With the release of the acclaimed Final Fantasy VII Remake, we’ve been seeing a ton of great deals around older Final Fantasy games, which is perfect timing for those who are itching to go back and play some of their favorites. PS4 and Xbox One players have sales of their own to take advantage of this week featuring deals on the original FFVII and later entries like X/X-2 HD Remaster and XII: The Zodiac Age. But if you’re looking to go further back and play some of the older Final Fantasy games, a new Square Enix sale offers discounts for those classic games on iOS and Android. You’ll also find deals on the Dragon Quest franchise and other classics like Chrono Trigger.
The sale includes markdowns spanning from the first Final Fantasy, which is just $4 right now, to the original Final Fantasy VII, which is on sale for $9. Several of these games regularly go for about $15, so it’s a good chance to grab some of these older FF games for less than $10. You can also snag the excellent Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions for just $7 (the iPad version is discounted to $8).
Besides Final Fantasy, the time-traveling epic Chrono Trigger is a full 50% off, selling for $5 on iOS and Android. You’ll also find a host of Dragon Quest deals, including Dragon Quest VIII for $15 (normally $20) and the earlier games for $10 or less. You can check out all the current mobile deals below. It’s unclear how long these deals will be available, so don’t wait too long if any of these games catch your eye.
From Burt Reynolds to Jodie Foster, we’ve uncovered 49 X-Files guest stars you may have forgotten about.
Scully, you’re not gonna believe this. Just in case you were worried that 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, the Pentagon recently released some actual, real-deal footage of UFOs this week–why not, right? Which, in addition to making us start to question the very nature of reality itself, prompted us to take a look back at one of the best sci-fi television shows ever made: The X-Files. We came for the spooky extraterrestrial content, but quickly realized there were a lot (and we do mean a lot) of famous celebrities in that show.
Beyond just launching the careers of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, The X-Files was home to dozens upon dozens of guest stars, many of whom were young unknowns at the time, playing one-off parts as supernatural creatures, hapless victims, or disgruntled FBI agents who were sick of Mulder and Scully’s bizarre theories. We trawled through each episode of the show to find a whopping 49 guest stars that you’ll definitely recognize today, whether they went on to star in some of your favorite (non-alien related TV shows), continued on to become A-listers in big budget movies, or were already A-listers to begin with.
Who were your favorite X-Files guest stars and who surprised you most on this list? Let us know in the comments below.
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1. Seth Green (Season 1 Episode 2)
Comedy mainstay Seth Green guest starred as an alien-loving stoner in the second episode, “Deep Throat.”
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2. Donal Logue (Season 1 Episode 3)
Terriers and Sons of Anarchy star Donal Logue showed up as an FBI agent and friend of Scully in “Squeeze,” the episode that introduced recurring (and super disgusting) villain, Eugene Victor Tooms.
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3. Felicity Huffman (Season 1 Episode 8)
Oscar nominee Felicity Huffman is better known for her career on Desperate Housewives, but in The X-Files she played a scientist trapped in an Alaskan outpost.
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4. Brad Dourif (Season 1 Episode 13)
Deadwood’s Brad Dourif played a psychic serial killer named Luther Lee Boggs in “Beyond The Sea.”
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5. Mark Sheppard (Season 1 Episode 12)
Supernatural mainstay Mark Sheppard played a pyrokinetic sociopath in the aptly titled “Fire.”
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6. Bradley Whitford (Season 2 Episode 9)
You’ll probably recognize him from hits like The West Wing and Cabin In The Woods, but before he was advising fictional presidents Bradley Whitford was playing a troubled geologist in The X-Files’ “Firewalker.”
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7. Terry O’Quinn (Season 2 Episode 12/Season 9, Episode 6)
Also known as Locke from Lost, Terry O’Quinn’s Lt. Brian Tillman would make two appearances in the show and later guest star in the first movie.
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8. Dean Norris (Season 2 Episode 22)
Breaking Bad’s Hank Shraeder, Dean Norris, played a role in the deeply disgusting “F. Emasculata.”
