Doom Eternal Won’t Have Any Microtransactions

Buying a full-price video game doesn’t always guarantee you’ll get everything it has to offer without spending more money. Cosmetics and pay-to-win items are often locked behind microtransactions, asking players to part with more cash if they want to gain a leg up on the competition or simply look different. Fortunately, Doom Eternal isn’t involved in such hellish practices.

That’s according to the game’s creative director, Hugo Martin. The upcoming FPS will include unlockable cosmetics, but you won’t have to pay for them–you’ll simply have to earn them. “Eternal is a $60 game, not a free-to-play game or a mobile game–we are giving you a complete experience with no store just like you’d expect,” Martin said in reply to a fan question on Facebook.

The cosmetics in Doom Eternal will have no impact on how the game plays; they exist just to look cool. “Unlocking skins with XP is part of the experience if you care about that stuff, or you can completely ignore it and it and it will have no impact on your experience at all, and it’s all free,” Martin continued. “Nothing you can unlock in Eternal with XP has anything to do with player abilities or content that would impact your game in any way.”

Doom Eternal never felt like the sort of game to include microtransactions, especially after its predecessor also eschewed the practice, but it’s still welcome news when a big triple-A game doesn’t ask you to part ways with even more cash. This is especially true when it comes to the game’s competitive multiplayer, since you won’t find yourself at a disadvantage there if you elect not to purchase additional weapons, skills, and the like.

Doom Eternal is set to launch on March 20, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with the Nintendo Switch version due out later this year.

Now Playing: Doom Eternal Is Metal As F**k

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The Art of The Last of Us 2 Deluxe Edition Is Up for Preorder

The Last of Us Part 2 promises to be one of the biggest games of the year. It catches up with Ellie and Joel several years after the events of the first game and sets them off on another dangerous adventure. If you’d like a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the PS4 exclusive, you can preorder The Art of The Last of Us Part 2 in hardcover, Kindle, or a new deluxe edition that just went up on Amazon.

As a side note, video game art books tend to get occasional discounts on Amazon prior to release. If you preorder now, you’ll be guaranteed to lock in the lowest price, even if it goes back up before it comes out.

Preorder The Art of The Last of Us Part 2 Deluxe Edition

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The Art of The Last of Us Part 2 is a hardcover 200-page book that promises to offer “extensive insights” into the making of the game. Compared to the regular version, the deluxe edition offers the following extras:

  • Gallery-Quality Lithograph
  • Slipcase
  • Exclusive Cover

The book is also available in non-deluxe hardcover and Kindle editions. It’s the exact same book as the deluxe edition, but without the exclusive cover, slipcase, and lithograph.

Preorder The Last of Us Part 2 for PS4

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The game The Last of Us Part 2 is also up for preorder in a handful of editions, some of which are sold out everywhere or nearly everywhere.

For details about what comes in each edition, check out our The Last of Us Part 2 preorder guide.

More Video Game Books

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Xbox Elite Series 2 Deal Tops the Best Xbox Deals Right Now

I, for one, am getting really excited for the Xbox Series X, but we have so little info as of yet, there’s no reason you can’t get yourself set up with a new Xbox One in the meantime. With Xbox Series X backwards-compatiblity, anything you buy to play on your Xbox One now will also work on your Xbox Series X later. The same goes for controllers, so if you pick yourself up an Elite Series 2 controller deal, you can use it with your next Xbox.

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Xbox One All-Access Bundles

One of the best ways to save on Xbox One is with the Xbox All-Access program. Depending on your qualifications, you could set yourself up with a brand new Xbox One X, Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass Ultimate all for $30.99 a month. Unfortunately, the option to upgrade to the Xbox Series X after 12 months expired on December 31, and Microsoft hasn’t offered any new news on its upgrade plans. Still, even without the 12-month upgrade turnaround, this remains an amazing Xbox One deal.

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Limited-Time Terminator Event In Ghost Recon Breakpoint Is Live

Ubisoft teased their own Terminator crossover event for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint earlier this week, and the first of two parts to this ongoing event has now launched across Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

The is a two-part event, with the first featuring an ominous message from the future and at least one T-800 roaming across Breakpoint’s fictional island disguised as a regular human. It’ll be up to you and your team of Ghosts to track down the time-travelling visitor and put a stop to a potentially humanity-threatening foe. Just don’t look for Arnold Schwarzenegger — his likeness isn’t being used at all here. You can check out the launch trailer for the event below.

The second part, which kicks off on February 1, will take you to the heart of the problem. A factory has been configured to mass produce T-800s, and it’s your duty to put an end to it. Both parts of the event will be playable until February 6.

