After a long wait, THQ Nordic has released a second expansion for the PS4 and Xbox One versions of their action-RPG Titan Quest. The expansion, called Ragnarok, came to PC in 2017, but console players can finally experience it for themselves.
Two new trailers have been launched alongside the expansion, one a cinematic, the other showing gameplay. It’s the latest step in Titan Quest’s long, strange rollout–it first released on PC in 2006.
The expansion increases the level cap and adds a new story arc, which includes over 1000 new enemies and dozens of bosses to fight through.
Here’s how it looks when you’re playing it.
Unfortunately, there’s no indication that this expansion is coming to the Switch version of the game. However, PS4 and Xbox One players can rest assured that the third expansion, Atlantis (released for PC in 2019), is coming soon.
This homeschooling stroke of genius is made possible by the sheer level of detail in the opening moments of Half-Life: Alyx, which lets players draw on the windows in Alyx’s greenhouse.
Coomber leads his students through the hallmarks of complementary and supplementary angles with serious charisma, using window panes and a set of coloured markers.
At one point, he even brandishes a plank of wood for a physical demonstration. Coomber ends the video with a challenging problem in Alyx’s surveillance room, erasing part of her detailed Citadel layout in the process…
As he offers up his knowledge, you can hear Combine alarms and patrols puttering about in the streets, City 17’s Citadel looming large in the background.
This clever remote teaching method is clearly a response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has led countries to close schools and forced teachers to adapt to provide learning. If you’re yet to dive into Valve’s latest, check out our review of the game, which we thought “set a new bar for VR.”
Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN who feels deeply ashamed by his failure to understand 8th Grade maths. It’s been a while, ok! Follow him on Twitter.
Chinese theaters are beginning to reopen, and will initially be showing popular blockbusters such as the Avengers films and Avatar.
The Hollywood Reporter states that between 600 and 700 cinemas have reopened, with more to come, after closing to help limit the spread of the viral outbreak – and they’re hoping to fill seats using blockbuster films.
Among the movies Chinese theatres are reportedly planning to show are all four of the Avengers films, as well as other blockbusters like James Cameron’s Avatar, and Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Interstellar.
So far, only smaller cinemas have opened across the country and larger chains are still waiting to resume business. However, with more and more businesses opening back up in the country, likely only a matter of time.
The Mandalorian season 2 is due in October on Disney Plus, and while it’s not filming at the moment due to the outbreak of COVID-19, an exciting new casting decision has been made. Making Star Wars is reporting that Michael Biehn is joining the second season as another bounty hunter who Mando has had past dealings with.
Biehn’s breakout role was Kyle Reese in 1984’s The Terminator, but he’s perhaps best known for playing Corporal Hicks in Aliens–both James Cameron films. You might also recognize him as Sgt. Rex “Power” Colt from the excellent Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.
Biehn’s had fewer major on-screen roles lately, but he’s the sort of veteran actor who should fit in well with The Mandalorian’s casting of older action heroes, like Carl Weathers and Nick Nolte. As Making Star Wars notes, the initial production name for The Mandalorian was Huckleberry, a reference to Tombstone, which also starred Biehn.
The report also confirms that Bill Burr, who played Mayfield in the first season, will also return. Reports are also suggesting that Rosario Dawson will join the second season as a fan-favorite character who has only appeared in animated form before, Ahsoka Tano.
The Mandalorian is the only live-action Star Wars release scheduled for 2020. The final season of The Clone Wars is currently airing on Disney Plus.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has recently released on Switch, and many players are praising the game for its flexible position on gender identity–it never asks you to confirm a gender, and lets you use any hair, make-up, and clothing on any body, which was not the case with previous games in the series. Now, in a new interview with The Washington Post, the game’s producer Aya Kyogoku has explained the game’s relaxed stance on identifying and restricting gender.
Kyogoku says that the decision is “not just about gender,” but a wider consideration for how people identify themselves. “Society is shifting to valuing a lot of people’s different identities,” Kyogoku says. “We basically wanted to create a game where users didn’t really have to think about gender or if they wanted to think about gender, they’re also able to.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kyogoku notes that she does not consider changing the Switch’s internal clock to skip time forward “cheating,” although the developers advise against it.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is, by Nintendo standards, fairly progressive, and its push for greater diversity is represented even in its choice of hairstyles. It’s also the first game in the series to feature characters in same-sex relationships, as NPCs C.J. and Flick are explicitly referred to as a couple. Several players on Twitter have also noted a reference to a comic book that features a gay main character that one villager will reference in conversation.
