Category: Games

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

YouTube has released its own beta version of TikTok’s short-form video format in the US. Called YouTube Shorts, the program is currently only available to a small group of US users. According to YouTube’s Official Blog, YouTube Shorts will be accessible by everyone in the coming weeks.

Through YouTube Shorts, users can make up to 60-second videos. Similar to TikTok, the tools included are “a multi-segment camera to string multiple video clips together, and the ability to record with music.”

YouTube Shorts revolve around music and will be heavily integrated with YouTube’s existing music programs. Snippets heard in YouTube Shorts can link users to the full song’s music video and the artist’s other info on YouTube. In the future, users can create Shorts from a music video and see other Shorts made from the same song.

YouTube has signed licensing agreements to use millions of songs from over 250 labels and publishers. Many of them are major music labels and companies, like Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

Instead of getting a standalone app, YouTube Shorts will be integrated into a row on YouTube’s homepage. YouTube will also test out a Shorts tab on mobile, making it possible to watch Shorts with a single tap.

The end goal is for YouTube Shorts users to clip audio and make Shorts out of any existing YouTube video, provided that the original creator hasn’t chosen to exclude their video from the service. YouTube Shorts in its current iteration will not allow ads or other monetization features, but the development team confirmed that they will explore monetization options in the future.

YouTube Shorts was initially launched in India in fall of 2020 and has enjoyed success. According to YouTube, the YouTube Shorts player has earned over 6.5 billion daily views globally.

Fortnite‘s fourth and penultimate Anomaly puzzle is also probably it’s easiest yet, but you’ll need to reach Battle Pass tier 60 before it becomes available. As this Fortnite Anomaly is located in the dense jungle of Stealthy Stronghold, you may be liable to get turned around in there and lose your way. Here’s exactly where to investigate an Anomaly in Stealthy Stronghold in Fortnite Season 6.

Investigate an Anomaly in Stealthy Stronghold

Stealthy Stronghold is located at the north or slightly northwest end of the map. It’s surrounded by a large wall that you can’t break through, so you’ll either want to land inside, build over and into it, or locate one of a few doors along the perimeter.

Once inside, head to the location you see in the screenshot below, identified by the white map marker.

Once you’re there, you should see the Anomaly spawn. It’s once again shaped like a ghostly butterfly and as you approach, it will start to fly away. Unlike other Anomaly puzzles, such as the Anomaly in Lazy Lake, the Anomaly on Shark Island, or the Anomaly near Catty Corner, this fourth Anomaly isn’t so much a puzzle as it is a chase.

The Anomaly will continue to fly off, so all you need to do is stay nearby. It seems to pause at certain spots to ensure you’re keeping up, so you need not worry about losing track of it. This Anomaly is quite forgiving.

You’ll move across some of the terrain and structures inside Stealthy Stronghold for about 25 seconds before the Anomaly finally stops, spins stylishly, and burrows into the dirt, creating a small glowing mound.

Take out your Harvesting Tool, give it just a single whack, and the Anomaly will return, now unburied, completing your fourth Anomaly puzzle. This time, the reward is perhaps the coolest of all, as you unlock the Agent Jones Jump 42 Style, which is the one we saw him wearing in the Zero Crisis Finale at the start of Season 6.

Stay tuned for the fifth and final Anomaly puzzle once we grind out to Battle Pass tier 76. For more on Fortnite Season 6, check out what’s in the Fortnite Season 6 Battle Pass, learn how to craft weapons in Fortnite, and discover the map changes to Fortnite Season 6.

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Sony has announced that PlayStation has acquired the Evolution Fighting Games Tournament. Revealed on the Sony Interactive Entertainment blog, it was stated that EVO will be the beginning of the next chapter for PlayStation’s efforts in esports entertainment, which will work in partnership with esports venture RTS. This reveal comes just ahead of Evo 2021, which will be an online-focused event starting on August 6-8, and then again on August 13-15.

In the blog post, it was stated that EVO 2021 is still on track, and will be an online event set for this August. So far, the current lineup of games for the tournament includes Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Strive, Tekken 7, and Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath. According the blog post, more games will be announced soon, and though PlayStation is now under ownership of EVO, Mark Julio stated that the tournmanent is still open to all games from different platforms, which means that games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and classic Melee are open to be added to the list of games

GameSpot reached out to Nintendo about the recent news and what this means for Super Smash Bros. at EVO, which issued the following the statement:

“Nintendo has enjoyed engaging with fans at past Evo tournaments and wish the show organizers the best with their new venture. We will continue to assess Evo, and other opportunities, as we plan for future online and offline Super Smash Bros. tournament activity,” said a representative from Nintendo.

