FIFA 21 is seemingly making major additions to its Career mode, following years of criticism about a lack of meaningful changes.
Announced on the FIFA 21 website, EA Sports has highlighted 8 key changes and additions to the long-static mode, most of which seem to add more emphasis to the management side of the game.
The new Interactive Match Sim view.
Interactive Match Sim – The biggest change mentioned so far, this looks to be a stripped back management experience in the vein of Football Manager. You’ll be able to jump in and out of matches – to take penalties or free kicks, for example – while using the management view to make tactical changes as the game progresses.
Revamped Growth System – On a more micro level, this will let you take a more active view of your players’ development in training, and allow you to train players in new positions, for instance pushing a right back into a right winger.
Match Sharpness – This is an entirely new attribute that controls how well your players will perform in “crucial moments” – presumably, alongside fitness levels, this could result in a higher need for squad rotation.
Active Training – Tied into Match Sharpness, you’ll be able to organise group training sessions that improve players’ sharpness, including finishing or tackling training.
Activity Management – Another Football Manager-like addition, this allows you to manage how much training and how much rest your team will get between matches, balancing Match Sharpness with morale and fitness.
Enhanced Opposition AI – EA Sports says your computer-controller opponents will now act more intelligently when attacking and defending, and make more “informed” decisions, in order to keep the game fresh.
New Ways to Sign Players – Career will now offer Loan-to-Buy deals with optional or mandatory future transfer fees, as well as player swap proposals.
Set-up Options – Before starting your Career, you’ll be able to set elements that make the experience more or less realistic, including ‘Authentic Transfers’ (no specifics on that as yet), or getting a cash injection through a Financial Takeover.
EA Sports says a full reveal will be coming next month, but it’s an encouraging sign for those who’ve wanted updates to the game’s single-player elements.
FIFA 21 will be released on October 9 on PS4, Xbox One and PC, and will arrive as a next-gen game later this year – with a free upgrade for those who bought current-gen editions. As you might expect, there are multiple pre-order options – here’s our full FIFA 21 pre-order guide.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Rock of Ages 3: Make or Break is a carefree hop, skip, and jump through world history, art, and absurdist meme culture. One moment it’s 800 BC and the set is dressed in the myths of ancient Greece, the next it’s 1500 AD and the sun god gazes down on Tenochtitlan, then a bit later it’s the very beginning of time and everything is spaghetti and meatballs. It never dwells, never stops to make sense of it all. Historical figures pop their cartoonish heads into view for a brief visual gag before disappearing, bit players tossed aside in a bygone round of whack-a-mole.
Fittingly, Rock of Ages 3 is best enjoyed with the same restless approach in mind. Structured as a series of discrete challenges, each hectic bout of arcade action lasting no more than a couple of frantic minutes, it feels designed to be experienced in short, sharp bursts. Don’t linger. Dip in and, when you feel the frustration levels rising, dip out, move on to a new challenge, or simply come back later.
The core conceit revolves around the idea that all war, throughout all history, is essentially fought by lobbing rocks at each other. The Rock of Ages series has so far focused on one very specific interpretation of this idea: You have to roll a rock through a trap-laden obstacle course to attack the enemy castle at the end. Controlling the roll takes some adjustment. The initial temptation is to embrace the top speed of your chosen boulder and should be resisted. Move too fast and you won’t have the handling to steer through the crowded tracks, let alone slow down in time to make the next corner. Rocks don’t have brakes as such, and it took me some time to get used to easing off the accelerator when required and knowing when my built-up momentum was optimal to negotiate what lay ahead.
A couple dozen playable rocks are unlocked via the story mode, each sporting slightly different characteristics. Most are conventional variants–one’s a bit heavier but accelerates slower, another is faster but more easily damaged, and so on. But some opt for more novel traits, like being a ball composed entirely of sheep, its uneven surface adding some extra rock to your roll. To be honest, though, as charmingly silly as it is to unlock a new rock that is literally a giant stone cube, I found the default option (he’s a real all-rounder) the most suitable in almost every situation.
