Persia talks about Dr. Disrespect’s most recent interview, where he said he is considering taking legal action against Twitch. It has been three weeks since the sudden Twitch ban and there has been no official explanation, but that is not stopping Doc from continuing his livestreaming and content creation. He spoke about “Doc 3.0” and how he will be returning in epic fashion, promising big surprises.
Persia also goes over the new addition of xCloud support for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. That means you’ll be able to play the Game Pass library on your phone or tablet, with controller support and online play through Xbox Live servers. You’ll even be able to pick up your progress right where you left off through cloud saves.
And finally, Persia talks about the delay of Destiny 2: Beyond Light. Bungie announced on its website that the game’s next big expansion has been delayed to November 10 across all platforms, including PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Although our Play For All streams have come to a close, our donation drive will be open until the end of August! We have a Play For All merch store that you can visit at store.gamespot.com to snag some swag with all proceeds going towards Black Lives Matter and COVID-19 Relief.
As part of Madden NFL 21‘s ratings reveal week, EA Sports has announced the next player to join the elusive “99 Club,” denoting the highest ranking in the game.
Joining Patrick Mahomes, Christian McCaffrey, and Aaron Donald is the corner back Stephon Gilmore of the New England Patriots. The second defensive player to receive the honor, Gilmore is one of the NFL’s most elite defenders. He won the Defensive Player of the Year award for the 2019 season. He is undoubtedly deserving of the 99 rating.
Gilmore also ranks as the highest-rated CB overall, with Jalen Ramsey (94), Richard Sherman (92), Jaire Alexander (91), and Tre’Davious White (90) rounding out the top five.
EA worked with Gilmore’s wife and daughter to surprise him with the 99 rating. Check out the nice video below to see how it all played out.
Boston-based artist Mags Munroe created a special mural honoring Gilmore’s 99 rating, and you can see it in the video below.
EA Sports has one more 99-rated player to announce, and the reveal is coming on July 17. ESPN released a teaser, and you can try your hardest to guess who it might be.
Madden NFL 21 is coming on August 28 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. It will also be coming to the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X, with free upgrades for current-gen owners through EA’s Dual Entitlement program. For more details, check out our Madden NFL 21 pre-order guide.
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2K Sports has begun to announce the roster of officially licensed courses for PGA Tour 2K21, and the studio has started off with some strong choices. There will be 15 courses in all, and one of the first reveals was TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut.
This course is home to the Travelers Championship, a tournament won by Dustin Johnson in June. The course is known for its signature finishing stretch, with the final four holes putting players through the ringer to claim victory. You can check out a teaser for the course below.
TPC Summerlin from Las Vegas, Nevada, the home of the Shriners Open every year, is also coming to PGA Tour 2K21. Here’s the teaser:
There will be 15 licensed courses in all for PGA Tour 2K21, and the rest of the courses will be announced over time in the lead up to the game’s release on August 21.
Previous trailers for PGA Tour 2K21 have also shown courses like TPC Sawgrass, TPC Scottsdale, TPC Deere Run, TPC Twin Cities, East Lake Golf Club, and TPC San Antonio, but these and the rest of the venues have yet to be properly and formally shown off.
Whatever the case, the number of officially licensed PGA Tour courses in PGA Tour 2K21 is more than double the number from 2018’s game, The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA Tour.
In addition to the licensed courses, PGA Tour 2K21 features 12 PGA Tour players, including:
Sergio Garcia
Justin Thomas
Bryson DeChambeau
Matt Kuchar
Kevin Kisner
Gary Woodland
Billy Horschel
Ian Poulter
Tony Finau
Jim Furyk
Patrick Cantlay
Cameron Champ
PGA Tour 2K21 launches on August 21 for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. For more, check out GameSpot’s PGA Tour 2K21 pre-order guide.
This week on Wrestle Buddies, GameSpot’s professional wrestling podcast, Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring are joined by a very special guest, look back on one of the best WWE pay-per-view events of all time, and learn all about how referees work–the rules are ridiculous.
First up, ahead of WWE’s Extreme Rules–and the “eye for an eye match” that will surely be a future segment of the podcast–we look back at 2005’s ECW One Night Stand. It’s the show that led to WWE relaunching ECW as its own brand. Don’t hold that against the show, though, because it’s truly one of the best events you’ll ever watch.
Next up, class is back in session as Professor Elfring teaches Chris and the audience about wrestling referees and all of the weird rules that they have to follow–including being incredibly weak. The role of the referee is a strange one, but also possibly more important than any wrestler in a given match.
