Fans of the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on SNES, rejoice–Donkey Kong Country 3 is joining the Nintendo Switch Online collection this month. The third game in the trilogy–which is not quite as beloved as the first two, but is still well-regarded–arrives on December 18, alongside four other games.
Donkey Kong Country 3 features Dixie and Kiddy Kong, on a quest to rescue Donkey and Diddy. The game introduced overworld vehicles and some new moves, and it still looks great in 2020.
There are three more SNES games and a NES game coming on December 18, too. The other SNES games are a bit more obscure, and you can check them out in the trailer below.
The Ignition Factor is a game about fighting fires, Super Valis IV is a scrolling action game, and Tuff E Nuff is a fighting game. While these games are unlikely to stir up as much nostalgia as Donkey Kong, there’s still bound to be some love for them among players.
Nightshade on the NES is an interesting choice, too–it’s an adventure game, developed by Australian Beam Software. The 1992 game was criticized for poor controls at the time, but it’s an interesting curio, and definitely a title that few players have had a chance to experience.
The NES/SNES library on Nintendo Switch Online now features over 90 games.
Note: This guide contains spoilers for one of the story quests in Cyberpunk 2077. Read on at your own risk!
The stakes get raised pretty significantly in Cyberpunk 2077 as you work through Act 2. After protagonist V acquires the biochip and finds Johnny Silverhand in their head, you set out on a journey to find out all you can about the chip and how you can get rid of it before it kills you. Your investigation goes down several avenues, including working with Goro Takemura, a former Arasaka bodyguard.
You’ll spend a lot of time with Takemura as you investigate Arasaka and try to get in touch with the corporate brass, without getting yourself killed in the process. But eventually, things take a turn and you’re separated from Takemura at a key moment during the story mission Play It Safe. When the pair of you are attacked during a meeting in an apartment building, V falls through a collapsed floor, separating you from Takemura. At this point, you have a choice, although it’s not immediately clear: run for your life, or return to Takemura and save him from being overwhelmed by enemies.
Toward the end of the Play It Safe mission, after your meeting with Hanako Arasaka, Takemura’s safehouse comes under attack from Arasaka goons. At the start of the battle, an explosion will collapse part of the building beneath V, sending him sprawling to the floor below. At this point, Johnny will insist that you need to leave the building, while V will mention returning to help Takemura.
1. Ignore Your Minimap
Regardless of what the characters say, getting back to Takemura is a hidden objective, and not marked on your map. You’ll have to find the path back to him on your own, and if you follow the one displayed on your minimap, you’ll be directed out of the apartment building, leaving Takemura to his fate.
2. Find Your Way Back Up
There is a path that’ll lead you back up to the floor above to help Takemura, but it’s not obvious. The easiest way is to just jump back up through the hole you fell through. If you have the Reinforced Tendons cyberware (which awards double-jump) or Fortified Ankles (which gives you a charged jump), you can spring back right up through the hole back into the room with Takemura.
If you don’t have the proper chrome, you’ll have to fight through a mess of enemies to get to Takemura. When you get up in the room where you fell, look for a neon cross on the wall. Beneath it is a hole through which you can crawl. Follow the path and look for stairs to take you back up to the floor above, but be careful of the Arakasa goons you’ll face along the way.
3. Kill The Arasakas
The apartment where you find Takemura will have several Arakasa soldiers in it, all unloading on him. The benefit of coming back up through the hole is that you’ll get the drop on these guys, allowing you to approach from behind and get takedowns on them. Otherwise, you’ll have to fight them head-on as you return to Takemura’s apartment. Kill all three and Takemura should accompany you back out into the hallway. (Note: We found this whole area to be pretty buggy, with Takemura sometimes getting stuck in his cover position during this fight. It seems like, if you progress far enough, he’ll follow you, but saving before attempting to go after him is a good idea.)
4. Fight To The Street
From here, you’re going to be bombarded by Arasakas all the way to the exit, and they hit hard. Expect a tougher fight than if you had simply escaped on your own. As you leave the apartment, enemies will come at you from both sides of the hallway. If you have a lot of grenades, you can easily get them down the hall by bouncing them off the walls, which will allow you to avoid exposing yourself. Strong Quickhacks, like Contagion, are useful here too, as you can damage and kill multiple enemies at once. But don’t stick your head out too far as you fight, because you’re liable to get quickly overwhelmed by Arasakas.
