December has just begun and EA is already in the spirit of giving. The publisher’s Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville has received a holiday-themed update that includes new maps and modes, balance tweaks, and more.
The Feastivus Holiday update features a brand-new map for Team Vanquish, Ops, and Mix modes–Oozevoir. This map includes a springy pink goop that lets you bounce around for better vertical positioning. Other locations, like Giddy Park, have been reworked to fit into the holiday-theme.
You can earn seasonal costumes through Battle for Neighborville’s newly-implemented Festival Prize Map. Unlock holiday-specific wares like the Super Rare Abominable Chomper, Legendary Feastivus Master Engineer, and more by completing certain requirements on the prize map.
Actor Patrick Stewart narrated a trailer outlining everything available in the update. EA also released the patch notes for the Feastivus Holiday update, which includes a new “Casual” setting for free-roam regions, updates to battle arenas, the opening of Rux’s Emporium, bug fixes, adjustments to things like controller settings and aim assist, and much more.
Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville Holiday Feastivus Update Full Patch Notes
General
Added an all-new Map: Oozevoir
Updated Giddy Park’s loading screen to a winter-themed version
Added new Grandmaster Ranks to the game so character levels now go up to 50 (current top rank is 20)
Updated the Social Tab to show the Grandmaster Ranks of all players in Giddy Park
Updated the Player Rank plates to make them easier to read
Moved completed Free-Roam Region Medals to the bottom of the screen
Updated the last Weekly Challenges so they now give Rainbow Stars instead of coins
Added a Vanquish/Vanquished Ratio to the end-of-round scoreboard for multiplayer games
Added new UI icons for Character Perks, including attack, defend, speed, and character-specific perks
Turf Takeover
Decreased capture time for certain objectives
Made it easier to hit targets on the final objective in Goopy Gully
Free-Roam Regions
Added new ‘Casual’ setting, reducing the amount of damage players will take when at low health
Added a cooldown timer to region Bounty Hunts and Gnome activities
Giddy Park
Added two new Festivals: Feastivus and Snowday
New set dressing for each festival with “snow” terrain and visual effects
Added three new activities in Giddy Park for Snowday Festival in January – Treasure hunt, Bounty, and Coin capture
Battle Arena
Updated so that the last player standing will now get a spotting and 10% speed increase buff to help them fight the enemy team
Rux’s Emporium
Included the ability for players to now purchase Costumes, Gestures, Emotes, and much more
Included the ability for players to purchase Rainbow Stars for use in Rux’s Emporium
Major Bug Fixes
Fixed the Scoreboard so that it can now be viewed when the player is vanquished
Adjusted mouse sensitivity options to have a wider range, allowing the user to adjust them to a much finer extent
Fixed the heal beam so that it’s no longer canceled when its target sprints
Fixed the issue where players could get a completed challenge after re-rolling
Controller Settings
Increased max aim acceleration
Reduced scale factor (ramp-up) for aim acceleration
Options
Extended our max value for controller sensitivity
Extended our max value for controller aiming sensitivity
Extended our max value for controller aim acceleration
Aim Assist
Adjusted assist settings when set to low
Adjusted acceleration thresholds
Reduced multiplier when facing aim assist targets
Reduced aim assist when pushing sticks to extremes
Reduced base aim assist area when aiming at a target
PC Controls
Adjusted ranges and step values for mouse sensitivity
Motion Twin and Evil Empire have announced that additional content will continue to come out for Dead Cells in 2020, starting with a brand-new DLC expansion. Both teams revealed that Dead Cells will continue to be supported going forward, with about two years of content planned.
In Q1 2020, Dead Cells will get its third DLC expansion: The Bad Seed. In a Steam blog post, Motion Twin and Evil Empire write that The Big Seed “brings two new early game biomes and a big #$&%-off boss for you to bash your head against.” The Bad Seed will cost $5 USD.
When The Bad Seed goes live, you’ll be able to journey to The Arboretum, a location described as “tranquil” with “nothing dangerous of note.” The other location, The Swamp, appears to be much more difficult, described as a “putrid, tick-infested cesspool inhabited by spear-wielding, blow dart firing jerks.” The teaser image of the boss isn’t much, it looks like a purple vine (and possible eyeball) extending out of the muck, but there’s an assortment of spooking-looking, crucified individuals in the background.
In the blog post, Motion Twin and Evil Empire wrote that both teams want to make gameplay adjustments and add plenty of new content to Dead Cells, including balancing changes to “glaring problems” and “building out a bunch of new creatures and replacing some of the more tired types with biome specific beasts.” Both teams plan on adding new weapons, additional secret areas, and lore too.