Known for bringing fighting game tournaments to the forefront with games like Street Fighter, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros., the EVO Fighting Games Tournament has launched the careers of several well-known players, such as Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara. Last year, EVO 2020 was cancelled following the spread of COVID-19 and after accusations of sexual harassment from EVO organizer Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cueller came to light. In a follow-up statement, head of Business Development for EVO, Mark Julio, stated that the union with PlayStation will allow them to continue supporting the fighting game community under new leadership. Since the cancellation of last year’s EVO and change in leadership, the future of the fighting game tournament has been uncertain. However, this news shows that plans for this year’s tournament, which is still a scaled-down version of previous events, will move forward.

This year’s EVO is poised to be a fresh start for the fighting game tournament, which has had a tumultuous year. However, the current leadership at EVO is looking to bring things back on track with the union with PlayStation. In a statement on the official EVO website, the founders of the fighting game tournament, Tom and Tony Cannon, stated that the Cueller has been removed from the company entirely and that EVO will reaffirm its support for the community:

“In order to deliver on the trust you have all put in Evo, we realize that we need an experienced strategic partner who truly respects the spirit of the FGC. This is why we’re excited to announce that Evo has become part of the joint partnership of Sony Interactive Entertainment and RTS. The new partnership is committed to bringing amazing tournaments and competitive gaming experiences back to you this year and beyond.‍”

The Joker may not actually say the now-infamous “we live in a society” line in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but he does say a lot–all told the Clown Prince of Crime has a scene that lasts several minutes in the “nightmare” sequence, a continuation of a similar vision Batman experienced in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

In this scene, Batman, Mera, Deathstroke, Cyborg, and The Flash are doing their best to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Darkseid’s siege on Earth. Everything is destroyed or overrun by Parademons and they have to keep moving, as Cyborg explains, because they can be caught if they stand around in the open for too long. Unfortunately, this is when Joker decides to intervene and make sure they do exactly that–though the dream-logic of the nightmare sequence makes it hard to tell exactly how “real” Joker actually is in that moment.

He’s sitting on an abandoned Mad Max-flavored car in a SWAT vest when he begins taunting Bruce for his past failures, specifically his inability to save “an adopted son.” Of course, anyone familiar with DC Comics lore will know that the son he’s referring to here is Jason Todd, the second Robin, who was brutally beaten with a crowbar by The Joker and then murdered in an explosion during a story called A Death in the Family.

While Batman has never had an on-screen Robin in any of the Snyder directed films, this isn’t the first time Robin has been referenced. In Batman V Superman, a brief shot of a vandalized Robin costume was visible, implying that there had indeed been a Boy Wonder at some point or another. In the dream sequence, Joker makes the existence of a Robin canonical.

Batman has had multiple sidekicks over the years, however, and while the story the Joker tells is clearly a nod to Jason, it’s never made explicitly clear which Robin is actually being discussed–either way, it would seem that they’re long dead in this universe, and the guilt Bruce is experiencing has yet to subside. It’s so intense that Bruce even vows to murder the Joker for it while brandishing a gun–though Joker seems very confident that Batman’s bark is much worse than his bite. He offers Batman a truce in the form of a joker card, and says that as long as Batman has that on him, their feud will be on hiatus.

Notably, he also addresses him as “Bruce,” but it’s entirely possible that’s another element of the dream-logic. The vision Bruce is having may be prophetic, but it’s still a nightmare. Though it’s equally possible that this version of the DCEU just has a publicly known Batman–the Snyder Cut also includes a scene with Lex Luthor telling Slade Wilson who Bruce Wayne actually is, and that moment is certainly not a dream.

Either way, it’s not likely that we’ll see a pay off for this particular stinger any time soon. Ben Affleck has officially passed the Batman reigns on to Robert Pattinson for the upcoming film, The Batman, and there are currently no announced plans for Snyder to direct a Justice League sequel. Meanwhile, Jared Leto is not currently signed on to reprise his role as Joker in the upcoming movie, The Suicide Squad.

The journey, rather than the destination, is the focus of Mundaun–the reasons you take it and the travel required to reach its conclusion. In this way, it feels like a spiritual successor to Half-Life 2’s Highway 17, a mid-game chapter that finds crowbar-toting protagonist Gordon Freeman traveling by buggy along the lonely coast. It’s a lengthy, melancholy section of the 2004 shooter where the driving is occasionally interrupted by combat, puzzles, and on-foot exploration. Mundaun is like Highway 17 expanded to a full 10-hour experience. In your journey to the mountaintop, you sit passively in a bus, drive a hay-baling truck along bumpy terrain, and ride a sled across quiet alpine slopes. You’re guided through a series of dark, labyrinthine tunnels by a trolley car the size of a toaster. You ride a chair lift. The inclusion of vehicles might not sound noteworthy on its own, but traversing the mountain in all these different ways–on foot, by sled, by truck–has the effect of making the mountain feel like a real place; a peak that must be considered to be conquered. You don’t cover dozens of virtual miles in your quest, but Mundaun feels like a journey nonetheless–personal and physical–as a result of this fixation on the vehicles we use to make our pilgrimages.

