up a Sword or Shield Expansion Pass, here’s how to access the Isle of Armor and how to evolve Galarian Slowpoke. We’ve also put together a guide explaining how to teach Pokemon to Gigantamax. Even if you don’t have the Expansion Pass, you still have a few ways to get the newly added Pokemon without the DLC.

How To Upgrade The Master Dojo

After completing all three of the Master Dojo’s trials and earning Kubfu, speak to Honey and she’ll mention her desire to upgrade the facility with more features. Each of these upgrades costs a few thousand Watts, but you’ll get some handy new amenities in return, such as a vending machine that dispenses supplements for Pokemon like Protein (which raise a monster’s EVs) at a discount.

You can see the full list of Master Dojo upgrades, along with how many Watts you need to spend to get them, below:

No. of Watts	Upgrade
5,000	Adds a hair stylist (new hair styles)
10,000	Adds a Rotomi terminal (unusable)
20,000	Activates the Rotomi terminal
30,000	Adds a vending machine (dispenses Fresh Water only)
40,000	Adds Soda Pop to the vending machine
50,000	Adds Lemonade to the vending machine
100,000	Adds fresh ingredients to the kitchen fridge
200,000	Adds a second vending machine (dispenses Protein and Iron only)
300,000	Adds Calcium and Zinc to the second vending machine
400,000	Adds HP Up and Carbos to the second vending machine
500,000	Adds the Master Dojo as a League Card background
800,000	Receive Honey’s League Card
1,000,000	Battle against Honey
3,280,000	Receive Honey’s Rare League Card

How To Farm Watts

Traditionally, the quickest way to earn Watts in Sword and Shield is by checking Max Raid dens around the Wild Area. After you beat the main game, you’ll receive 200 Watts each time you interact with a glowing Max Raid den. If a den is hosting a Max Raid, you’ll receive 2,000 Watts from it, even if you don’t participate in the battle. You’ll also net some Watts for catching or defeating a wild Pokemon that has a glowing aura.

While checking Max Raid dens is the most reliable way to collect Watts, it can also be quite time consuming, especially if you’re trying to fully upgrade the Master Dojo. Fortunately, the Isle of Armor expansion introduces a new way to earn Watts, although it’s a bit of a gamble: Digging Pa, an NPC located outside of the Warm-Up Tunnel. Give Digging Pa seven Armorite Ore and he’ll dig up some Watts for you. Each bundle that he digs up can range from a few hundred to a few thousand, so you can potentially earn a ton of Watts from him, but the amount you get is up to chance.

The founder of British games studio Traveller’s Tales (best known for its LEGO games) has revealed that, in 2008, the company spent more than $1,000,000 on a failed pitch to make a tie-in game for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit series.

Jon Burton posted a video to his YouTube channel GameHut explaining the situation and featured footage from the tech demos used to pitch the game to Peter Jackson and then-director Guillermo Del Toro.

Instead of LEGO Games for which the studio was known, the team made photorealistic recreations of key scenes from The Lord of the Rings movies on Xbox 360 hardware, including Gandalf fighting the Balrog, Arogorn fighting Uruk-Hai at Amon Hen, and stealth gameplay where you’d play as Frodo in Deephallow Woods, avoiding the Black Riders. It’s very much worth watching the video, but here are some screenshots:

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The footage is seriously impressive, but according to Burton, the team “went way too far, and spent way too much money” on the project in order to impress Jackson and Del Toro at a pitch meeting in New Zealand.

Del Toro was apparently very receptive, but Warner Bros. ultimately decided that it “wanted a game that wasn’t directly based on the movie, but happened in the same universe at the same time,” a philosophy Burton disagreed with (but likely led to the birth of games like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor). As a result, the game never saw the light of day, which is a massive shame as the more-than decade-old footage genuinely holds up in retrospect.

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For more on Lord of the Rings, check out our article covering The Second Age, the setting for Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV prequel. You can also check out some screenshots of Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the next-gen stealth game coming from Daedalic.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has explained why he allowed the upcoming movie musical to be censored on Disney Plus.

Taking to Twitter on Monday, Miranda confirmed that the lyrics of two explicit songs have minor alterations in the filmed version of the original Broadway production, which arrives on Disney’s streaming platform, July 3.

LANGUAGE!
1. On July 3, you’re getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!)
2. But MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of “Fuck” is an automatic R rating. We have 3 “Fucks” in our show. So…
1/2 https://t.co/7o3OQ34rqt

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

Miranda was responding to a fan who questioned why the movie had received a PG-13 rating, rather than an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and asked whether any iconic lines had been cut or changed for the movie to reach this categorization.

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In his reply, Miranda revealed that Yorktown, the 20th song of Act One, and Washington on Your Side, the 8th song of Act Two, had been edited for mature language.

