Category: Games

Madden NFL 22 is launching soon, and alongside it EA is holding another edition of its Madden Championship Series. It is open to anyone, and this year it has a total prize pool of $1.65 million.

The championship series is actually a series of Madden tournaments, with the first beginning on August 21. From there, the Thanksgiving tournament starts in September and extends through November. The third, Wild Card round begins in October and goes through January, and the series wraps up with the Madden Bowl from January through February.

Doing well in the first three tournaments nets you points in addition to giving you a chance to win some preliminary money. The top 12 players from across the three tournaments on both PlayStation and Xbox qualify for playing in the Madden Bowl, which has a grand prize of $250,000. Registration for the ladder stage of the first tournament is open from now until August 21.

Madden NFL 22, meanwhile, will be released on August 22, and EA is working on a number of tweaks that it claims will significantly change the gameplay. These include a momentum meter that will react based on how you play; momentum can unlock buffs or debuffs, including home field-specific perks. EA is also continuing to invest in using real-world statistics from the NFL season in improving player behavior, and it has overhauled the game’s AI to be more realistic.

Back 4 Blood is a spiritual successor to the co-op zombie mayhem of the Left 4 Dead series. With such an emphasis on shooting your way through zombie hordes with your mates, you may wonder how easy it will be to actually play with those friends who didn’t happen to adopt your own platform of choice. It’s releasing across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles, with the open beta set to begin soon.

Does Back 4 Blood Support Cross-Play?

In short, yes. A Back 4 Blood beta FAQ from WB Games confirms that the Back 4 Blood open beta features cross-play support, and players in the closed beta have already been linking up with their friends to play it across platforms. As such, you can expect the feature to also be available at the game’s launch in October.

What About Cross-Progression?

Cross-play is useful if you’re playing on one platform and need to connect with friends across another platform. But what if you own multiple platforms and want to be able to seamlessly hop between them? First: congratulations, moneybags. Second, sorry, there is no announced cross-progression and no indication from the beta that it will be the case.

The game does prompt you to create a username, but there’s currently no way to login with that same username on another platform. That means there’s effectively no way to carry your progress from one platform to another. The good news is that there isn’t much progress to be transferred anyway, at least for the time being. The only pain point will be your customized card decks, which you’ll have to rebuild if you hop onto a new platform.

Still, the existence of a login system suggests that Turtle Rock could have the back-end ready for implementation at launch, or sometime after. The company has not announced plans for other progression systems or a battle pass.

Ready for Launch

Back 4 Blood’s open beta runs from August 12-16 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms. The game is set to release on October 12, and will be included in Xbox Game Pass. The closed beta has already been big on Steam and Twitch, so read up on how to play the Back 4 Blood open beta. Check out our Back 4 Blood preorder guide for more details.

That whole Drax,Thanos history seemed to get swept under the rug. Always wondered why but every reason I could come up with just makes me shake my fucking head. It is what it is. 🤷🏻‍♂️ https://t.co/AXlFcKYq5E

— Vaxxed AF! #TeamPfizer Poor Kid Chasing Dreams. (@DaveBautista) August 9, 2021

Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game launched on Kickstarter on August 3 and has since become the highest earning tabletop RPG to launch on the platform after just a few days of being on the site.

The officially licensed tabletop RPG by Magpie Games, which is set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, went live on Kickstarter with a crowdfunding target of $50,000 on August 3. The game smashed through its initial target in just 16 minutes before raising over $1,000,000 in just its first day on the website.

Things have barely slowed down since – the tabletop RPG has now raised over $4,000,000, eclipsing the previously held Kickstarter record for a crowdfunded TTRPG by some margin. Matt Colville’s Strongholds and Followers, an unofficial Dungeons & Dragons crowdfunded campaign, previously held the record for the highest crowded funded TTRPGwhen it raised $2.1 million in 30 days in 2018. Not only has Avatar Legends blown the previous record out of the water by comparison, it still has 24 days left of its campaign.

As previously reported by IGN, fans of the Avatar-based RPG have worked their way through a number of different stretch goals since fully funding the core game. Included within the game’s surpassed stretch goals are a range of additional NPCs, a velvet dice bag, various physical playbooks, and more. Magpie Games added additional funding updates as recently as August 8 (from time of writing) and so it remains to be seen whether the company has an upper limit for stretch goals and, if so, what that limit is.

For those of you who haven’t kept up to date with the story so far, you can find out more about the premise of Avatar Legends, as well as the basic principles behind the tabletop game’s mechanics in our original article. Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game will remain on Kickstarter until September 3.

For more on Avatar: The Last Airbender, why not check this article about the Avatar and Spongebob podcasts announced by Nickelodeon in May and later released in June. Alternatively, you can read this article detailing how Nickelodeon has started to lay the groundwork for an “Avatar Airbender universe” that will feature multiple series and movies.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Xbox and Sega have announced a new grand strategy, as Amplitude Studios’ upcoming PC-exclusive strategy game Humankind has been confirmed for Xbox Game Pass on August 17, the day it launches.

