Author: Trafficblast

Season of the Undying in Destiny 2 ends next week, and that means this weekend’s visit from Exotic vendor Xur is the last before the start of the Season of Dawn on December 10. We’re seeing some big changes coming to Destiny 2 next season, particularly in how Exotic Engrams work. In the meantime, though, Xur has a few Exotics from Year Two that you might be missing, including Black Talon, which is one that rarely (if ever) has appeared in his bag before.

Xur Location

Head to Titan to locate Xur this week. You’ll want to land at the transmat zone on The Rig, then head north under the scaffolding with the edge of the platform on your left. Look for a small, low building toward the north end of the area; you’ll find Xur chilling in the dark room within.

Look for Xur in an out-of-the-way building on The Rig on Titan.

What Is Xur Selling?

The weapon Xur is offering this week is Black Talon, a spiffy sword that doesn’t just force you to attack enemies at melee range–it can also fire deadly bolts. It’s a Year Two Exotic, and in fact, Xur has a few of those this week, making this a good time to fill out your collection if you’re lagging behind on some Exotics that came with the Forsaken expansion and the seasons that followed.

If Xur’s wares aren’t compelling, you can always roll the dice on the expensive Fated Engram he brings with you. This gives you a single Exotic from the limited pool of ones you haven’t already earned, for the price of 97 Legendary shards. If there’s something you’re missing from your collection, it’s a good deal, but be sure to purchase it on the character who’s missing the Exotic, and note that you can only get one per week, so choose wisely which of your characters makes the buy. If you’re a PC or Xbox One player taking advantage of cross-save, you can now potentially get Wavesplitter from the Fated Engram as well.

Xur Item Lineup (December 6-10)

• Black Talon (Exotic sword)
• Lunafaction Boots (Exotic Warlock leg armor)
• Womrhusk Crown (Exotic Hunter helmet)
• Stronghold (Exotic Titan gauntlets)

Black Talon

Black Talon is a sword that offers both high melee damage and a deadly ranged attack.

This might be the first time Xur has had the Year Two Exotic sword Black Talon available, and if you like blades, this is a handy one to have in your collection. In addition to being a formidable Power weapon up close, Black Talon offers some ranged capabilities as well–it can fire off deadly bolts that seek targets, which makes it great in both PvE and the Crucible.

Lunafaction Boots (Warlock)

Lunafaction Boots are a perfect pairing with the Warlock Well of Radiance Super.

A mainstay of a lot of Warlock builds, Lunafaction boots are great for supporting a team in major battles, such as those in raids. The boots strengthen your Warlock Rifts for anyone who stands in them, increasing reload speeds significantly. If you use Empowering Rifts, Lunafaction boots also boost everyone’s weapon ranges.

Stats:

• Mobility: 6
• Resilience: 13
• Recovery: 7
• Discipline: 6
• Intellect: 6
• Strength: 10
• Total: 48

Wormhusk Crown (Hunter)

Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge with Wormhusk Crown, and you’ll get some health back.

Another useful Year Two Exotic, Wormhusk Crown is great for Hunters who do a lot of dodging. Every time you execute a dodge, Wormhusk Crown gives you a small amount of health back and bumps your shields, as well. Pair it with some Paragon mods and you can get yourself out of a lot of sticky situations with a dodge.

Stats:

• Mobility: 7
• Resilience: 2
• Recovery: 17
• Discipline: 6
• Intellect: 6
• Strength: 12
• Total: 50

Stronghold (Titan)

Stronghold makes your sword guards extremely effective, which makes it a great get with Black Talon this week.

If you’re keen on grabbing Black Talon this week, Stronghold is also a good get for your collection. This sword-specific Titan armor makes your sword guards much better–they increase your movement speed and no longer drain ammo, and if you time them right for just as a shot hits your block, Stronghold heals you, as well. That pretty much means you can use swords to block indefinitely, allowing you to close gaps on enemies to more easily take them down.

Stats:

• Mobility: 6
• Resilience: 14
• Recovery: 6
• Discipline: 12
• Intellect: 2
• Strength: 12
• Total: 52

The Switch exclusive Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection is now available for your portable enjoyment. The collection combines Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Rogue, and all of the single-player DLC across both games.

Black Flag and Rogue released very close to each other and made use of similar naval battle mechanics. Black Flag is one of the more highly-regarded Assassin’s Creed games, introducing the pirate Edward Kenway who gets tangled into the Assassin cause. Rogue was less well-received, but tells a very different kind of story about a loyal guild member turned Assassin Hunter.

Aside from the two main games, the collection includes the Freedom Cry and Aveline DLC. The Aveline DLC features the star of the PSP spin-off Assassin’s Creed Liberation, while Freedom Cry puts the spotlight on Edward’s trusted shipmate Adewale. You’ll also get an extra content pack with CG trailers and concept art, as well as the manga Assassin’s Creed: Awakening and a sample of the tie-in novel Blackbeard: The Lost Journal. Plus it includes 10 new exclusive outfits for your assassins, and uses Switch capabilities, like the touchscreen and motion control aiming, for certain features.

The Rebel Collection costs $40/£40/$80(AUD), and uses 19GB of space. You can find it now on the Eshop.

Kojima Productions has released a brief video showcasing some of the changes coming in Death Stranding‘s upcoming patch. The update is due to arrive in mid-December.

One of the most requested changes from the community is the option to delete other players’ vehicles. Death Stranding is a shared-world game; you’ll never see other players, but structures they’ve built, such as bridges, roads, ladders, and postboxes, will appear in your game and can be interacted with. The same is true with vehicles, giving you the chance to commandeer those abandoned by other players. This becomes a problem, however, when vehicles are abandoned in inopportune places–especially by those eager to troll.

