Niantic and Warner Bros.’ joint Harry Potter game, Wizards Unite, launches on iOS and Android later this year. While the title still doesn’t have a firm release date, the companies recently opened pre-registration for it on Android, and now those who’ve played one of Niantic’s previous games can reserve their same usernames for it.
From now until 11:59 PM PT on April 30, Ingress Prime and Pokemon Go players can reserve their in-game names to use in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. To do so, you’ll first need to go to Niantic’s website, then select the option to use either your Ingress Agent name or Pokemon Go Trainer nickname. Follow the prompts and your Harry Potter: Wizards Unite username will be set.
Niantic notes that there may be some instances where you can’t use your same username, specifically if it overlaps with one in a different Niantic title. If that happens to be the case, the developer says that reservations will be handled on a first come, first served basis.
Wizards Unite casts players as a member of Statute of Secrecy Task Force, and it’s your mission to explore the real world, locate Foundables (important people and items in the wizarding world), and dispel the Confoundable magic that’s trapping them. While the basic premise of the game is similar to Pokemon Go, it also bears many similarities to a traditional RPG, with a stronger emphasis on story and RPG elements like skill trees and potion brewing.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was originally scheduled to launch in 2018 before being delayed into this year. You can read more about the title in our hands-on impressions, and Android users can pre-register for it on Google Play.
Seeing an opponent leave an Apex Legends match early is one of the more irritating facets of the game, but fortunately developer Respawn has a fix in the works to penalize anyone who does go MIA. Unfortunately, the company accidentally set the feature live before it was ready, before quickly disabling it once again.
In an update on the Apex Legends subreddit, community manager Jay Frechette said the studio has been working on the feature, but “it wasn’t our intention or plan to have it go live with the [April 4] update.” He says the penalty turned on early due to a piece of missing script, and the studio has since fixed it to disable the penalty. He states he doesn’t have an ETA for “if or when” it will be released.
The 1.1 update included some quality-of-life changes, like allowing you to invite a member of your last squad into your party, and the addition of squad invites to the Friends menu. You can also mute from the Leegends select screen, so altogether it seemed aimed at making the game easier to connect with good teammates and ignore bad ones.
Still, the quit early penalty has been one of the most requested features among the community, since revolving around three-person squads means that a single premature exit can be a crippling blow to your team composition. The admission that the team doesn’t know if the feature will be implemented at all suggests that it is still weighing the idea, possibly against other ways to deal with team composition issues.
“My favorite [game] was Sonic the Hedgehog 2. So, I could never beat this game,” Woods explained to GameSpot before going into the most touching story of the afternoon. “And like, I guess like 9, or 10 maybe. I was living in an apartment with my sister and my parents in Dunwoody, Georgia. I finally get to the boss. I finally make it to the space station, and I pause the game and I run out into the living room like, ‘I’m at the end! I’m at the end of Sonic!’
“They all run in the room, and I sit down. I hit start, and I start playing. And they’re cheering, you know? Like, ‘Oh come on! Come on!’ Got three lives left. I die once. I die twice. Last life, they’re cheering me, and my dad’s hitting me, hyping me up. At this point, I’m still super socially awkward. Big, thick Coke bottle glasses. Like, I would wear my little polo button all the way up to the top. I go to school with comic books. I can’t talk to people.
“Which I still pretty much am–I just got Lasik. So I finally get hit one time, and then I lose all my rings. I get one ring back. I’m still fighting. I get hit again. I got no rings left. Finally hit him for the last time, and he blows up. And my parents and my sister lost their minds. They’re screaming. They’re hoisting me up in the air like on their shoulders and stuff. And like, that legit is the best memory I’ve ever had of any video games, cause it–this is gonna get emotional.
“It’s weird whenever I talk about this because it meant so many different things to me. For one, it was like, video games were my happy place. It was my safe zone. I could be anybody in a video game. I could be a hedgehog. I could be Tails. Eventually, I could be Knuckles. I could be whatever in these video games. But when my parents came in, and they saw something that I enjoyed. And they supported me doing that. And it was for lack of a better term, it was like meaningless.
