Paul Haddad, the voice actor who brought Leon Kennedy to life in 1998’s Resident Evil 2, has died. The actor, aged 56, had recently posted a GoFundMe for a neurosurgery procedure, and is understood to have been ill for some time.
Haddad, a resident of Toronto, Canada, and a regular stage performer, had only credits on two other games–Hype: The Time Quest (1999) and retro throwback Daymare: 1998 (2019). The news of his passing came via the Twitter account of Invader Studios, the developer of Daymare.
Paul Haddad, our dear friend and an icon among the RE community, has passed away recently. We’ve been truly honored to have the chance to meet and work with such a great man and a brilliant professional that He was. Rest in Peace Paul… You will live forever in our hearts. pic.twitter.com/o6gkMqX7SI
In a way, this makes his performance as Leon Kennedy all the more significant–he played a lead role in one of the most important horror games ever made despite his relative obscurity, and his voice has been heard by millions of players.
Haddad never played Kennedy again after this first appearance. In later games he was voiced by Paul Mercer, Christian Lanz, Matthew Mercer, and eventually Nick Apostolides in the Resident Evil 2 Remake. In fact, Resident Evil 2 had a whole new cast due to the SAG strike in effect during the game’s development.
Apostolides paid tribute to Haddad on Twitter, calling him a “kind soul” and saying that he will “always be our Leon”.
You likely aren’t going outside very much right now, but when normalcy returns, you’re going to need to keep yourself dry in the rain. The Death Stranding Bridges jacket from Acronym lets you do so in style and even promises to be “Timefall-proof” in case you’re worried about rapidly aging in the water.
The jacket also features a multi-position storm collar, several pockets for storing your items from the harsh environments of post-apocalyptic America, and a storm hood with a redesigned visor compared to older models. We don’t recommend trying your luck against “BTs” with it, though.
Wearing the jacket, you’ll certainly look like Sam Porter Bridges from the game, particularly if you carry a few tons of equipment on your back and a baby in a pod. Death Stranding is an extremely odd and polarizing game, but Sam’s fashion sense is undeniable. With all the zippers and pockets in your jacket, you’ll be stocked up on enough snacks, hand sanitizer, and gum to weather any storm.
Death Stranding is currently available exclusively on PS4. A PC version will arrive on June 2. You can pre-order it from Steam for a selection of digital goodies alongside the game.
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Seinfeld’s final episode aired well over two decades ago, but it remains one of the most popular television shows in history. Its lasting pop culture presence inspired developers Jacob Janerka and Ivan Dixon to create an adventure game pitch, and it’s better than a chocolate babka.
Created as an unofficial pitch with no involvement from the show or a network, the Seinfeld Adventure introduction shows off what a classic point-and-click game would look like with Jerry, Elaine, George, Kramer, and Newman.
It would feature an inventory system that includes some of the show’s famous items, including Junior Mints candy and a black-and-white cookie, and Jerry’s apartment was faithfully recreated for the video. There’s even a marble rye loaf on his table, which he likely stole from an elderly woman on the streets of Manhattan.
Janerka and Dixon want to get the proper license to develop the game for real, and decided the pitch would be the best way to prove their talent.
“We want to do this the official way. However, we believe that pitching to the internet will show the demand for such a game, which will provide a better chance of this becoming a thing than us just sending a cold email,” the duo said.
Should the game become a reality, it would be fairly short–around the length of an episode of the show, with room for more episodes as DLC. The game would feature slightly modernized plot beats, including email, which was still fairly new when the show aired.
The developers encourage using the hashtag #seinfeldgame on Twitter in order to show support. If they’re given permission to move forward, they’ll next turn to funding development, yada yada yada, then a game will come out.
Competitive gaming has changed over the last few months, with in-person events canceled, but Riot Games’ new Valorant aims to inject some new life into the scene with a high-profile event. The ESPN Esports Valorant Invitational starts tomorrow, April 20, and it includes professional players from some of the biggest games on the planet.
The tournament will last until April 22, and it should be interesting to see how the different games’ professional players adapt. Most of them are shooters already, with the only exception being League of Legends, but the tactical gameplay style could give the CS:GO and Rainbow Six Siege teams an advantage.
Valorant includes a “show blood” toggle in its settings in order to make the game more suitable for broadcasts. Riot Games mandates that broadcasters disable blood during competition.
