The Australian Classification Board (ACB) has updated its guidelines to include a special notice on video game boxes that specifically mentions if it has in-game purchases.
This development comes after Australia’s government launched multiple inquiries into loot boxes to determine a course of action to protect consumers.
In the United States, the main ratings group–the ESRB–started putting special stickers on video game boxes to denote if a game has in-game purchases and random items for purchase. The ESRB, however, is a self-regulating independent group that works off the advice from the video game industry and trade groups. The ACB, meanwhile, is a government institution.
Microtransactions are popular in many video games–in fact, it is rare for a big AAA game to not have microtransactions in some form. Publishers have taken heat for how they are implemented, and random loot boxes have become less popular in AAA console games in the wake of the Star Wars: Battlefront II controversy. A popular form of microtransactions today is cosmetic items through Battle Pass systems. For example, the Battle Pass for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone is estimated to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars from its microtransactions.
The Spider-Man exclusivity is just the latest part of Square Enix’s deal with Sony to give PlayStation owners preferential treatment. PS4 players got early access to the beta and they will also receive other cosmetics that won’t be available on Xbox and PC, at least not right away.
Spider-Man will come to Marvel’s Avengers on PS4 and PS5 sometime after launch, though an exact date has not been announced. Developer Crystal Dynamics has since clarified that Spider-Man will be the only console exclusive character, so don’t expect a match on Xbox or PC.
Spider-Man is the second post-launch DLC confirmed for Marvel’s Avengers but the first one made exclusive to one console family. He joins Hawkeye, who will also accompany The Avengers sometime after the game drops this September for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Marvel’s Avengers will be released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X further down the road.
GameSpot recently spent some hands-on time with Marvel’s Avengers, and we came away finally understanding what type of game it actually is and how it works. Check out GameSpot’s in-depth video above to find out more.
The retailer GameStop recently posted a product page for NHL 21 on PC, but this was a mistake. EA Sports has confirmed that the new ice hockey game will not be released on PC.
The game is scheduled to release on October 16–which is later than usual due to issues related to COVID-19–and it will be available only for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This is no surprise, given that the series has not been released on PC for more than a decade now.
The real-world NHL season recently started back up again, beginning with the playoffs which have been exciting so far. EA likely would have wanted to have the game out sooner to capitalize on the hype, but complications related to working from home caused delays. When NHL 21 is released on October 16, the playoffs will have been over for more than a week.
The classic flight sim is back, letting you take off and land at airports all across the world. You can glide over tons of cities, mountains, forests, deserts, and more, in various weather conditions and through both the day and night. The game will also offer guidance tailored to your level of experience in the cockpit.
More Coverage:
Battletoads — August 20
Available on: Xbox One, PC
Battletoads
It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen Rash, Pimple, and Zitz, but the toads are back for a new beat ’em up adventure with really rad hand-drawn art. As you’d expect, you can play through the whole thing via three-player couch co-op. There’s no online option to play together, however.
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Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time — August 21
Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch
Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time
The Cartoon Network/Adult Swim classic returns, with a new adventure featuring the show’s voice cast. There’s lots of combat in this game, of course, but Jack wields more than just his signature katana. You can use more than a dozen weapons and special skills to complement your particular fighting style.
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New Super Lucky’s Tale — August 21
Available on: PS4, Xbox One
New Super Lucky’s Tale
Yes, Super Lucky’s Tale is already available on Game Pass on Xbox One, but this is a separate, enhanced version that was previously only available on Switch. All you really need to know is that it’s a cute platformer with both 3D and 2D levels. There are lots of collectibles, puzzles, and bosses to be found in them.
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PGA 2K21 — August 21
Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC
PGA Tour 2K21
The latest 2K golf game lets you create a custom golfer to go up against the pros. You can play on 15 real-world courses, but if those aren’t enough for you, you can make your own custom courses too. Those can be shared online with other PGA players around the world.
HBO’s Game of Thrones wrapped up its eighth and final season in 2019, bringing about an end to the very popular fantasy show. The franchise is living on with a spin-off TV show and of course another book from author George R.R. Martin. But the main show is finished.
Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has now reflected on the legacy of the TV show as part of the wider TV landscape. He told Collider that it’s probably too soon to have the discussion about how Game of Thrones has impacted TV, but he said he’s happy to have been part a part of it. He enjoyed playing Jaime Lannister over the years, but he’s glad Game of Thrones ended when it did.
“I had such a great time on that show. It was quite amazing that you go back to something for so long, and I was never bored or like, ‘Oh, now I’ve gotta go back to this?’ Because of the nature of the story, the story changed,” he said. “My character was such a great character, and he was always on a new journey, so I’m gonna miss that. I miss it.”
“I miss my friends and I miss the crew. But at the same time, it’s also a relief that it’s over because it was time to move on. You don’t wanna overstay your welcome.”
Hunt: Showdown has disabled an option available to Nvidia users on PC over concerns that it gives players an advantage. In a tweet on the game’s official account, the developers have explained the issue at hand, and have announced that the option has been disabled to prevent exploits.
“In the last couple of months we have received feedback that players use and exploit Nvidia filters in order to get a competitive advantage, especially during night mission,” the post reads. “To keep a level playing field and a fair competitive environment we have devided to disable Nvidia Freestyle.”
The issue is that it’s possible to use Freestyle to greatly lighten the screen during dark missions, making opponents much easier to see. Since so much of the game is set in the dark, this means that players able to adjust brightness on the fly were at a major advantage.
If you’re an Nvidia user, you’ll now have to join other players in the darkness.
Back in May, the game added console cross-play, meaning that there’s a wider pool of players to hunt with and against.
This review contains spoilers for Season 1, episode 1 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, “Sundown.”
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Where does one even begin to broach the complex subject of H.P. Lovecraft, the namesake of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel Lovecraft Country and its 2020 television adaptation, executive produced by Misha Green, J.J. Abrams, and Jordan Peele? For starters, he was a racist — an exceptional one, even by the context of his lifetime. Some of the things he’s said and written I can’t even bear to quote here in good conscience.
He was also, crucially, an author and poet in the then-nascent subgenre of “weird fiction” up until his death in 1937. Though largely ignored in his lifetime, Lovecraft’s work would later find its audience among a new generation of readers, and to this day he is credited as the most prolifically recognized author of “cosmic horror” fiction, made popular by his collection of novels and short stories encompassing what is known today as “The Cthulhu Mythos.”
How then does one reconcile the dichotomy of Lovecraft’s reprehensible beliefs and his immense posthumous impact on the shape of popular fiction? In the case of Lovecraft Country, by reconfiguring the tropes and narrative structure of Lovecraftian horror fiction around a subject — a black man in mid-20th century America and his extended circle of family and friends — who would otherwise be rendered either peripheral or monstrous by Lovecraft’s own hand.
“Stories are like people,” says Atticus “Tic” Turner, the protagonist of Lovecraft Country as he walks alongside a fellow traveler down a lonely road on the way to Chicago. “Loving them doesn’t mean they’re perfect. You just try to cherish them, overlook their flaws.” Convenient though that answer may be, it is nonetheless the gravitational center around which the show’s creators have chosen to align the orbit of the series’ ideas and themes.
A Korean War vet and avid science-fiction buff, Atticus knows all too well the pain of loving something that doesn’t love you back, and the value of literary escapism: “I love that the heroes get to go on adventures in other worlds. Defy insurmountable odds. Defeat the monster, save the day. [A] Little negro boy from the South Side of Chicago don’t notoriously get to do that.” Played by Jonathan Majors, known for his scene-stealing turn as the gentle playwright Montgomery Allen in 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco, his portrayal of Atticus is just as emotionally nuanced and considered.
Though the premise of these two stories could not be farther apart in terms of tone or content, what they nonetheless share are characters dispossessed from their own histories by forces of prejudice and systemic plunder far beyond their control and older than either of their lifetimes. After a brief stint in Florida after his tour in Korea, Atticus is summoned home to Chicago by his estranged father Montrose (Michael K. Williams), who has discovered a secret concerning his maternal ancestry. “I know that like your mother you think that you can forget the past — you can’t,” reads Montrose’s letter as Atticus recites it for his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), publisher of the Safe Negro Travel Guide, an in-universe equivalent to Victor Hugo Green’s Green Book. With his father now missing and the only clue to his whereabouts lying somewhere in the isolated town of Ardham, Massachusetts, Atticus, George, and his childhood friend Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett) must embark on a journey to bring him safely back home.