“I’m not out there like catching footballs, or scoring goals in soccer. I’m playing video games. But they said, ‘This is what you enjoy. This is what we’re gonna support. Cause this is you. This is you in your most authentic phase of life. Child doing what a child wants to do.’ So that just solidified like my parents love me.
“Family’s important. Loyalty is important, but I got all those lessons in that one moment because of video games. So that’s why I’m so adamant about kids playing video games, to a certain extent. All things in moderation obviously. Get outside sometimes. But then sit down and mash out Red Dead, you know?”
April marks the start of the spring anime season, which will continue until the end of June. Across Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hidive, Netflix, Hulu, and VRV, there are dozens of new anime airing in the US this spring, ranging across almost every genre. Below, we’ve outlined every new movie and series that’s been announced for these six streaming sites, and provided a brief description for each anime.
Although this spring sees the continuation of several Winter 2019 season premieres (such as The Rising of the Shield Hero and Dororo), for the purposes of this article, we’re only compiling anime seasons or parts that make their debut in April. If you’re looking for an anime that’s already completed its run, check out our Winter 2019 guide.
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Attack on Titan’s third season finally concludes with a second part this spring, seeing the return of the well-animated action scenes and explosive drama that made this anime so popular.
A detective agency composed of individuals with supernatural abilities inspired by famous writers and their respective novels continue to defend their city from powerful criminals.
After most of his family is murdered by a demon and his sister transformed into one, a boy embarks on a quest to discover the secret to making his sister human again.
An original anime, Fairy Gone takes place in a fantasy world where a war fought between humans killed off most fairies. However, some still remain, and they’re eager for battle.
One Punch Man Season 2 — Hulu (Crunchyroll for the UK)
The superhero who can defeat any foe in a single punch returns, continuing his search for a foe who can finally provide him the challenge he desires.
A high school girl quickly realizes–to her horror–that she is having impure thoughts about the cute boy in her class, and decides she must banish said impulses to appear normal.
A stressed out man returns to his apartment one day to discover he’s been visited by a benevolent fox spirit, who promises to do all his chores so he can relax after a hard day’s work.
Hitori is incredibly shy–so much so that she’s only ever had one friend. But now that she and her childhood friend have gone to different schools, she needs to learn how to make new ones.
Characters from Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World, The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Konosuba, and Overlord become high school classmates in this chibi-style anime.
No character actually speaks in this anime that follows the everyday lives of cute high school girls, so each story is told entirely through facial expression, action, and musical score.
The ridiculous comedy returns with two new episodes, each of which have multiple versions that offer different takes on the ludicrous series of events that transpire.
An ex delinquent and a girl who only ever “speaks” by writing out senryū poetry forge an adorable connection over their shared love of writing literature.
This anime reimagines the beloved 2001 classic of the same name, while also finally finishing the incredible story of a teenage girl who moves in with a family that suffers an unusual curse.
A hard-working student meets his match when he’s tasked with tutoring his genius peers–a math prodigy, a brilliant writer, and an exceptional athlete–in their weakest subjects.
A powerful wizard raises an infant, but realizes–only after the boy decides to venture out into the world on his 15th birthday–that he hasn’t actually taught his ward a lick of common sense.
Despite his best efforts not to, an ordinary student continues to find himself trapped in erotic, risque situations with his frighteningly violent teacher.
The lone survivor of a mysterious event that caused hundreds of people to just vanish, Yuki seeks the aid of a courier to deliver her to her father–who somehow is still alive.
Picking up at the start of a new season, the Seidou High School baseball team accepts new members and faces off against old rivals.
Carole & Tuesday — Netflix
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, studio Bones has created a story-driven anime about two girls from different backgrounds who both want the same thing: to become musicians.
Upon learning her school has no baseball club, Arihara founds one and a slew of other girls soon join, each finding the support they need to overcome the trials of growing up.
The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Theater Climax Season — Crunchyroll, VRV
The Idolm@ster spinoff series that depicts what the music idols do in their time off away from the drama of the stage continues with a fourth season.
The sole remaining member of the koto club and a delinquent (who’s also a koto player) strike an uneasy bond after the former realizes he can’t judge someone for their appearance.
