IGN UK Podcast #561: Haunted Houses and Red Beef

Cardy quizzes both Dale and Jesse about their recent experiences in the haunted houses of Phasmophobia and Bly Manor. There’s also the new PS5 UI to talk about as the next-generation of consoles fast approach.

There’s a tightly contested new Endless Search to play as well as some of your feedback of which only some are sandwich-based.

Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].

IGN UK Podcast #561: Haunted Houses and Red Beef

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Remothered: Broken Porcelain Review

As a follow-up to 2018’s enjoyable stealth-based survival horror game Remothered: Tormented Fathers, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is both a sequel and a prequel – but that’s really just a polite way of saying I couldn’t make heads or tails of the chronology of its plot, and I’m not convinced its creators could either. Perhaps I was too distracted by its countless audio dropouts, freezes, broken controller inputs and baffling enemy behaviours to really be able to concentrate on straightening out the tangled threads of its nonlinear narrative. If nothing else, Remothered: Broken Porcelain is aptly named; like a shattered vase it lacks structure, each individual part is rough around the edges, and it’s not really worth the effort to try and piece them all together.

At the very least the setting is an appropriately haunting one. Ashmann Inn is an antiquated hotel situated in a secluded snowy mountain region highly reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining. Certainly during its opening moments I enjoyed the eerie ambience of its dimly lit hallways as I, controlling the young protagonist Jennifer, indulged in a deadly game of hide and seek with the murderous, mind-controlled hotel maid Andrea (seemingly modelled on Annie from Stephen King’s Misery).

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But that enjoyment was about as short-lived as Stephen King’s career as a film director, because Remothered: Broken Porcelain simply can’t sustain the same level of cat and mouse tension that the original game could. This is largely due to Jennifer’s movement speed which is positively glacial in comparison to the swift gait of each enemy stalker. By the time you’ve slowly crouch-walked your way up behind one, they’ve already read a book, made a sandwich, and turned around and spotted you before the stealth attack prompt has managed to materialise over their head.

Since attacking enemies from behind is your sole combat option for the most part, once detected your only course of action is to flee and hide until they’re no longer on high alert. This can also be problematic, as seen by the many times I went to hop into a locker and the ‘open locker’ button prompt failed to appear, resulting in me frantically shuffling back and forth trying to find it before copping the wrong end of a pair of sewing scissors in the jugular. The supernatural sensitivity of the enemy AI versus your own sluggishness and unreliable inputs doesn’t make for a fun stealth experience, just a frustrating one that made each area of Remothered: Broken Porcelain a chore to complete.

A Bug’s Life

Outside of these cumbersome enemy encounters, there’s surprisingly little else to do in Remothered: Broken Porcelain. There are significantly fewer environmental puzzles to solve than there were in Tormented Fathers, with only the occasional cracking of a safe combination to demand much in the way of lateral thought. Instead, Remothered: Broken Porcelain places an emphasis on Jennifer’s ability to temporarily teleport her consciousness into a moth and fly up to out of reach items or, in one instance, agitate a guard dog enough for Jennifer to slip by. It’s an interesting concept, but there’s no real scope for employing it outside of very specific story junctures, and when you do get to use it it’s like trying to pilot a remote-controlled drone through a room submerged in honey. The moth’s movements are seriously listless and it has a tendency to get stuck on parts of the environment. And since it can only be used in short bursts I’d often find myself switching to moth form, getting stuck in a wall on the way to my target, being beamed back to Jennifer, and then forced to wait for a cooldown timer to recharge before I could start the process over again.

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Jennifer’s moth ability might not be much fun to use, but at least it’s one bug that’s actually been included on purpose. Elsewhere there are far too many game-breaking glitches to count. Aside from the aforementioned button prompts failing to appear when you’re trying to hide, there’s dialogue and ambient audio cutting in and out, characters getting stuck in scenery, game crashes, enemy stalkers pinning you between their body and the environment, confusing camera quirks, and more. It took me about 10 hours to complete my playthrough of Remothered: Broken Porcelain, but I’d estimate that at least a couple of those hours were a direct result of failing objectives due to glitches and retreading stretches after forced restarts. To developer Stormind Games’ credit, there has already been an effort to rectify many of these flaws – at the time of writing (some 48 hours after launch) there have already been three patches deployed for Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s PC version.

