Coming to the WWE Network this Sunday, June 23, is the latest PPV, Stomping Grounds. It has nothing to do with the WWE Network original series Breaking Ground, though we wish it did. WWE superstars will battle each other at the event, and GameSpot, per usual, will be covering and reviewing the show live.
As previously mentioned, Stomping Grounds takes place on Sunday, June 23. Depending on where you live on this planet, you’ll have to tune in at different times if you want to watch live. Check out the times for Stomping Grounds below. Keep in mind, that the Kickoff Show starts one prior to the main card.
4 PM PT
6 PM C
7 PM ET
12 AM BST (June 24)
9 AM AET (June 24)
Below, you’ll find the full match card for the show, which consists of nine bouts over the course of the evening, seven of which will be for WWE championship titles.
Stomping Grounds Match Card:
Seth Rollins (c) vs. Baron Corbin (Universal Championship)
Kofi Kingston (c) vs. Dolph Ziggler (Steel Cage Match for the WWE Championship)
Becky Lynch (c) vs. Lacey Evans (Raw Women’s Championship)
Bayley (c) vs. Alexa Bliss (Smackdown Women’s Championship)
Daniel Bryan & Rowan (c) vs. Heavy Machinery (Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre
Samoa Joe (c) vs. Ricochet (United States Championship)
Big E & Xavier Woods vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
Tony Nese (c) vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Drew Gulak (Cruiserweight Championship)
Like most people on the internet, GameSpot has some opinions about which way we think these matches will go, and one half of the Wrestle Buddies, Mat Elfring, is chiming in with his rude and quite possibly crude opinions–they’re not crude. Check out all the matches below and our predictions for the show.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the new mobile game from Warner Bros. and Pokemon Go developer Niantic, is now live a little early in the US and UK. Since its announcement, Wizards Unite has drawn frequent comparisons to Pokemon Go, and not without reason; not only are both titles developed by the same studio, they share many similar gameplay elements. Now that we’ve gotten our hands on the full game, how exactly do the two titles compare? Read on as we break down their similarities and differences, or check out more in-depth guide to Wizards Unite for Pokemon Go players.
The general thrust of Wizards Unite is very similar to Pokemon Go, albeit with a Harry Potter spin. Just as in the Pokemon mobile game, gameplay primarily revolves around exploring the real world in search of collectibles. Rather than catching Pokemon, however, you’ll be hunting for “Foundables”–people, creatures, and artifacts from the Wizarding World that have begun appearing in the Muggle world.
Not only is the basic premise of Wizards Unite similar, many of its elements have analogs in Pokemon Go. The game’s equivalent of Gyms are called Fortresses, and just as in Pokemon Go, these will host Raid-like “Wizarding Challenges” that will require players to team up in-person to tackle. Instead of a Pokedex, you have a Registry that gradually fills out as you collect Foundables. Inns serve the same function as Pokestops, while Portkeys are similar to Eggs; after you’ve used either a Gold or Silver Key (Wizard Unite’s version of Incubators), you’ll need to log a certain number of steps and the Portkey will take you to a Wizarding World location.
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While the games’ foundations are very similar, however, Wizards Unite differs from Pokemon Go in some significant ways. The most obvious is the sheer amount of content it has from the outset; right from the start, Wizards Unite features a variety of quest objectives to complete. The game also places a bigger emphasis on story, with fully voiced dialogue and a clear–if not entirely comprehensible–plot running through the experience.
Wizards Unite also employs more traditional RPG-like elements than Pokemon Go does. Once you’ve reached level six in the game, you’ll be able to choose a Profession, which will allow you to unlock abilities in skill trees. The game also features a potion-brewing system.
The screenshots look similar to Kingdom Hearts in aesthetic, but with a darker, grittier palette. They show iconic characters Aeris, Barret, Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth, all rendered in typical Testuya Nomura fashion. Some are stills from combat encounters with bits of the HUD visible, while others are likely from explorative gameplay sections. There also seem to be a handful of shots from possible in-game cutscenes, including an epic back-to-back shot of Cloud and Tifa. You can check out the new screens below.
