Halo Infinite Monster Energy Drinks Have Begun To Appear In The Wild Offering Double XP

It appears Microsoft is teaming up with Monster Energy for a new promotion related to Halo Infinite. Halo Infinite-branded Monster Energy drinks have begun to appear in the wild, and the text on the cans states that people can claim a double XP token for Halo Infinite.

Given that these sugary drinks are now in the market, it probably won’t be much longer before Microsoft talks about Halo Infinite’s multiplayer element. The last we heard, 343 had scaled back plans for a beta test, but the multiplayer reveal is slated to happen “soon.”

The marketing materials from the Monster Energy drinks also state that some kind of “AR Experience” for Halo Infinite is set to begin on September 1. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on this.

Halo Infinite’s multiplayer will be free, though the company has yet to clarify how it will work. If you buy these Monster Energy drinks you’ll want to hang on to them, as the code-redemption site for the promotion is not live yet.

Halo Infinite is scheduled for release this holiday as a launch title for the Xbox Series X. The game will also come to the regular Xbox One as well as PC. Developer 343 Industries sees Halo Infinite as a platform instead of game, and one that the studio plans to support until 2030 or later.

For more on Halo Infinite, check out GameSpot’s editorial below.

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Pokemon Sword & Shield Offering Free Shiny Amoonguss For The Next Few Hours Only

During the 2019 Pokemon World Championships, Top 4 player Baik Jongyoon used a team featuring a Shiny Amoonguss, the Pokeball-like mushroom Pokemon. Now, you can add your very own Shiny Amoonguss to your team in Pokemon Sword/Shield–but you need to act fast.

Serebii is reporting that a Pokemon Korea Trainer’s Cup stream released a Mystery Code for a Shiny Amoonguss, resembling Jongyoon’s prized Pokemon. To get it, you need to enter the pause menu from the main menu and select “Mystery Gift.” then enter the following code: TRA1NERSCUP.

We tested this code ourselves in Australia, and it works. The Shiny Pokemon is Level 50, with Clear Smog, Spore, Protect, and Rage Powder. It’s got good stats, and is worth adding to your team (although you should expect other players to do the same).

This Pokemon can only be claimed until August 10, 2:59 PM UTC (7:59 AM PT, 10:59 AM ET). At the time of writing, that’s about 13 hours away.

Pokemon Sword & Shield recently became the third-best selling Pokemon game pairing in the series, and it recently grew further with the Isle of Armor expansion.

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Deadly Premonition 2 Patch 1.0.3 Has Massively Improved The Game’s Horrendous Frame Rate

Deadly Premonition 2 launched in July, and the Switch exclusive returned fans to the strange world of Francis York Morgan, the hero of the original game. However, while the first game is well regarded for its lovable shoddiness, the frame rate in the sequel was beyond the pale, and the game suffered in reviews as a result.

In GameSpot’s review, critic Kurt Indovina said that once you entered the open world, “the frame rate falls off a cliff; it feels as though the game is in a perpetual loading state.” The developers promised that this would be addressed.

Now, in a new patch, this issue has been partially addressed. Update 1.0.3 has arrived, and in a Reddit thread, fans are sharing their reactions and new footage, showing that the game is now far more stable, despite still having noticable frame drops.

The footage below comes from Reddit user santanapeso, and shows the game’s hero moving through the open world.

Gav, a feature editor at Nintendo Life, ran his own before-and-after comparison, and noted that even though the frame rate still isn’t great, it’s an enormous improvement on the game’s launch state.

This isn’t the first game-changing patch for Deadly Premonition 2. The game’s director, Hidetaka Suehiro (aka Swery), apologized for the game’s transphobic content and promised to change it. However, the patch that addressed this issue made only very minor changes.

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Tenet Actors And Producer, Including Robert Pattinson, Talk About How Difficult The Film Was To Make

Tenet has, by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic, become the most important movie of 2020–and whether Christopher Nolan’s new film can succeed at the international box office when its rollout begins on August 26 will likely be an indicator of whether or not other studio films will see cinema releases this year. Now, in a new interview with The Irish Times, many of the film’s stars and its producer have opened up about the challenges of the shoot.

