Author: Trafficblast

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Not only can you play as a good boy in this new title from Spooky Squid Games, you can help save some real good boys too. With each purchase of Russian Subway Dogs on PC and Mac until August 8, $1 will go to Save Our Scruffs, a charity dedicated to finding rescue dogs safe homes around the world.

From the team that brought They Bleed Pixels to life comes a new pixelated arcade game. In Russian Subway Dogs, you’ll play as one of man’s best friends just trying to live another day in the Moscow Metro, swiping food from Russian commuters.

In the game’s campaign, you’ll follow Proletaricat and her chaotic kittens in 100 levels inspired by real-world train stations. But in order to get those sweet treats, your good boy will have to dodge vodka, rival pups, and an elusive subway bear. If stories aren’t your jam, there’s also an endless mode complete with leaderboards.

You can wag your money at Russian Subway Dogs right now via Steam on PC and Mac for $15. During its launch week, you can snag a small bonus treat in the form of 10 percent off.

Patrick Stewart has announced that he will once again portray Captain Jean-Luc Picard in a new Star Trek series. As reported by CNET, the announcement was made during a Star Trek convention being held at Las Vegas. Stewart later posted a lengthy statement on Twitter, saying that it is “an unexpected but delightful surprise” to be returning to the role.

“I will always be very proud to have been a part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when we wrapped that final movie in the spring of 2002, I truly felt my time with Star Trek had run its natural course,” he said. “It is, therefore, an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him. Seeking out new life for him, when I thought that life was over.

“During these past years, it has been humbling to hear stories about how The Next Generation brought people comfort, saw them through difficult periods in their lives or how the example of Jean-Luc inspired so many to follow in his footsteps, pursuing science, exploration, and leadership,” he continued.

“I feel I’m ready to return to him for the same reason–to research and experience what comforting and reforming light he might shine on these often very dark times. I look forward to working with our brilliant creative team as we endeavor to bring a fresh, unexpected, and pertinent story to life once more.”

According to the Star Trek: Discovery Twitter account, the new show “tells the story of the next chapter in Picard’s life.” In June Alex Kurtzman, who has worked on recent Star Trek movies and TV show Star Trek: Discovery, signed a five-year deal with CBS Television Studios to release several new Star Trek shows. The series focused on Picard is the first to be confirmed since that announcement, and the show will air on CBS All Access.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

FIFA 19’s release date is fast approaching, and publisher EA has finally unveiled more of the game’s new features. Possibly the most intriguing change is an overhaul of Kick Off, which was hitherto a standard exhibition mode. In addition, FUT 19, or Ultimate Team, has replaced Online Seasons with a new sub-mode named Division Rivals.

FIFA 19’s Kick Off brings more options than any pervious version of the mode. You can still play what’s now called a Classic Match if you don’t like change, or you can utilize any number of new options. You can specifically choose to make your match Champions League-themed, which will rebrand it with the official logos and replace commentators Martin Tyler and Alan Smith with Derek Rae and Lee Dixon; alternatively, you can do the same but for the Europa League.

You can also decide to play a two-legged match, where you play with the same two teams with each side playing at home once and away once (with the away goals rule active in the event of a draw). Similarly, you can set up a Best Of series, where you play a three- or five-match series against a friend or the AI.

The most interesting aspect of the overhauled Kick Off, however, is the ability to set House Rules. This is something many FIFA players have been doing themselves for years while playing against friends, but now EA will allow you to input special laws into your match. For example, you can prevent short-range goals from counting towards the scoreline, or force your mates to score from headers and volleys only.

Ultimate Team won’t be overhauled in quite the same way, but it still comes boasting a couple of new features. Online Seasons is no more; Offline Seasons will still be available but the online equivalent is to be replaced by Division Rivals. These are weekly competitions against those of a similar skill level to you, all with dynamically updated objectives. EA says it wants to reduce the amount of grinding required in FIFA’s online modes, so this year you can obtain Champion Points to gain access to the weekend’s Champions competitions. FUT is also adding a Champions Channel, where you can view previous Champions matches and analyze how players performed in those games. Confirmed Icons for FIFA 19 include Rivaldo, Johan Cruyff, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Eusebio, Clarence Seedorf, Claude Makelele, and Raul.

Outside of FUT and Kick Off, we know FIFA 19 will conclude Alex Hunter’s story in The Journey, while we can expect improvements to Career Mode and Pro Clubs. For more information on those and more on FIFA 19, keep an eye on GameSpot.

FIFA 19 launches worldwide on September 28 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS3, and Xbox 360. That’s around a month after its closest rival, PES 2019, which also has a demo out very soon. For more on EA’s sporting behemoth, check out our big feature on the 19 best new FIFA 19 features you might have missed.

