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Even though PC gamers (correctly) worship at the altar of the gaming mouse and gaming keyboard, for certain driving, flying, and 3rd-person games, some experiences are better played with a controller. And of course, controllers are also almost always better for Comfy Couch Gaming when your gaming PC is plugged into your gaming TV.
San Diego Comic-Con begins in full tomorrow, with “Preview Night” happening for a few hours this evening. But in advance of that, IGN was invited to participate in a preview of Preview Night where we were given a tour of a handful of the biggest booths on the show floor, from LEGO to Cartoon Network to Dark Horse and more.
Check out the gallery below for huge LEGO figures, various exclusives, a recreation of the Krusty Krab, Witcher action figures, and much more. The show floor was still under construction during this tour, so don’t mind the work-in-progress state of some of the booths. Don’t worry — they’ll have everything in order by tonight!
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite may be out now, but that hasn’t slowed Niantic’s support for Pokemon Go. The studio has rolled out another new update for the game that completely overalls its appraisal system, making it much easier to see how your Pokemon’s stats measure up. That’s not all, however; after numerous teases, it appears Team Rocket will also begin invading Pokemon Go soon.
According to the latest patch notes, the new update adds Team Rocket to Pokemon Go. While the villainous team hasn’t begun appearing in the game yet, it seems players will be able to challenge Team Rocket grunts in battle. On top of that, players will have a chance to catch Shadow Pokemon that are abandoned by the Rocket grunts.
Shadow Pokemon aren’t an entirely new concept in the series. GameCube’s Pokemon Colosseum and its follow-up, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, both featured Shadow Pokemon, which were denoted by a dark aura swirling around them. In those games, players needed to rescue the Shadow Pokemon from villains and then gradually “purify” them by using them in battle. It’s unclear if Pokemon Go’s Shadow Pokemon will work the same way, but the concept certainly sounds similar.
In addition to Team Rocket, the new Pokemon Go update overhauls the game’s appraisal tool. Now when you appraise a Pokemon, you’ll see a clear overview of the monster’s Attack, Defense, and HP stats, with a one- to three-star rating signifying its overall potential. You can see the full patch notes for the update below or on the App Store.
Pokemon Go’s next Community Day event takes place this Sunday, July 21. This month, the featured Pokemon will be Mudkip, one of the three starters from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. A One Piece crossover event is also happening in the game beginning next week, which will give players a chance to catch a Pikachu wearing Luffy’s iconic straw hat. Finally, there’s still time to catch Armored Mewtwo in the game; the Legendary Pokemon will appear in five-star Raids until July 31.
Here’s what can you expect in this release.
A plane full of lucky passengers on a Southwest Airlines flight got more than a bag of pretzels on their trip to San Diego. They received a free Nintendo Switch system and a copy of the recently released Super Mario Maker 2, perfect for staying occupied while hurtling above the earth in a metal tube.
The first indication of the giveaway came from Nicholas Friedman, a social media manager at Funimation, who posted about it on Twitter. GameSpot confirmed the giveaway with Southwest Airlines, which said it partnered with Nintendo for the promotion. An image shared by Friedman shows a voucher, which he said could be redeemed for the system and game when the passengers land.
This isn’t Nintendo’s first cross-promotion with Southwest. The airline also gave away Wii U consoles, and the original Super Mario Maker added a special airline-inspired course, complete with a special costume to unlock.
The Southwest promotion was well-timed. It came just as Nintendo made a flurry of other announcements regarding upcoming hardware and software. A revised Nintendo Switch with better battery life is coming in mid-August in the U.S., new Joy-Con colors were announced, and Luigi’s Mansion 3 got a holiday release date. Plus this is all coming shortly after the announcement of the portable-only Switch Lite.
July’s free NES games are now available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. This month sees two more titles join the system’s slowly expanding NES library, along with a special version of a previously added game and a handy new feature.