The announcement was made on Xbox Wire, confirming that the game will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on PC only. There has been no word on whether or not the game will come to consoles, either standalone or as part of Xbox Game Pass.

“Humankind is a convergence of culture, history, and values that allows you to create a civilization that is as unique as you are,” the official blog post writes. “You’ll be re-writing the entire narrative of human history (…no pressure) from its humble beginnings in the Neolithic Era, as you set out to leave the biggest mark on the world.”

Humankind tasks players with building their own unique civilizations using moral choices and real-world cultures to pull from, in the hopes of gaining enough “fame” to win the game. Humankind was delayed earlier this year from April 22 to August 17, though last month Sega and Amplitude did offer a closed beta.

For more, check out the full list of everything offered on Xbox Game Pass right now, as well as everything you need to know about the Xbox Game Pass service.

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

Iron Gate Studios provided a sneak peek at some of the new changes that will be coming to Valheim and its food system as part of its upcoming Hearth & Home update. This overhaul is meant to balance health vs stamina to allow players to be more creative and versatile in their playstyles.

Currently, eating food provides your character the same amount of stamina as it does health. But in Hearth & Home, food will now be split into three categories, based on whether a piece of food replenishes health or stamina. A red icon means that a piece of food will restore mostly health, while yellow indicates stamina. A white icon means both health and stamina will restore evenly.

The food bar will now be replaced with timers so that you can more accurately see how much time you have left before you need to each more. Food icons will still start blinking when they’re halfway depleted.

Iron Gate will go more in-depth later about how this new food system will affect the minute-to-minute gameplay. But broadly speaking, in order to build out your base and terraform, you’ll want to eat food that will provide you with enough stamina to keep building. However, make sure you also have enough health so that you can survive a plunge if you accidentally end up falling to your death. During battles, you’ll most likely opt for more health or stamina, based on your preferred combat style.

Valheim is currently available right now on PC through Steam Early Access. The Hearth & Home update is currently on track for a Q3 release this year.

Darksiders III is coming to Nintendo Switch, and it’ll be here in September. THQ Nordic has announced that the action game will launch on September 30, both digitally and in stores.

The Switch edition includes the base game and two expansion packs, Keepers of the Void and The Crucible. The game will retail for $40/£35/€40. The existence of Darksiders III for Switch is not a total surprise, as it was leaked on a Russian store in July.

Darksiders III was originally released in 2018, so Switch fans have been waiting for a while. The PS4/Xbox One edition of the game that launched in 2018 was developed by Gunfire Games, but it’s not immediately clear if that studio or another one is responsible for the Switch version.

It’s not the first Darksiders game on Switch, however, as the top-down action RPG Darksiders Genesis was released in 2020 for Switch (as well as PS4 and Xbox One). Before that, Darksiders Warmastered Edition and Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition were released on Switch in 2019.

GameSpot’s Darksiders 3 review scored the game a 4/10.

“There are remnants of a good game here, buried within the vivacious combos of a combat style this game doesn’t want to embrace. Unfortunately, it’s buried far too deep to ever salvage,” critic Richard Wakeling said.

PS5 and PS4 owners will definitely want to check out Amazon’s latest game promotion, which discounts select PlayStation exclusives to Prime Day-level prices. You’ll also want to take a look at PS Direct’s August Savings sale for even more PlayStation game deals. A number of PS5 exclusives are featured in the sales, including a trio of great games for $50 each: Returnal, Demon’s Souls, and The Nioh Collection. We’ve rounded up the best PlayStation game deals at Amazon and PS Direct below:

PlayStation game deals at Amazon and PS Direct

• Days Gone (PS4) — $20 ($40)
• Death Stranding (PS4) — $30 ($40)
• Demon’s Souls (PS5) — $50 ($70)
• Dreams (PS4) — $10 ($20)
• Ghost of Tsushima (PS4) — $30 ($40)
• The Last of Us Part II (PS4) — $20 ($40)
• Marvel’s Iron Man VR (PS4) — $20 ($40)
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4/PS5) — $40 ($50)
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition (PS5) — $50 ($70)
• MLB The Show 21 (PS5) — $50 ($70)
• MLB The Show (PS4) — $40 ($60)
• The Nioh Collection (PS5) — $50 ($70)
• Returnal (PS5) — $50 ($70)
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS4/PS5) — $36.54 ($60)
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure Special Edition (PS4/PS5) — $70 ($90)

A couple of great PlayStation accessories are also on sale for solid prices. The PS5’s HD camera is $40, down from $60, while the DualShock 4 back button attachment is only $15.