We discussed the modernization of Final Fantasy VII Remake in a feature article, with managing editor Peter Brown saying he “[fell] in love with the world and characters all over again” after going hands-on with the game on the E3 2019 show floor. “It would be far too premature to claim that the final product will be as amazing as my demo, but at the risk of sounding naive once again, I’m given hope as I recall the experience I had when I first played the original PlayStation demo in 1996, and how that experienced carried over to the full game,” Brown wrote of the demo.
Final Fantasy VII Remake will launch exclusively for PlayStation 4 on March 3, 2020. Square also confirmed that the hotly-anticipated RPG will be playable on PlayStation 5 and will span two discs worth of gameplay content.
Nintendo Switch games are notoriously expensive, but there are a few reliable ways to save yourself some cash. The Nintendo Eshop regularly has sales, and the company began offering a pair of game vouchers for $100 to players with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription that you can then redeem on two games, saving yourself up to $20. But on top of these deals, there’s another way to make your money go even further that fewer people consider: gift card discounts.
Currently, at Newegg, you can save 10% on a $50 Nintendo Eshop gift card by using promo code EMCTBVT49 at checkout. That translates into getting a $50 gift card for only $45, which may not seem like a huge price cut, but why stop there? You can then turn around and use that gift card on already discounted games, saving yourself even more money.
An even sneakier way to use discounted gift cards is to buy a pair of $50 gift cards and use those to buy two game vouchers at Nintendo for $100, assuming you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. (Reminder: You can get a year of Switch Online for free through Amazon Prime.) Not only are you saving $20 on two full-price games with the vouchers, but you’re saving an additional $10 with the gift card deal, getting you $120 in value for only $90. That translates to getting two new $60 Nintendo games for only $45 each. Plus, you’ll get 500 My Nintendo Gold Points from the voucher purchase, which equals another $5 in Eshop credit. The eligible list of games for Nintendo’s vouchers includes upcoming releases like Pokemon Sword and Shield, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Super Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and more.
This particular Newegg gift card deal is only running for a few more days, but gift card discounts do pop up often in case you miss this one. Xbox One and PS4 gift cards also get marked down by $5 or $10 regularly, so you can save money when shopping for those platforms as well. For example, BJ’s members can currently get a $25 PlayStation Store gift card for only $20, which can be used to save even more money on some of the great PS4 games on sale right now.
Microsoft exclusive Gears 5, which unveiled a haunting cinematic trailer during the company’s E3 2019 presentation, is only a few months away. Details about the upcoming third-person shooter continue to emerge with its September release right around the corner, and a new post on the Gears 5 official website provides some enticing information, including free content and the lack of a season pass.
The news post outlines a bunch of the game’s details. We get a cinematic glimpse at new Gear Fahz Chutani (played by Rahul Kohli, Rage 2‘s Garcia the Gregarious). The post also goes over the game’s new 3-player co-op mode Escape, which you can check out 10-minutes of gameplay footage above. But the biggest piece of news centers around additional content.
Developer The Coalition touts a “player-first experience,” stating some of the game’s additional content will be free. According to the post, Gears 5 will feature no season pass, no loot boxes, and free DLC maps for matchmaking and private play. The maps sound similar to Gears of War 4, but where that game required you own the map to play them in private matches after they left the playlist, this game doesn’t seem to have that limitation. Though Gears 5 will have microtransactions, the post confirms that “all store purchases are direct,” meaning no RNG (random number generator) will play in a role in what you get. An IGN report reveals that Gears 5 will feature seven different types of cosmetics that can be purchased will real money: costumes, weapon skins, banners (emblems with more surface area), expressions (emotes), executions, blood sprays, and marks (to mark targets). “The only random kind of chance you have is that there’s a type of content that we essentially give to the player for free just for playing,” The Coalition boss Rod Fergusson told IGN during E3 2019.
Gears 5 follows Kat Diaz (played by Laura Bailey, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End‘s Nadine Ross) as she searches to uncover the truth behind her heritage and her connection to the Locust. Xbox boss Phil Spencer said Gears 5 was ” looking great” when he visited the Vancouver-based studio in March 2019.
Gears 5 will release on September 10 for PC and Xbox One. A versus technical test is scheduled for Friday, July 19, with Horde Mode getting its own test sometime this August.