The new additions this time are Donkey Kong 3 and Wrecking Crew. Nintendo has also added a special save state of Mighty Bomb Jack, which joined the service back in November 2018. This version starts you off in the final zone, with the conditions to see the best of the game’s four possible endings already met.
On top of the new titles, Nintendo has added a “rewind” feature to the NES library. As the tweet above demonstrates, this can be activated by holding the ZL and ZR buttons, and it allows you to go back a few seconds and try again if you mess up. The rewind feature can be used with every NES game in the library, and it should prove to be useful for some of the service’s more difficult titles like Ghost ‘n Goblins or Ninja Gaiden.
The NES library is only available to those who subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online service. It features more than 40 classic games, including Super Mario Bros. 3 and Punch-Out, with additional titles being added on a monthly basis. Other perks for subscribing include the ability to play online with others, cloud save backups, and some exclusive offers, such as the Nintendo Switch voucher program and Tetris 99, which is free to download and play for subscribers.
Individual Nintendo Switch Onlien subscriptions run for 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.
The final piece of major story-driven DLC for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is out today. Judgement of Atlantis is the third and final episode in Odyssey’s The Fate Of Atlantis DLC, the second story expansion for the Assassin’s Creed game.
Judgement of Atlantis takes place in the underwater city and sees Kassandra/Alexios aid Poseidon. Of every Assassin’s Creed game, comic, and animation to date, Judgement of Atlantis is seemingly the most lore-driven when it comes to the characters that drive the overarching plot of the franchise: the Isu. Also referred to as “those who came before,” the Isu have largely remained a mystery in Assassin’s Creed, despite being one of the most important groups in the franchise since 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II. The previous episodes of The Fate Of Atlantis dealt with Persephone and Hades, but primarily handled the Isu as the god-like beings they’ve always been portrayed as. Judgement of Atlantis dives deeper into the lore behind these figures, revealing their almost human-like history, beliefs, and customs.
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Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Fate Of Atlantis: 10 Minutes Of Combat and Exploration
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Instead of returning to an annual release schedule, Assassin’s Creed took a break after the release of Odyssey in 2018 and scheduled a series of episodic story-driven DLC to primarily release in 2019. Odyssey’s main campaign is broken into three separate storylines, and the two DLC expansions add additional context to two of them. Legacy Of The First Blade takes place within Odyssey’s “Hunt The Cult Of Kosmos” storyline and reveals how those events connect to 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins. The Fate Of Atlantis occurs after the “Between Two Worlds” storyline and further explains the Isu’s involvement in the Assassin and Templar conflict.
With Odyssey’s story now officially concluded with the release of Judgement of Atlantis, we can begin to look forward to Ubisoft’s next game in the franchise. Clues in The Division 2 seem to imply 2020’s Assassin’s Creed game will take place in a Viking setting. If true, the game would discount the 2016 leak/rumor that Ubisoft had planned a trilogy of games to take place in Egypt, Greece, and Rome (though getting two out of three isn’t all that bad). Vikings do make sense for topping off this latest trilogy though. Origins and Odyssey are not traditional Assassin’s Creed games in terms of combat and world-building, but both have acted as origin stories for the Assassin and Templar conflict. The Age of Vikings takes place just before the events of the original Assassin’s Creed, so a game in that setting could act as the final piece of the mystery as to how the two groups ultimately formed.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game will be included in Ubisoft’s upcoming game-focused subscription service, Uplay+, along with the other 17 mainline Assassin’s Creed games. Exclusive to PC, Uplay+ is scheduled to launch on September 3 with over 100 games.
Nintendo announced a revised Nintendo Switch model sporting better battery life, but that wasn’t the only new piece of hardware it had to reveal. The company also announced two new sets of colors for its Joy-Con controllers: Blue with Neon Yellow, and Purple with Neon Orange.
As usual with Joy-Con sets, the colors pairings represent the left and right Joy-Cons, respectively. Each package will cost $80 at launch, and they’ll be available starting October 4 in the United States. Other Joy-Con colors include Gray, Neon Pink, and Neon Green, and the removable nature of the controllers means they can be mixed and matched. Nintendo has not announced if they’ll be for sale individually, as it offers for some colors.