Valorant is currently in closed beta testing, and you can get into the beta using a key by watching streams. It will officially release on PC later this summer, with its final launch date still unannounced.
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The Stalk Market is Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s produce-based equivalent to Wall Street. Every week turnip-selling boar Daisy Mae will visit your island and can sell you turnips which will either appreciate or depreciate in value as the week goes on.
In the online-era, Animal Crossing players have discovered ways to bend the system in their favor. A network of Stalk Market tracking has made it so that anybody with an internet connection can usually find a good deal on turnips that can yield millions in Bells.
But if you want the best deals, you would do well to remember your manners.
What is the Stalk Market?
The Stalk Market is supposed to emulate the real-life Stock Market and all its fluctuations. The goal is to buy your Turnips at a low price then sell them at the highest possible price for a nice profit. But because both the Stalk and Stock Market are governed by arcane rules, it’s hard to predict how the market will grow or fall over the course of a week.
Normally, this would mean that there’s a good chance you buy turnips only to have a lousy week and are forced to sell your stalk for a loss.
How to Get Turnips
If you’re interested in getting into the turnip trade, you’ve got to make sure you’re available on Sunday mornings. The turnip seller, Daisy Mae, will be somewhere on your island every Sunday from 5 AM to 12 PM so long as you’ve unlocked Nook’s Cranny. Then, you can buy as many turnips as you can afford. If you don’t see her, she may be hiding behind some trees. She’s small and can be easy to miss!
Daisy Mae only sells turnips in bundles of 10. This means Bells go fast when you’re shopping with her, so be sure to save plenty before she comes around on Sunday morning. And remember, you cannot plant turnips and you definitely shouldn’t eat them.
For more information on the Animal Crossing turnip trade, like suggestions on how to store all your new turnips, be sure to visit IGN’s turnip guide.
The two most popular turnip tracking apps online are turnipprophet.io and Turnip Calculator. They basically use the same information, so it really depends on which UI you prefer. But in both cases, players can plug in the price in they bought their turnips on Sunday, then plug in the selling price on their islands twice each day for a price prediction.
The algorithm calculates what kind of trend your Stalk Market is on and gives you a range of potential sale prices for the week. With these tools, you can tell as early as Monday whether your turnip prices are headed for the high hundreds or set to drop below market value.
You Can Make It So You Never Sell Your Turnips for a Loss
Knowing your turnip prices for the week is just half the battle. It doesn’t matter if you know what your sell prices are looking for the week if you’re already on a descending pattern, destined to sell at a huge loss.
Luckily, players can sell their turnips on other people’s islands making it so that anyone can find a good selling price for their turnips, even if their own island is tracking low. Just remember to sell them before the next Sunday rolls in. If you wait until the week is over, all your turnips will rot.
How to Find a Good Turnip Price
Finding a good turnip price is probably easier now than ever. The Animal Crossing subreddit is usually filled with players advertising their high turnip prices, and there are many homegrown Discord servers and Slack channels where players share their turnip prices with friends. Even a quick search for turnips on Twitter can yield results of a generous player who’s open to letting strangers on their islands.
But letting other players onto your island can be a troublesome process because of wait times and a max island occupancy of nine, including the host. That’s why it’s not very convenient to try and get a hundred strangers lined-up to go to your island.
One service called Turnip Exchange does a good job of streamlining the process and is probably the best way to handle strangers trying to get onto your island to sell their turnips. The way it works is that a host can create a queue for their island that will automatically share their Dodo Code with players organized into a virtual line.
The Dodo Code will only be shared with a limited number of players at a time, so there will never be more than the desired number of players on an island at any given time. This gives players time to sell their turnips and leave while preventing too many players from attempting to fly to the island at one time.
Players don’t get any benefits for opening up their islands for turnip sales. So anytime someone offers their Dodo Codes to strangers, it’s at some personal cost. They have to keep their Switch on so players can keep coming to the island, and they’ll need to check in periodically to make sure that their system doesn’t fall asleep. Plus, it’s stressful having potentially hundreds of strangers converge on your island.
As such, there’s some informal etiquette that’s developed among the community. For example, it’s polite to leave a tip whether it’s Bells or materials. Hosts will sometimes specify if they appreciate tips or not, but it’s not a bad idea to leave behind some of your new earnings, especially if you’re potentially making millions from a lucrative turnip selling price. A 10% tip or materials like iron ore are customary.