Beyond this two-year plan, Motion Twins is working on two prototypes for brand-new projects and Evil Empire will continue to prototype new content for Dead Cells.
If you haven’t picked up Dead Cells yet, you should–GameSpot picked it as one of the top 10 games of 2018. In GameSpot’s Dead Cells review, Daniel Starkey wrote, “Dead Cells is a phenomenal effort to blend together some very disparate genres into a tight, cohesive whole. It’s one of the better examples of how to remix ideas without losing their individual strengths.”
Bungie’s Destiny 2Season of Dawn livestream showed off a few new things that are coming with the season, including its content calendar and new Sundial six-player event. It also confirmed an item that appeared in the Season of Dawn trailer that Destiny players have been wishing was in the game for a while: Sparrows on Mercury.
In Destiny 2, Sparrows are the speeder bike-like vehicles you can summon to help you get around in patrol zones, the open public areas situated on various planets. When it was added with the Curse of Osiris expansion back in the first year of Destiny 2, Mercury was a relatively small zone–so Sparrows were disabled, forcing you to walk wherever you wanted to go.
We’re headed back to Mercury for Season of Dawn, in order to use some time travel Vex tech run by Osiris, Curse’s main non-player character. Though the zone doesn’t seem like it’s changed too much outside the addition of the new Sundial activity, Bungie showed the ability to summon Sparrows on the planet during its stream. That’s going to make hanging out there a whole lot less irritating.
The stream also gave a few other tidbits of information. We saw the new seasonal artifact, the Lantern of Osiris, which will dish out several season-specific mods for armor and weapons as you level it up. Those mods are mostly focused on armor with Solar affinity, as opposed to the mods that came in Destiny 2’s last content season, the Season of the Undying, which were mostly aimed at Void and Arc abilities and armor. Undying’s weapon mods were also mostly for close-range, rapid-fire weapons, where Dawn’s play more with precision guns that function better at long ranges.
Bungie also showed some Sundial gameplay during the stream. The six-player activity includes a variety of bosses that will roll out slowly over the course of the season, and looks like it’ll include multiple encounters, similar to the Menagerie activity from the Season of Opulence. Completing it is part of the season’s story, which sends you to Mercury to stop the Cabal from trying to use time travel to rewrite the ending of the Red War, the conflict from Destiny 2 vanilla’s story campaign.
While Bungie showed off the new content calendar, it seems like it’s holding some things for the season closer to the vest than it did for Undying. We got a sense of the content that will roll out next season, but altogether, the calendar seems a little thin. That might be a result of Destiny 2’s seasons being a lot smaller than its major expansions, like the recently released Shadowkeep–but it also seems likely that there are some secrets coming next season that Bungie has yet to divulge.
CD Projekt Red is ending console support for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, the company has announced. In a post on the game’s official website, the developer explained it has made the decision to discontinue the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game in order to focus on the PC and mobile versions.
“When we launched the console versions of Gwent back in 2017, our intention was to provide console players with the same level of support as their PC counterparts,” the company wrote. “However, having just launched Gwent on iOS, and with the Android version coming, the number of supported platforms would significantly increase. Looking to the future, we do not believe we can support a growing number of different versions of Gwent while improving feature parity between them.”
Because PC and mobile are the most popular platforms among Gwent players, CD Projekt Red will continue to support those versions with new updates and content. The PS4 and Xbox One versions, meanwhile, will be “frozen” in their current state until they are discontinued next year. Players will no longer be able to make in-game purchases using real money as of today, December 4, and matchmaking on consoles will no longer be supported following an update on December 9.
While the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Gwent are being sunsetted, CD Projekt Red is giving console players the option to copy their accounts to GOG and carry their progress to the mobile and PC versions. This will be done through a website that will go live on December 9. Players will be able to copy their accounts this way until June 9–when the console versions will cease operation. Here’s how the developer explains the process:
“Starting from December 9, 2019, console players will be able to access a webpage where they can request to copy their progress from their console account to a new or existing GOG account. Since we do not support the ‘merging’ of accounts, we will only be able to copy progress to existing GOG accounts that do not have any Gwent progression on them at the time the request is made.”
This process will allow players to copy the following progress:
All collected ornaments
Other currencies
Cards
Deck lists
Account level
Current rank
Thronebreaker rewards
Contracts
On top of that, Xbox One players will be able to copy their Meteorite Powder; PS4 players, however, will not, as CD Projekt Red explains “transferring Meteorite Powder from PlayStation 4 to GOG.com is not possible.” The developer says it will share more details about the account-copying process when the website goes live on December 9.
