New Pokemon Go Event And Pokemon Now Available

Niantic has kicked off another in-game event in Pokemon Go. The Stardust Blast event is now live for a limited time. This event gives players a chance to earn twice the normal amount of Stardust for capturing Pokemon and hatching Eggs, and it’s scheduled to run until 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET on November 13.

On top of that, two new species of Gen 4 Pokemon have begun appearing in Pokemon Go. The adorable Water-type Buizel is now available around the world as a Raid Battle, while the pre-evolved form of Roselia, Budew, can be hatched from Eggs. The latter arrives at a fitting time, as Niantic recently rolled out the new Adventure Sync feature to most Pokemon Go players, making it much easier to hatch Eggs than before.

Stardust Blast isn’t the only event going on now in Pokemon Go. To celebrate the release of Ingress Prime, Niantic has made two new Shiny Pokemon, Cubone and Ponyta, available for a limited time. These Shiny variants are green and blue, respectively–the same colors and the two warring sides in Ingress Prime, The Enlightened and The Resistance.

Meanwhile, Pokemon Go’s next Community Day event is scheduled to take place this Saturday, November 10. The featured Pokemon this time around is the Gen 2 starter Cyndaquil, and if players manage to evolve it into its final form, Typhlosion, up to an hour after the event ends, it’ll learn the powerful attack Blast Burn.

Players also still have a chance to catch Giratina, the first Gen 4 Legendary Pokemon to appear in Pokemon Go. Giratina arrived as a Raid Battle as part of the recent Halloween event, and it’ll remain a presence at Gyms until November 20. If you need help adding one to your collection, here are some tips on how to catch Giratina.

Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC Lineup Has Already Been Decided, Says Director

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai has confirmed that the five yet-to-be-revealed DLC characters for his anticipated fighting game have already been chosen.

Sakurai tweeted this information, saying that the fighters were picked by Nintendo in conjunction with his input. After being flooded with subsequent recommendations for fighters by fans, Sakurai wrote “It’s great to dream about your favorite character joining the battle and I appreciate your passion, but please try to stay on topic when replying to tweets and refrain from flooding us, and other users, with requests.”

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No Plans For Warcraft 4, Says Blizzard

Blizzard senior producer Pete Stilwell has revealed that there are currently no plans to develop Warcraft IV. However, a sequel to Blizzard’s acclaimed real-time strategy series is possible, and the BlizzCon 2018 announcement of Warcraft III: Reforged proves the developer hasn’t completely abandoned the series.

“I mean, I wouldn’t rule anything out, but we don’t have any plans around [Warcraft IV] at this point. Getting [Warcraft III: Reforged] right, I think, is our priority first and foremost,” Stilwell told GameSpot in an interview. Reforged, a remaster of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its The Frozen Throne expansion, aims to appeal to fans of the franchise’s earlier real-time strategy days. Stilwell’s words reinforce what Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void producer Tim Morten had to say about Warcraft’s future.

Reforged features remodeled characters and animations, as well as remastered maps and campaigns. The UI and world editor have also both been upgraded, and Reforged features 4K support. A Spoils of War edition–that unlocks special in-game content for Diablo III, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft–is now available for pre-order.

Warcraft III first released in July 2002, about two years before the debut of the massive-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Other than a few Warcraft-themed additions in Heroes of the Storm, fans of the real-time strategy series haven’t seen any major announcements since the release of 2003’s The Frozen Throne. It looks like they’ll have to wait a little longer for any possibility of Warcraft IV.

New Overwatch Toys Announced At BlizzCon 2018

During BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard announced new Overwatch-themed toys and Lego sets. The products will be made available for purchase in 2019.

“Throughout 2018 our goal has been to give fans an abundance of new ways to express their affinity for their favorite Blizzard games, and it was exciting to be able to showcase our plans for 2019 and beyond today at BlizzCon,” said Blizzard vice president of global consumer products Matthew Beecher. “We cherish these game worlds as much as our players do, and today’s reveals helped put a spotlight on how far we’ve come, through our stellar partnerships, in developing toys and apparel that reflect that shared passion.”

