Author: Trafficblast

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot‘s much-anticipated first DLC, which will introduce elements from the anime follow-up Dragon Ball Super, will be available very soon. A New Power Awakens – Part 1 will release on April 28, and it’ll let both Goku and Vegeta achieve Super Saiyan God transformations.

The DLC, which can be accessed at any time, involves fighting Beerus and achieving this new form. Beerus will be a level 250 opponent, and players won’t have access to all their items in the fight, so expect it to be tough. The game’s producer, Hara Ryousuke, outlined exactly how difficult the fight is in a quote included with the press release: “Beerus is so strong, my clear rate for this battle is 1 out of 10!”

A New Power Awakens – Part 1 is available through the Season Pass, but you’ll also be able to purchase it separately. Whichever way you buy it, you’ll also receive Part 2 later this year, although the date and content of that pack has not been announced.

A second DLC pack is also included in the Season Pass, so it’s very likely that Goku and Vegeta will eventually be able to achieve Super Saiyan Blue in the game–although what we’re really hoping for is an eventual game adaptation of the Tournament of Power and Goku’s Ultra Instinct form, which is coming soon to Dragon Ball FighterZ.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot scored a 7/10 in the GameSpot review. Heidi Kemps said that the game’s “modern, semi-open approach to telling the saga of DBZ–despite some minor issues–is a good one.”

Following its Guns, Love, and Tentacles campaign expansion, Borderlands 3 is getting another seasonal event. Revenge of the Cartels is free, providing a limited-time opportunity to earn loot and rewards. The event begins April 23, launching alongside Mayhem Mode 2.0, and will continue until June 4.

As detailed in a Gearbox blog post, Revenge of the Cartels adds a brand-new area to Borderlands 3 called Villa Ultraviolet. The new locale will introduce never-before-seen enemy types, limited-time challenges, and new legendary loot. However, you won’t be able to immediately visit Villa Ultraviolet on April 23–you’ll need to complete a few side missions first.

Come April 23, Maurice will add a new, repeatable quest to his job board on Sanctuary III. The quest will send you out to fight Cartel Operatives across multiple planets–defeat them and you’ll earn Hideout Coordinates. Collect enough and you’ll be able to travel to Villa Ultraviolet, the home of crime boss Joey Ultraviolet.

Like past seasonal events, Revenge of the Cartels adds limited-time in-game challenges to Borderlands 3. There are 18 in total, and completing them will net you exclusive rewards. These rewards are listed below.

Borderlands 3 Revenge Of The Cartels Challenge Rewards

• 3 Challenges: VECH-tor Graphics ECHO Device Skin
• 6 Challenges: Retro Outrunner Weapon Trinket
• 10 Challenges: Framed Firewall Room Decoration
• 14 Challenges: Hotline Pandora Vault Hunter Head
• 18 Challenges: Death by Filigrees Vault Hunter Skin

A newly released trailer for Animal Crossing: New Horizons shows off a number of events and other new features coming to the game over the next few months. This includes two new special visitors, Leif and Jolly (formerly Crazy) Redd, who were confirmed, but there’s actually a third returning character teased in the trailer: Rover, a friendly cat whose role in previous games was to help you name your character and town.

Rover can be seen briefly toward the end of the trailer during the May Day section. The May Day event, which is scheduled for May 1 through 7, has you visiting a special island separate from the regular Mystery Tour deserted islands you can visit with Nook Miles. Nintendo teases, “A special visitor who looks familiar might also be there…”, and judging by the back of him, that visitor appears to be Rover. You can see a screenshot below.

In past Animal Crossing games, you would encounter Rover on the train at the very beginning of the game. There, he would ask you questions to determine your character’s name and gender, the time and date, and your town name. In New Horizons, that role is partially taken over by Timmy and Tommy, and you name your island after you’ve arrived.

In Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Rover does have a more event-oriented role. He hosts the Garden Safari event, which tasks you with planting seasonal flowers and catching special butterflies; as a reward, he gives you Rover-style furniture.

The first of the recently announced events, Nature Day, is scheduled to come in a free update on April 23 and will run through May 1. That update also introduces the confirmed new visitors, Leif and Jolly Redd, as well as an expansion to Blathers’ museum.

Ubisoft has released the latest patch for Rainbow Six Siege. Previously only on the PC test server, Patch Y5S1.2 is now live on official PC servers and scheduled to come to Xbox One and PS4 sometime this week.

The patch is primarily geared towards balancing certain Operators and weapons, namely Ying. A previous update replaced Ying’s frag grenades with a claymore, but now Ubisoft is replacing her claymore with smoke grenades in hopes it will “increase the level of synergy she deploys when spearheading,” specifically when it comes to the attackers trying to counter Mira or Goyo. She’s also getting more Candelas and the damage rate of her T-95 LSW is getting a nice buff.

Patch Y5S1.2 also implements several bug fixes, with the most notable one addressing the barricade replication glitch. In the patch notes, Ubisoft also says that the quick match map pool won’t change for the rest of the season, only rotating to new maps in Year 5, Season 2. The full patch notes are listed below.

Rainbow Six Siege Y5S1.2 Patch Notes

Update

• Update–the quick match map pool will remain the same throughout Y5S1 and will rotate again in Y5S2.

Balancing

• Buck
• Frag Grenades replaced with Claymores.
• Increased Skeleton Key Magazine Capacity:
  • Skeleton Key magazine capacity increased to 5 + 1
  • Skeleton Key max ammo count is now 25+1
• Goyo
  • Reduced number of Volcán shields to 2 (down from 3).
• Jager
  • Now a 2-speed/2-armor operator.
• Mozzie
  • Removed Super Shorty secondary.
• Ying
  • Increased number of Candelas to 4 (up from 3).
  • Replaced Claymores with Smoke Grenades.
  • Increased T-95 LSW damage to 46 (up from 43).
• M12 (Caveira)
  • Added a Razor Holographic Sight option to her M12.
• TCSG12 (Kaid, Goyo)
  • Added an additional magazine to the TCSG12.
  • Reduced TCSG12 damage to 57 (down from 84).

