Author: Trafficblast

Marvel’s Avengers is slated to get a growing roster of heroes, but the start of that expansion has been pushed back a bit. The first new character, Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye, will no longer be coming this month.

Crystal Dynamics announced the delay in a blog post detailing various changes to its roadmap. It refers to this as a “slight delay,” but didn’t give a new release target for the new character.

“Moving forward, we intend to have a fixed, predictable patching cycle to ensure all new content meets both our and your high standards and has time for extensive internal testing,” the post reads. “We know fans are hungry for new content, but delivering a fun experience is our priority. With this in mind, we’ve decided to push Kate Bishop’s Operation launch back a bit, out of October. We’re sorry for this slight delay, but we are dedicated as a team to quality first.”

Kate Bishop’s operation was to be the first of a two-part Hawkeye storyline that would then add Clint Barton in November. The blog didn’t give word as to whether this would also impact the release of Barton as its second character, but the post implies that both will still be out before 2021. The studio promises next year will bring the biggest expansion yet, with a new hero, region, and narrative arc.

The blog also announced delays to the next-gen versions of the game, which are being pushed into 2021. The current-gen version will still run better on PS5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, with higher frame rates and faster load times. As a make-good to fans, the game will offer a package of 1500 credits, 7000 units, 250 upgrade modules, and 20 DNA keys, plus a Sarah Garza-inspired nameplate. You can claim that reward starting October 22.

Marvel’s Avengers has been successful, at least in terms of initial sales, for publisher Square Enix thus far. However, the game has seen its player-counts falling and criticism for bugs and lack of endgame content–and we don’t mean the movie. Because developer Crystal Dynamics is working to address the game’s issues, the next-gen versions for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PS5 have been delayed to 2021.

Crystal Dynamics said it wants to deliver a “next-gen experience showcasing all that this game is meant to be” in a blog post announcing the decision. You will still be able to play the PS4 or Xbox One versions on the new systems and can experience better frame rates and faster loading times, and your progress will also carry over. Once the next-gen-specific versions are released, it will be a free upgrade.

Several changes requested by fans are being worked into future updates, as well. These include a ping system, the ability to replay the Reassemble campaign, a high-contrast mode, hero icon visibility adjustments, mission reward clarity, and better enemy attack indicators. PC stability is also being worked on, with GPUs apparently being the source of many crashes thus far.

GameSpot’s Phil Hornshaw gave the game a 7/10 in our Marvel’s Avengers review. While he enjoyed the depth of combat and characters’ different styles, he didn’t like how live-service elements were implemented and encountered plenty of bugs.

If you saw our review of last year’s SteelSeries Arctis 9X and were bummed that the wireless gaming headset was designed for the Xbox One and you aren’t on Team Green, then the SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless is for you. This wireless headset offers 2.4GHz wireless connectivity for PC and PlayStation gamers along with simultaneous Bluetooth for listening to music or making phone calls. And with steel construction, plush cushioning, and ski-goggle headband, the Arctis 9 Wireless boasts the build quality and comfort we’ve come to expect from SteelSeries. Does this pricey $199.99 dual wireless headset deliver the sound to make it a top headset for gamers?

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=steelseries-arctis-9-wireless-review&captions=true”]

SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless – Design & Features

With its ski-goggle headband and large, oval earcups, the Arctis 9 looks and feels like previous SteelSeries efforts. The gaming headset has an understated look that lends some versatility; it looks equally at home in front of your gaming PC or PS4 as well as on the move connected to your phone. It avoids obvious gamer design flourishes in favor of a nearly all-black look. The earcups feature matte black surfaces, and the cloth headband is black with thin, white accents.

[poilib element=”poll” parameters=”id=3c9aa306-25d1-40a4-ad6f-fc5becceefac”]

If you are looking for colorful, pulsing RGB lighting, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The only lights on the Arctis 9 serve a function rather than simply adorning the form. A small LED indicator on the right earcup blinks white when connected wirelessly and blue when connected via Bluetooth (and alternates white and blue when connected to both).

When charging, the LED glows green when the headset has more than half of its battery life remaining. It glows yellow when it’s between 20% and 50% and red when it’s between 10% and 20%. When there’s less than 10% battery life remaining, it blinks red. There’s also an LED light on the retractable microphone that glows red when the mic is muted.

The Arctis 9 Wireless connects to your PC or PlayStation via a USB wireless transmitter. The headset and transmitter come paired out of the box, but I needed to update the firmware from each after installing the SteelSeries Engine software. Even with a firmware update, I was updated and up and running in less than five minutes.

