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NBA 2K20 is a game about playing basketball, but there’s also a surprising number of activities in the game that have nothing to do with throwing a ball through a hoop. 2K Sports already revealed all of the new activities in 2K20’s The Neighbourhood social space, and now a new trailer is showing off all the ways its loot boxes and gambling mechanics work with what resembles an actual casino.

The trailer, which almost feels like a parody, revolves around the card collecting MyTeam mode. By opening card packs you’ll hopefully get rarer and more highly rated players that can even evolve like Pokemon in this year’s game. By racking up wins in the reimagined Triple Threat mode, you can earn in-game currency, more card packs, and a chance to “spin to win!” for various jackpot prizes.

There are also ball drops where you get to watch a pinball fall through a series of pegs, hoping it lands on one of the color-coded platforms on the way down to presumably win some kind of player card. There’s also a literal roulette wheel and a slot machine, just in case the gambling mechanics weren’t already obvious enough. Each of these activities has appeared in the series before in some form or another, but dedicating an entire trailer to cheap games of luck is particularly tone-deaf.

The series has caught plenty of flack in the past for the number of microtransactions featured in both MyTeam and MyCareer. “Microtransactions are everywhere, and trying to advance without them feels nearly impossible,” our review for NBA 2K18 said. The in-game Virtual Currency flowed a little more freely in NBA 2K19, but microtransactions still loomed over everything. 2K even added seemingly unskippable pre-game ads in another move that rubbed some fans the wrong way.

Rather than temper controversy, NBA 2K20 seems to be embracing the contentious business model, which isn’t too surprising considering its microtransactions have proved to be incredibly popular. Whether wheel spins and slot machines constitute gambling or not when no actual money is involved is up for debate. But the result of these randomized games is sure to influence the lure of any available microtransactions if things don’t go your way. Not to mention the game is rated E for Everyone with only one slight mention of in-game purchases. Either way, marketing a game in such a way is more than a little disconcerting.

NBA 2K20 launches on September 6 for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. Check out our NBA 2K20 pre-order guide for all the info on pre-order bonuses and what’s included in the Digital Deluxe and Legend editions. You can also download a free demo for NBA 2K20 right now.

Update: Some tiny new images of Project Resistance have been grabbed using a YouTube video thumbnail grabber website. The last of the four images certainly seems to hint at a four-player cooperative game in the vein of Resident Evil Outbreak.

Original story continues

Capcom is unveiling a new Resident Evil project just prior to the Tokyo Game Show on September 9. Tentatively titled Project Resistance, little is known about the upcoming game but we do know that it’s coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. A teaser trailer should shed more light on what to expect from Capcom’s latest.

Following the teaser trailer’s reveal on September 9, Project Resistance will have a booth at TGS where attendees can watch members of the development team show off gameplay for the first time. There’s no indication on whether this footage will appear outside of the show floor, but residents of Japan will be able to get their hands on the game by advance registration.

The Resident Evil Outbreak website has been updated with a blank white screen that just says “OK” in the top left corner. This may prove significant, as the same thing happened to the Resident Evil 2 website prior to the remake’s release. Or it could mean nothing and this is just upkeep to maintain the web domain. Time will tell. A new four-player cooperative Resident Evil game would certainly be interesting, though.

All will be revealed on September 9 at 8:00 am PST // 11:00 am ET // 4:00 pm GMT.

Sega has officially unveiled the next chapter in the Yakuza series, which takes combat in a different direction to its predecessors.

Its full Japanese title is Ryu ga Gotoku 7, which roughly translates to Yakuza 7: Whereabouts of Light and Darkness – though its name in the West will likely be slightly different. Yakuza 7 is headlined by an all-new main character, Ichiban Kasuga, but the biggest shake up is its approach to how fighting plays out. The brawling action of past games is being swapped out for turn-based combat.

Gematsu has translated the Japanese press release which describes how the game uses a “”live command RPG battle” system that combines the series’ signature action with an RPG-style command system. It has evolved into a system in which anyone can easily enjoy exhilarating battles. In this completely new battle system, Ichiban Kasuga and his party will fight by selecting techniques with various effects such as attack, recovery, support, and more.”

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The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

Amid all the controversy surrounding the Epic Games Store that came to a head earlier this month, the digital game store has quietly continued to offer free weekly games for its users. Over the past few weeks and months, players have been able to claim critically acclaimed titles like Alan Wake, Hyper Light Drifter, Overcooked, and The Witness, and the best part is that they’re all yours to keep forever, no subscription required. This week’s offering of deals is no exception: For the next seven days, you can claim Celeste and Inside, two platformers with drastically different aesthetics but equally memorable stories. All you need is a free Epic account to snag the two titles.

