Category: Games

Fortnite’s 15.40 update is just around the corner, and it’s going to bring some interesting changes to the game. As with all Fortnite updates, it’s not precisely clear what the patch is going to do, but we have a few hints from the game’s official Twitter account. The patch is set to go live on February 16.

According to the below tweets, it appears that popular limited-time modes Air Royale and Floor is Lava will be making a comeback. The patch will also allow you to adjust object level of detail in the Perf Mode alpha, but only on PC. Additionally, characters will have more exotics in stock for you to grab. Let’s just hope the opposing teams won’t get there first.

The above tweet also references an “unvaulted favorite.” Based on context clues, it’s likely either pump shotguns or an explosive weapon. Then again, the “knock knock” phrasing in the first tweet has led some to think that the Flint-Knock Pistol might be making a comeback, too. We’ll know for sure when the patch comes out on February 16.

If you’re still looking for some help with the challenges for the Hearts Wild event, check out our guide. In other Fortnite news, the Flash skin recently came to the game. A recent maintenance patch addressed some performance issues.

According to Six Days in Fallujah’s publisher Victura, the recently resurrected military FPS based on a real Iraq War battle is not attempting to “make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.”

Peter Tamte, the head of Six Days in Fallujah publisher Victura, spoke to Polygon after the game was re-announced for a 2021 release, and stated that developer Highwire Games “will not grapple with the political machinations that led to the titular conflict.” Instead, the game’s focus will be to “engender empathy” for the American troops, their work in taking out the insurgents throughout Fallujah, and the civilians who were caught in between.

“I think reasonable people can disagree with that,” Tamte told Polygon of his narrative strategy. “For us as a team, it is really about helping players understand the complexity of urban combat. It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions. And we do want to show how choices that are made by policymakers affect the choices that [a Marine] needs to make on the battlefield. Just as that [Marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.”

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Six Days in Fallujah isn’t the first game to attempt to sidestep politics, as The Division 2’s developer Ubisoft Massive also revealed that it didn’t want to take a stance in current politics and that doing so would be “bad for business, unfortunately.” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney also argued that politics should be removed from game companies.

The difference between The Division 2 and Six Days in Fallujah, however, is that the Iraq War is an event that is pulled right from our world, as opposed to a fictional tale of war.

The city of Fallujah saw increased insurgent activity during the 2003 Iraq War when a terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi brought in fighters from around the country and beyond to the city. In the months and years that followed, Fallujah saw a ton of civilian casualties and the death of a team of private military contractors from Blackwater USA.

In 2004, Western forces made two attempts to retake the city, and Six Days in Fallujah focuses on this Second Battle of Fallujah which, according to the International Red Cross, cost around 100 American lives and the lives of at least 800 civilians.

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Considering that Six Days in Fallujah is a military shooter, it can be safely assumed that weapons of war will be used by the player. However, one such weapon, white phosphorous, that was used to flush out insurgents from bunkers, will not be part of the game.

“There are things that divide us, and including those really divisive things, I think, distracts people from the human stories that we can all identify with,” Tamte said. “I have two concerns with including phosphorus as a weapon. Number one is that it’s not a part of the stories that these guys told us, so I don’t have an authentic, factual basis on which to tell that. That’s most important. Number two is, I don’t want sensational types of things to distract from the parts of that experience.”

When asked what responsibility that Tamte’s team bears in communicating the outcome of the Second Battle of Fallujah to consumers, he said that he wants people to “understand the human cost of war.”

“I don’t think players are going to be confused about the cost [of war],” Tamte said. “I just don’t think that they’re going to walk away from this experience going, ‘We need more war.’ I don’t think that’s something that the Marines and soldiers want as a message. I don’t think that’s something that the Iraqi civilians want as a message. I think people do need to understand the human cost of war.

“Perhaps playing the game will make them curious and they’ll want to learn more about all the things that have happened in Fallujah since the 2004 battle, and that will lead them to their own conclusions from doing the research. But right now, simply ignoring the battle is not going to cause them to think about all of its consequences.”

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To help make Six Days in Fallujah as authentic as possible, Tamte and his team interviewed Marines and soldiers who were part of the battle. These interviews took place as far back as a few months after the battle to as recent as last year. These people will be the avatars that the players fight alongside.

