Before the Elimination Chamber has begun, there are already some big changes to the card. You can check out live coverage of the WWE PPV below, as the Kickoff Show airs on Twitter, YouTube, and on the WWE Network.
Because Lacey Evans is pregnant, her match against Asuka has been taken off the card. Asuka no longer has a match at Elimination Chamber, but there will be a Women’s Tag Team Championship match where Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair will team up to take on the current champs, Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler.
WWE’s Elimination Chamber PPV is airing on the WWE Network, taking place at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida inside the Thunderdome. Results for all of the matches are listed below and will be updated as the event transpires.
The Elimination Chamber will place six WWE wrestlers in an intimidating structure where the last one standing will be the winner. And this is one of the final PPVs before Wrestlemania arrives this April–with Fastlane coming on March 21. Because of this, you can expect to see a lot of Wrestlemania storylines start to build at Elimination Chamber–outside of what was already started at the Royal Rumble.
In order to check this show out, if you’re not watching already, you’ll have to subscribe to the WWE Network. It’s $10 a month and will give you access to a lot of WWE content. However, keep in mind that this April, all of WWE’s content is moving entirely to Peacock, as it will be the exclusive home to WWE.
Below, you’ll find the match card for the show, and typically one match is announced during the Kickoff Show, which will be noted in the notes below.
Match card:
Mustafa Ali vs. Elias vs. John Morrison vs. Ricochet (KICKOFF SHOW: Winner enters US Championship match)
Drew McIntyre vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton vs. AJ Styles vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Sheamus (Elimination Chamber match for the WWE Championship)
Kevin Owens vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Cesaro vs. Jey Uso vs. Sami Zayn vs. King Corbin (SmackDown Elimination Chamber match)
Roman Reigns vs. Winner of Smackdown Elimination Chamber match (Universal Championship)
Bobby Lashley vs. Riddle vs. Kickoff Show winner (United States Championship)
Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler vs. Sasha Banks & Bianca Belair (Women’s Tag Team Championship)
Below, you’ll find the live results for the show, and while you wait, listen to predictions to the show of the Wrestle Buddies, GameSpot’s wrestling podcast featuring Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring. Additionally, there will be important notes from each match as well, in case anything wild happens.
Kickoff Show
Preshow notes will appear here. It begins at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET.
Keith Lee has been removed from the card. The Kickoff Show match will be a Fatal 4-Way where the winner will replace Lee in the United States Championship match.
And now, 24 of the most important things you need to know about Monster Hunter Rise.
1. You Can Zip Around Like Spider-Man With Wirebugs
Monster Hunter Rise introduces vast new maps, and a new way to traverse them: the Wirebug. These tamed insects let hunters shoot out bioluminescent strands to dart up sheer cliffs, swing through the air, and hurtle every which way. Unlike Spider-Man’s web shooters, they never run out (they simply have a short cool-down timer) and they don’t need to affix to a surface – you can dangle from anchor points in mid air.
Wirebugs also enhance the move set of every weapon class, enabling rapid repositioning and devastating new ‘Silkbind’ attacks.
Hunters carry two Wirebugs as standard, though you can often temporarily recruit a third in the wild. Maps are also dotted with Great Wirebugs – effectively cannons to propel you vast distances in a hurry.
Sling that bug!
2. Meet The Palamute: The Hunter’s Best Friend
Another way to traverse the vast new environments of Rise is the Palamute – a whole new class of AI companion. Like the feline Palicos, the canine Palamutes can draw enemy aggro and dish out attacks, but they also let you ride them. While on dogback you can guzzle restorative potions, sharpen your weapon, or just catch your breath while putting some distance between yourself and the magnificent beasts you’re hunting.
3. The Hunting Horn Rework Makes It the Ultimate Support Weapon
Since its introduction in the PSP era the Hunting Horn has been something of a contradiction: a support weapon class that’s extremely technical to use. Each attack corresponds to a note, and playing short tunes delivers buffs to all nearby allies. Certain hunting horns can nullify monsters’ status effects, like ear-piercing roars and the down-draft from their mighty wings. It’s always been a rewarding weapon class to learn, but few made the effort – player data gathered by Capcom shows that of the 14 weapon classes in World, the Hunting Horn ranked dead last, the most-used weapon of 2% or fewer players.
That’s about to change. For Rise, the Hunting Horn has been completely reworked, with more streamlined controls and handy on-screen guides displaying which note combos activate which buffs. A new age of belting dragons with giant lutes is almost upon us!
You can see the Hunting Horn in action towards the end of the video above.
