Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has made quite the impression at Gamescom 2018. Moving away from the dark-fantasy of the Dark Souls series, and even further from the macabre mystique of Bloodborne, the new stealth-action Souls game set in Sengoku Japan has some similarities for players familiar with From Software’s particular style, but also a number of big surprises as well. Releasing March 22, 2019, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be the next big step forward for the developers of the Souls series.
During Gamescom 2018, Lucy James and Tamoor Hussain spent some time playing From Software’s next big game, and they came away impressed, yet equally humbled by its brutal twist on the Souls formula. Playing as a resurrected Shinobi known as The One-Armed Wolf, he acquires a powerful, multiple-purpose prosthetic arm that aids him in his quest for revenge against a powerful Samurai and his clan. On the surface, Sekiro looks very similar to From Software’s past titles, however, there’s a number of big changes that will catch first-time players off-guard.
Much like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Sekiro has a strong focus on bringing players into dangerous environments that house powerful enemies, traps, and large beasts that can–and often will–take you out with ease. However, Sekiro takes more of a stealthy approach compared to other Souls games, emphasizing more on the experience of being a cunning ninja. By utilizing all the skills and tools you have at your disposal, which includes stealth-kills and brutal counter-attacks that can drop an enemy in one fell swoop, you’ll eventually gain the confidence to overcome what lies ahead. In our written impressions, we talked about the many challenges present in the Gamescom demo, which includes a massive snake, along with a dual against a large boss on a bridge.
It looks like more Fallout-themed beer is on the way. Bethesda owner ZeniMax recently filed a trademark application for “Nuka Dark,” which is the in-game drink introduced to the Fallout universe in Fallout 4‘s Nuka-World expansion. The trademark, filed on August 15 with the United States Patent & Trademark Office, covers all manner of boozy items. The Goods & Services line of the application covers, “liquor; bourbon; spirits; wine; beer, ale, lager, stout; beverages containing alcohol; whisky, vodka, gin, rum; liqueurs; aperitifs; digestives.”
As the Fallout Wikia explains, Nuka-Cola Dark is an alcoholic version of Nuka-Cola. It is really strong, carrying a 35 percent (!!!!) ABV in the game.
In 2015, Bethesda partnered with beer giant Carlsberg for Fallout 4-inspired beer that was simply called “Fallout Beer.” The new trademark filing suggests Bethesda is making a real version of Nuka-Cola Dark, and my oh my it would be strong if really has a 35 percent alcohol by volume.
Beer company Sam Adams recently launched a new beer called Sam ’76, and it would be a real shame if Bethesda doesn’t partner with the company for a Fallout 76 beer.
We have contacted Bethesda in an attempt to get more details. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on this very important story.
After four years and seven free expansions, Path of Exile is still like the free-to-play action-RPG version of a owning a vintage sports car. From the unforgiving combat to the piles and piles of randomly generated loot to the encouraged repetition, there is plenty to admire for those of us who remember the Diablo 2 era fondly. But in light of how far the genre has come, playing more than 85 hours of Path of Exile for this review also reminded me how high-maintenance and cumbersome it can be. In many ways, it’s a reminder of why genre conventions should change over time.
Path of Exile’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness is its sprawling, intricate, oftentimes unwieldy skill system. By allocating points into a web with hundreds and hundreds of passive bonuses, you can achieve very fine control over a character’s damage capabilities and survival potential. The best of these are special nodes that completely change your playstyle, like giving you 50 percent more health but causing spells to cost health instead of mana.
During Parsons’ tenure on the show, he has racked up “four Emmy wins, one Golden Globe, a voice-over role in the spin-off Young Sheldon, and choice gigs in film and on Broadway.”
DICE has received backlash since the announcement that women would be included in Battlefield 5. There are many who accuse the developer of pursuing an agenda, bending historical accuracy to jump on “the bandwagon” of gender and racial inclusivity. DICE executive producer Aleksander Grondal disagrees, even saying he wishes his team had initially included women in 2016’s Battlefield 1.