There are six Lego sets in total, with the cheapest starting at $15 USD and the most expensive being $90 USD. The sets are called Tracer vs. Widowmaker, Hanzo vs. Genji, Dorado Showdown, D.Va & Reinhardt, Bastion, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar. All together, the six sets add figures of Overwatch characters Tracer, Widowmaker, Hanzo, Genji, Soldier: 76, McCree, D.Va, Reinhardt, Pharah, Mercy, Reaper, and Winston to Lego’s expanding line-up of block people. The Lego sets are scheduled for release in early 2019.

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Blizzard is also releasing a Nerf gun shaped like McCree’s Rival. The first figure in Blizzard’s new Overwatch Ultimate Figure line, Mercy, was also shown and scheduled for 2019. The Nerf gun hits store shelves in January 2019, and the figure is currently aiming for a spring 2019 release.

Undertale Creator Talks New Game Deltarune, Admits It’s Far From Finished

Toby Fox released the first chapter of a new RPG, called Deltarune, on October 31, 2018. Fox admits this three-hour chapter is all of Deltarune that he currently has, and the rest of the game is still years away from being finished. Which is a little disappointing, as we love what he’s created so far.

Prior to the game’s release, Fox wrote down his answers to questions about the new game that he thought people might have. He released his answers only after Deltarune: Chapter 1 came out, so his opinion on certain aspects of the game’s development might have changed in response to the positive reception.

Regarding when when fans can expect the next chapter, Fox said that Chapter 1 took “a few years” to make, which is longer than development of Undertale‘s demo. As of right now, Fox doesn’t want to spend more than seven years on any one project, so finishing Deltarune is “actually impossible” unless he recruits more people. “So I’m going to try making a team,” Fox said. “Because I really want to make this. But I may not be able to succeed because I have no experience successfully directing a team and I have no idea who I’m going to work with.”

Fox currently has no timetable for Deltarune, but he promises that he’ll release all the chapters at once if the game is made. “I’m not doing pre-orders because I don’t like those,” he added. “It just seems like the best way not to burn anybody.”

In his Q&A, Fox also addresses whether or not Deltarune will have multiple endings like Undertale. “No matter what you do the ending will be the same,” he said. He also iterated that Deltarune’s world is not the same as Undertale. Despite the two’s similarity in setting and characters, Deltarune is a game featuring “different characters, that have lived different lives.” He does add that Deltarune is “just a game you can play after you complete Undertale” though, so future chapters of the game might make more sense or take on additional meaning if you complete Undertale first.

The rest of the Q&A mostly deals with Fox’s own complaints with Deltarune: Chapter 1–namely the battle system–and his affirmation that he’s never going to use Kickstarter again. Fox took to Twitter after the Q&A’s release to thank those who helped him on Deltarune: Chapter 1 and clarify a few more details. Most noticeable is his tweet about his inspiration for Deltarune. Although Undertale came out first, Deltarune was the original game he wanted to make.

Deltarune: Chapter 1 is available for PC. Undertale is available for PS4, PS Vita, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Director Considering Options for Other Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 Titles

Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, has hinted that Square Enix is considering revisiting other entries in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7, which includes games like Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus and the film Advent Children.

Reported by Famitsu (via translations provided by Gematsu), Nomura was participating in a Q&A session for The World Ends With You: Final Remix when a fan said “I want to play Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7 again!”

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Ubisoft Is Making More Cinematic Adaptations Of Its Games

Ubisoft has announced live-action adaptions for two of its games. The developer is working on scripts for a TV series based on Child of Light and a film about the event of Werewolves Within.

According to Variety, both adaptions are a part of Ubisoft’s Women’s Film and Television Fellowship, a program conceived in 2017 to “illuminate female voices within the entertainment industry.” Both adaptations are being written by two of the fellows, Mishna Wolff and Tasha Huo. After being selected, both women were offered the chance to pick one of Ubisoft’s games to transform into a movie or TV series. Wolff wanted to adapt Werewolves Within while Huo picked Child of Light.

“[The game] kept popping into my head,” Wolff said, in regards to her decision to adapt Werewolves Within. “It was just demanding I tell a story.” Huo knew she wanted to tackle Child of Light before even starting the fellowship. “We love that the game centers around Aurora discovering strength,” Huo said. “I love video games and I’m passionate about them, but you want people who have never heard of these games to fall in love with them.”

