The Season of the Undying might be over in Destiny 2, but that doesn’t mean all the seasonal rewards you earned but didn’t claim are gone. In fact, with a little finesse, you can get an Exotic engram from last season’s rewards right now–even if you claimed it already. And thanks to recent changes with the new season, the free engram all but guarantees a new Exotic for your characters.
To claim the Exotic from the Season of the Undying season pass, you’ll have to have surpassed Level 98. As Redditor SecretAgentB pointed out, the engram seems to be available thanks to a minor glitch on Bungie’s website. Bungie’s page for the Season of the Undying season pass allows you to view your progress through that season and claim any rewards you might have neglected to grab before Tuesday’s start of the Season of Dawn. But even if you claimed the Exotic engram for level 98 on the pass, you can still get it again.
First, head to bungie.net/7/en/Seasons/PreviousSeason, which displays your progress through the season pass. A dropdown menu at the top lets you choose which character’s pass to see, and if you page through the rewards, you’ll spot any you haven’t claimed. Page to the end to find the Exotic engram at level 98 and click it. That’ll pull up a pop-up window with a button marked “Claim,” which will allow you to instantly claim the engram for the selected character (but no other character).
Choose wisely which character you want to claim the engram with, as you can only do this once per account. If you’re hoping to get one of the three new pieces of Exotic armor from the Season of Dawn, you’ll want to pick a character who already has all or most of the Exotics available from the random loot pool. SecretAgentB’s original post also suggested you be logged into the game when you use the glitch; we’re not sure it’s strictly necessary, but better safe than sorry. Thanks to a new change with Season of Dawn, all Exotic engrams are now Fated engrams, which means they’ll only give you Exotics you don’t have for that character until you’ve got everything (after that, they start dropping random Exotic armor so you can get different rolls). If you pick a character who’s missing a lot of Exotics, you’re more likely to unlock something from past seasons.
While it’s not a glitch, this page is also handy if you’ve got seasonal rewards from Undying that you never bothered to grab. Seasonal armor on the pass defaults to your current gear level, making this a useful way to shore up any armor slots that are lagging behind the rest of your loadout and boost your Power level up to the new cap of 960. If nothing else, grabbing those rewards and dismantling them will earn you materials and Glimmer you can use on other things in the game.
Click To Unmute
Restart Destiny 2 Season Of Dawn | GameSpot Live
Resident Evil 3 Remake Release Date & More From Sony’s State Of Play – GS News Update
With Black Friday in the rearview mirror, some of this year’s biggest discounts on consoles and console games are definitely behind us, but the same can’t be said for PC games. Sure, Steam held its annual Autumn Sale during Black Friday, but there are other digital game stores that tend to have even better prices. One such store is Fanatical, which just launched its own Winter Sale with hundreds of deals on digital game codes, many of which can be redeemed on Steam.
The Winter Sale is live now through January 3, but along with the main store sale, there will be 24-hour Star Deals going live every day until Christmas. These flash deals are only available for a day at a time and they tend to have some of the best discounts available online, so keep checking back to see what the latest game on sale is.
Some of the best deals available right now include two of this year’s biggest games, Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5, for $18 each. You’ll also find acclaimed strategy game Civilization VI for $15 as well as Monster Hunter World for $27. Newer games, like Borderlands 3 and The Outer Worlds, are both down to $52.79, although please note those must be redeemed through the Epic Games Store.
Be sure to check out some of our picks from Fanatical’s huge winter sale below. We’ve noted which platform the code can be redeemed at; the product listing will also indicate the appropriate store near the price. You can also see the full offering of games on sale at Fanatical.
Star deal
Best Winter Sale game deals
Click To Unmute
Resident Evil 3 Remake Release Date & More From Sony’s State Of Play – GS News Update
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
Best PlayStation 4 Games Of 2019
Sony is laying the groundwork for the next-generation PlayStation 5, but PS4 isn’t going quietly into that good night. The current console generation still has plenty of life left in it, and it showed its strength this year with a killer lineup of big games.
Much of the PS4 lineup kept pace with PC and Xbox One, with multiplatform games performing well on Sony’s console. The company also further opened its cross-play functionality throughout 2019, finally letting PS4 players game alongside other platforms so that you’re no longer bound by console loyalty in many cases. Meanwhile, Sony put out some first-party exclusives this year, including the open-world zombie survival game Days Gone and the divisive but ambitious Death Stranding.