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9. Tony Shalhoub (Season 2 Episode 23)
Beloved character actor Tony Shalhoub played a riff on Bruce Banner in “Soft Light” where he was a mild-mannered scientist named Dr. Banton who was irradiated in an experiment.
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10. Jack Black (Season 3 Episode 3)
The man, the myth, the legend, Jack Black played a hapless arcade employee named Zero in “D.P.O.”
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11. Giovanni Ribisi (Season 3 Episode 3)
Known for his roles in Sneaky Pete and Avatar, Giovanni Ribisi played a troubled kid with an obsessive crush on his high school teacher and the ability to control lightning in “D.P.O.” He also murdered Jack Black’s character. R.I.P.
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12. Peter Boyle (Season 3 Episode 4)
The late Peter Boyle of Young Frankenstein and Everybody Loves Raymond fame played a reluctant psychic whose ability to predict the future came from his love of The Big Bopper in “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.”
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13. Ryan Reynolds (Season 3 Episode 13)
Before he was Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds was busy being a high school jock turned cult murder victim in “Syzygy.”
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14. Michael Bublé (Season 3 Episode 15)
Crooner Michael Bublé played an unnamed background character (no really) in the WW2 flashback parts of “Piper Maru.”
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15. Lucy Liu (Season 3 Episode 19)
Before her big break on Ally McBeal, Lucy Liu played the daughter of a gambler in over his head in “Hell Money.”
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16. BD Wong (Season 3 Episode 19)
Law & Order SVU’s BD Wong joined Liu as a detective investigating a supernatural gambling ring in “Hell Money.”
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17. Alex Trebek (Season 3 Episode 20)
Game show host Alex Trebek played a shady government Man In Black (who looked suspiciously like game show host Alex Trebek) in the legendary “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.”
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18. Jesse Ventura (Season 3 Episode 20)
Wrestling superstar Jesse Ventura joined Trebek as a Man In Black in “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.”
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19. Tom Noonan (Season 4 Episode 10)
Manhunter and Last Action Hero star Tom Noonan played a memento-collecting killer in “Paper Hearts.”
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20. Jodie Foster (Season 4 Episode 13)
Jodie Foster didn’t actually make an on-screen cameo, but she did provide the voice for a cursed tattoo in “Never Again.”
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21. Richard Belzer (Season 5 Episode 3)
Unofficially crossing the X-Files over with Law & Order SVU, Richard Belzer guest starred as Det. John Munch. Talk about a cinematic shared universe.
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22. Jerry Springer (Season 5 Episode 5)
Talk show host Jerry Springer played himself in the wildly funny “Post-Modern Prometheus.”
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23. Luke Wilson (Season 5 Episode 12)
Young Luke Wilson appeared as Sheriff Hartwell in the vampire-comedy episode, “Bad Blood.”
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24. Bryan Cranston (Season 6 Episode 2)
Walter White himself, Bryan Cranston, guest starred as Patrick Crump, a man suffering a strange affliction causing him to drive west or die in “Drive.”
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25. Lily Tomlin (Season 6 Episode 6)
Comedian and actor Lily Tomlin played a ghost named Lyda in “How The Ghosts Stole Christmas.”
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26. Bruce Campbell (Season 6 Episode 7)
Horror legend Bruce Campbell played a man who may or may not have fathered a demonic baby in “Terms Of Endearment.”
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27. Jesse L. Martin (Season 6 Episode 19)
The Flash’s Jesse L. Martin played an extraterrestrial baseball player in “The Unnatural.”
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28. Jim Beaver (Season 6 Episode 21)
Before he was in Deadwood and Supernatural, Jim Beaver had a bit part as a coroner in “Field Trip.”
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29. Lance Henriksen (Season 7 Episode 4)
In an episode that crossovered with creator Chris Carter’s other series, Millennium, Lance Henriksen, aka Bishop from Aliens, appeared as Frank Black.
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30. Octavia Spencer (Season 7 Episode 4)
Also in the Millennium crossover episode was Octavia Spencer, playing the aptly named Nurse Octavia.
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31. Dick Clark (Season 7 Episode 4)
Yet another Millennium episode cameo was legendary TV personality Dick Clark as himself.