Emma Thomas, who produces Christopher Nolan’s movies (and is also his wife), told The Irish Times that Tenet is their most ambitious film yet, even though the temptation is always there to go smaller rather than bigger. “With every movie, we have the same conversation,” she says. “Are we going to do a small one this time? In a world where studios have become more and more risk averse, we’ve just been lucky that every movie we’ve done has worked. So we keep on capitalizing on the last movie.”

Thomas also says that while previous Nolan films often have one scene that they know will be tricky (citing the hospital explosion from The Dark Knight), Tenet has several. “With Tenet it felt like every time we would do one of those big things, you relax for five minutes and then you look at the set schedule for next week and then there’s another one,” she said.

Robert Pattinson–who stars in the movie and gives some of the all-time best Hollywood interviews–recalls how difficult some of the action scenes were to film, referencing a specific driving sequence they filmed early on. “I’m s***ting myself as I’m whipping between cars at 80 miles an hour and Chris is behaving like this is completely normal,” he says.

Pattinson says that he’s generally paired with John David Washington, the film’s main protagonist, and since the actor is an ex-NFL player he’s in extremely good shape. “The maximum workout I do most of the time is a casual stroll,” Pattinson says. “John David can run all day long. It was good that I ended up being pretty fit. But definitely, at the beginning, there were days I just could not walk afterwards.”

He also revealed that Washington had to explain elements of the plot to him. “Right up until the last week of the shoot, I was talking to John David and asking him some pretty fundamental questions about who my character was. And John David was like: ‘Wait, you don’t know this?’ But it’s complicated! You’re not just being fed the story.”

Kenneth Branagh, meanwhile, plays the film’s villain, who he says is “darker than anything (he’s) ever played.” According to Branagh, Nolan told him to make the character “unremittingly evil.” He also says that there were two scenes he filmed where he wasn’t really sure what was going on–the first time that’s happened in his career.

Tenet will have a limited US release on September 3 in select markets, if all goes as planned.

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Here’s What’s Happening With The Star Trek Movie Series

New reports from Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter have shined a light on the future of the Star Trek movie series, and this includes a project originally set to be directed by Quentin Tarantino that still could happen.

The new movie boss at Paramount, Emma Watts, is said to be “re-assessing” the company’s entire movie slate, and this includes the Star Trek series. There are three Star Trek projects currently in the works at different stages of production, including the sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, another film from Fargo’s Noah Hawley, and the Tarantino movie.

Hawley’s movie is supposedly being put on the back burner, and this could be due to its story. THR says the plot is related to a virus that wipes out a huge part of the universe, and Paramount may not want to pursue this story in the current climate.

The Star Trek Beyond sequel seeks to reunite the cast of the reboot series from JJ Abrams, including Chris Hemsworth, John Cho, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, and Zoe Saldana. The actor who played Chekov, Anton Yelchin, died in a 2016 accident.

Director S.J. Clarkson was at one point attached to direct this new film, but she dropped out to work on a Game of Thrones spinoff. Among the reasons why this project has stalled, the report said, is due to the high price tag given the big-name actors who would appear in it.

The Star Trek movie originally set to be directed by Tarantino, meanwhile, is written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), and it reportedly draws inspiration from the 1968 Star Trek Season 2 episode, “A Piece of the Action,” with a story that takes place in a 1930s gangster setting. Tarantino will no longer direct this movie, should it happen, but Deadline said the project is “still viable.”

Tarantino previously told Deadline that, while he wouldn’t direct this new Star Trek film, he stands behind the plot of it and said he would provide notes.

“I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it. It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut,” he said.

The Star Trek series is owned by GameSpot’s parent company, ViacomCBS.

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Xbox Series S Reportedly Confirmed by Controller Packaging Leak

Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s rumored second, cheaper next-gen Xbox, may have been confirmed by a controller packaging leak.

