Following launch issues surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red has allegedly changed its developer’s bonus structure to ensure they will still get their bonuses.
As reported by Bloomberg, executives at CD Projekt SA have taken “responsibility for the buggy release of the highly-anticipated title Cyberpunk 2077 this week” and have made changed to make sure that the team “will receive their full bonuses no matter how the game is reviewed.”
“We initially had a bonus system that was focused on the game’s ratings and the release date, but after consideration, we believe that measure is simply not fair under the circumstances,” wrote Adam Badowski, studio head and creative director for Cyberpunk 2077, in the email to staff that was obtained by Bloomberg. “We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality, and still you did everything you could to deliver an ambitious, special game.”
Current and former employees talked to Bloomberg about how the bonus structure previously worked for Cyberpunk 2077 devs, and it’s a bit complicated. Every month, team leads would give out tokens – styled after the company’s logo, no less – to “members of the their team they felt deserved honors.”
These tokens could then be transferred into bonuses if Cyberpunk 2077 were to meet certain criteria. Under the revised system, those “payouts will be guaranteed even though Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed and the review score has been mixed.” Bloomberg also notes that these bonuses come “on top of regular annual profit-sharing payouts,” but that “there has been concern it pushed them to work longer hours.”
In The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 7, the crew on Slave I head to the Karthon Chop Fields to pick up Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr). Cara Dune (Gina Carano), now a Marshal of the New Republic, removes Mayfeld from scrapyard work and tells him she has a job for him. She leads him to the rest of the crew, including Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison), Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), and Din Djarin aka Mando (Pedro Pascal). Mando asks if Mayfeld still knows Imperial clearances and protocols, and says they need the coordinates for Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito).
Dune promises Mayfeld a better deal, and he decides to help the team in their mission to find Grogu aka Baby Yoda. In order to get the coordinates they need, Mayfeld needs access to an internal Imperial terminal. He believes there is one on the planet Morak, which houses an Imperial rhydonium refinery. The crew travel to Morak on Slave 1, with a new mission to get Mayfeld and Mando to the Imperial terminal in the refinery. But during this mission, they are attacked by pirates, and Mayfeld must confront his Imperial past.
The Game Awards 2020 featured a ton of announcements, ranging from world premiers of new games to gameplay teasers for already anticipated titles. And plenty of those announcements had to deal with games coming to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
On this episode of Generation Next, Lucy, Jordan, and Tamoor provide their immediate reactions to what went down at The Game Awards. The trio also talk through their respective impressions of the show as a whole and how it has contributed to the conversation surrounding the new generation of consoles–from the reveal of Xbox Series X to the advertisement of upcoming AAA titles and indie titles coming exclusively to the new consoles in 2021 and beyond, including The Callisto Protocol and Perfect Dark.
Generation Next is a weekly video series focused on discussing Xbox Series X|S and PS5. Sometimes that means sitting down for a serious discussion and other times that means mixing in some good points among lots of silly bants. It’s usually the latter.
I’ve waited a long time to say this with confidence: Microsoft is finally – finally – set up for sustained first-party success. Xbox Studios’ on-paper portfolio was capped off by The Game Awards’ riveting reveal of Perfect Dark, which will revive a beloved N64-era franchise that has been dormant for 15 years. It’s been entrusted to The Initiative, Microsoft’s lone new homegrown studio located in the development hotbed of Santa Monica that’s staffed by talent with impressive resumes. Perfect Dark’s director, for instance, is Drew Murray, who also helmed the sublime Sunset Overdrive.
But let’s back up a bit first. The story of the Xbox One’s disastrous launch has been well-told at this point, though I’d argue that Microsoft’s failures in the first-party/exclusive games department over the past generation have been just as damaging to the brand, if not more so. Funny enough, Xbox One had a pretty solid launch window’s worth of exclusives, including Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Titanfall. But since starting reasonably strong on the software side, the well has gone and stayed dry, year after year. And while there have been somegems, they’ve been overshadowed by studio closures, franchise failures, and high-profile cancellations and even higher-profile delays.
You know the recent Xbox story: a host of studio acquisitions, a megaton Bethesda purchase, the rise of Xbox Game Pass, and the release of a great new next-generation console in the Xbox Series X. The last and most important piece of the puzzle has always been first-party and/or exclusive games, though, and it’s also the problem that takes the longest to solve. You simply can’t get major, system-selling exclusives overnight, even when you pay $7.5 billion.