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Call of Duty is a force to be reckoned with in the video game industry. It has, for the past 14 years, been the dominant first-person shooter in a market with some serious contenders. The series has had to evolve to maintain its edge, and despite being developed by multiple different studios, the entirety of the Call of Duty series has almost consistently garnered widespread acclaim from critics and players alike. People will always debate the merits of an annualized series, especially one that seems to thrive on iteration, but Call of Duty shows no signs of slowing down.

It all began back in 2003, with the original Call of Duty appearing alongside the likes of Medal of Honor and Battlefield, two series that had already established a glowing reputation among military FPS fans. All three were set during World War II, and Call of Duty would continue down that path for both Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 3.

After four years and three games set in a decades-old conflict, the decision to ground the next Call of Duty game in a more contemporary setting resulted in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The departure was welcomed with open arms by an audience hungry for something new, and the positive reception ensured a steady stream of modern- or future-set sequels, including multiple Call of Duty: Black-Ops and two more Modern Warfare (Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3) games in the years to come.

Like so many things, Call of Duty moves in cycles, and it was just last year that Activision took the series back to World War II, for, you guessed it, Call of Duty: WWII. It was a return to form that felt, to many, like the right move at the right time–a good way to shake up the flow of the previous 10 years. We are now looking ahead to the impending release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 this fall, and it’s anyone’s guess as to when the series will return to a more traditional style of military mayhem.

Call of Duty’s reach is so vast that it has no doubt resonated with people for a wide variety of reasons. We’ve collected GameSpot’s Call of Duty reviews from over the years and compiled them to illustrate the series rise to prominence, and to provide a historical snapshot of each individual games’ place in the process. But if there’s a particular game that made you fall in (or out) of love with the Call of Duty, shout it out in the comments below!

Nothing about the hype, release, disappointment, and slow, disciplined redemption of No Man’s Sky has been typical. As such, the great paradox of the Next update isn’t exactly a surprise. It introduces some drastic improvements to the base game, not to mention a great deal of what Hello Games’ Sean Murray promised and was pilloried for not delivering at launch. It is a grander, more cohesive experience that makes the infinite expanse of space feel much less lonely. But what Next really ends up emphasizing through all of its quality-of-life improvements and additions was that the game we got on day one was always going to be “the game.”

You start out as an amnesiac astronaut stranded on a random planet with a broken ship that, once repaired, takes you on a potentially neverending search through a near-infinite universe. What you seek can vary; it may be answers that explain your identity crisis and the odd state of the universe or a wealth of natural resources to fund an extended tour of strange, far-off planets. Though you begin as a disadvantaged lost soul, it’s entirely possible to study your surroundings, take advantage of what they have to offer, and become a social and military force in the eyes of No Man’s Sky’s alien races.

Through multiple updates, this has always been the very soul of No Man’s Sky. Ever since the Atlas Rises update, “You are not alone” is the first phrase another living being speaks to you after you manage to escape your starting planet. There is an enormous amount of fear, hope, and power in that moment, especially after spending a couple of hours scouring your ersatz home planet for the resources to repair your ship.

The power of that statement diminishes, however, the more the game gives you command and comprehension of your environment. Without a doubt, No Man’s Sky has become a veritable sandbox. In fact, after a few initial goals are met, you receive a message asking if you’d like to continue the story, or define your own path–whatever that may be. Through a combination of new mining and terraforming tools and the freedom to build how and where you wish, it has never been easier to make any planet into a home. Finding the raw materials to do so and refining them into their most useful form is now a quick and relatively painless fact of life. Multiple land-based vehicles now exist, making traversal even less of a dangerous hassle. As for space, frigates and fighter crafts are easier to obtain. There are more missions available to haul in incredible amounts of resources or, if you’re looking to play the role of a space pirate, seek out traders and fleets in other galaxies and ransack them for sweet loot.

All this is made more enticing by the fact that Next fulfills the much-touted promise of true multiplayer, where up to four people can now party up and take on the universe together. It’s not entirely seamless. Multiplayer tended to create random stutters and bugs more than anything else I did in game–even when playing the otherwise technically astounding Xbox One X port. That said, you can still wander around, help people farm resources, and have backup while breaking into a well-guarded facility. Portals and teleportation devices are now a staple in No Man’s Sky, and showing off your new home has never been easier. Altogether, No Man’s Sky’s universe finally feels like, well, a universe. It feels like a fine place to live a digital life, while simultaneously being the least innovative or interesting thing the game could become.

With Next, No Man’s Sky becomes a competent space-faring sandbox. It’s definitely good enough to turn some of the heads who angrily ranted against the game that released in 2016. Creatively, though, No Man’s Sky neither gains nor loses anything by trying to become a mining colony sim. It greatly excels when it embraces being the No Man’s Sky we’ve always known.

