Author: Trafficblast

The Xbox Store is constantly offering new deals on a weekly basis, but this week’s round of game discounts will be exciting for any fighting game aficionados. In celebration of Evo 2019, the annual fighting game tournaments held August 2-4 in Las Vegas, the Xbox Store is offering huge discounts on some of the event’s biggest games, like Dragon Ball FighterZ and SoulCalibur VI. The following deals are available through Monday, August 5.

If you’ve yet to pick up Dragon Ball FighterZ, the anime-inspired fighting game is only $15 USD (was $60), with its FighterZ edition on sale for $38 (was $95) and its Ultimate Edition marked down to $44 (was $110). The Dragon Ball FighterZ Fighter Pass is also discounted to $19.24 from $35. Tekken 7 is also majorly discounted right now, with its standard edition selling for $20 (was $50), its Rematch edition selling for $40 (was $80), and its Ultimate edition selling for just $50 (was $100). Alternatively, you can also pick up Tekken 7’s season passes separately, as both passes are also on sale.

You can also grab SoulCalibur VI for super cheap–the standard edition is marked down to $19.79 (was $60), while the Deluxe edition is now $36 (was $90). Other highlights from the Evo sale include the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up bundle for only $10 (was $20), Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite – Deluxe Edition for $19.79 (was $60), and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection for $20 (was $40).

If you’ve already got all the fighting games you need, it’s worth checking out all the DLC marked down as part of the sale, too. There are a ton of discounted characters, costumes, music packs, and more, so now’s a good time to grab various upgrades for any titles you own.

See all Xbox One game deals

Best Xbox One game deals | 7/29 – 8/5

After a month of exclusive new stuff, our IGN First with Control

is coming to an end. But before it does, we thought we’d ask one more favour of Remedy Entertainment – getting them to answer your questions.

Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen and Thomas Puha assembled to answer some of the IGN community’s queries about the game – you can see what they had to say below. And if you missed any of our Control coverage, it’s all in one handy spot for you to check back on. Onto the next month!

Dangatv asks: Control looks like the natural progression from your last 3 games, what game play aspect are you most proud of and can’t wait for the public to experience?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): The open-ended nature of the world. It is a very different approach compared to our previous games. The players can discover new missions as they explore the Oldest House, and choose freely what to focus on at any given time. But there’s a bit of extra responsibility they have to take on as well since we are not going to hold their hands. It’s going to be exciting to see how people will receive this new approach.

dbl14 asks: Is the story of Control built to feel satisfying as a self-contained narrative? As a huge fan of Alan Wake, I’m all for open questions at the end of a game, but I’d at least like enough closure that I won’t feel I need a sequel to get the whole experience. Thanks!

Sam Lake (Creative Director): The main story of Control is Jesse’s journey into this world to find answers to the nightmarish events in her childhood. This story has a beginning, middle and end in Control. It is self-contained. Is everything neatly wrapped up and explained? No, definitely not. This is one story told in a world full of stories. There are other, smaller, self-contained stories in the game, and there are threads that are not wrapped up. There are elements in the backstory of both Jesse and the Bureau you will need to try to piece together from the clues you find. There are the stories of the other characters involved that play key roles in the game. Their stories you will need to look for and puzzle out to understand what has led to the current crisis. This is just one chapter in the bigger story of the Bureau. Many previous chapters have led to this point, untold so far, and after this the Bureau is in a new situation that will lead to new stories.

phillyblunt90000 asks: Will there be modes separate from the story like challenge, survival, or time trials?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There are no challenge or survival modes, but let’s see what we’ll do post launch. Our team is really small so we have to carefully choose what we can do. Whatever alternate game modes we could do, they’d have to fit into the world of Control.

There are features in the game like “Bureau Alerts”, which pop up from time to time requiring the player to go to a certain areas of the Oldest House and clear Hiss or fight a mini boss in a certain time. The Director’s help is always required throughout the Oldest House.

Reoyon asks: How much inspiration was taken from the SCP foundation?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): It definitely was an inspiration, but it was important for us to do our own thing. Control’s lore is a complex accumulation of ideas and concepts that we’ve come up with through the years, and as usual, a lot of it is drawn from pop culture – SCP definitely being one of them.

Control: 11 New Screenshots

Reoyon also asks: How accomplished do your artists feel after referring so many different types of vistas inside The Oldest House? Did you originally plan for the game to have such a wide variety and scope?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): We wanted to have a sense of “being trapped” in a building with a supernatural threat, which progresses into a discovery of a hidden strange world. It’s like John McClane trapped in Wonderland.

The Oldest House was always intended to be a vast and complex world, with areas that are more “volatile” or taken over by a mind-bending phenomenon. So the artists had a lot to play with, but usually they started by establishing the environment with a brutalistic art direction and then mess it up. I’d like to think they enjoyed it.

ManInBlack4458 asks: New game plus? Photo mode?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There will be a Photo mode post launch. Once we’ve had a bit of a break from shipping the game, catch our breath, we’ll get to work on that.