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32. Ann Dowd (Season 7 Episode 5)
Ann Dowd of The Leftovers and Hereditary fame appeared as the mother of a supernatural teenager in “Rush.”
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33. Shia LeBeouf (Season 7 Episode 6)
Baby Shia LeBeouf appears in an episode about unlikely chains of events titled “The Goldberg Variation.”
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34. Constance Zimmer (Season 7 Episode 13)
Emmy nominee and Entourage star Constance Zimmer guest starred in the hilariously ’90s “First Person Shooter.”
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35. Garry Shandling (Season 7 Episode 19)
Comedian Garry Shandling appears in the in-universe X-Files movie as Mulder for the episode “Hollywood A.D.”
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36. Tea Leoni (Season 7 Episode 19)
Bad Boys and Madam Secretary star Tea Leoni played Scully for the in-universe X-Files movie in “Hollywood A.D.” She was married to David Duchovny at the time.
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37. Kathy Griffin (Season 7 Episode 20)
Comedian Kathy Griffin played identical twins Betty Templeton and Lulu Pfeiffer in “Fight Club.”
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38. Rob Van Dam (Season 7 Episode 20)
Professional wrestler Rob Van Dam also guest starred alongside Griffin in “Fight Club.”
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39. Will Sasso (Season 7 Episode 21)
Mad TV alum Will Sasso played a man who accidentally summoned a genie in “Je Souhaite.”
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40. Danny Trejo (Season 8 Episode 6)
Cult favorite Danny Trejo played a gangster in Season 8’s “Redrum.”
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41. Zach Grenier (Season 8 Episode 19)
Zach Grenier of Devs played a medical doctor named Herman Stites in “Alone.”
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42. Lucy Lawless (Season 9 Episodes 1 and 2)
Xena herself, Lucy Lawless stars as an immortal super soldier in “Nothing Important Happened Today” parts one and two.
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43. Jane Lynch (Season 9 Episode 5)
Glee’s Jane Lynch played the mom of a rowdy teenager in the disgusting “Lord Of The Flies.”
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44. Aaron Paul (Season 9 Episode 5)
Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame was the main villain, a teenager who could control insects, in “Lord Of The Flies.”
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45. Burt Reynolds (Season 9 Episode 13)
Burt Reynolds played a fictional version of himself that also may or may not be the face of God in “Improbable.”
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46. Joel McHale (Season 10 Episode 1)
Community’s Joel McHale played a conspiracy podcaster named Tad O’Malley in “My Struggle.”
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47. Kumail Nanjiani (Season 10 Episode 3)
Comedian (and X-Files fan podcaster) Kumail Nanjiani played an animal control officer in “Mulder And Scully Meet The Weremonster.”
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48. Rhys Darby (Season 10 Episode 3)
Comedian Rhys Darby played the titular weremonster in “Mulder And Scully Meet The Weremonster.”
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49. Haley Joel Osment (Season 11 Episode 6)
Haley Joel Osment of The Sixth Sense fame played a haunted Vietnam vet in “Kitten.”
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
If like us you love anime, you’ll no doubt have thought about why video games do so little with the games based on them. This is especially true of the shonen genre, with franchises like Naruto, My Hero Academia, One Piece, and One Punch Man. Each of these properties presents fascinating worlds, charismatic characters, and interesting ideas that would work well as a game. And yet, in most cases, we keep getting boilerplate arena fighters.
In this video, Tamoor vents his frustrations with the state of anime and manga to video game adaptations, and remembers one particular example of it being done well. Why is he doing this? Because anime and manga deserve better, and he’s hoping that others out there might see the video and feel the same.
Admittedly, Dragon Ball FighterZ was an excellent recent example of an anime adaption done right, but it’s still buried under a pile of forgettable ones. Maybe if we complain loud enough someone will listen to our anguished cries for better anime games. Fingers crossed.
At the end of the livestream revealing the Viking setting of the next Assassin’s Creed game, Ubisoft announced the game’s official title: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. A full trailer is scheduled to release tomorrow, April 30, at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET.