Lovecraft Country establishes its bonafides as a speculative pulp-serial straight out the gate with its opening scene, a dramatized recounting of Atticus’ time fighting in the trenches of the Korean War, only for the scene to be quickly overtaken by his own overactive imagination. From flying saucers and laser-shooting alien tripods, eldritch horrors and a lithe, bikini-clad Dejah Thoris, the show wears its unabashed love of genre fiction tropes proudly on its sleeve. The spectre of what happened to Atticus in Korea, and perhaps what he left behind, hangs over the episode with all the ominous portent of a funeral pall. Showrunner Misha Green’s adaptation takes the foundational elements of Ruff’s novel and amends them confidently into the space of an hour-long serialized horror-drama. An unsurprisingly comfortable fit, given that the book was originally conceived as a television pitch. If you’re looking for a beat-for-beat adaptation of the text, this isn’t that; it’s better.
What Lovecraft Country’s first episode does particularly well is foreground the presence and experiences of black women. Jurnee Smollett’s turn as the smoldering Leti is captivating from her first moment on-screen, as is Letitia’s sister Ruby, played by Luther’s Wunmi Mosaku. George’s wife Hippolyta, played by Aunjanue Ellis, is a strong matriarchal figure with palpable ambitions for something more than just her role as a housewife, and Atticus’ little cousin Diana, played by Jada Harris, is precocious and creative. Something notable about Diana is that, in the novel, the character was originally portrayed as a 12-year old boy named Horace. This isn’t the only case where the show plays with the gender of the novel’s original characters, as the series changes the formidable Caleb Braithwhite into the sultry Christina Braithwhite, who makes an impressive first appearance in the form of Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road). Whether these changes will have any bearing on the character’s motivations or goals in the future, however, is anyone’s guess at this point.
The first episode, “Sundown,” has a lot going for it, particularly when it comes to the show’s overall score, music choices, and cinematography. The block party scene at the one-third mark of the episode is a perfect example of all these elements locking into place. When Lovecraft Country is good, it’s good. Awash in the ethereal glow of fuschia lighting, Black bodies dance in joyful abandon to Ruby’s scintillating cover of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “I Want A Tall Skinny Papa” followed by a duet performance of Dave “Curlee” Williams’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” Matter of fact, the sole exception to the episode’s otherwise period-appropriate soundtrack is an appearance by Tierra Whack’s 2019 single “Clones” while Atticus walks through his neighborhood in an earlier scene. As for the block party, there’s laughter and singing, pouring fire hydrants and weightless smiles. It’s an unambiguous portrait of Black joy, a ray of communal celebration and happiness that stands in stark contrast to the darkness that’s soon to follow.
By far one of the stand-out moments, if not the stand out moment of the first episode of Lovecraft Country is the cross-country montage of Atticus, George, and Leti traveling through the heart of the Midwest, narrated by a sobering excerpt of James Baldwin’s opening statement during his historic 1965 debate with conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. “It would seem to me the proposition before the House, and I would put it that way, is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro, or the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro, is a question hideously loaded, and then one’s response to that question – one’s reaction to that question – has to depend on effect and, in effect, where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply as to be scarcely aware of them.”
Baldwin’s words are searing when paired with the imagery of segregated ice-cream counters and movie theater entrances, Aunt Jemima billboards and teenagers pantomiming racial stereotypes. The very serious function of racism, as Toni Morrison once so eloquently put, is distraction. It keeps one from doing their work, or simply living one’s life, by constantly having to assert the fundamental worth and truth of one’s existence.