There won’t be a New Game Plus mode. It’s something we’ve talked about, but unfortunately there are certain game design constraints, technical reasons and simply a lack of resources as to why we cannot do that.

ProbablyChinese asks: In regards to the writing, what sort of balance did you find between explaining strange things to the player (for example having Jesse exposit) and letting the surrealism speak for itself?

Sam Lake (Creative Director): Creating Control, we wanted to create a deep, mysterious world where finding the answers can be an exciting challenge in itself. Rather than force-feed the answers to you, or even freely hand everything to you on a platter, we wanted the thrill of detective work to play a role. Sometimes there are very few clues to form a theory of a strange aspect of the world, sometimes there’s a lot, but it’s in fragments to be found and pieced together through exploration. This is not to say that things are random or that there are no answers, quite the contrary, a lot of effort was put into creating this world and making pieces, as weird as they are, fit together.

Jesse as the narrator guides you at times, but she often operates based on instinct, she senses things, or is supernaturally shown things, but that doesn’t mean she understands their meaning. She is smart and she forms her own theories, but they are not necessarily the whole picture or the one and only truth. The Bureau is actively trying to apply scientific analysis on things that are beyond them. On many things they have formed a theory that might help you, or sometimes they have multiple conflicting theories for you to pick and choose from. Clearly, based on the Hiss invasion, the Bureau has failed or is failing to understand and deal with the dangerous forces they encounter. And as you dig deeper, you’ll discover that this is not the only time they have failed, only the latest.

thelastspartan87 asks: Did Control draw any inspiration from Psi Ops: the Mindgate Conspiracy?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): I loved that game! Not directly, but many of us remember that game fondly and especially its use of physics. We’ve been almost surprised now that Control is done just how much fun it is to mess around with the physics, throwing stuff around and and seeing the enviroments reacting to the action.

(Lets not forget Max Payne 2 was one of the first games having proper physics!)

Coreyahno asks: Will Control support Dolby Atmos?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): No.

Charlie Heath asks: How does the game’s checkpoint system work specifically? In other words, what kind of progress (and how much of it) is lost, when you die and respawn at a “control point”?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): As with any game you make, that has changed a lot as the game development progresses. You start out with a plan which already has gone through many iterations and as you make the game, things change for many reasons be it technological, resources or just the overall game design changing.

We always had “Control Points” in the Oldest House, which act as checkpoints and fast travel points. Originally, they were very few and far between. Control was always going to be a challenging game and we wanted to make sure players would be careful in exploring because if you died, there would be a price to pay. Its okay to be challenging, but not (too) frustrating.

Of course, as development progresses and you watch playtests, certain things became obvious. Like how long it takes to get back into a fight from a checkpoint or to wherever you were in the mission before you died. Another thing that impacts the experience is how long the load times are, do you have to re-equip your mods etc. You wont really know that until the final stretch of development when you have the entire game together.

So in the end, we added quite a few more Control Points/checkpoints as we watched playtests and realized it was just taking too long for players to get back into the action. It’s a difficult one, you want to stray true to the game design principles and at the end of the development, you get a lot of feedback and playthroughs and start questioning yourself a bit: “are we doing the right things?” It’s a challenge, but we’ve said Control is going to be a challenging game, so…

Joe Skrebels (yes the author of this article, what of it?) asks: How long will the game/story be?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): One of the questions we get asked the most.

Its difficult to give an accurate answer because it really depends on the player and how meticulously you play the game. Control is just not a linear game, though you can just focus on the campaign missions.

On average we’ve seen it takes 10-15 hours to get through the campaign, but if you know replay it a few times and know what you are doing, of course you can get through a lot faster. Some players have taken 20 hours when they explore, do every side-mission, find lore collectibles, complete the Bureau Alerts and so on.

We’ll have two expansions and other content following launch that will increase that playthrough time, but main story campaign will be within 10-15 hours.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s UK Deputy Editor, and he’s extremely into the idea of John McClane in Wonderland. Follow him on Twitter.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is about to hit Season 10, with a start date set for this Thursday, August 1. Developer Epic Games has been releasing Season 10 teasers this week, which have suggested that some sort of time-related hijinks were about to unfold as part of the big seasonal changeover event. And sure enough, a leaked trailer for Season 10 seems to hammer home what’s about to happen.

Today’s teaser, which is likely to be the final one, consists of a brief video clip where the Zero Point orb hovering over Loot Lake explodes. It turns out those are the opening moments of the Season 10 trailer, the full version of which has leaked, apparently via the Fortnite Brazil Twitter account. That video has since been removed but reshared online–watch it below–and it shows the explosion send the character who was fleeing from it into a sort of wormhole.