“I mean, if we were getting on the bandwagon, I created Battlefield 1, and we could’ve ‘jumped on the bandwagon’ that time around,” Grondal told GamesRadar+. DICE did eventually add female Russian soldiers to Battlefield 1 in the In The Name of the Tsar DLC, but women were not prominently featured in the multiplayer prior.
Grondal continued, “I think it’s a shame we didn’t [add women], because that perhaps would’ve been better for us. I don’t think it’s a bandwagon thing, I think it’s about gamers wanting to express themselves in different ways. If you take a look at Battlefield historically, it’s been about expressing yourself through gameplay, solving problems the way you want to, and these characters fall perfectly in line with that thinking.”
The Fullbright Company and Annapurna Interactive have announced that Gone Home is coming to Switch. First releasing in 2013, Gone Home is a first-person exploration game that rose to critical acclaim for its powerful story that addresses LGBTQ issues. [Update: Gone Home will not release on August 23 as originally announced. Instead, Annapurna says it’s due out on September 6 in both North America and Europe. The publisher teases, “We might have some additional news to share then, so stay tuned!”]
Gone Home puts you into the role of Katie Greenbriar, a 21-year-old woman who’s returned from overseas to visit her family’s new home for the first time. You find the Greenbriar house abandoned, with a note from Katie’s younger sister, Samantha, begging Katie to leave well enough alone and not snoop into what happened between her and their parents in Katie’s absence.
We think the game is superb, giving it a 9.5/10. In our Gone Home review, Carolyn Petit wrote, “Gone Home executes on its ambitions flawlessly. The things in the Greenbriars’ home take on an emotional heft as you come to understand the stories they tell, and although they’re absent, you feel the presence of the Greenbriars all around you. Gone Home is an important game because it does something games rarely do: it tells a believable story, grounded in the real world, that focuses on women and treats all of its characters, women and men alike, as complex individuals. But the reason to play Gone Home is not for its importance. It’s for the elegance with which its tale is constructed and communicated, and the captivating way that it makes you an active participant in peeling back the layers of one family’s ordinary lives as their home tells you their stories. Like many of our own memories, those stories cut deep.”
Gone Home first launched on PC, before getting Xbox One and PS4 ports in 2016. The Switch port releases August 23.
A new mode is on the horizon for the PC version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. As part of its “Fix PUBG” initiative, the developer is planning to introduce a “fervently” requested feature to the battle royale game next month: a training mode.
In this new mode, players will be able to leisurely test out different vehicles and weapons, as well as practice the various skills they need to succeed at the game, from parachuting to vaulting. The mode supports five to 20 players and is set on a new, 2×2 km desert map that encompasses a shooting range, several vehicle tracks, a parkour course, and even an open water area for aquatic vehicles.
“Training Mode was designed from the very beginning to have a living map–with room to introduce new areas as well as ideas players want to see implemented in the future,” Dave Osei, senior designer at PUBG Madison, wrote in a post on Steam. “We wanted to go beyond what players were asking for, so we didn’t want the map to be just a shooting range, but an open, living map where players can test a variety of skills to their heart’s content.”
PUBG Corp. hasn’t announced an exact date for when training mode will arrive in the game, but the developer says it is planning to launch it sometime in September. In the meantime, you can read more details about the proposed features and areas the mode will contain on Steam. You can also take a look at some screenshots of the new training mode map in the gallery above.
The “Fix PUBG” campaign was first announced earlier this month and will be a “months-long” initiative to improve the battle royale game by implementing common fan-requested features, bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and more. The campaign is set to run through October. You can learn more about the campaign on the Fix PUBG website.
When the first trailer for The Happytime Murders arrived, it was clear what kind of movie this was going to be. It’s a dirty version of the Muppets. What’s more, it’s from director Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson. The potential for something cool and different was obvious. The only question is whether the movie would hit the mark or not.
As it turns out, for the most part, it lands pretty well. The Happytime Murders is set in a world where humans and puppets coexist. When the former stars of a 1980s TV show get murdered, disgraced former puppet cop Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) and human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) are forced to work together to find the killer. It’s a pretty straightforward murder mystery that just so happens to be loaded with foul-mouthed puppets, lots of violence, and one wildly awkward sex scene.
