A Year of Rain, a new RTS that calls back memories of old-school RTS games like WarCraft 3, is now available on PC in early access.
A fantasy RTS with base building, cinematic cut-scenes, and a “strong focus” on hero units, A Year of Rain seems to be building on the elements that PC gamers of a certain age will fondly remember from WarCraft 3 and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. While other games such as StarCraft II and the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series have used these elements, this style of RTS seems to have been largely dormant for several years. As such, A Year of Rain feels a bit like a dose of nostalgia.
Alongside these old-school elements and the multi-faction campaign are more modern-day ideas such as a fully cooperative story and 2v2 multiplayer modes, including the upcoming asymmetric “Against All Odds” mode which pits two heroes against two entire armies.
Today has been declared Stranger Things day–it’s the date that Will Byers was first taken into the Upside Down in the first season, back in 1983–and as part of the celebrations, we now have a title for the first episode of season 4.
The front page of the episode’s script has been shared on the show’s official Instagram and Twitter, revealing the name–Chapter 1: The Hellfire Club. The episode is penned by series creators The Duffer Brothers, but we’re not yet sure who will direct the first episode back. The post contains a short caption: “We’re starting a club. Wanna join?”
What does the name mean? The term “Hellfire Club” is associated with several exclusive clubs across Britain and Ireland in the 1700s, which were generally secretive and often devoted to immoral acts. Whether or not the Stranger Things kids are aware of the connotations of this name are not yet clear, of course, but you can bet that the Duffer Brothers are.
Three blooper reels for Stranger Things were also released today, so it’s been a big day for fans of the series. Back in October we got our first tease of the next season, and more recently we found out that it’ll consist of eight episodes, which will start filming in January 2020.
The new game update, 1.14, includes various improvements to help fix problems that caused Red Dead Redemption 2 to crash if users had anti-virus software installed.
The Rockstar Games Launcher, meanwhile, has received an update as well. With the update applied, players should no longer experience as many crashes when booting the launcher.
GameSpot tested the new Red Dead Redemption 2 update and founded that it seemed to work. In our test, the game hasn’t crashed since applying the update. These are just the latest updates for Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, as an earlier one was released on November 5.
Red Dead Redemption 2 PC players have also reported issues related to audio and FPS, but there is no word yet on when fixes may be delivered for these issues.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available on PC through Rockstar’s own launcher and the Epic Games Store, while the Western will come to Steam in December.
Did these updates improve the Red Dead Redemption 2 experience on PC for you? Let us know in the comments below!
It’s going to be a while before we get another season of Stranger Things, with season 4 set to start shooting in January 2020, and will premiere in the summer at the earliest. We’ve already gotten our first little tease of what we’re likely to see when the series eventually returns, but after a great season three many fans will be eager for any new Stranger Things content they can get their hands on.
Thankfully, the Stranger Things YouTube account has delivered today, posting blooper reels for all three seasons for us to enjoy . Don’t expect any revelations about process here, or deep insights into the personal lives of the characters, or hints towards future seasons here–it’s a lot of flubbed lines, things falling down, and footage of kids dancing. It’s all very charming, and a great reminder of how important the cast’s natural chemistry is to the series’ success.
The season 1 blooper reel is a flashback to a younger cast, and is by far the shortest.
Here’s the season 2 blooper reel, where you can check out a lot of the cast’s dance moves.
The blooper reel for the show’s third season has a stronger emphasis on flubbed lines (albeit still with some dancing), and is a bit longer overall. It shows how well the cast plays off each other behind the scenes, and hints at the camaraderie and friendship that have built up between them over three seasons of filming. Of particular note is David Harbour’s hilarious inability to deliver the line “it’s your grandma” without cracking up.
Today is Stranger Things Day–November 6, 1983 was the date on which Will Byers disappeared into the Upside Down, and the Blooper Reels have been released to celebrate (or commemorate). If you’re hungry for more behind-the-scenes content, here are 15 on-set photos released shortly after Stranger Things 3 debuted. It’s also worth checking out our list of season 3’s best Easter eggs.
Yes, Kingdom Hearts 3 has a wildly convoluted story, just like other games in the series. But the Disney and Pixar worlds are wonderful, the characters ooze charm, and the combat is a fast-paced spectacle. Despite releasing earlier this year, Kingdom Hearts 3 will be only $15 at Target on Black Friday weekend (Nov. 28-30).
With the Shadowkeep expansion to Destiny 2, developer Bungie made it possible to reach all-new heights in terms of players’ overall Power level–the measure of a Guardian’s strength based on their equipment. The addition of the Seasonal Artifact in the current season allows you to keep climbing beyond the gear Power cap of 960. Now, one player has reached another Power milestone, one that has some serious implications for Destiny 2’s ongoing story.
This week, streamer Bagel4k pushed his Power level up to 999 thanks to the Seasonal Artifact, which allows you to keep gaining in Power endlessly by accruing experience points from completing activities and turning in bounties. That’s impressive from a sheer gameplay standpoint–it takes 1.5 million experience points to gain one point of Power from the artifact, and the push to get your gear up from 950 to 960 is so tough, Bungie is patching the game later this week to make that final climb a little easier. (For context, it takes 100,000 points to unlock each new level of Bungie’s new Season system.) But 999 Power is also very significant to the story of the Forsaken expansion’s endgame area, the Dreaming City.
