Author: Trafficblast

Konami has released a free-to-play version of PES 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Named PES 2019 Lite, the downloadable title includes a limited selection of the full game’s modes.

Exhibition matches and skill training are the offline offerings, with PES League–including 1v1 and co-op matches–and My Club available for those who wish to play online. Master League and Random Selection Mode are therefore the main exceptions from the full version.

We enjoyed Konami’s sports sim here at GameSpot; critic Richard Wakeling awarded the game a 9/10 in our PES 2019 review. “For as long as EA continues to develop FIFA and hold a monopoly over official licences, PES will be the scrappy underdog just hoping for a surprise upset, even when it’s fielding the likes of London Blue and PV White Red,” he wrote. “The lack of licences for top-tier leagues remains a disheartening sticking point, but PES continues to make brilliant strides on the pitch, building on what was already an incredibly satisfying game of football to produce one of the greatest playing football games of all time. It might be lacking off the pitch, but put it on the field against the competition and a famous giant killing wouldn’t be all that surprising.”

Konami continues to update the game with squad updates and new player faces, though it still lacks some big team licenses. For more on that topic, check out our feature on how EA and FIFA beat Konami and PES to football’s biggest licenses.

PES’s mobile version has been updated, meanwhile. What used to be PES 2018 Mobile is now PES 2019 Mobile, which includes local 1v1 matches as well as a mobile edition of My Club. PES 2019 Mobile is out now for iOS and Android.

Square Enix has released a new trailer for Kingdom Hearts III. The long-awaited sequel is set to launch in January so, according to the publisher, this will be its last trailer. The video touches on familiar themes from throughout the Kingdom Hearts franchise: stolen hearts, worlds, and destinies, and–of course–returning home.

From there we’re given a showcase of all the iconic Disney characters and worlds that will be featured in the game. Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc. make an appearance, Tigger very excitedly reunites with Sora, and of course, King Mickey looks to be out and about on mysterious world-saving adventures. Naturally, given that Kingdom Hearts III wraps up Sora’s story, there’s an abundance of characters critical to the main narrative, most notably the members of Organization XIII and Xehanort. Check out the trailer above.

Kingdom Hearts III has leaked and versions of the game are out in the wild. Director Tetsuya Nomura responded to the leak with a statement encouraging people not to share spoilers, especially the “epilogue and secret movie.”

“We want everyone to be able to equally experience the full game after its release, so we ask for your continued support on this matter,” Nomura added. “We’re sorry to see this caused concern amongst our fans who are excited for the release. We’re one month out from the release. Let’s enjoy the game together when it releases on January 29, 2019.”

Kingdom Hearts III is the first core entry in the mainline series since Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2005. As previously mentioned, the game will wrap up Sora’s arc, after numerous side-stories and spin-offs have thoroughly explored the universe as a whole. Square Enix and Disney has signed-up an all star cast of familiar voices for this entry. Kingdom Hearts III’s release date has been confirmed as January 29 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Street Fighter V recently released an update that introduces advertisements to the fighting game’s loading screens, player models, and stages. While the advertisements can be toggled off, the introduction of ads in the first place went over just as well as you’d expect.

Now, Street Fighter executive producer Yoshinori Ono has responded. In a statement posted Sunday evening, Ono thanked fans for their feedback, adding that Capcom will continue to consider this feedback to think about how it may “improve” the sponsored content feature in the future. Advertisements in Street Fighter V seem like they are here to stay.

“We value and thank our community for providing feedback on the new sponsored content feature added to Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition this week,” Ono said. “We will continue collecting everyone’s feedback to consider how we can improve this new feature for players in the future.”

Advertisements came to Street Fighter V in an update released on December 11. Some people immediately criticised the move, and made silly mock-up images of new skins for brands like McDonald’s and Mtn Dew. Right now, the ads in Street Fighter V are for things like the Capcom Pro Tour series and extra content sales for the game. Players who view the ads earn extra Fight Money (the game’s currency) from Ranked and Casual matches, but the sponsored content, as Capcom calls it, can be toggled off for those who don’t want to see it.

