Cyberpunk 2077 is a huge game–even though we’ve been getting lots of looks at its story and gameplay for years now, there’s still a lot to uncover. CD Projekt Red gave us one last, lengthy look at Cyberpunk before its December 10 release date, and it covered a lot–from story, to side quests, to sex.
In the video above, Lucy and Jean-Luc’s lingering Cyberpunk questions are fielded by Phil, a GameSpot editor who got to spend some 16 hours exploring Night City in CD Projekt’s final preview of the game. He spent a bunch of time working through the story, spending time with the characters, hanging out with Johnny Silverhand, and building up the legend of mercenary V through the course of the preview. He also ventured to a Night City red light district to find out what hanky panky is like in Cyberpunk 2077–for science. It was weird.
We’ve got plenty more Cyberpunk 2077 coverage, including lore deep-dive videos and two big previews based on our 16-hour play session, at GameSpot.com, so be sure to check them out.
The Last of Us Part 2 is the long-anticipated sequel to Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed game surrounding an apocalyptic disease. After a string of delays, The Last of Us Part 2 finally released on PS4 over the summer, and if you missed it during those dog days, you can pick it up now at a discount thanks to Black Friday 2020. Note that if you own a PS5 with a disc drive, you’ll be able to play this physical PS4 copy on that system as well thanks to backwards compatibility.
The best Black Friday deal we’ve spotted for The Last of Us Part 2 is already live now at Amazon. You can grab TLOU2 for $30, half-off the MSRP. Starting next week, Walmart and GameStop will have it for the same price as well, though GameStop knocks off a couple more bucks if you buy pre-owned. That means that if you’re out of luck at one retailer, there will probably be another where you can get it for the same price.
The Last of Us was known for its moral ambiguity and dark themes, and The Last of Us 2 follows in its footsteps. Instead of the first game’s Joel as your protagonist, you now play as a fully grown Ellie. The world is just as grim as ever in the years following TLOU, as Ellie’s journey puts her face-to-face with warring factions fighting for survival and power.
The Last of Us Part 2 is a PlayStation 4 exclusive, but if you’ve picked up a new PS5, you’ll get a nicely boosted performance including improved load times. If you haven’t yet played the first game, you can pick up The Last of Us Remastered as part of the PS Plus Collection, which offers a selection of quality PS4 games for new PS5 owners who are subscribed to PlayStation Plus. You can also claim the PS Plus Collection on PS4 as long as your profile has logged into a PS5 first.
Sony has partnered with Adult Swim’s buddy scientists Rick and Morty to deliver a quirky 30-second PlayStation 5 advertisement.
The two appear in Morty’s parents’ living room, with Rick counting what looks to be a lot of money and Morty standing to the left of the PlayStation 5. Rick tells Morty to “talk about the thing,” to which Morty, stammering as he does, begins to list off some PS5 talking points.
“This is the PlayStation 5,” Morty says, gesturing to the right, where the console stands vertically on a white Ikea-looking table. “It’s really fast. It’s super fast. Like, way less of those long loading screens, you know?” According to Rick, “they” really wanted the two to mention the PlayStation 5’s speed because the fast loading times are “really important to them.”
Morty then very briefly dives into the DualSense’s features. He talks about the haptic feedback in the controller, as well as the adaptive resistance found in the shoulder buttons. But Morty ends up blocking the console, which Rick tells him not to do because “they wanted that in the shot.” The advertisement concludes with Rick telling the camera to “go play PS5” after shouting a bunch of expletives as he always does. Check out the short advertisement above.
The PlayStation 5 is now available worldwide, but they’re pretty difficult to get a hold of. However, GameStop and Walmart plan to restock their shelves in time for Black Friday.
With Doom Eternal, id Software continued the reboot of its classic shooter with even more high-speed shooting and tactical dismemberment. If you missed it when it released earlier this year, you can snag it for a mere $20 during Black Friday 2020. It’s currently backwards-compatible with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S and will receive a free next-gen upgrade sometime in the future.
Black Friday will bring a huge price slash on Doom Eternal at Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart. Starting November 22, Doom Eternal will be just $20 at Best Buy, and it’ll be the same price at Walmart when that sale starts November 25. If you miss out on those deals, GameStop will have the game for $25, and all those prices are more than half off the usual retail price of $60.
The sale price applies to both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Doom Eternal, and if you have the disc drive versions of Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation consoles, the games will function on those as well. Bethesda hasn’t laid out exactly when its free PS5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrades are coming for Doom Eternal–all we know is that they’re dropping “at a later date.”
