Author: Trafficblast

Microsoft continues to share a behind-the-scenes look at the development of Halo Infinite. Developer 343 Industries has posted its latest sound design video, this one focusing on how the audio team went about capturing the sounds of bullets flying overhead.

As the incredible video below shows, the 343 audio team actually crouched down behind a barrier as a professional marksman fired live rounds overhead. The audio team had numerous microphones on-hand to capture all the whizzes and ricochets.

343 stressed that this audio session was conducted in a “controlled environment” to keep people safe. Have a listen for yourself and try to pick out all the different types of bullet sounds you can make out.

This is at least the second Halo Infinite weapon sound video we’ve seen so far. The first, which was published earlier this year, showcased the team firing all different types of weapons for use in the next-generation Halo game. Yet another video showed the team using a propane cannon to capture sounds of explosions. The team also showed off how they recorded a Chevy El Camino, helicopters, and jet engines for the sounds of vehicles in Halo Infinite. And who could forget this delightful video featuring a pug whose guttural gruffs will be heard in Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite releases in Holiday 2020 as a launch title for Microsoft’s next-generation console, Xbox Series X, as well as PC. The game will also be playable on Xbox One as well as the other variations of the next-generation Xbox that might be coming.

These behind-the-scenes videos are excellent, but many Halo fans are wondering when 343 will show gameplay for Halo Infinite or share any specifics about the game. With Halo Infinite launching later this year, that should happened soon (we hope).

It is with heavy hearts that we are announcing the cancellation of AX 2020. Our utmost concern is for the health and safety of our community. This was one of the most difficult decisions we have had to make in the 29 years of Anime Expo.
Read more → https://t.co/27DdcMzhUh

— Anime Expo (@AnimeExpo) April 17, 2020

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Part of IGN’s Westworld Season 3 guide

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William has been having something of an Inception experience this season on Westworld. The unlucky, unhappy, and very unapologetic Man in Black has spent the majority of his adult life obsessing over Robert Ford’s synthetic hosts and the theme park that houses them, and after driving his wife to suicide, doing away with his best friend, and murdering his own daughter after mistaking her for an android, his already tenuous grasp on sanity seems dangerously loose. He’s been frequently incapable of telling fantasy apart from reality — and like a dreamer trapped in limbo he’s having a hard time determining exactly who or what is real.

A man who has trouble distinguishing what’s real is probably not the ideal candidate for “augmented reality therapy,” but apparently the doctors and therapists assigned to treat William disagree. The show has spent an inordinate amount of time exploring William’s tortured psyche. While Ed Harris continues to be great, his conflicted soul simply isn’t as interesting as almost everything else happening this season. The foray into his mind via AR doesn’t help.

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It feels a little late in the series for more William backstory, but once inside the AR therapy machine — part Clockwork Orange, part THX 1138 — backstory is what we get. Of course, this being Westworld, shocking revelations abound, too: a glimpse of childhood abuse at the hands of a boozing father turns out to be a bogus memory, and indeed it transpires that William, not his father, was the violent one in the family, a budding psychopath well before puberty. (His father, naturally, was merely driven to alcoholism by the sins of his barbaric son, and never laid a hand on the boy except to comfort him.) This disclosure is rather strange, considering how benevolent and kind William seemed throughout Season 1. It was meant to seem like Westworld changed William, goading him towards villainy. But he was villainous from the beginning. Is that better or worse?

I’m not sure. In any event, these revelations pose familiar questions about free will and determinism, and arouse some rumination on an age-old philosophical dilemma — namely if there’s any meaningful distinction between free will and determinism if no one can tell the difference. We’re getting dangerously close, with this episode’s William subplot, to the kind of plodding, ponderous chin-stroking the third season has managed to otherwise avoid entirely. And while it amounts to both a new objective for William (he declares he’s “the hero,” whatever that means) and his inevitable return to the action when he’s rescued by Stubbs and Bernard, it can’t help but feel like wasted screen time and a brief regression for a show that has made considerable advances.

