Category: Games

Find Friends And Teammates and Vary Your Teams

Each of the three Professions you can choose from has benefits and drawbacks, and while it’s possible to change Professions at any time, you’ll want to try to pick one and stick with it so you can build out its skill tree and unlock its strongest capabilities. While you can get away with any Profession if you play alone or casually, if you’re serious about beating tough Wizarding Challenges, you’re going to want to team up with other players and diversify your jobs.

The three classes are Auror, Professor, and Magizoologist. Aurors excel in damage and Critical Hits. They get bonus damage against Dark Forces enemies like Death Eaters, but take extra damage from Beast-type enemies. Magizoologists are high-Stamina, high-defense fighters who specialize mostly in healing, and get bonus damage against Beasts while taking extra damage from enemies known as Curiosities. Professors are somewhere between the other two classes, focusing on status effect spells that make their teammates more effective and their enemies less effective. Professors are strong against Curiosities, but take extra damage from Dark Forces enemies.

Building a strong team requires helping each other out to shore up each class’s weaknesses, while sharing their strengths. You’ll want to avoid fighting with a group of all Aurors, for instance; try to coordinate with your Wizards Unite pals so you can build effective teams to take down more Fortresses.

After an impressive showing during EA Play at E3 2019, new details about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order have emerged. A Respawn Entertainment developer cites the Metroid series as a prominent influence on how exploration is handled in the upcoming third-person action-adventure game.

Lead level designer Jeff Magers sat down with GameInformer to discuss Jedi: Fallen Order’s exploration. Magers said it’s “an exploration game from the level design perspective, at its core” and that “traversal feels snappy [and] responsive.” But while things like “mixing in [the] wide range of traversal tools [to] make the moment-to-moment feel really good” and “no UI objectives in the world” sound nice, things got interesting when Magers mentioned how Metroid (among other titles like The Legend of Zelda franchise and the Dark Souls games) influenced the hotly-anticipated Star Wars game.

“Metroid absolutely served as an inspiration for us,” Magers told GamerInformer. “What the Metroid-style level design does for us is somewhat [of] a way to give the player guided exploration. A ton of freedom within the world, but at the same time we can deliver really handcrafted moments and really focus on the moment-to-moment.” Magers then described design sensibilities common in Metroidvanias: hidden secrets, backtracking, abilities/weapons that unlock new areas. For Jedi: Fallen Order, “Force powers are lock-and-key mechanisms,” meaning that behind the Force push gate you couldn’t get through earlier, “Maybe there’s a whole other area [or] maybe there’s a little secret.”

Since hidden pathways and secrets to discover abound, Jedi: Fallen Order is not really linear. “We have linear sections of the game,” Magers said. “And each, I’d say 30-minute to one hour section that we call a level… will be somewhat linear, although there [are] different branching options, different choices to make, different secrets to find [and] areas to explore. But when it really opens up is kind of at a macro level. You will be retraversing through these levels that earlier was kind of more of a linear experience… with your new tools and your upgraded hero. It really aligns with kind of the goal of the game, which is to become a Jedi.” It sounds like the Jedi has become the master of Jedivania.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will launch on November 15 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Peter Parker’s Mournful Crowdsurfing

Spider-Man 2 is, objectively, a very good superhero movie no matter how dated it might seem now, and one scene, in particular, stands out in just about everyone’s memory as one of the best: Peter Parker, unmasked, stopping a train full of New Yorkers with every last bit of his strength and passing out promptly afterward. The citizens lift Peter’s unconscious body up and basically crowd surf him to safety–all respectfully refusing to look too closely at his unmasked face out of respect.

The intent of the scene is actually pretty beautiful, but the execution punches right through the melodrama veil and directly into “camp” territory. It’s so over-the-top and so completely absurd that it actually winds up working.

You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

This video has an invalid file format.

Sorry, but you can’t access this content!

We are living in the age of movie remakes and reboots. There have been remakes almost as long as there have been films–1903’s The Great Train Robbery was remade the following year. But with so much competition today for audience attention and money, filmmakers, producers, and studios are increasingly falling back on revisiting reliable properties. If a movie can arrive with a built-in audience via a recognisable brand, then it stands a better chance at the box office than something entirely original. Similarly, why think of a new story when you can recycle one that worked so well in a previous decade?

This is never more true than in the horror genre. Horror has long thrived on sequels, remakes, and reboots, which can be made cheaply and quickly. Horror franchises often run into multiple sequels, and even when their popularity starts to dip, it’s hardly the end. The whole thing can simply be rebooted to start again. From remakes of Halloween and Friday the 13th to A Nightmare of Elm Street and Child’s Play, no horror series is ever truly dead.

