Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Purge Trooper Guide – Strategies For How To Beat Each One

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Beginner’s Guide – Tips To Get You Started

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order Review – The Friends We Made Along The Way

Star Wars games often feel estranged from the franchise that spawned them. Video games have gotten very good at capturing the aesthetic of Star Wars–the cold metallic angles of Imperial architecture, the powerful hum of a lightsaber, the electric snap of a blaster bolt hitting home–but can struggle to get beneath the surface. It’s the rare Star Wars game that reaches beyond how Star Wars looks to explore what Star Wars is really about.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the latest game in the canon, is one of the better offerings specifically because it tries to look beyond the trappings of Star Wars. It’s not just another Jedi power fantasy, although wielding the Force with skill and resolve will certainly make you feel powerful. Like the best Star Wars games, it’s one that adds to the ideas of the films and other material, exploring new corners of the galaxy while focusing on the core themes of the franchise: knowing yourself, fighting your own darkness, and braving adversity with the help of friends.

Friendship has always been one of the main drives of Star Wars, especially in the original film trilogy, and it’s the core of what makes Jedi: Fallen Order work in both story and gameplay. The primary relationship of the game is between Cal Kestis, a Jedi padawan in hiding in the aftermath of the Jedi Purge that took place in Revenge of the Sith, and BD-1, a droid entrusted with a secret mission by the Jedi Master that previously owned it. Once Cal and BD-1 meet, they become inseparable, working together as partners to solve puzzles in forgotten ruins, navigate alien environments, and beat back the Empire.

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The pair work throughout the game to complete a scavenger hunt created by BD’s last companion, Master Cordova. Before he vanished, Cordova locked away a list of Force-sensitive children throughout the galaxy that could be used to resuscitate the destroyed Jedi Order and challenge the Empire. He left clues to how to retrieve that list hidden in BD, requiring Cal and the droid to travel to various worlds, following in Cordova’s footsteps to free up BD’s encrypted memories.

Functionally, BD is Cal’s constant companion as he rides around on the Jedi’s back, and Cal regularly talks with the droid as they explore Fallen Order’s planets. BD also serves several support functions in gameplay. Most importantly, BD provides Cal with “stims” that allow him to heal himself in the middle of Fallen Order’s often-oppressive combat. He can also function as a zipline, unlock doors, and hack certain droid enemies to turn the tides of battle. BD is just enough a part of any given fight or puzzle that you’re always aware of his presence and his help, but it’s Cal’s constant interactions with the little droid that really build out their relationship.

You definitely need BD’s help and the upgrades you find for him throughout your journey, because Fallen Order can be punishing. It lifts a number of gameplay ideas directly from the Soulsborne genre; enemies are often tough-as-nails and can deal big damage if you’re complacent, whether they’re Imperial stormtroopers taking potshots or two-foot rats leaping out of burrows to snap at Cal’s throat. Fighting isn’t just about wailing on everyone with your lightsaber, but rather relies heavily on blocking and carefully timed parries if you mean to stay alive against even the most run-of-the-mill foes. You and your enemies also have a stamina meter to manage, which dictates how many blows you can defend against before you stagger, and adds a strategic element to duels. To win a battle, you need to whittle down an enemy’s stamina while blocking, parrying, and dodging to manage your own. Since every blow you sustain can be devastating, combat becomes an exciting, cerebral exercise in pretty much every case. You’ll spend a lot of time not only honing your parrying skills, but also making quick battlefield decisions about how you can isolate dangerous enemies or use your Force powers to even up the odds.

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You can only heal from a limited number of stims or by resting at periodic meditation points, similar to Dark Souls‘ bonfires, and using them respawns all the enemies in the area, which makes being a smart combatant even more critical. Killing enemies and finding collectibles nets you experience, which accumulates into Skill Points you can spend on new abilities for Cal. But dying costs all the experience you earned since your last Skill Point unless you can find and damage the enemy who bested you.

Though the elements of Fallen Order are Souls-like–it’s probably most closely comparable to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, in fact–on most difficulty settings, it’s far less brutal than From Software’s games. Fallen Order might be considered Soulsborne-lite, making use of the same elements but to a different effect. It’s tough, even occasionally frustrating, but not nearly so much as the games from which it draws its inspirations. That balance achieves something that feels essential to Fallen Order’s identity: It makes you a powerful Jedi Knight, without turning you into an unstoppable Force-wielding superhero. Ratcheting back on the Jedi powers (and forcing you to unlock them as you work through the story and deal with Cal’s past) helps Fallen Order’s take on the Star Wars universe feel grounded and believable–a place where people could actually live.

Your lack of overwhelming power also helps make the ever-looming Empire a frightening threat, even as individual soldiers comedically call out their own ineptitude in pretty much every battle. Cal spends the entire game hunted by the Inquisition, a subset of the Empire’s forces specifically tasked with exterminating Jedi. Because every fight is potentially deadly, running into the game’s specially trained Purge Troopers is always an event, and you’re forced not only test your lightsaber skills and timing, but to consider all the abilities at your disposal to make it out alive.