Bug Fixes

• FIXED – Barricade replication issues where the barricade is not destroyed for all players in game except the shooter.
• FIXED – The Dynamic Play button does not update properly when last match was on an Event/Discovery playlist.
• FIXED – Players can clip inside the excavator in EXT Construction Site of Oregon.
• FIXED – Game boots with DX11 when players manually select the Vulkan executable in the steam installation folder.
• FIXED – Minor menu/shop visual and cosmetic fixes.
• FIXED – Lighting issue on Consulate map for consoles (hotfixed on PC on March 30).

Developer GungHo Online Entertainment has announced that you can pre-load Ninjala from the Nintendo Switch eshop before its open beta goes live later this week.

Ninjala’s open beta is scheduled during a 17-hour period from April 28-29, with three different time slots spanning those two days. The first one takes place from 12-12:59 PM PT / 3-3:59 PM ET / 7-7:59 PM GMT.

Players can check out the eight-player battle royale and training modes, as well as experiment with the game’s four available weapons: Ippon Katana, Drill Beat, SK8 Hammer, and Trick Ball. Check below for a breakdown of Ninjala’s open beta schedule.

GungHo Online recently shared a second developer diary in which the studio went over the flow of in-game battles and some of Ninjala’s mechanics. Sometime after launch, GungHo said Ninjala will receive a season pass, which the studio will discuss in its next developer diary.

Ninjala is a free-to-play online multiplayer game that shares DNA with Bleeding Edge and resembles the aesthetics of Splatoon. The game is slated to launch on May 27 for Nintendo Switch and will not require an active Nintendo Switch Online membership to play.

Riot Games’ Valorant has become the hottest shooter of the moment even in its closed beta, but some fans have voiced complaints about the balance of certain characters, particularly the explosive Raze. A new update dubbed 0.47+ takes aim at some of Raze’s more powerful abilities, reducing her number of Paint Shell grenades from 2 to 1, and forcing her to get two kills before she can use the ability again. The patch also adjusts the sound effects on all of Raze’s powers to make them easier to hear in a chaotic match.

The patch affects several of Sage’s abilities too, though mostly indirectly. Melee attacks against Sage’s barrier will now deal double damage, and players will no longer be able to bunny-hop their way through her Slow Orb. However, if you walk through her Slow Orb, you no longer make noise, which makes it less useful as an enemy-finding tool. The update also fixes a well-documented bug that allows Cypher’s spycam to fire weapons.

If you still haven’t had a chance to play Valorant, you can get a beta key by watching participating Twitch streams, among other things. If you’re the kind of player who delights in finding ways to break the game, Riot is offering bounties up to $100,000 for players who can find and identify exploits in the game.

Full patch notes below:

Gameplay and Balance

Melee damage

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including
  • Sage’s Barrier
  • Haven’s metal double doors
• Why?
  • There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

Raze

• Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
• Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh cooldown
• Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
• Fixed an edge case where the secondary cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.
• What’s up with that?
  • Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades and their number were creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied proper gameplay information and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to clearly identify and interpret the threat.

Sage

• Slow Orb now also slows the air speed of players in the zone
• Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise
• Why though?
  • Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the zone. Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can’t necessarily hear people who move through

Map Updates

• Several exploits fixed on Bind, Haven, and Split
• Split: Orb moved from B Mid to B Main
  • The intent is to alleviate some pressure from mid and provide more incentive for players to control B Main.

Quality of Life

• Reduced outbound network traffic from client for players running at high frames-per-second
  • Some ISPs and network setups were throttling game traffic, impacting gameplay by causing large spikes in network latency as FPS increased.
  • No impact to gameplay / responsiveness

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a rare server crash caused by packets occasionally being corrupted by some players’ networks
• Cypher’s Spycam can no longer use weapons
• Fixed a bug where footstep audible range would sometimes not appear on the minimap

If you’re browsing the Switch Eshop this week, you’ll likely see a bunch of AAA games from Capcom and Bandai Namco on sale for low prices. While there are some truly great deals in both of those publisher sales, I’m here to let you know about the best deal on the Eshop right now: Celeste for $5. If you haven’t played the brilliant 2018 platformer from developer Matt Makes Games, you shouldn’t pass up this deal.

The lowest price we’ve seen Celeste for on Switch up until now was $10–so yes, this is an excellent deal at $5. This price is only good through April 26, so make sure you snag it before it goes back up to $20 next week.

Celeste was my favorite game of 2018. You play as Madeline, a young woman grappling with mental illness, who decides to scale the titular mountain. Madeline’s journey is moving–it’s certainly one of the more poignant games that deals with mental illness. Each level asks you to run, jump, and climb to avoid increasingly precarious obstacles. Throughout the nine chapters, clever new mechanics are introduced to spice up the platforming. Gorgeous pixel art and catchy tunes round out the stellar package.

Fair warning: chapter 9, which was added in a free update last year, is extremely challenging. But Celeste also has welcome accessibility options that let you tweak the gameplay to meet your skill level.

The game earned a 9/10 in GameSpot’s Celeste review for its fine-tuned platforming, compelling story, and emotional use of music to impart its themes.

Celeste isn’t the only wonderful indie game available at a discount on Switch. For its one-year anniversary on Switch, Cuphead is 25% off at $15. Meanwhile, the gripping roguelike Dead Cells is down to $20.

For more game deals, check out our roundup of the best digital game deals on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. We also have a running list of every free game available now.