E3 2019 is behind us, but even the most devoted video game fans are bound to have missed some news out of the show. The event is just too sprawling to keep up with it all at once. Nintendo keeps its own announcements deeply under wraps and contained mostly within its Nintendo Direct presentation the Tuesday morning of the show, but other announcements are often littered throughout the week in its Nintendo Treehouse streams.
In case you missed any of the news and announcements, we’ve compiled them all below. You can also catch up on all the Xbox news, and despite Sony’s absence, there was plenty of PlayStation news that we’ll be wrapping up soon as well.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel Announced
The biggest announcement of Nintendo’s conference was saved for the very end, when the company revealed the first teaser for a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The brief teaser video gave us scant details about the new game, and no clue about when to expect it, but it did drop some intriguing clues about the story. It showed Link and Zelda together, appearing to explore a tomb before something awakens. In the distance, Hyrule Castle starts to shake and rise.
Series producer Eiji Aonuma has since revealed that the sequel came about because the studio simply had too many ideas to fit into the downloadable content.
“Initially we were thinking of just DLC ideas, but then we had a lot of ideas and we said, ‘This is too many ideas, let’s just make one new game and start from scratch.'”
Reports have been circulating that Nintendo is developing new Nintendo Switch models, despite the company staying mum on the subject at E3. A new report indicates that the wheels are still very much in motion, albeit quietly.
According to the report, Nintendo has moved production out of China and into Southeast Asia to avoid newly proposed tarriffs from the United States. That reportedly includes both production of the current model, along with two new ones. The first model is said to be similar to the existing Switch but with better components, while the second is a budget version with lower specs and a new look. Production of these models is reportedly well underway, suggesting their release could be close. The original reports suggested that the cheaper model could come out by the end of June, but that seems unlikely at this point. One or both could still be slated for this year, however.
Animal Crossing Given New Title, But Delayed
Animal Crossing for Switch was slated as a 2019 game, but Nintendo has now pushed it into 2020. It wasn’t all bad news, though, as the presentation also gave us much more detail on what to expect from the newly-dubbed Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
New Horizons takes place on an island of your own, and you begin in a tent. You’ll have more control over both your own look and the management of the society this time around, and you can enjoy the island lifestyle with a friend thanks to the addition of couch co-op. It won’t support cloud saves, though, so this island is an island unto itself.
Though delays are often a bummer, Nintendo explained that this one was an attempt to allow its workers to have a healthy work-life balance. Given the recent spate of studios caught putting their devs through heavy crunch, this explanation seemed to be met pretty positively from the community, although Nintendo’s stock price took a hit in the wake of the news.
Link’s Awakening Is Coming This Fall, With Some Surprises
To mark the game’s release, Europe is getting a lavish collector’s edition complete with Game Boy styled Steelbook case. The game will also release along with a new Amiibo showing Link rendered in the game’s claymation-like art style. For more details check out our pre-order guide.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was last year’s big Nintendo release, but the enduring popularity of the fighting game has made DLC announcements almost as big as game reveals themselves. At E3 Nintendo revealed a bunch of new characters including the heroes of Dragon Quest and the much-requested Banjo-Kazooie.
The Dragon Quest heroes actually count as one character, with the various forms serving as different appearances. Each of them is a sword-wielding character so the skin swapping makes sense. Banjo and Kazooie, meanwhile, are on loan from Microsoft as the two companies have gotten increasingly cozy lately.
Sword and Shield will honor the recent legacy of the series by working with the PokeBall Plus accessory released alongside the Let’s Go games. That’s not the only lesson it’s taking from Let’s Go, as we’ve also learned that it won’t have random encounters.
Zelda Spin-Off Cadence of Hyrule Released, Is Great
In addition to the Breath of the Wild 2 announcement and more details about the Link’s Awakening remake, Nintendo ended the week of E3 with the release of Cadence of Hyrule. This Zelda spin-off from the studio behind Crypt of the Necrodancer borrows that game’s signature rhythm gameplay, but set to remixed Zelda tunes in the land of Hyrule.
And wouldn’t you know it, the combination works. GameSpot’s Cadence of Hyrule review concluded that the game wonderfully realizes the spirit of classic Zelda games and exploring the world is consistently fun and rewarding.