The Verge obtained photos of Xbox’s next-gen controllers, and the packaging mentions both the confirmed Xbox Series X and the unconfirmed Xbox Series S, which has had a supposed codename in Project Lockhart for quite some time.

Twitter user @zakk_exe was able to purchase this new controller on a resale site, and The Verge has verified it is a genuine next-gen controller.

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At the end of last month, an alleged image of this white Xbox Series X/S controller appeared online, and it’s important to note that Microsoft has yet to unveil either a white next-gen console or controller.

A recent report suggested that this Xbox Series S reveal would be taking place in August 2020, so news shouldn’t be too far away.

Xbox Series X, and presumably Xbox Series S, will be released during Holiday 2020, yet we have yet to learn of any release date or price.

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However, Microsoft did feature a bunch of its first-party game in a recent Xbox Games Showcase, and gave fans a new look at Halo Infinite, Fable, Forza Motorsport, Avowed, and much more.

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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.

PGA Tour 2K21 Devs Talk PS5/Xbox Series X Support, DLC, Swing Updates, And More

PGA Tour 2K21 is coming very soon, with the professional golf game scheduled for release on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on August 21. Ahead of that, the developers at HB Studios have answered some questions on Reddit regarding support for PS5/Xbox Series X, DLC, the new swing mechanics, and more.

Beginning with the next-gen consoles, HB Studios will not release a “bespoke” version of PGA Tour 2K21 for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. However, like thousands of other games on both platforms, PGA Tour 2K21 will play on PS5 and Xbox Series X through backwards compatibility, HB said.

Regarding DLC, HB said it plans to add more courses, modes, and MyPlayer options in the future. However, the studio did not say if this will come in the form of paid or free expansions.

There are 15 real-world PGA Tour courses in PGA Tour 2K21, which is more than double the number (6) that were featured in 2018’s The Golf Club 2019 Featuring PGA Tour.

Also in the Q&A, HB spoke about some of the changes for the swing mechanics in PGA Tour 2K21. First off, backswing tempo is removed, while the downswing timing and accuracy “tolerances” have been tuned to make the overall swing mechanics simpler. Additionally, the swing animations themselves have been updated to more “more athletic.”

HB also clarified that there will be many different golf clubs to earn and unlock, and these clubs include attributes that change performance. However, HB says one club won’t necessarily be “better” than another because of how the game has been tuned. For example, one driver may go further than another, but the tradeoff is that it requires a more expert control of accuracy and timing. Another example provided was that a wedge might go straight more easily, but it will be more difficult to control when using the shot-shaping mechanics.

Go to the Reddit post here to catch up with all the questions and answers.

GameSpot recently played a few hours of PGA Tour 2K21, and you can watch our gameplay video above to see us shoot 59 at TPC Summerlin.

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Seth Rogen’s An American Pickle Features A Weird Cameo From Everyone’s Favorite PS4 Exclusive

An American Pickle, the new Seth Rogen movie that debuted exclusively for HBO Max on August 6, has received mixed reviews that trend mildly positive. It’s a film about a man who gets preserved in a vat of pickles for 100 years and then has to connect with his great-grandson in modern-day Brooklyn, but that’s not the weirdest thing about it.

One viewer noticed something interesting in the background of the film, and noted it on Twitter. At a bar that the characters frequent, there’s a game playing on the TV, and it’s the same one each time. It’s unusual for a video game to be playing on a TV bar at the best of times, of course, but what makes it even weirder is that the game is PS4 launch title Knack.

Here’s the tweet from Michael Leri noting the cameo.

The game, which launched in 2013, has become a bit of a meme over time. The launch title received a 4/10 from GameSpot, and is often the butt of jokes, with players ironically calling it one of the true greats of the console.

So why is Knack, of all things, popping up in the background of An American Pickle? Unless first-time feature director Brandon Trost decides to explain, we might never know.

Knack was eventually followed up with a sequel, Knack 2. It was much better.

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