Category: Games

As with many of the Inside Xbox livestreams, the latest one had plenty of news and announcements that paint a clearer picture of Xbox’s future. You may have heard about Sony revealing details on the next PlayStation console, but Microsoft has a new console of its own coming soon–an Xbox One S without a disc drive. The all-you-can-eat game downloading service Game Pass will get a new tier option that packs in Xbox Live Gold, and Gears 5 multiplayer will be shown very soon. What’s probably the most exciting thing is head of Xbox Phil Spencer stating that Microsoft’s E3 2019 presentation will feature “things nobody has seen before” from the company’s new game studios.

If you want to watch the stream yourself, check it out here. Otherwise, read through all the good stuff we plucked out from Inside Xbox.

Xbox One S All-Digital Edition Confirmed

Rumors and leaks preceded this reveal, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when Microsoft made the official announcement for its disc-less Xbox One S. The new version of the console will launch on May 7 for $250 USD and come bundled with Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, and Forza Horizon 3. It’s built with the same exact specs as the Xbox One S, sans the disc drive of course.

Read the full Xbox One S All-Digital Edition story here.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Announced

Combining Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold into one subscription option has also been rumored for a while. Microsoft confirmed that it’s bundling the two services and calling it Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which sensibly coincides with the all-digital Xbox One S announcement. While it’s available for a few select users, it’ll launch in full later this year for $15 a month.

Read the full Xbox Game Pass Ultimate story here.

Phil Spencer Says Big Things From New Studios Coming For E3 2019

Inside Xbox concluded with a few words from head of Xbox Phil Spencer. He affirmed Xbox’s presence at E3 by saying, “We are the platform holder that has a live stage show…We’re taking the responsibility of being out there representing gaming.” He continued to say that some of Microsoft’s newly acquired studios will have things to show that nobody has seen before.

Read the full story on Phil Spencer’s comments here.

Spencer Also Says He’s Been Grinding In Destiny 2 Using Project xCloud

While Microsoft’s cloud-based game streaming service Project xCloud is still in development, Spencer stated that he’s been using a sort of alpha build himself. He said he’s still trying to grind out light level 700 in Destiny 2 and has been doing strikes on his phone using an Xbox controller.

Gears 5 Multiplayer Reveal Coming Soon

The focus of the Gears 5 content during the Inside Xbox stream was esports. The Coalition’s studio head Rod Fergusson stated that TBS’s show ELeague will be doing a six-part series on the professional competitive scene for Gears of War in June, which will include a Gears 5 multiplayer reveal. A Gears 5 invitational competition will also take place in July, ahead of the game’s release later this year.

Read the full Gears 5 Multiplayer Reveal story here.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Is Now Backward Compatible

The 2008 stylish character-action game Ninja Gaiden 2 is now backward compatible on Xbox One along with a suite of visual enhancements for Xbox One X. Like any of the backward compatible games, you can either use an existing physical copy of the game or download it digitally.

Read the full Ninja Gaiden 2 Backward Compatible story here.

Splinter Cell And Fable Games Get Xbox One X Enhancements

While we may not have a new game in the storied stealth-action franchise from the Tom Clancy extended universe, three last-gen Splinter Cell games just got Xbox One X Enhancements. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (Xbox 360 version), Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist now include enhanced visuals and resolution. The same treatment was extended to the RPGs Fable 2 and Fable 3.

Game Bar For PC Gets A Major Upgrade

PC gamers got a little bit out of the Inside Xbox stream as well; Windows 10 users are getting a significant update to Game Bar. It’ll now be widget-based with modules that you can pop in and out to customize the things you want. For example, you can have chat volume mix, Spotify, and streaming accessible while staying in-game using the new Game Bar overlay.

Rage 2 Gameplay Walkthrough

Tim Willits, director at developer Avalanche Studios, walked us through a brief Rage 2 gameplay segment. Rage 2 is confirmed to feature the coveted, overpowered gun of Doom fame, the BFG 9000. There will also be Arcs, which are sci-fi-styled underground tombs with weapons and abilities to earn.