4. Wyvern Riding Lets You Control Monsters
Use enough Silkbind attacks during a quest and you will reduce your prey to a ‘mountable state’, allowing you to leap on its back and control it like a giant puppet!
Alternatively, you can collect an endemic life form, the Puppet Spider, which can reduce a monster to a mountable state instantly.
Pulling on glowing silken strings, you can make a monster run, dodge, and attack other large monsters, or simply run into sheer cliff faces. Fill up your wyvern riding gauge and you can unleash the Mounted Punisher, a devastating special attack that inflicts massive damage.
You’re my wyvern now.
5. Endemic Life Forms Now Confer Valuable Bonuses
Monster Hunter World introduced endemic life forms – adorable little creatures that scurried around minding their own business. Endemic life forms helped to build the illusion that you were trekking through a complex ecosystem, but in World they were little more than optional collectables. Not any more – now each and every one offers a valuable bonus: buffs to attack and defence, consumables to use in combat, and some even cough up valuable ores and armour spheres to upgrade your gear. Veteran hunters may wish to jump straight into the action, but rookies will do well to traipse about the map tracking down these colourful critters to get that extra edge in combat.
6. Monster Blight: Give Them A Taste of Their Own Medicine!
The most electrifying new use for endemic life is the opportunity to inflict Monster Blight – a new type of status ailment that can leave monsters charged with electricity or engulfed with flame. Gone is the monsters’ monopoly on hurling hadoukens of elemental damage – thanks to these combustible critters the shoe is on the other foot.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20most%20electrifying%20new%20use%20for%20endemic%20life%20is%20the%20opportunity%20to%20inflict%20Monster%20Blight%20%E2%80%93%20a%20new%20type%20of%20status%20ailment…”]
7. The Helper Cage Holds Five Endemic Life Forms
Some endemic life forms confer lasting buffs the instant you touch them, while others you will collect and store in your handy five-slot ‘Helper Cage’. All of these critters confer powerful benefits, like the Brewhare’s passive ability to boost the restorative power of potions. Others serve as powerful single-use items, like the poison-curing Antidobra, or the caltrop-like Trapbugs.
8. Rise is a Love Letter to Japanese Folklore, Culture, and Aesthetics
The fantasy world of Monster Hunter hosts myriad exotic races and cultures, with realms inspired by everything from Pacific islands to the Swiss Alps. The village you’ll fight to protect in Rise is an homage to feudal Japan, and the new monsters you’ll fight have all been inspired by the ghoulies and demons of Japanese folklore – the yokai and oni. Judging by the outfits worn by the residents of Kamura Village and their proficiency with Wirebug manoeuvres, the secretive ninja clans of Japan’s past were also a strong inspiration.
For those who’ve been following Monster Hunter for a while, Rise closely resembles the final PSP title in the series, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. As of this writing it’s still the best-selling Monster Hunter game in Japan, with over 4.8 million copies sold – although with the massive Switch install base, that figure might finally be surpassed.
9. Monsters From Every Gen Return, Including Many Fan Favourites
Monster Hunter is not unlike Capcom’s Street Fighter series, in that along with new characters, fan-favourites from older games will often return. Just as no Street Fighter would be complete without Ryu and Chun-Li, the mighty Rathalos and Rathian fire-breathing wyverns are back to scorch cocky hunters. Plenty more classic monsters will be joining them: the hyper-aggressive Tigrex, the water-logged Royal Ludroth, and the T-Rex-like Anjanath, to name a few. (Check out IGN’s wiki covering all the confirmed monsters here.)
Plenty of iconic small monsters return as well, including the shark-like Zamites and those furry, furious boars, the Bullfangos. For series veterans, every trip to the wilderness will be a trip down Memory Lane.
Mizutsune also returns.
10. Upgrading Weapons Has Become Much Faster
Monster Hunter games are all about defeating monsters and then using their power against them – slaying the frigid Lagombi to make an ice element sword, or besting the noxious Pukei-Pukei to make poison resistant armour. Upgrading your weapons used to require farming a heap of materials, which meant lots and lots of grinding.
To encourage players to branch out and see more of what all fourteen weapon classes have to offer, Rise will require significantly fewer monster parts for weapon upgrades. Considering that all weapon classes now have completely revised move-sets, there’s a lot of new gameplay to explore.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Rise%20will%20require%20significantly%20fewer%20monster%20parts%20for%20weapon%20upgrades.”]