“Cadence of Hyrule is a fantastic Zelda game in its own right, even though it adopts the gameplay mechanics of another series,” James O’Connor wrote. “Beyond the aesthetics, it nails the satisfying sense of exploration and increasing power, and it revels in the joy of discovery, as all the best Zelda games do. It’s an extremely successful melding of two great game series and an experience that makes you feel eager for Nintendo to do more interesting things with their major licenses.”
Cadence of Hyrule is now available on the Nintendo eShop for $25.
The Witcher 3 Coming To Nintendo Switch
The Witcher 3 is one of the most massive RPGs of the generation, and soon you can take it with you wherever you go. CD Projekt Red’s critically acclaimed game is coming to Nintendo Switch, complete with its two expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine and all other DLC.
The Switch version will have some visual compromises to fit, but CD Projekt has been sharing screenshots and it certainly looks like the Geralt we all know. We even got a good look at his glistening body in a bathtub. You could see the iconic bathtub scene while playing in the bathtub, but we wouldn’t recommend it as the Switch isn’t waterproof.
Check out our pre-order guide to see all that games in the package.
For those looking for something to play right now, Nintendo Online subscribers can play Double Dragon 2, Volleyball, and City Connection in the updated NES library. Or you can polish up your skills in Splatoon 2 as you prepare for the final Splatfest, scheduled to take place in July.
PC gamers in need of a new rig should check out what Dell is offering this week in a limited sale of 15-20% off on select Dell and Alienware gaming computers. That encompasses three powerful laptops and one desktop, with savings up to $300. The sale is only available now through this Sunday, June 24.
Dell’s G15 gaming laptop is just $850, under the full price of $1000. It features a 15-inch, 1080p display with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 graphics card to support it, making this a great entry-level gaming computer. Going up from there are the Alienware m15 gaming laptop and Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 laptop/tablet, both for $1,450, down from the full price of $1,780. What the Alienware laptop lacks in functionality relative to the XPS 15, it makes up for with more powerful hardware under the hood with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 graphics card and a hybrid HDD/SSD. Lastly at the top end is the Alienware Aurora gaming desktop for $1,900 down from its usual $2,230. That comes loaded with an i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 graphics card and 512GB solid state drive.
We all have those games, the ones forever etched into our memory. No matter how far in the past you need to look, you can recall exactly when and where you acquired it, the setting you played it in, and the sensations you felt as its sights and sounds washed over you for the first time. Final Fantasy 7 is one of these games for me. And because it’s so near and dear, the initial announcement of Final Fantasy 7 Remake in 2015 left me with mixed emotions. I was happy Square Enix was finally giving it a serious go, but all I could think of were the things I expected to get cut, or potentially worse, disfigured by the norms of modern game design. Keep the classics classic, I thought.
Nearly four years later, playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake at this year’s E3, I finally confronted the things that worried me the most: real-time action taking the place of turn-based combat, voice actors speaking for main characters, and a 3D camera system in place of fixed perspectives. I walked out of the demo completely surprised, not by the sweeping changes but by my shift in mindset. I naively thought I wanted a conservative remake of the game I remember, but it turns out the reimagined Final Fantasy 7 is giving me the best gift of all: a chance to fall in love with the world and characters all over again, and potentially for new reasons.
It would be far too premature to claim that the final product will be as amazing as my demo, but at the risk of sounding naive once again, I’m given hope as I recall the experience I had when I first played the original PlayStation demo in 1996, and how that experienced carried over to the full game.
Stepping into a dingy Mako Reactor–one of the many beating hearts of the corporate-run operation that saps, sells, and profits off the earth’s natural resources–two powerhouses clash. Cloud, a cold-hearted, former super (svelte) soldier of the Shinra Power Company, is just there to do a job. Barret, the hulking environmental activist behind the mission to destroy the reactor, has no choice but to work with Cloud to glean from his experience at Shinra. But as a person who wears his heart on his sleeve and fights for a noble cause, Barret’s contempt for Cloud’s self-centered opportunism is loud and clear. The two grit their teeth through the tension after a few spats and lay down their explosives. Their escape is cut short by a massive crimson mech, the Scorpion Sentinel. Using a little magic, Cloud’s massive sword, and a Gatling gun surgically grafted to Barret’s arm that never runs out of ammo, the two overcome their opponent and accomplish their mission, inflicting a massive blow to Shinra when the reactor ultimately explodes from within.