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However, while fixing technical issues is of course appreciated, it’s going to take nothing less than a significant overhaul to smooth out Remothered: Broken Porcelain’s garbled story. The plot jarringly shunts forwards and backwards in time while being only loosely connected by cutscenes that end far too abruptly. The only shining light as far as the story is concerned are the handful of playable flashbacks that centre around Jennifer and her best friend Linn. They’re easily the most well-written exchanges in the entire ordeal and are set prior to the madness descending on the residents of Ashmann Inn, meaning they’re mercifully devoid of any sloppy combat sections.

NHL 21 Review – Score

EA normally releases new NHL games during the Stanley Cup playoffs when the sporting world is focused on hockey, but complications due to COVID-19 led to a delay for NHL 21. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup weeks ago, and as a result, ice hockey has escaped the wider public sports consciousness as other leagues take hold. But NHL 21 is a compelling reason to care about hockey again, as this year’s game delivers a major improvement to the story mode, adds a flashy new arcade-style mode in HUT Rush, and makes the on-the-ice gameplay better than ever thanks to a series of new skill moves that let you play with more style.

Be A Pro 2.0

The biggest new addition for NHL 21 is the expanded and improved Be A Pro. After NHL 20 delivered basically no updates on the career-focused mode, NHL 21 offers a huge step forward thanks to a cinematic-style campaign of sorts, where you create a character and guide them through their career, beginning in either Europe or the Canadian Hockey League and competing for a spot in the NHL. The story beats play out through non-voiced dialogue sequences and cutscenes with coaches, media, and teammates. The main choices you make come from the Team or Star paths, and both have pros and cons to consider as you weigh your options to shape your career in the way you want to.

As an example, my agent called me to ask if I wanted to attend a charity event for a wildlife protection company. I chose the “Team” response, and my brand rating improved because the simulation suggested my fans would see this as a sports star being humble and genuine. However, choosing this option came with a negative effect, too, as my agent told me it was a noble choice but I should also plan for my life after hockey and try to make as much money in my prime as possible. I enjoyed the struggle of making these choices, and I found myself choosing one option and then loading a previous save to see how things would have played out differently. The choices you have to make can be real head-scratchers and they generally seem believable and taken from real-world headlines. But while the conversation system and cutscenes are generally enjoyable and a step up from the past iterations of Be A Pro, they are at times very cheesy and contrived, so the conversations and their impact don’t always resonate.

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I started my Be A Pro season in the Canadian Hockey League’s Memorial Cup, and it was an enjoyable challenge to start my career as a low-level, poorly rated player who had to compete well with what few shifts I was given to win over my coach and teammates. Very few hockey players have a meteoric rise; it’s often a slow grind, and this is faithfully represented in NHL 21’s Be A Pro. The aim is to make it to the NHL by performing well enough to get signed by a team in the draft. To that end, NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode delivers a multitude of feedback systems to help you improve. During games, a coaching system gives you live feedback about how you’re performing and what you need to do better. After each game, a detailed statistics page populates with even more information and shows you sliders that represent how much further you need to go to improve.

You can tailor your player to your liking with NHL 21’s skill tree system, allowing you to decide what type of player you want to be and then building a skill profile that focuses on anything you want. As I got better and better, I enjoyed seeing my player grow and evolve with their OVR rating rising, and the intuitive feedback systems helped me to understand what to prioritize to become a better player and teammate.

The rest of what makes Be A Pro so great this year are the more subtle improvements and attention to detail. There is a new radio show featuring NHL 21 commentator James Cybulski, who is a radio host in real life. It plays while you’re moving through the menus and completing tasks like assigning skill points, checking the calendar, and tracking your progress, and it’s exciting to hear Cybulski speak about what happened during the previous week and shower you with praise or discuss your less-than-ideal performance with his witty and informative commentary. It’s a natural-sounding broadcast show, complete with Cybulski taking callers and flubbing his dialogue in some cases just as it would happen in real life.

There is also a new Salary Perks option that lets you decide what to do with your earnings, which can become significant as you progress through your NHL career. Some of the options include supporting charities, buying cars and houses, or even investing your money into app development, and they impact your player’s ratings, which further encourages you to invest in your player’s life off the ice. For example, buying a sports car gets you a limited-time buff toward speed on the ice, while hiring a lawyer gets you +2 aggressiveness, which is pretty silly but fun to see at the same time.

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NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode is a far cry from the Longshot and The Journey modes from EA’s Madden and FIFA games, respectively–which are far more fleshed out and include voiced dialogue–but what is there for NHL 21’s Be A Pro mode is entertaining and feels like a first step, and one that I hope EA builds upon in the future.