11. Prevent Kamura Village From Being Wiped Out by Monsters!
Monster Hunter games are legendary for their special end-game co-op battles against gargantuan beasts, like the battleship-sized Lao-Shan Lung, the Jhen Mohran sand whale, or World’s living volcano monster, the Zorah Magdaros.
In Rise the novel new co-op mode is The Rampage, in which hunters will join forces to protect Kamura Village from an onslaught of multiple large monsters using batteries of cannon and ballistae to halt their advance. Once again, the inspiration for this mode comes from Japanese folklore – the tales of the Hyakki Yako, a procession of supernatural monstrosities that occasionally emerges from the spirit realm to wreak havoc.
You can see Rampage gameplay in the trailer above.
12. Explore Kamura Village With Your Friends
Previous instalments of Monster Hunter confined player interaction to the Gathering Hub and the quests themselves, but Rise considerably expands the scope for co-operative shenanigans. Now you and your friends can go flaneuring in Kamura Village together, and join forces in a significantly upgraded Training Room. This safe environment for practising weapon moves now features an animatronic wooden monster dummy resembling a Tetranadon to fight, a significant upgrade from World which had you belting a wooden stump.
The Kamura Village training area.
13. Beware the Sticky Fingers of the Thieving Melynx!
One of the more endearing quirks of the Monster Hunter series is the antics of the Lynians – races of intelligent kitty-cats that can walk on their hind legs and indulge in all manner of hijinks. While your loyal Felyne companions, the Palico, will assist you on quests, their mirror opposite are the Melynx, tribes of thieves who will pounce on you mid-quest and steal your gear! If a Melynx nicks one of your items you can strike him to get it back, but if he makes his escape all is not lost. Just look for their secret hide-out, where you can retrieve your property from their hoard of ill-gotten loot, and maybe return the favour by rummaging through their equipment stockpile and expropriating some barrels.
14. Rise Was Developed Simultaneously With World
Monster Hunter Rise was in development for over a year before the release of Monster Hunter World. The Rise team paid close attention to what made World a success, and as such all the quality of life improvements that World players enjoyed are present: auto-combining of gathered materials, the radial menu, accessing your full item box and equipment collection in the base camp, and more.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20Rise%20team%20paid%20close%20attention%20to%20what%20made%20World%20a%20success…”]
15. Extracting Resources Now Only Requires One Button Press
Rise builds on the quality-of-life improvements introduced in World in many ways, not least with regards to resource extraction. In older Monster Hunter games you’d need to tap a button repeatedly to extract every last lump of iron or clump of herbs from a resource node, but now you can extract them all with a single button press. Every aspect of the game has been tuned to accelerate your movement through the map, reducing the time to confrontation with your mission objective to the absolute minimum.
16. The Graphics Are Last-Gen, and That’s A Good Thing
Monster Hunter achieved blockbuster success on the PSP, a hand-held system with a screen just 480 by 272 pixels. Capcom made the best possible use of that space through imaginative graphic design, rich use of colour, spectacular monsters, and truly bizarre equipment. Many complained that the weapons and armour sets in World were too grounded, too staid. Rise returns to the PSP aesthetic with anime mega-swords and outfits that would make a cosplayer weep.
Thanks to its exaggerated, cartoon-like action Monster Hunter doesn’t need state-of-the-art graphics to look good – and to be fair Rise looks great for a Switch title, especially in portable mode.
Monster Hunter Rise is in good hands. The game director is Yasunori Ichinose, who is responsible for some of the best instalments in the series, including Monster Hunter Generations, and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – arguably the game that elevated the franchise from being a niche title to a cult hit. He’s clearly leveraged over a decade of experience to push the Monster Hunter experience in a bold new direction.
18. You Can Now Throw Barrel Bombs Downward
Wirebugs have made a wealth of three-dimensional combat moves available, and this versatility extends to your consumable items. Large barrel bombs have long been a staple of the series, dealing massive damage to trapped or sleeping monsters – and now you can drop them too. Vault yourself over a monster, select large barrel bomb from your item menu, and bombs away!
19. The Familiar Pattern of Monster Progression Returns: Raptors, Fire Birds, and Cranky Kongs
Rise continues the tradition of easing in new players by tasking them with defeating a succession of large monsters with progressively more complex attack patterns. Early on you’ll face the Great Izuchi, a comically bellicose giant velociraptor. Later you’ll confront the Aknosom, a goofy fire-spitting bird in the tradition of the Yian Kut-Ku and the Qurupeco. The simian Bishaten echoes the monkey mischief of the Congalala, and Rise’s flagship monster, the Magnamalo, is uncannily like the tremendously popular Zinogre.