As he floats through it, he sees the major elements and additions during the past year in Fortnite–the missile explosion, vaulted weapons, the introduction of Peely and other skins, seasonal events, and more. At the end, he falls back to the island map, only for the camera to pan out and reveal this is the moment just before the meteor’s impact that demolished Dusty Depot. As one of this week’s teasers pointed to, the location is still intact, at least for the time being.

Exactly how this pans out in-game is something we probably won’t know until the Season 10 update arrives tomorrow. But it seems as if we can expect Epic to essentially hit the undo button on many of the map changes that have taken place. That said, don’t expect everything to be the same–Epic’s reference to a “twist” and a peek at a modified version of the Drift skin suggest that things may not be exactly how you remember them.

Last week’s House of X #1 officially kicked off writer Jonathan Hickman’s grand plan for the X-Men franchise. But House of X itself is only telling half of the story. This week it’s joined by sister series Powers of X, a book that provides a wider view of the mutant race in both the past and future of the Marvel Universe.Read on for a breakdown of what happens in this first issue, how Powers of X connects to House of X and why the bright new future dawning for the mutant race may not last. And if you need a refresher, check out our recap of House of X #1.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Powers of X #1 and House of X #1!

Powers of X: What Does the Title Mean?

Both House of X and Powers of X have been shrouded in mystery from the start. In the case of Powers of X (which should be read as “Powers of Ten”), it’s not even been clear why Hickman chose this particular title. However, that mystery is answered within the first several pages of issue #1.

Powers of X is named very literally, following a mathematical approach to the X-Men timeline. The story begins in X^0, or Year One of the X-Men, as Xavier first conceives of his dream for peaceful human/mutant coexistence. It then jumps ahead ten years to X^1, the present-day Marvel Universe. From there, it moves ahead 100 years to X^2, a time when humans and mutants are more bitterly divided than ever. And finally, it ends at X^3, 1000 years later in a future where mutants have finally triumphed over man.

Year 1 – Charles Xavier’s Fateful Encounter

Issue #1 opens with a flashback to the very first encounter between Charles Xavier and Moira MacTaggert. Xavier is enjoying a pleasant summer day as he watches a fair and contemplates his dream for mutantkind. He and Moira begin a friendly chat, before Moira relays a strange prophecy based on a tarot card reading. Moira mentions The Magician, The Tower, The Devil and The Strong Man, the last of which she claims is Xavier himself. Moira seems to have a prescient knowledge of Xavier and his future, telling him “It’s not a dream if it’s real.”

Xavier then reads Moira’s mind, and is apparently shocked at what he finds within. Readers aren’t yet privy to what he learned, but Marvel previously teased this encounter as “the most important scene in X-Men history.” We’ll probably learn more in next week’s House of X #2, which is subtitled “The Curious Case of Moira X.”

Why is Moira behaving so differently in this scene? It probably has something to do with recent developments surrounding the character in the Marvel Universe. Following her death in 2001’s X-Men #108, Moira was resurrected in a 2010 storyline called Chaos War. In the process she became bonded to the spirit of Destiny, a mutant capable of seeing the future. Moira’s gold earrings in this scene may be a callback to Destiny’s golden mask, a subtle giveaway that she’s probably being influenced by Destiny. We’re guessing Destiny is able to travel through time and take control of Moira’s body whenever and wherever she chooses, hence why Moira knows so much about the future of a man she’s supposedly never met before.

Marvel’s Dawn of X relaunch Begins a New X-Men Era

Year 10 – Xavier and Magneto’s Secret Plot

Ten years later, Powers of X #1 links up with the events of House of X #1. We see Mystique and Toad arriving on Krakoa after their daring robbery of a Damage Control facility (a mission which left Sabretooth stuck in Fantastic Four custody). Mystique brings a thumb drive containing the stolen blueprints to Magneto, but she’s reluctant to hand it over without receiving some further form of payment. However, Xavier forcibly takes the drive, reminding Mystique that every resident of Krakoa must play their part in building a better world.

This scene only further reinforces our suspicions from House of X #1 that Xavier has taken a villainous turn. Since when does he condone theft, murder and intimidation?

It’s also worth pointing out that Xavier uses telekinesis to take the drive from Mystique – an ability he’s never had in the past. Is this a new ability granted by his upgraded Cerebro helmet, or is it a sign that this person isn’t actually Charles Xavier at all?

Year 100 – Mister Sinister Betrays Mutantkind

While the mutant race may be resurgent in the present-day Marvel Universe, this issue makes it clear that Xavier’s mutant nation is doomed to failure. In the world of X^3, the mutant population has again dwindled to a mere 10,000, the vast majority of which live off-world as allies of the Shi’ar Empire. Those few who remain on Earth are locked in a destructive war against the Man-Machine Supremacy and their leader, Nimrod the Lesser.