The things that make No Man’s Sky a great experience are the things that have been there since the first version. In that game, you are well and truly alone. You were a drifter in a universe where the chances of meeting a stranger who spoke your language were in the single digits, and the chances of meeting one who said something coherent were even lower. In that game, you’re not being led on by loot or having the best house. Your concerns are material inasmuch as if you wanted answers, if you wanted to see what new creations the procedural generation gods had bestowed on the next planet, you needed to barter, trade, and mine.

The good news is that side of the game is still very much here, and it has seen its share of improvements, most notably to the pacing and presentation. It’s rare that graphics can make or break a game, but Next’s visual upgrades truly make a difference. The worlds are vastly more detailed, with breathtaking new lighting and physics effects enhancing everything from pollen flying off plants as they sway in the breeze to gravity and light being vacuumed into the yawning void of a black hole. The third-person camera not only grants the game a sense of scale, but also gives you a better understanding of exactly who you are in the universe, especially since the look and species of your character is now customizable at space stations. The improved effects in space make an already magnificent environment even more amazing, especially with ringed planets now a common sight.

Where much of the game’s initial hours are still spent introducing you to the core mechanics, they are now far more deeply embedded in narrative conceit; you are a newborn wholly unaware of who you are, your place in the universe, and who is guiding you along. Every new bit of information is found by you, clued in by anomalous broadcasts from derelict equipment strewn across the universe, learning from the failures of other explorers. There are aliens, but their help is unreliable until you put the time and effort into learning their language. You do this either by getting one of the aliens to teach you new words or finding the species’ codices scattered in foreign monuments. There are many more of these opportunities now, especially in space stations which have been redesigned as wide-open forums where one might find friends bragging about new discoveries, hulking armies on furlough, or scavengers hawking their new finds. You’re a stranger to them all at first, and it’s only in choosing to take the risk of ingratiation that you can find yourself in a species’ favor, with their representatives willing to offer help in your hours of need.

All of this is in favor of the Artemis and Atlas Path storylines, introduced in the Atlas Rises update. The narrative beats of each story are largely unchanged, but they are both now far better integrated into the flow of the game as rewards for your curiosity rather than staunch waypoints impatiently waiting for your arrival. That said, players returning to old saves will find it’s not as easy as just picking up where they left off, and much of what they already own gets shuffled around at random. It doesn’t break pre-existing games, but it’s a less-than-welcome relearning curve, to be sure. Both narratives still have their positives and negatives, though the original Atlas Path storyline is now a minor footnote in a journey much wider in scope, but what matters most is that both narratives encourage the things that distinguish No Man’s Sky.

At its absolute best, No Man’s Sky is a measured, gentle experience where you are rarely the agent of change, but a perpetual visitor who’s constantly dwarfed by the magnitude of a universe neutral to your presence. It is not your job in these stories to colonize the universe. Your job is to comprehend it. Your job is to recognize the spirituality in it. The primary gimmick of No Man’s Sky, since day one, has been awe. The best things about the Next update feed that gimmick. While features like multiplayer and base-building certainly put more proverbial asses in seats, they’re also the least memorable additions to an otherwise thoughtful experience.

Nothing about the hype, release, disappointment, and slow, disciplined redemption of No Man’s Sky has been typical. As such, the great paradox of the Next update isn’t exactly a surprise. It introduces some drastic improvements to the base game, not to mention a great deal of what Hello Games’ Sean Murray promised and was pilloried for not delivering at launch. It is a grander, more cohesive experience that makes the infinite expanse of space feel much less lonely. But what Next really ends up emphasizing through all of its quality-of-life improvements and additions was that the game we got on day one was always going to be “the game.”

You start out as an amnesiac astronaut stranded on a random planet with a broken ship that, once repaired, takes you on a potentially neverending search through a near-infinite universe. What you seek can vary; it may be answers that explain your identity crisis and the odd state of the universe or a wealth of natural resources to fund an extended tour of strange, far-off planets. Though you begin as a disadvantaged lost soul, it’s entirely possible to study your surroundings, take advantage of what they have to offer, and become a social and military force in the eyes of No Man’s Sky’s alien races.

Through multiple updates, this has always been the very soul of No Man’s Sky. Ever since the Atlas Rises update, “You are not alone” is the first phrase another living being speaks to you after you manage to escape your starting planet. There is an enormous amount of fear, hope, and power in that moment, especially after spending a couple of hours scouring your ersatz home planet for the resources to repair your ship.