While 90% of the story will be following these people from the US military, 10% of the game will tell a story from the city’s civilian population. Developer Highwire Games enlisted the help of an American journalist in Iraq to interview a dozen civilians who survived the battle. In Six Days in Fallujah, players will take on the role of a father trying to get his family to safety. This story will overlap with the US forces story.

“This is as an unarmed Iraqi civilian,” Tamte stressed. “We do not at any point ask the player to become an insurgent, to be clear about that. This is an Iraqi civilian who was trying to get his family out of the city during the battle.”

Tamte has been working on this project for over 15 years, and he noted that one of the most controversial parts in the long road in developing Six Days in Fallujah is its inclusion of real soldiers and their deaths. Tamte had a message to the families that may be outraged by this.

“A message that I heard from all of the people who’ve lost loved ones in battle is, they don’t want their child or friend’s sacrifice to be forgotten,” Tamte said. “Even the ones who were very opposed [to the war in Iraq]. And I had conversations with many of them, as well as other members of our team — especially former military who are on our team had conversations with many of these families in 2009 — and we heard one after the other, ‘We don’t want you to make a game about this, but we don’t want our son’s sacrifice to be forgotten.’ It’s a mixture of that.

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“The reality is that most people are not aware of the battle for Fallujah,” Tamte continued. “And so, by talking about this battle in a game, we are helping people remember the sacrifice of some very specific people. So that’s number one. We share the same objective they have, which is, we don’t want their son’s sacrifice to be forgotten. But do I understand their caution about it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because for most of those people, their only idea of a video game is watching somebody else play Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a sport, and if somebody made a sport out of the killing of my son, I’d be pretty upset. Our job now is to show people that we’re not making Call of Duty.”

“The only thing that I fear is that fundamentally, when we cut through everything, people’s objection here to Six Days in Fallujah is more of an objection to the Iraq War,” Tamte concluded. “We’ve made games about other wars, and real stories from other wars, that have not gotten the attention and have not gotten any sort of controversy. So fundamentally, people’s objection is to the Iraq War. I don’t think we should be a proxy for that particular battle.”

Six Days in Fallujah will be released on PC and consoles later in 2021.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Dead Cells‘ Update 21 is now live on Xbox One, PS4, and Switch. The update went live in the PC version of the game in December 2020.

Update 21 adds the new Katana weapon, a sword with the unique ability to chain together standard slash attacks with a dashing charge attack. The update adds the Demolisher mob and four new mutations, too.

The new mutations are Acrobatic Preparation (allows you to attack with your equipped range weapon and a ranged weapon in your backpack at the same time), Porcupine Backpack (allows you to attack with your equipped melee weapon by rolling through enemies, Tortoise Wheel (allows you to block or parry attacks by rolling), and Fatal Cadence (increases attack).

Amusingly, Update 21 adds several Christmas-themed outfits to Dead Cells as well. This, of course, made a lot more sense when the update first released for PC in December. But there’s no shame in wanting to spread a little Christmas cheer just after Valentine’s Day.

For the entire list of changes in Update 21, check out the full patch notes. They’re listed below.

Dead Cells Update 21 Patch Notes

Important Features

• The Malaise is being reworked:
  • The bar now fills with (game) time. The malaise contamination rate is tied to the number of enemies still alive in the level, the fewer enemies, the less quickly your malaise bar will fill. When only 10% of the enemies are left alive, the biome is considered “Malaise cleared”.
  • The higher the malaise, the more dangerous the enemies (increased movement speed, quicker teleport, shorter reaction time and at the latter stages, increased damage).
  • Enemies will also randomly spawn around you and from time to time, an enemy will transform into an Elite. The spawn rate and Elite rate will also increase with Malaise.
  • Being hit doesn’t increase your malaise anymore. Killing enemies, Elite, and Bosses decreases your malaise gauge.
  • Food looted in walls is always contaminated and will increase your Malaise bar, the “healthy” food looted on enemies doesn’t decrease your Malaise bar. Healing with your flask does heal some Malaise too.
  • The “Malaise Cleared” event completely stops the bar from filling until the end of the biome, and even decrease your malaise gauge with the amount you would get by killing all the enemies left in the level. However, these won’t get you any more malaise reduction. Mobs and Elites stop spawning.