The supplemental pages fill in a lot of the missing history here. As tensions between Krakoa and the outside world grew during the mid-21st Century, Mister Sinister instituted a series of Martian breeding pits designed to create mutant super-soldiers using genes culled from various powerful X-Men. One of these mutants happens to be Rasputin, the Soulsword-wielding heroine seen on the cover. Rasputin has a combination of Quentin Quire’s telepathy, Colossus’ steel skin, Unus the Untouchable’s force field, Kitty Pryde’s intangibility and X-23’s healing factor. Rasputin is joined by Cardinal, a Nightcrawler-inspired mutant deemed a failure because of his pacifist nature, and a “black brain telepath” named Cylobel.

As readers learn, Sinister’s breeding pits ultimately collapsed, with each successive generation of chimeras more and more prone to failure. Ultimately, Krakoa itself was overwhelmed by outside threats. The X-Men discovered too late that Sinister had designed his pits to fail. He betrayed the mutant race and defected to the Man-Machine Supremacy (which they probably should have seen coming, given that Sinister isn’t actually a mutant). But Sinister got his just desserts, as he was quickly executed by his new “allies.”

As this new time period unfolds, Rasputin and Cardinal narrowly escape capture by the Sentinels, but Cylobel and another pacifist mutant named Percival aren’t so lucky. Cylobel is taken to Nimrod, who forces her into a device designed to obliterate every trace of her body except the information contained within her mind.

The good news is that the X-Men still exist in this dark future. Rasputin and Cardinal return to their home base on Asteroid K to meet with their teammates, including characters who look an awful lot like Wolverine, Magneto, Xorn and Groot (though this last character is probably a sentient fragment of Krakoa). Whether these X-Men are the originals or chimera creations like Rasputin remains to be seen. Wolverine also references “the old man,” suggesting Xavier himself may still be alive.

Year 1000 – The X-Men’s Ultimate Victory

This issue closes out 1000 years into the future of the Marvel Universe. Despite the dark future for mutantkind in X^2, by X^3 mutants have finally succeeded in becoming the dominant lifeform on Earth. In this era, Nimrod has evolved to become Nimrod the Greater. No longer a mutant-hunting Sentinel, Nimrod now exists as a living database holding the collective consciousness of all mutants. Nimrod works hand-in-hand with a blue-skinned psychic called The Librarian, a character who may be a distant descendant of Charles Xavier himself.

In this era, humans have been almost entirely wiped out, except for a small sample who now live as primitive savages inside a dome called The Preserve. The Preserve is designed as a monument to Homo sapiens and a reminder of the enemy that very nearly ended mutantkind.

For more on this X-Men relaunch, learn how to read Hickman’s X-Men run and then read our reviews for House of X #1 here and Powers of X #1 here.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s big 4.0 update has arrived, adding another DLC fighter to the roster–the Hero from Dragon Quest–and a few other new features to the game, such as an Online Tournament mode that will occasionally host special themed events and a new Spectate mode that lets you earn prizes for successfully predicting the winner. Alongside the update, Nintendo has quietly released a little Smash Ultimate freebie for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.

Right now, NSO members can download the Spirit Board Challenge Pack 1. The pack contains an assortment of helpful items for the game’s Spirit Board mode. You’ll receive the following:

• 1,500 Spirit Points
• 10 Shuffle All (reshuffles every Spirit on the board)
• 10 All Primaries (reshuffles the board with Primary Spirits)
• 10 All Supports (reshuffles the board with Support Spirits)

As previously mentioned, the Spirit Board Challenge Pack 1 is an exclusive offer for NSO subscribers. The Eshop notes the pack cannot be downloaded during a free trial for the service, so you need to have an active, paid membership in order to claim it. To download the pack, select the Eshop icon from Smash Ultimate’s main menu and you’ll see it listed beneath the game’s other downloadable content.

NSO subscriptions cost US $4 / £3.49 / AU $6 for one month, US $8 / £7 / AU $12 for three months, and US $20 / £18 / AU $30 for one year. Nintendo also offers an annual Family Membership, which runs for US $35 / £31.49 / AU $55 and covers up to eight Nintendo Accounts across multiple systems. Along with online play, subscribers get access to other special offers, such as the game voucher program (although your last day to purchase vouchers is today, July 31), and some free titles such as Tetris 99 and the Switch NES library. Those who purchase a 12-month individual or family membership will also receive an exclusive set of gear for Splatoon 2.

Speaking of Splatoon 2, Nintendo is offering a free set of gear for the game via My Nintendo. The batch costs 100 Platinum Points and includes the following four items: Gray FA-11 Bomber, Brown FA-11 Bomber, Red V-Neck Limited Tee, and Green V-Neck Limited Tee. The gear set will be available on My Nintendo until February 1, 2020.

After five blockbuster movies that have grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide, the Bourne universe is making the jump to the small screen with Treadstone, a globe-trotting, time period-hopping action series that will explore the titular black ops organization that created Jason Bourne and numerous other CIA assassins.Premiering this fall on USA network, Treadstone “explores the origin story and present-day actions of the infamous covert program that uses behavior modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season of Treadstone follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously ‘awakened’ to resume their deadly missions.” The plot of the series will span decades as it delves into Treadstone’s history and present activities – and while Jason Bourne is in the wind after the events of the last movie, his “presence will be felt” in the new show.