Xbox Fan Fest At E3 2019

Xbox Fan Fest will be expanding this year by offering 700 tickets. This grants you access to Microsoft’s E3 stage presentation, hands-on with upcoming games, some swag, and much more. Tickets are acquired via random drawing and those 18 years old and up can enter starting April 19 at 9am PT–winners will be announced on April 25.

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The cheeky new advertisement for the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition showed a group of people playing Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer with split-screen. Some took this as a playful tease that the game might, finally, get updated to support split-screen–a feature the game controversially left out.

Unfortunately, it was merely an editing issue. Halo community director Brian Jarrard confirmed on Twitter that the depiction of split-screen for Halo 5 in the trailer was only “a little bit of good old fashioned creative liberty in the editing bay.”

Halo 5 launched without split-screen multiplayer, a staple of the franchise, and fans quickly let Microsoft know about this omission. Developer 343 has said time and again that it will never add split-screen to Halo 5, but thankfully Halo Infinite will have this feature.

A still from the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition appeared to show Halo 5 split-screen

Halo 5 executive producer Josh Holmes said the decision to remove split-screen from Halo 5 was “one of the most difficult ones we’ve ever had to make as a studio.” He added that Halo 5’s new “massive-scale environments,” better visuals, and improved AI might have been “compromised” if split-screen was in the mix. Not only that, but Phil Spencer says the majority of Halo co-op happens across Xbox Live, not locally.

The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition launches on May 7 for $250 USD. For lots more on the pros and cons of the digital-only system, check out the video embedded above.

Nintendo just dropped a 15-minute video detailing everything Persona-related that’s coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and there is a lot to unpack. The video outlined exactly how Persona 5’s Joker works as a fighter and other content in the version 3.0 spring update, but that’s not all. It also revealed the Mementos-themed stage with a few twists that’ll warm the hearts of long-time Persona fans.

The new content includes homages to Persona 3 and Persona 4 with the battle theme songs “Mass Destruction,” “Reach Out To The Truth,” and “Time To Make History.” A new arrangement for the Persona 4 boss battle theme “I’ll Face Myself” and Persona 3’s final fight song “Battle Hymn Of The Soul” will be on the tracklist. To top it all off, the stage changes color to match each games color scheme. You can check it out below.

Persona 3-themed Mementos stage.Persona 4-themed Mementos stage.

The normal Persona 5-themed Mementos stage.

The songs featured in Smash Ultimate from Persona 3 and Persona 4.

Even oddly accurate Mii renditions of the protagonists from Persona 3 and 4 are featured in the Mii Fighters costume pack. A brand new remix of the song “Beneath The Mask” (which you can hear playing in the reveal trailer) along with plenty of other familiar tunes from Persona 5’s incredible soundtrack will also be included in Smash Ultimate. In the video you can see the rest of the Phantom Thieves in the game, Joker’s stylish victory screen, and how the all-out attack is incorporated. All the content in the update drops Wednesday, April 17.

April 17 is a big day for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In addition to launching a new paid DLC character, Joker, the update adds a stage-builder and video editor. That’s not all. The update also makes changes to the Smash World hub on the Nintendo Switch Online mobile app.

With the new update, players will be able to take a look at new user-made videos and custom stages that the community creates using the video editor and stage builder. Perhaps the best thing about the update is that you’ll be able to view community-created stages and then click a button to queue them up to download on your home console. What’s more, stages can be rated, so theoretically the best ones should surface to the top.

The Nintendo Switch Online app, which requires a paid subscription, also allows players to use voice chat. You can check out the new features in the video above; skip to 13:46 to see what’s new for the Smash World hub on the app.

Read next: Smash Bros. Ultimate 3.0 Update Adds Stage-Builder, Video Editor, Persona 5 Character, More

When you’re struggling, Pathway sends you a dog to help out. It’s that kind of game. You might have seen your squad massacred in the North African desert, but look! Here’s a cute puppy called Donut. He’s even got sharp teeth and the “Anti-Fascist” character trait that means he does +20% damage against Nazis. In moments like these, Pathway picks you back up and says maybe you can still complete the mission after all. Pathway is generous like that.