Dangle Game Upgrades

On the ice, NHL 21 excels yet again. The big new additions to the gameplay mix this year are a series of skill moves that make NHL 21 even more true-to-life and faithful to where the real NHL is at these days. Players like Alexander Spechnikov, Sidney Crosby, and Alexander Ovechkin are wowing fans with their skills, and this has seemingly inspired the flashy new skill moves in NHL 21. The new slip and chip dekes are relatively simple to execute, and they are useful for getting around defenders in the open ice. The bank net self-pass, which Crosby made famous, is particularly helpful to quickly change directions and keep defenders guessing. The more challenging dekes, the “no-move move” and the lacrosse goal, are aimed at the highest-skilled players and I found them to be extremely difficult to pull off. The lacrosse goal in particular is the hardest deke in the game–and it should be, given that it’s only been performed in real life on camera a handful of times.

The new skill moves are a welcome and enjoyable part of NHL 21, but they are not overpowered, and you don’t necessarily need to use them to score goals. Like in real hockey, the majority of goals that are scored are the result of playing with speed, making hard passes, and putting in the effort to fight for the puck. It’s a thrill to pull off some of the new skill moves during a game, especially against human opponents, but I scored the most goals–and had the most goals scored against me–by breaking the defense down with speed and making good and smart passes. Like in previous years, cycling the puck and waiting for a cross-crease scoring opportunity is the best way to win, even if it’s not the flashiest way to do so.

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Also of note, your AI teammates, along with defenders, are smarter and more capable this year. In comparison to NHL 20, I found the AI to make better choices and skate together at a more capable level, and this contributes to making NHL 21 feel even more authentic to the sport.

AI goalies are smarter in NHL 21, too–they get into position and reading shots better than last year, and as a result I found myself scoring fewer “cheap” goals, which helps make the game feel more true-to-life. The sloppy goals from previous games can still happen, but I experienced fewer of them in NHL 21. Several new desperation animations for goalies have been added this year, too, and they elicit some jaw-dropping sequences just as they do on a TV broadcast.

There is still some weirdness to be found in NHL 21’s gameplay. Player models do not always react to the action on the ice in a natural-looking way–there can be horror-show clips of players knocking into each other and limbs bending in inhuman ways, for example. And it’s disappointing that the player models and the crowd animations are largely unchanged from last year. But these shortcomings are few and far between, and they don’t negatively affect the experience in a consequential way.

Excellent Controls And Detail

The controls in NHL 21 are once again phenomenal. Using the recommended skill stick controls, the gamepad feels like an extension of your stick, and the controls feel intuitive and simple to grasp across the wide variety of moves you can perform. In particular, I found that poke checks are remarkably represented in NHL 21, providing a fine level of control to break up passes and give your opponents headaches as they try to enter the zone or make a move.

Elsewhere, NHL 21 delivers subtle improvements to the presentation that help the game look and perform more realistically. Jerseys generally look more like the real deal, featuring crinkles on them that give the appearance that they are actually worn instead of just slapped onto the character model. The animations, too, appear smoother this year, especially the backskating and pivoting animations that are fluid almost to a level of a TV broadcast. Some of the skating animations are still a bit wonky, but for the most part NHL 21 has a stunning package of realistic-looking animations that ice hockey fans will appreciate.

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The attention to detail in NHL 21 is impeccable and makes the game feel like a true representation of hockey culture. PA announcers during intermissions talk about hot dog giveaways, commentators James Cybulski and Ray Ferraro have an excellent rapport and effectively balance being informative and entertaining at the same time. The way a player looks over their shoulder when entering the circle for a faceoff, how the crowd noise crescendos into a roar during the third period when the game is close, and how the ice creaks and cracks when playing on ponds are just a few examples of how NHL 21 successfully captures the spirit of hockey by getting the small details right.

HUT Rush

In addition to the updated Be A Pro, the other biggest new addition for NHL 21 is the HUT Rush mode, which is a great addition to the Hockey Ultimate Team mix. A less serious, more arcade-style mode, HUT Rush challenges you to rack up the highest score by completing skill moves and chaining them together for multiplier points. HUT Rush makes you play differently–no longer are you trying to score goals the basic way, because that won’t be good enough.