That brings us to today, when we can finally take a holistic view of Microsoft’s first-party roadmap and genuinely get excited about what we see:
Halo Infinite
Perfect Dark
Fable
Starfield
The Elder Scrolls VI
Avowed
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
Everwild
Forza Motorsport
State of Decay 3
Microsoft Flight Simulator (Xbox Series X version)
That’s a damned impressive list, and that doesn’t even include unannounced-but-inevitable sequels like Forza Horizon 5, Gears 6, Fallout 5, and Doom 3. Nor do we know what talented studios like Machinegames (Wolfenstein) and Compulsion (We Happy Few) are up to yet. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also inked a handful of third-party console launch exclusives, including Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and the Vin Diesel vehicle Ark 2.
The bad news is that most of those are still pretty far away. Granted, 2021 should still see a number of exclusives land on Game Pass, though not many heavy hitters. The Medium, Scorn, CrossfireX, Psychonauts 2, Warhammer, 12 Minutes, The Ascent, and the console release of Flight Sim are all on tap to be appetizers for 2021’s main Xbox course in the Fall, Halo Infinite.
And look, no one’s saying these games are “better” than PlayStation’s exclusives. Sony has earned its sterling reputation amongst gamers by consistently delivering fantastic first-party games. I’m not writing this as a comparison at all. Quite frankly, Microsoft has to get its own house in order before it can worry about Sony. All of these games have to actually be stellar, not just good, in order for that to happen.
But there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel for Xbox gamers. Perfect Dark, a first-person “more than a shooter” according to The Game Awards reveal video, gives Microsoft the chance to do what a new IP can’t: tap into a groundswell of nostalgia and resurrect a fan-favorite franchise in a way Xbox has never really done before. It could prove to be the perfect complement to the rest of the newly impressive first-party roster. Here’s hoping Microsoft can pull the whole thing off, and that Xbox’s first-party problems finally become a thing of the past.
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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
Bad Robot Productions, JJ Abrams’ movie, and TV production company, has launched a video game division under the guidance of former Valve executive Michael Booth.
In 2018, Abrams announced that Bad Robots will be expanding into video games with Bad Robot Games, but the newest venture under Booth will bring video game development in-house. Meaning Bad Robot themselves will begin developing and designing games on their own.
Booth will serve as general manager and will lead the creative team through the company’s first game, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Booth was formerly a developer for Turtle Rock Studios, the developers of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood. He was project lead on games such as Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Nox, as well as working on Team Fortress 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals.
In a statement to Hollywood Reporter, Booth says, “My career has been driven by a desire to innovate new ways of bringing people together for epic adventures online, leaving them exciting stories they can tell their friends afterward.”
Booth added, “The games I create center around people working together to survive and thrive in fantastic worlds, which seems an excellent fit for JJ Abrams’ approach to moviemaking. As a huge fan of JJ’s work, I’m incredibly excited by the unique opportunity to create something new at Bad Robot Games Studios in collaboration with the world-class talent at Bad Robot.”
There has been no word on what Bad Robots’ first project will be.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.
Fans of competitive, block-dropping puzzle games had it pretty rough for most of the last decade. Creativity in the Tetris space was being stifled by a strict set of game-rules guidelines imposed by The Tetris Company, while Puyo Puyo was mostly trapped in Japan, playable only by those international fans fervent enough to tread import waters. Thankfully, things have changed somewhat on both fronts, bringing us the unusual mashup title Puyo Puyo Tetris in 2017 to critical and fan success. Three years later, we now have a follow-up in the form of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. While it keeps much of what made the original game a success, it offers a few new game modes and online enhancements–but as a sequel, it lacks the same punch as the original.
Like in the original game, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is built around an engine combining these two competitive puzzle titans into a singular game entity. Players pick either Puyo Puyo or Tetris gameplay and go up against an opponent, with rules adjusted according to which style they’re using–or they can play a mode that switches between Puyo Puyo and Tetris gameplay at set intervals. If you’re feeling especially brave, you can attempt Fusion mode, which puts Puyo blobs and Tetromino blocks on the same board in a complex rules mashup that will put your puzzling skills to the true test.
But that’s just the beginning. There’s a lot on offer in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 for both solo and multiplayer play. The Adventure mode offers an all-new story, complete with a pleasant new overworld interface and featuring a cast of colorful weirdos–mostly from the expanded Puyo Puyo universe–who solve all of their problems and disagreements by tossing colored blobs and blocks at each other. The game modes change in every chapter, so Adventure Mode serves as a way to practice and learn the various styles of gameplay available while also unlocking characters, in-game shop credits, and various embellishments for your profile. While the rainbow-colored characters and their jokey personalities are certainly cute, the nonsensical nature of the narrative will either charm you to bits or leave you mashing the skip button to get to the dropping faster. This mode takes a few hours to finish, and future DLC expansions have been teased.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 on Nintendo Switch
After you’ve finished Adventure Mode–or if you want to take a break from it–you have several options for both solo and multiplayer play for up to four people (or CPU bots). Besides all the gameplay styles above, you have special rulesets like Party Mode, which puts chaos-causing items onfield, and Big Bang Mode, a challenge of who can solve certain puzzle formations quicker. If you don’t want the stress of competition, there are challenge modes like Marathon (clear 150 Tetris lines) and Tiny Puyo (make a gigantic Puyo combo with a big playfield). Of course, solo endless Puyo and Tetris modes are available as well for those times when you just want to zone out and crush some blocks and/or squish some blobs.