Sometimes a derelict truck is a mere nuisance, blocking a road or a doorway and forcing you to climb behind the driver’s seat to move it. Other times, like with The Cosplayer’s shelter, a truck can completely block an entrance with no feasible way to circumnavigate it unless you have explosives handy. The latest patch aims to rectify this issue by giving you the option to remove other player’s vehicles by simply holding down the options button.

The video also reveals that the patch will let you see the Odradek scanner through cargo on Sam’s back. When the scanner is locating BTs, the cargo will become transparent once these changes are implemented, preventing Sam’s payload from blocking your line of sight to a crucial survival tool.

Aside from this, Kojima Productions tweeted last month that the upcoming update would also give players the option to increase the game’s small text size.

If you’ve ever wondered what a Pokemon game would look like as an MMO, cast your gaze no further than the upcoming TemTem. Developed by Madrid-based studio Crema and published by Humble Bundle, TemTem takes the familiar creature catching and battling of Pokemon and sets it in a shared online world–and now it has a new trailer.

The Pokemon influence is clear as day, and Crema isn’t shying away from the obvious comparisons. The Steam store page for TemTem even says that it’s a “massively multiplayer creature-collection adventure inspired by Pokemon.” Yet the MMO aspects differentiate TemTem enough that it’s much more than just a simple clone.

There will initially be 76 TemTems to catch.

“Every kid dreams about becoming a Temtem tamer,” the game’s description explains. “Exploring the six islands of the Airborne Archipelago, discovering new species, and making good friends along the way. Now it’s your turn to embark on an epic adventure and make those dreams come true.”

You’ll be able to team up with other TemTem trainers and play the entire campaign cooperatively, battle against others in competitive matches, buy and decorate your own house, and customise your character to stand out from the crowd.

TemTem is initially launching on Steam Early Access on January 21, 2020. Those who purchase it at this early stage will gain access to three islands to explore, 76 TemTems to catch, and a 20-hour campaign. Crema will expand on each of these areas as the months roll by, and also has plans to release TemTem on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch at a later date.

Phoenix Point, the XCOM-esque strategy game from Snapshot Games, has been delayed on Xbox Game Pass for PC for the foreseeable future. The title was supposed to release on December 3, the same day it successfully launched on the Epic Games Store, but it’s still absent.

Snapshot Games has now announced a delay, attributing the Game Pass no-show to a few issues, including Microsoft’s certification process.

“We know that some of you are waiting for our release on Microsoft Xbox Game Pass for PC and the Microsoft Windows Store,” a statement on the developer’s official forums says. “We want to update you on the status of that.

“The fact is we dropped the ball. We were exceedingly busy getting the game itself ready, and being inexperienced with Game Pass and the Microsoft Store, we simply had not properly prepared the groundwork to get the game released on time on these platforms. Compared to other platforms we’re on these platforms require a number of pre-requisites, from Microsoft certification to legal documentation review. While these are now mostly complete, they have given rise to a number of new delays.

“Specifically, we are currently unable to make the same content available on Microsoft’s platform that is available to players on other platforms. Since we want to make sure all players have access to all versions of Phoenix Point regardless of where they choose to play, we need to get this working before we can release.

“This issue was not anticipated by us and has caused unexpected delay over and above our delay waiting for certification. We had hoped to have Game Pass players, at least, up and running today, but it now seems like there will be further delays. We do not have an ETA for Phoenix Point on Game Pass or the Windows Store yet. Please know we are working as hard and as quickly as possible with our partners at Microsoft to resolve these issues and will keep you informed.”

First announced in 2016, the spiritual successor to XCOM was successfully funded via Fig, and was initially set to launch in 2018 before a delay pushed it back to July 2019. That eventually changed to September and then December, where it’s now available to buy on the Epic Games Store. An Xbox One release of Phoenix Point is due in early 2020, with a PlayStation 4 version to follow at a later date.

Call of Duty Mobile had a strong start, and new estimates from a mobile tracking firm show its momentum has slowed but it’s still doing very well for itself. Sensor Tower says that in its first two months, it has hit more than 172 million downloads and generated almost $87 million in global player spending.

This represents a slowdown from its explosive launch, which hit 100 million in the first week alone, and about 148 million in its first month. This means it got about an additional 20 million downloads in November. November also added another $31 million in revenue. Sensor Tower says this is as compared to $55 million in October, which suggests that the decline in new downloads hasn’t led to a proportional slowdown in revenue.

The tracker also broke down some of the numbers further. The game is most popular in the US, where it has gotten about 17% of total worldwide downloads. That’s followed by India (10%) and Brazil (7%). The US is also home to most of the revenue generated (42%), followed by Japan (13%) and Great Britain (3%). The App Store also accounted for the lion’s share of revenue (59%) compared to Google Play ($41%).

Apple recently announced its most downloaded iPhone games of 2019, and surprisingly it wasn’t Call of Duty Mobile. Instead, it was Nintendo’s own Mario Kart Tour. Call of Duty did make the top five, however.

“Beyond its messy microtransaction menus and the slight time-saving purchases, there’s not much else in Call of Duty Mobile that detracts from its faithful recreation of the exhilarating and fast-paced multiplayer action of the core series,” Alessandro Barbosa wrote in GameSpot’s Call of Duty Mobile review. “It’s flexible and easy-to-use control scheme mitigates the lack of controller support, and its celebration of the best modes and maps the Black Ops and Modern Warfare series have produced makes it a pleasure to line up game after game.”