As previously rumored, Valhalla takes place during The Viking Age. Occurring between the ninth and eleventh centuries, The Viking Age occurs roughly 100-400 years prior to the events of the original Assassin’s Creed. That could mean that this game will continue the origin stories of how the Hidden Ones and The Order of Ancients went on to become the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order, respectively–a narrative first started in Origins and continued in Odyssey.
The finished artwork revealing the setting for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
In the artwork used to announce Valhalla’s setting, a Viking warrior separates two different scenes. On the left, you see Viking raiders sailing in longboats and on the right you see Viking raiders attacking English soldiers. The Viking warrior in the middle is holding an axe, with the symbol of the Assassin Brotherhood engraved into its blade. Additionally, there is a raven flying over the shoulder of the Viking, which could suggest the bird takes on the in-game role of reconnaissance that the eagles Senu and Ikaros did in Origins and Odyssey, respectively. In Norse mythology, ravens are seen as the eyes of Odin–so getting a drone-like view of the world through one would fit into the Viking theme of Valhalla.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be the first new game in the series since 2018’s Odyssey. Instead of returning to the franchise’s typical annual release schedule, Ubisoft instead used 2019 to further flesh out Odyssey with two massive DLC expansions, Legacy of the First Blade and The Fate of Atlantis. Both DLCs were split into three episodes each and together all six chapters almost doubled the length of Odyssey’s story.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ latest update brought back two returning characters: the shrub-selling Leif and shady art vendor Redd. The latter operates a small merchant ship called Jolly Redd’s Treasure Trawler, which is the only place you can purchase artwork to donate to the museum’s new art wing.
As before, many of the pieces Redd sells are of…dubious origins, and since Blathers will only accept genuine works of art for the museum, you need to suss out the real pieces from the fakes before you make a purchase. This time, however, some of the forgeries are worth owning in their own right, because it appears they are haunted.
Since Redd arrived in New Horizons, players have been sharing clips of fake artwork they’ve purchased from him on social media. While many of the forgeries have subtle inaccuracies, some have apparently been seen doing unusual–and often creepy–things. We haven’t stumbled upon any of these in the game ourselves yet, but people have shared clips of paintings opening their eyes, while the fake version of the ancient statue levitates when touched. You can take a look at some of the fakes below.
Really makes you wonder where Redd gets his wares.
New Horizons is in the midst of its Nature Day event. Until May 4, you’ll be able to complete special nature-themed Nook Miles+ tasks and receive five times the usual Nook Miles as a reward. This week also marks the start of May Day. From May 1-7, you’ll be able to use a one-time ticket to embark on a special a May Day Tour, where you’ll apparently get to meet another returning character, Rover.
Picking up a new physical game isn’t as easy as it was just a couple of months ago. Shipping delays and low stock have emphasized the importance and convenience of digital games. Luckily, most games are available digitally on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. We’ve put together a list of the best digital game deals this week, and there are a lot of good titles up for grabs at discounted prices, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Outer Wilds, and Dishonored 2.
You can check out all of the best digital game deals–separated by platform–below. Also, don’t miss out on games you can snag free of charge; we’re keeping a running list of every free game available now. In addition to games, you can save right now on PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold subscriptions.
Best Switch game deals
Best PS4 game deals
Best Xbox One game deals
*denotes deal only available for Xbox Live Gold subscribers
Ubisoft has released a new video on the state of The Division 2. The video, below, sees the team discussing the upcoming Title Update 9.1 patch, connectivity issues, warhound convoy, and more.
First and foremost, Ubisoft has nothing to say about The Division 2’s upcoming raid. “We don’t have any information about the raid yet,” community developer Chris Gansler said. “My goal is to give you at least two weeks of a heads up so you’ll have plenty of time to look at getting ready for the raid and all that stuff.” Gansler went on to say that the raid should come packaged in Title Update 10, but there’s currently no word on when this drops for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
Ubisoft is continuing its investigation into The Division 2’s connectivity issues. Gansler said the Delta/Foxtrot errors should occur less frequently following a recent backend update. However, the Delta errors persist in general and the team is “currently struggling to figure out what the underlying causes [are].” There’s no word on when these connectivity problems will be fully resolved, but they are the team’s “highest priority.”