In addition to new missions, the Terminator event will also give participating players additional gear as rewards. These include the RT5 Shepherd Terminator vehicle, Shredded T-800 facial paint, an Uzi, the Starfield X4 Terminator vehicle, the Resistance Helmet, and an AR-18.

Ghost Recon is building a history with featuring cameos from popular Schwarzenegger films, even if they don’t feature the actor himself. Ghost Recon Wildlands featured a similarly limited event where players hunted down The Predator, which sounds awfully similar to what Breakpoint is offering here.

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Madden NFL 20 Teases Super Bowl 2020 Prediction With Manning Brothers Ad

Madden NFL 20 is preparing to announce its official prediction for Super Bowl LIV, and it’s teased the big event with a new ad that suggests player data may be taken into account. The advertisement features brothers Peyton and Eli Manning, both former NFL quarterbacks, having some sibling rivalry.

The ad takes us inside the “EA Sports prediction lab,” where very serious people in white coats furrow their eyebrows at charts. Peyton Manning says the lab has already conducted its own simulations, but player data gets fed into the machine and “the more games we input, the tighter the prediction.” That suggests EA is planning to take user data into account for this year’s soothsaying.

EA Sports has also set up an official site where you can predict the points spread and MVP. All of this is tied into encouraging people to play more Madden to “feed the machine,” with a 50% discount on the game across all platforms. You can play a simulation of the Super Bowl now. But seeing as the ad never gives a cutoff time for when user data is being taken into account, it’s difficult to say if it’s all a gimmick.

The ad does end by teasing that the official prediction will be revealed tomorrow, January 30. That coincides with the Super Bowl Music Fest, which features an EA Sports Bowl. That may be where the company reveals which team won its prediction model–though Madden predictions have a spotty history of predicting the actual outcome. On the bright side we can be reasonably confident the Madden Curse won’t be a factor.

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New SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run Teaser Delivers A Lot Very Quickly

That much-loved undersea hero SpongeBob Squarepants is set to make his return to theaters later this year, in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. It’s the first SpongeBob movie in five years, and a new trailer will premiere during the Super Bowl this weekend. Ahead of that, we have a short teaser.

The teaser certainly doesn’t hang around. It starts with Larry the Lobster telling SpongeBob that Super Bowl commercials are “really expensive,” and that he only has 26 seconds to tell him everything in the movie. What follows is a rapid-fire list of some of the treats awaiting viewers, including flashbacks, robots, Snoop Dogg, churros, and a wise sage made of sage played by Keanu Reeves. Check it out below:

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is directed by Tim Hill, who also made 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and was one of the main writers on the original show. All the regular voicecast are back, including Tom Kenny as SpongeBob, Bill Fagerbakke as Patrick, Rodger Bumpass as Squidward, and Clancy Brown as Eugene H. Krabs. The movie hits theaters on May 22 2020.

Sponge on the Run isn’t the only new SpongeBob release on the way. In December, Nickelodeon struck a huge deal with Netflix to license many of its characters to the streaming giant, and according to reports, a “music-based project” based around Squidward is one of the shows in development.

SpongeBob Squarepants premiered in 1999, and it continues to be made, with Season 13 announced in July this year. The show was created by Stephen Hillenburg, who died in 2018.

Dune Has a Really Interesting New Logo

Warner Bros. has revealed the logo for Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune adaptation at a French convention, and it’s really striking.

The logo, positioned above the image of a sand dune, uses a curved U-shaped icon positioned in four different ways in order to spell out Dune in a stylish manner. A lens flare element in the final shape helps create a more obvious letter E.

Images of the logo have not been officially released by Warner Bros., but photographs taken at the convention have made their way onto Reddit and the wider internet.

While not offering a close look at the film, this title treatment does allow an insight into the film’s potential aesthetic. It’s clean and futuristic, which could mean we’re looking at a particularly sleek vision of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic. This would be in direct contrast to David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation, that was rather baroque in its art design, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed version which featured horror-like design work by a pre-Alien H. R. Giger.

Fans of the book have amusingly pointed out that a few more of the U shapes could be dropped in to spell out Duncan, in reference to popular Dune character Duncan Idaho. Duncan will be portrayed by Jason Momoa in this new adaptation.

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Dune releases December 18 this year, and is the first of a two-part adaptation of the original novel. It is also the first release of a larger Dune-based franchise planned by Warner Bros., with reports saying a TV series based on the Bene Gesserit order – Dune: The Sisterhood – has been ordered as a direct-to-series show.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

Arrow Cast Reacts to Series Finale With Memories From Set

Warning: this article contains spoilers for the series finale of Arrow and the finale of the Arrow-verse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths.

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After eight seasons and 170 episodes, Arrow faded to black in Tuesday’s emotional series finale.