Ben Smith, producer of the Bourne film franchise, is showrunner and executive producer on the series. The cast includes Jeremy Irvine, Brian J. Smith, Omar Metwally, Tracy Ifeachor, and newcomers Han Hyo-joo and Emilia Schüle.

IGN has an exclusive first look at the new spy series in the photo gallery below, introducing us to three key characters who will be our eyes and ears inside this covert operation. Check out the images below and read on for our interview with Smith, which gives some insight into the world of Treadstone and what’s driving the show’s latest recruits.

Treadstone Season 1 Photos

IGN: How do you think Treadstone will set itself apart in the crowded spy genre without a familiar character like Jason Bourne character as an anchor?

Smith: The people activated in Treadstone are everyday people with jobs and families who awaken to find themselves as human weapons with extraordinary skills and abilities. Treadstone’s multiple storylines set across the globe also set it apart. Our characters include a taxi driver in London, a housewife and piano teacher living in North Korea, and an American Oil rig worker in the Arctic.

Are Bourne’s whereabouts established or hinted at in the series?

Bourne’s presence is definitely felt. The blowback from the events which surrounded him in the past have a direct effect on the CIA and our story. His whereabouts? He hasn’t been seen for a few years…

Obviously Treadstone is presented as a nefarious program in the films – will the series see these new sleepers awakening to the realities of the organization they’re a part of, or are we seeing a more benevolent version of Operation Treadstone here?

Depends on who we’re talking about – and where we find them in their present cover lives. Our sleepers, “Cicadas” as they are referred to in Treadstone, each react differently to being awakened years after volunteering for a black-ops program of which they have no memory. To find yourself thrust into the violent center of a terrifying world you weren’t aware of yesterday has different responses for all. There are no good guys or bad guys in our world – everyone is making choices based on their individual moral compass and narrative. The consequences of those decisions is where our series lives. Treadstone as an organization has evolved but its roots remain the same.

What do we need to know about these new agents – can you give us some background on the characters featured in our first-look photos?

Soyun (Han Hyo-joo) is an affectionate wife and mother working as a piano teacher in North Korea whose life begins to spiral out of control when she is mysteriously activated. This occurs just as her husband is getting promoted to be a key member in the North Korean nuclear program. The fallout puts Soyun and her family in extreme danger.

John Randolph Bentley (Jeremy Irvine) is a former Vietnam Vet and CIA agent who had been stationed in West Berlin in 1973 before a sacrifice for a fellow agent left him in Soviet custody. The horrors of the programming he endured under enemy control alter him forever.

Petra (Emilia Schüle) works in a covert KGB facility in East Berlin in 1973 and one of the requirements of her position include developing a very close personal relationship with prisoner John Randolph Bentley. We are left wondering how much of the relationship is manipulation as part of her job and how much is genuine feeling.

This looks to be a globetrotting series much like the novels and films; what are some of the locations we’ll be visiting in Season 1?

Treadstone definitely is a global adventure and our first season takes place throughout Europe (Paris, London, Budapest, Berlin, Greece, and Amsterdam) as well as the Arctic, Africa, India, Korea, China, Brazil, and of course Washington DC.

Are you drawing from Robert Ludlum’s novels in any way to flesh out the series?

Definitely. Treadstone expands on the mythology which started in The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. The DNA of Ludlum’s work and his ability to viscerally relay the geopolitical realities of our time through the lens of very personal stories is present throughout. The themes he wrote about are more relevant today than ever.

Laura Prudom is the Deputy Entertainment Manager at IGN. You can talk to her on Twitter at @LauinLA.

Subspecies aren’t totally new to Monster Hunter World, but they’re making a comeback to the series in a big way in the upcoming Iceborne expansion. We recently got to play the beginning of Iceborne, and some of the first few monsters we faced were three brand-new monsters: Nightshade Paolumu, Coral Pukei-Pukei, and Viper Tobi-Kadachi! They may look familiar, but these subspecies are more than just a reskin.We also noticed at least nine exciting quality-of-life improvements in Iceborne, but continue on to see gameplay of each new monster with hands-on impressions and comparisons to each of their parent species.

Iceborne: Nightshade Paolumu Gameplay Impressions

I absolutely adore Nightshade Paolumu, the emo-cousin of the Coral Highland’s most coveted pom-pom baby. This subspecies is donned in dark purple, near-black fur and scales, and the tips of its wings are tinged green. Neon-blue stripes travel up Nightshade Paolumu’s long neck, and when it inhales enough air, it inflates to reveal colorful “eyes,” reminiscent of markings you’d see on a brilliant moth. Really, I can’t wait to see its armor set and weapons!