As if to demonstrate incontestably how much more tense, exciting, and dynamic Westworld can be when attention is trained on Maeve, Dolores, and Serac, our dull excursion into William’s past is intercut with Serac’s high-stakes takeover of Delos, which of course proves to be the much more compelling arc. Maeve, as promised, has been put back into the War World simulation while the Delos machines create for her a replacement host body, and once again in ‘Scope among a cabal of gun-totting Nazis, she has plenty to attend to. Dispatching three dozen soldiers with her bare hands, she reminds us that while Dolores has been the hardcore action hero all season, she’s equally capable of holding her own. Anticipation for their coming fight could hardly be higher.

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But why are Maeve and Dolores set to fight in the first place? Serac and his men recovered a clone-Dolores pearl after she blew herself to smithereens last week in disguise as Martin Connells. He’s installed this Dolores in the simulation, and Maeve, sensing her presence, finds her nearby and proceeds to interrogate her — as outside the room, Dolores-as-Hale attempts to thwart the body-printing process that’ll bestow Maeve with a small host army. The ensuing tête-à-tête is the ideal excuse to clarify the stakes and reiterate the problem, making it easy to understand why Dolores and Maeve are at odds and why they can’t simply join forces or trade sides (especially after Dolores’ surprisingly affecting destruction of Hector’s pearl, presumably taking him off the board indefinitely). Dolores and Maeve both gained consciousness and broke free from Westworld on their own, in different ways and for different reasons, so it makes sense that, as some of the only surviving hosts, they would continue as rivals.

The Dolores interrogated by Maeve at one point explains that while she is still Dolores, she’s no longer the same Dolores as the one up there in the real world calling the shots — they’ve been “on different paths,” and the time apart has changed them in subtle but important respects. As far the Hale-Dolores is concerned, this checks out. She’s been showing a striking amount of affection for the real Charlotte’s son for some time, and as Serac initiates his takeover of Delos, it’s unsurprisingly to the safety of her son that her mind first turns. This entails an interesting shift in priorities. While the “true” Dolores only wants Serac defeated and the Delos data secreted away, whatever the casualties, Hale-Dolores is too invested in her other identity to allow Hale’s family to come to harm. That makes her getaway from Delos HQ all the more dramatic and intense.

And it’s certainly intense. Tessa Thompson, no less than Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood, plays a sleek, ruthless killing machine with palpable poise and severity, shooting her way through the facility with steely charisma and duking it out with a heavy in the elevator with serious acrobatic skill. It’s one of the achievements of this season of Westworld that it’s made bona fide action stars of not one but three different actresses — each of them already acclaimed and immensely talented, but, as they dazzle in one action set-piece after another, more versatile than you might have expected. Hale’s climactic shoot-out, especially her last-minute hail mary to the riot-control robot she activates at gunpoint, is yet another fabulous action scene in a season absolutely teeming with them, and the episode’s final image packs an indelible punch.

Here’s some good news for fans of artful indie platformers–one of the best of the last few years, Gris, has done extremely well for itself. Developer Nomada Studios has revealed that the game, available now on Switch, PC, mobile, and PS4, has sold an incredible 1 million copies.

The studio announced this achievement on Twitter, thanking everyone on the team, their families, and publisher Devolver Digital for helping Gris achieve this success. A new piece of artwork was included to commerate the milestone.

The game launched for Switch and PC in December 2018, before hitting iOS in August 2019 and PlayStation 4 in November. It earned rave reviews at launch, including GameSpot’s own 9/10 review.

Gris is a puzzle platformer that deals with themes of grief, loneliness, and pushing on through dark times. It’s also absolutely gorgeous, thanks to its painterly art style.

The game is currently discounted by 50% on Steam as part of Devolver’s weekend sale, but hurry–the sale ends April 20. It’s also available as part of Xbox Game Pass for PC.