Core components of Final Fantasy 7 have undergone massive transformations, but these aforementioned beats, the events that made my first taste of Final Fantasy 7 so memorable the first time around, have returned to center stage under a brand-new hi-def spotlight. The attention to visual details, from the environment to special effects in combat, gives everything a dreamlike quality, almost as if I’m seeing my imaginary version of Final Fantasy 7 brought to life. I only have good things to say about the way the remake looks, and my mind runs wild when I consider what the rest of the game will look like in the years to come.
I was equally impressed by the new real-time combat system during my brief stint playing the remake, which I did not see coming. Rather than standing orderly on opposite sides of a rectangular battlefield as before, every character involved in a fight can now run in any direction at will. The ATB Gauge is back, but you needn’t wait for it to fill if you want to throw out basic attacks, which conveniently speed up the refill process too. You only have to wait for a full ATB gauge to do something more substantial, like cast a spell or use an ability. And if you want a taste of the past or simply need to catch your breath, you can also bring combat to a halt while picking commands from menus. This process is somewhat optional as your allies are controlled by AI when they aren’t given explicit instructions, but it’s definitely handy.
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My Friend Pedro – Nintendo Switch Gameplay
My Friend Pedro – Nintendo Switch Gameplay
Total War: Three Kingdoms – Reign of Blood Trailer
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I still have questions about the finer points of Materia management–the items that govern what a character is capable of beyond simply attacking and using items–and time will tell how exciting battles remain long run, but it seems like it will strike a good balance between free-flowing action and menu-based mechanics from the past.
The Scorpion Sentinel boss, as seasoned players will recall, has a tail equipped with a powerful laser that’s best avoided. In the past, you would only bear the brunt of it if you attacked the scorpion while its tail was raised. That laser is still dangerous, but it’s guaranteed to attack in the remake’s version of this fight. Once the tail goes up, that’s your cue to run and take cover behind debris strewn around the reactor platform. This occasional threat, along with the scorpion’s leap-and-smash attack, lends a new kick to the familiar foe. My hope is that this is also setting the tone for the rest of the game and that positioning will become a critical component of combat. Juggling priorities was a treat rather than a hassle thanks to the largely intuitive controls, so the ongoing challenge would be most welcome.
I feel silly in retrospect for being so fixated on what Final Fantasy 7 was rather than what it could be, and now I’m more excited than ever to find out.
There was a lot to love about my time with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but it wasn’t without some concern. Even though I’m glad characters can speak for themselves and thus have more natural interactions now, I am a little concerned by Barret’s over-the-top characterization. Final Fantasy 7 has a ton of strange things in it and I don’t want it to be overly self-serious all the time, but in the face of a more realistic presentation overall, Barret’s cartoonish delivery rubs the wrong way.
When Final Fantasy 7 Remake releases in March 2020 I’ll be turning 35. I’ve changed a great deal since my first exposure to Cloud, Barret, and the rest of the gang, and the E3 demo reminded that my relationship to Final Fantasy 7 is a holdover from the past. With that in mind and the overall quality of the new demo, I can’t wait to rekindle my connection to one of my favorite games of all time. I feel silly in retrospect for being so fixated on what Final Fantasy 7 was rather than what it could be, and now I’m more excited than ever to find out. I’ll always have the original if I need it, but this new version is shaping up to be an enlightening trip down memory lane.
Alpha Protocol, one of my favorite games, has been removed from Steam and other PC storefronts and is therefore unavailable to purchase.
It was initially believed Sega’s rights to publish the game had expired. However, the company clarified to GameSpot that this is incorrect; it still owns the Alpha Protocol brand and intellectual property–just not some of the music within the game.
A Sega spokesperson told GameSpot: “Due to the expiry of music rights in Alpha Protocol, the title has been removed from Steam and is no longer on sale.”
Alpha Protocol is also unavailable to purchase on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Humble stores, though Sega has assured fans that existing owners of the game (on any platform) will still be able to redownload it in the future.
Alpha Protocol was released for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2010. Although it received a mixed critical reception at the time, it went on to gain a cult following thanks to its deep RPG mechanics and glamorous spy fiction. I once called it the best James Bond game ever, despite 007 not actually being in it.