Finally, we are pleased to welcome WWE superstar The Big Show to the podcast to look back on his time as a member of the Dungeon of Doom. Don’t know what the Dungeon of Doom is? Luckily for you, we covered it in a previous episode. Mat recently interviewed Show about his new Netflix series and couldn’t help himself when it came to talking about this amazing piece of wrestling history.
All of that can be heard in our latest episode above, plus a new installment of Mike or Meg or Dan’s Soapbox with GameSpot’s Dan Auty, your questions, and a look at what noted vampire warrior professional wrestler Gangrel is up to this week in Gangrel watch!
New episodes of Wrestle Buddies are released every Thursday. You can check it out on Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.
SinoAlice, a mobile RPG with gacha elements from the director of Nier Automata, has reached 1,000,000 players two weeks after its global release. The game also has a Nier Automata crossover event that runs from July 16 to August 6 and you can receive 2B from Nier Automata as a playable character just for logging in.
The story of SinoAlice is set in a dark and twisted fantasy world, retelling more grim versions of fairy tale characters, like Alice (in Wonderland), Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella.
The event features a series of quests written by Yoko Taro–the director of SinoAlice and Nier Automata–and features machine lifeforms as enemies. You can also unlock A2 and Emil in The Puppets’ Feast Grimoire, the games’ loot box-type mechanic for unlocking gear.
After Nier Automata, a crossover with Nier Replicant will start on August 8. The game also added a new character, Little Mermaid, and several new story chapters for existing characters Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
In an interview with GameSpot, Yoko Taro said the game stands out among other mobile RPGs due to its unique setting and focus on storytelling.
We learned about the Child’s Play TV show Chucky back in January, when Syfy ordered the show to series. Now, with the release of the first Chucky trailer six months later, we’ve learned that the show will also air on USA Network alongside Syfy. The teaser trailer has some fun with this announcement, including the tagline, “An evil too great to play on just one network.”
The trailer isn’t much–it features a lengthy shot of a decrepit Toyland store aisle, looking somewhat ransacked, followed by a shadowy look at the bloodthirsty doll silhouetted against the store’s entrance. Rain trickles down the glass doors as Chucky raises his iconic kitchen knife. One exciting detail for longtime Child’s Play fans is the fact that–as pointed out by YouTube commenter Oscar 3:30–the trailer uses the theme music from Child’s Play 2, which was first released in 1990. And, of course, we hear Chucky’s iconic laugh at the end.
Of course, it’s no surprise that the Child’s Play TV show will make references back to the film series. After all, as we learned back in January, original franchise creator Don Mancini will serve as writer and showrunner on the series, and will also direct the first episode. Syfy described Chucky thusly at the time: “A vintage Chucky doll turns up at a suburban yard sale, an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies–and allies–from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster.”
In addition to Mancini, David Kirschner (Hocus Pocus), Nick Antosca (Channel Zero), and Harley Peyton (Twin Peaks) serve as executive producers on the series. Notably, the show apparently has nothing to do with 2019’s Child’s Play reboot, which starred Mark Hamill in the title role.
Chucky will hit TV screens via Syfy and USA Network in 2021.
Wales Interactive, the publisher behind FMV games like The Complex and Late Shift, has announced a new FMV title called Gamer Girl, and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. The game, which is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One in September, lets you play as a popular streamer’s chat moderator and personal contact. The game is being developed by FMV Future (The Bunker).
It’ll be up to you to handle a chat log and maintain personal contact with the streamer, Abicake99 (Alexandra Burton). You’ll make decisions about the posts in her chat, respond to DMs from her, and work to help Abi succeed–she can fire you if you mess up.
Interestingly, this is also being positioned as the first “improvised” FMV game, with the press release drawing comparisons to found-footage movies like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Part of the game will involve protecting Abbi from a predator, and following her as she takes her streaming into dangerous real-world scenarios.
You can watch the trailer below, which hints at the game’s horror elements.
The micromanagement elements of the game will involve managing comments, rewarding or banning Abbi’s community members based on their comments, and the better you do, the more moderator abilities you can unlock.
So it seems like the game will have two goals–help Abbi succeed, and keep her safe. You can also influence what kind of streams she does, or purposefully encourage drama and to help increase her ratings.
Real-life streamers, including CyborgAngel, will also appear within the game as characters. You’ll be able to contact some of them, too, but they may have ulterior motives.
Wales Interactive is promising “hundreds of choices and permutations,” so it should be interesting to see just how many different paths you can go down in Gamer Girl.