You’ll have to keep moving through the apartment building to escape, and Arasakas will keep coming for you, so move carefully and stay behind cover. As you get further out, Takemura should become more helpful, helping to fight the Arasakas in the stairwell. It’s not too far to get out of the building, and once you can see daylight, run for it. You’ll split up, but Takemura will make contact later to let you know he’s doing well.
5. Epilogue Appearance
Unfortunately, saving Takemura doesn’t unlock the ability to spend any more time with him. He’ll go into hiding for the rest of the game, leaving you to deal with everything else that’s going on. Saving him does have the potential to change your ending of the game, however. Takemura will show up in the epilogue depending on your choices, which can earn a Trophy or Achievement for saving him, dubbed “The Devil.”
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Cyberpunk 2077 hasn’t had the smoothest launch, and for some PC players the problem has been exacerbated by the game’s issues with certain components. Right now, players AMD CPUs are having issues with performance–but there’s a way to improve things.
A Reddit thread has discovered a fault with the game, whereby it only recognizes physical cores on AMD chips, not logical cores. While Intel CPUs face no issue, AMD users can see enormous performance drops.
Thankfully, all you’ll need to do to rectify the issue is change a single line through a Hex Editor. PC Gamer has a great guide on how to do this, recommending freeware HxD as the editor to use.
Once you’ve done that, open the Cyberpunk 2077 executable file in the program, and do a Ctrl+F search for the following Hex-values tab:
75 30 33 C9 B8 01 00 00 00 0F A2 8B C8 C1 F9 08
Change that 75 to an “EB” and save the changes, and your problems should be solved. Hopefully a patch will come soon to eliminate the need to do this, though.
The first major patches for Cyberpunk 2077 dealt with seizure-inducing light displays, copyrighted music issues, and some bugs, but more are surely on the way. If you’re playing on Xbox One or PS4, there’s no easy fix for the game’s troubling launch state, which CD Projekt Red has apologized for.
After numerous delays and production upsets related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mortal Kombat movie has a release date. Director Simon McQuoid’s film will be available to watch on April 16, 2021.
The news comes via producer Todd Garner, who released a new poster featuring the release date. He also promised that a first-look trailer would arrive “in the new year.”
For a while, it seemed like Mortal Kombat would still be a cinema-only release, and while it will come to cinemas, it’s also going to be on HBO Max from day one–as with all 2021 Warner Bros. releases.
Back in late 2019, the film’s release date was set for January 15, 2021–and compared to many other films, its eventual COVID-19 delay was much less severe.
The Mortal Kombat film was shot in Adelaide, South Australia. It won’t be the first Mortal Kombat film, with the first releasing in 1995 and still being a lot of fun (the same can’t necessarily be said for 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation).
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There are many, many weapons in Cyberpunk 2077. The most special of these are called Iconic weapons: unique, custom weapons that are a step above the ones you’ll find on any old corpse. These come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but none is as distinctive and full of personality as Skippy, the talking smart pistol.
Ostensibly based on Microsoft’s Clippy, the pop-up paperclip that used to help us with Word documents, Skippy is an AI-operated smart pistol. A shot from a smart gun will automatically seek targets mid-air, which is as useful as it sounds. Normally, you need cyberware in your hands that will enable you to use smart weapons; however, a major advantage to Skippy is that it doesn’t require cyberware to use.
To find Skippy, head to a back alley in the Glen, southeast of Corpo Plaza. See the map in the image below to pinpoint the area.
The location of Skippy in Cyberpunk 2077.
Skippy is a unique weapon for a lot of reasons, the least of which is the waived cyberware requirement. Skippy offers a choice between automatic headshots or nonlethal limb shots, the latter of which is called “Puppy Loving Pacifist mode.” It’ll also jam from time to time, prompting Skippy to make a comment about how this has never happened before–if you know, you know.
Pokemon Go‘s annual holiday event is returning next week, developer Niantic has announced. The event kicks off at 8 AM local time on December 22 and will feature a ton of festive activities and bonuses, including increased appearances of Ice Pokemon, exclusive Research tasks to complete, and more.