Title Update 9.1 is slated to drop in May, though Gansler said that “it might be mid-May, it might be a little bit later, depending on how tests are going.” Next week’s State of The Division 2 should feature a definitive release date, where the team will also talk about all of 9.1’s changes. Gansler said the patch will look at “NPC aggressiveness, NPC target accuracy, grenades flying around and hitting you all the time. So accuracy there as well.” The update will also include bug fixes and adjustments from player feedback.
Ubisoft is aware of the warhound convoy XP bug in The Division 2 but doesn’t consider the problem an “exploit.” Gansler said the activity, in which you’re tasked with taking down highly armed guards transporting a secured weapons cache, is “tuned too generously at this point.” The team is considering how it will change when Title Update 9.1 arrives sometime this May.
The team also talked about The Division 2 League, free gifts you can receive just by logging in before May 5, the manhunt targets, and more.
Ubisoft recently dropped Title Update 9 for The Division 2 across all platforms. The 10 GB update makes a number of changes to the looter-shooter, such as adjusting Named Items and Talents, implementing a new Exotic reconfigure feature, addressing a variety of bugs, and more.
Since its launch in late 2018, Fallout 76 has lacked one element crucial to the series’ identity. The series’ best moments predominantly involved stories of its survivors, the poor souls unfortunate enough to have been exposed to nuclear war and the horrors of its fallout. Fallout 76’s latest free expansion, Wastelanders, attempts to inject some of that humanity into the game by introducing human NPCs and their stories to the auburn hills of Appalachia, while also expanding upon available role-playing options. Taken as a separate part, Wastelanders represents some of the best Fallout content since New Vegas, but Fallout 76’s flawed structure and mechanics prevent it from shining.
It’s been more than a year since I played Fallout 76, and it’s likely that I’m not the only one returning from a prolonged absence now that Wastelanders has launched. This made me decide to start a new character in a bid to see just how much Fallout 76 has changed since then. Wastelanders’ changes are apparent from the start. After the tutorial, you emerge from Vault 76 to something new: Two human travelers, marking the prominent return of human life to West Virginia wasteland, greet you at the entrance to the vault. They mention a treasure rumored to be buried in the hills of Appalachia, which quickly leads you to a newly established bar under the management of Duchess and her party of ragtag brains and brawn. This alternative start to Fallout 76 is more gripping than the previous audio logs that initially introduced you to its world and serves to illustrate how Wastelanders’ content affects the rest of the game.
Initial tutorial quests take you through the broad strokes of Fallout 76’s survival elements and base-building, interspersed with contextual dialogue for each action delivered by a character you can actually interact with. The disembodied audio logs and impersonal robots of the original tutorial are still there if you choose a different route, but running through the same lessons while advancing a more captivating story in Wastelanders make Fallout 76’s opening hours more akin to a traditional Fallout adventure. It can be easy for brand-new players to miss this pair of human NPCs entirely, but for returning players their mere existence will quickly draw you to their new introduction.
The most welcome change is the addition of Fallout’s traditional nuanced dialogue and the associated decision trees. Using points that you pour into your SPECIAL stats (the range of role-playing traits including strength, charisma, perception, and more) you can instigate certain dialogue options that help you resolve situations in different ways. An early example featured an altercation between Duchess and a local gang of raiders. Instead of breaking up the hostile intrusion into her bar, I was able to use my character’s Perception skill to spot and call out backup hiding behind the enemies, letting them resolve the imminent conflict without having to pull the trigger. If you’ve played Fallout 3 or New Vegas in the past, you’ll be familiar with the system that Wastelanders uses here. Despite not iterating on a system that’s over a decade old, it adds much-needed personality and space for role-playing in contrast to the rest of Fallout 76’s quests.
