Category: Games

Chapter 2 of Fortnite officially kicked off last week, and it brought a wealth of changes to the popular battle royale game, including how players can level up their Battle Pass. While developer Epic claimed these changes made leveling up easier this season, many players found the opposite to be true, although it appears those issues have now been rectified.

Fortnite’s v11.01 update is now live, and while Epic has once again elected not to release patch notes, players on Reddit have discovered that the amount of XP you can earn for completing certain tasks has been greatly increased. Previously, you would be able to earn 24,000 XP from Fortnite’s daily punch cards, but that number has now been upped to 96,000 following the update, while weekly challenges give out 520,000 XP instead of 140,000.

Not only does this mean leveling up the Chapter 2 Battle Pass should be much easier moving forward, it gives players a much greater chance to hit tier 100 before the season ends. That’s good news all around, as Chapter 2, Season 1 is scheduled to end on December 12 according to Epic’s website, which would make it a little shorter than a typical season.

This time, in addition to completing challenges, you can earn XP and medals for doing certain actions while you play, like eliminating opponents, harvesting materials, and more. You can even earn an achievement for being eliminated by the Mythic Goldfish–an exceedingly rare one-hit-kill item that you can fish up.

With Halloween just around the corner, Epic has brought the popular Skull Trooper and Skull Ranger skins back to Fortnite’s in-game shop for a limited time. Meanwhile, the next set of Chapter 2 challenges is scheduled to drop on October 24. If you need help completing any of the missions available so far, be sure to check out our full Fortnite Chapter 2 challenges roundup.

Dakota Meyer, a former United States Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving lives and sustaining injuries in a 2009 military operation in Afghanistan, has spoken up about how war video games “romanticize” war in an unhealthy way.

Meyer said war video games may encourage people to think it’s fun or exciting to kick down doors and kill people. These are the real-life nightmares that keep him awake at night.

“Suffering has become normal for people. It’s become entertainment,” Meyer said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “Video games about war … war has now been romanticized. It’s been romanticized that it’s this cool image … I hear people say I just want to go kick in doors and shoot people in the face. Well, you’ve probably never done it then. We’ve got kids playing video games of the stuff that keeps me awake at night. And it’s like, at what point do we start humanizing these things?”

Meyer went on to say that people are becoming desensitized to human suffering due in part to the increasingly graphic nature of video games and other entertainment.

“There is nothing cool about taking another human’s life,” Meyer said. “When you’re playing video games, and it’s like, ‘Oh I got this many kills.’ These kids are just watching this screen over and over, and the more graphic it gets, the [more desensitized we become] to another human being’s suffering.”

“We’ve pushed ourselves away form being empathetic to, hey, these are real people. These are real people’s lives,” he added.

Also during the podcast, Meyer said video games like Grand Theft Auto, which allow people to kill anyone or run people down with your car, are problematic. “How does anything positive come from that?” he said.

Meyer earned his Medal of Honor for disregarding orders and charging into a killing zone where, over the course of six hours, he saved 12 fellow soldiers. He has said the September 9, 2009 ambush was the “worst day in my life.”

Meyer was awarded his Medal of Honor at the White House in 2011. President Barack Obama remarked at the time, “You did your duty above and beyond, and you kept the faith with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps you love.”

The next big military shooter to release is Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The game’s campaign is being led by a team of former Naughty Dog developers. The game appears to be taking steps to better represent a soldier’s experience. For example, Modern Warfare’s campaign puts an emphasis on encouraging players to identify threats.

If you cause a lot of collateral damage, you will see a fail screen. “The game sort of has its own version of, ‘You just got court marshaled and arrested,'” narrative director Taylor Kurosaki told Game Informer.

“We have pretty complex heuristics where we’re basically trying to determine, are you, the player, acting like a proper soldier? Or are you kind of being a psychopath and not playing by the rules?”

The new Modern Warfare, which is a soft reboot of sorts of the 2007 game, launches on October 25 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Not all war video games are seen as glorifying battle, death, and suffering. The 2012 shooter Spec Ops: The Line tells a war story that asks the player to consider the horrific realities of war.