The power of that statement diminishes, however, the more the game gives you command and comprehension of your environment. Without a doubt, No Man’s Sky has become a veritable sandbox. In fact, after a few initial goals are met, you receive a message asking if you’d like to continue the story, or define your own path–whatever that may be. Through a combination of new mining and terraforming tools and the freedom to build how and where you wish, it has never been easier to make any planet into a home. Finding the raw materials to do so and refining them into their most useful form is now a quick and relatively painless fact of life. Multiple land-based vehicles now exist, making traversal even less of a dangerous hassle. As for space, frigates and fighter crafts are easier to obtain. There are more missions available to haul in incredible amounts of resources or, if you’re looking to play the role of a space pirate, seek out traders and fleets in other galaxies and ransack them for sweet loot.

All this is made more enticing by the fact that Next fulfills the much-touted promise of true multiplayer, where up to four people can now party up and take on the universe together. It’s not entirely seamless. Multiplayer tended to create random stutters and bugs more than anything else I did in game–even when playing the otherwise technically astounding Xbox One X port. That said, you can still wander around, help people farm resources, and have backup while breaking into a well-guarded facility. Portals and teleportation devices are now a staple in No Man’s Sky, and showing off your new home has never been easier. Altogether, No Man’s Sky’s universe finally feels like, well, a universe. It feels like a fine place to live a digital life, while simultaneously being the least innovative or interesting thing the game could become.

With Next, No Man’s Sky becomes a competent space-faring sandbox. It’s definitely good enough to turn some of the heads who angrily ranted against the game that released in 2016. Creatively, though, No Man’s Sky neither gains nor loses anything by trying to become a mining colony sim. It greatly excels when it embraces being the No Man’s Sky we’ve always known.

The things that make No Man’s Sky a great experience are the things that have been there since the first version. In that game, you are well and truly alone. You were a drifter in a universe where the chances of meeting a stranger who spoke your language were in the single digits, and the chances of meeting one who said something coherent were even lower. In that game, you’re not being led on by loot or having the best house. Your concerns are material inasmuch as if you wanted answers, if you wanted to see what new creations the procedural generation gods had bestowed on the next planet, you needed to barter, trade, and mine.

The good news is that side of the game is still very much here, and it has seen its share of improvements, most notably to the pacing and presentation. It’s rare that graphics can make or break a game, but Next’s visual upgrades truly make a difference. The worlds are vastly more detailed, with breathtaking new lighting and physics effects enhancing everything from pollen flying off plants as they sway in the breeze to gravity and light being vacuumed into the yawning void of a black hole. The third-person camera not only grants the game a sense of scale, but also gives you a better understanding of exactly who you are in the universe, especially since the look and species of your character is now customizable at space stations. The improved effects in space make an already magnificent environment even more amazing, especially with ringed planets now a common sight.

Where much of the game’s initial hours are still spent introducing you to the core mechanics, they are now far more deeply embedded in narrative conceit; you are a newborn wholly unaware of who you are, your place in the universe, and who is guiding you along. Every new bit of information is found by you, clued in by anomalous broadcasts from derelict equipment strewn across the universe, learning from the failures of other explorers. There are aliens, but their help is unreliable until you put the time and effort into learning their language. You do this either by getting one of the aliens to teach you new words or finding the species’ codices scattered in foreign monuments. There are many more of these opportunities now, especially in space stations which have been redesigned as wide-open forums where one might find friends bragging about new discoveries, hulking armies on furlough, or scavengers hawking their new finds. You’re a stranger to them all at first, and it’s only in choosing to take the risk of ingratiation that you can find yourself in a species’ favor, with their representatives willing to offer help in your hours of need.

All of this is in favor of the Artemis and Atlas Path storylines, introduced in the Atlas Rises update. The narrative beats of each story are largely unchanged, but they are both now far better integrated into the flow of the game as rewards for your curiosity rather than staunch waypoints impatiently waiting for your arrival. That said, players returning to old saves will find it’s not as easy as just picking up where they left off, and much of what they already own gets shuffled around at random. It doesn’t break pre-existing games, but it’s a less-than-welcome relearning curve, to be sure. Both narratives still have their positives and negatives, though the original Atlas Path storyline is now a minor footnote in a journey much wider in scope, but what matters most is that both narratives encourage the things that distinguish No Man’s Sky.

At its absolute best, No Man’s Sky is a measured, gentle experience where you are rarely the agent of change, but a perpetual visitor who’s constantly dwarfed by the magnitude of a universe neutral to your presence. It is not your job in these stories to colonize the universe. Your job is to comprehend it. Your job is to recognize the spirituality in it. The primary gimmick of No Man’s Sky, since day one, has been awe. The best things about the Next update feed that gimmick. While features like multiplayer and base-building certainly put more proverbial asses in seats, they’re also the least memorable additions to an otherwise thoughtful experience.