You may want to consider building a fenced path that goes between your airport to Nook’s Cranny if you’re opening your island to strangers. This will prevent them from exploring your island and will likely help you turnip queue go a bit faster.
How to Make Millions on Turnips… With Some Cheating
If you’re not averse to a bit of time travel in Animal Crossing, you can use a friend’s high turnip prices to make an absurd amount of money quickly.
Turnip prices will always change if you time travel to a day that had high prices in your own game, but an individual’s time manipulation can’t affect games outside their own. That being said, you can set your system clock to early morning Sunday, invest in a ton of turnips, and travel to a island with high turnip prices and sell.
You can keep going back to your Sunday, buying more, and selling, but be sure to get the approval of your friend to make multiple trips or consider visiting different islands. You can see the exact steps to accomplishing this in the video above.
As mentioned in the previous section, it’s highly recommended you leave a tip or some significant compensation if you’re making bank on turnips, especially with this method.
Call of Duty: Warzone’s crossplay feature, which allows users to play Battle Royale and Plunder together using all platforms, may be more of a curse than a blessing for some console gamers.
As reported by Eurogamer, console players are running up against PC cheaters in Battle Royale because of Warzone’s crossplay feature, and as a temporary fix, the console gamers are turning off the feature completely (which his no easy task itself).
At the beginning of last week, Infinity Ward tweeted out that they’d banned, so far, 70,000 accounts worldwide as part of their “zero tolerance” policy for cheaters.
We’ve now issued over 70,000 bans worldwide to protect #Warzone from cheaters. We’re continuing to deploy dedicated security updates and work continues on improving in-game reporting. We’ll share more details soon. We are watching. We have zero tolerance for cheaters.
The issues persist however, as console gamers, generically unfamiliar with the problems PC gamers face from cheaters, are now exposed to the madness of PC chicanery.
This is it: the final chapter of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is also the toughest, pitting you and your team against some of their greatest challenges. Below is everything you need to know to make your way through Destiny’s Crossroads, survive the battles, and finish FF7 Remake.
You’ve got another motorcycle mini-game to contend with, this time with more enemies and more variety. The battles themselves are relatively straightforward, though: be sure to utilize Cloud’s guard ability to minimize incoming damage, and break to avoid bombs from helicopters. You’ll eventually take on a M.O.T.H. Unit, which will fling blades at you before getting electrically charged and coming in for closer fights, and some 3-C SOLDIERS, who have swords of their own. Just be sure to guard against their attacks to make it through.
Boss Fight: Motor Ball
Motor Ball is a pretty easy fight thanks to the high mobility of your motorcycle. Just brake and steer clear of its attacks.
The chase culminates in the battle with another robot boss. This one is pretty easy, since the high mobility of your motorcycle allows you to avoid all its attacks without much difficulty. Pull in alongside the boss and swing away, smashing its wheels. When Motor Ball lifts up on three wheels, hit the brakes and peel away so it can’t smash down on you, and guard when it readies its guns to avoid getting blasted.
Slash at the wheels until you destroy all six of them, staggering the boss. When that happens, attack it as much as you can; drive up its stagger percentage and use your Spinning Attack for big damage. The boss will eventually recover, adding new attacks to use against you. Repeat the process and keep going after the wheels, but keep an eye on them–eventually, some will be shielded, forcing you to pick other targets.
Generally, Motor Ball doesn’t throw anything at you that you can’t see coming. When it readies its flame spin move after being staggered, brake and stay clear until it’s all over. If the boss pulls ahead, reduce your speed a bit to avoid the electric bombs it drops on the highway ahead of you. As soon as you can, close the distance and attack its wheels again. Watch out for it to charge a big laser as well, which it’ll shoot at one side or the other; again, hit the brakes and head to the opposite side. When the boss pulls ahead and shoots the laser back at you, cut to one of the sides of the road to avoid it.
Keep hammering the boss and avoiding its attacks until you finally destroy it. It takes a while, but it never gets especially tough.
After winning, you’ll have a quick chance to heal up. Take it and stock up on any items you need. You’re going to need them.
Make sure all four members of your party are outfitted with Healing Materia and their best weapons that are as upgraded as you can get them. You’ll also want some big spells spread around your team–although keep one of each elemental spell Materia with Aerith, as you’ll want her fully outfitted later. Equip a strong Barrier Materia as well.
Boss Fight: Whisper Harbinger, Whisper Croceo, Whisper Rubrum, And Whisper Viridi
The Whisper Harbinger will force you to take on three bosses at once, each with a different weapon. Focus on one at a time to take them down.