There’s plenty happening in Destiny 2, including a just-released Exotic bow quest. But now, there’s another event that will let players loot and shoot for a good cause. Taking place on October 24 through November 10, players in Destiny 2 can participate in Games2Give, Bungie’s annual charity event for streamers and viewers alike to help those in need. Viewers who donate to streamers taking part in the event will also earn some special unlocks for your Guardian and Ghost.

In a blog post on its official site, Bungie stated that all proceeds from this charity event would go straight to Bungie Foundation’s iPads for Kids Program and the Children’s Miracle Network. Viewers who donate will earn limited-time rewards for your characters. For instance, the $10 donation will give you the new Mist Blossom emblem, while sending in $50 will let you snag the Exotic Ghost shell known as the Gilded Shell. Donating $100 will get you both previously mentioned rewards along with a submission into a larger prize pool for a set of rare physical prizes. This set includes the Destiny 2 soundtrack on vinyl, two Guardian figurines, and a real model of the Ghost’s Gilded Shell.

For those interested in streaming, there are several prizes you can get on your own, which include the rewards above, along with a VoltEdge TX70 Wireless Headset, and a VIP trip to visit Bungie’s development studio. On October 29, Bungie and several content creators will take part in a special 24-hour livestream. During this event, the group of fans and developers and developers will take part in several daring challenges and activities to raise more funds for Games2Give.

Overall interest in Destiny 2 has increased in a big way following the re-launch as a free-to-play game and the release of the expansion Shadowkeep. In Phil Hornshaw’s review, he stated: “Returning to the moon is full of spooky fun, and while Shadowkeep might not be as huge as Forsaken, it still provides some impressive additions to the world that will take time to fully explore. More meaningful choices in Shadowkeep are pushing me to think beyond just packing my most powerful guns and shooting everything in my path. These are improvements that represent a giant leap forward for Destiny 2.”

Locate all the mysterious Eridian Writings in Borderlands 3 to earn rare currency and unlock more rewards.

The final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has hit, which means that every trailer for every movie in the nine-film Skywalker Saga has officially been released, floating around and waiting to be watched and rewatched and rewatched again.

Which, thanks to the internet, that’s totally a thing you can do right now. We found ourselves taking a trip down memory lane reminiscing on the trailers that have come before, and we figured we would help you enjoy the same experience right here. Below you’ll find all the main trailers released from the nine Skywalker Saga movies, all for your space-viewing pleasure!

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Whether you loved the first episode of HBO’s Watchmen, like I did, or found it intriguing but imperfect, like mentioned here in the IGN review, one thing’s certain: Damon Lindelof’s new show is a head-scratcher.

Lindelof drops viewers off in the world of Watchmen (specifically the comics’ version, not the movie’s) 34 years after the events fans are familiar with, with three decades worth of alternate history and alternate politics to catch up on. It’s confusing, but purposefully so. Your enjoyment level of the pilot will correlate with how much you can stand not knowing up front.

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The Terminator franchise has always been about trying to maintain hope for humanity’s future in the face of relentless mechanized onslaught (as personified by the titular cyborg assassins). The latest sequel/reboot, Terminator: Dark Fate, embraces that notion as it steers the series into a new direction while both acknowledging and jettisoning many of the hallmark trappings of the franchise so far. It’s an exciting, action-packed and often humorous reset that captures the spirit and pacing of the first two James Cameron entries in a way that none of the recent three films could. It’s the best Terminator film since T2: Judgment Day.

One key reason is that Dark Fate does not place Arnold Schwarzenegger front and center. He shows up later in the film and appears for just the right amount of screen time. Where the first Terminator used him judiciously as the villain and Judgment Day introduced a new version of his T-800 as a heroic protector figure, the Austrian Oak’s shadow loomed large — perhaps too large — over the next three films, even when he was reduced to just a digitally recreated cameo.

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In the cosmic wake of the Black Hole that gobbled up Fortnite for a bit and then belched a new one back out, it seems that every gamer on the planet is offering at least a respectful hat tip to the ballsy — and, perhaps more importantly, seemingly ultra-effective marketing ploy — which included shutting down all of Fortnite’s servers and social media channels over the weekend in anticipation of the release of Chapter 2.

And that got us thinking: what are some other awesome viral stunts from the history of gaming? Here’s some that worked, some that didn’t, and one that never should have made it out of the conference room.

Click through the gallery above, or scroll down for the full list.

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