We’re aiming to give a cycling nature to the mechanic, with a Malaise that should stay in-between 3 and 7 during most of the run (except boss fights). Currently, all mutations and items interacting with the Malaise have seen that aspect of their design disabled.

Balancing that new mechanic is going to be a major challenge and we’re counting a lot on your help and feedback.

• Colours have been rethought following community feedback pointing out the continued decrease in consistency. Hence, we decided to change the scaling of a good chunk of items and of some mutations to (re)focus each statistic on its primary identity.
  • Tactics keeps all things related to ranged gameplay: turrets, range weapons, with some utility and damaging spells to support it. Dual scale with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is poison or electricity gameplay.
  • Brutality keeps its focus on fast melee weapons and everything related to jumping into the melee. Grenades stay mostly red. Dual scale with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is fire or blood gameplay.
  • Survival keeps its focus on crowd control, survivability, shields and slow, heavy melee weapons. Also supported by heavy damage skills with the long cooldown that goes with it. Dual scale with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is root or ice gameplay.

In addition, the health points scaling of Brutality and Survival has been decreased in the late game while the Tactics has been very slightly increased. However, it’s mostly felt at high scrolls counts, so it mostly impacts 3BC+ late game.

• The Backpack introduced in the 19th update to support transitioning from 2-slots weapons to two differents weapons has been reworked. It’s now a meta upgrade unlocked at the Collector, in a similar fashion than Recycling or the random starting weapons and can be used with any type of weapons.
  • You can store any weapons to the exception of the too noble GiantKiller and the 2-slots weapons in your backpack by pressing the backpack key (Y on Xbox controller, △ on a PlayStation one) when picking a weapon. Empty your backpack by holding the “use” key.
  • Video settings have also been added to accommodate every one preference. You can choose in-between putting the backpack slot to the right of you skill slots or in-between your weapons and your skills. An opacity slider is also available.
• New Mutations have been added, thought at the start to support 2-slots gameplay through the backpack slot but which are now available for any type of build:
  • Acrobatic Preparation: Attacking with a ranged weapon also attack with the ranged weapon in your backpack. Roll to reload. (Tactics).
  • Porcupine Backpack: Rolling through enemies attacks them with the melee weapons stored in your backpack. (Brutality)
  • Tortoise Wheel: Rolling parry attacks and projectiles with the shield stored in your backpack. (Survival)
  • A fourth mutation, Fatal Cadence (Survival) has also been implemented, increasing the attack speed when alternating in-between primary and secondary weapon slot.
• New Weapon: The Katana, finally added upon popular request. Its unique mechanic allows to chain a standard slash with a dashing charge attack by holding the button. Merry Christmas!
• New Mob: The first mob we implement inspired by a discord community suggestion (many thanks to Leylite#4491) using the Explosive Crossbow to hunt you.
  • We called him the Demolisher because it reminds us of construction workers using explosives to do his job. It can be found in BC0 in the distillery, and in several places later on, mostly as an alternative upgrade to the Knife Thrower.
• New Outfits, including 2 Christmas-themed ones.
• 2-slots weapons can now have different affixes on each part.
• New Diet! Cheese can now be chosen in the diet options.
• New tactic mutation: Ranger’s Gear
  • Like Scheme, but for ranged weapons.
  • Tactic lost a fair number of its mutations in this update. This will not compensate for all losses, but should be a step in the right direction until the next update. Update 21.2