Courses are treacherous, too. Battering rams will bash you off the track, springboard traps will fling you sideways, cannons and catapults and tanks and trebuchets all launch their payloads in your direction, and various cows, bulls, elephants, and even people will do their best to impede your progress. Though you can destroy many of these obstacles by crashing into them at the right angle and with enough speed, you’ll sustain damage in doing so and run the risk of not being able to complete the circuit.
Instead, all obstacles are best avoided by charting a nimble passage between, around, or occasionally over the top of whatever’s in your way. Running the gauntlet through a particularly dangerous section of track and emerging unscathed feels exhilarating, as if you’ve pulled off an instinctual stunt-driving masterclass full of death-defying near-misses and escapes by the seat of your pants.
Screw up your run and that exhilaration can turn to frustration. It can be funny to round a corner and run straight into a large frog that bounces you back the way you came, or crash through a wall only to trigger a springboard trap that throws you off the track. Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh. However, I found such gallows humour would swiftly give way to bitterness. Grievances pile up as a seemingly unavoidable chain reaction of catastrophe interrupts your flow–that frog bounces you back into an exploding barrel, the bull does its jump attack to immobilise you, and now you’re an easy target for the cannon–and your entire run lies in ruins. The game’s turned against you and soon every little bump is a grave annoyance, exemplary of an unjust world.
It’s not that these things are capricious or arbitrary. The injustice isn’t a result of a random roll. Hit that bump at the wrong angle and you know it’s going to end poorly. Enter that series of S-bends too fast and you’ve only got yourself to blame when the sticky cows take you out. It’s more that the courses are so chaotic, so congested with angles and projectiles that it’s nigh impossible to calculate the correct trajectories and evasive manoeuvres on the fly. Get it right and it’s thrilling, even if at times you’ll marvel at how you managed it. Get it wrong–always the more likely scenario–and it’s exhausting.
Not helping matters is the maddening inconsistency of the respawn placement of your rock after a fall. The paths you follow are typically narrow and always edged by sheer drops–fall off and ideally you are reset close to where you exited the track. Sometimes it feels fair, returning you just before the corner that messed you up. Other times it drops you too far back, punishing you further by having to repeat a large section of the course against the clock. Yet other times it returns you too close to the jump you missed, and you find yourself having to slowly reverse in order to gain the longer run-up required. I ended up quitting out of countless challenges because I felt the respawn had robbed me in some fashion.
Rolling your rock, in all its alternately thrilling and aggravating glory, is the primary concern of the “Break” part of the Rock of Ages 3 equation. The story mode found here serves up six variations of your central gate-crashing objective that are just different enough from each other to alleviate any pent-up frustration. Keep failing at one and it does feel like a clean slate when you switch over to a new challenge.
The Time Trial mode makes a virtue of its stop-start nature. To beat the times necessary to earn a gold medal, you have to learn the courses inside out, a knowledge gained only through countless restarts. The skill ceiling here is towering, demanding precision control of your chosen rock as well as both the audacity to identify preposterous shortcuts and the thumbstick dexterity to pull off the moves necessary to traverse them.
I was able to secure a bronze medal on every course on the first or second time, but the silver remained out of reach on many, and the gold medal times still often look like witchcraft. Gradually I found I could shave seconds off my time by taking this line through those sections, by performing risky jumps to cut corners, or by clipping these pillars to help me change direction without having to reduce my speed. Mining the track for further secrets threw up several daring shortcuts I would never have noticed during a normal run, though I’m still honing my ability to execute them seamlessly. Even in the pre-release period, where the time trial leaderboards were populated only by a handful of developers, testers and reviewers, it remained thoroughly rewarding to see my new best time inch its way into the top 10.
In the main War challenge variant, you are also tasked with laying traps to prevent enemy rocks from reaching your castle. The field presents two identical courses: on one you’ll be rolling to avoid the enemy’s traps, and on the other the enemy will be rolling to avoid yours. Viewing the track from a bird’s-eye perspective, you get a couple of minutes to lay down your traps before you and the enemy are allowed to start rolling. Three runs are usually necessary to completely destroy the enemy’s castle, and so in between each round you get another chance to lay down some more traps to hinder your opponent’s run.