A sequel to the 1985 baseball manga Touch, MIX sees two step brothers work together to take their high school team to nationals, while also trying to escape the tragic legacy of their fathers.
Two divine beings join forces with the 13 buddhas in order to combat the vices in humanity, but they’ll have to contend with the personification of Earthly desires in order to succeed.
An unlucky man is trapped in a space shuttle with the debt collector assigned to hunting him, but the two decide to forge an uneasy alliance and find a rumored paradise planet.
An original anime, Sarazanmai is about three eighth-grade boys who magically transform into kappa in order to protect their city from zombies.
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World — Funimation
Based on the 1996 visual novel of the same name, the anime follows the twisted tale of a high school boy who travels through time to learn the truth about his father’s disappearance.
PlayStation fans can rejoice, as the much-requested PSN ID change feature is finally coming to PS4 this week. Changing your PSN ID will be free for the first time; each subsequent change will cost $10 / £8, while PS Plus subscribers get a reduction to $5 / £4. The news is good, but there’s a catch: not every PS4 game might not play nicely with your new ID, and in some cases the problems could be significant.
As stated on the PlayStation Blog, “As a result of the preview program, we’ve found an instance where a game did not fully support the feature.” Sid Shuman, PlayStation’s director of social media, clarified that any game published on or after April 1, 2018 should support the feature. However, not every game has been tested with the feature implemented.
Sony has provided a tentative list of games that could present issues for those who change their PSN IDs. Sony says a “large majority of most actively played PS4 games support the feature,” and while you can rollback the change, you’ll want to be aware of the potential for issues.
There are two ways to change your PSN ID: on the PS4 itself or via a web browser. Once you’ve done so, be mindful when jumping into the games below, which are separated into those that have been found to have issues and those with “critical issues.”
Games With Issues Identified
Changing your PSN ID may cause the previous ID to remain visible or disappear entirely, user accounts to unlink, and settings to return to default in these games. Sony suggests that signing out and signing back in should resolve these non-critical issues.
Absolver: Downfall
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
Big City Stories
Bloodborne
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Crossout
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
Dark Souls III
Dragon Quest Builders
FIFA 17 Standard Edition
Gauntlet: Slayer Edition
God Eater 2 Rage Burst
Grand Theft Auto V
Gundam Versus
Guns Up!
Injustice 2 – Standard Edition
Killzone Shadow Fall
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
MLB The Show 17
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
Naruto Shippuden: Storm Trilogy
Naruto Storm: Road to Boruto Expansion
NBA 2K19
PlayStation VR Worlds
Rock Band 4
Rocksmith 2014 Edition – Remastered
The Last of Us Remastered
Titanfall 2
Trackmania Turbo
Trove
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
UNO
Warframe
WipEout Omega Collection
Games With Critical Issues
Changing your PSN ID may cause you to lose progress and/or in-game currency in these games. Additionally, some parts of the game may function properly. Sony doesn’t recommend changing your ID if you want to keep entitlements and Trophies as it’s “possible to incur permanent game errors or data loss.”
Bungie has announced the next event for Destiny 2 is called The Revelry. The spring-themed event will begin on April 16 and continue until May 6, adding content and a new Exotic weapon to the game. A new trailer detailing the event has also been released. It can be viewed below.
The Revelry grants access to a new area called Verdant Forest, which–like Festival of the Lost’s Haunted Forest–adds objective-based fights that you need to clear in order to face off against an onslaught of bosses. Although Verdant Forest can be tackled alone, Bungie advises to fight “with a team.”
During the event, you’ll also be given a Reveler’s Tonic. The tonic can be filled with Reveler’s Essence by killing the Verdant Forest’s bosses or clearing certain side quests. Once filled, the tonic can be used to reduce the cooldown on grenades, melee attacks, or class abilities. The potency of the tonic can be increased as well, by equipping pieces of The Revelry’s new Inaugural Revelry or Vernal Growth armor sets. The effects of these armor pieces and the your tonic will apply in all game modes except for Private Matches during the entirety of The Revelry event.