Whereas Paolumu has nothing up its sleeve except wind pressure and air-projectiles, Nightshade Paolumu puts its enemies to sleep, too. On top of expelling huge mountains of sleep gas, it can also pepper clouds of it on the ground. Energy Drinks were a must for this fight.

New Monsters in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

As we fought, I broke a rule I should have internalized by now from all the Kushala Daora I’ve hunted: I flashpodded the monster without first checking where it would land, sending Nightshade Paolumu into a cloud of its own sleep gas. This resulted in some overly eager, and then very sleepy hunters, and one unscathed *puffersims.

Unlike Coral Highlands Paolumu, Nightshade Paolumu made its debut in the Wildspire Wastes. Also unlike it’s pastel counterpart, it curls its tail into a sizable mass, which it then wields as a frantic hammer that strikes multiple times. It doesn’t get stuck in the ground after this, either.

My favorite of Nightshade Paolumu’s attacks is when it ricochets around in the air like a violently deflated balloon. I used a Light Bowgun during this fight, so while I was never in immediate danger, this attack did cart a teammate. I still love you, emo puffball.

*Puffersims = Paolumu.

Iceborne: Coral Pukei-Pukei Gameplay Impressions

With Coral Pukei-Pukei’s bright orange coloring (red when enraged) and firehose-like jets of water it sprays from both ends, it’s hard not to make a firetruck comparison! Instead of putting out fires though, Coral Pukei-Pukei inflicts waterblight, which decreases stamina recovery. It’s preferable to the Ancient Forest’s Pukei-Pukei’s poison, but Coral Highland’s Coral Pukei-Pukei’s water jets deal significantly more raw damage than the poison blobs and smoke clouds we’re accustomed to.

To store mass quantities of water in its tail, Coral Pukei-Pukei must eat, like its cousin must do to build up poison. It its intro cinematic, it guzzled water from the squishy blue platforms that work like traps, and in battle in chowed down on Brightmoss and other plants.

Like its forest-dwelling counterpart, the subspecies Coral Pukei-Pukei was pretty easy for me to read, which allowed me to follow my usual pattern of attack with success. When it starts spraying water though, that’s a different story. These long-ranged line attacks look totally erratic, especially so when its airborne, but there must be a surefire way to dodge the circular-traveling beam with precision when practiced. Luckily, I was able to dodge, and then block with the Sword and Sword, to avoid the worst of it.

Iceborne: Viper Tobi-Kadachi Gameplay Impressions

The only subspecies with fought in the new locale, Hoarfrost Reach, was Viper Tobi-Kadachi. This subspecies’ scales resemble fallen, decayed leaves, and it inflicts two status effects, and can do so pretty much simultaneously.

Viper Tobi Kadachi’s tail is covered in needle-like spines which can inflict poison with numerous close-ranged attacks, but it can also fling those spines from a distance to accomplish the same.

Its saliva must be nasty, or its fangs filled with venom, because getting hit with a bite can cause paralysis. Luckily, I was never poisoned and paralyzed at the same time since I slammed Herbal Medicine as soon as I became inflicted, but it’s certainly possible. And dying from poison while paralyzed or stunned is definitely one of the worst ways to go in Monster Hunter.

Viper Tobi-Kadachi was our team’s toughest challenge during our hands-on session, rivaling even the ferocious Barioth. I also apparently had a lapse in judgment and chose a weapon I’m not an expert with, which probably didn’t help. What got two of us carted at the same time, though, was our expectations of Viper Tobi-Kadachi’s attack range steering us wrong.While the Ancient Forest’s Tobi-Kadachi’s tail-slam attacks demolish targets directly in front of it, Viper Tobi-Kadachi’s tail comes down at a wide angle—which proved fatal when we thought we were safe! Like most subspecies, Viper Tobi-Kadachi’s attack cadence is a bit different, and that caught us off guard.

One thing to note: all of this gameplay was captured from a work-in-progress build. We also fought a Beotodus, Banbaro, and Barioth during our time with Monster Hunter World: Iceborne; and Fulgur Anjanath made a few appearances, too! You can see Fulgur Anjanath Turf War with Viper Tobi-Kadachi in that video. Lastly, make sure to check out the 9 Exciting Quality-of-Life Improvements in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne we noticed. We’ll have more from Iceborne to come, but to catch up on everything else so far, read 34 New Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Details.

Casey DeFreitas is an Editor at IGN who loves monster hunting, slaying, and catching. And no, Tobi-Kadachi no longer gives her trouble whether low rank, high rank, or tempered. Catch her on Twitter @ShinyCaseyD.

Monster Hunter World’s upcoming Iceborne expansion brings some big changes and bigger monsters. But while cool new tools like the Clutch Claw have likely already caught your eye, there are tons of less flashy tweaks that will probably make seasoned hunters yell “YES FINALLY” with the same level of enthusiasm.

We got to play through the first few hours of Iceborne last week, and while you can watch us take on three of its new subspecies monsters here, these little quality-of-life improvements really stuck out. There are surely plenty more, but here of nine of the most exciting tweaks we’ve seen saw so far – be sure to watch the video at the top of the page to see them in action!