The action sequences in “Sundown” are as intense as its moments of poignance. The car chase scene out of Simmonsville is a bracing back-and-forth of twists and turns that culminates in an explosive finale of eerie implications. The escape out of Devon County before sunset is a tense cat and mouse encounter of racial terror, as the town sheriff bears down on George’s Buick with a force as malevolent and unrelenting as any of Lovecraft’s own horrors.
Ironically, the show becomes a lot less horrifying when the “actual” monsters show up. The episode’s climax in the woods of Worcester County is a gruesome onslaught that feels like a remix of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and the car chase scene from Jordan Peele’s Us. It’s a fun finale, though one that all too conveniently diffuses a confrontation of genuine terror and emotional stakes.
Skullgirls Mobile is celebrating over 5 million downloads with a new character, a sword-wielding actor with some wild combos. The character is Annie of the Stars, who has been introduced in a stylish new trailer–and they’re coming to Skullgirls: 2nd Encore too.
You can check out the character in action below, and see how they’ll perform in both games. There’s a focus on the character’s personality and their work as an actor, but we’re more interested in their combos, their short sword, and their sci-fi inspired attacks.
You can check out Annie below.
The trailer contains the question “when’s Annie?”, which is, strangely, a reference to the season two finale of Twin Peaks–we’re not sure if that will have any bearing on anything, though.
Skullgirls: 2nd Encore released in 2015, while the Mobile game has been around since 2017. This will be the first new character for 2nd Encore in some time.
Skullgirls developer Lab Zero Games released Indivisible last year. It’s due to receive a TV adaptation for NBC streaming service Peacock.
After a rough launch in 2016 and many years of updates, Dead by Daylight has evolved into one of the best horror games you can play today. When everything works there’s literally no game like it–where else can you play as iconic film and TV characters like Ash Williams or Nancy Wheeler as you run away from villains like Ghost Face, Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers? The premise might seem silly, but Dead by Daylight turns it into one of the most thrilling multiplayer experiences around, pitting one terrifying Killer against four hapless Survivors as they scramble to escape the map alive.
As the Killer, your job is to sacrifice the four Survivors to the Entity, the malevolent god in charge of the nonstop forced competition that is each “trial” in the game. And while you’re outnumbered, the odds are heavily lopsided in your favour. You move faster, you have access to more immediate information, and, most importantly, you’re the only one capable of dealing any damage. The Survivors can’t do anything to harm you–at best, they can slow you down–while you’re equipped with a wide array of offensive abilities.
With twenty different Killers to choose from (so far), there’s no shortage of entertaining and diverse playstyles. The Hillbilly charges around the map with his chainsaw, the revving of the limb-lopping tool acting as a terrifying warning of what’s to come. The Trapper discreetly leaves bear traps on the ground, catching any Survivors who aren’t watching where they’re going in a crippling vice of metal teeth. Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head leaves a trail of horrible barbed wire anywhere he drags his giant blade, and he can send anyone who steps in it to his own special sacrifice areas.
Killers find themselves holding most of the cards when it comes to playing, and that’s the way the game likes it. Being a huge threat is a real treat, and it’s how Dead by Daylight creates the tense atmosphere it needs to succeed–Survivors know they’re outgunned (literally, if the Deathslinger is in the trial) but they do their best to live anyway.
To survive in Dead by Daylight, the four players without murderous intentions need to escape the trial. The exit gates are locked and unpowered, and to open them you and your team need to repair five generators littered around the randomly-generated map. The only thing complicating this is the Killer, who really doesn’t want you to leave.
Repairing generators is easier said than done, of course. There’s a risk associated with it, and there’s a tension created by needing to pass skill checks–timing-based events where a dial spins around a circle and you need to hit a button when it reaches the right spot (think Active Reloads from Gears of War, except the target area moves every time). If you fail it, a loud bang will directly alert the killer to your location. Successfully turning the generator on will also alert the Killer, as will dropping a pallet (which slows the Killer down as they lumber towards you), climbing through a window too fast, and helping other Survivors who have been indisposed–there are a lot of ways in which the Killer will know where you are.