You will also be able to exchange the Reveler’s Essence you collect for limited-time rewards, “including world drops, Enhancement Cores, and ornaments for the Inaugural Revelry helmet.” The latter will grow in size by equipping more pieces of the Inaugural Revelry or Vernal Growth armor sets. Essence can also be exchanged for a new Exotic kinetic fusion rifle called Arbalest. Bungie describes the firearm as “the first weapon of its kind,” and “does extra damage against enemy shields.”
During The Revelry, drop rates for Bright Engrams will be doubled, and players at max level will earn one every time they level up. Limited-time Revelry Engrams will be available as well, the images of which are posted above.
It’s been a long time coming, but Sony is finally rolling out the much-requested PSN ID change feature this week. From April 10 (April 11 in Europe), PS4 users will have the option to change their PSN IDs as many times as they’d like either through the console itself or a web browser. Here’s how the process works.
The first time you change your PSN ID will be free, but each subsequent change will carry a $10 / £8 fee. If you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, you’ll pay half that, so each change will cost you $5 / £4. As previously mentioned, there are no limits to the number of times you can change your PSN ID, and you can always revert back to any previous ID at no charge by contacting PlayStation support.
To change your PSN ID through your PS4, first go to the Settings tab and select Account Management. From there, choose Account Information, then Profile, and finally Online ID. Input the PSN ID you’d like to use and follow the on-screen prompts to finish the process. To change your ID through a web browser, first log in to your PSN account, then select PSN Profile. Click the Edit button next to your PSN ID and you’ll be able to change it. Follow the remaining prompts to complete the change.
As previously noted, you’ll only be able to change your PSN ID either through a PS4 console or a browser; you can’t do so on PS3 or Vita. Moreover, child accounts cannot change their ID. If you do change yours, you’ll have the option to display your old ID next to your new one on your profile for up to 30 days to help your friends notice the change. You can read more about the process on the PlayStation Blog.
Another caveat to keep in mind is that not all PS4 games will support ID changes. While any title published on or after April 1, 2018 should display your new ID in-game, Sony says it discovered one instance “where a [recent] game did not fully support the feature.” A small handful of games also have “critical issues” that may potentially result in the loss of game progress and other data if you do change your ID. You can see the full list of games that support PSN ID changes here.
For a limited time, you can get some pretty sweet discounts on select video games and accessories at Newegg, which is offering a 20% off promo code now through tomorrow, April 11 or until supplies run out. The promo code to use is EMCTYUT27.
This promotion includes some of this year’s biggest releases, like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which is discounted to $48 with the promo code; The Division 2, also available for $48; Kingdom Hearts 3, which is marked down to $38; and Devil May Cry 5‘s Deluxe edition, which is down to $56 for Xbox One. Notably, you can grab two of 2018’s best games for remarkably cheap: God of War for $32 and Red Dead Redemption 2 for $30, both on PS4.
There’s also a small selection of consoles and accessories on sale, including the PlayStation Classic for just $32 (as a reminder, it launched at $100 in December), a few PSVR bundles, gaming headsets, and wireless controllers.
You certainly can’t say that Zanki Zero: Last Beginning is not unique. How many other games out there are first-person, real-time, tile-based roguelike horror dungeon crawls featuring in-depth survival mechanics, ensemble character drama, and a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story about clones and the last remnants of humanity? I definitely can’t think of any. But unique doesn’t always equal good, and in the case of Zanki Zero, its interesting, genre-melding concepts wind up a bit hobbled by some not-so-great execution.
Zanki Zero begins as a rogue’s gallery of eight characters find themselves on a strange tropical island with only a few rundown facilities. They all have no idea why they’re here, how they got there, or what connection they all have. But things soon take a turn for the even weirder: TVs across the island start playing a bizarre educational cartoon at set intervals, explaining that the eight are the last remnants of humanity and must work together to survive and build a new future for the human race. Oh, and they’re all actually clones, experience rapid aging, and die after 13 days of life–assuming nothing else kills them first. But it’s okay, because one of the few functioning things on the island is an Extend machine that can clone them after they die, effectively meaning they can live and die forever.