Nintendo also announced a new model of Nintendo Switch, which boasts up to 9 hours of battery life as compared to 6.5 with the launch model. Other than that improvement, though, it appears identical to the old version, so you may want to read up on how to tell the difference. The revised models will launch in mid-August in the U.S.
A much bigger change to the Switch hardware is represented by the Switch Lite, a smaller and budget-priced version of the hardware that removes the docking functionality to be a portable-only system. That version has its controllers permanently affixed to the body of the console, unlike the standard Switch. However, you could still use separate Joy-Cons for local multiplayer games.
See Blue/Neon Yellow Joy-Cons at Best Buy
See Purple/Neon Orange Joy-Cons at Best Buy
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PUBG Corp. has released a new cinematic trailer for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The trailer, which can be watched below, showcases the origin of PUBG’s first map, Erangel, and introduces the story behind the battle royale game.
In the trailer, a man recounts the time when he was a young boy in 1965 and his home, Erangel, was bombed by some unknown force. Resolving to live, the boy went on to survive by scavenging for weapons, medicines, and materials until he was the only person left alive on the island. Fast-forwarding to the present day, it’s revealed the matches in PUBG are a series of live-streamed (and possibly televised) battles to the death–similar to The Hunger Games.
These matches are orchestrated by the man, now incredibly wealthy, who designed the battle royale games to be a test for discovering humanity’s true survivors. The trailer ends with the man confirming these are his battlegrounds, identifying himself as the mysterious unknown player in PUBG’s title.
Though PUBG’s maps have hinted towards some sort of overarching narrative, this is the first confirmed lore for the battle royale game. PUBG Corp. hasn’t revealed whether more story-focused trailers will be revealed in the future, but game theorists at least now have a starting point for piecing together PUBG’s backstory.
The new trailer also acts as an announcement for the start date of PUBG’s upcoming season, Season 4, which is scheduled to begin July 24. Season 4 is a massive update for PUBG, completely reinventing Erangel with new visuals, adding parkour movement mechanics, and introducing brand-new weapons, vehicles, and items. There’s a new battle pass to work through as well, and it contains challenges that can be tackled cooperatively with your squad.
Season 4’s start date closely follows a major PUBG update on Xbox One and PS4 that added Apex Legends‘ auto equip weapon attachment features to the console versions of the game. If you want to try out all the changes in Season 4, the patch is currently live on PUBG’s PC test servers. On console, you’ll need to wait for the update to officially launch to play through the changes.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. A mobile port, called PUBG Mobile, is available on Android and iOS devices. Despite being relatively new, PUBG is one of the most influential games of the 21st century for popularizing one of gaming’s most popular subgenres.
Though not a sequel, a new PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds game is in the works. The upcoming game is being developed by Striking Distance, a studio helmed by ex-Call of Duty and Dead Space developer Glen Schofield. Described as an “original narrative experience within the PUBG universe,” the game is still in its infancy. Schofield has hinted the game may not necessarily be a battle royale like PUBG though.
It’s been a busy week for deals as Amazon Prime Day 2019 came and went, offering thousands of discounts and special bundles across every category, including gaming. Prime Day included quite a few noteworthy deals, like a PS4 Pro bundle with Spider-Man and Horizon Zero Dawn for $300 that sold out in a blink, but if you missed your chance to grab a new console, accessory, or specific game on your wishlist, there are still plenty of deals to be had at Walmart and other retailers this week.
Walmart’s Summer Savings event kicked off on Sunday and continues through Wednesday, July 17, offering free two-day (or faster) shipping on all orders over $35. GameStop’s major summer sale, which began a full week before Prime Day and continues until July 20, has some solid game deals, trade-in offers, and collectibles worth checking out. Plus, you’ll find some solid deals still floating around at places like Google Express, so don’t fret if you missed out (or decided to boycott) Amazon’s shopping bonanza.