Disney held a press conference for Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, and although the cast and filmmakers in attendance were mostly tight-lipped, J.J. Abrams did address his approach to the story following Rian Johnson’s controversial The Last Jedi.
“Because we had worked on Force Awakens…we had talked about quite a few things back in the day,” Abrams said. “So it was a bit of picking up where we left off. And the fact is that what Rian Johnson had done in Last Jedi had set up some things that were sort of wonderful for this story, one of the things being that the cast was separated. The characters weren’t together for the entire movie essentially.”
The characters are sure to come together again in the conclusion to this trilogy–and we have no doubt it will be immensely satisfying for fans. Abrams went on to discuss his process for coming up with specific story beats:
“We just started doing the thing that you do, which is you say, ‘What do you desperately want to see? What feels right?’ And then my job as the director was to make sure that all the pressures of all the obvious things–fan expectation, and studio [expectation], and all those practical, logistical issues as well, weren’t brought to set…we needed to keep the thing feeling as human as possible, and not like some massive machine.”
The panel included Anthony Daneils (C-3PO), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Naomi Ackie (Jannah), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), John Boyega (Finn), Daisy Ridley (Rey), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Keri Russell (Zorii Bliss), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Richard E. Grant (Allegiant General Pryde), director J.J. Abrams, writer Chris Terrio, and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy.
Kennedy shared some kind words about Abrams–including the story of how they met.
“I met JJ actually along with a filmmaker by the name of Matt Reeves when they were 15, and they had won a contest for movies that they had made, and I said to Steven Spielberg, ‘Why don’t we hire these two young guys to come in and take your home movies and clean them up, and give them a break, and see if we can’t give them a start in the business?'” Kennedy recalled. “So needless to say, for years, Steven and I watched JJ and his career just take off from that point.”
Billy Dee Williams, who returns to Star Wars with Rise of Skywalker to reprise his iconic role as Lando Calrissian, said he didn’t rewatch the classics before jumping back into the character.
“I have a lot of admiration for this young man called monsieur J.J. Abrams,” Williams said. “When I worked with George [Lucas], that was an opportunity to work with somebody who was really extraordinary, and here again I have an opportunity to work with somebody who is really extraordinary.”
Williams said he had worked with Abrams previously on Lost, and he described the filmmaker as “fabulously crazy.”
“This has been a great pleasure for me, coming back to do Lando,” Williams continued. “I didn’t think that it would happen. I just wrote it off, you know? And I said, ‘Well, I did what I had to do, and that was it.’ But when I got the call from J.J., and then when we met, I just sat there and I just chuckled, because I thought it was just a wonderful gift. So I’m a very, very happy human being right now. Thank you very much.”
The panel was hosted by filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who has seen Rise of Skywalker and had plenty of praise for it. At one point, she addressed Adam Driver as Ben Solo–then asked him whether it’s appropriate to call his character by his original name, or whether he’s fully rejected his past now and left that part of him behind.
“Yes and no,” Driver replied. “When people are actively trying to deny a certain part of their lives, I think they can do it pretty successfully. And it just turns into what is happening around them that brings it out of them.” He added that before filming Force Awakens, he and Abrams discussed making Kylo a character who wasn’t sure where he fit, and that echoed Driver’s experience being a new character in this well-established franchise.
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Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker – Official Final Trailer
Oscar Isaac briefly addressed Poe Dameron’s role in this movie, saying we’re going to see a new side of the character.
“He’s kind of always been a wild card energy,” Isaac said. “I remember J.J. being excited about dirtying up the squeaky fly boy image he has…I get to join my friends this time, and you really get to see the interaction with these three.”
Anthony Daniels, who has played C-3PO in every Star Wars film so far, said he’s starting to see the franchise from a new perspective now that he’s donned the golden suit for the final time.
“I am so close to it, and I say this, rather like having your nose up against the planet, you can’t see how big that planet is,” Daniels said. “And gradually now I’m beginning to get a perspective on it. And that comes from talking to fans–people who say what Star Wars has meant to them over the years.”
Actress Keri Russell plays a new character in Rise of Skywalker named Zorri Bliss. During the panel, DuVernay revealed that Russell, like Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma before her, keeps her mask on for the entire movie. DuVernay said she didn’t realize the character was played by Russell until she saw the credits roll.