The wireless transmitter has a switch on its underside to toggle between PC and PlayStation use. (The headset works with PS4 and will work with the PS5 at launch.) The Arctis 9 Wireless can also be used with a Nintendo Switch in docked mode.

At 13.4 ounces, the Arctis 9 Wireless is a heavy headset but feels lighter than it is thanks to the ski-goggle strap that creates a suspension feeling that prevents the metal headband from pressing down on the top of your head. There’s a Velcro fastener on the end of the ski-goggle strap that provides a minimal amount of size adjustment, but this large-headed reviewer had no trouble finding a comfortable fit.

The large, oval earcups are heavily padded, and the padding is covered in a soft, breathable fabric. Their large size minimizes the odds that your ear will be pinched against your headset and will likely fit inside the earcup. While comfort is top-notch, the large earcups tend to get warm over long stretches.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=While%20comfort%20is%20top-notch%2C%20the%20large%20earcups%20tend%20to%20get%20warm%20over%20long%20stretches”]

Most of the controls are located on the back of the right earcup, where you’ll find a volume dial, microphone mute button, power button and Bluetooth button. Below the buttons on the right earcup is a micro-USB port for charging along with a 3.5mm jack to share audio with another headset.

The retractable mic sits on the front of the left earcup and a ChatMix dial is around the back that lets you adjust the volume between game and chat audio.

With the SteelSeries Engine app, you can customize a few settings when the Arctis 9 Wireless is connected via the USB charging cable to your PC. The software is easy to use in large part because the software supplies a limited amount of customization. You can tweak the audio presets and the microphone volume and sidetone levels. You can enable 7.1 virtual surround sound via DTS Headphone:X v2.0 and select from among three surround sound profiles: Game, Studio, and Cinema. You can also set the headset to connect via Bluetooth when it’s powered on and set the headset to turn itself off after sitting idle for a period of time to save battery power. The headset is rated for 20 hours of continuous use.

SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless – Performance

To test the Arctis 9 Wireless, I played Call of Duty: WWII, CS:GO, and Fortnite on the PC and listened to music on the Spotify iOS app. The first thing I noticed was how big the sound field felt. With 7.1 sound enabled, I could not only hear from which direction teammates and enemies were approaching but also how far away there were. Sound effects gained in volume and detail as gun battles grew closer. Game audio was dynamic and well balanced, with powerful bass, strong mids and clear high tones. Large explosions felt concussive and dialogue between characters sounded crisp and clear.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Large%20explosions%20felt%20concussive%20and%20dialogue%20between%20characters%20sounded%20crisp%20and%20clear”]

The big bass response helped games sound and feel realistic and also aided music playback. From the booming bass from DMX’s anthem, X Goin’ Give It To Ya to the clean picking on Billy String’s Taking Water, the Arctis 9 Wireless handles everything from rap to bluegrass with ease. Despite the strong bass response, I wouldn’t call the Arctis 9 Wireless bass heavy like so many other gaming headsets because it does an admirable job of separating the lows from the mids and the mids from the highs.

To test the microphone, I made a voice recording. The recording sounded accurate and clear but failed to separate my voice from ambient noise as effectively as the Blue mic of the Logitech G Pro X.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=best-gaming-headsets&captions=true”]

SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless – Purchasing Guide

The SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless is available direct from SteelSeries for $199.99.

Cardy quizzes both Dale and Jesse about their recent experiences in the haunted houses of Phasmophobia and Bly Manor. There’s also the new PS5 UI to talk about as the next-generation of consoles fast approach.

There’s a tightly contested new Endless Search to play as well as some of your feedback of which only some are sandwich-based.

Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].

IGN UK Podcast #561: Haunted Houses and Red Beef

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=ign-uk-podcast-episode-500-photos&captions=true”]

• IGN UK Podcast #560: A Crispy Slice of Heaven
• IGN UK Podcast #559: The Manic Marsupial and Jesse’s Voice Changer
  
• IGN UK Podcast #558: Hades and Ham Sandwiches
• IGN UK Podcast #557: PS5’s Banquet of Delights
• IGN UK Podcast #556: Judging Tony Hawk’s Tallywacker

 

 

 

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

As a follow-up to 2018’s enjoyable stealth-based survival horror game Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is both a sequel and a prequel – but that’s really just a polite way of saying I couldn’t make heads or tails of the chronology of its plot, and I’m not convinced its creators could either. Perhaps I was too distracted by its countless audio dropouts, freezes, broken controller inputs and baffling enemy behaviours to really be able to concentrate on straightening out the tangled threads of its nonlinear narrative. If nothing else, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is aptly named; like a shattered vase it lacks structure, each individual part is rough around the edges, and it’s not really worth the effort to try and piece them all together.