In other Street Fighter V news, Capcom just today launched a new character, Kage, and introduced a big new balance patch. You can learn more in GameSpot’s coverage here.

Two of the year’s biggest games, Fallout 76 and Hitman 2, are currently marked down substantially on Amazon. Bethesda’s open-world multiplayer RPG and the stealth game from Warner Bros. can be had for just $30 USD each right now on PS4 and Xbox One.

Both games were also discounted nicely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but if you missed out on those deals, now you have another chance.

Fallout 76 didn’t get the best reviews. If you wanted to pick up the game but not at full price, now seems like a good time to do so. Hitman 2, meanwhile, was generally better-liked by critics. You can read GameSpot’s reviews for each game below.

Bethesda has pledged to support Fallout 76 with new updates in the weeks, months, and potentially years to come. Hitman 2, meanwhile, is getting more content down the road when new locations come to the game through the expansion pass.

The new Aquaman film from Warner Bros. is doing quite well already. The superhero origin movie has now exceeded $261 million from all international markets combined, an achievement that is especially notable given that the film hasn’t premiered in the US yet.

According to Variety, China is the biggest market for Aquaman so far, with box office receipts totalling $189.2 million there after two weekends. Other markets where Aquaman is performing well so far include Mexico ($7.9 million), Brazil ($7.7 million), Russia ($7.4 million), the UK ($6.5 million).

Aquaman, which stars Jason Momoa in the title role, opens in the US on December 21. In addition to Momoa, the film stars Nicole Kidman, Amber Heard, and Willem Dafoe. It was directed by James Wan, who previously made Saw, Insidious, and Fast & Furious 7.

GameSpot’s Aquaman review mostly praised the superhero film.

“Aquaman isn’t simply a bunch of remixed comics elements thrown together. It’s a movie with its own over the top, tongue in cheek, inconsistent, massive, irreverent, CGI-soaked tone, aesthetic, and world,” reviewer Michael Rougeau said. “And somehow, it works well enough that you’ll be calling Arthur king by the end.”

For more on the critical reaction to Aquaman, check out this roundup of reviews.

Mortal Engines, the big-budget sci-fi movie from a series of Lord of the Rings veterans, is expected to be a major box office flop. Variety reports that the film is expected to lose more than $100 million when all is said and done. The film had a reported production budget of $100 million, with “tens of millions” more spent on marketing.

As of today, Universal’s Mortal Engines has made only $42 million worldwide.

“This is a true Christmas disaster and a lump of coal for Universal,” Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock told Variety. “They took a big swing, and they struck out.”

Mortal Engines has yet to open in China, which is a massive market, but it currently has no release date for that country.

The disappointing box office results come even though Mortal Engines has big names attached–it was written by LotR’s Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh. It was directed by Oscar winner Christian Rivers, who also worked on LotR.

As we reported in the past, Mortal Engines takes place in the far future where modern technology as we know it has been destroyed and morphed into a steampunk-like world, where giant, moving cities traverse through Europe looking for other cities to eat, in order to use the eaten city’s structures to power their gigantic machines to continue the hunt.

That might be a visually stunning set-up, but the complicated plot was one of the reasons that Warner Bros. and Fox said no to the film because Universal picked it up, according to Variety. Universal reportedly only contributed 30 percent of the production costs, with Media Rights Capital putting up half of the money. Legendary and Perfect World also financed the movie.

Jackson apparently at one point said he believed Mortal Engines could become another big franchise, but this box office performance suggests that may not happen.

For the first time in the history of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, this year’s game, Odyssey, lets you choose to play as a man, Alexios, or a woman, Kassandra. But which was the more popular choice?

Game director Scott Phillips told Game Informer (via Destructoid) that Alexios is currently the more popular choice. Around two-thirds of players chose him. This ratio surprised Phillips because early playtests were closer to 50/50.

“Right now it’s two-thirds Alexios and one-third Kassandra,” he said. “The interesting thing is that, during playtests, it was pretty much 50/50. I was a bit surprised; I was expecting half-and-half or even a little bit more Kassandra.