It’s a neat idea. The base course is the same for you and the enemy, so when you’re on your first run you can take note of the best–or rather, worst–spots to lay traps. When you hit a snag somewhere, it’s painful but also provides useful intelligence. Immediately you start thinking about how much worse you could make it for your opponent with a few cunning additions. Further, you are limited in the type and amount of traps you can lay, and there’s a genuine tactical element at play here as you survey the track and make interesting choices about which finite resources you’re going to deploy and where.
The War challenge can also be incredibly tense. The rounds aren’t strictly defined–you have to wait for a cooldown before you can start your next run, but you don’t start it automatically–so there’s a clever push and pull over whether to start your run now and get ahead of your opponent, or delay it a little longer while you keep laying down traps. There’s even a great siren sound effect to alert you to when your opponent begins their run, and a little picture-in-picture window showing you exactly where they are. Being able to witness the enemy roll into your carefully laid trap, or just completely mess up some innocuous jump, as you overtake them through the same section of the track is a joy that never grows stale.
More throwaway are the Obstacle Course and Skee Boulder challenges. The former has you race side-by-side with an AI rock through a course pre-populated with traps for both of you while the latter is a cleaner course littered only with points targets for you to hit and the chance of a bonus multiplier if you reach the finish line first. Neither possesses the depth of the time trials or the War challenge, and tend to expose the limitations of the AI’s rolling ability. The Break mode is rounded out with two even more underwhelming challenges. The Unit Challenge is a stripped-down version of War, limiting your options of one or two prescribed traps and rushing you through its planning and rolling phases in an unsatisfying hurry. And, finally, Avalanche presents just the trap-laying aspect, and asks you to prevent a dozen or so enemy rocks from breaching your castle. The more leisurely pace is a welcome change, but it’s simply too easy to beat, especially once you’ve clocked that the AI struggles to navigate certain traps more than others.
Away from the story mode of Break, Rock of Ages 3 also lets you “Make” in a comprehensive challenge editing tool. Here you can create your own course and, once you’ve proved it can be completed, upload it to the Rock of Ages 3 server to share with other players. It’s basically Rock of Ages Maker.
The scope of the terrain editor is impressive. You can click and drag to carve out a track, while another click and drag allows you to widen, narrow, raise, or lower it at any point. You can even assign nodes that make it easy to branch the track in multiple directions. There are different sets based on the eras depicted in the story mode with all the environmental objects, traps and obstacles are available for you to drop in wherever you like. It’s great that all these props are readily available, but it does mean the courses you build will look a lot like the ones in the base game.
Despite some fiddliness with selecting things amongst terrain of varying heights–an issue that also plagues the trap-laying aspects of the Break mode–it’s a powerful tool that makes it surprisingly easy and fast to build a course. I built my first, and admittedly slightly barebones, course in about five minutes. I was able to jump in and test it at the click of a button and it was actually a blast to play, even if I do say so myself.
The Make servers are already brimming with courses to sample, drawn I assume from the beta tests run earlier this year and likely the developers themselves. While I downloaded a few courses that were clearly someone’s first test level, I did play quite a few that were easily on par with anything in the story mode, though these did tend to be significantly more challenging. The only real downside of the Make tools are that they’re limited to relying on the same challenge types found in the Break mode–you can’t customise the parameters of the challenge or stretch the rules of rolling a big rock in more adventurous ways.
Together, Make and Break showcase the strengths and weaknesses of Rock of Ages 3 overall. At its best, it’s a thrilling and often hilarious ride through an imaginative and surreal landscape. At its worst, its formula is too rigid, its challenges too rote, and it can feel like your frustration with its idiosyncrasies could boil over at any moment. Thankfully, in such times, the bite-size structure comes to the rescue, and you can roll into something new.
After facing a lengthy production delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jurassic World: Dominion is back to set–with a record number of animatronic dinosaurs. Speaking on Collider’s Comic-Con@Home Directors on Directing panel, director Colin Trevorrow has said that Dominion is going heavier on the practical effects than either of the past two films in the franchise have.