“You’re getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!),” Miranda explained in his tweet on Monday. “But the MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of ‘F***’ is an automatic R rating. We have 3 ‘F***s’ in our show.

“I literally gave two f***s so the kids could see it: 1. In Yorktown, there’s a mute over ‘I get the f*** back up again’ 2. ‘Southern *record scratch*kin’ Democratic Republicans.’ You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!”

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For those somehow unfamiliar with the wildly successful musical, Hamilton is a dramatization of the life of Founding Father and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, tracing his story from his arrival in New York City at the dawn of the Revolutionary War through to his ill-fated duel with rival Aaron Burr in 1804. The musical features a unique combination of hip-hop, R&B, soul, and show tunes to help examine Hamilton’s story through a modern lens.

Hamilton debuts on Disney+ on July 3. If you want to learn more, we recommend Gore Vidal’s book “Burr,” as an “enjoyable and even necessary companion piece” to the hit stage show.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Earth Defense Force 6 has been officially revealed by series publisher D3, with the game expected to launch in 2021. Alongside that, a voxel-based spin-off, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is also on the way.

The 2021 date suggests that Earth Defense Force 6 will land on next-generation consoles, which launch this holiday season, but no official platforms for the game have been announced just yet.

The game’s website doesn’t offer much information beyond a suite of screenshots (below), which as you might expect, include massive bugs terrorizing an urban landscape. It looks very much like an Earth Defense Force game, where a team of humans (often in co-op groups) must flesh out character builds and fight to rid the world of a bug scourge with increasingly absurd weaponry.

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As well as EDF 6, a voxel-based Earth Defence Force game has been revealed, titled Earth Defense Force: World Brothers.

The change in art style looks like a great fit, and according to its website, the predicament facing the World Brothers is that “Earth has become a square?” The game features characters from across the entire EDF series, and it will land on Nintendo Switch and PS4 at some point this year.

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Neither game has so far been announced for western release. The EDF series has traditionally featured long gaps between Japanese release and a western release, but spin-off Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain launched simultaneously worldwide, which might offer some hope to fans of giant bug slaughter.

Check out IGN’s review of Iron Rain from April 2019, where we called the last entry in the series “a more-than-pleasant experiment, a game that feels like it was made by fans of the series with their own ideas”.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

We’re stoked to present to you the exclusive first trailer for Superman: Man of Tomorrow, the next animated DC Universe Movie from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. You can watch the trailer in the player above or via the embed below.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow is due out this summer on digital, 4K Ultra combo pack, and Blu-ray combo pack.

In Superman: Man of Tomorrow, “Daily Planet intern Clark Kent takes learning-on-the-job to new extremes when Lobo and Parasite set their sights on Metropolis,” according to the official plot synopsis.

Darren Criss (Hollywood, Midway) voices the lead role of Clark Kent, while Star Trek and Heroes’ Zachary Quinto voices his foe, Lex Luthor. Criss is no stranger to DC Comics adaptations, having appeared on The CW’s Supergirl and The Flash as the supervillain known as Music Meister.

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The voice cast ensemble of Superman: Man of Tomorrow also includes San Andreas and True Detective’s Alexandra Daddario as Lois Lane, Brett Dalton (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as cosmic bounty hunter Lobo, Ryan Hurst (The Walking Dead) as the supervillain Parasite, and Ike Amadi (Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge) as Martian Manhunter.

Piotr Michael voices Perry White, while Jonathan and Martha Kent are played by Neil Flynn and Bellamy Young, respectively. The voice cast also includes Cristina Milizia, Eugene Byrd, April Stewart, Cissy Jones and David Chen.

The film’s creative team includes director Chris Palmer, screenwriter Tim Sheridan, and supervising producer Butch Lukic.

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This year also saw the release of another Man of Steel animated movie from WBHE, Superman: Red Son. In our positive review of the film, we praised it as “one of the stronger additions to DC’s animated movie library in recent years.”

And be sure to check out our roundup of every DC Universe Movie review in the 15-film continuity that recently ended with Justice League Dark: Apokolips War.

Here’s some good news and some bad news. First the good: Amazon has just put a box of eight Final Fantasy VII polygon figures up for preorder. They’re based on the character designs from the original 1997 game, which means ’90s kids will love them, as will anyone who enjoys delightful character designs. Seriously, just look at them. They’re slated for a September 1 release, and priced at $64.

Now for the bad news: instead of just selling the complete set as you might expect, Square Enix is only offering them in a package of eight blind boxes. That means you won’t necessarily get all the figures with one purchase, and you may get doubles.

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• Get it at Amazon
• Also at Square Enix Store

That’s a bummer, but you’ll definitely get eight of these figures (just cross your fingers you don’t get eight Renos). If that sounds like a gamble you’re willing to take, you’ll probably want to secure your preorder soon. It’s unclear how long the stock will last.

