Category: Games

Following its release for PS4 and Xbox One in September, 2K’s NBA 2K21 is headed to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in November. It’s almost here. One thing people want to know is just how much better the next-gen edition looks, and that’s starting to come into focus.

In a new video, we recreated the NBA 2K21 PS5 next-gen gameplay trailer shot-for-shot with the PS4 edition. You could have guessed this, but the PS5 edition certainly looks a lot better.

In particular, the sweat that drips down cover star Zion Williamson’s face is more pronounced, while the animations and overall graphics generally look better and more realistic on PS5. Check out the full video to see more.

NBA 2K21 is a launch title for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, releasing on November 10 for Xbox Series X and November 12 for PS5. Keep checking back with GameSpot for lots more in the days and weeks ahead!

One of Noita‘s best spells is the ability to summon a torrential downpour from thin air. A heavy, magical cloud bursts open above you, extinguishing damaging flames or washing away toxic poisons. Having this ability on one of my many runs always reassured me that I could be a little more reckless with my navigation through Noita’s dangerous biomes–at least it did, until I discovered that I could just as easily drown myself in many of its narrow and twisting procedurally-generated mazes.

A big part of Noita’s appeal is watching how all its physics-based systems interact with each other. This 2D roguelike’s dynamic world is brought to life with vibrant pixels, each one reactive to the world and circumstances around it. Fires will spread and engulf nearby wooden structures, slowly burning them away. Those wooden structures might support a giant vat of toxic sludge, which will quickly pour through the tunnels of a mine once its supports are gone. This sludge, in turn, can erode enemies, infect life-giving pools of water, and melt away the ground. But it can also just as easily kill you. The simple act of knocking down a lantern creates a deadly domino effect, and part of Noita’s appeal is learning to spin that into an advantage.

Noita doesn’t give you the means to control this chaos, but with a variety of wands and spells you can learn how to nudge it in advantageous directions. It’s easiest to think of wands in Noita as weapons, while spells are the ammunition loaded into them. Each wand features slots for spells, as well as attributes determining casting speeds, delays, and whether spells are shuffled when cast. Spells, on the other hand, determine your overall damage output and effects. This can range from the expected arcane fireballs and small jolts of electricity to the more absurd, such as combining specific spells to summon terrain-consuming black holes that spit out explosives or create magnificent electrical storms that spew out toxins.

Experimenting with both wands and the spells you load into them is one of Noita’s most engaging aspects. It’s captivating to stumble upon a combination that sounds absurd on paper, yet synergizes in unexpected and effective ways. Finding a wand with numerous slots invites you to satisfy your curiosity and experiment, letting you craft complex strings of spell commands. Spells are fired in order from left to right of a wand’s queue, letting you assign modifiers to them based on their position. For example, a wand can be configured to fire a large, slow fireball before applying a spread pattern to a wind spell. The wind can be cast directly after the fire, catching the flames as it bursts past and igniting them, creating a wide-reaching attack from an otherwise pointless gust of wind.

You can just as easily craft entirely useless wand and spell combinations, as well as setups that can end up doing more harm to you than to enemies. One of my earliest experiences with this was combining a boomerang perk with a spell that cast bombs, both equipped on a wand with a rapid fire rate. Instead of flying in front and behind me like I expected, the bombs I cast instead travelled briefly ahead before turning to explode in my face, ending my run there and then. Initial instances like this are comical as you sit dumbfounded by what just occurred, but they can quickly morph into frustration as you grapple with trying to understand why they happened so that you can learn from them.

Understanding Noita’s spell crafting is a slow process, predominantly because the game does a poor job of explaining how any of it works. The game’s tutorial is nothing more than an in-game control breakdown at the start of each run, forcing you to figure out its intricacies on your own. Because Noita spent a good amount of time in early access, it’s easy enough now to play with a highly detailed wiki at your side. But without in-game guidance, it can take hours before you discover some of Noita’s key mechanics, such as the strict casting order of spells or the ability to fill potions vials up again with any liquid. It makes the game’s opening hours frustrating because of how limited your options can feel before you come to an understanding of their depth, making the brutally dangerous enemies all the more challenging to overcome.