This is just one of many things worth praising in the latest Animal Crossing. In GameSpot’s review-in-progress, Kallie Plagge noted how enormous the game is. “So far, I’ve played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for 80 hours over 17 days, and that anticipation hasn’t yet gone away. While I’ve spent a lot of time developing my island so far, I still feel as if there’s plenty left for me to do and see–there’s a lot in New Horizons to occupy your time with.”
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is all about friendship, but it can be confusing to figure out how exactly to play with your friends. You can’t just rely on your Nintendo Switch friends list for everything; New Horizons also has its own friends list, and your Switch friends aren’t automatically included. Here’s a rundown of what you need to do to start playing with friends and make sure you’ve added them as friends in New Horizons.
The first thing you need to do is wait a day after you’ve started your game. At that point, your island’s airport will be operational, and you can start traveling to friends’ islands and accepting visitors to your own. Keep in mind that you need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play online with others.
Friends vs. Best Friends
New Horizons distinguishes between “friends,” meaning your Nintendo Switch friends, and “Best Friends,” which are friends you add in-game via the Best Friends List app on your NookPhone. To unlock the Best Friends List app, you have to play online with at least one other person (we detail how below).
While you can play with friends and Best Friends in largely the same ways, there are a few differences. Most importantly, Best Friends can use all their tools on your island, while friends aren’t allowed to use destructive tools (shovels and axes).
You can also view whether your Best Friends are online or not via the app and send them in-game messages provided they’re online. You can still view the friends you’ve played with via the same app, but it won’t tell you whether they’re online, and you can’t send them any messages.
How To Add Friends And Best Friends
Once you have access to the Best Friends List app, the only way to add either friends or Best Friends to the app is by playing with them online first. There’s currently no way to import your Nintendo Switch friends list into the in-game app.
Once you’ve played with someone online–either by visiting their island or inviting them to yours–they’ll be added to your in-game friends list in the Best Friends App. From there, you can request to add them as a Best Friend or, if they’ve requested you first, accept their request. We’ve outlined how to play with friends online below.
How To Invite Friends To Your Island
In order to invite friends to your island, you have to speak to Orville at the airport and tell him you want visitors. You have a few options when doing this: You can choose whether to connect to local players or those playing online, and you can allow either all your friends or only your Best Friends to visit. Orville will then open your gates so your friends can come, and when you don’t want visitors anymore, you can ask Orville to close the gates.
You can also choose to invite players via a Dodo Code. Choosing this option will allow you to invite people who aren’t on your friends list at all in addition to friends and Best Friends. Orville will give you a random five-character code, which you can then give to anyone you want to invite (by texting them or whatever method you’d normally use to communicate). This helps you control who comes to your island. The Dodo Code will expire when you close your gates.
How To Visit Friends’ Islands
If you’d rather go to a friend’s island, talk to Orville and instead tell him you’d like to fly and that you want to visit someone. He’ll again ask you to choose between local play and online play, and you can then either search for a friend–to see if anyone on your Switch friends list has opened their gates to friends–or search via a Dodo Code you’ve received from someone else. Like with inviting friends, you’ll need to coordinate using whatever methods you usually use to talk to your friends and make sure their gates are open.
What Can You Do With Friends?
When a friend is visiting or you’re visiting their island, you can simply play Animal Crossing together as you normally would (though you can’t do things like terraform your island while you have company, for example). You can exchange items by dropping them on the ground, trade fruit, visit each other’s stores, and talk to each other’s villagers, among other things.
When you aren’t playing together on one island, you can still communicate with friends in a few ways. You can send messages to Best Friends using the Best Friends List app (as long as they’re online). You can also send letters to any of your friends as long as you’ve played with them online before. You’re limited to two letters per friend per day, but this is a good way to send items to friends if you don’t have time to visit each other’s islands. Finally, you can buy and send friends gifts directly through the Nook Shopping option at the Nook Stop machine in Resident Services–you can even use a special gift card. Both letters and Nook Shopping gifts will arrive in your friend’s mailbox almost immediately, provided they’re connected to the internet.
Apex Legends‘ first ranked series split is now live, resetting every player’s rank. The ranked series split also now makes it possible to play on either of Apex Legends’ maps for the rest of Season 4: Assimilation, as Kings Canyon has returned once again.
The ranked series was first introduced into Apex Legends during Season 2: Battle Charge, adding a competitive Ranked playlist to the battle royale. In both Season 2 and Season 3, each ranked series lasted for a full season–rewarding players with in-game cosmetic items based on their final rank and then resetting that rank at the start of the following season.