First up is Celeste, a gorgeous platformer about climbing a mountain and conquering one’s inner demons. You control a young woman named Madeline, who has traveled alone to Celeste Mountain in the middle of winter, determined to reach its summit. As she climbs the mountain, she encounters a colorful cast of side characters who help (or hinder) her journey, including a fellow climber with whom she develops a close friendship. Celeste is an extremely difficult platformer, but also a forgiving one–there are settings you can adjust at any time to decrease the difficulty, even if it’s just to get past one particularly frustrating obstacle. Easily one of the best games of 2018, Celeste is a true gem worth experiencing.

A few weeks ago, Epic released Playdead’s Limbo as a weekly freebie, and now you can play the studio’s follow-up puzzle-platformer, Inside. Similar to Limbo, Inside features a dark, monochromatic environment full of dangerous traps and monsters. The protagonist is an unnamed boy, who must navigate this hazardous environment without dying (spoiler: you’ll die a lot) and eventually stumbles upon a bizarre scientific experiment. In addition to normal platforming elements, Inside also introduces a mechanic that lets the boy control bodies to help him solve puzzles. Just as in Limbo, there’s no dialogue and the ending is a bit open-ended, but it’s one you won’t soon forget.

Both Celeste and Inside will be free to claim until September 5, when they’ll be replaced by the next round of freebies, The End Is Nigh and Abzu.

Claim this week’s free games at Epic

Blizzard Entertainment is suing a number of companies and individuals involved in the making of the free-to-play PC and mobile game, Glorious Saga. The Overwatch developer alleges that the game is a “massive infringement” of its Warcraft intellectual property, stating that “they created a game whose content is almost entirely copied from the Warcraft games and related products.”

Polygon reports that Blizzard is seeking a court order to stop the infringement and maximum damages for the “serious and irreparable harm to Blizzard and its business.

“Defendants did not just copy a few discrete elements from Blizzard’s Warcraft games,” the company claims in the suit. “Every character in the Infringing Game was copied from a character from the Warcraft games, and many even bear the names of popular characters from the Warcraft games such as Jaina Proudmoore, Gul’dan, and Malfurion.” Blizzard is seeking “$150,000 per infringed work.” The image below is taken from the lawsuit, showing side-by-side comparisons between the offending character designs.

“Every monster, creature, animal and vehicle in the Infringing Game was copied from the Warcraft Games. Weapons, amulets, and other objects were taken straight from the Warcraft games, without pretense. Audio cues and sound effects from the Warcraft games were reproduced for the Infringing Game.”

The suit claims that the defendants have “profited handsomely” from Glorious Saga and its alleged copyright infringement. Even the game’s mobile icon recreates the cover for World of Warcraft’s Battle of Azeroth expansion, depicting a human and orc locking eyes while snarling at each other. Blizzard alleges that the use of Warcraft material was “willful and intentional.”

Five companies and two individuals are named in the suit, including Glorious Saga developer InstantFuns, and Sina Games–a subsidiary of Chinese software and tech company Sina Corp. Blizzard alleges that this isn’t an isolated incident for the developer either, as it claims the company also advertises various unlicensed mobile games using the names and characters of well-known IP, such as Yu-Gi Oh!, Naruto, and Pokemon. Glorious Saga is just “among the latest” to have done so.

Blizzard believes many of the defendants are simply shell companies created “as part of an overarching scheme to deceive Blizzard or members of the public,” with the two individuals responsible for running them also named in the suit. Each of the defendants is based outside of the United States, but Blizzard has chosen to file the suit in the Central California US District Court as each company conducted its business through US- and California-based companies, using Google Play and Facebook to distribute and market Glorious Saga to US customers.

Hideo Kojima’s not the only one handing out cameos in his games lately. The enigmatic game director is a guest voice actor in Control, the latest action game from the surreal minds at Remedy Entertainment.

Back in March, Kojima’s publicist tweeted out that the Metal Gear Solid creator was doing “some voice recording for the other Sam.” Now we know this was referencing Sam Lake, Control’s lead writer and the former face of Max Payne, as opposed to the lead character in Kojima’s upcoming Death Stranding. Not only that, but Akima Saito, Kojima Productions’ Head of Marketing, also makes a cameo alongside his colleague, providing the English translation for Kojima’s Japanese lines.

Multiplayer First discovered the very missable easter egg, noting that Kojima and Saito both appear in Control’s end credits.

The side mission in question sees Kojima play the role of Dr. Yoshimi Tokui. As protagonist Jesse Faden climbs inside what looks like a sensory deprivation pod, Kojima narrates a peculiar meditative experience involving the flavor of a bag of potato chips, conversations with trees, and an army of hostile forklifts. You can see for yourself in the video below–just beware this will obviously spoil the side mission if you haven’t played it yet.

It’s a suitably surreal cameo considering the game it occurs in and Kojima’s own penchant for the bizarre.