Death comes quickly in Noita, be it by reckless spellcasting, from the chaotic nature of each biome’s physics, or at the hands of its large roster of enemies. Even the most fortunate runs with the best spells and wands on offer can come to a grinding halt through carelessness, as enemies imbued with elemental attacks can quickly cut you down. Understanding enemies and their weaknesses makes killing them more satisfying, especially when you figure out how particularly difficult foes can be torn apart with the right elemental combinations. But at the same time, their random dispersion throughout each biome can sometimes feel unfair, especially when some of Noita’s most challenging enemies are ready to greet you at a stage’s start.

Randomness is at the heart of most roguelikes, and Noita is no different. It does, however, feature parameters that make consecutive runs so drastically different from one another that it’s difficult to get to grips with its mechanics when you’re constantly brushing up against the new challenges accompanying a new run. For most of my initial hours with Noita, I was hardly making progress, encumbered with trying to understand its combat while also engaging with runs that had no chance of lasting more than a handful of minutes. There’s no overarching progression to lean on for help in Noita; you’re reset to the same point with each new start. As you start coming to an understanding of its systems, Noita’s mechanical depth–and the rush of discovering it–overcomes its initial frustrations. But it’s an abrasive start that is far from welcoming.

Noita’s main hook of experimentation with spells and their effects on the world around you is strong enough to pull you through its uneven start.

It’s a disservice to the game that lies not just underneath the crust of its world, but in all other directions that hold secrets to be uncovered. The core of Noita is about progressing downwards, moving from one area to the next before reaching its final, gold-laden world. But there’s so much else on the periphery that is persistent with each run that invites exploration, often challenging you to become creative with its elements in order to reach their secrets. One early example is a massive pool of lava stretching to the edge of the screen. It’s too large for you to glide over, but you can turn the molten magma into cool rock with a delicate sprinkling of water. You could, alternatively, find a way to boost your gliding time or use directed pushes of air to propel you along. There are numerous ways to tackle many of Noita’s side activities, each of which makes you feel like a genius for reaching them.

Creatively manipulating Noita’s reactive world with an inventive spellcasting system acts as the game’s initial appeal, but it’s also the game’s biggest stumbling block early on. Trying to gain footing in Noita’s dangerous, unstable world is an abrasive task that distracts from its wonderful secrets and challenging puzzles, but its main hook of experimentation with spells and their effects on the world around you is strong enough to pull you through its uneven start. Noita is tough and unforgiving of even the smallest mistakes, but it’s also just a gleeful sandbox of destruction that brings as much joy as it does death.

The new Ghost of Tsushima Legends update is now live, adding multiplayer co-op missions to Sucker Punch’s latest release. We figured that the update seemed as good an excuse as any to jump back into the game.

In the video above, Max Blumenthal channels his inner ghost to pull off some super slick combo kills, aiding his allies from the shadows as the Assassin class. The gameplay should give you a pretty good idea of whether the Assassin is the ideal starter class for you. Don’t fret if you start with a different class though; every class can be unlocked eventually.

Once you’ve downloaded the update for Ghost of Tsushima, accessing Legends is fairly straightforward. You can either talk to Gyozen, a brand-new in-game character who will be added to and marked on your map once the update is downloaded, or you can select “Legends” from the main menu.

Still on the fence about whether to pick up Ghost of Tsushima? In GameSpot’s Ghost of Tsushima review, Edmond Tran wrote, “Ghost of Tsushima’s story hits hard in the game’s third and final act, and ends in spectacular fashion. It left me with the same kinds of strong emotions I felt at the end of all my favourite samurai film epics, and had me eager to watch them all again. The game hits a lot of fantastic cinematic highs, and those ultimately lift it above the trappings of its familiar open-world quest design and all the innate weaknesses that come with it–but those imperfections and dull edges are definitely still there.”

It’s the question on the minds of so many theme park fans: When will Disneyland reopen? While there is still no set date, the state of California has revealed the guidelines that must be met in order for the parks to open. This comes after Disney announced it was laying off 28,000 workers, partially blaming the state for not allowing them to reopen. Don’t get too excited, though, as it may still be some time before the gates open–a possibility Disney is unhappy about.

As announced by California’s Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, via The Hollywood Reporter, theme parks will be able to open at 25% capacity when the counties they exist in reach Tier 4 (yellow) status in the state’s four-tiered system. The guidelines to achieve Tier 4 status are less than one new daily case per 100,000 people and less than 2% positive tests.