Of course, most horror remakes are not good. There’s a reason why many of the originals were hits in the first place–they were bold and exciting, movies that pushed the genre in interesting directions. Returning to the same story years later and doing it in much the same way is rarely enough, even if your core audience didn’t grow up with that first movie. The best horror remakes need to offer something more.

In some cases, directors such as John Carpenter and David Cronenberg went back to the 1950s and remade B-movies of the day like The From Another World and The Fly, updating them with their own sensibilities and cutting edge VFX. In others, like Last house on the Left, rough, raw ’70s exploitation movies were remade in a more contemporary style that retained the power of the originals while presenting them in ways more appealing to modern audiences. And then there are remakes that also function as new adaptations of novels, taking a different approach to the existing source material, like last year’s It. So here are some of the best horror remakes ever made–great movies that actually managed to improve on the iconic originals.

Detective Pikachu released to critical and popular acclaim on May 10–the box office hit is already slated for a sequel–and now the first live-action Pokemon film is gearing up for its next release in digital, DVD, Blu-Ray, and UHD/4K formats. While we don’t have an exact release date for the film on physical and digital media, it’s likely the physical version will release sometime in August 2019, with the digital version becoming available a few weeks beforehand, based on precedent. Pre-orders are now up at several retailers, so it’s a safe assumption Pokemon fans won’t have to wait much longer to own the animated film starring Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu.

In GameSpot’s Detective Pikachu review, entertainment editor Michael Rougeau was impressed by how well the world of Pokemon translated into a live-action film. “Detective Pikachu should prove enjoyable for any and all Pokemon fans, young or old,” he wrote. “It presents fun answers to the fantasy of what life would be like if Pokemon were real. It introduces new wrinkles to the world of Pokemon, although not all of them completely work. Still, as the first official live-action trip to the world of Pokemon, Detective Pikachu presents characters I want to see again and a setting I’d like to return to.”

No special features have yet been announced for Detective Pikachu’s home release, but we do know a steelbook version will be available, as it’s already open for pre-order at Best Buy. An image of the Blu-ray cover does list something called “Detective Mode” as being included, but there’s no word on what that entails. As soon as all those details are revealed, we’ll include that info here, but if you already know you need this film in your collection, read on for where to pre-order.

Pre-order Detective Pikachu

You have a few different options for pre-ordering the film, ranging from a digital-only version to a collectible steelbook containing digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD / 4K Blu-ray formats.

Digital-only — $20

DVD — $20

Blu-ray + Digital — $25

UHD/4K Blu-ray + Digital — $30

Steelbook — $35

While WWE has spent decades as a dominant force in wrestling or sports entertainment, there is another popular aspect of contemporary WWE that you won’t see on its streaming service or weekly programming, and that’s a video gaming channel. UpUpDownDown was created by WWE Superstar and New Day member Xavier Woods, and it is a celebration of Woods’ passion for gaming.

Woods, going under the name Austin Creed on the channel, debuted it back in 2015, and his videos feature the host talking to other WWE Superstars about gaming, playing games, challenging each other. It has evolved many different directions with popular shows like Battle of the Brands–where Creed and Tyler “Prince Petty” Breeze play GM Mode of Raw vs. Smackdown 2006 and the UpUpDownDown Championship matches, where current UpUpDownDown Champion Kofi Kingston plays random games against opponents.

While Kingston wasn’t the first champion on this channel–that honor goes to Mikaze AKA Mr. Castle–he’s the current champ, beating Swagatha Christie (Jack Gallagher). Most recently, Kingston–who goes by Mr. 24/7 AKA Mr. Gotcha as in Mr. Gotchyoura**–was challenged by fellow New Day member Big E at E3, which resulted with another successful title defense for the champ. Additionally, Kingston is also the WWE Champion, and he’ll be defending that title on Sunday at Stomping Grounds against Dolph Ziggler.

Kingston has been and will continue to be a prominent cast member of this channel, and he spoke to us about the channel’s growth, his series on UpUpDownDown, his gaming techniques, and about Zack Ryder’s Internet Championship.

GameSpot: With the New Day, you guys are obviously friends, and there’s a lot of camaraderie. For you, how does it feel to see Xavier Woods’ UpUpDownDown channel grow?

Kofi Kingston: It is awesome, because number one, I know how passionate he is about video games. I thought that I was really passionate and then I met him, and I was like, “Oh, he’s on a whole other level.” He has a ridiculous range of games that he plays and enjoys, and then on top of that too, just knowing the kind of person that he is, he’s really like a visionary, you know?