You can read GameSpot’s review of Control right now, check out how long it takes to beat, and even grab a copy for $10 off on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

The Nintendo Switch is home to a ton of hidden gems, but one that you may have overlooked is Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, a charming sushi-matching puzzler from Nintendo and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy developer Indieszero. If you’ve missed out on the game, you have a chance to right that wrong and pick it up for a fraction of its usual price thanks to this fantastic deal.

As spotted by Cheap Ass Gamer, Sushi Striker is available for dirt cheap right now at Newegg. The game is currently listed for $12–more than 70% off its usual MSRP of $50–and you can drop that price even further to $6 with the discount code EMCTDVE22. Simply apply the code at checkout to get the extra discount.

See Sushi Striker at Newegg

Sushi Striker casts players in the role of Musashi, a young Sushi Striker who sets out on a quest to liberate the world’s sushi supply from the evil empire. The game features more than 150 stages, which unfold as fast-paced, plate-matching battles against the empire’s minions. The story is as knowingly ridiculous as it sounds, and the theme song alone is worth the price of admission.

We gave the game a 7/10 in our Sushi Striker review. “Despite its imperfect transition to Switch, Sushi Striker is one of the more enjoyable puzzle games in the console’s library. With a substantial campaign that’s propped up by clever mechanics and a charmingly ludicrous story, the game offers a wealth of single- and multiplayer content to dive into,” we wrote.

Sushi Striker is also available for 3DS. That version normally retails for $40, but Newegg has it listed for $10, and the aforementioned discount code will drop the price down to $5.

Pokemon Masters, the latest mobile spin-off of the popular franchise, is now available on iOS and Android platforms. It features teams of three “Sync Pairs”–notable trainers with their partner Pokemon–doing battle in a new region called Pasio.

The game is free-to-play with microtransactions, ranging from $1 to $80 for various bundles of the in-game currency, gems. Those can purchase you a chance at unlocking new characters, in typical gacha-style. Based on our hands-on impressions, though, the story mode appears to have plenty of depth outside of that aspect.

The game features 65 trainers from across the games and anime series, but the battles work very differently than you may have come to expect from past Pokemon games. You control all three of your team’s trainers, and the types and weaknesses are displayed in battle. The combat is also real-time with cooldown timers for your moves. In co-op you can use special “unity attack.”

Meanwhile, fellow mobile game Pokemon Go is still go-ing strong. On November 15, the next main series games, Pokemon Sword and Shield, will be released for Nintendo Switch. Check out how these games are changing battling.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 took the “go big or go home” approach to sequel design. Despite all of its bombastic, over-the-top action and world-ending stakes, however, the one scene that stuck with most people, and drummed up plenty of media coverage in the process, was the now infamous No Russian mission.

In the early campaign level, players control undercover CIA agent Joseph Allen as he attempts to infiltrate a Russian terrorist cell. Unfortunately, part of blending in with the villainous group means joining them as they shoot up an airport full of innocent civilians. You can choose to gun down the fleeing crowds of people yourself, or sit back and watch it unfold. Either way, playing through the scene is unsettling and uncomfortable, especially considering the sheer number of mass shootings that occur every year. Fans and critics alike have always questioned whether the scene was necessary to tell Modern Warfare 2’s story, and this division existed within developer Infinity Ward, too.

“No Russian polarized this studio,” art lead Joel Emslie says in an interview with Game Informer. “There was a side of the studio that felt that it should be played from the perspective of a security guard that got caught up in it, then there was the other side that liked the way it was going. I remember doing all the civilians for No Russian, and I just wouldn’t … there was a point in time where we were discussing how gory we would get with the people who were getting hit. I pulled back, and I said, ‘You don’t need it. People are getting tagged and their squibs are going off; it’s all good.'”

Emslie showed his wife and she was adamant the scene needed more gore, so he went back and changed it. “My wife looked at it and she’s all like, ‘Where’s all the blood and guts?’ and I’m like, ‘We didn’t need to do it,'” he explains. “She called me out. She calls me on my bulls***. It’s pretty funny. She looks at things in a different lens. She’s a lawyer. She doesn’t mess around, but she’s a good gut check on stuff.”

Based on what we know about the upcoming reimagining of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the next game in the series could feature similarly unsettling and controversial moments. Campaign gameplay director Jacob Minkoff, and studio narrative director Taylor Kurosaki, don’t think this will be restricted to one or two particular scenes, though. “People ask us that internally over and over. They’re like, ‘Where’s your blankety blank scene?'” Minkoff says. “There are so many of those at this point that people have stopped asking that question.”

“The answer is it’s the whole game,” Kurosaki adds. “I could come up with a list of like eight different things that it could be. Who knows what it will be.”

“I suspect there will be a number of different moments and people will call out their different favorite moments,” Minkoff says. “In the same way that in [Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare], people called out the nuke and the aftermath sequence where you crawl out of the helicopter, or they called out the AC-130, or Crew Expendable, or All Ghillied Up. There were a bunch of those, and I feel very confident that we have a bunch of those.”

We’ll know for sure when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launches for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 25.