Author: Trafficblast

There’s never been a better time for smartphones. We’ve come a long way from the brick-shaped phones that came with a shoulder strap or had to be plugged into a car to use. Almost every smartphone is a thin, glass-covered rectangle with a high-res screen and ample performance.

But that’s a double-edged, as almost every phone looks and performs the same. Obviously, you want something a little more special or offers the most features so you get the first bang for your buck. Luckily, we’ve seen and tested every new smartphone available today and can tell you which are the best.

We get that choosing the right phone is unlike any other device. After all, it’s something you rely on and have to use every day. Trust us, we won’t steer you the wrong way in your quest for the best smartphone.

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The screenplay for Avengers: Endgame has a scene featuring Doctor Strange villain Dormammu that never made it to the final film, it was recently revealed.

On page 77 of the Endgame screenplay, the scene is featured right after Captain America (Chris Evans) says, “That is America’s ass.”

Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is in “astral” form after coming in contact with The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Banner attempts to talk The Ancient One into giving him the Time Stone, which leads The Ancient One to bring up a visual interpretation of the Infinity Stones. She takes out the Time Stone and a darker strand veers off.

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The Game Awards 2019 show is wrapped and, as expected, there were a ton of reveals and announcements. While host Geoff Keighley and other game companies hinted at some of the unveilings before the show, there were still plenty of unexpected reveals.

Going into the show there were a lot of theories about what may be shown during the awards. Rumors spread for all kinds of possible game reveals, from Batman to Crash Bandicoot, most of which we were disappointed not to see on stage. Below you’ll find the biggest surprises and let downs from the annual video game celebration.

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When Bungie detailed Destiny 2‘s latest season, the Season of Dawn, a big part of its rundown concerned Solar character subclasses. As with Arc subclasses last year, Bungie revamped a bunch of Solar subclass abilities and perks to make more character builds and strategies useful in the game and viable to players. For the first visit of the season for weekend Exotic vendor Xur, Bungie has carried on the Solar theme–the Agent of the Nine’s entire inventory is geared toward Solar subclasses. Time to try out some new strats.

Here’s where you can find Xur and everything he’s carrying.

Xur Location

Xur is located on Nessus in the Watcher’s Grave area, offering Prometheus Lens as his Exotic weapon this weekend. For Hunters, he has Young Ahamkara’s Spine gauntlets; for Titans, it’s the Hallowfire Heart chest armor; and for Warlocks, it’s the Wings of Sacred Dawn chest armor.

To find Xur’s location, spawn in at the Watcher’s Grave transmat zone, jump on your sparrow, and head north. You’ll see Calus’s golden barge floating above the landscape ahead. Climb aboard and look for Xur hanging out near the edge of one side.

What Is Xur Selling?

Unfortunately for veterans but perhaps fortunate for New Light players, Xur’s entire haul this weekend consists of Year One Exotics. Your weapon from Xur this week is an oldie but a goodie: Prometheus Lens. The Exotic trace rifle fires a powerful Solar beam, and if you want a fun Solar weapon to use for Zavala’s seasonal Strike missions to earn the Buzzard ritual gun, the new shader, and the new emblem, Prometheus Lens isn’t a bad choice.

If Xur’s wares aren’t compelling, you can always roll the dice on the expensive Fated Engram he brings with him. 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 and you want it sooner rather than later, it can be a good deal–starting with the Season of Dawn, all Exotic Engrams are Fated Engrams, but you’ll have to level up your Season Pass or wait for a random drop to get some. 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 13-17)

• Prometheus Lens (Exotic trace rifle)
• Young Ahamkara’s Spine (Exotic Hunter gauntlets)
• Hallowfire Heart (Exotic Titan chest armor)
• Wings of Sacred Dawn (Exotic Warlock chest armor)

Prometheus Lens

There was a time when Prometheus Lens was a beastly Crucible weapon that needed nerfing. These days, it’s still a handy trace rifle that can do some serious damage from long distances, thanks to its perfectly straight laser trajectory. It fires a Solar beam that creates an expanding heat field on whatever you hit, which grows larger the longer you hold down the beam to do more damage. Landing kills with Prometheus Lens gives the gun ammo from reserves, too, so the more havoc you wreak, the longer the beam will last.

Young Ahamkara’s Spine (Hunter)

If you like Tripmine Grenades, you’ll love Young Ahamkara’s Spine. The gauntlets increase your tripmines’ duration and blast radius, which can make them extremely deadly–and great for setting traps in the Crucible. You can also get your grenades back faster with the gauntlets, since any ability kills will give you Tripmine Grenade energy.