A lot of us play video games for a long time on the WWE roster, and as soon as he announced, “Oh, let’s do a gaming channel.” As soon as he had that idea, all of us are like, “Huh, why didn’t we think of that?” It was right there in front of us, but at the same time, he’s the only guy that could ever run it, because of infectious personality. He’s a real people person. He meets people wherever he goes. He always jokes around about that, so it’s only natural that this channel would grow to the extent that is has and it’s awesome to see, because I know how much work he puts into it, how much sacrifice, and then on top of that, we get to play video games at work; it’s all good.

You also have your own show called “I Just Love Kicks” where you’re talking about sneakers. When did sneaker culture become a passion for you?

I feel like I’ve always been into sneakers, and it wasn’t until I became a WWE superstar that I was actually able to afford the ones that I wanted to buy, and I always wanted to come out and have a pair of sneakers that would be like eye-catching, and it just kind of spiraled from there. Kind of grew from there, my passion, coming out and meeting a lot of different people who were sneakerheads really kind of fueled more of a passion within me, and it was actually Woods who had the idea of in an effort to get more content on the channel, and make it more than just the video game channel.

He was like, “Yeah, maybe you should do a sneaker show.” I was like, “I don’t really know if anybody would be interested in this. I don’t really know what I’m talking about.” But as we speak now, after we get off the phone, I’m going to do another review of a pair of Air Max 720s that I’ve been trying to review, and hopefully I’ll have that free pocket of time to do that and have that episode go up. It’s cool to actually share a passion with people, because this is the way that a lot of sneakerheads, you find them in the funniest places, regardless of whether they’re hip-hop artists or graphic designers. We went to the Nickelodeon studios and did Double Dare, and one of the executive producers there was a big sneakerhead.

Which is crazy to be on the set of Double Dare and have rare and expensive sneakers, because you’re probably going to get slime on them, so that guy lives on the edge, but you find sneakerheads in the strangest places, and the common thread of having sneakers really brings us all together. It’s a way that I can kind of be involved with the sneaker community, as well as staying, I guess, in tune with what the latest trends are and what the most fashionable sneakers are, and what looks cooler or whatever. It’s a way that I can kind of keep in that community as well.

Primarily on the channel you are a competitor, Mr. 24/7, and throughout your competitions, on all these episodes you’ve been on, who do you feel is your biggest competition for the UpUpDownDown Championship?

It’s really funny. I guess I would have to say Mikaze, only because in an effort to try and become UpUpDownDown Champion, I actually went up against him three or four times before I was able to actually beat him; so he’s kind of my kryptonite, to be honest, on the show. And then over the years, we’ve had several Madden competitions and different games like that, but it really just depends on the game. We have such a wide spectrum of palettes, and everyone has their own specialties, like Samoa Joe is actually pretty good at a lot of different games. He’s good at fighting games, he’ll be on shooting games too. I stink at shooting games. I’m probably one of the worst, if not the worst, but when it comes to fighting games I can hold my own, so it’s really all about matchups.

Even in particular fighting games, you might go up against somebody, like in Tekken, Jimmy Uso is really, really good, but whenever he goes up against his brother [Jey Uso], his brother can beat him every time. But I’ll go up against Jay, and I’ll be able to beat him, you know? It’s really all about those matchups.

In competition, for you, how much of the playing the video game is about head games?

Oh, I think that’s for me, that’s my whole thing. I come out there and talk a lot of trash. Whether I’m winning or whether I’m losing, getting in my opponents head and frustrating them to where you’re not thinking about the mechanics of the game. You’re really thinking about really anything else, that’s definitely a big part of my strategy, is to kind of distract people by talking trash and being loud and obnoxious, you know? That’s a big part.

Who would you say is a bigger sore loser when you lose a game? Would that be you, or would it be Xavier during the Battle of the Brands?

That’s tough, that’s tough. I’m not a good loser, I know that for sure. A lot of times people get mad when they beat me, because I almost make it seem like I won. You know what I’m saying? It depends on the day to be honest, and it depends on the game or the situation, but I do not lose well. I cannot stand losing, especially when it comes to video games. I oftentimes on the channel you’ll see just raw emotion, I think that’s why people like to go the channel so much, because you get to see WWE superstars outside of the ring. You know, you get to see them doing every day things that the average Joe does at home. We play video games just like everybody else, so I think a lot of people like that.