See some of the best post-Prime Day deals still available below.
$400 ($550 value)
Use promo code GOTURE at checkout to see the price slashed to just $400 on this crazy bundle with the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One S All Digital-Edition (plus digital downloads for Minecraft, Forza Horizon 3, and Sea of Thieves).
$314 ($500)
Normally priced at $500, the Xbox One X is on deep discount at Google Express via seller Antonline. In checkout, you’ll see an initial $166 markdown, and once you apply promo code JULY20SAVE, that will increase to $186 off, dropping your price to just $314 (plus tax).
$314 ($500)
The same Google Express deal mentioned above also applies to this Xbox One X bundle with PUBG. $314 is a fantastic price for one of the most powerful consoles out there; plus, it doubles as a 4K UHD player.
$300 ($450)
Ready to go all-in on the Xbox One S? This bundle has an MSRP of $300 on its own, so getting a bonus controller and headset doesn’t hurt one bit.
$329 ($358.96)
Unfortunately, the only accessory left for this bundle is an Ematic Paw Patrol-themed carrying case–but getting the Switch and a first-party Nintendo game for essentially half off is still a good deal.
$300 ($359.96)
Prime Day saw quite a few markdowns on the PS4 Slim, but the last bundle left is this modest one at Walmart, which basically throws a bonus Crystal DualShock 4 controller in for free.
The good thing about games is that once they get discounted by one store (looking at you, Amazon), they tend to get price-matched by all the major retailers. There are some solid deals still available, such as Kingdom Hearts 3 for $20, Days Gone for $40, and Red Dead Redemption 2 for $30.
Aside from games and consoles, there are still plenty of markdowns on controllers, headsets, PC accessories, retro arcade machines, and more–see some of the best deals we found that are still up for grabs below.
$50 ($70)
$200 ($300)
$40 ($50)
$36 ($60)
$119.40 ($160)
$140 ($200)
$126.37 ($200)
$13 ($20)
The old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t just apply to printed matter. When you first see images and screenshots of Dragon Quest Builders 2, it’s easy to write the game off as yet another blocky-building sandbox game. But Dragon Quest Builders 2 is more than just your run-of-the-mill material-gathering, object-crafting, block-laying game. Its virtual community-creating gameplay stands out among the crowd, jam-packed with the warmth, joy, and charm that makes the Dragon Quest series so delightfully memorable.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 begins with your player character, a Builder with the ability to move and create objects, winding up stranded on a strange archipelago. Long ago, these islands flourished with a great civilization–up until a cult called the Children of Hargon gained power, destroying all that existed and forbidding those in its thrall from creating anything new. It’s up to you and your mysterious friend, a snarky, aggressive boy named Malroth, to destroy the cult’s hold on the people and restore these islands to their former glory, one block at a time. Much like how the original Dragon Quest Builders was a take on a what-if ending for the original Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest Builders 2 takes the ending of Dragon Quest II and turns it on its head–but you don’t need to be familiar with that game to get a lot of enjoyment out of this one. (You will appreciate several of the callbacks, though.)
The core gameplay loop in Dragon Quest Builders is immensely satisfying. You have a central island, the Isle of Awakening, that acts like one big sandbox, along with several other islands both large and small that you can visit to gather materials and advance the main story. The larger islands all feature a big, overarching quest to restore a destroyed population center, which you’ll accomplish by completing numerous smaller sub-quests to build facilities, find new materials, help individual NPCs, and explore different areas. Completing these quests rewards you with the gratitude of those you’ve aided, which in turn yields new item-creation recipes, improves the skills of the NPCs at the base, and brings more characters to the area to help with building, farming, mining, and monster-slaying. When you finally complete the lengthy main quest on each of the bigger islands, several of the NPCs will return with you to the Isle of Awakening, eager to aid you in building your own unique city and letting you run absolutely wild with your creative town-building concepts.