Once you’ve progressed through the destroyed highway a bit, you’ll face the giant arbiter of fate, the Whisper Harbinger. You don’t have to deal with the huge colossus directly, luckily–instead, you’ll fight three smaller Whisper bosses, called Croceo, Rubrum, and Viridi. Each has a different weapon, mirroring Barret, Cloud, and Tifa.
Contending with all three of the creatures is tough, but you only need to take down one of them right now. It’s your choice, but we had the easiest time focusing on Rubrum. Cloud can counter its Flurry attack with Punisher mode to do some damage–Guard your way through its other attacks, like Crimson Arc. Hammer away at the Rubrum with Punisher mode and ATB attacks to give it as much damage as you can; the more you pour on, the quicker you’ll pressure the Whisper and drive up its stagger meter. Guard as much as you can to avoid taking too much damage, while keeping yourself topped up with items and healing spells.
Hurt one of the Whispers enough and you’ll advance to the next section of the fight, where you’ll face the three Whispers again. In addition to their other moves, they sometimes like to use powerful spells like Firaga from Rubrum, Blizzaga from Viridi and Thundaga from Croceo. Follow up with the same approach, allowing your AI teammates to keep the other enemies busy while you focus on Rubrum. It’ll add a new attack, Sweep, to its moves, but you’ll still mostly want to guard as much as you can to avoid taking a lot of hits. Keep countering Rubrum and hitting it with your big ATB attacks to rack up damage, and you’ll eventually knock it out of the fight. The Harbinger will intercede again, opening up the path forward.
The only way to damage the Whisper Harbinger is to take down its smaller fighters, but dishing out heavy attacks will stagger them.
When you get to the end of the next pathway, you’ll take on Whisper Rubrum by itself. It’ll use the Temper attack to power itself up and become more aggressive, adding more swings to Flurry and Crimson Arc. Guard through them to land counterattacks with Punisher mode, then do as much damage as you can with ATB attacks. Your best bet with Rubrum is to duel your way through, but don’t be afraid to overwhelm the Whisper with attacks from your teammates. Just don’t use Fire magic, as the creature can absorb it. Stagger the boss and you can damage Rubrum can do some damage to the Harbinger.
With Rubrum down, you’ll fight Croceo and Viridi together. Pick one and go after it; Viridi is best attacked from behind while its attention is elsewhere, especially because the boss will protect itself with a shield. Watch out for Viridi’s Azure Plume attack, which will stun anybody caught in it. Like Rubrum, hit the Whisper to do as much damage as you can to stun it, then finish it off to do more damage to the Harbinger.
Croceo is next, but it’s probably the least of your problems. Watch out for its Amber Judgment attack, an orb that will track you, and Amber Whirl, a laser beam that cuts straight toward you and then out to the sides. Dodge the lasers as best you can, guard against Croceo’s shotgun Scatter attack, and use ATB attacks to knock the Whisper out and stagger it.
You’ll fight the three Whispers again in a moment. Repeat the process to do some damage to one and you’ll trigger the real next phase of the fight.
Boss Fight: Whisper Bahamut
Whisper Bahamut is a powerful boss who will rock you pretty hard. Cast Manaward and get ready to use guard a lot.
When combined, Rubrum, Croceo, and Viridi become a lot more dangerous as Whisper Bahamut. The dragon is fast and carries a bunch of powerful moves, most of which are really difficult to dodge. Expect Bahamut to come after you right away with melee swipes, as well as a spinning attack where it barrels its whole body through you. Dodging those moves is pretty tough; flip to Punisher mode and guard to minimize your damage so you can at least strike back against Bahamut when it comes after you.
Quickly try to get Manaward barriers on your team to deal with Bahamut’s powerful attacks. Watch out for Bahamut’s Umbral Strikes attacks, where it throws two big explosive blasts at you. The first arcs in from the left, and the second from the right–if you dodge right and then left, you can often avoid them. Its Umbral Inferno hits you with a bunch of painful lasers, but running or dodging sideways can usually get you out of the line of fire of most of them. Flare Breath will knock you down, but if you can get around to the side or behind Bahamut, or dodge backward, you should be able to avoid it.
Counters are pretty effective against Bahamut, mostly because a lot of its attacks are close to impossible to dodge.