It’s disappointing then that after its initial handful of quests, Wastelanders forces you to reach level 20 before you’re able to continue its story. This requires you to plunge back into Fallout 76’s original main questline, which is also required to contextualize the rest of the expansion’s story. The issue isn’t so much the ham-fisted timeline trickery that you have to ignore for the story’s events to make sense, but rather the older quest structures that you have to return to for an extended period. Wastelanders’ opening teases you with the kind of structure and storytelling that made previous Fallout games so captivating, but you have to see yourself through at least 10 hours of tedious pre-Wastelanders quests just to get back to it.
The whiplash of this switch is jarring. Going back to quests primarily relayed through audio logs is deflating, and the diminished sense of role-playing is prevalent. If Fallout 76’s original quests have been altered since launch, the effect isn’t significant. Many quests are straightforward: Move to a waypoint, kill enemies, pick up a quest item, and repeat. The lack of dialogue and decision-making in between makes the repetition even more noticeable, and it quickly reminded me why I was bored with Fallout 76 to begin with. At its worst, it’s incredibly frustrating. When robotic quest-givers attempt to poke fun at how you had to travel so far across the map just to end up having to make the return trip, it isn’t funny; it just reminds you that Fallout 76 understands its shortcomings and makes you deal with them anyway.
Once you reach the required level, however, the most promising parts of Wastelanders are ahead of you. You’ll form relationships with two factions as you decide on a way forward, giving you even more space to tackle dialogue with choices that have lasting ramifications. The two factions–a returning band of raiders and a docile settlement of engineers–work towards the same goals with different approaches. Siding with the Raiders, I was surprised to see a different take on the predominantly violent archetype from past Fallout stories. Meg, the group’s leader, expressed a clear understanding of how past Raider behavior was counterintuitive to sustainability, but still retained the tough-as-nails attitude required to cut it in the dangerous wasteland. This depth of character extended to my favorite pair in the Raider crew: a brash and energetic girl named Ra-Ra and her best friend Gail, a tall and powerful Super Mutant. Listening in on their friendly conversations or their comical teardowns of other raiders made small pauses in their camp between missions worth it, making me look forward to each next interaction with the pair.
This characterization that Fallout 76 initially lacked wasn’t just a hindrance to its overall world-building, but to its quests too. The later questlines in Wastelanders are fantastic, eschewing the reliance on combat and giving space to more variation. Whether it’s deciding how to infiltrate a brutal underground fighting ring, tricking security systems using a mutant, or navigating deadly traps left by a ghoul in his misguided attempts to rid himself from Appalachia, Wastelanders’ quests are consistently engaging, in spite of Fallout 76’s enduring issues with its gameplay mechanics.
Wastelanders’ quests are consistently engaging, in spite of Fallout 76’s enduring issues with its gameplay mechanics
But for an online-only game, Fallout 76 still makes playing with friends one of its biggest hurdles to work around. When you’re exploring the wasteland and taking on side quests, rotating public events, or just hunting for loot, playing with a party does make the monotony more enjoyable, but anything to do with main quests is still problematic. This is highlighted in Wastelanders’ new narrative spaces–areas where Fallout 76 intends for you to make lasting story decisions. These can range from small indoor areas, like Duchess’ bar, to larger dungeon-like encounters where major story missions take place. In a party, you’re given two choices: Either each player completes them alone or follows whoever the party leader is, forfeiting all of the meaningful decisions to them. However, Fallout 76 doesn’t make sharing these moments with your friends worth it, as progress is only awarded to the party leader. You’ll either have to complete each mission multiple times for each player’s story to progress or not play together all.
Playing Fallout 76, and by extension its Wastelanders content, alone is entirely possible, and it’s how I spent most of my time. But it’s also the most tedious way to play, as Fallout 76’s many survival elements require considerable amounts of time and effort away from its more engaging aspects. Hunger and thirst meters drain rapidly and negatively impact both your action points and health, while weapon condition meters will routinely run their course and leave you without your favorite rifle in combat. You can sustain yourself with raw food and dirty water in large quantities (if you have the medicine to cure any diseases and radiation poisoning), but for the most part you have to cook food and boil water at a cooking station. Similarly, you have to spend a lot of time looking for junk to break down into pieces to repair weapons and armor.