Heavily indebted to the genre of mid-20th-century pulp adventure of which Indiana Jones is the obvious cultural touchstone, Pathway depicts a world where the Nazis are plundering ancient artifacts to harness their powers in occult experiments and so must obviously be stopped by an international band of mercenaries. It’s a light, breezy, knock-about game of turn-based combat that understandably always wants you to succeed at killing Nazis, with or without a surprise canine companion. However, it lacks tactical depth and, while killing Nazis is a noble pursuit, its moral stance is less sure-footed when it steps into the territory of tired colonialist tropes.

The core of Pathway is in its XCOM-style combat. Every encounter is preceded by a planning phase in which you place each member of your squad onto the battlefield. Smart players can take advantage of this head start by positioning their squad to, say, rush an exposed enemy on the first turn. In an early sign of Pathway’s charitable spirit, you get this planning phase even when your squad has been ambushed and, unlike in XCOM, you’ll never see an enemy already in cover on the first turn of a fight.

During combat, each squad member can typically perform separate two actions–move and shoot, heal and reload, or some combination thereof–and much of the time an encounter consists of outflanking an enemy to get off a shot at them around whatever cover they happen to be hiding behind. Characters can also perform special actions depending on the weapon they carry and, in some cases, the skills they possess. Pistols, for example, allow for a special double-shot action that can target two enemies, while characters require specific skills to use items like grenades or medkits in combat.

And that’s about as deep as it gets, unfortunately. Aside from minor variations in clip size and range, all the guns function in much the same fashion and can drop most enemies in one to two shots. As a result, a character with an assault rifle plays no differently to one with a shotgun. The only meaningfully different weapon is the knife, not merely the game’s only melee weapon but the weapon with the highest damage potential. Since there’s no “zone of control” or “attack of opportunity” mechanic (outside a special action reserved for sniper rifles), it’s perfectly feasible to run right up to enemies, jump over their cover and attack from the adjacent square. In fact, it’s often the most effective approach, no matter how silly it looks or tactically uninteresting it becomes.

Fights can still be challenging, even on the default normal difficulty. A way of evening the odds is to have the enemy greatly outnumber you. Unimaginative, sure, but it gets the job done. At other times, some enemies will have access to special abilities that you don’t, while others can move further than your squad. These factors create situations where you’re encouraged to think several turns in advance, coordinate attacks between your squad members, and time your limited special actions.

But still, most of the time you’re not really feeling that pressure. Most of the time you’re just moving and shooting, moving and shooting, with the odd moving and knifing thrown in. Where the lack of depth is truly exposed is in the slim variety of actions on display, a failure that can be attributed to the derivative nature of each character’s skill tree. Indeed, when leveling up characters don’t earn new abilities, they merely improve existing ones; they’ll boost that chance to for a critical hit, perhaps, or beef up their HP. True, you can unlock the ability for a character to use an additional weapon, so that they can now carry a shotgun as well as a pistol, but it’s hard to get excited about that when, again, weapons don’t function in any meaningfully different way.

The lack of variety extends to the maps on which the battles take place. There is barely a handful of scenarios–Nazi camp, desert village, underground temple–and you’re served up a seemingly randomly-generated version assembled from stock parts each time you enter combat. A benefit of this approach is that you never know exactly what you’re going to get, but on the flip side, it means that none of the individual battlefields are ever memorable and they all end up blurring into one by the end of a campaign. That’s not to say the arenas are poorly designed; they’re serviceable and little more.

Linking one encounter to the next is a campaign structure that sees you plotting a pathway across a network of nodes. At each node, you hit a narrative event that could be anything from following some Nazis into a mysterious mineshaft to finding an oasis at which you can rest. Sometimes you might end up in a fight, sometimes you might find some treasure or a trader with whom you can buy and sell, and sometimes nothing happens at all. It’s a bit like FTL, really, except instead of zipping across space you’re driving a jeep across the Sahara.