You currently have two belts, the WWE Championship, and the UpUpDownDown Championship, is there any plan to challenge Zach Ryder for the Internet Championship?

Wow, you know what? That’s not a bad idea, because he’s been sitting on that Internet Championship for a long time. As a matter of fact, he’s probably the longest-reigning champion in the history of the company. I think actually he passed Bruno Sammartino a little while ago, I think it was a little underground thing, you know? But I have not thought about that, I’ll definitely put it into the tank, people are talking about the actual 24/7 Championship, because that’s my name; number one. Now Truth is running around with me, but he was my former tag team partner, so I feel like I can live vicariously through him and be champion through him, but who knows man. I’ve got a really long torso, and I’d like to put a lot of belts around it.

We’ve seen you go up against a lot of WWE superstars that are great at gaming and are regulars on UpUpDownDown, but is there anybody that’s in WWE currently that’s not on the channel that you think is a formidable gaming foe?

Has Ricochet been on the channel yet? I don’t know if he’s been on yet. Maybe he has, I don’t know, but he’s actually pretty good at Mortal Kombat, and I didn’t expect him to be, but he’s actually been getting really, really good. Maybe him? I don’t know. Most of the people who are gamers have found their way onto the channel in some way shape or form. If you’re a gamer, Woods will sniff you out, he’ll get you on the channel by some means. I guess off the top of my head all I can think of is Ricochet. Yeah, most of the gamers are pretty much on the channel right now.

What’s the game you’re most excited for that you haven’t played yet?

Yeah, well the new Final Fantasy, I believe the remake has been announced at E3, as far as the release date. I would love to get hands on that for sure, because I grew up on Final Fantasy, that was the role playing game and series that I came up on, you know. And even in a remake, I ended up downloading Final Fantasy VII on my phone now, which is crazy to me that you can put such, what used to be a large game and it’s accessible on your phone, it’s wild. You know, that used to have three discs on the PlayStation, you know what I’m saying?

Now you can literally open up your phone and save it on your phone, you know, technology is crazy. But, yeah, any kind of incarnation of the Final Fantasy series, I’m all about. Especially these days, I don’t really have a whole lot of time to play RPG because they take up so much time, but if I can get my hands on that new Final Fantasy that’d be great.

I don’t know if you’ve played it in a long time, and it was only a one disc game, but you can get Final Fantasy Tactics on your phone, which is a pretty seamless port and just a lot of fun.

Really? I didn’t know that. I wish you hadn’t told me that, because that’s going to be another thing I’ve got to play to take up more time.

John Wick films are riveting to watch because of how fluid and precise all of Keanu Reeves‘ moves are. You get a sense that he’s always one step ahead, able to predict the next movements of his foes and adjust accordingly. It’s not always perfect though; John gets battered and bruised when he makes an error, reminding him that death is just a second away should he not maintain a death-dealing rhythm. With Bithell Games’ interpretation of this action franchise, all these pillars of John Wick’s combat are upheld, which is surprising given the turn-based nature of John Wick Hex.

John Wick Hex puts you in control of the titular assassin during his lucrative time as an assassin before any of the films, when John’s skills were at their sharpest. You overlook the action from above, moving John around the linear stages by clicking on points for him to move to. Each action takes up time, represented by a bar on top of the screen that lets you easily see what commands you’ve enacted, and how long they will take to execute down to the second.

Directly underneath this is another timeline for enemy actions, letting you compare how long their moves will take in comparison with yours. While time is paused between your turns, you can cycle through each of your available moves and get an idea of how long it will take to execute in the timelines above. This lets you make the best decision possible for the scenario, calculating your actions so that you can pull off a headshot on an enemy before they get to return fire, or just as quickly duck behind cover before poking out on the other side to return a shot.

Despite being turn-based, John Wick Hex lets you take turns so quickly that it’s easy to string multiple actions together fluidly once you feel more comfortable with the repertoire of offensive actions open to you. It felt great to throw my handgun across a small courtyard to stagger an enemy about to fire at me, then use the afforded time to take down another enemy close by before picking up their handgun and finishing off the previous one. When strung together Hex flows by much faster than you might expect for a strategy game, while still pushing clever decision making to the forefront of its gameplay.

John Wick Hex aims to make you feel like your scripting one of the many action sequences in one of the films. Each small decision you make influences the full symphony of death that John orchestrates, with a feature at the end of each level letting you see your actions unfold in real-time. Bithell Games co-founder, Mike Bithell, explained that they were also careful to ensure this approach made logical sense. Games like XCOM will often introduce randomization in what should be a certain situation, which is one example where Hex makes some changes based on their title character.