“We’ve actually gone more practical with every Jurassic movie we’ve made since the first one, and we’ve made more animatronics in this one than we have in the previous two,” Trevorrow said on the panel. After taking a break from the franchise, with J.A. Bayona directing 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Trevorrow is back in the director’s chair for Dominion, and apparently borrowing from his predecessor’s work.
“J.A. Bayona really, he found the value in creating really photo-real, just beautiful lighting references that could be articulated just slightly,” Trevorrow said. “Just a head and a jaw that could move, but painted beautifully, hand-painted. We do it for all of the dinosaurs now, so when we put it into a space, you can see how the light reacts to the skin. Even if they ultimately do make that a digital animal, there was always something there reacting to the light in that environment.”
It sounds like a simple, low-tech way to improve the overall quality of the visuals–though more advanced technology is also helping the Dominion team use more animatronics on set.
“We finally reached a point where… digital extensions on animatronics will be able to match the texture and the level of fidelity that, on film, an animatronic is going to be able to bring. And you didn’t use to be able to really mix them. You could really see the seams. And so that part of it is very exciting for me.”
For many people in my generation, Spy Kids was a formative work of early 2000s entertainment–but it was also groundbreaking in its representation of a Latinx family. Director Robert Rodriguez has recently discussed how difficult it was for him to see that vision through, in a chat on Collider’s Comic-Con@Home Directors on Directing panel.
The casting of a Latinx family was more than just Rodriguez’s vision–it was personal, with each main character named after a member of his own family. Carmen was his sister, Juni his brother, and Gregorio and Felix both uncles.
“For me, it was a big victory, and it was an important one for things to follow, to have the kids in Spy Kids be a Latin family,” Rodriguez said in the panel. “The studio was like, ‘Why are you making them Latin, though? Why don’t you just make them American?’ And I was like, ‘They are American, it’s based on my family.'”
The story was partially inspired by his uncle Gregorio, the basis for Antonio Banderas’s character, who was the only FBI agent to ever bring down two different top ten most wanted criminals. “I wanted to make a movie about my family, cause I grew up in a family of 10 kids, a big Latin family,” Rodriguez explained. “But I thought, ‘Well, I should make them spies so it’s more interesting for people. So it’s not just about my family.'”
But the director still faced a fight over casting, with the studio questioning whether diverse casting would make the film’s audience smaller. “People think only Latins will go see it,” Rodriguez explained. “I said, ‘No, I don’t think so, I mean they’re only gonna speak Spanish as a kind of code when it’s cool. And they are American, they’re just Latin.”
“It wasn’t really convincing. I finally had to come up with a good argument,” he added. “Finally, I said, ‘Okay, you don’t have to be British to enjoy James Bond. By being so specific, it becomes more universal.’ So they went with it.”
As we now know, the films were a huge success that ended up spawning three sequels, and a recent CGI animated reboot called Spy Kids: Mission Critical. Rodriguez has been back in the spotlight lately for his work directing last year’s Battle Angel Alita adaptation.
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This Save State focuses on all things from the Xbox Game Showcase. The livestream kicked off with our first look at Halo Infinite gameplay. A cinematic opening fit for Master Chief began with a crash landing and took us into a mission on a massive map. Halo Infinite is confirmed to be larger than previous titles and Microsoft already spoke on brand new mechanics being added to the series. Multiplayer will be revealed in the coming months but other features like sprinting and the rumored grappling hook were shown in the gameplay.
There were also a variety of first and third-party games announced, like a brand new Fable, State of Decay 3, and Outer Worlds DLC. Fable’s announcement closed out the show but gameplay or a release date were not provided.
Other announcements gave us more information on games like Hellblade 2: Senua’s Sacrifice and Everwild, with new trailers and deeper looks into their worlds. And we also got confirmation that Destiny 2 will be making its way to next-gen through Game Pass.
There was even more details revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase and you can check it all out on GameSpot.com. While you’re there, stop by our store to purchase Play For All merch, the proceeds of which are donated to Black Lives Matter and COVID-19 Relief.