On the upside, you’ll have an idea of where the Killer is too. Survivors play in third person, as opposed to the first-person perspective of the Killer, affording them a great deal of extra visual information. And when the Killer nears, their Terror Radius kicks in and a thumping heartbeat warns Survivors of their impending arrival, to great effect. It combines with the game’s dynamic metal soundtrack to quicken the pace of your own heart, your awareness of your imminent doom growing alongside the volume of the heartbeat.
If the Killer catches you, they’ll likely dump you on a sacrificial hook and leave you to dangle while you bleed out. Your teammates will be forced to agonize over risking the wrath of the Killer to save you or to leave you there to die while they work on the generators. And as you hang, helpless, you’ll have a bird’s eye view of exactly how bad things are going.
It is extremely unlikely that you’ll escape as a Survivor, and that’s part of what makes Dead by Daylight so exciting. The way it fills you with dread while still making you unable to look away is the sort of dynamic only the masters of horror ever really nail. Too often the genre leans into other tricks to get by–excessive gore, jump scares, titillation–but the classics all focus on that perfect moment where the viewer clasps their hands over their eyes to find some brief respite–only to split their fingers apart so they can see what happens next.
The thumping heartbeat, the staccato soundtrack, and the knowledge that the odds are terrible engulf you in an impending sense of doom, but the tantalising idea that you might be able to get away compels you to keep playing just one more game.
From 2016 To 2020
When I first reviewed Dead by Daylight in 2016, the one-versus-four multiplayer game was lacking in a lot of ways, but it’s come unbelievably far since. Behaviour Interactive took its fair game and worked hard to turn it into something that is now played by millions. Games that were player-hosted and often laggy messes–especially when you were matched against Killers half the world away–now run beautifully on dedicated servers. The player population is up thanks to cross-play. And where you once had to randomly queue to try and join a game alongside your friends, Dead by Daylight now allows party matchmaking by default.
That said, Surviving With Friends (as partying up is known) is highly controversial and highlights the inherent wrinkles in a game like Dead by Daylight. This is supposed to be a lopsided affair, a tense showdown between a solitary Killer and four crafty Survivors where both sides know one thing to be true–the Killer is almost certainly going to get their prey. It’s the thrill of gambling at a casino, except instead of a dealer hitting you with a King on double sixes, it’s a lady with a decapitated pig as a facemask hitting you with the reverse bear trap from Saw. Either way, the house is always supposed to win.
Outside of a couple of largely meaningless gestures, Survivors can’t communicate with one another in-game, and that’s what partying up changes. Once Survivors are able to communicate (through external voice chat programs like Discord), the ability for the Killer to divide and conquer becomes significantly more complicated, and it can negate a huge portion of the atmosphere the game is built upon.
However, Dead by Daylight has managed to survive as long as it has over the years because it cleverly leans into being lopsided. The more time you spend with the dozens of different Killers, Survivors, and maps, the more you get the feeling that it’s not supposed to be balanced at all. Instead, by featuring 20 Killers, all with a wide variety of playstyles and management techniques, the sentiment of the game in 2020 is to just have fun with it. Enjoyment is more important than victory.
That doesn’t mean that the game isn’t constantly being improved, however. Even beyond the quality-of-life improvements, Dead by Daylight has introduced a wide array of gameplay fixes and tweaks to make things more fun for both sides. One of the more common issues that cropped up were “infinite loops.” Killers move around 15% faster than Survivors (not accounting for sprint burst perks and the like) which means that, over a long enough distance, they’ll always catch a survivor. But early into the game’s life cycle, players found a way to change those odds. By using window ledges and pallets, Survivors were able to find areas where Killers wouldn’t ever be able to catch them.
Behaviour did a good job of removing them as best they could–changing the map layout logic where necessary and implementing Killer Perks to readjust the odds in other areas. And when those solutions don’t work, there’s another on the cards. The Entity simply blocks the window in question to force the survivor to go elsewhere. Problems still crop up sometimes, but when they do, they’re best solved by a community of players who understand a key element of what makes Dead by Daylight fun–the game is better when both sides are having a good time.