For context, the Dreaming City is currently cursed to continually repeat a three-week timeloop, thanks to the machinations of a powerful Hive leader called Savathun. Despite completing the Last Wish raid in the Dreaming City and its high-level dungeon, Shattered Throne, Guardians so far have been unable to break the curse. But there was some suggestion that hitting 999 Power would be the secret to ending the Dreaming City’s torment. According to one of Destiny 2’s lore books, Truth To Power, reaching 999 Power and completing Shattered Throne would allow players to finally kill Savathun’s daughter, Dul Incaru, and end the curse once and for all.
As Bagel4k discovered, however, that’s apparently not the case–at least, not yet. Despite Bagel4k’s efforts, the curse endures. Bungie acknowledged the situation in a blog post titled “On the Power Climb,” which not only pays some tribute to Bagel4k, it functions as a story point as well.
The blog post mixes Bungie’s voice in acknowledging Bagel4k with some secret messages from Savathun herself. Though there isn’t much in the way of details, the post suggests that perhaps Guardians’ efforts to break the curse are actually part of Savathun’s whole overall plan. That’s sort of Savathun’s whole deal–she embodies an ideal of cunning. And the lore suggests that everything players have done in the Dreaming City up to now hasn’t actually helped to stop Savathun, but were actually actions manipulated to help her achieve her goals of gaining ultimate power. All the enemies we’ve been killing over and over in the Dreaming City have been feeding Savathun, and that’s what the timeloop curse is all about.
Bungie has said that the four seasons that make up the third year of Destiny 2’s content will tell an ongoing story that started with Shadowkeep, but most of the threads from Year Two–concerning the Dreaming City, the entities known as the Nine, the enigmatic new character called the Drifter, and more–are still hanging. Shadowkeep advanced things a bit in a different direction concerning the Hive, but it all goes back to Savathun. We can guess from Bagel4k’s exploits that Bungie isn’t quite ready for the story of the Dreaming City to end, nor to tell us what it all means, just yet.
The third episode of Vader Immortal, the Oculus Quest VR experience, is going to recreate the experience of facing off against Darth Vader in lightsaber combat. Previous episodes have brought you face to face with the Sith Lord, but now for the first time in the series you’ll be able to battle against him with your own weapon.
A new post on the official Star Wars website digs into the final chapter of Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series. The post discusses how the game–which was written by David S. Goyer (Terminator: Dark Fate, The Dark Knight, Blade II) and is considered part of the Star Wars canon–will wrap up.
The final chapter, which will release on November 21, follows on from the first two episodes, which saw the playable character (a Force-sensitive smuggler) get captured by Vader and learn how to wield their Force powers. This time players will be trying to prevent Vader from activating a powerful artifact that will destroy life on Mustafar; to do so, you’ll have to break into Vader’s castle and fight him.
Because of your new Force powers, you’ll be able to pull objects towards yourself, including Stormtrooper blasters. You’ll also be able to incite battles between Vader’s drone army and an Imperial battalion. And then, at the game’s conclusion, you’ll face off against Vader; but because the events here are canon, don’t expect him to die. You’ve previously been able to fight Darth Vader in both the first and second Star Wars: The Force Unleashed games, but those are now non-canon–this one counts.
South Park’s 23rd season may not be over, but the era of Tegridy Farms may well be finished in “Season Finale.” This episode ties together several story threads as the town gets fed up with Tegridy and throws Randy in jail.
We’ll have our review of “Season Finale” up a bit later tonight. Until then, let us know what you thought of the new episode in the comments below.
Deep Down was first announced in 2013 as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, but we haven’t seen or heard much from it since. The last news we heard was all the way back in 2015, when producer Yoshinori Ono said that the game would look “completely different” from the initial trailer the next time we saw it, and that the game was aiming for a very realistic experience.
But the game has not been seen since, beyond a trademark renewal in 2017 that got fans’ hopes up. Now, Ono has spoken about the game for the first time in years, and it sounds like the game is not being worked on, but could theoretically still happen.
In an interview with Eurogamer that primarily focuses on Street Fighter V (which he is also executive producer on), Ono briefly discussed the long-dormant dragon hunting game, admitting that he still has some hope that the game will be completed one day.
“The original team is clearly no longer together at this point, but people might have noticed that we’ve kept the trademark registered, and it’s not been completely given up on,” he told Eurogamer. “Every year we examine titles we’re doing in future, and we bring up projects to approve and move forward. There’s not much I can say about it, but if you’ve noticed we’ve kept the trademark it means we haven’t given up on the title completely.”
When asked about the TGS trailer from 2014, Ono said that the team had “the concept developed a bit further than that.”
This isn’t confirmation that Deep Down will still happen, but it suggests that the game’s eventual release remains a possibility. It certainly wouldn’t be the first major PlayStation title to take its time releasing: The Last Guardian was first revealed seven years before its eventual release, while Until Dawn was announced as a PlayStation 3 title five years before its eventual PS4 release. Then there’s Shenmue III, which will release on November 19, a full 18 years after Shenmue II.