Season 4: Assimilation changes things up by introducing a ranked series split, causing players to get the rank reset halfway through the season. The split also changes which map that Ranked mode is played on. The first half of Season 4 saw you play Ranked on a reworked World’s Edge. The latter half sees the return of Season 2’s Kings Canyon.
When Season 4 ends, rewards will be given out based on the highest rank a player ended on whether that was during the first ranked series or the second. So if you reached Diamond II in the first half of the season, but only Gold I in the latter half, you’ll receive Diamond-tier rewards when Season 5 begins.
The split essentially gives you a chance to reset your rank and once again climb if you find yourself in a rut halfway through the season or possibly get an even higher rank if you play better on Kings Canyon than World’s Edge. This split also represents the first time that World’s Edge and Kings Canyon have been available to play in Apex Legends at the same time for an extended period outside of limited-time events, as World’s Edge will continue to be used in the Play Apex playlist.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Now more than ever, I’ll take any chance I can get to feel like a demigod – even if it’s just in a video game. Doom Eternal offers that power fantasy in spades but is always ready to check your first-person-shooting ego around the next corner with a bigger, faster, nastier demon from Hell. This evolved followup takes everything good about the fast and punchy 2016 reboot and proves it wasn’t a fluke. In fact, it’s largely ruined the first game for me in retrospect because the addition of Eternal’s mid-air dashes make the last thrillride of a game feel like wading through waist-high molasses by comparison. Even multiplayer’s been innovated on, with 2016’s forgettable vanilla DeathMatch replaced by Eternal’s inventive 2v1, Demons-vs.-Slayer Battlemode. The full package is expertly crafted from both a design and technical perspective.
So far I’ve done in-depth reviews of both the single-player and multiplayer modes. First, here’s what I said about the campaign:
Simply put, Doom Eternal is one of the best first-person shooter campaigns I’ve played in years. As the second game of its kind it’s lost some of its novelty but none of the joy of its intense and furious combat style. This excellent refinement of the already outstanding 2016 reboot makes you an unspoken deal: if you can keep up with it, it will keep up with you. It continually teaches you how to play faster, smarter, and more efficiently, with lots of options at every step of the way to tailor fights to your prefered slaying style, and it’s an absolute blast along the way.
A quick Battlemode walkthrough intro and bare-bones tutorials for each playable demon give you a quick look at what each bad guy can do in your hands, but the fun of Battlemode is getting out there and figuring out how to best put each Demon’s abilities to work. Doom Eternal is a game that demands and respects player skill, and while Battlemode doesn’t allow you to put yours to the ultimate test on a traditional level playing field, it is nevertheless a clever mode that’s a lot of fun if you’re willing to give it a try and get to know its nuances.
Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood will remain closed beyond the original March 28 reopening date that Universal announced March 12.
“We are extending the closure of Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood through April 19 as we continue to respond to current conditions and make the health and safety of team members and guests our top priority,” Universal said in a statement posted Tuesday.
“This includes our theme parks and Universal CityWalk at both destinations. The Universal Orlando Resort hotels have also temporarily suspended operations. We will continue to monitor the situation and make adjustments as needed, based on guidance from health agencies and government officials.”
Our original report follows.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Universal has shut down operations at the Universal Studios theme park, with current plans to reopen as of March 28 at this time.
Variety reports that in response to and in order to help contain the spread of novel coronavirus COVID-19, Universal will be closed starting March 14.
“The health and safety of our team members and guests is always our top priority,” Universal Studios spokesperson told Variety. “Out of an abundance of caution and in response to the guidance provided by the California Department of Public Health, Universal Studios Hollywood will temporarily close beginning Saturday, March 14. The theme park anticipates reopening on March 28 as we continue to monitor the situation.”
Universal CityWalk, however, will remain open.
Universal joins Disneyland and Disney California Adventure in closing in response to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. Those two parks, however, are closed indefinitely as of this time. News of Disney World’s closure has yet to be announced, and that park is operating normally as of press time.
Veteran actor Michael Biehn has been cast in the second season of The Mandalorian, Disney+’s Star Wars series. The actor is best known for his turn as Kyle Reese in James Cameron’s The Terminator.
Biehn is best known for his collaborations with director James Cameron. Aside from playing the protagonist Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie, Biehn worked with Cameron by appearing in Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989).
The Mandalorian premiered alongside Disney+ in 2019. The Star Wars live-action series starred Pedro Pascal as the titular Mandalorian tasked with finding The Child, popularly referred to as “Baby Yoda” as the two characters are from the same species.
Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, served as creator and showrunner, while a rotating cast of directors helmed individual episodes including director Dave Filoni, Fick Famuyiwa, Deborah Chow, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi.
Season two is set to premiere this October on Disney+.