A bit of role-playing makes these fantasy scenarios infinitely more interesting than just playing efficiently and killing everyone on sight. Dead by Daylight capitalises on this dynamic by incentivising those actions through the scoring system. Killers who eliminate all the Survivors the first time they find them will walk away with a large chunk of points, certainly. But those who toy with Survivors–who perform a variety of actions like targeting more than one Survivor at once, chasing them around the map, chopping someone down only to put them on a hook and then leave (allowing them to be rescued)–will find they’re able to rack up even larger scores. And they’ll do it without even necessarily killing all the Survivors.
The same goes for the other side. It’s obviously a cinch for a coordinated group of survivors to constantly bait a Killer into long chases while those not being pursued repair generators to escape, and it’s a quick way to knock out some games. Or you could take a bunch of solo-focused anti-slug perks (being downed causes a player to slither on the ground like a slug, and being left in this state is called being slugged) and a Skeleton Key and wait for enough teammates to die so you can make a quick escape through the Hatch. But the game is more thrilling and tangibly rewarding if you play into the theme of the game instead. If you take perks that help your teammates when they’re in trouble, or if you lead the Killer on nail-bitingly close races through the map, you’ll also find that you earn more points. Dead by Daylight directly rewards traits like Boldness and Altruism, and just as it’s possible to earn a ‘success’ without landing a kill as the Killer, a Survivor can die and still come out ahead points-wise.
Those points can be used to level up your characters, unlocking new perks and items to take into games. The more you play a particular Killer or Survivor, the more you unlock for them. Eventually you reach a point where you can unlock perks to make them available for other Killers or Survivors, encouraging you to step outside of your comfort zone if you want to build out characters in different ways.
As the game currently stands, these points also feed into a ranking system which defines the quality of player you’re up against. Behaviour Interactive flirted with changing this system while I was writing this review–introducing skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) briefly before removing it again. And while its implementation was a bit premature, SBMM seems like a system that would benefit the game in the long run. Dead by Daylight gains nothing by showing players their rank as it does currently, and it actually incentivises overly-competitive behaviours in players who find themselves chasing ‘pips’–the system used to define progression in the ranking system itself.
Something it hasn’t really improved since launch is the tutorial, and that’s another area where the community around the game can help point in the right direction. While the current tutorial teaches players the absolute basics, concepts like loops and the points system, which quickly become crucial to success in the game, are left for players to figure out on their own or to learn from other sources. And by outsourcing this opportunity to emphasise the pageantry at the heart of Dead by Daylight, there’s a missed opportunity to foster the attitude required to get the most out of the game.
At launch, Dead by Daylight suffered because of its reliance on peer-to-peer hosting and absent social features, but over time it rectified these issues. And while a brief and premature tussle with skill-based matchmaking turned the new player experience into a bit of a horror show (a problem which is now fixed), thanks to its community of players Dead by Daylight is without peer in the asymmetrical competitive multiplayer arena, and has grown into one of the most robust horror experiences around.
One of the new modes in Madden NFL 21 is The Yard, which is an arcade-style football offering where players can perform trick plays and have a generally less serious experience.
The 6v6 games will be played on special fields, and EA Sports has now begun to announce these through posts on social media. One of them, F.O.B. Nico, is set on a military base, while another one is set in the parking lot at Lambeau Field. Another field is The Port, which is an oceanside shipping center. Football is most popular in America, but the NFL has been trying to expand its reach to international markets, and that’s reflected in The Yard’s Brandenburg field in Germany.
You can see all of these fields in the videos below.
The Yard will feature new trick play animations never before seen in Madden. It will feature its own career with your customized avatar, letting you collect Rep to build rank and Cred to unlock gear. That gear includes jerseys with rarity statuses ranging from Common to Legendary.
The Yard will link up with The Yard: Underground on mobile. You’ll have a shared inventory and progress between the two, so you can keep earning Rep and Cred while you’re away from your console or PC.
Madden NFL 21’s introduction of a more casual, arcade-style mode is interesting given the timing. Starting in 2021, rival 2K Sports will begin developing arcade-style football games, though EA Sports will remain the exclusive developer of simulation-style football games.
Madden NFL 21 is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 28, with the Xbox Series X, PS5, and Stadia versions launching at a later date. For more details, check out our Madden NFL 21 pre-order guide.