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The rest of the game often has to do with clambering around the environment and solving puzzles, not unlike Tomb Raider, God of War, or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Navigating the world is as much about using observation and problem-solving skills as your Force tools. Respawn’s Souls-inspired map design allows you to explore off the beaten path without ever really getting lost, and each planet is richly realized and fascinating to explore. The intricate pathways encourage you to wander off and visit each planet’s varied environments to see what you might uncover, and Fallen Order always make sure you’re rewarded with a bit of story, a cosmetic item, or even an optional miniboss fight.

When you’re between missions on planets, you’re spending time with Fallen Order’s two other major characters, Cere and Greez. They’re the pair who manage to save Cal in the early hours of the game when his Jedi nature is discovered by the Empire, and they put him on the quest to find the list of Force-sensitives before the Inquisitors can get their hands on it. Though the story is a little rough in the early going as Cal is thrown directly into the quest with little lead-up or explanation, Fallen Order’s story starts to excel around the halfway point as his relationships with BD, Cere, and Greez really start to develop. Once Fallen Order starts to invest in the interpersonal dynamics and deepening friendships of its cast, it really hits a stride–and its quest feels less like an elaborate series of tasks to fetch a MacGuffin, and more like an essential addition to the ongoing Star Wars saga.

It does take Fallen Order a while to get there, though. The first few planets are a bit on the dull side, rushing to get Cal on his quest through the galaxy without really establishing why you should really care. Until it starts to click later in the game as you unlock more Force powers, combat can be a hassle, especially at certain boss battles or chokepoints, when your last meditation point is some distance away and you have to navigate through the same chunks of the map over and over. And while parrying is an essential part of the game, at higher difficulties, the timing can feel finicky and unreliable.

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The game also loves to throw handfuls of enemies at you all at once, which can be overwhelming, and combat against lower-tier enemies is built to lock you into finisher animations in a lot of cases. Instead of making you feel like a cool, well-trained warrior, these usually just leave you open to some Imperial dork wandering up with an electrobaton and clocking you in the head. It’s only after you get enough Force powers to effectively control the crowds that these moments become more exciting than irritating. But throughout the game, there are always times when an enemy you couldn’t see because of the game’s tight targeting lock system gets in a cheap hit, forcing you to replay a fair stretch of its large, interweaving maps.

But especially as it wears on, Fallen Order becomes perhaps the strongest conception of what playing as a Jedi Knight ought to really be like. It’s true that Fallen Order borrows liberally from other action games, but those elements work together with Respawn’s combat and environment design, and a story that finds humanity in the Force and in its characters, to hone in on what makes the world of Star Wars worthy of revisiting again and again. Even with some rough edges, Fallen Order represents one of the most compelling game additions to the Star Wars franchise in years.

Stardew Valley’s Upcoming 1.4 Update Dated And Improvements Detailed

Stardew Valley has been teasing something big for patch 1.4, which developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has called the “everything” update. A new post on the Stardew Valley developer blog has gone into detail about what we can expect from patch 1.4, including additions that will be made to endgame romance plots, and when the patch will be live for the PC version of the game.

The 1.4. update is coming to the PC version of the game on November 26, 2019, and will add a “pretty big variety of new things” to the farming sim, which first released in 2016. The aim of this patch, Barone says, is to “polish” the game to a point where it completely matches his original vision for the game, introducing quality of life improvements and bug fixes that “will make the game more seamless to play.” Barone has promised that “nearly every aspect of the game has been expanded or improved upon in some way.” One example he gives is Wild Bait, which previously served very little purpose, but will now make it possible to catch double fish when you use it during fishing.

There will be tweaks big and small, including a new 14-heart event for every potential spouse after you marry them. This means that even if you feel like you’ve finished absolutely everything in the game, there will be more content to discover, including plenty of stuff that Barone doesn’t want to announce yet so that players can be surprised. Also significant is the addition of a unique screenshot function for the PC version, which will add the ability to take a screenshot of your entire farm, or any other area, from the options menu. This means that you can show off what your whole farm looks like without needing to stitch together multiple shots. There’s no mention of a similar functionality coming to the console or mobile versions of the game, which will be receiving 1.4 “a few weeks” after the PC release.

Barone is aiming for a simultaneous release across all systems, but there are some caveats–the PS Vita version will receive another patch to fix some issues with the current build, but no content beyond what was offered in 1.2, and there are no plans to bring multiplayer functionality to the mobile versions of the game. The 1.3 multiplayer patch has now come to every console, having recently made it to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game. Also interesting to note is the fact that the 1.4 update represents the first time Barone has allowed other people to work on his game. “I formed a small team earlier this year to help me continue working on Stardew Valley,” Barone wrote. The patch was developed with the help of two other people.