Almost all of the figures up for grabs are fantastic characters, with the exception of Reno (I kid!). The set includes Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, Sephiroth, and Reno. There’s also a chance that you’ll get a rare secret character variant (read to the end of this article if you want it spoiled).

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Final Fantasy VII Polygon Figures

• Cloud
• Aerith
• Tifa
• Barret
• Red XIII
• Sephiroth
• Reno

Each figure stands about two inches tall. They all have their iconic polygonal, boxy bodies, but they have “expressive eyes,” as the marketing copy says, which do look nice and add a lot of personality.

For the price they’re charging, I wish they just sold these in a set. But if you think it’s worth the risk, go ahead and place your preorder now.

Secret FF7 Polygon Figure

Spoilers: The secret figure is… (drumroll, please)

…

…

Cloud wearing the dress he puts on to infiltrate Don Corneo’s mansion. Good luck!

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a comic book series that ties in to the game before it launches later this year.

Dark Horse Comics recently created a listing for the comic series and it’s called Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team. The series will be about an assistant emergency medical technician on a failed rescue mission, presumably in Night City, the game’s main setting.

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“Nadia, an assistant EMT for a privately-owned business known as Trauma Team International, is the sole survivor of a failed rescue mission turned shootout,” the listing reads. “After she agrees to continue work for an upcoming extraction mission, Nadia and her new team find themselves in an even more dangerous and life-threatening situation.”

This is the listing for the series’ first issue. It’s unknown at this time how many issues will be in this series. The team behind the comic is writer Cullen Bunn, who wrote Dark Horse’s Harrow County and Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men in 2016, and illustrator Miguel Valderrama, who illustrated Dark Horse’s Giants.

This “new series based on the highly anticipated game” will be released on September 9 later this year with a price tag of $3.99 for issue one, which will be 32 pages long. The September 9 release date makes sense when you consider that Cyberpunk 2077 was set to be released on September 17 after a delay from its original April release date. The game was recently delayed once more to its new date of November 19.

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While Dark Horse has a listing up for the comic, it does not appear to be available for pre-order or purchase just yet. Read about CD Projekt Red’s plans for a “more robust” next-gen upgrade for Cyberpunk 2077 while waiting for this tie-in comic book to be released. Check out this neat easter egg hidden on the recently-released Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox controller, too.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Netflix has confirmed that a Chicken Run sequel will be heading to its streaming service, with production expected to begin next year.

The streaming giant announced the cracking news in a tweet on Tuesday, exactly two decades after Aardman’s original stop-motion adventure swooped onto the big screen.

POULTRY NEWS: Exactly 20 years to the day since the original was released, we can confirm there will be a Chicken Run sequel coming to Netflix!! Produced by @aardman, production is expected to begin next year. Eggsellent.

— Netflix UK & Ireland (@NetflixUK) June 23, 2020

Netflix tweeted: “POULTRY NEWS: Exactly 20 years to the day since the original was released, we can confirm there will be a Chicken Run sequel coming to Netflix!! Produced by Aardman, production is expected to begin next year. Eggsellent.”

Alongside this announcement, Aardman shared an official synopsis for the film: “Having pulled off a death-defying escape from Tweedy’s farm, Ginger has finally found her dream – a peaceful island sanctuary for the whole flock, far from the dangers of the human world. When she and Rocky hatch a little girl called Molly, Ginger’s happy ending seems complete. But back on the mainland the whole of chicken-kind faces a new and terrible threat. For Ginger and her team, even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk – this time, they’re breaking in!”

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Sam Fell, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Aardman Animation’s Flushed Away and the Laika-produced ParaNorman, is attached to direct the sequel, with Peter Lord, Carla Shelley and Karey Kirkpatrick returning as executive producers. Steve Pegram and Leyla Hobart will produce the poultry picture, and Nick Park will be involved in a consulting role. Rachel Tunnard is teaming up with original Chicken Run writers Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell on the script.

“Fans around the world have waited patiently for a sequel idea worthy of Chicken Run so we’re delighted to announce, on the 20th anniversary, that we’ve found the perfect story,” Aardman’s Peter Lord, who co-directed the original claymation comedy with Nick Park, said in a statement. “Netflix feels like the ideal creative partner for this project too: they celebrate the film-maker, which means we can make the film we want to make – the one we really care about – and share it with a global audience.”

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The original Chicken Run film was a huge box office hit, making $225 million worldwide on a modest $45 million production budget, and to this date, it remains the highest-grossing stop motion animated film in history. It also earned a spot on our list of Top 10 DreamWorks Animation movies, however, DreamWorks will have no involvement in the upcoming sequel as they ended their partnership with Aardman in 2006.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.