These narrative moments are fun and typically well-written. They often allow for choices that can lead to surprising results and occasionally let you utilize the skills of one of the squad characters you’ve opted to take on the journey. But they do a poor job of depicting the African people whose countries, from Morocco and Egypt and beyond, have been invaded by the Germans. The locals you meet are helpless simpletons, peaceful goat herders at best and, at worst, cowards hiding in ruined villages and collapsed caves until you wander by to hopefully rescue them. These poor people can’t do anything until saved by a globetrotting band of wealthy adventurers.

Further, throughout the entire game, you’re collecting treasure, much of it ancient religious and cultural relics of the people you’re ostensibly helping. Literally the only thing to do with this treasure is sell it to fund the purchase of more fuel for your jeep and ammunition for your guns. Retrieve an ancient inscribed vase from the altar room of a secret temple? That goes for $250 at the next trader stop. The suggested idea is you’re keeping these precious relics out of Nazi hands, but surely there’s a better option than looting them for yourself and then selling them back to the people you stole it from.

Pathway looks and sounds great, it nails the pulpy attitude it’s aiming for, and, of course, it’s always fun to shoot Nazis. But the more I played, the more the cracks started to show, the more samey it all became, and the more uncomfortable some aspects of its design made me feel. I still enjoyed much of my time with Pathway. There’s a pleasure to be had in both its aesthetic choices and the frictionless grind of its structure, but I came away wanting more–more tactical meat in its combat and a more thoughtful approach to the way it chose to represent its world.

The big Version 3.0 update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will add a number of new Mii Fighter costumes that players can purchase for less than a dollar each.

There are six new costumes coming, including those based on Tails and Knuckles from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, as well as the Morgana Hat from Persona 5 and costumes based on the protagonist of Persona 4 and Persona 3, among other items. Each costume costs 75 cents each, and they go on sale April 17 with the Ver. 3.0 update.

Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Version 3.0 update launches on April 17, and it also adds Joker from Persona 5 and a new Mementos stage as paid DLC. In terms of free content, the update introduces a new Stage builder and video editor, while there are updates to the Smash World portion of the Nintendo Switch Online app as well.

Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

Out of nowhere, Nintendo announced all the key details for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s big Version 3.0 update today. In terms of new features, Ultimate is adding free stage- and video-editing tools for everyone to use.

A video from Nintendo showcases how each of these features will work. Building off the Stage builder from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Wii U, the new version features tools that players can use to create basically whatever they want. In handheld mode, players can use the touch screen to draw to make their creations. Some of the things you can do include create moving platforms and spinning traps, or anything else you can think up and design.

The Stage builder also features front and back layers for a further level of depth. The custom stages will live in a new Custom tab of the Stage Select screen. Players can also share them with the community. People are able to rate creations, so in theory the best ones should surface. The stages can also be viewed using the Nintendo Switch Online app, and players can even queue up a new stage download so when they get home it should start downloading.

As for the video editor, it does what you would expect. You can combine your saved video clips and adds subtitles and sound effects. As you’d expect, you can then share your creations in the Smash World page in the Nintendo Switch Online app.

Skip to around 11 minutes in the video above to check out the stage builder and video editor.

The Version 3.0 update for Smash Bros. Ultimate launches on April 17. In addition to the Stage builder and video editor, the update adds Joker from Persona 5 as a new paid DLC character, as well as a number of different Persona and Sonic Mii Fighter Costumes.

In an unexpected bit of news, PlayStation architect Mark Cerny spoke to Wired about Sony’s high-level plans for the next PlayStation.

It is still very early days (the console won’t launch until 2020 at the soonest), but there was a lot of information in the interview. In a new video feature, Giant Bomb EIC Jeff Gerstmann joins GameSpot’s Peter Brown and Michael Higham to discuss all the key points.

Read next: First PlayStation 5 Details: PS4 Backwards Compatible, PSVR For PS5, SSDs, And More

Xbox announced that Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass are now getting bundled together for a lower price called Xbox Game Pass Ultimate that cost $15 a month. This bundle includes access to free games every month, as well as an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Microsoft also announced an all-digital Xbox One S, coming May 7, that will cost $250. The all-digital edition will come with Minecraft, Forza Horizon 3, Sea of Thieves, and a “special offer” for Xbox Game Pass.