At the very least the setting is an appropriately haunting one. Ashmann Inn is an antiquated hotel situated in a secluded snowy mountain region highly reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining. Certainly during its opening moments I enjoyed the eerie ambience of its dimly lit hallways as I, controlling the young protagonist Jennifer, indulged in a deadly game of hide and seek with the murderous, mind-controlled hotel maid Andrea (seemingly modelled on Annie from Stephen King’s Misery).

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=remothered-broken-porcelain-review-screenshots&captions=true”]

But that enjoyment was about as short-lived as Stephen King’s career as a film director, because Remothered: Broken Porcelain simply can’t sustain the same level of cat and mouse tension that the original game could. This is largely due to Jennifer’s movement speed which is positively glacial in comparison to the swift gait of each enemy stalker. By the time you’ve slowly crouch-walked your way up behind one, they’ve already read a book, made a sandwich, and turned around and spotted you before the stealth attack prompt has managed to materialise over their head.

Since attacking enemies from behind is your sole combat option for the most part, once detected your only course of action is to flee and hide until they’re no longer on high alert. This can also be problematic, as seen by the many times I went to hop into a locker and the ‘open locker’ button prompt failed to appear, resulting in me frantically shuffling back and forth trying to find it before copping the wrong end of a pair of sewing scissors in the jugular. The supernatural sensitivity of the enemy AI versus your own sluggishness and unreliable inputs doesn’t make for a fun stealth experience, just a frustrating one that made each area of Remothered: Broken Porcelain a chore to complete.

A Bug’s Life

Outside of these cumbersome enemy encounters, there’s surprisingly little else to do in Remothered: Broken Porcelain. There are significantly fewer environmental puzzles to solve than there were in Tormented Fathers, with only the occasional cracking of a safe combination to demand much in the way of lateral thought. Instead, Remothered: Broken Porcelain places an emphasis on Jennifer’s ability to temporarily teleport her consciousness into a moth and fly up to out of reach items or, in one instance, agitate a guard dog enough for Jennifer to slip by. It’s an interesting concept, but there’s no real scope for employing it outside of very specific story junctures, and when you do get to use it it’s like trying to pilot a remote-controlled drone through a room submerged in honey. The moth’s movements are seriously listless and it has a tendency to get stuck on parts of the environment. And since it can only be used in short bursts I’d often find myself switching to moth form, getting stuck in a wall on the way to my target, being beamed back to Jennifer, and then forced to wait for a cooldown timer to recharge before I could start the process over again.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Jennifer%E2%80%99s%20moth%20ability%20might%20not%20be%20much%20fun%20to%20use%2C%20but%20at%20least%20it%E2%80%99s%20one%20bug%20that%E2%80%99s%20actually%20been%20included%20on%20purpose.”]

Jennifer’s moth ability might not be much fun to use, but at least it’s one bug that’s actually been included on purpose. Elsewhere there are far too many game-breaking glitches to count. Aside from the aforementioned button prompts failing to appear when you’re trying to hide, there’s dialogue and ambient audio cutting in and out, characters getting stuck in scenery, game crashes, enemy stalkers pinning you between their body and the environment, confusing camera quirks, and more. It took me about 10 hours to complete my playthrough of Remothered: Broken Porcelain, but I’d estimate that at least a couple of those hours were a direct result of failing objectives due to glitches and retreading stretches after forced restarts. To developer Stormind Games’ credit, there has already been an effort to rectify many of these flaws – at the time of writing (some 48 hours after launch) there have already been three patches deployed for Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s PC version.

[poilib element=”poll” parameters=”id=4f8399a9-6566-4964-b423-46ceee843a49″]

However, while fixing technical issues is of course appreciated, it’s going to take nothing less than a significant overhaul to smooth out Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s garbled story. The plot jarringly shunts forwards and backwards in time while being only loosely connected by cutscenes that end far too abruptly. The only shining light as far as the story is concerned are the handful of playable flashbacks that centre around Jennifer and her best friend Linn. They’re easily the most well-written exchanges in the entire ordeal and are set prior to the madness descending on the residents of Ashmann Inn, meaning they’re mercifully devoid of any sloppy combat sections.