If you’re a shooter fan, though, this is definitely a deal you should be eyeing. Doom 2016 modernized id’s classic, marrying its fast-paced old-school shooter feel with a bunch of tweaks and improvements, and Doom Eternal continues to evolve the idea. Eternal plays with the formula by tying health, armor, and ammo drops you get from enemies with how you dispatch them, turning your constant demon-slaying carnage into a sort of puzzle-solving dance. Performing finishers, setting enemies on fire, and tearing them apart with your chainsaw all get you different drops, so to keep yourself alive, you have to keep moving, keep ripping, and keep tearing.
“Though it can take a bit to get the hang of it, the intricacies of Doom Eternal’s combat, combined with its enhanced mobility and option-heavy level design, create a ton of white-knuckle moments that elevate everything that made Doom 2016 work so well,” we wrote in our review. “Its combat is just as quick and chaotic, but requires you to constantly analyze everything that’s happening in order to come out victorious. Once you get the hang of the rhythm of Doom Eternal, it’ll make you feel like a demon-slaying savant.”
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian: Season 2, Episode 4!
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The Mandalorian: Chapter 12 proved to be a surprisingly eventful episode on multiple fronts, not least of which being the first in-canon appearance of a major Star Wars video game villain. The Dark Trooper looks to now be an official part of Disney’s Star Wars timeline, and that means Mando and friends have a very dangerous new enemy to contend with.
If you weren’t a PC Gamer back in the mid-’90s, you may not recognize these ominous armored troopers. Read on for a full breakdown of what the Dark Trooper is and how their live-action debut will impact the plot of The Mandalorian.
The Dark Troopers as seen in The Mandalorian: Chapter 12.
The Dark Trooper in Star Wars: Dark Forces
The Dark Trooper was first introduced to the franchise in the 1994 PC game Star Wars: Dark Forces. Dark Forces revolves around Kyle Katarn, an ex-Stormtrooper and mercenary who is hired by Mon Mothma to steal the plans for the first Death Star (obviously, the game is no longer part of the official canon). That initial mission only forms the basis of the game’s opening level, however. From there, the game pivots to a series of missions involving Kyle and his partner Jan Ors investigating the top-secret Dark Trooper Project.
As the game reveals, the Dark Trooper Project is the brainchild of General Rom Mohc, an Imperial notable for his obsession with one-on-one combat and his distaste for impersonal super-weapons like the Death Star. The Dark Trooper is designed to be a much more powerful alternative to Palpatine’s ordinary Stormtroopers. Dark Troopers are outfitted with stronger weaponry, jetpacks and nearly indestructible armor forged from the rare metal phrik.
Dark Forces introduces three variations of the Dark Trooper. Most Dark Troopers seen in the game are actually battle droids rather than living soldiers. The Phase 1 Dark Trooper resembles nothing if not a cross between a Stormtrooper and a Terminator endoskeleton. The Phase 2 Dark Trooper is much larger and more heavily armored. The Phase 3 Dark Trooper is the culmination of Mohc’s plans. It’s an exoskeleton suit rather than an autonomous robot, and Mohc himself wears the sole Phase 3 suit in existence when he battles Katarn in the climax of the game. Naturally, Mohc is defeated, and the Phase 3 suit is destroyed along with the majority of the Dark Trooper Project aboard Mohc’s Star Destroyer.
The Dark Trooper has made a handful of appearances in other Star Wars projects, mainly various video games and tabletop RPGs. For example, the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies introduces the Triumphant-class Dark Trooper as a companion to Darth Vader, and the older Star Wars: Battlefront series throws Elite Dark Troopers into the mix.
Kyle Katarn battling a Phase 2 Dark Trooper in Star Wars: Dark Forces.
Those early Battlefront games also fleshed out the origins of the Dark Trooper Project with the introduction of the Phase Zero Dark Trooper. These proto-Dark Troopers were designed by a younger Lieutenant Mohc using aging Clonetroopers as a template. Tapping into the same technology powering Darth Vader, Mohc augmented these Clone Wars veterans with extensive cybernetic upgrades. Unfortunately, the psychological toll proved to be too much for these Dark Troopers, and so the project pivoted to droids and exo-suits instead.
Some of the early Dark Horse-era Star Wars comics like Dark Empire II and Empire’s End feature a completely different version of the Dark Trooper. These elite soldiers wear black armor (not unlike the Deathtroopers introduced in Rogue One) and actually have limited Force abilities. These Dark Troopers are one of many weapons the cloned Emperor Palpatine unleashes on the galaxy following his return.
Why the discrepancy? As writer Tom Veitch previously explained to IGN, the creators involved in the various Expanded Universe projects weren’t always in close contact with one another back in those days.
How The Mandalorian Could Reinvent the Dark Trooper
While those definitely look to be Phase 2 or 3 Dark Troopers in the final scene of The Mandalorian: Chapter 12, it’s pretty much a given the series won’t be following the Expanded Universe’s example when it comes to these characters. For one thing, the majority of Dark Forces takes place shortly after the events of Episode IV, whereas The Mandalorian is set five years after Return of the Jedi. According to the EU, the Dark Trooper Project should be long gone by now.