Part of what makes this gameplay loop so fulfilling is that doing these dozens upon dozens of small errands for NPCs rarely becomes tedious. The characters you meet in Dragon Quest Builders 2 are lively and full of personality (and funny accents), and helping them out with their needs to receive their heartfelt thanks just feels really, really good. You also get the joy of watching a town transform from a barely-functional series of ramshackle hovels into a thriving community thanks to your persistence and kindness. When you finish a new building or complete a task, the populace gathers around to showcase their elation and shower you with gratitude points–a simple reward that nonetheless feels wonderful to get.
It also helps that the world itself is tremendously fun to explore. The varied settings you encounter in your quest offer a variety of things to discover: towering hills, sandy beaches, secret underground caverns, ancient ruins, waterlogged bogs, and so on. You’ll find plenty to do out in Dragon Quest Builders 2’s expansive environments, and by exploring, you’re amply rewarded with rare materials, optional side quests, some new NPC companions, and even a few simple puzzles that yield nice rewards upon completion. There are even a few randomly generated small islands you can sail out to that offer fresh experiences every time you visit, allowing you the chance to see interesting procedurally-made environments, collect lots of unique, rare materials and bring them all home to build the city of your dreams.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dragon Quest game without many of the series’ beloved monster designs. While a few non-humans are friendly to you, most of the monsters you encounter are strict adherents of the Children of Hargon and want nothing more than to destroy you and everything you’ve made. You’ll have to fight them off if you want to keep on building. Unfortunately, you’re a Builder, not a fighter, so your combat prowess for a lot of the game feels quite lacking.
As a result, combat winds up being the weakest part of the game. While it’s a marked improvement over the original Dragon Quest Builders, offering you a lot more control over your character and bringing NPCs into the mix to aid you in fighting, it still feels quite bland most of the time–you’ll just run up to enemies, whack them with a few basic weapon strikes, and hope they die sooner rather than later. The NPC warriors that join you on expeditions and when your bases and city need defending are far more useful for fighting off enemies than you are most of the time, particularly Malroth, who is an absolute beast when it comes to monster-mashing. I frequently found myself just waiting for Malroth to whittle down enemies’ health before I went in to finish them off and collect EXP and loot. The boss fights utilize some gimmicks involving your Builder abilities that make them significantly more interesting than normal fights, but they’re few and far between. At least combat isn’t a primary focus of the game, and new abilities and items you build as you progress help with enemy destruction–but combat never really stops feeling like an annoying distraction to what you want to do most: explore and build stuff.
But whatever problems the game has are quickly negated by everything else Dragon Quest Builders 2 does well. Characters are quirky and memorable with wonderfully written dialogue (though they’re sometimes a smidge too chatty), you get lots of cool materials to work with over the course of the game to build and customize your city, and everything, from the controls to the visuals and audio to the interface, feels inviting, engaging, and fun. Occasionally there’s a bit of tiny text that’s hard to read (a problem made worse when playing in handheld mode on Switch), but the vast majority of the time you’ll be too busy building away to care about the game’s small irritations.
Online co-op play opens once you have cleared the game’s first major quest. Unfortunately, while you can’t play the campaign in a co-op session, you are still allowed to build on the Isle of Awakening alongside a buddy or three. Working together to build your island is as fun as playing solo—maybe even more so—and the various customization items you can craft to wear during these sessions add a lot of goofy charm to the proceedings. In our testing, sessions with other players located in North America went smoothly, with few noticeable lag hiccups. If you want to show off but don’t feel like having a virtual block party, there’s also a bulletin board where players from around the world can post, tag, and share screenshots of their creations in-game.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a great game, combining exploration, sandbox-building, questing, and town-management into a delightful package that will gladly suck up your time and put a big smile on your face. It’s the sort of game that you’ll intend to play for a little while, only to find that hours have flown by once you manage to actually put it down. Don’t dismiss this one when you see big square blocks on the box–you’ll be missing out on a very fun twist on an excellent gaming foundation.