Stats:

• Mobility: 10
• Resilience: 3
• Recovery: 11
• Discipline: 10
• Intellect: 6
• Strength: 6
• Total: 46

Hallowfire Heart (Titan)

Titans get to set a lot of things on fire with Hallowfire Heart. The Exotic chest armor has a simple function: It improves the recharge rate of all your Solar abilities–especially when your Super is fully charged. Go forth and burn the bad guys down.

Stats:

• Mobility: 8
• Resilience: 7
• Recovery: 10
• Discipline: 6
• Intellect: 12
• Strength: 6
• Total: 49

Wings of Sacred Dawn (Warlock)

Now that Solar subclasses have been updated, flying around as a Warlock is a much more viable strategy than it has been in the past. Wings of Sacred Dawn feed into that plan, since the chest armor buffs you as you soar through the air. When airborne, aiming down sights causes you to hover in place briefly, where you get increased damage resistance, increased accuracy, and reduced flinch. You can also extend the effect by landing weapon hits.

Stats:

• Mobility: 14
• Resilience: 6
• Recovery: 7
• Discipline: 6
• Intellect: 12
• Strength: 6
• Total: 51

Cliff Bleszinski wants to create again, whether that means making a new video game or indulging in his passion for writing and drawing. The former design director for Epic Games and co-founder of Boss Key Productions is one of gaming’s biggest and most recognizable names, known for his role in the development of Unreal and Gears of War.

“I need to create,” Bleszinski tweeted. “I miss it. I don’t know what it will be, writing, drawing, maybe a game, but, lord, since I was a kid I loved doing it and I need to do SOMETHING again soon. The itch is back. No promises to those of you who care. But it is soooo freeing to make, well, stuff.

“And no, I’m not going to stream or be a [You]’tuber. I’m friggin 44. C’mon, man.”

Bleszinski departed Epic in 2012 after 20 years at the company, before going on to co-found Boss Key. The studio released Lawbreakers, a multiplayer first-person shooter, in 2017, but the game’s positive critical reception wasn’t enough to help it gain a healthy player base, so the servers were shut down in September 2018. After this, Boss Key launched the battle royale shooter Radical Heights in April 2018, but the company closed its doors soon after, with Bleszinski describing the game as “too little too late.”

Since then, Bleszinski has stepped away from the gaming industry, getting involved in one of his other passions: theatre. He was an investor/producer for the play Hadestown, which won eight Tony awards, including Best Musical, and also co-produced another Broadway play, a new version of Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” Aside from this, Bleszinski has invested in multiple restaurants and is planning on writing a memoir about his time in the games industry.

If he does make another game, Bleszinski says he doesn’t want to run his own company again. “I’ll tell y’all one thing–I will NEVER be a CEO again. I wasn’t that good at it and it made me miserable. Some creatives can do it, I cannot.”

Don’t expect to hear about a new game from him anytime soon, though. The Gears of War creator later clarified his earlier tweets, saying, “Haha literally just had a call with my agent from the video game space as he was driving to downtown LA for The Game Awards and realized that tweet is going to cause him to be inundated with questions there. To be clear, I’m just loving…writing…right now.”

Capcom has released a new demo for the remake of Resident Evil 2, titled R.P.D. Demo. It’s available to download now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and includes a well-timed reference to the upcoming release of Resident Evil 3.

The demo is the same as the one-shot demo released prior to Resident Evil 2’s launch back in January, except the 30-minute time limit has been removed so you can explore Racoon City’s police station at your own pace. However, there is one key difference in the form of a creepy Easter egg.

Players investigating the front entrance of the R.P.D. in the latest demo have reported hearing Nemesis shouting “STARS.” Nemesis is, of course, the popular antagonist of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, which Capcom announced earlier this week is also getting the remake treatment. Resident Evil 3 takes place prior to and during the events of Resident Evil 2, so Nemesis would have been pursuing Jill Valentine at the same time Leon and Claire were both in Racoon City. It’s a very cool Easter egg, especially considering this week’s reveal, and is something Capcom really didn’t have to do–so it’s easy to appreciate that they did.

The remake of Resident Evil 3 is set to launch on April 3, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It also comes packaged with Resident Evil Resistance, an asymmetric multiplayer game which, among other things, stars a guy called Martin Sandwich.