American composer Dave Porter created some very memorable music for the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul TV shows, and more recently, he composed new tracks for the Breaking Bad movie, El Camino. Two of those tracks, “Underpass” and “Frozen Money,” have now been released in full.
You can listen to the songs below, through the Spotify link. They are textbook Breaking Bad songs, featuring metallic, driving sound sounds that make you feel tense and uncomfortable–in a good way.
These two tracks were featured in El Camino, but this is the first time they’re being released in full.
El Camino, which was released in October 2019, was a huge success for Netflix. More than 25.5 million people watched it over its first week to become one of the network’s most popular films ever.
“If you love Breaking Bad and Jesse Pinkman, El Camino is a beautifully crafted kindness, and a chance to spend another hour or so with a character you care about,” reviewer Meg Downey said. “If you don’t have strong feelings about either of those things, El Camino may feel like a really spectacularly shot screen saver. Either way, the fact that it exists at all, and that Sony TV and Netflix were willing to put money behind what is so obviously an extremely niche passion project, feels like a good omen for franchise TV.”
A new Game Developers Conference study has been released, and it shines a light on the impact of COVID-19 on the gaming industry. For the study, GDC surveyed almost 2,500 developers, and there are a series of notable takeaways to learn from the report.
First, nearly half of those who responded to the survey said they are working longer hours and are less productive than before the pandemic when they might have been working in an office.
“Poor communication, isolation, and lack of access to critical tools are some of the common challenges devs are dealing with right now,” GDC said. “Nearly half of game makers feel working from home has lowered their productivity and 1/3 of developers said they’ve experienced a decrease in creativity while working from home. While productivity and creativity may have decreased for many developers, the amount of hours worked has increased for nearly half of all the developer respondents.”
On the other side, 19 percent of respondents said they saw an increase in their creativity in their new work-from-home environment. “Fewer distractions means more space to think and act on ideas,” one person said.
One surveyed developer said, “The most difficult part is problem-solving. Not everyone can sit on Zoom all day. We typically would have brainstorming sessions in the office together that would help when we were stuck on an issue.”
Overall, 32 percent of respondents said their productivity “somewhat decreased” due to working from home, while 9 percent said their productivity “greatly decreased.” 24 percent said their productivity somewhat increased, while 8 percent said their productivity greatly increased.
In terms of the number of hours worked, 41 percent of surveyed developers said they were working about the same number of hours as before. About the same percentage said they are working longer hours from home. Of those, 28 percent said they were working “somewhat more” hours, while 11 percent said they were spending “much more” time working than before.
14 percent said they were working less, and 6 percent said they were working much less than before.
The pandemic has also had an impact on business results. 34 percent of respondents saying they saw their business decline, 37 percent said it stayed about the same, and 31 percent said their businesses experienced growth due to the increased time spent playing games.
Less than 10 percent of surveyed developers said they were laid off or furloughed due to the pandemic, while 26 percent said their household income dropped due to the crisis.
70 percent of respondents said they moved to a work-from-home environment, while 27 percent said they were already working from home before the pandemic struck.
As would be expected, a number of game projects have also been delayed due to COVID-19. 33 percent of respondents to the survey said their games were delayed for reasons related to the virus. Another expected result is that mental and emotional health of developers has been impacted.
“My whole family is living with me and sometimes it’s hard to focus on my tasks,” one respondent said.
“Aside from the pressures of home life, not seeing people that work on the game in person has been tough,” another explained. “The lack of a human connection and a physical tangible place to call work just makes you feel like an outsider.”
About 10 percent of surveyed developers said they felt safe about returning to work. “There has been talk of reopening the office for some individuals, with extra cleanliness required,” one respondent said. “I want no part in it.”
Planet Coaster is coming to consoles, and ahead of its late 2020 release, a gameplay trailer has been released to show off the kind of parks you’ll be able to create. This trailer shows off a particularly well-designed park in the game, which is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, and Xbox One.
While the trailer doesn’t show anything of the console UI, it indicates some of the things you’ll be able to do will a controller, including building modifications, drawing paths for walkways, and dropping workers into the park.
Check the trailer out below, and reminisce about when it was safe and fun to visit theme parks before the COVID-19 pandemic (some theme parks are open now, but whether they’re safe to visit is another question entirely).
Whether or not players will be able to make a park that looks this good and runs this well on their first attempt remains to be seen, of course.
Planet Coaster received a 9/10 in GameSpot’s review. Reviewer Edmond Tran wrote that the game is “focused on the positivity that amusement parks can bring, one that fosters even the smallest spark of imagination and creativity.”