Currently, Orange County–home to Disneyland–is in Tier 2 (red), which means there are 4-7 daily cases per 100,000 people and a 5-8% positive test rate. Universal Studios Hollywood is in Los Angeles County, which is currently Tier 1 (purple) with more than 7 daily cases per 100,000 people and a positive test rate of over 8%.

Once the counties reach Tier 4, they will be allowed to open–but there are some rules being imposed by the state. Once open, in addition to the 25% capacity limit, all ticket reservations must be made in advance. There are to be no day-of ticket sales. Beyond that, masks will be required inside the parks. Currently, the shopping complexes attached to both Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood are open. Both require masks and take guest temperatures.

Shortly after the state revealed its guidelines, Disney responded in a statement. “We have proven that we can responsibly reopen, with science-based health and safety protocols strictly enforced at our theme park properties around the world,” Disneyland Resort president Ken Potrock said. “Nevertheless, the State of California continues to ignore this fact, instead mandating arbitrary guidelines that it knows are unworkable and that hold us to a standard vastly different from other reopened businesses and state-operated facilities. Together with our labor unions we want to get people back to work, but these State guidelines will keep us shuttered for the foreseeable future, forcing thousands more people out of work, leading to the inevitable closure of small family-owned businesses, and irreparably devastating the Anaheim/Southern California community.”

Likewise, Universal Studios Hollywood is not pleased with the new guidelines. In a statement, the park’s president and chief operating officer Karen Irwin commented, “Pushing us into Tier Four behind other businesses that have already reopened makes no sense. It ignores science, reason and the economic devastation this will bring to the thousands of our employees, the indirect businesses that rely on us, and our industry overall.” She continued, “The health and safety of our guests and team members has always been our top priority. We have designed detailed health and safety protocols that allowed us to open our theme parks in Orlando, Osaka, and Singapore. We have collaborated with LA County health and government officials on a comprehensive plan to move forward safely here, and we are prepared and ready to reopen. Our theme parks are controlled primarily outdoor businesses that we have proven we can operate responsibly.”

Ultimately, Irwin said that theme parks should fall under Tier 3. Keeping them in Tier 4, she believes, will mean parks won’t open until sometime in 2021. “Our employees are ready to go back to work and the fact that they won’t be able to do so until well into next year is shameful,” she said.

Disney and Universal’s parks in Florida are open to the public, with restrictions in place. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the state of Florida has also seen a decline in testing. In July, an average of 54,400 daily tests were administered. Now, the state averages less than half that. Thus far, no outbreaks have been traced back to Disney World’s guests or employees, according to the New York Times.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Universal Studios Hollywood.

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Netflix has announced that The Office’s Rainn Wilson will be executive producing and narrating a quirky new competition series titled We Are the Champions. The show, which is slated to debut on November 17, will feature “unusual competitions around the world… including cheese rolling, chili eating, fantasy hair styling, yo-yo, dog dancing, and frog jumping,” according to Variety. In other words, the show sounds like an attempt to try to wind 2020 down with a light-hearted salve to what will no doubt be an exhausting final few weeks of the year.

“We Are the Champions’ celebrates weirdness, finds beauty in idiosyncrasies, and demonstrates what it really takes to rise to the top: heart,” Wilson said. “As a self-proclaimed expert on the unconventional, I’m excited to introduce viewers to these small-world competitors with big-world dreams because, in this time, we could all use a hero–be it a dancing dog or the world yo-yo champion.”

Chris Uetwiller, CEO of the show’s production company, Dirty Robber, added, “In a TV landscape that can be rather formulaic at times, We Are the Champions represents something refreshing and different.” He also emphasized that the show is about storytelling that will surprisingly move people, asking, “Who knew people would ever be moved by cheese rolling?”

The show also bookends a year that similarly kicked off with Wilson’s The Office co-star Jim Krasinski starting a new project in March to combat great stress and uncertainty. Krasinski’s YouTube series, called “Some Good News,” had a quick, strange, and somewhat divisive journey from a feel-good one-off to a series that garnered more than 2 million subscribers and netted around 70 million views to then being acquired by GameSpot parent company ViacomCBS for the CBS All Access app. The show has not yet debuted on CBS All Access, but Krasinski announced he would no longer star–and the shift also meant that an adorable once-free show has now been locked behind a streaming paywall.