Author: Trafficblast

In March, Halo developer 343 Industries released a gigantic update for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The update was 60 GB, which makes it much bigger than some brand-new games. Some people expressed frustration over this. After all, even a blazing-fast internet connection would require quite a while to download such a large update.

The studio has now shared more insight on why that update was so large and what fans can expect in terms of file sizes going forward. Design director Max Szlagor said said in a blog post that the studio is always trying to make file sizes smaller, but it’s not always possible.

“With such a large surface area of game, and the scope of changes that need to be made this can make them rather large,” Szlagor said. “Whenever core game data files are updated, this usually means a larger update. We manage this process very carefully to minimize the amount of times this happens. But it is one of those things that can come up.”

Thankfully, Halo: MCC has a system called “Intelligent Install” that allows players to choose which parts of the game they want to download. MCC comprises six different games: Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, and Halo 4. This latest 60 GB update was mandatory for everyone, but new players–or those who uninstall MCC to free up space–can use the Intelligent Install system to only install what they want to play.

Szlagor said Microsoft will try to be “as mindful as we can” about the size of MCC updates, but at the end of the day, the company cannot guarantee there won’t be other massive file sizes in the future.”

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare also has seen some truly massive updates, too, as the Season 2 update was 100 GB on some platforms. For its part, developer Infinity Ward apologized for the large file size, and said future updates could be smaller.

As games become more and more sophisticated and grow in terms of scope, file sizes are likely to expand as well with next-generation titles. With that in mind, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X will feature expandable storage, though you need to buy a proprietary card to do so.

As more and more people stay home from work and school amid the COVID-19 crisis, Xbox Live is experiencing “record” numbers. To help mitigate additional server strain, Microsoft is apparently asking its publishing partners to hold back their big updates until off-peak hours.

Limited time clothing items return in this week’s Red Dead Redemption 2 Online update, with some big bonuses and discounts on in-game items included.

The following limited time release clothing items will be available in general stores in-game until April 13:

• Gator Hat
• Squat Stovepipe Top Hat
• Winter Shotgun Coat
• Benbow Jacket
• Ortega Vest
• Tied Pants
• Strickland Boots
• Calhoun Boots
• Vaquero Baroque Spurs

Along with the re-release of various clothing items to the Wheeler, Rawson & Co. catalogue, an all-new scoring system for kills has been implemented. The new update will reward players for more difficult or trickier kills with more points. All new volatile weapon loadouts, point values, and more explosions have been added, so head over to Fort Mercer, Heartlands Oil Field, and Tall Trees to rack up some serious points.

Big bonuses and rank based rewards this week, with vigilantes scouring unfriendly terrain in search for undesirables will receive a 50% cash bonus on all Bounty projects, including Legendary Bounties. Collectors will gain a 100% bonus on all Role XP for the Condor Egg and Salvage Collect free roam events, including sales on any complete sets this week.

Various rank rewards are still active this week, with every 10 levels earned up to level 60 rewarding players with all new bonuses, discounts, and new items.

Other discounts available this week includes 5 Gold Bars off of the cost of either the Collector’s Bag or the Bounty Hunter License. If you have been saving up for either of these, now is the best time to grab these in-game items. Also discounted this week are all Collector Maps at 80% off, Criollo and Brenton Horses at 70% off, 50% off all Collector and Bounty Hunter clothing, and 40% off the Bounty Wagon.

While PlayStation Plus members will receive a Reward for 3 free Ability Cards of your choice, there is no Twitch Prime exclusives this week.

In other news, Rockstar has promised that online events in both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V will continue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the teams at Rockstar are now working remotely.

Red Dead Online is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC for those who own Red Dead Redemption 2. A current PlayStation Plus subscription or an Xbox Gold subscription are needed to play online on PS4 or Xbox One.

One small feature added to Persona 5 Royal is a series of crossword puzzles. Throughout the course of P5R’s year, you’ll find a book on the table furthest from the entrance door in Leblanc. Interact with the book and you’ll then be prompted to solve a crossword. If you’re successful in figuring it out, you’ll be rewarded with one knowledge point for free, and it’s worth doing because it doesn’t consume any in-game time.

Note that when you initiate a crossword puzzle, you only need to solve for the line that’s highlighted in blue. All other words around it serve as hints by letting you whittle down the number of letters you have left to work with or fill certain letter for the line in blue.

So, here are the solutions for the crossword puzzles we’ve found in P5R (note that there be more we have yet to discover).