Sony heads into the new year a strong market leader, with several more big exclusives and a new console launch on the horizon. Before we look ahead to 2020, it’s time for one more look back at our favorite PS4 games from 2019.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
The current console generation may be winding down for PS4 and Xbox One, but as 2019 proved, the Switch is just hitting its stride. Nintendo’s hybrid system has been on a veritable roll since it launched back in March 2017, and this past year has been another strong one for the platform, with a swathe of great titles arriving over the last 12 months.
And that’s to say nothing of the third-party support Switch received in 2019. The hybrid console continues to be a fertile home for indie developers, and this year brought another batch of stellar indie games to the platform, including the Zelda/Crypt of the NecroDancer crossover Cadence of Hyrule and the hilarious Untitled Goose Game. And despite Switch’s technical limitations, major third-parties continued to bring their titles to the system, even some that would not have seemed possible just a few years ago, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Overwatch, and Dragon Quest XI.
All of that is to say 2019 has been a great year for Switch owners. With so many highlights to choose from, narrowing down a list of this year’s standout titles has been difficult, but the GameSpot staff have rounded up our picks for the best Switch games of 2019 below.
Over the next few days, we will offer further insight into why we picked the 10 games we did for the best of 2019, with each article going live on-site in order of the games’ release dates. Then, on December 17, we will reveal which of the nominees gets to take home the coveted title of GameSpot’s Best Game of 2019. So be sure to come back then for the big announcement, and in the meantime, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub.
With Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, From Software proved it still excels at making incredibly difficult action games that push you to be better. Though Sekiro is built with similar storytelling beats and mechanics as those found in From Software’s Soulsborne titles, the game is an altogether different beast to tackle–curating mentally taxing (but highly rewarding) combat encounters that are defined by both stealth and hyper-aggression. Combat is the best aspect of Sekiro, but the game has a lot more going for it, all of which helps make it one of the best gaming experiences of 2019.
Sekiro’s setting, Ashina, is loosely based on the Sengoku period of Japan. It’s a well-crafted world, one that’s supported by its detailed level design and storytelling. Save for a few areas, all of Ashina’s many locations are directly connected, allowing you to seamlessly traverse most of the map without the need for fast travel. This further makes Sekiro’s in-game world feel like an actual place–one its roster of characters, some of whom are friendly and many of which are not, call home. Lore isn’t given to you as an info-dump either; instead, the game encourages you to seek out the answers to its many questions by tying expositional history to useful in-game items or weapons. Your growing strength is directly tied to your growing knowledge of the world, and vice versa.
Sekiro’s biggest strength–even more so than its stellar combat–is that everything about the game so seamlessly fits together. The mentally taxing but deeply satisfying combat encounters work because they fit with the overall theme of the game: that, for better and worse, the people of Ashina are all connected with one another. Every challenging duel is a deeply personal affair as you learn how your opponent attacks and defends, and your victories slowly affect the growing conflict between Ashina and the invading Interior Ministry. Your deaths are marked by the spread of dragonrot in the allies you meet and befriend, so your failure to help your friends has a literal impact on their physical health and well-being. The game’s story doesn’t outright tell you that your actions have consequences; you experience the cost of your failure first-hand through the gameplay.
All of Sekiro’s systems interweave together in this way. Even the soundtrack matches with the movements of certain enemies to better inform you of when your foe has entered a more aggressive phase of combat.
Alone, Sekiro’s story and its individual mechanics make it seem like another Dark Souls or Bloodborne, and given the shared developer, it’s a fair comparison. But Sekiro breaks away from what From Software has created with its Soulsborne games (if only a little) by forcing the player to fight with only one weapon, follow a more unambiguous story, and endure an emotional component to failure that hits almost as hard as losing in-game progression. It creates a more cohesive whole, where all parts of the game are working in tandem to tell one extraordinary tale of a single shinobi risking the survival of an entire nation to save the boy entrusted to his care–all of which is why Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is one of GameSpot’s best games of 2019.
Click To Unmute
Resident Evil 3 Remake Release Date & More From Sony’s State Of Play – GS News Update
Over the next few days, we will offer further insight into why we picked the 10 games we did for the best of 2019, with each article going live on- site in order of the games’ release dates. Then, on December 17, we will reveal which of the nominees gets to take home the coveted title of GameSpot’s Best Game of 2019. So be sure to come back then for the big announcement, and in the meantime, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub.