This horror adventure game’s distinct point of view is obvious the moment you see it in action. Each first-person frame looks like hand-drawn pencil art, and the entire game is presented in black and white. Developer Hidden Fields uses this to terrific, eerie effect. The mountain lake where those beekeepers are doing their work is beautifully alien, a rocky landscape that’s empty except for these strange beings in their protective suits accompanied by an unnerving buzzing. Night on the mountain’s snowy slopes feels eerie in a different way–dark, save for the light of the moon, and quiet, save for the sound of your snowshoes or sled on the powder. With winning art and sound design, Hidden Fields brilliantly brings home the feeling that you are alone, and that this lonely journey is one you must take on your own.

As that journey begins, protagonist Curdin sits on a bus winding its way up narrow mountain roads to the sleepy alpine town where he often visited his grandfather growing up. The young man is returning to the village to attend his grandfather’s funeral after receiving news that the old man died when his barn caught fire. But something’s wrong. Despite the village priest’s claims that his grandfather was already buried, Curdin finds a charred corpse in the barn. When he goes to see the priest, the chapel is locked. He goes to the graveyard–grandfather’s grave is empty. As Curdin attempts to get to the bottom of these mysterious events, he begins a trek to the top of the mountain, whose towering pincer-like twin peaks can be seen from almost anywhere in the game.

This overarching mystery–what happened to grandfather?–is interspersed with smaller questions presented by the game’s strange iconography. You go to sleep with a spiked paddle balanced on your chest to ward off evil spirits. You defend yourself against malevolent beekeepers with puffs of pipe smoke. You engage in meaningful conversations with the disembodied head of a goat. It may sound like weirdness for weirdness’ sake, but Mundaun’s refreshingly eccentric perspective has the effect of giving you itches that you can only scratch by continuing to play.

It takes some time for the game to fully come into its own, though. When you first arrive on the mountain, the church is locked, the graveyard is locked, and multiple rooms in grandfather’s house are locked. The solution to enter the graveyard involves hearing a girl’s singing and a goat’s bleating–which initially seem like they might just be background noise–looking up on top of a cliff where the goat and girl are standing, and talking to the girl, who will then throw a paper airplane that loops around the steeple, causing the sun to move. This casts a ray of light to a tree near the graveyard, where you can now find the key. I’m spoiling this puzzle because it’s the only bad one in the game. The dream logic required to progress here is an annoying early roadblock in a game that otherwise relies on concrete solutions to concrete problems. I was compelled by the mysteries and by the promise of the locked doors, but frustrated that all my early efforts were funneled to this unintuitive skill check.

Once you progress past this obstacle, though, Mundaun has terrific pacing as you progress up the mountain–a varied loop that cycles effortlessly from on-foot exploration to puzzle-solving to vehicle-based traversal to combat to playable flashbacks that reveal your grandfather’s past. I always had something to do and somewhere to go, and each new location cried out for exploration. This is driven by the main plot, to be sure. But it’s also driven by smaller tasks along the way. For example, making coffee is an optional task that’s introduced early in the game. If you find all the components–a cup, coffee grounds, a pot, a pump to fill that pot with water, a stove and a piece of wood and matches to light a fire–you can brew and drink a cup of coffee, which permanently raises your health. This optional quest was a welcome break if I ever felt stumped on where to go next.

In the early game, the only weapons you have access to are breakable pitchforks, which you may or may not be able to reach when an enemy appears. As you attempt to escape your pursuers, an extra bit of health may be the difference between success and death. So, in addition to desiring to explore because the game’s locations are beautiful and varied, I wanted to explore to find coffee grounds. In the process, I often found something unsettling, helpful, or both. A monstrous biped made of haunted hay. A hut filled with hanging carcasses that make music when you touch them. A paper boat serenely floating on a lake’s surface inked up with clues from some unseen benefactor on how to defend yourself against an enemy. Mundaun’s hills are alive with intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

The initial segment in the village concludes with Curdin gaining access to his grandfather’s hay truck, which you can use to travel more quickly up the roads. And, as you travel ever upward, the personal component of your trek is slowly revealed through playable flashbacks. Through these eerie scenes, you get glimpses of Curdin’s grandfather’s involvement in a war decades before and a deal with a mysterious, malevolent figure who spared the lives of him and the men in his regiment. These story threads are introduced early on when you meet that dark figure near the wreckage of your grandfather’s barn. He clutches your wrist, leaving you marked with a charcoal black hand. As you continue, these threads serve as connective tissue between your current journey and your grandfather’s past, woven through each leg of the journey. You meet a character who knew your grandfather; another character descended from one of your grandfather’s contemporaries. Each has ties to events we have seen unfold in the past. These links communicate that our journey is connected to the broader history of the mountain and that, as we uncover the mystery of what happened to grandfather, we are also unearthing the community’s dark secrets.