There’s an In-Game Event Schedule

Right out of the gate, when you go to get your Login Bonus you’ll notice two new buttons, one of which sends you to an in-game event schedule. It was empty in the work-in-progress build we were playing on, but this probably means you won’t have to check an external website to see what event quests are coming up anymore. Hooray!

Seliana’s Gathering Hub Has Everything

Bringing things closer to your fingertips seems to be a trend of Iceborne, one the Gathering Hub in the new town of Seliana leans into hard. Everything you would normally have to leave Astera’s Gathering Hub to access is all contained within this one. The Armory, the Resource Center, the Argosy, your Harvest Boxes. You name it, it’s here, all without a loading screen to get to any of it. What’s more, you’ll be able to return here as usual after missions if you like. And honestly, why ever leave at this point?

New Headquarters-Specific Radial Menus

Another nice tweak you can use in either hub is the addition of new Radial Menus specifically for when you are back at base. Separate from your mid-quest Radial Menus, you can now create ones made specially for things like gestures and stickers without having to worry about making space for items.

What’s more, in a related addition, swapping Item Loadouts will no longer automatically change your Radial Menu settings. You can still have custom Radials for each Loadout, but you can now choose not to swap to it when changing!

Setting “Craft All” From the Radial Menu

And those aren’t the only Radial Menu improvements: While you could always assign item crafting to a slot, it would previously only craft one of the item you chose at a time. There’s now an option to “Craft All” of an item with a single press of a Radial Menu shortcut, which is sure to come in handy during long fights.

New Monsters in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

Customize Bowguns From the Item Box

The Item Box has gotten a long-overdue buff, as you can now customize your Bowguns from them. That saves you a trek all the way to the armory just to make a single change if you need to.

Similarly, Seliana has a place for your Palico to sit next to each Item Box so you can adjust their equipment without going into your room. Seliana is basically a convenience dream.

YOU CAN FINALLY PET YOUR PALICO

This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.

In what is likely the most important change on this list, you can finally pet. Your. Palico. A great wrong has been set right, as the Foot Bath in the Seliana Gathering hub allows you to pet them, play with them, and give them lots of love and scritches. You can even pick them up and let them splash their feet in the water!

I am dead.

Fire Your Slinger With Any Weapon Drawn

Out of the sauna and into the slightly less relaxing fire of battle, an absolutely wonderful change is the ability to fire your Slinger with any weapon drawn. You can simply fire away as usual without sheathing, similar to how the Sword and Shield already could. Doing so with ranged weapons and the Insect Glaive is a little bit clunkier since they share controls with the Slinger, but it’s still simple enough. It’s a tiny change that makes a huge difference.

A Small Slinger Ammo Visual Tweak

Slingers got another quality-of-life improvement that’s maybe not quite as monumental. When you equip ammo from your pouch, you’ll now see the icon of any picked-up ammo you already had loaded behind it. Nothing has functionally changed here, but it’s a nice tweak for the forgetful among us – especially with the Clutch Claw’s new emphasis on using Slinger shots to knock around monsters.

Improved Dynamic Difficulty Scaling

And finally, as previously announced, Iceborne’s difficulty will now scale more smoothly with your party size. Where the health of a monster used to simply double in multiplayer regardless of if you had two, three, or four players in your party, Iceborne will scale better for parties of two. Parties of three still get the short end of the stick, but it’s a welcome change regardless.

Excitingly, that change will actually be coming to Monster Hunter World whether you buy Iceborne or not. While the joys of Seliana’s Gathering Hub will obviously be limited to the expansion, here’s hoping some of these other changes will make it to the base game as well.

We’ve asked Capcom if that’s the case for everything on this list, and there are certainly more quality of life improvements we didn’t mention here. Be sure to watch our new gameplay videos fighting three of Iceborne’s subspecies as well, and we’ll have lots more to come from Iceborne!

Tom Marks is IGN’s Deputy Reviews Editor and resident pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.

First revealed at Paris Games Week 2017, Concrete Genie is all about letting your artistic creations flourish amid a space that seems intent on extinguishing them. Developed by PixelOpus, your fictional hometown serves as the canvas to restoring the once lively streets that have been corrupted by a strange force. Helping you are your new friends in the form of the energetic Genies, who will bring color back and a newfound sense of identity back to your home. Nearing its October 8, 2019 release, we had the chance to both play the game and speak with director Dominic Robilliard about the creation of this colorful adventure.

The story focuses on an introverted and lonely teenager named Ash, who spends his days drawing in his journal while hanging out in the seaside town of Denska. Though it was once a thriving place, it’s now a depressing locale plagued by a large number of young delinquents. Ash finds himself at odds with a group of bullies who tear apart his journal, scattering the pages across town. He eventually discovers a new outlet to explore his artistic talents after finding a magical brush, allowing him to conjure up enchanted graffiti and beings known as Genies. With his brush and Genies in tow, he’ll take to the streets and rooftops to restore Denska, pushing back the darkness that has crept into town.