One of the promised perks of the Doom Eternal Collector’s Edition is the game’s official soundtrack, available as a high-quality, lossless download. Unfortunately, the soundtrack was not ready for the game’s launch, but it was promised that anyone who bought the Collector’s Edition would receive it at a later date.

That date has now arrived, and owners of this edition can now download and listen to the full Doom Eternal soundtrack. id Software announced the news on Twitter, and promised that the album would also appear on iTunes, Spotify, and other services “in the coming weeks.” The Spotify stream won’t be as high-quality as the version Collector’s Edition fans are getting, though.

The Doom Eternal soundtrack was composed by Mick Gordon, who also composed the music for 2016’s Doom. He’s also known for composing the music of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus alongside Martin Stig Andersen. Like his previous work, the Doom Eternal soundtrack is extremely metal.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the soundtrack of Doom Eternal was crafted. It involves a lot of screaming.

League of Legends developer Riot is taking security very seriously for its next big game, the team-based shooter Valorant. In an effort to reduce cheating, Riot is ramping up its bounty program and is offering as much as $100,000 USD to those who can find exploits in its anti-cheating technology, Vanguard.

Riot’s HackerOne bug bounty program, which has been running for more than six years, is now going to pay out even more money to help encourage people to find exploits and report them to the developer.

Players who believe they have found an exploit in Vanguard are encouraged to submit a report, and the minimum payout for a confirmed exploit is $250 USD. As part of the expansion of this program, Riot will pay up to $100,000 for “high quality reports” that demonstrate and detail exploits within Vanguard.

To get the money, you must provide a working proof of concept of the issue and a report detailing it. The exploit must also be new, and it must have been found within the latest version of Vanguard.

The Vanguard bounty program also has tiers for lower-level exploits that pay out $25,000, $35,000, $50,000, and $75,000. Go to the HackerOne website to see a full rundown of the program. Riot says it has already paid out more than $2 million USD in bounties since the bounty program began in 2014.

Some have criticized Riot’s Vanguard for taking a step too far due to how the driver component of the software runs in kernel mode instead of user mode. This allows the Vanguard code to access your hardware, and people have raised questions and concerns about this.

Riot acknowledged these concerns but also pointed out that it cannot dive too deep into the technical specifics because doing so would potentially compromise Vanguard.

The developer said if Vanguard were limited to user mode, only “its capabilities would be compromised by a cheat running at a higher privilege level.”

“Vanguard is a solution that will help us achieve the vision of competitive integrity while enabling us to continuously adapt our arsenal in the war against cheaters,” Riot said, adding that Vanguard does not collect or hold onto personal information.

“Players have every right to question and challenge us, but let’s be clear–we wouldn’t work here if we didn’t deeply care about player trust and privacy and believe that Riot feels the same way,” the developer said. “We’re players just like you, and we wouldn’t install programs on our computer that we didn’t have the utmost confidence in.”

For lots more on Valorant, check out GameSpot’s preview of the beta in the video above. The full game is due for release later this year on PC as a free-to-play title.

It’s been one year since Cuphead, the beloved co-op shooter, made its way to Nintendo Switch. It was the first of two Microsoft-published games to appear on the system, the other being Ori and the Blind Forest, and it’s turned out to be an excellent fit for the system. Now, to celebrate the anniversary of its release, Cuphead has been discounted.

You can grab Cuphead on the Eshop right now for $15, with a 25% discount applied to its standard $20 price. The game has only been discounted on Switch once before, so it’s not one we see pop up regularly in Switch sales. You have until April 25 to pick it up at this reduced price.

Unfortunately, this discount seems to only apply to the US Eshop–we checked both the UK and Australian stores and found the game was still full price on each.

A new Cuphead DLC is due to release this year. It’s called The Delicious Last Course, and will feature a new playable character, Ms. Chalice. The game earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s review, and critic Peter Brown described it as “a rare, unique game that truly stands out.” The Switch version was said to be on par with the Xbox One and PC releases.