The environment, and the secrets it hides, is as interesting as any personal revelation. When you reach your grandfather’s house, you are immediately confronted with multiple locked doors, and the process of discovering how to unlock them is slow but rewarding. In its mechanics as in its storytelling, Mundaun effectively mixes long-term question marks (Where will I find the key to unlock grandfather’s study?) with concrete short-term goals (I need to enter the chapel to progress the story). Some puzzles on the route to solving these problems are a little obtuse, but most are satisfying to solve. I especially enjoyed one that required that I find the right spot to stop a model truck on its tracks to open a hidden drawer. Additionally, the presence of locked supply rooms that you can use any of a number of disposable keys to open and stoves where you can prepare coffee to increase your health kept me interested in exploration, even when I wasn’t sure what to do to advance the critical path. All of these tasks have a central aim: progressing further up the mountain or preparing yourself for what you will face as you progress up the mountain. As a result, even momentary diversions have an enjoyable utility. None of this feels like a waste of time. How could it? Is it a waste of time to pack your bag before a flight?

Unfortunately, in its prerelease state, Mundaun is beset by bugs as disruptive as a flat tire. For example, at one point, while riding on a ski lift, the lift stopped. My mouse look was suddenly, inexplicably limited to the vertical axis. I couldn’t tell if this was intentional or a bug. After a while, I restarted the game and played through this same section again. Again, my movement was limited to looking up and down. I tried every item in my inventory, hit every button; nothing worked. Eventually, out of desperation, I restarted the game a second time. When I reached the same section on this try, my vision was unhindered and I easily figured out how to progress. I encountered similar problems at multiple junctures, and this kind of bugginess sows doubt about whether you’re actually stumped by a puzzle or hobbled by jank.

Mundaun is an adventure game first and foremost, but it does include combat. The weapons at your disposal are limited to breakable pitchforks and an heirloom rifle. Combat isn’t particularly involved, but the presence of enemies helps to differentiate the free and easy exploration of the day from the anxiety-inducing sprints of the eerie night. Using the rifle never feels twitchy; you slowly line up shots, and the gun moves back and forth with your breath. Much of the game passes before you acquire this weapon, but, even once you get it, Mundaun remains a horror adventure game, first and foremost. The shots that you must fire are rare and the rifle’s report is a loud, echoing crack. It feels like you are breaking the mountain’s quiet peace, disrupting the inherent solitude of the place, each time you fire off a round.

Thankfully, your time on the mountain runs low on ammunition and high on strange, wonderful mystery. Mundaun is a darkly original work. This is an impeccably paced game with satisfying gameplay that fits hand-in-glove with its narrative focus on the process of taking a journey. That journey is rich in atmosphere and imagery, sustained by questions until it is satisfied with clever answers. My trek was well worth the effort for the view from the peak.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is finally out, which now ushers in the era of the director both being asked and speaking frankly about his previous plans for a sequel–and whether they have any bearing on current plans for one. In a recent interview streamed live on YouTube with Wonder Meg, a channel “dedicated to all the nerdy things,” Snyder was asked exactly this by the titular Megan.

To which, Snyder replied: “All of the New Gods would be rolling in at some point. In the full invasion of Earth… I think you’d have to go full pedal-to-the-metal with the New Gods at that point. ‘Cause the third movie is a New Gods invasion movie in a lot of ways.”

Unfortunately, Snyder didn’t get into any deeper specifics. Beyond what was discussed in passing, even if Snyder won’t get a chance to tackle a New Gods story, Emmy-winner Ava DuVernay (Selma, When They See Us) will. Way back in 2019, it was announced that DuVernay would be teaming up with Batman writer Tom King on a New Gods film from a script the pair co-wrote. In another recent YouTube interview, Snyder told The Minutemen in February that his version of Justice League would “tease” at the New Gods with “the implication that the rest of them are there… in this movie you see DeSaad, you see Darkseid, you see one other in the throne room of Apokolips.”

Meanwhile, on the day of its release, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has reportedly been in so much demand that it crashed HBO in Asia.