Throughout the holiday event, Ice-type Pokemon such as Spheal, Snover, Snorunt, and others will appear in the wild and hatch from 5 km eggs more frequently than normal. The Fresh Snow Pokemon Vanillite and its evolved forms will also make their debut in the game during the event, while Alolan Sandshrew, Dewgong, Jynx, Walrein, and more will appear as Raid bosses.
In addition to all the Ice Pokemon, a couple of festive costumed Pokemon will be available during the Holiday 2020 event as well. You’ll be able to catch Pikachu, Delibird, and Cubchoo wearing holiday-themed outfits. You’ll also have a chance to encounter Shiny Jynx in Raids.
Beyond the increased Pokemon spawns, there will be a variety of event-exclusive Field Research tasks to complete. These will lead to encounters with Cryogonal and Vanillite, among other rewards. Niantic is also adding some new holiday-themed avatar items to Pokemon Go’s style shop, including a Greedent Sweater, Whimsicott Earmuffs, and Winter Coat.
Finally, Niantic will offer various bonuses during the celebration. Throughout the entire event, you’ll be able to carry 40 gifts at a time and open up to 45 gifts each day. The following bonuses will also be available on specific days:
December 22-23 — 2x Raid XP
December 24-25 — 2x catch Candy
December 26-27 — 2x Star Piece duration
December 28-29 — 2x Lucky Egg duration
December 30-31 — 2x catch Stardust
The Holiday 2020 event runs until 10 PM local time on December 31. You can read more details on the Pokemon Go website.
The downturn has caused some in the industry to question CD Projekt’s strategy. Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners who often tweets about industry happenings, said that this reflects an “overreliance on one large game release every few years…Any sort of uncertainty/issues will lead to this. Ultimately the decline isn’t because the game isn’t selling well, but because of future prospects / current known issues.”
As I noted before, the over reliance on one large game release every few years is never a good thing. Any sort of uncertainty/ issues will lead to this. Ultimately the decline isn’t because the game isn’t selling well, but because of future prospects / current known issues.
CDPR’s stock is taking a hit IN THIS MOMENT. But let’s pull the camera back… 5 days 1 month 6 months 1 year They’ll be fine. Stop stanning billion dollar corporations. They’ll recover from this. They already made their money back from CP2077 dev. They’ll get away with this. pic.twitter.com/wSlufQLvts
Others have downplayed the stock price, calling it merely a bump in the road for one of the world’s biggest video game developers. For example, reporter and consultant Mike Futter noted that CD Projekt’s stock price is still ahead of where it was a year ago.
To be clear, stock prices are a fickle beast, and they reflect dozens of factors that are bigger than the release of just one game, even a blockbuster like Cyberpunk 2077. That said, the roiling controversy surrounding the game–and particularly its last-gen console versions, which are so buggy and broken that Sony and Microsoft have begun offering refunds–has overshadowed its positive review scores and impressive sales numbers.
CD Projekt issued a statement on Monday acknowledging the technical issues on PS4 and Xbox One and urging those who are unsatisfied with the experience to seek refunds. They also said that an update is planned within the next seven days that will hopefully alleviate some of those shortcomings. For more on the game, be sure to check out our full Cyberpunk 2077 review. This isn’t the first time the game has shown issues in need of fixing–the latest patch, version 1.04, addressed seizure-inducing scenes affecting those with epilepsy, music copyright issues for content creators, and a number of other problems.
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Wonder Woman 1984 and Star Trek’s Chris Pine is in talks to star in Paramount and eOne’s Dungeons & Dragons feature film.
As reported by THR, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are set to direct the feature that is based on the popular role-playing game owned by Wizards of the Coast. Goldstein and Daley also wrote the latest version of the script that was based off a previous draft by Michael Gilio.
No plot details were given for this new Dungeons & Dragon movie, but it will be the first feature film based on the property since Jeremy Irons’ starred in New Line’s adaptation in 2000.
In our review of 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons, we said “if making a movie is akin to running a marathon, then Dungeons & Dragons is like an infant trying to crawl. This film truly gives the already legendary Battlefield Earth legitimate competition as the worst, most inept big-budget movie released by a major studio in recent memory. Though it doesn’t have Battlefield Earth’s extra camp factors (the Scientology connection, Travolta), it may well actually be even worse. Quite an achievement.”
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