“The idea of choice being key to our game shows really well in that even we are surprised by some of the choices [players] ended up making.”

It’s unclear if the breakdown between Alexios and Kassandra includes people who played the game more than once and chose a different character the next time. We also don’t know how the player split breaks down by console.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey launched in early October, and it enjoyed the franchise’s best start in many years in terms of game sales and microtransactions.

Both the rosters of Raw and Smackdown came together on Sunday, December 16 for the WWE PPV TLC, where the sports entertainment superstars used tables, ladders, and chairs to beat down their opponents. Things got pretty brutal that evening, especially during the main event match.

The show took place in San Jose, California at the SAP Center, and the card was stacked with 12 matches over the course of the evening. Yes, that is a lot of matches for a non-major WWE PPV. There were plenty of titles on the line and plenty of foreign objects allowed in these matches. TLC is a bit of a crazy beast. Check out all the matches in the order they aired.

TLC Match Card:

• Buddy Murphy (c) vs. Cedric Alexander (Cruiserweight Championship) — Kickoff Show
• Elias vs. Bobby Lashley (Ladder Match) — Kickoff Show
• R-Truth & Carmella vs. Jinder Mahal & Alicia Fox (Finals of MMC Season 2)
• The Bar (c) vs. The New Day vs. The Usos (SmackDown Tag Team Championships)
• Braun Strowman vs. Baron Corbin (TLC Match)
• Natalya vs. Ruby Riott (Tables Match)
• Finn Bálor vs. Drew McIntyre
• Rey Mysterio vs. Randy Orton (Chairs Match)
• Ronda Rousey (c) vs. Nia Jax (Raw Women’s Championship)
• (The New) Daniel Bryan (c) vs. AJ Styles (WWE Championship)
• Seth Rollins (c) vs. Dean Ambrose (Intercontinental Championship)
• Becky Lynch (c) vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka (Triple Threat TLC Match For The Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Before this PPV kicked off, I had no expectations. I thought it was going to be pretty awful, as there were 12 matches on the card, and Raw’s side of things had little to no build-up to its matches. And I was wrong. The WWE PPV ended up being quite a bit of fun, even with the shorter matches and lack of strong stories. At times, the fights didn’t feel like PPV matches, but it was all fine and dandy throughout the evening, as TLC is nothing more than a pit stop on the way to Royal Rumble anyway, which in itself is a pit stop on the way to Wrestlemania.

Like everyone on the internet, I have strong opinions about what happened during the WWE event, so I wrote down all my thoughts, ranked the matches and have presented them to you. Here’s what I thought about all the matches during the evening at the WWE PPV, TLC.

One of the most anticipated games of 2019, Kingdom Hearts III, isn’t due out until the end of January, but it has already leaked in some capacity. Game director Tetsuya Nomura responded to the unfortunate news, saying in a statement that he urges people to not share any spoiler-y videos. Specifically, Nomura said he hopes players don’t spoil the “epilogue and secret movie,” as these represent the game’s “biggest spoilers” overall, though he didn’t say why.

“We want everyone to be able to equally experience the full game after its release, so we ask for your continued support on this matter,” Nomura said.

Regarding the leak, Nomura said he and the team are aware of a “small portion” of the game emerging online ahead of time. He also stated that Square Enix knows “how this has all happened,” though he didn’t share any specifics.

“We’re sorry to see this caused concern amongst our fans who are excited for the release,” he said. “We’re one month out from the release. Let’s enjoy the game together when it releases on January 29, 2019.”

According to Eurogamer, Kingdom Hearts III’s title screen and other elements have emerged online. Leaks are nothing new in gaming, but this one comes six weeks out from launch, which makes it notable. Fans hoping to go into the experience with fresh eyes should be careful on social media sites and elsewhere between now and launch.

Kingdom Hearts III is the first new numbered entry since Kingdom Hearts 2 in 2005, so it has been quite a long time, indeed. Fans have been waiting a long time to see this story resolve, and Square Enix and Disney have put the requisite work in to make it a treat for fans–including pulling familiar voices from its various Disney movies.

The game launches on January 29 for playStation 4 and Xbox One.