Throughout its opening acts, Concrete Genie wears its influences to classic kids adventure films on its sleeve. With little to no adult supervision, young teens explore and cause mischief with reckless abandon–giving way to a conflict that only they can resolve. Ash can use his artistic talents to create vibrant and detailed landscapes across the walls of the city, which help him communicate with the Genies and open access to new areas. The contrast between the vivid graffiti and the depressing seaside town creates unique visuals that lead to some stunning moments where your work slowly brings the decaying Denska back to life.

It’s an endearing concept, driven by a spirit that many films and TV shows in a similar vein, like The Neverending Story or the more recent Stranger Things, run with. Speaking with Robilliard, the director went into Concrete Genie’s origins and how the setup focuses pretty heavily on the game’s anti-bullying message.

“When we started this second game [following 2014’s Entwined], we had a decent amount of time to explore different concepts,” said Robilliard. “Originally the idea of Concrete Genie came from our VFX artist Ashwin Kumar, which is why our main protagonist is called Ash. The very first image was of a bullied small boy who was drawing these large characters in the wall and imagining that they were sticking up for him. The theme of bullying and the idea that art can help cope was always there from the very beginning. Those two things just inspired everybody, and it really took off. That was the beginning for us to explore art as a gameplay mechanic, and to let people express themselves.”

At the heart of Concrete Genie are the constructs crafted from the enchanted brush. When facing the side of a building or a different structure, Ash can pull out his brush to paint grass, flowers, trees, and a starry sky across the surface. The more art you place on the town’s key areas, the more the darkness will dissipate. There’s a lot of room to experiment with these drawings, and I found it to be quite entertaining to stack on layers upon layers of art. Ash’s sprawling landscapes add an impressive ambiance to the environment, turning the depressing and drab alleyways into vibrant nighttime galleries teeming with detail. These drawings are also the catalyst for your Genies to spring into action.

Ash’s greatest allies are the Genies. They not only help him overcome various obstacles, but they also liven up the town with their inquisitive personalities. They’re also entirely of your own making. Along with creating landscapes to free up the city form the corruption, the brush can conjure genies, allowing you to select from a variety of different body types and attachments. You can get creative with your Genie–and of course, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. While drawing the body of my Genie during the early sections, I accidentally placed the horns and tail on the opposite end. Instead of the game telling me I was doing it wrong, it rolled with it. The resulting Genie, a smiling bright red creature with a tail on its head and antennae around its rear, felt like a creation that came from the minds of Jim Henson or Tim Burton.

As you explore more of Denska, tagging new walls and finding lost pages from your journal, more of the town’s history will be revealed. The bullies that taunt Ash also have distinct backstories, and Ash discovers what set them on such a destructive path. Concrete Genie presents different areas to explore that progressively becomes more intricate as you head further into town. Though it’s not quite a Metroidvania-style game, there is an incentive to backtrack to earlier areas once you have acquired some new Genies and abilities. While there are a lot of puzzles to overcome in Denska, most of them seemed a bit one-note–centering mostly around creating an object in a spot to get the Genie to open a door elsewhere. I did enjoy seeing everything come together after finishing a complex tag. I was always surprised by what I could create with the painting mechanics, and it’s easily the game’s most exciting feature.

“We worked really hard never to judge your painting,” said the director. “One of the reasons that we have the lights as a mechanic for gauging your coverage is that it’s encouraging you to paint in specific places. We never tell you what to paint or how to paint them, and we never say whether your artwork is good or not. That’s completely up to you. So using paint to push back the darkness that could actually be on the walls, creating more of an environmental aspect, was a theme that we wanted to explore. It suddenly became this very natural fit that this beloved hometown idea that Ash is trying to save and rejuvenate from this environmental disaster that has befallen it. It all just fit together really well, and it gives you this nice baseline for the progression of the story, and it mirrors what’s happening to Ash as well.”

However, it’s not just drawing that you can do with your brush. Eventually, Ash will confront monsters that spawned from the darkness. You’ll have to use the brush’s elemental attacks and light to subdue them. As we transitioned from the game’s more relaxed and free-from drawing structure, the combat felt a bit jarring to jump into, but it’s certainly an interesting twist for the game. It works well given where the plot leads, but it still felt a bit lacking if somewhat unrefined compared to the flexibility of the drawing mechanic. Still, given that it’s pulling heavily on tropes from ’80s adventure films, I’m interested in seeing how it will develop alongside the painting gameplay.

I was struck by Concrete Genie’s attention to detail when it came to its location, and how in-depth the drawing mechanics were. It left me curious to see how far you can stretch Ash’s artistic skills, and just where the story will go next. It’s got a modest feel throughout, but I was impressed with how more grand it became after the closing of the first act, which gave me the sense that this adventure could go places that you’d least expect.