Balancing

• Colour scaling changes:
  • Mutations:
    • The “Soldier Resistance” and “Berseker” mutatutions, focused on increasing player survivability, now scale with Survival instead of Brutality.
    • The “Predator”, “Initiative” and “Scheme” mutations, focused on increasing melee damage and playstyle now scale with Brutality instead of Tactics.
  • Melee Weapons:
    • Broadsword (no more red scaling)
    • Symmetrical Lance (no more red scaling)
    • Rapier (no more purple scaling)
    • Meat Skewer (no more purple scaling)
    • Flashing Fans (no more tactics scaling)
    • Rhythm n’ Bouzouki (remove red scaling)
    • Crowbar (remove purple scaling)
    • Cursed Sword (remove purple scaling)
    • Assassin’s Dagger (remove purple scaling)
    • Frantic Sword (remove purple scaling)
    • Seismic Strike (remove red scaling)
  • Ranged Weapons:
    • Hokuto’s bow (no more red scaling)
    • Alchemic Carbine (no more red scaling)
    • All Crossbows (add purple scaling)
    • Boomerang (no more survival scaling)
    • Hemorrhage (add red scaling, remove green)
    • War Javelin (remove survival scaling)
    • The Boy’s Axe (remove red, add green)
    • Ice Shards (no more purple scaling)
    • Barrel Launcher (remove red scaling)
  • Shield:
    • Assault Shield (add red scaling)
  • Skills:
    • Cleaver (no purple scaling)
    • Crusher (no more purple scaling)
    • Wolf trap (no more purple scaling)
    • Stun Grenade (no more purple scaling)
    • Ice Grenade (no more purple scaling)
    • Root Grenade (remove purple scaling)
    • Swarm (no more green scaling)
    • Grappling Hook (no more purple scaling)
    • Phaser (no more purple scaling)
    • Lacerating Aura (no more purple scaling)
    • Telluric Shock (no more green scaling)
    • Smoke Bomb (add red scaling)
    • Cluster Grenade (add green scaling)
    • Sinew Slicer (add red scaling)
    • Knife Dance (remove purple scaling).
• The Heart of Ice mutation doesn’t decrease cooldown when hitting slowed enemies anymore. It can now be triggered by ranged weapons fired at close range.
• Oil Bomb does more damage but doesn’t spread oil as far as before.
• Swarm now creates 8 worms per use, with a 10 seconds cooldown.
• The Concierge red aura size has been slightly reduced to allow dodging with a very well timed dodge.
• Rhythm n’ Bouzouki damage has been reduced.
• Spite Sword critical damage has been reduced.
• Blood Sword damage has been reduced.
• Hokuto’s Bow bonus damage has been reduced.
• Crusher damage has been reduced.
• Bloodthirsty shield damage has been reduced.
• Thunder Shield damage has been reduced.
• Torch damage has been reduced.
• Grappling Hook range has been increased.
• Oil Sword damage has been reduced.
• Sadist’s Stiletto critical damage has been reduced.
• Tesla Coil and Flamethrower Turret damage has been reduced.
• Tonic’s cooldown now starts after its effects ended.
• The Vengence mutation damage bonus increased and defence bonus decreased.
• The Emergency Triage mutation now protects you during only 1 second instead of 3.
• The Dead Inside mutation now let you consume food but the efficiency of all sources of healing is now decreased by half.

Level Design

• All biomes in BC3+ have less mobs overall.
  • Prison Quarters: Even less rats, and no more shieldbearers after BC1.
• Some mobs have been removed from some biome to make room for the Demolisher:
  • Inquisitors are replaced by Demolishers in Clock Tower (BC3+).
  • Bombarders are replaced by Demolishers in the Distillery (BC0).
  • Enforcers in Ramparts are now a BC4+ mob, and Slashers a BC2+ mob. Demolishers are met there in BC1+. Weirded Warriors have been removed from this biome.
  • Knife Throwers are a BC1 only mob in Prison Quarters, replaced with Demolishers in BC2+.
  • Stilt Village’s Knife Throwers have been replaced with Demolishers (BC1+). The number of Weirded Warriors has also been greatly reduced.

Graphics & UI

• An option to disable the gameplay slow-motion (most notably when elites die) has been added.

Quality Of Life

• Sawblades traps can now be dodged. Update 21.1

A highly detailed series of fake additions to the Left 4 Dead wiki has inspired fan-art and even a mod that puts the nonexistent content into the game. The vandalism focuses on a bizarre character called “Purple Francis,” a poorly recolored version of one of the game’s four Survivors. The vandal cooked up a surprisingly thorough backstory for Purple Francis, including his untimely death in a comic book, described by the article as a “national tragedy.”

According to the articles, Purple Francis’s purple hue was caused by an iron-rich diet. Prior to Left 4 Dead, he owned a root beer factory and sired two sons, Cungulus and Skibbity. Though the wiki’s moderators sadly deleted Purple Francis’s page, a mod on Left 4 Dead 2’s Steam Workshop page will add Purple Francis to the game, which the mod’s author labels as “cut L4D content.” There’s also a Discord page to join if you’re a true Purple Francis enthusiast.

While there’s no word on the state of the Left 4 Dead franchise, the game recently got its first official patch in nearly a decade. Though the patch came from Valve, it was primarily built by more than 30 members of the game’s community. A spiritual successor called Back 4 Blood is currently being made by many of the game’s original developers.

Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 were supposed to be shot back-to-back, but due to scheduling conflicts with Tom Cruise, that can’t happen now.

When the two Mission: impossible sequels were announced back in 2019, Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation and Fallout writer and director Christopher McQuarrie was on board to direct both back-to-back.

While McQuarrie will still be directing both, the as-of-yet untitled Mission: Impossible 8 film will no longer be shot immediately after Mission: Impossible 7 due to a scheduling conflict with Cruise.

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Deadline reported that Cruise will now be needed on promotional duties for Paramount Pictures’ Top Gun: Maverick, which apparently cuts into the planned shooting times for MI:8. Maverick, which stars Cruise, is set to release in theaters on July 2 after coronavirus-related delays. So, instead of rolling right into the production of MI:8 following the end of MI:7’s production, Cruise will instead be busy marketing the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun.

Following that run of promotional needs, Cruise, McQuarrie, and the rest of the crew will begin production of MI:8. It’s also important to note that while UK tabloids reported over the weekend that MI:7’s production has been disrupted by pandemic-related travel issues, Deadline has confirmed this was not true.

McQuarrie actually posted on Instagram yesterday and said that the team finished its shoot in the Middle East and would now be heading to London to apply a few “finishing touches” to MI:7. MI:8 still remains set to release on November 4, 2022.

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For more Mission: Impossible, read our thoughts on the latest entry in the series in IGN’s Mission: Impossible Fallout review and then read about how Esai Morales was tapped to replace Nicholas Hoult as the villain in the forthcoming sequels.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Riot has revealed some of the social changes that will soon come to the multiplayer shooter Valorant, and they’re the sort of changes that fans have been asking for for a while now. These upcoming tweaks will target patches 2.04 and 2.05, and will focus on punishing AFKers and other undesirable player behavior.

The meat of the changes will target AFK players and “AFK-type behavior.” As a 5-on-5 shooter, losing a single teammate can make or break a Valorant match, and it’s clear that Riot is trying to do something about it. Patch 2.04 will implement a new system that will improve detection of AFKers, and the penalty structure for that behavior has been completely overhauled.

Essentially, the new system will track your behavior holistically, meaning that players who drop due to intermittent internet issues won’t get much of a penalty at all. However, those players who go AFK in the middle of games will be hit with increasingly stringent punishments, including queue restrictions, ranked rating reductions, or even an outright ban.

Chat-based offenses are getting a similar overhaul in patch 2.04, with a revamped penalty structure detailed in the blog post. However, the post also notes that players who threaten violence or harass other players will be banned on a zero tolerance basis. Additionally, a feedback system for player reports is planned for patch 2.05.

A recent Valorant patch made substantial changes to rifle movement accuracy, meaning that running and gunning with a rifle is a lot less effective than before. In other Riot news, the company’s CEO was recently accused of creating a hostile work environment in a lawsuit.

Google has announced that a slew of new games will be coming to Stadia in the near future, and that over 100 games are to be added to the service by the end of 2021.

Google recently announced that it would be shutting down its internal studios for Stadia, despite not releasing a single game from them. In the same breath, it also stated that more games would hit the service. Google is making good on that promise as the company announced that not only will nine games be coming to Stadia shortly, over 100 games will join the Stadia lineup in 2021.

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Those nine games are Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition (February 23), Shantae: Risky’s Revenge – Director’s Cut (February 23), It Came From Space and Ate Our Brains (March 2), FIFA 21 (March 17), Kaze and the Wild Masks (March 26), Judgement (April 23), Killer Queen Black, Street Power Football, and Hellpoint. The latter three do not have release dates for Stadia.

“We’re thrilled to continue bringing games from some of the best developers for our players to experience within the Stadia store,” a blog post from Google reads. “Over the next few weeks and months, players can expect to see everything from action-filled RPGs to competitive co-op titles and nimble platformers. These games represent just a sampling of the more than 100 games that will be added to the Stadia store for our players in 2021 to share, experience, and play with friends.”

This news comes weeks after word broke that Google was giving up on developing its own games. According to one source familiar with Stadia’s first-party work that spoke to Kotaku, “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.” Read about this decision by Google and then read our thoughts on Google’s game streaming service in IGN’s Stadia review.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.