While it may be the end of an 8-year journey for fans, it is also the end of a huge career chapter for the actors who helped to shape the series. Naturally, in the aftermath of the highly anticipated final episode, Fadeout, many of the stars took to social media to bid their heartfelt farewells.

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Stephen Amell, who has starred as Oliver Queen on Arrow since the franchise began, reflected on his character’s long, rocky journey to reach this point, referring to the end as “bittersweet.”

Katherine McNamara, who was promoted to a series regular for the DC drama’s eighth and final season, reprising her role as Mia Smoak, shared multiple tweets to mark the emotionally-charged ending.

She shared a few poignant behind-the-scenes photos from her time on set before signing off with a final tribute to her character and the rest of the team, who she thanked for “believing” in her and “entrusting” her with the storyline.

After thanking the fandom for watching Arrow for the past eight years, Black Canary star Katie Cassidy shared a touching message about her time on the show, saying she has “so much love” for the cast and crew.

Meanwhile, David Ramsey, whose on-screen counterpart is John Diggle, interacted with fans throughout the series finale. He revealed his favourite part of playing the character was acting with his castmates and that he felt “super nostalgic” filming in the Season 1 bunker for a final time, before concluding that he felt a mixture of emotions about the last episode.

Ramsey also shared some favourite moments and memories from the show on his Instagram stories alongside a final snapshot to mark the end of the series. He captioned the image: “It happened…”

Emily Bett Rickards, who returned to play Felicity Smoak for one last time in the series finale, shared a photo of the empty seats left behind by Amell and herself, writing, “Until the next one bud!”

Elsewhere, Grant Gustin, who appeared in Arrow as Barry Allen aka The Flash, closed the curtain on the final series with a remarkable cast and crew photo, saying, “It takes an army to make a show like Arrow.”

White Canary star Caity Lotz retweeted a series of posts to honour the final episode. She also responded to a tweet from co-star Katie Cassidy, simply writing, “Sister” alongside a love heart emoji.

Juliana Harkavy, who played Dinah Drake, aka Black Canary on Arrow since 2017, bid her own farewell to the series, though she refused to say “goodbye.”

Paul Blackthorne, who portrayed Quentin Lance in a regular role throughout the early seasons of Arrow, extended a shoutout to series star Stephen Amell, who he called a “legend.”

Arrow’s Roy Harper, aka Colton Haynes, shared some cast photos from the set of the final episode, as he teased the exciting “Roy and Thea reunion.”

Katrina Law, Nyssa al Ghul on The CW series, thanked the fans for coming along for the ride, saying she felt “humbled to be a part of it.”

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In our review of “Fadeout”, we recognized the episode to be an “imperfect but ultimately effective conclusion to a long-running superhero saga”, which makes “excellent use of the series’ two most critical supporting characters” Felicity Smoak and John Diggle.

For more on the Arrow-verse, read this breakdown of some of the biggest moments from the finale, find out which episodes Marc Guggenheim identified as the most pivotal, and Stephen Amell’s comments on the Crisis on Infinite Earths ending.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Get a New Windows Laptop on Sale for $199, Plus Gaming Laptop Deals

In my opinion, right now is the secret-best time of year outside of Black Friday to find great deals on laptops. Between people having fatter pockets thanks to tax refunds and a general sense of quiet on the retail-front, laptop deals have been quietly popping up with regularity since the start of the new decade.

Gaming Laptop Deals

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I recommend you take the money you save and put it toward the purchase of a new gaming chair. You can keep using the old folding chair you found outside a school cafeteria last summer, but I think you should make yourself as comfortable as possible. You gotta look out for number 1. Or not, it’s up to you.

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Seth Macy is IGN’s tech and commerce editor and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Twitter @sethmacy.

Cuphead On Switch Is Discounted To Celebrate His New Super Smash Bros. Costume

Cuphead, one of the very few Microsoft-published games to make its way to the Nintendo Switch, has made his way into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a Mii costume as of Update 7.0. The costume for a Mii Gunner is available to purchase, and comes with the music track “Floral Fury”.

It’s not quite the same as getting Cuphead as a fully fledged fighter would be, but then the character was not on most player’s radars as a possible addition.

It’s a cool, unexpected cameo, and to celebrate, developers Studio MDHR are offering a rare discount on the Switch version of Cuphead. Until Friday (January 31), the game is available on the Eshop for 25% off. Cuphead doesn’t often drop in price, so it’s a good opportunity to snatch up the Switch version.

Cuphead has been a huge success story, and is getting turned into an animated series for Netflix. It will also be receiving new DLC in 2020, expanding the adventure out further.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will also be expanded further, with six more fighters being added before the end of 2021.

Now Playing: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Adds Byleth & Cuphead – GS News Update

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