These modes are certainly nice, but most of them were already available in the original Puyo Puyo Tetris. However, there have been some revamps since the first game. For example, the Lessons mode now offers a wealth of playable tutorials to give you hands-on experience with some more advanced techniques. Need to work on your Puyo stacking prowess? Don’t have the slightest clue what a T-spin is or how to do it? You can now learn quickly and easily thanks to this thoughtful new addition. There are also new visual flourishes ranging from the subtle to the flashy, including an impressively elaborate background animation when a player has a particularly high combo happening.
Of course, a big draw for competitive puzzlers is online play, and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 delivers on that front. Besides offering a ranked mode in the form of Puzzle Leagues, you can also play casual matches with friends or random players across several different game modes with an easy-to-use lobby system. Online play is smooth and hassle-free, and I had no connectivity issues with players as far away as Europe and Australia, even on Wi-Fi.
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The marquee feature in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, however, is the Skill Battle mode. In this mode, you form a team of three characters, each with individual stats and battle skills, to fight an opponent’s team of three. You can also equip special items earned through certain quests in Adventure Mode to further augment your team’s stats and grant additional boons, such as bonuses to chains.
You then proceed to pick your game of choice and square off against a foe, but instead of trying to make them top out, you set off combos and complete line clears to deal damage to their health bar. You’ll also be able to make use of the three character skills you have assigned, which have a variety of effects ranging from changing colors of Puyos to clearing up garbage waiting to be dropped–you can even spontaneously create a perfect set of lines for a Tetris or T-Spin combo instantly. Provided, of course, that you have the MP available to do so. It’s a cool idea, and the shift in focus to damaging an opponent’s lifebar instead of making them top out adds a new way to think about offensive and defensive play–in some Skill Battle setups, topping out and getting a clean board to work with is actually a good thing if you have recovery options in place.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 on Nintendo Switch
However, the most interesting elements of Skill Battle are undermined by its implementation of RPG-style stats and enhancement items. Characters gain experience points in certain Adventure Mode nodes, which grants them better stats, and helpful items to equip are also farmable in these areas. These items and stats carry over to every other Skill Battle mode, both single-player and multiplayer, on- and offline, including the Puzzle League. This leads to some serious problems: If you’re underleveled or lack good items compared to your opponent, you’re at a severe disadvantage that skilled play and technique usage can only slightly compensate for. Needing to grind for items and levels in a puzzle game simply to be competitive–or even just to beat some of the tougher Adventure Mode quests–is tedious and unfair on several levels, and ruins much of Skill Battle’s appeal. I suspect that eventually the Skill Battle leaderboards will be dominated by level 99 teams that have poured hours into securing optimal item loadouts, leaving new players with an incredible hill to climb if they even want to become slightly competitive.
There’s no denying that Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 offers a lot of value–and even if you’re just here for simple Tetris or Puyo play, there’s plenty to satisfy. But as a sequel, the new additions it brings to the table feel rather inadequate, particularly the flawed Skill Battle mode. If you’ve never had a taste of this flavorful mashup before, then Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 will certainly quench your thirst for wacky puzzle antics and then some. But if you’re a veteran looking for a truly substantial upgrade to the original game, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 might leave you feeling rather unfulfilled.
Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out, and it has already become apparent that navigating Night City may be a more daunting task than many players were expecting. Maybe you missed an important tutorial because the guy you were talking to started aggressively T-posing, or perhaps there just… wasn’t a tutorial, because this is Night City, and you are basically on your own. With an RPG as robust as Cyberpunk, there’s a lot of mechanics to wrap your head around right at the start, different systems to manage and keep track of, and you can get just as lost in the back alleys of Night City as you can in the game’s never ending menus and inventories. The information overload is Braindance-levels of real
During my first hours in Night City, I spent so much time trying to steal cars I couldn’t keep, searched in vain for access points, and wondered who the hell kept lighting me on fire. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all run into plenty of problems long before Keanu Reeves shows his dreamy face, and I know you’ve all seen your fair share of frustrations based on our behind-the-scenes Cyberpunk 2077 Strategy Guide traffic data. While I can’t help you if you run into terrifying bugs like your character going bald if you look in a mirror (don’t worry, you’re still breathtaking), now that I’ve made my way deeper into the game, I can try and help you make sense of Cyberpunk 2077’s complex world with a handful of in-depth guides that may hold the answers you seek. And yes, we’re keeping it spoiler-free!