1. How school years are divided: SEMESTERS
2. Hanami: cherry (?) viewing: BLOSSOM
3. Time for a trip: (?) Week: GOLDEN
4. What are the May Blues: MALAISE
5. Where art is shown off and sold: GALLERY
6. A type of outdoor allergy: POLLENOSIS
7. Nihonga: (?) cultural artwork: JAPANESE
8. Label for an uparalleled artist: MASTER
9. Held to inform the public: CONFERENCE
10. Changes with the season: WARDROBE
11. Exchanged all over the world: CURRENCY
12. A border between air masses: FRONT
13. Medicine of varying legality: NARCOTICS
14. Many students’ greatest love: VACATION
15. These gauge student knowledge: FINALS
16. A seasonal sky-bound event: FIREWORKS
17. A stationary hotspot: heat (?): ISLAND
18. Necessary for dares: COURAGE
19. A common skin injury: SUNBURN
20. When it’s too hot to sleep: SWELTERING
21. Techy term for e-infiltration: HACKING
22. Localized destructive storm: TYPHOON
23. Tsukimi: lunar viewing (?): FESTIVAL
24. Establishing an order of worth: RANKING
25. Absorbs the most light: BLACK
26. Co-opted Celtic holiday: HALLOWEEN
27. Lined up at school festivals: STALLS
28. Tipster hotlines offer this: REWARD
29. Laying into someone: BASHING
30. Draws people to you: CHARISMA
31. AKA sweating sickness: INFLUENZA
32. What lights do for store signage: ILLUMINATION
33. Politicians thrive on this rating: APPROVAL
34. Joyful holiday with an intruder: CHRISTMAS
35. A type of wish. New Year’s (?): RESOLUTION

For more on the game, be sure to check out our spoiler-free guide on how to unlock the new palace and extra semester that’s exclusive to P5R. We’ve finished the entire game as well and we outlined how long to beat P5R depending on how you play. You can also check out our breakdown of what to expect in the first 60 hours of P5R and have a full review in the works.

If you or someone you know is the owner of this illustrious work of art, please email [email protected]. We are offering $1000 to the owner, and $20,000 to their nearest food bank. We make a lot of jokes, but this is not one of them. pic.twitter.com/KqcjK90sMU

— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) March 30, 2020

With social distancing measures in place in many parts of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pokemon Go developer Niantic has been making numerous tweaks to make the game easier to play. The studio will soon allow players to participate in Raid Battles from home, but before that option rolls out, it is temporarily letting you interact with Gyms from much farther away.

As Niantic explains in a new blog post, the studio is doubling the distance from which you can interact with Gyms, allowing you to spin Photo Discs and take part in Raid Battles while keeping a safe distance from other players. This change, however, only applies to Gyms; Niantic is not increasing the distance from which you can interact with PokeStops.

Niantic has other adjustments in the works as well. The developer says it is “working on an entirely new way to enjoy Pokemon Go Fest” this year, and it will also tweak the Adventure Sync feature so that it tracks your steps while performing indoor tasks “like cleaning your house and running on a treadmill.”

While Niantic has had to cancel numerous Pokemon Go events in March due to the pandemic, it still has a few events lined up for April. The Team Rocket Special Research story quest The Shadowy Threat Grows has been extended; you now have until the end of April to rescue Shadow Entei. Meanwhile, Alolan Exeggutor will be April’s Research Breakthrough reward, and Niantic will continue to hold its weekly Pokemon Spotlight and Mystery Bonus Hour events throughout the month.

Finally, a new Legendary, Landorus, has made its debut in the game. The Legendary Pokemon will be available in Raid Battles and as a Go Battle League reward encounter until April 21. The Mythical Pokemon Genesect is also slated to debut in EX Raids this month.

In a blog post, Lab Zero announced that a new free update is coming to Indivisible, the developer’s metroidvania-inspired action platformer, on April 2. The update will add two new modes to Indivisible: new game plus and couch co-op.

Once you’ve completed Indivisible’s campaign at least once, NG+ allows you to replay the story from the very beginning with all the abilities, weapons, and incarnations you unlocked in your previous playthrough. This will allow you to discover hidden secrets much earlier in the campaign as well as access shortcuts that require late-game abilities. Enemies and bosses will be a lot stronger though.

Couch co-op mode allows you to tackle Indivisible’s campaign with up to three other players. Player 1 will always be protagonist Ajna, but the other three can take control of any of the other members of your party. While exploring, each player will be able to move independently of each other. In battle, you’ll each control your individual character in the game’s hybrid of turn-based and real-time combat.

How To Access Indivisible’s New Modes

New Game+

• After downloading the update, if you’ve previously completed Indivisible, look for and press the “Game Clear” button
• If it does not appear, you will need to complete the final challenge of the game and watch the credits, even if you previously completed the game
• When prompted, save your game into one of the save slots
• The next time you open the Load Game menu, you’ll see a new button appear in the save slot.
• Press the button

Couch Co-Op

• Plug in 1-3 extra controllers
• Press an attack button

In GameSpot’s Indivisible review, Michael Higham wrote, “I want to love Indivisible unconditionally; it has so many great pieces, and it’s a special thing to feel seen. I’m happy to have a game that’s distinctly Southeast Asian, giving some earnest representation to a part of the world I belong to and one I’m even more curious about now. As a whole, it sometimes doesn’t come together; it’s missing weight to its narrative and the challenges necessary to flex its wonderful combat system. But it stands out as an RPG that’s doing something genuinely different, and it brings joy to its clever platforming with the tune of an infectious soundtrack. For all its faults, Indivisible has its heart in the right place.”