In HUT Rush, it’s all about playing with style and using the new skill moves to do so. HUT Rush ties into the new skill moves nicely, providing an avenue for which to put the new skills to good use. There is a social competition element to HUT Rush as well, as your high scores go on a leaderboard that resets weekly, and I found myself coming back just in the first week to see how my stats compared to the global playerbase.

Hockey Culture

There are a multitude of modes to play in NHL 21 depending on what kind of experience you want, and I enjoyed the variety. Beyond the traditional 5v5 mode and the aforementioned HUT Rush and Be A Pro, the Threes and Ones modes return, and they remain as engaging and fun as ever with their less serious, more stripped-down mechanics. World of Chel returns as well, and this online mode succeeds in creating a hub of sorts for you to create a character and develop them. In World of Chel, you compete against other human players with leaderboards, a battle pass-style cosmetic system, and other progression rewards that represent the carrot to keep chasing. Hockey Ultimate Team offers literally hundreds of challenges to take part in, and this is before you even begin competing with other humans in online versus modes.

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The Franchise mode, however, sees only minimal updates–the main new feature, a trade deadline simulation, doesn’t end up feeling very satisfyingly tense and demanding as you race to make trades against the clock. That said, Franchise remains a very strong offering that lets you live out the fantasy of being an NHL GM as you make all manner of choices to help your team succeed, from identifying draft picks, to maintaining and repairing the toilets in your stadium’s bathrooms, to keeping your fans happy. You need to manage just about everything, and it can be a real head-scratcher to have to make decisions that might be good for your organization but bad for player morale. In that way, it feels realistic and true to the experience of the dilemmas that a real NHL GM might face.

Simply put, NHL 21 represents a gigantic offering with each distinct part bringing something to the table that shows off a different corner of the hockey world and its culture. And speaking of culture, NHL 21 introduces new banners that pop up to tell you that offensive team names and other toxic behavior will not be tolerated. Further, NHL 21 has built-in player-reporting tools, so you can quickly and easily report offensive user-created team names you may come across. The NHL video game series and the sport it’s based on is known to have a diversity and toxicity problem, and it’s good to see EA take a step in the right direction to weed out some of the bad actors. However, with the game’s online modes only just getting properly populated now, it’s too soon to say if these reporting tools will be effective in thwarting bad behavior.

NHL 21 is a fantastic ice hockey game that pushes the series forward with an enjoyable, engaging story mode in Be A Pro and a flashy, arcade-style way to play with HUT Rush. The new skill moves are a welcome addition to the mix to give players new ways to be slippery and keep defenders guessing, but the best part of NHL 21 is its solid foundation thanks to its excellent controls and presentation package that is getting even closer to mirroring a TV broadcast.

The Mandalorian Season 3 Filming Start Date Teased

The Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian has been one of the biggest hits on Disney Plus so far, and the second season is due to premiere on the streaming service on October 30. A third season is coming, and executive producer and showrunner Jon Favreau has now confirmed when it should start shooting.

He told Variety that the third season is expected to begin filming “before the end of the year.” Production will kick off after series star Pedro Pascal finishes his shooting obligations for the wacky Nicolas Cage movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Whereas other major TV shows and movies have been delayed or shut down entirely due to COVID-19, The Mandalorian is in a unique position due to how many of the characters already wear masks as part of their costumes, while the production uses Fortnite developer Epic’s incredible technology to create virtual sets.

“We’re in very small situations and oftentimes we have a lot of characters in masks,” Favreau said. “And we also have a lot of digital work that augments things. So we’re a show that’s probably well-equipped to be flexible based on the protocols that are emerging surrounding work restarting.”

The Mandalorian Season 2 introduces a number of big names. Michael Biehn (Terminator) will be playing a bounty hunter, and there’s a rumor floating around that Rosario Dawson may appear as Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. Additionally, there’s another rumor that Clone Wars actor Katee Sackhoff will also be involved in the upcoming season.

Now Playing: Star Wars Squadrons Video Review

Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access Speedrunner Has Beaten The Game In 7 Minutes

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available now in Early Access, and one of the game’s selling points has been its huge map. The game also features over 45,000 lines of dialog, and it’ll reward players who take their time to see everything. However, it’s also possible to do the exact opposite and blast through the game as fast as you can–and one player has already racked up a 7 minute completion.

Speedrunner Professor Palmer speeds across the map, skipping every encounter and clicking through cutscenes, and manages to reach the final area thanks to a lucky investigation dice roll on a well leading to the final area.