“I want to get online – I NEED! A COMPUTER!” – Keanu Reeves
As you might expect, almost everything in Cyberpunk 2077 can be hacked, but there’s a lot of weird terminology and methods for different kinds of hacking. Breach Protocols? Netrunning? Access Points? Let’s put it in simple terms: In Cyberpunk, you can hack a local wi-fi router and upload some janky viruses to everything and everyone nearby. Then you can set about disrupting electronics or giving someone’s eyes a 404 error. But don’t forget to look for places to plug your extendable USB stick in and download free prizes! But seriously, these hacking tips and explainers are worth your time:
Like any RPG, Cyberpunk is all about growing your character from a nobody into a legend of Night City, but you’ll find there are more ways to level up your character than you might think. Taking on certain tasks may raise your character level and give you attribute points to spend, but undertaking gigs and fighting crime can up your street cred to unlock new merchandise and opportunities. On top of that, simply performing actions like hacking, punching, or even just jumping around can raise individual skill levels like an Elder Scrolls game, so you might as well parkour at every opportunity, and take a look at these explainers to help level your character:
No, I don’t actually own this bike, but the previous owner is in too many pieces to care right now.
No offense to Jackie, but the car you start the game with stinks. I then spent the next several hours beating up Tyger Claws to steal their motorbikes, only to find out I couldn’t keep them even if their owners met an untimely death. Turns out, there’s a little more work involved if you want to start acquiring vehicles that will stay with you and can be summoned like a cyberpunk Roach. If you’re looking to buy, fix, or fast travel – check these out:
With enough hard work, beating up thugs, and hacking literally every access point you can find, you too can look this successful!
Look, those fancy mantis blade cybernetics aren’t going to pay for themselves. My Corpo character may have started the game with over a hundred thousand eurodollars, but it turns out the prologue is a pretty great equalizer for ensuring you’re broke. Fortunately, Night City seems to have a pretty laid back “finders keepers” rule allowing you to loot every dildo and legendary pair of jeans you come across. If you’re looking for a quicker path to making big bucks, maybe these guides can help you get rich or die trying (and then reloading a previous save):
Hopefully some of your most burning questions were answered, but if it hasn’t become obvious, there is a lot to Cyberpunk than you may realize at first glance (who knew the simple act of putting away your weapon would be hard to figure out). We’re hard at work making sure every last how-to guide is available to help you in your time of need, and these other sections may help you get where you need in Night City:
These guides were written by Miranda Sanchez, Brendan Graeber, Janet Garcia, Angie Harvey, and Felicia Miranda. We’re still hard at work building the perfect Cyberpunk 2077 Guide, and are adding new walkthroughs, side jobs and gigs, weapon locations, characters you can romance, and plenty of Easter eggs too! If you’re stuck anywhere else in Cyberpunk 2077, we want to know! Leave a comment below or, from the guide, hit the “Was this page helpful?” button to contact us.
Alongside a celebration of 2020’s best video games, The Game Awards was packed with new trailers and world premieres for upcoming titles.
If you didn’t sit through the entire three-hour long show but still want to catch the big announcements from the event, we’ve got you covered with this round-up of the 12 biggest trailers from The Game Awards 2020. The compilation features the surprise reveal of Perfect Dark, the first game from Microsoft’s “AAAA studio.” The Initiative is helmed by talent from Crystal Dynamics, Naughty Dog, Bungie, and more. We also included two teasers from Bioware: one for the next Dragon Age, featuring everyone’s favorite egg, Solas, as well as a glimpse at the next Mass Effect. We also had to include Sepiroth’s introduction video to Smash Bros. Ultimate, featuring that now-iconic image of him and Mario, as well as Ark 2, starring Vin Diesel.
If you want to catch the full Game Awards replay, check it out on youtube.com/GameSpot, and subscribe for all the latest and hottest game trailers.
The 2020 Disney Investor Day live stream was PACKED with news and announcements. Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige revealed the MCU’s plans for the next few years. From trailers and casting announcements, to new movies, TV shows, and specials, Marvel Studios had a LOT to show off. Here are the biggest reveals you need to know!
Watch the video above for the latest updates on Fantastic Four, Thor: Love and Thunder, Captain Marvel 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Black Panther 2, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, Ironheart, What If…?, and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