And die they will, because survival in this dilapidated paradise is no picnic. When you begin the game, you barely have any functional facilities to do things like cook and sleep, and you need to collect material in order to build them. Not only that, but you need to effectively micromanage the health of every character. On top of a typical health meter, they also have a stamina meter (which drains from merely existing and goes down faster when doing strenuous activities or carrying lots of items), a stress meter, and even a bladder meter. Letting one element get out of control can have cascading effects; if a character can’t hold it anymore and wets themselves, they become embarrassed and stressed, which makes fighting enemies tougher, which leads to more rapid stamina loss for them and their teammates, which leads to health loss, which leads to death. Scavenging and using food and relief items and facilities like toilets helps, but carrying too much leaves a character overburdened and unable to move, and as time passes, characters age, and the amount they can carry changes.
If that all sounds like a lot to take in, that’s because it really is. The heavy survival elements of Zanki Zero get dumped on you quite early in the game, and with little in the way of resources and experience, managing everything can get extremely rough. And that’s all before you factor in exploration and combat. The game offers multiple difficulty levels (that can be changed mid-game to your liking) to help offset this, but it’s still pretty rough waters in the early game as you try to come to grips with how much you need to micromanage. While there are some tutorials, they are inadequate, amounting to info-dumps that are tough to take in when you’re already struggling with juggling everything else. Once you finally have all of the island’s facilities built and can stock a small safety net of resources, the constant micromanagement becomes far less daunting and even quite enjoyable as you watch your ragtag bunch grow from helpless castaways to capable survivors.
All those important survival elements aren’t even the core focus of the game, either–it’s also a first-person, real-time dungeon crawler. At the behest of the mysterious TV characters, the cast explores urban ruins that drift to the shores of the island to find new parts for their Extend machine and finally remove the fatal rapid-aging flaw from their cloned selves. Each of the ruins is tied to one or more of the cast members’ lives, and you’ll see glimpses of traumatic events from their pasts in each one that reveals more about who they are and, perhaps, why they are here. The unfolding story and revelations throughout the varied environments push you to move forward and discover the secrets of the characters’ hellish situation. You won’t get more story without a struggle, however; the ruins are laden with hazards like mutated animals and trap switches. If the challenge of basic survival and rapid old age doesn’t kill you, the threats in the ruins certainly will.
But character death can have its advantages. Sure, you have to drag them back to the Extend machine and spend your limited stash of “points” earned from dungeon exploration to revive them in a child body. But when you revive them, you can also give them a bonus called “Shigabane:”: based on their life experiences and how they died, they get advantages in their new clone form. For example, dying at middle age from being gored by a giant boar while poisoned will result in the revived clone taking reduced damage from boars, getting poison resistance, and adding an extra day to their lifespan at middle age. It’s a great system that doesn’t remove all of the sting from death but still leaves you feeling like you’re making progress through your efforts.
Unfortunately, Zanki Zero’s combat is easily the worst element of the game. It attempts to marry turn-based, tile-hopping roguelike combat with real-time elements like charge attacks, group combos, and attack cooldowns, but it winds up constantly feeling sluggish and unresponsive. Worse, there’s not much in the way of strategy in most of the fights; you usually want to maneuver behind or to the side of an enemy while charging attacks, whacking them when opportunity strikes, then scurry away to avoid retaliation, charge again, and repeat. (Or, if you have a ranged weapon, you plink away with that.) An additional element where you use an aiming reticle to target specific body parts of an enemy just makes things messier, as you have to spend valuable time fidgeting with awkward aiming controls. It’s the same reticle you use to examine things in the environment, so if your reticle isn’t in the right place (say, you just examined something else not long ago), your attacks can simply miss entirely. It’s a shame that combat’s such a weird-feeling mess, because it drags down the fun of exploring these urban ruins, finding interesting items and bits left behind, and learning about the characters and the world.
Uniqueness is one of Zanki Zero’s biggest selling points, but its myriad ambitions and ideas aren’t enough to obscure the elements that don’t work as well. While the novelty of the game, its interesting story, and engaging exploration do a lot to carry it, it falters in some crucial spots that drag down the whole.