“We were so thrilled with the outcome of this fellowship, it is exactly what we wanted,” Ubisoft director of film Margaret Boykin said. “We were so lucky to work with these two women.” Ubisoft is also putting together an upcoming movie based on the Rabbids games, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and the Splinter Cell games. The developer is also working on a sequel for 2016’s Assassin’s Creed and movies about Watch Dogs and Far Cry.

Child of Light is a 2014 platformer RPG where players take control of a young, selfish princess named Aurora, who one night falls asleep and awakens in another world called Lemuria. After she befriends a firefly named Igniculus, Aurora is told to collect the stars, sun, and moon and return light to Lemuria. She meets an odd assortment of individuals on her quest, and together the group of misfits mature and grow together. In our Child of Light review, we gave the game an 8/10, congratulating it on its willingness to “explore the dull ache” of woe and enjoying its “interesting and engaging” combat.

Werewolves Within is a 2016 spin on the party game Mafia. A VR title, players sit around a campfire in a small town meeting. Some players are secretly werewolves while everyone else are ordinary townsfolk. The werewolves must keep their identity a secret to win, while the other players use clues to try and deduce who amongst them isn’t really human. In our Werewolves Within review, we gave the game a 7/10, describing its matches as “hair-raising, pulse-quickening experiences” but wishing there was more there to get players to “return to the game.”

This Moment Changed My Mind About Red Dead Redemption 2

While playing the first handful of hours of Red Dead Redemption 2, I was coming to terms with kinda sorta…hating it. Rockstar’s sprawling western just wasn’t for me. It was too plodding, too deliberate, too time-consuming, and too dull. So many of the game’s systems seemed designed deliberately to keep you from having fun while playing it. No matter how much I liked the original Red Dead Redemption–a game I’d fully completed in 2010, despite a lot of the same sorts of issues–I was getting ready to let the sequel ride off into the sunset that is deleting it off my PS4 hard drive.

Then I hit one of the game’s best scenes (at least, so far), and it significantly changed my mind.

It’s not exactly an easy task to get to that scene if you’re already at odds with the game’s pace. It comes in Chapter 2, after you have gone through quite a few tutorial missions, learning about brushing horses, tracking and hunting game through the wilderness, and improving camp. Red Dead 2’s story isn’t in any particular hurry to pull you along, but eventually you spend time with all of the Van der Linde gang’s characters, and hanging around with them starts to become the story in itself. One mission sees you and your comrades mounting a rescue mission to save Sean, an outlaw pal who was captured by bounty hunters off-screen in the earlier Blackwater job that happens before the game’s start.

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It’s not the mission to save Sean that turned the corner for Red Dead 2. That’s another of those “fight a bunch of guys” missions common to video games, where you gun down a small army while ducking behind trees and random bits of wood to hide incoming fire. Red Dead 2’s gunplay isn’t especially engaging most of the time; leaving the game’s sticky aim assist on basically does the work for you, but turning it off makes picking out targets finicky and difficult. But the gang and I managed to clear out the bounty hunters holding Sean and secure his release, safe and sound.

One evening not long after rescuing Sean, I returned to camp to find everyone in good spirits. Dutch, the gang’s leader, declared Sean’s return a major victory, and before long, a full-blown party started. Scattered groups of people in the gang started pounding whiskey, singing, dancing, and conversing. The camp came alive as the characters cut loose and had a rare bit of fun.

The party scene is, so far, my favorite thing that’s happened in Red Dead 2. You can wander around, sitting by campfires and joining in as other members of the gang sing songs, to which protagonist Arthur doesn’t always know all the words. You can ask one of the women of the gang for a dance, and somewhat clumsily sway with her, or offer a quick dip. You can listen to a variety of interactions, including Sean drunkenly trying to convince one of the camp’s women, Karen, that he’s in love with her–and then to their tryst in a tent, where both break down in whiskey driven tears. It’s a moment that’s both heartfelt and hilarious, especially when Sean stumbles back out of the tent afterward and playfully calls Arthur a creep.

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The party lasts through the night, and while there’s not a particularly large amount to actually do from a gameplay standpoint, it’s one of the better moments in Red Dead 2 because it takes advantage of what’s great about the game: its characters. You spend the party just learning about the people who make up the gang, and time spent with them deepens the story moments and conversations that come later.