“Personally, I love the mask,” Russell replied. “That’s my fantasy dream sequence–that I can see everyone…and no one can see me. That’s my dream. It’s a real power play, in a way.”
As the panel drew to a close, DuVernay asked Abrams one final, open-ended question: What does this movie mean to him, and what does he want it to mean to fans?
“I like to think that when you’re working on something [like this]…the truth is that there’s the movie that you know you are presenting to the world, and then there’s the thing that you’re doing–not necessarily secretly, but meaningfully,” Abrams said. “We live in a crazy world. We live in a crazy time, and Star Wars for me was about hope, and it was about community. It was about the underdog and it was about bringing people together and seeing all oddballs represented and the most unlikely friends and the most unlikely places, and the family you make is really your family.
“To tell a story that is, of course, a giant spectacle, and like you say, the blockbuster wrapping–but the thing that mattered to me most…is really the people who are sitting here and what you’re watching and the eyes of the characters and the heart of the characters…It really is about hope, and it’s about coming back to a sense of possibility about unity, and if Star Wars can’t do that for us, I don’t know what can.”
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker hits theaters December 20.
More games are coming to Xbox Game Pass for both PC and console in December, Microsoft has announced. Eight titles are coming to Xbox One this month, while PC players can expect nine games to be added to the service soon.
Star Wars Battlefront II will soon be getting Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker content and a new Celebration Edition that includes all past and upcoming free game updates and a ton of new customization options.
Revealed by EA, Star Wars Battlefront II: Celebration Edition will be released digitally on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC for $39.99 USD on December 5, 2019.
Existing Battlefront II players can upgrade for a discounted price of $24.99 and this new Celebration Edition includes all of the following;
Disney wanted Baby Yoda to be a big surprise. To preserve the secret, it held off on making Baby Yoda toys and merch until Star Wars: The Mandalorian began airing on Disney+. Now that we’re several episodes into The Mandalorian, the adorable alien baby is, as they say, out the bag. That means the toys are coming, including Baby Yoda Funko POPs, plushes, and more.
Unfortunately for fans of The Child (as the little cherub is called in the show) it seems these items are only available in limited quantities. Amazon has already sold through its initial stock of Baby Yoda Funko POPs, and Walmart is fresh out of the 11-inch plush. So if you want a chance to put the lovable creature on your shelf, get your preorder in fast.
Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire was originally released back in May 2018 on PC. A console version was due to arrive this year but, as it turns out, it’s going to miss 2019 by almost a full month. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions are now set to launch on January 28, 2020.
There’s still no word on when the Nintendo Switch version will eventually arrive, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too far off now that Obsidian’s old-school RPG is on other consoles.
As the name suggests, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Ultimate Edition comes with all of the previously released DLC included. There’s even a collector’s edition that’s bundled with a fetching statue of Od Nua and a couple of other trinkets. This will set you back $130/£120/€130.
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire – Ultimate Collector’s Edition bundle.
The original PC version was awarded a score of 8/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Deadfire is dense, and it isn’t a small game, easily dwarfing its predecessor in terms of scale,” reviewer Daniel Starkey said. “There’s a lot to do, and it’s easier than ever to get lost in the little stories you find, without following the arcs that the game has specially set out for you. Still, it’s worth taking your time. The richness of Deadfire takes a while to appreciate, and like the brined sailors that call it home, you’ll be left with an indelible attachment to these islands when you do finally step away.”
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Persona 5 Royal Release Date & Special Editions Revealed – GS News Update
Persona 5 Royal – Official Western Release Date Announcement Trailer
Top New Games Out On Switch, PS4, And Xbox One This Month — December 2019
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – Official Season One Gameplay Trailer
Some 007 fans have theorized that Rami Malek is, in fact, playing a rebooted version of Dr. No, the original Bond baddie from the 1962 movie of the same name, in the upcoming No Time to Die.
Several spectators have taken to social media to draw comparisons between Malek’s supervillain Safin and Joseph Wiseman’s Dr. Julius No, highlighting similarities and connections between the pair, though nothing official has been said on the matter as of yet.
From the outset, there have been some apparent parallels between the plot of Dr. No, the first film in the franchise, and No Time to Die, the final Bond film starring Daniel Craig as 007. In the original storyline, Bond was dispatched to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a fellow British agent, with the trail eventually leading him towards No’s underground lair. Whereas the upcoming plot sees Bond’s peaceful retirement in Jamaica interrupted when his CIA friend Felix Leiter tracks him down seeking help to rescue a kidnapped scientist in a mission that gives rise to “a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.”