Halo Infinite has added a second composer. Developer 343 Industries confirmed as part of the game’s big showing that Ori and the Blind Forest‘s Gareth Coker has come aboard to co-compose the music for Halo Infinite alongside Curtis Schweitzer.
“We’re huge fans of Gareth, known most recently for his work on the Ori soundtracks,” Halo boss Chris Lee said in a blog post. “Gareth’s work can be heard throughout the campaign including one of my personal favorites we refer to internally as ‘Escharum’s theme.'”
Escharum is the new villain in Halo Infinite–he is the leader of the Banished. According to Microsoft, Escharum will be “one of the most formidable foes the Master Chief has ever faced.”
Music has always been a huge part of the Halo series, from the very beginning with the iconic score that Martin O’Donnell wrote at Bungie. The new score for Halo Infinite, at least going off what was in the eight-minute gameplay demo, appears to be carrying forward this legacy.
Coker and Schweitzer will work alongside Halo Infinite music supervisor Joel Yarger on the project.
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. Launch will be just the beginning for Halo Infinite, as 343 sees it as a platform that will be supported for 10 years.
Back at E3 2018, Microsoft announced an ambitious beta-testing program for Halo Infinite that would see developer 343 Industries invite people to test the game ahead of launch and give feedback to the studio. Now, the developer is scaling back some of those plans.
In a blog post, 343 boss Chris Lee said the studio remains “committed to building the game in partnership with our community,” but the company is making some changes.
“Given the unprecedented challenges of this year, we’re not quite where we expected to be in terms of broader public flighting,” Lee said. “While not the full program we had envisioned, we have been working very closely with the community on nearly every facet of the project.”
Some of the challenges that Lee is referring to here including the shift to a work-from-home setup for 343 and its development partners. Additionally, Lee said 343 has been impacted by the social justice movements taking place around the US and the world, with its team members taking time to come together and take a stand against racism.
Although 343 is scaling back its beta-testing plans for Halo Infinite, Lee mentioned that 343 worked with “confidential groups of community representatives” since the beginning of the game’s development to gather feedback around the game’s art style and story, while the studio also brought in community members to playtest the game.
While 343 can no longer commit to offering public beta tests for Halo Infinite, Lee said 343 is “assessing options for broader hands-on opportunities before launch.”
Lee also mentioned that there may be beta tests after launch given how 343 plans to grow and evolve Halo Infinite over time. “In fact, in many ways, feedback and community flighting will be even more important after launch as we partner together to continually evolve and update the game into the future,” Lee said.
343 sees Halo Infinite as a platform instead of game, and one that the studio plans to support until 2030 or later. 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.
9 Monkeys Of Shaolin | Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Despite being just two and a half levels long–with the half being a tutorial introducing the controls and story–I found myself growing a little bored during the 9 Monkeys of Shaolin demo. Developed by Sobaka Studio, the Russian team behind the underrated isometric twin-stick brawler Redeemer, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has this staunch air of familiarity to it: The story–in which Japanese pirates invade and pillage a remote Chinese country–echoes a similar set-up to Ghost of Tsushima and the control scheme is eerily reminiscent of (yet surprisingly simpler than) Redeemer’s. Even the enemy types and environmental backgrounds are familiar and generic.
And yet, after finishing the short demo and re-watching the 2018 announcement trailer, I was still intrigued by the RPG elements and excited for what’s to come.
9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a side-scrolling beat-em-up that put me in control of the fisherman Wei Cheng. The combat is simple yet fluid, with the controller’s face buttons performing one of four actions: kicks, slashing strikes, thrusts, and dodges. Every action can be canceled into another–for example, the three different attack types can be combined together or immediately interrupted by a parry move–which allows me to remain aggressive and reactive when surrounded by multiple enemies. Though the arsenal was limited, the short demo seemingly belies the depth 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has buried within it. There’s also online and offline co-operative play, which should make the combat even more chaotic during later levels, especially when you acquire new moves and better gear and magical spells.