It’s nice, too, that for as much shooting and stabbing as you do in Red Dead 2, there are ways to interact with its world that don’t come at the end of a gun barrel. The games industry is full of triple-A titles that have huge, beautiful, imaginative worlds, but your only way of taking part in those worlds is to kill the stuff within them. For all that imagination, the reality of what games offer is usually pretty narrow: kill, or be killed. In Red Dead 2, there are at least these other opportunities, where interacting with characters is as rewarding as sticking them up or gunning them down.

Video games as a medium often still struggle in trying to tell compelling stories, specifically focusing on plot and action while relegating character development and worldbuilding to collectible notes and audio logs. Games often feel like their creators fear that if players aren’t constantly running from one battle to the next, they’ll stop playing altogether–there’s no time to waste on populating many games with people, even though the people within them are what make humans so interested in stories in the first place.

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Red Dead 2 isn’t afraid to let you stop and just spend time with its characters. The party scene has no real gameplay loop, there’s no achievement or trophy tied to it, and you can basically set your controller down for most of it. Red Dead 2’s confidence in its characters is such that the game is okay with you not playing for a bit, but instead just being there, in that moment it’s trying to create for you. Rockstar’s willingness to try to leave you in moments like that is refreshing, because so many games and developers aren’t. When other developers are looking at Red Dead 2’s success, I hope that’s the lesson they take from it.

SNES Classic And NES Classic Sales Number In The Millions

Nintendo has announced that more than 10 million NES Classic and SNES Classic units have been sold since both consoles released. First launching to high demand in November 2016, the NES Classic was cancelled in April 2017 and then re-released in June 2018. The SNES Classic released in September 2017.

During Nintendo’s financial results briefing, president Shuntaro Furukawa stated both Classic consoles’ success suggested there might be “even greater demand during the holiday season.” Furukawa did not discuss either unit’s future during the briefing, and did not remark whether this success might justify the creation of additional Classic consoles–for Nintendo 64 or GameCube, for example–or the addition of more NES games on Switch Online.

Nintendo has also released the updated list of the company’s global game sales data for both Switch and 3DS. The biggest change in the Switch list is Mario Tennis Aces, which shot up to the number six spot with 2.16 million copies sold, after being number 10 during the last update. The big four–Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 2–remain in the top, while the rest of the list has shuffled around a bit. With Nintendo adopting a pay to play online model for the Switch, it will be interesting to see if Splatoon 2 can continue to remain in the top four, or if it will be knocked out by another game in the coming months.

The full list of the top 10 games on both Switch and 3DS are listed below.

Nintendo Switch Global Game Sales Data

  1. Super Mario Odyssey — 12.17 million
  2. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — 11.71 million
  3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — 10.28 million
  4. Splatoon 2 — 7.47 million
  5. 1-2-Switch — 2.64 million
  6. Mario Tennis Aces — 2.16 million
  7. Arms — 2.10 million
  8. Kirby Star Allies — 2.10 million
  9. Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze — 1.67 million
  10. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 — 1.53 million

Nintendo 3DS Global Game Sales Data

  1. Mario Kart 7 — 17.04 million
  2. Pokemon X/Y — 16.29 million
  3. Pokemon Sun/Moon — 16.10 million
  4. Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire — 14.06 million
  5. New Super Mario Bros. 2 — 12.61 million
  6. Super Mario 3D Land — 11.96 million
  7. Animal Crossing: New Leaf — 11.69 million
  8. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS — 9.24 million
  9. Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon — 7.51 million
  10. Tomodachi Life — 6.20 million

Turtle Beach Elite Pro 2 + SuperAmp Gaming Headset Review

Be sure to visit IGN Tech for all the latest comprehensive hands-on reviews and best-of roundups. Note that if you click on one of these links to buy the product, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

The Elite Pro 2 + SuperAmp is the latest wired 7.1 surround sound headset from Turtle Beach (See it on Amazon). As its name suggests, this headset sits near the top of the company’s lineup and commands an unsurprisingly high price of $249; a $50 premium over the previous Elite Pro model. The reason for the price bump is because it now has surround sound and an included SuperAmp control unit. Unlike the previous Elite Pro’s Tactical Audio Controller (TAC), the new version swaps out a breakout box with multiple sliders for a Bluetooth-connected hardware wheel and a mobile app to streamline the operation a bit. The new Elite Pro 2 is offered in versions for either Xbox or Playstation, so PC gamers will have to stick with the older model, for now.

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