In an email to Kotaku, Professor Palmer notes that he reached the end “having fought nothing, gained no EXP, still level one.” Getting their time down to 7 minutes took over 200 attempts.

You can watch the complete run below and see how they did it.

Of course, this is atypical, and works only for a very specific build. For most players, seven minutes won’t be enough time to even read the EULA–which you’ll want to do, because it contains a hidden quest.

Developer Larian Studios is watching this Early Access period, and how its being played, closely. The studio recently released a heatmap showing how and where players are dying in-game.

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Movie Studios Can Buy Theaters Now, But It Turns Out They Don’t Want To

For most of the lifetime of the cinema medium, movie studios were not allowed to own movie theaters. A New York judge struck that ruling down in August, but, thus far, studios don’t seem to be taking the bait. The CEOs of Warner Bros. and Universal Studios said this past week that they have “no plans” to do so, Deadline reports.

“We have no plans to do that currently,” said Universal chairman Donna Langley when asked if her company was interested in buying up movie theaters in the struggling industry. “We have no plans either,” added Warner Bros. chair and CEO Ann Sarnoff. The two were speaking at a Milken Institute Global Conference virtual panel. Sarnoff laughed as she answered, Deadline reports.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought the theater industry to a screeching halt earlier this year, and companies like AMC have only been able to take the smallest of steps to start moving again since. Cineworld’s Regal Cinemas are shut down completely for the time being, and AMC says it could run out of cash to keep going by early 2021.

Further, this comes hot on the heels of a major legal change. Shortly after movie theaters became a viable business in the early 1910s, movie studios started snapping up theaters. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court made the landmark decision, known as the Paramount Decree, that movie studios could not own movie theaters, as the vertical integration violated United States antitrust law. This decision stood until August 7, 2020, when the courts granted the Department of Justice’s motion to lift the decree over a period of two years. In other words, studios like Universal and Warner Bros. are allowed to own movie theaters in the United States for the first time in almost 70 years. Instead, studios say they’re rooting for exhibitors to survive on their own.

“I’m kind of an armchair sociologist and I believe people want to have communal experiences and especially with certain genres,” Sarnoff said. “We’re big fans of the exhibitors; they’ve been good partners of ours for many decades. We’re rooting for them. I know it’s tough sledding right now. I’m hoping they come out on the other side, probably even stronger.”

Even as Sarnoff says that, citing genres like horror and superhero films as theater-perfect experiences, studios are shifting toward streaming. Universal and AMC got into it earlier this year when the former released its movie Trolls: World Tour onto VOD in the early months of the pandemic. Warner Bros. announced this summer that Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League will premiere as an HBO Max miniseries. More recently, Disney has begun to experiment with sending movies directly to its Disney+ streaming service, starting with Mulan and Pixar’s Soul, and now Disney is starting a major re-org with Disney+ in the spotlight.

The longer the closures go on, it makes sense to wonder whether or not studios still need the theater system as a means of distributing their products. Sarnoff’s seemingly dismissive response to the question suggests otherwise.

Image credit: Getty Images/AaronP/Bauer-Griffin

PS5 UI Reveal, Destiny 2’s Next-Gen Launch Date, & A New Borderlands 3 Season Pass | Save State

In this video, Persia talks about Sony’s reveal of the PS5 user interface. The new features showcased included the Creator button and its capabilities to had spoiler warnings to content you record, “Activities” cards that help you track your progress and access specific points in each level, and Official Game Help for PS+ subscribers. Official Game Help are spoiler-free videos that can help steer you in the right direction if you’re stuck on a level. Social and sharing options are also upgraded in terms of joining parties and games but also by being able to watch and share your screen with friends while you play.

Persia also talks about Destiny 2: Beyond Light getting an official next-gen release date for its upgraded version. On December 8th, you can play on Xbox Series X and PS5 at 4K but the Series S will still run at 1080p. All versions run at 60FPS, have a new FOV slider, better loading times, and support cross-gen multiplayer/ The Beyond Light expansion will be available on Game Pass and also backwards compatible for the current-gen versions.

Lastly, Persia talks about Borderlands 3 getting a new season pass. Season Pass 2 will include two more pieces of DLC called the Designer’s Cut and the Director’s Cut, plus new looks for the Vault Hunters. The Designer’s Cut will include a new skill tree for each Vault Hunter and a new standalone mode called Arms Race.

This is your Save State for Thursday, October 15th.