Now Playing: Stardew Valley – Multiplayer Trailer

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Pokemon Sword and Shield Review Discussion – NVC 483

Welcome to Nintendo Voice Chat! Pokemon Sword and Shield launch this week, and the NVC crew is here to discuss the good and bad of the next generation of Pokemon. The panel talks about the Wild Area, Max Raid Battles, some of the controversy surrounding the titles, and more. Then, they tackle your burning questions about Sword and Shield. In the news, learn about the Nintendo Switch not getting a price cut anytime soon, petting the dog in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Shovel Knight’s final content update.

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Xbox Scarlett Won’t Be “Out Of Position” On Power Or Price, Says Xbox Boss

Microsoft and Sony are both gearing up to introduce their next generation of consoles, and so far both companies are broadly explaining their visions for the next-gen of hardware. For Microsoft, that means committing to not repeating the mistakes of the Xbox One launch.

“I would say a learning from the Xbox One generation is we will not be out of position on power or price,” Xbox head Phil Spencer told The Verge. “If you remember the beginning of this generation we were a hundred dollars more expensive and, yes, we were less powerful. And we started Project Scarlett with this leadership team in place with a goal of having market success.”

Spencer went on to say that the company had discussions about whether to do another console generation “years ago,” and added that he personally thinks there will be more generations after that. Because of that calculus, he said, “We’re all-in on Project Scarlett and I want to compete, and I want to compete in the right ways which is why we’re focused on cross-play and backward compatibility.”

Microsoft has provided some information on the specifications of its next console and the Scarlett certainly shaping up to be on equal footing with its competitors. We’ve created a comparison between the Scarlett and PS5 to breakdown what we know about each piece of hardware thus far and how they compare to each other.

Now Playing: New Xbox At E3: Everything We Learned About Scarlett

Final Fantasy XIV Will Come To Xbox One, Phil Spencer Says

With X019 happening, plenty of big announcement have been made for Microsoft’s gaming platforms, including several Japanese games making their way to Xbox. A total of 10 Final Fantasy games will hit Xbox Game Pass, while Sega revealed three Yakuza games will debut on the platform as well. But what wasn’t part of the stage show was Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirming that Square Enix’s MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, will be coming to Xbox One.

In addressing the press at X019, Spencer said, “I wanted you to know, rest assured that we will be bringing that game [Final Fantasy XIV] to Xbox. We have a great relationship with Yoshida-san [FFXIV director] and we’re working through what it means to bring [to Xbox] a cross-platform MMO that they’ve run for years.”

While it may not come as too much of a surprise, since FFXIV director/producer Naoki Yoshida has continually said he hopes to eventually bring the game to other platforms, Spencer’s statement makes it clear that things are actually moving along. No potential release date or launch window was suggested, however.

In a previous interview with Yoshida-san, he told us, “My direction has never changed from the beginning when we started with A Realm Reborn: strive to have as many people play FFXIV on multiple platforms. Secondly, I want to allow people to play with their friends without any cross-platform limitations. I am still in discussion with Microsoft and Nintendo to make this a reality.”

FFXIV and all three of its expansions are playable now on PC and PS4; for more on why the MMORPG is important, be sure to read our FFXIV Shadowbringers review, post-mortem interview with Yoshida-san, and feature on how the latest expansion became one of the best stories told in franchise history. And for more on X019, check out our stories below:

Now Playing: FFXIV Shadowbringers – Holminster Switch Dungeon Trust Gameplay

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Full Match of Bleeding Edge Gameplay (Technical Alpha)

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26 Minutes Of Halo: Reach PC Gameplay

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Wasteland 3 Release Date Revealed, Coming To Console And PC This May

After acquiring InExile Entertainment last year, Microsoft confirmed during its X019 livestream that the studio’s upcoming RPG, Wasteland 3, will launch on May 19 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Before wrapping up the livestream, InExile boss Brian Fargo announced the game’s release date alongside a brand-new trailer that was incredibly chilling. The “1987” trailer, below, shows survivors battling computerized enemies in a snow-covered Colorado devasted by bombs.

Fargo, who is expected to retire after Wasteland 3 ships, said the game was designed as a standalone experience. He also confirmed that no previous knowledge of the Wasteland series, nor playing Wasteland or Wasteland 2, is necessary to jump into Wasteland 3.

Wasteland 3 was announced three years ago through crowdfunding site Fig. Since then, the project has surpassed $3 million and made an appearance at E3 2019. We were able to go hands-on with Wasteland 3, where we said the game is “shaping up to be a solid follow-up that maintains the level of choice and agency from its predecessor–while also really seeing the stakes with its increased production quality.”

Now Playing: Wasteland 3 – Live-Action Announcement Trailer

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