Newcomers to the Monster Hunter experience should resist the temptation to go in guns blazing, as all large monsters have complex attack patterns designed to wreck the reckless. Instead, you should observe their behaviour, study their moves, and only strike when you’re confident you have an opening. The two most important pieces of advice given to new hunters still apply in Rise: “Don’t get hit. Hit it until it dies.”
This principle applies in co-op as well. Beginners shouldn’t worry too much about min-maxing gear or having the highest DPS – just stay alive, get in the odd hit, and you can still make a contribution and have a rollicking time.
21. Beware the Horrifying Khezu!
Few monsters embody the unique charm of Monster Hunter like the Khezu, a white wrinkled freak that looks like a giant frozen chicken with a telescoping neck – a chubbier cousin of the Mass Production Eva Units from Evangelion: Death & Rebirth. He’s blind, he’s constantly sniffing around for human prey, and his electric attacks make him aggravating to engage. But there’s something endearing about this shrivelled, wailing wretch, and he’s very popular in Japan – at one point you could buy Khezu plush toys!
The Khezu makes a triumphant return in Rise, and his beautiful grotesqueness embodies Monster Hunter’s quirky, freaky soul.
In all previous games in this series hunters needed to consume cold drinks on desert and volcano maps and hot drinks on icy maps, lest their health or stamina bars gradually whittle away to nothing. But no longer – Rise does away with this requirement.
It may seem like a minor point, but this is one of the most controversial changes in the game. In the eyes of some die-hard fans, every inconvenience removed chisels away at what makes Monster Hunter special and risks ruining the magic of the series.
I’m of the opinion that the soul of Monster Hunter remains intact, for now. You’ll know they’ve gone too far if they ever get rid of weapon sharpening.
Icy climes just became a little more friendly. (Not pictured.)
23. An Ultimate Sequel Or Robust DLC Is Practically a Certainty
Capcom has displayed a well-established pattern when releasing Monster Hunter games: when a new instalment is a success, it is followed a year or so later by an enhanced edition that adds a new ultra-high difficulty tier of quests, a handful of all-new monsters, and a menagerie of sub-species variants of existing monsters. Add all the new craftable weapons and armour sets and it amounts to a massive content update.
Given the huge Switch install base and the hype surrounding Rise, there aren’t many things that could prevent an Ultimate edition at this point. The only question is whether it will be available as a stand-alone game you can import your old save into (like Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate), as a download (like Iceborne), or both.
We’ve already been promised loads of new content in the form of a steady supply of post-launch Event Quests. Whatever Capcom decides, expect Rise to be supported for a long time.
24. Rise Is A Monster Hunter For Everyone
Capcom has taken great pains to make this the most accessible Monster Hunter game ever. Rise builds on the dozens of quality-of-life improvements in World, adding a gentler difficulty curve in the single-player Village Quests to make the game much less intimidating for new players. For advanced players, all the combat complexity you’ve come to know and love is still there, now enhanced by a slew of Wirebug fighting moves that catapult you into a z-axis of new possibilities.
This is the most innovative Monster Hunter game to date, and there’s a very good chance it could also be the most successful.
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James Cottee is a veteran of both the Australian games industry and the art of Monster Hunting. You can find him on Twitter.
This Sunday has brought with it another handful of great deals. Over on Amazon you can grab yourself a great Razer laptop, while Best Buy still has their Microsoft sale going, which lets you snag some Xbox Game Pass on the cheap, as well as other handy Microsoft products. If none of that sounds up your alley, make sure to check further down our listing as there’s always a great selection of games up for offer.
A new DualSense controller teardown video from IFixIt has revealed potential causes for the drifting issues that some PS5 owners have been experiencing.
The video from IFixIt, which you can watch here, explains how the DualSense uses “off-the-shelf joystick hardware with a long history of predictable, preventable issues.”
These joystick modules are manufactured by a company called ALPS and have been used by such other controllers as PS4’s DualShock 4, the Xbox One and Xbox Elite controller, and the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller.
The particular model number used in the DualSense controller, RKJXV, has an operating life of two million cycles, while the life span of the center push function is around 500,000 cycles.
IFixIt mentions that, while this number can vary greatly depending on how often you play games and what types of games you play, these parts can exceed their lifespan with just over 400 hours of game time. This “back of the napkin math” is based on IFixIt employees’ Call of Duty gameplay.
The main cause of drifting actually appears to be related to the potentiometers, which help sense what type of movement a player is trying to accomplish.