Love is a hard thing to get right in video games–especially when that love isn’t presented as an RPG romance option or a dating sim, but rather a consistent undercurrent that elevates every aspect of the game in which you find it. There’s little love between Amicia and her brother Hugo at the beginning of A Plague Tale: Innocence. Hugo has been hidden away from his sister due to his illness for the entirety of his five short years of life, but all of that changes when their home is attacked and it falls on Amicia to save the two of them as best she can.
It’s a common sentiment in video games that escort missions are the worst, but leading Hugo through the threatening, plague-ridden countryside of France in pursuit of a cure is a thrilling, beautiful, and heartwarming experience. The performances from the main characters are extraordinarily affecting, whether it’s when Hugo innocently asks during a frantic escape if he and his sister are going to die, when he finds flowers and puts them in Amicia’s hair and tells her they’re pretty, or when Amicia has to grapple with the devastation of needing to kill to protect herself and her brother. The genuine affection that develops between the two, particularly when things take a turn for the worst, is infectious and believable. When Hugo is in trouble you feel Amicia’s panic and desperation, and your developing love for him makes seeing the story through feel essential and meaningful.
Click To Unmute
How A Plague Tale: Innocence Manipulates Your Decisions
Resident Evil 3 Remake Release Date & More From Sony’s State Of Play – GS News Update
The strength of A Plague Tale’s characters feed into the interesting ways you can engage in its combat encounters which evolve alongside your character development and progress. To great effect, each encounter is more of a puzzle than a toe-to-toe fight. Amicia is a glass cannon who is only able to sneak by her vastly stronger foes early on, but as the game wears on, her abilities become more diverse and unlock extremely satisfying options for combat. The swarms of rats, in particular, work both to establish the horrific sense of place and also become the most interesting tool to use in combat. Combat arenas gradually become more complicated, and mastering your abilities and knowledge of how to manipulate light–a rat’s worst enemy–to your advantage is necessary to paving the way forward.
The effectiveness of A Plague Tale: Innocence’s narrative is due to the sympathetic, unwilling heroes at its heart.
The effectiveness of A Plague Tale: Innocence’s narrative is due to the sympathetic, unwilling heroes at its heart. Amicia and Hugo aren’t adventurers. They aren’t trying to solve a crime, take on a fabled adversary, or become warriors–they’re victims of circumstance. Underdogs. Vulnerable to the violent, grisly world around them. As are the people who choose to join them. That isn’t to say they aren’t clever or bold or brave, but it means their fear is more palpable and their victories and escapes more triumphant. The allies you encounter are empathetic and learning about their backstories informs the harsh world around you. Having younger companions rely on you, particularly in the case of Hugo, enhances the tension in combat encounters, the fear of your environment where staying in the dark for too long puts you at risk of being devoured by rats, and the mental stakes if you fail in an attempt to be stealthy.
A Plague Tale: Innocence weaves a beautiful story about resilience and victory in the face of unbelievable odds, not out of arrogance or the desire to best an enemy, but because it is the only choice Amicia and Hugo can make. The quiet moments of discussion with Lucas and your ragtag group of collected wards and allies are an important contrast to the frantic and terrifying world that lies beyond. Between violent guards, merciless rats, and an almost unrelenting darkness, it’s a game that should feel oppressive to play–but Hugo’s optimistic naivety and the love he shares with Amicia are so touching that there is always a light to be found in the darkness.
Click To Unmute
Resident Evil 3 Remake Release Date & More From Sony’s State Of Play – GS News Update
The Game Awards is just a day away, airing live on December 12 at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET. Show host Geoff Keighley has announced a brand-new digital consumer festival that lets you play a handful of demos on Steam for free.
The Game Festival is billed as the “first-of-its-kind,” a digital consumer event as part of a pilot program with Steam. For a limited 48-hour window, you can get your hands on 13 demos before they’re removed from Steam. These include gruesome platformer Carrion, cute skateboarding title SkateBIRD, wholesome adventure game Spiritfarer, and more.
The Game Festival runs from Thursday, December 12 at 10 AM PT to Saturday, December 14 at 10 AM PT. Some of the available demos to play can be viewed below.
The Game Festival Free Steam Demos
“Let’s face it: Not everyone can attend a physical trade show or consumer event,” Keighley said in a press release. “The Game Festival is designed from the ground-up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”