But as with a great many characters and elements that originated in the EU (Grand Admiral Thrawn, Darth Maul’s return, etc.), we can probably expect The Mandalorian to draw some inspiration from these classic stories while also putting a fresh spin on things. We may learn Moff Gideon, not General Mohc, is the mastermind behind the Dark Trooper Project. The Dark Troopers could be portrayed as a last-ditch effort by the Empire to maintain power. No longer blessed with the limitless resources of the Palpatine era, the Imperial Remnant may now see the value in a smaller army comprised of highly capable, nigh-indestructible super-soldiers.
The Dark Troopers may actually become the dark inverse of the Mandalorians themselves. Perhaps Gideon has stolen the secrets of Beskar armor and other Mandalorian arts in order to create a new breed of trooper. To date, Mando has gotten by largely on the strength of his blaster-proof armor and years of training. What happens when the enemy suddenly has those same assets?
It’s also possible the series could draw on the variations of the Dark Troopers introduced after Dark Forces. Perhaps the series will revive the concept of Phase Zero Dark Troopers, revealing these soldiers to be cybernetically powered Clonetroopers left over from the Clone Wars. Hey, Temuera Morrison is already playing Boba Fett, so why not let him play a few clone characters while he’s at it?
We could also see the series unifying the conflicting versions of Dark Troopers seen in Dark Forces and Dark Empire II. Maybe these heavily armored super-soldiers will also be Force users. As Chapter 12 makes clear, Gideon is hellbent on mastering the secret of creating Force-sensitive clones and, apparently, helping usher in Palpatine’s return. These Dark Troopers could represent his early, flawed experiments with midi-chlorians.
Will Kyle Katarn Also Appear?
With Dark Troopers joining the fray in Chapter 12, a lot of Star Wars fans are probably wondering if Kyle Katarn might be next. Is there room for this ex-Stromtrooper-turned-Rebel spy-turned-Jedi Knight? It’s certainly not impossible.
Again, the series would have to tinker with the formula established in the EU. Given the events of Rogue One, we know Kyle didn’t have a hand in stealing the Death Star plans. But fortunately, that adventure is just one stop in a much longer journey for Mr. Katarn. Even destroying Project Dark Trooper is just the beginning. The sequel Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II deals with Kyle’s discovery of his Jedi heritage, a thread that continues across several games. Kyle winds up playing a heavy role in the post-Return of the Jedi EU era, including becoming one of the students at Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy.
Obviously, a series like The Mandalorian isn’t going to have room to fully explore that character arc, but we could easily see the character debuting in Season 3 as a prelude to a larger role elsewhere. Kyle could start out much as he did in the original Dark Forces – helping Mando end the threat of Moff Gideon’s Dark Troopers. From there, Kyle could link up with characters like Luke or Ahsoka and grapple with his Jedi powers. Even 26 years after his debut, Kyle Katarn still has a large fan following. Why not tap into that following by bringing yet another familiar Star Wars face into The Mandalorian?
Amazon kicked off Black Friday a week early, with its Black Friday Week sales event. Some of the earliest and best Black Friday deals so far are on video games, and with Microsoft letting the lid of its deals early, Amazon has been forced to play price-match catch-up.
Black Friday Xbox Deals at Amazon
We know Amazon will offer Game Pass Ultimate Black Friday deals, but those aren’t (at the time of this writing) live yet. You can, however, start saving on Xbox games right now.
Amazon hasn’t had the Xbox Series X available for order since the preorders sold out, which was last month. It’s not likely we’ll see them again on Black Friday, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is out on Nintendo Switch, and a day one update for the game is now live as well. The version 1.0.1 patch adds a Spanish audio option and resolves a handful of game-breaking bugs.
Specifically, the update fixes a couple of issues that prevented players from progressing further in the game in certain circumstances. You can see the full patch notes, taken from Nintendo’s official support website, below.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is the second Dynasty Warriors-style Zelda spin-off from Koei Tecmo, following the original Hyrule Warriors on Wii U (which was ported to Switch back in 2018). The game is a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and is set 100 years before the events of the Switch launch game, following Link, Zelda, and the Kingdom of Hyrule as they try to thwart the return of Calamity Ganon.
In addition to Link and Zelda, Age of Calamity features a variety of playable characters, including the four Champions Revali, Daruk, Urbosa, and Mipha, as well as young Impa. Players who have save data for Breath of the Wild on their Switch systems will receive a bonus weapon upon starting Age of Calamity: the Training Sword.
We scored the new Zelda spin-off a 6/10 in our Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity review. “The main reason I dove into Age of Calamity is because I love its world and the history it tries to remember. So for a game to retread them and proclaim to have something new to say when its inspiration’s most striking moments come from what it leaves unsaid is a big ask. But my problem with Age of Calamity isn’t that it fails to live up to that responsibility. It’s that it doesn’t even try. It doesn’t have the courage to see things through,” we wrote.
Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity Ver. 1.0.1 Patch Notes
General
Added Spanish audio.
Fixed software issues, including the following problems:
Fixed issue where proceeding further became impossible after certain operations in the menu screen of the two-player mode.
Fixed issue where proceeding further sometimes became impossible when changing characters at a certain point in some of the scenarios.
Fixed issue where proceeding beyond the loading screen sometimes became impossible after defeating an enemy with a certain procedure in some of the scenarios.
Fixed the issue where the screen display got corrupted and controls apart from the HOME Button stopped responding after certain operations in the materials selling menu.
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Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin will depart from the company. Lin, who served as the popular streaming platform’s COO from 2008 to 2018, made the announcement in a Medium post.
He recounted his experience with Twitch and thanked everybody involved in Twitch’s journey. Lin did not explicitly state what his next career plans were, but instead commented that he will be “spending time with family and loved ones, some sleep and relaxation, some fitness, and of course, a lot of video games.”
Twitch won’t be Lin’s final adventure in the tech sector, however. He stated, “I’m so excited to stretch my curiosity and to continue exploring a world where technology is a positive amplifier in our lives. I will build again. I hope to create something as remarkable as Twitch again, to build with amazing people who will challenge me, and to make the world we experience better.”
Kevin Lin, Emmett Shear, Justin Kan, Kyle Vogt, and Michael Seibel officially rebranded Justin.tv and launched Twitch in its current incarnation in 2011. Amazon then acquired Twitch in 2014 for nearly a billion dollars, an investment that looks to be paying off. Twitch is central to many gaming communities, and a number of popular gaming personalities sprung to fame from the platform. With the pandemic causing people to stay mostly indoors, individuals other than gamers–such as musicians and artists–also turned to Twitch to connect with their audiences. It seems Twitch has more room to grow and can potentially cultivate an even larger user base.
However, Twitch has faced challenges lately and continues to struggle with copyrighted material on the platform. In early 2020, Twitch received a flurry of DMCA takedown notifications over copyrighted audio. Since then, the company wrestled with creating policies dealing with copyrighted audio, and Twitch creators grappled with adjusting as well. More recently, major music institutions are still dissatisfied with Twitch’s solutions, such as Twitch’s Soundtrack Service for streamers, and want the platform to do more. In any case, it appears Twitch’s conflict with certain music industry organizations is far from over.
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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has had a number of bug fixes since it launched earlier this month. Developer Treyarch wants to keep players in-the-know about changes it’ll be making to the shooter so it’s created a Trello board. Players can check it to see the status of upcoming fixes.
“While this won’t serve as a comprehensive list of known issues (several of which are listed below), we’ll do our best to track the bigger issues of specific interest for the community here,” read a post on Treyarch’s official site. “You can also come here for details on how to report bugs on your specific platform, where to contact Player Support, and when to expect specific fixes to be released.”
The board includes known issues for both multiplayer and Zombies modes as well as general bugs the studio hopes to address quickly. It also has info on previous and upcoming updates as well as info on the Black Ops Cold War roadmap that begins on December 10.
A special DLC bundle based on one of the series most notorious maps, Nuketown, is also available right now. You’ll have to log in before December 3 to get it. The DLC pack comes with 10 items that are themed around Nuketown, including a weapon blueprint, weapon charms, and an emblem and a calling card.
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Pokemon Go has reimplemented a couple of temporary bonuses, developer Niantic has announced. For the next few months, Incense will once again attract more Pokemon when activated, and your Buddy Pokemon will both find more gifts and do so more often than usual each day.
These bonuses were initially implemented in Pokemon Go as part of Niantic’s efforts to make the game easier to play from home amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but they were removed back in October. As the studio explained on the Pokemon Go website, they’re being made available again at least until June 2021.
“These bonuses are temporary, but they will remain in the game at minimum through June 2021,” the studio wrote. “We’ll give at least one month’s notice before they change.”
The studio also says that more bonuses will be available as part of upcoming events, including decreased hatching distance for eggs, increased trading distance, and more 1 PokeCoin item bundles. Additionally, Niantic is currently doling out double XP for catching and evolving Pokemon and other tasks ahead of the game’s big Go Beyond update.
Pokemon Go recently implemented the ability to transfer Pokemon directly to Pokemon Home, and to celebrate, Niantic is holding a new event until November 23. As part of the event, Shiny Slowpoke is appearing in the game, as is Shiny Meltan. On top of that, this month’s second Community Day takes place on November 21. The featured Pokemon this time is Magmar, and any that evolve into Magmortar up to two hours after the event ends will learn the Electric-type Charged attack Thunderbolt.