PS5 Does Not Record Your Voice Chats, Sony Confirms

The recent 8.0.0 update for the PS4 introduced new functionality for voice chats in parties that will go live when the PS5 launches, and pop-ups alerted players can these chats “may be recorded.” People naturally became concerned about this, and specifically regarding conspiracy theories about how Sony might be listening in.

That isn’t the case, however. The Ask PlayStation UK account said on Twitter, “We do not record party chats.”

The purpose of the recording functionality is to give people the ability to record chats and submit them for a moderation review. The feature is only available on PS5, but the pop-up notification that is appearing now is alerting PS4 users that when they are in a chat with a PS5 player, those recordings can be sent to Sony for moderation review.

Here is Sony’s full statement on the matter:

“Following this update, users are seeing a notification about Party Safety and that voice chats in parties may be recorded. Voice chat recording for moderation is a feature that will be available on PS5 when it launches, and will enable users to record their voice chats on PS5 and submit them for moderation review. The pop up you’re seeing on PS4 right now is to let you know that when you participate in a chat with a PS5 user (post-launch), they may submit those recordings from their PS5 console to SIE.”

Microsoft also has the capability to listen in on Xbox party chart conversations, but the company says it only does this to improve its own voice recognition software.

Now Playing: PS5 UI Reveal, Destiny 2’s Next-Gen Launch Date, & A New Borderlands 3 Season Pass | Save State

New Korn Music Video Premiering Inside World Of Tanks Blitz As Part Of A Halloween Event

Here’s something unexpected: the rock band Korn is teaming up with Wargaming for a Halloween event inside World of Tanks Blitz to premiere the music video for Korn’s new song “Finally Free.”

This is all happening as part of the new event called “Convergence,” which runs from October 16 through October 24. As part of the event, players can unlock pieces of Korn artwork by completing objectives, and the music video itself will premiere in the free-to-play game.

Korn signer Jonathan Davis said in a statement, “I really like World of Tanks Blitz. It’s true to the era, there are a lot of great tanks in there, and you don’t just jump in and start shooting. I think there is a connection between rock and video games because video games are intense and rock ’n’ roll music is intense. It seems like they have always gone hand in hand.”

The Convergence event also features a new mode called Burning Games. The Halloween hook is that every tank on the map will bleed health like a vampire, and you need to deal damage to your enemies to re-gain health. This mode ties into the Korn music video, which follows a person named Captain who is trying to attend the Burning Games event but is thwarted by wasteland raiders.

Korn is not the first rock band that has partnered with Wargaming for a World of Tanks event. The company previously worked with Iron Maiden and Sabaton for events, while The Offspring played a concert inside World of Tanks and performed a set at the Wargaming Fest in 2019.

World of Tanks Blitz’s Halloween event also features a 60-stage event called The Way of the Raider, while new vehicles featured in the Korn video, the Tier V Spike and the Tier VII Annihilator, will be available during the event. You can visit the World of Tanks Blitz website to learn more about the Halloween promo.

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Physical Super Mario Rewards Added To My Nintendo

Nintendo is slowly expanding its My Nintendo loyalty program with new rewards. While the program has traditionally only featured digital rewards like wallpapers and select game discounts, Nintendo has been recently adding a handful of physical items to the rewards catalog, including a couple of new ones inspired by Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Paper Mario: The Origami King.

Five new physical rewards are now available on My Nintendo. First is a set of Mario posters, each one featuring the cover art from the three games included in 3D All-Stars: Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. There’s also a small Super Mario zipper case to store Switch game cards, Paper Mario origami and postcard sets, and a racer ID to go along with Mario Kart Live.

You can see all the newly added Mario rewards, along with how many points each one costs, below. Physical rewards are typically in limited quantities, however, so if any of these items catch your eye, it’s best to jump on them sooner rather than later.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars poster set
Super Mario 3D All-Stars poster set

If you’re short on Platinum points for the rewards, there are a few ways to earn more. You can receive some for completing certain tasks in some of Nintendo’s mobile games like Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. You can also earn points for visiting official Nintendo websites and completing tasks, like finding hidden Pikmin around the official Pikmin 3 website.

In addition to Platinum points, you can earn Gold points through the My Nintendo program. These are earned when you purchase select Switch games, and you can use them toward digital purchases, making them effectively eShop credit. You can read more about how My Nintendo Gold points work here.

Now Playing: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Minecraft Steve Classic Mode Gameplay

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