Developer Team Ninja has dropped a brand-new update for Nioh 2 on PlayStation 4 that makes various adjustments to the game’s difficulty in some areas. We’ve compiled the full patch notes below.

A bunch of Nioh 2 sub-missions have had their difficulty altered in order to assuage the game’s nail-biting challenges. In addition to the sub-missions, some of Nioh 2’s enemies have also been tweaked to make the experience a little more forgiving. Further, the drop rates of Smithing Texts and The Art of Combat tomes, items used to upgrade your created character and equipment, have been increased.

The update also makes a number of quality-of-life adjustments. These include fixing duplication item problems, addressing Yokai Realms and status effects that would not dispel, tweaking skills that would not activate, ironing out other bugs, and much more.

We awarded the action-RPG an 8/10 in our Nioh 2 review, saying, “Though it sometimes feels like a curse as you play, it is a testament that Nioh 2 successfully grabs and holds your complete attention so close for so long.” With its already punishing difficulty, we don’t recommend starting Nioh 2 with the bird guardian spirit.

Full Nioh 2 Version 1.07 Patch Notes

Adjustments

• Adjusted the mission difficulty of the following sub-missions:
  • A Favori for the Blacksmith
  • The Greedy Hunter
  • The Sunomata Yokai Hunter
  • The Viper and the Butterfly
  • The Brothers’ Blades
  • The Burning Sky
  • Scattered Fragments
  • Calling on the Fire God
  • The Dream’s End
• Weakened the attacks of some non-boss enemies. Previously, though the player could be above the recommended level some enemies would kill the player in one hit.
• Weakened some attacks of Shibata Katsuie that are especially difficult to dodge.
• Buffed the drop rate of Smithing Text and The Art of Combat.
• Added “Difficulty” to the search condition of Random Encounters.
• Added the “Accessories” tab to the “Tempering” menu.
• Added a feature to initialize settings in the HDR settings.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the level of the shiftling skill “Devour Yokai Realm” would reset when performing a reset on other skill trees.
  • The level of “Devour Yokai Realm” and overused skill points will be fixed in this update.
• Fixed an issue where custom active skills would remain set to an active skill slot even when a reset of the Samurai Skill tree was performed.
• Fixed an issue in the Dojo where an acquired Tea Utensil would disappear when completing the mission.
• Fixed an issue in the Dojo where the player could obtain duplicates of a Smithing Text if the player had not already turned in the text in question to the blacksmith.
• Fixed an issue wherein the Kodama Bazaar the stock of the items would not increase when using a skill that would increase the maximum amount of items a player can possess.
• Fixed an issue where twice as many items would be sold when selling items in the Storehouse.
• Fixed an issue where a visual of certain weapons while sheathed was reversed when wearing Youngblood Cuirass.
• Fixed an issue in the mission “Bird in A Cage” where it was not possible to give dung balls to “Ryunojo the Dung Lover.”
• Fixed an issue in the mission “Rain Draws Near” where the player could not ring the bell.
• Fixed an issue in the mission “A Way Out” where the Yokai Realm would not be dispelled when the boss-spawned object was destroyed.
• Fixed an issue in the mission “The Golden Castle” where the boss would not run out of Ki and would not be knocked down at times even when certain conditions were fulfilled.
• Fixed an issue in the multiplayer version of the mission “Strat Cats” where the mission would not end.
• Fixed an issue in the missions “The Fire God’s Magatama” where an unobtainable blue treasure box location was placed in the compass.
• Fixed an issue in the mission “Sharp Eyes” where the player could not get amrita when completing the mission.
• Fixed an issue where a Biwa Boku-Boku near a shrine would activate a Bloody Grave when the player is praying at a shrine.
• Fixed an issue where the Drenched states would not be removed when bathing in a hot spring while being Drenched.
• Fixed an issue where a ladder could not be used when certain enemies died with poison while the player was climbing the ladder.
• Fixed an issue where co-fighting NPCs cannot be assisted when they went down and simultaneously fell off a cliff.
• Fixed an issue where the Custom Active Skill Setting to the Active Skill “Sword Ki” was not applied to the Active Skill “Sword of Celerity.”
• Fixed an issue where Ki was consumed before the Active Skill “Swirling Snow” was executed.
• Fixed an issue where equipment effects and Custom Active Skill settings according to the active skill “Deadly Spiral” were not applied.
• Fixed an issue where the Custom Active Skill was not applied when Mystic Art “Trained Throw” is applied to the Active Skill “Piercing Hurl Shadow/Light.”
• Fixed an issue where the Active Skill “Dgraonful II” was not applied to the Mystic Art “Trained Throw.”
• Fixed an issue with the grapple move of the hatchets where the grab would not follow through.
• Fixed an issue where the Custom Active Skill Setting to the Active Skill “Windswept” was not applied.
• Fixed an issue with the switchglaive where you could perform the special switch stances “Retrobution” and Edge” without having unlocked the skills.
• Various other minor fixes.