You’re going to take a lot of damage here, though. Keep Aerith on-hand to restore health with Tifa backing her up to keep your team going. Meanwhile, keep hitting Bahamut with ATB attacks from Cloud and Tifa whenever you charge them. Try to get your Manawards up before Bahamut uses Mega Flare, its ultimate attack. Do your best to keep your team topped up on health from items and spells so that the attack doesn’t wipe you out.
If you can keep up the damage, you should be able to knock Bahamut to the ground and pressure it. Use that opportunity to hit it with Focused Strike and Focused Thrust to push up its stagger meter as fast as you can.
Kill off Bahamut and the Whispers will separate again, but they’ll be a lot weaker. Focus on one and start pounding away to kill it, giving Barret an opportunity to attack the Whisper Harbinger. Repeat the process twice more to finish the giant creature.
Boss Fight: Sephiroth
As with other sword duels in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, using Punisher counterattacks is key to staggering Sephiroth.
The Whispers aren’t giving up–they’re now creating a version of Sephiroth to challenge Cloud. Like past one-on-one battles, this is more of a sword duel and you’ll need to rely on guarding and using Punisher counterattacks to beat Sephiroth, especially in the first part of the fight.
Some of Sephiroth’s attacks you should guard against for counterattacks to damage Sephiroth and increase his stagger, while you’ll need to dodge others. Stand your ground against standard melee strikes and Telluric Fury, although be sure to keep your guard up through the entire attack, because Sephiroth will hit you with multiple blows most of the time. When you see Sephiroth ready Aeolian Onslaught, dodge sideways, because the attack will juggle you into the air and Sephiroth’s movements make it ineffective for you to counter it. After countering, hit Sephiroth with some Punisher mode strikes to pressure him. He’ll sometimes ready powerful spells like Blizaga and Firaga–if you can hit him hard enough, you might be able to interrupt them, but it’s usually better to guard against them so you don’t take the full brunt of the magic.
Keep countering Sephiroth until you stagger him. Aerith will then join the battle, which shouldn’t really change your approach, but will give you more opportunities to do damage to Sephiroth. Get some Manaward barriers up if you can to cut the damage you take from Sephiroth’s spells and keep hitting him. You can also hit Sephiroth with some spells, especially when he’s charging magic of his own or preparing attacks, but try to conserve MP for later in the fight. Make sure to keep Cloud topped up on health as much as possible, because Sephiroth is going to hit you hard all the way through.
Keep landing counterattacks on Sephiroth to stagger him again. Tifa will join the fight next, but Sephiroth will become more powerful, using elemental magic for Infusions to amp up his moves and make them more effective. Pay attention to which element he uses, then hit him with the opposite spell–this is why you set up Aerith with all those spell Materia at the start of the chapter. When Sephiroth fires up Wind Infusion, blast him with Lightning magic; when he uses Lightning Infusion, he’ll be weak to Wind magic. You’ll do a lot of damage and push up his stagger meter if you can hit him with opposite spells.
When Sephiroth infuses himself with magic, hit him with the opposite element to knock him down and open him up for damage.
Meanwhile, keep dueling Sephiroth with Cloud as much as you can, while using Tifa to alternately top off your health and hit Sephiroth with ATB attacks to push up his stagger meter. Countering Sephiroth and hitting him with opposite spells will put him down on one knee so you can deal some serious damage, but make sure to guard for the long haul with his wind-based sword strikes, and be careful of the lightning strikes with his Lightning Infusion, which will rain down around the battlefield.
As you damage Sephiroth more, he’ll pull out new attacks, like Shadow Flare, creating gravity wells around the battlefield that then explode. Try to stay out of them as much as you can; the same goes for his Heartless Angel attack, which will light up the floor red and decimate your team if they’re caught in it. When Sephiroth readies it, run for it.
By that point, however, Sephiroth should be close to finished. Keep up the pressure with everything you have left and take him down. When he’s done, you’ll have plenty of downtime as you watch Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s lengthy ending.
Congratulations! Finishing the game unlocks an additional challenge in Hard Mode, which also includes a Chapter Select menu that will let you jump around in the game. Defeating bosses and completing side-quests in Hard Mode will also earn you more Manuscripts, which will give you more SP to upgrade weapons for each character. Your experience point gain is doubled in Hard Mode, and AP is tripled, which should allow you to wrap up things like finishing Chadley’s Battle Intel objectives and earning his final summon, or clearing the optional Combat Simulator fights that now open up in Chapter 17.