Fallout 76 still has some eye-catching settlements and dilapidated factories to explore, but for the most part I was too fixated on hunting down junk to truly appreciate the stories they tell. A lot of my time in Fallout 76 revolved around its convoluted in-game menus, shuffling around from one tab to the next to administer healing items or diving into separate menus entirely to repair my gear. The upkeep is a frequent bother. Without any meaningful tension or satisfying challenge to overcome, being forced to consistently engage with these mechanics feels like little more than unnecessary roadblocks. You can purchase repair and salvage kits with real money from Fallout 76’s store (I only found two in-game in 30 hours), and it does alleviate the tedium to an extent. But it’s hard not to wonder, then, how much of the survival frustrations are designed intentionally to push you in the direction of spending even more money on microtransactions.
Fallout 76 retains a heavy emphasis on combat, and it’s another facet that hasn’t changed all too much since launch. Weapons still feel cumbersome to use, especially if you go the route of specializing in melee combat. VATS, the tactical body-part aiming mechanic from past Fallout games, still feels out of place since the world around you still can’t be paused, serving more as an aim-assist that loses all semblance of its strategic roots. And the balance of combat is still incredibly confusing, with main quests presenting you with trivial encounters only to then thrust you into a scenario where enemies are almost immediately killing you. For such a large part of the overall gameplay loop, combat still remains one of Fallout 76’s weakest elements.
For an online-only game, Fallout 76 still makes playing with friends one of its biggest hurdles to work around.
There are still numerous bugs and technical issues in Fallout 76, affecting not only new Wastelanders content but older questlines equally. Some are small and inconsequential enough to ignore, like clipping character models and floating supply crates. Others are more difficult to ignore. I encountered numerous quest bugs that brought my progress to a halt, forcing me to reboot the game and start the entire quest again. On Wastelanders’ final quest, this happened three times at different points, which made what was meant to be a climatic heist into a frustrating exercise of hoping I’d reach the end of it. On top of that, Fallout 76 would routinely freeze and crash, as well as suffer severe frame rate issues and technical oddities like invincible enemies or freezing dialogue.
In many ways, it’s Fallout 76’s initial foundation that so severely holds it back from its most engaging content to date. Wastelanders is a clear return to more traditional and captivating Fallout stories, with characters and quests that give you room to role-play in a way the original quests lacked. But they still require you to dedicate a lot of time to survival mechanics that don’t reward your effort, and its frequent combat remains monotonous and uninteresting. Wastelanders introduces some of the best Fallout sequences in recent years, but you’ll have to dig through a lot of Fallout 76’s enduring issues to experience them.
Since launch, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been steadily growing in size thanks to its frequent, large updates. Following this week’s latest patch and additional content DLC owners of the game, Modern Warfare no occupies close to 200GB on any given platform.
Modern Warfare on PC currently takes about just over 180GB of hard-drive space, while ringing in at just over 185GB on PS4 and Xbox One. This follows two patches that went live on April 28. On PC these were combined into a single 32GB download, while it was split into a 12GB title update and additional 18GB DLC download on consoles. Warzone players on console could skip the latter of the two, reducing their overall download requirement and file size.
Downloading big updates has become normal for Modern Warfare players, so much so that developer Infinity Ward addressed it specifically in February. During the lead up to Season 2, Infinity Ward stressed that the large update size at the time (in excess of 50GB) would help reduce update sizes in the future, while also improving the game’s overall footprint on your hard drive. While 32GB is smaller, the game’s growing size is concerning, especially as it inches closer towards 50% of the total internal capacity of both the PS4 and Xbox One S.
Prior to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launching, Infinity Ward shared the PC requirements for the shooter, which included a recommended hard drive partition of 175GB. At the time Infinity Ward explained that this was to ensure future content updates had space to exist, but that estimate has already been exceeded following this week’s patch.
It’s leading to a lot of frustration from players, especially when Infinity Ward isn’t being clear as to why the game requires more and more space on consoles and PC alike. But if you plan on continuing you play online, there’s no other option. We’ve reached out to Activision for comment on Modern Warfare’s on-going update situation.
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