“It’s the logic of the fight that when you’re watching as a viewer, you think, yeah, that seems how you would fight, and that’s the driving principle of every choice we’re making is, does this feel like it’s sensible?” explained Bithell. “Like you say, if I’m directly in front of a guy, the chance of me hitting him is 100% every time. Because it is. If I’m John Wick, he would not miss at this range. One of our starting assumptions with the game was that we thought that John Wick never misses. You go back, watch the movie, he totally does, but he misses in places where that feels logical.”

So far Hex feels incredibly faithful to its source material, while also being a tactically satisfying turn-based strategy game too.

Bithell was coy regarding just what story Hex was going to tell, given that it is detached from the trilogy of films out now. But he did say that Lionsgate has given him and his team a lot of freedom to experiment with both their own story and its effect on the series’ mythos, allowing them to tell a tale that Bithell says will be surprising to fans.

John Wick Hex excels so far at making you feel like the ultra-instinctive and clinical assassin that Wick is. It will be crucial to see how its enemy variety and level-design both test your strategies as you become more comfortable with your abilities. But so far Hex feels incredibly faithful to its source material, while also being a tactically satisfying turn-based strategy game too.

From Software’s new game Elden Ring boasts a high-profile partnership with fantasy author George RR Martin, but it’s shaping up to be more than a Souls game infused with Martin’s lore. The transition to an open world game, and some of the world-building from Martin, are making it into what Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki feels is the next logical step for the genre he helped to create.

“With a larger world, new systems and action mechanics inevitably become necessary,” Miyazaki told IGN. “In that sense, I think that Elden Ring is a more natural evolution of Dark Souls.”

For example, the protagonist of Elden Ring can travel the world on horseback, and even fight enemies while mounted. Miyazaki says this leads to more diverse combat situations, rather than restricting players to combat within tightly confined spaces. The addition of horseback also means that spaces can be set further apart, including villages. But unlike many RPGs, these villages won’t be safe havens full of NPCs and happy shopkeepers.

“Villages will be the dark dungeon-like ruins that you have come to expect from us,” Miyazaki said. “Creating a more open game is a big challenge for us. If we were to add towns on top of that, it would become a bit too much, so we decided to create an open-world-style game focused on what we are best at.”

Miyazaki also says the division of labor with Martin has resulted in an interesting process developing the lore. Your character is created and so the protagonist of the story has no fixed identity. Martin’s work has been to lay the groundwork with the lore and history of the world, while Miyazaki’s team has been developing the events within the timeframe of the game. Both worked independently, but their work would impact each other.

“Storytelling in video games–at least the way we do it at From Software–comes with a lot of restrictions for the writer,” he said. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to have Martin write within those restrictions. By having him write about a time the player isn’t directly involved in, he is free to unleash his creativity in the way he likes. Furthermore, as FromSoftware we didn’t want to create a more linear and storydriven experience for Elden Ring. Both issues could be solved by having Martin write about the world’s history instead.”

Elden Ring is coming to PC, Xbox One, and PS4. For more on Elden Ring, check out our pre-order guide.

While everyone’s looking ahead to upcoming Star Wars releases such as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (November 15) and Star Wars: Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker (December 20), video game publisher Electronic Arts announced some new content for the not-yet-forgotten Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Dennis Brännvall, franchise design director for Star Wars Battlefront, took to Twitter to outline the new content in a community update video. The update, set to launch sometime this month, introduces new characters and firepower. Droidekas and the Galactic Republic TX-130 tank from the Clone Wars will finally roll out, alongside a new set of digs for Anakin Skywalker and the 212th Recon Division and 41st Scout Battalion troopers. Check out the announcement below.

We also got a sneak peek at what’s to come. A new planet called Felucia is in the works, as well as “new ways to play the game.” Brännvall didn’t specify when Felucia will be available nor did he clarify what “new ways to play” means.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson said Star Wars Battlefront 2 is “a great game” in a May 2019 earnings call. Wilson was keenly aware of what microtransactions did to the game’s reception, noting that they “clouded what was otherwise a really great game.” However, he called attention to developer DICE’s continued effort to support and improve the title, stating the shooter is now “a really strong game with really strong player sentiment.”

In our Star Wars Battlefront 2 review, we gave it a 6/10 at launch, saying, “While its main narrative feels unresolved, and the general loop of the multiplayer carries a number of issues, Battlefront II still manages to evoke that same sense of joy and excitement found in the core of what the series is all about.”