With being a small, vertical slice of the final game, the 9 Monkeys of Shaolin demo is by no means indicative of how the game will look and play when it drops on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. But the demo does make the case that, if anything, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin will be an enjoyable action romp when played with a friend. — Jeremy Winslow
Watch out The Office and Scrubs, there’s a new show with a retrospective podcast on the way. Saved by the Bell is going to get the episodic breakdown in a new podcast called Zack to the Future and it’ll be hosted by none other than Zack Morris himself, Mark-Paul Gosselaar.
The news comes from Variety, which reveals Gosselaar hasn’t actually seen the show since he finished filming it over 20 years ago. Now, he’ll be rewatching the first season to break it all down. He’ll be teaming with co-host Dashiell Driscoll, creator of the web series Zack Morris is Trash.
In a statement, Gosselaar said, “For years I have been asked by the dedicated fans of Saved by the Bell to revisit the show. I couldn’t wrap my head around an idea that would keep the audience entertained and celebrate the beloved series we created over 30 years ago, mostly because I can’t remember a thing about making it, and I am thrilled to say I have found the answer.”
As for Driscoll, he seemingly could be more thrilled to make a podcast about Zack Morris with Zack Morris. “I’ve been told there are other TV shows besides Saved by the Bell, and someday I hope to watch one of them–they sound fantastic,” he said. “But until then, I’m so excited to return to Bayside and introduce Mark-Paul Gosselaar to Zack Morris, and to do so with [producer] Cadence13.”
The news of this podcast comes as Gosselaar is preparing to return to his Saved by the Bell roots. He’s been confirmed to be appearing on the upcoming reboot for NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, in which viewers will learn Zack has become governor of California.
The first episode of Zack to the Future will debut July 29 on all podcast platforms.
In case you’re worried about whether Season 2 will be the last you see of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, there’s some good news coming your way. The streaming service announced at Comic-Con@Home that the show has already been renewed! That’s right, Season 3 is in the works, before Season 2 even begins streaming. What’s more, work on it has already begun.
“Amazon, in a bold and historic push to expand their ‘weirdo’ demographic, has greenlit Season 3 of The Boys! The writers and I are hard at work in the (virtual) writer’s room and we’re sad to say, the world has given us way too much material,” showrunner Eric Kriokke said in a press release. “We hope to be shooting in early 2021, but that’s up to a microscopic virus.”
It was also announced during the panel that Season 2 would see the debut of an aftershow for The Boys, titled, Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys. The series is set to be hosted by Aisha Tyler (Archer) and will feature members of the cast and crew of The Boys. According to Kripke, Inside the Boys–which he assures fans is a double entendre–is “a deep dive into how we make this insane thing.”
In a statement, Tyler said, “The Boys is one of the smartest, most irreverent, unapologetically badass shows streaming. I became a fan during Season 1 and this season I’m stoked to be flying fans into the heart of the show as host of Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys. Season 2 is bigger, badder, and more audacious than ever before, so join me after every episode as we dig through the rubble pile of our feelings. I promise, we’ll get through it like The Boys–dysfunctional, but together.”
During the panel, the cast discussed the upcoming Season 2, which starts with the Boys themselves on the run, Homelander out of control, and Starlight “trapped” in her current situation within the Seven. Showrunner Eric Kripke spoke to the show’s biting social commentary, and teased that Season 2 will tackle white supremacy, white nationalism, and systemic racism.
Karl Urban, who plays fan favorite Butcher, teased his Season 2 storyline. “The end of [Season 1] was a complete game changer for Butcher,” he said. “It was a real paradigm shift. It changes everything going forward for him, you know–his objective through Season 2 is to really find Rebecca and rescue her, to get his wife back. And so if Season 1 was Butcher really focused on blind revenge for the perceived death of his wife, Season 2 really becomes about getting her and saving her, and the moral questions that arise from that.”
The Boys follows a team of misfits who want to expose corrupt superheroes, primarily the group known as The Seven. In the world of the show, they’re essentially the Justice League, but run by the world’s greediest corporation. The series stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capon, and Karen Fukuhara, among many others. Season 2 premieres on September 4.