Each joystick has two potentiometers in them that are perpendicular to each other, and they measure both up and down and left and right.
Potentiometers are a three-terminal system that uses voltage to measure the position of the joystick. The third terminal, known as the wiper, slides around a semi-circular track. When you move the joystick, the position of the wiper – relative to a neutral, central position – allows the controller to know where and how you are trying to move.
There are two other parts that can potentially cause issues, a spring that returns the joystick to a centered, neutral position, and one that allows the thumbsticks to be pushed in.
Over time, the spring can stretch and create a new neutral position off-center. This would make it so the potentiometers think your thumb is moving the joystick even if you aren’t, causing drift.
Contaminants and imperfections can cause also drift, as they can alter the voltage and can cause erroneous readings across terminals. These range from plastic dust from components grinding together to outside elements like food or drink.
IFixIt offers some solutions for fixes, including taking off the potentiometers housing and cleaning or replacing wipers. Some of the more advanced options include soldering and there are plenty of YouTube videos on how to do that if you wish to try it.
If not, it is recommended to try to get a warranty replacement or, unfortunately, purchase a new DualSense. It’s also important to note that drift can occur to a brand new controller, as advanced calibrations are needed to ensure the potentiometers are functioning properly, and sometimes this does not happen.
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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
The Rainbow Six: Siege family is about to get a little bigger, with Flores joining the hero-based shooter as a brand-new attack operator. Flores will be added to Siege at the start of Year 6, Season 1: Crimson Heist. You can try the character for yourself on the PC test server on February 22.
In the video above, GameSpot video producer Jake Dekker and Game Informer video editor Alex Van Aken sit down to discuss their early impressions of Flores, as well as the other changes coming to Siege in Crimson Heist. The new season will also reimagine the Border map and add a brand-new secondary gadget, the Gonne-6.
As an attack operator, Flores is designed to aid his teammates in their assault on fortified defenders. His original gadgets are the RCE – Ratero Charges, drones that can be armed to explode. When used, Flores places a single RCE – Ratero Charge at his feet and a timer begins–once the timer expires, the drone becomes bullet-proof and lights its fuse, ultimately exploding. You don’t have to wait for the timer to expire though, Flores can arm his drone prior to time running out if you’ve already positioned the drone where you want it.
Developer Ubisoft Montreal has also teased what players can expect throughout Year 6. Season 2 will introduce a new operator and a complete rework to the Favela map, Season 3 will add multiple operators and do slight reworks to three existing maps, and Season 4 will add one more operator and a complete rework to the Outback map.
Zelda is officially 35 years old, dating back to the original Legend of Zelda’s launch on February 21, 1986. When a series has been around for that long there’s bound to be different advertising styles. From rap commercials in the 80’s to found footage ripoffs in the 2000’s there are a lot of approaches the Zelda series took when advertising over the decades.
In this video we’ve selected the best of them all, and at least 1 from each mainline game. This includes trailers and commercials, and those aren’t limited to just US or Japan. Some are comedic, some are epic, and some are just downright memorable.
In terms of what Nintendo is doing for the 35th anniversary of Zelda, it recently revealed that Skyward Sword HD will be making its way to the Switch 10 years after its original Wii release. It also revealed that more information about Breath of the Wild’s sequel will be revealed later this year.
With a class-action lawsuit recently filed against Sony over issues with DualSense controllers’ drifting analog sticks, the company could be looking at ways it can improve the design. Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t look like it has an easy fix.
In a new video from iFixit, the site looks into the reasons why the problem is becoming more prevalent, and it found the DualSense is using “off the shelf” joystick modules that have been prone to drifting in the past. The same module is used by a lot of other controllers, too, including the Nintendo Switch Pro controller and the Xbox Elite controller, the latter of which has seen drifting issues of its own.
The joysticks aren’t easy to remove for quick replacement, either. On the DualSense, haptic motor wires are soldered to the board, and these must be removed before you can do anything else. Once that’s done, 14 different solder points must be melted to get off the joystick module at all.
Getting into the module reveals potentiometers that can be worn down over time, which can lead to inconsistencies, plastics that can grind and cause dust buildup, and a spring inside can stretch and no longer go completely back to center–giving your controller a new neutral point that could lead to your character walking to one side when you aren’t using the stick at all. What’s more? these parts are rated as having a lifespan that could cause them to fail in just a few hundred hours of playtime, depending on the game in question.
If your controllers aren’t under warranty and you don’t want to fix the problem yourself, your only real option right now is to buy a new controller. With modern controllers being pretty expensive, however, that’s not an ideal solution.