Still, the story actually works. While it’s not hard to figure out who the villain of the film is, figuring out their motivations is a different story. The plot also opens up a world that would be very interesting to visit again in future movies, should that be in the cards.
As simple and interesting as the story is, though, there is one major problem with The Happytime Murders. This adult puppet movie is simply too adult. There is a certain novelty to the idea of puppets that curse, have sex, and do horrible things. In practice, though, it’s very easy to take the joke too far. Throughout the film, puppets and humans let the cursing fly so gratuitously and frequently that the impact of it simply wears off. It happens so often that it ceases being funny and instead seems like the movie is trying too hard to be edgy. How many times can a character drop an F-bomb in the span of two minutes before it means absolutely nothing? That’s something The Happytime Murders is keen to explore.
Likewise, with graphic content, this movie doesn’t seem to know when to stop. In the red band trailer, there is a sequence where one of the puppets has an orgasm that lasts so long it overstays its welcome a bit. Somehow, though, it’s even longer in the movie. There’s an audience for gross-out humor that will undoubtedly find themselves giggling at these moments in the film, but just a bit of restraint would have greatly improved the movie.
There’s still plenty to like about The Happytime Murders, though. Strangely, building this odd world where humans and puppets live together in something far less than harmony is where The Happytime Murders excels most. From the beginning of the film, it’s explained that puppets are seen as less than, and often subservient to, humans. They’re the target of verbal and physical abuse, and some of them spend their time and money in an attempt to transform their looks to appear more human, while others have bought into the idea that they exist only to entertain humans.
Chances are you’re not expecting the dirty puppet movie to examine racism in America at all. However imperfect a comparison it may be, though, it’s one of the things The Happytime Murders does well. What’s more, setting the film in Los Angeles, a city with a massive immigrant population, goes a long way in illustrating the divide.
The cast is another piece of the puzzle that fits well. While Melissa McCarthy is mostly doing the same thing she always does–yelling and falling down, while cursing–she somehow manages to have chemistry with a puppet. However, there is an odd running joke throughout the film that everyone thinks she’s a man. It might have been funny once or twice, but by the third, fourth, or fifth time that particular joke is revisited, it’s just tired.
The biggest standout of the of the movie is Maya Rudolph, who plays Phillips’ secretary Bubbles. She serves as a potential love interest for the former cop and manages to have many of the movie’s funniest moments, whether at her desk in Phillips’ office or out in the field helping to solve the mystery.
If you’re expecting to see some of your favorite Muppets in the film, you’ll be disappointed. None of them make cameo appearances. After all, the Muppets are owned by Disney. Still, it will be impossible to look at the puppets in this film without knowing they were designed by The Jim Henson Company. Likewise, Muppet veterans Barretta, Julianne Buescher, Kevin Klash, and Alice Dinnean make up the puppet voice cast.
In all, The Happytime Murders is a fun and very interesting film to watch. It’s as close as you’ll ever get to a Rated-R Muppet movie and sets up what could become a potential franchise that would be exciting to revisit–just maybe with a little restraint next time.
The Good
The Bad
A simple, easy-to-follow plot
There’s so much cursing that it makes the foul language mean nothing
The use of notable Los Angeles locations helps ground the movie
It’s not hard to figure out who the killer is
Its examination of racism was very unexpected
The puppet sex scene lasts way too long
Maya Rudolph blows the rest of the cast out of the water
Like 2016, 2019 will be a year without an Assassin’s Creed game. Speaking with GameSpot during Gamescom, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that his company will not release a new entry in the (usually) annualized franchise.
“On Assassin’s, we had a game
, and we have one this year, but we are not going to have a full-fledged Assassin’s next year,” said Guillemot. “It’s just because the team were
working separately, so we have two games now, one year after the other. But next year you’re not going to have a fully fledged one.”
There won’t just not be a new “main” Assassin’s Creed entry, either; Ubisoft also won’t release any sort of spin-off or smaller game. Instead, explained Guillemot, Ubisoft plans to extend this year’s entry, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, as much as possible through DLC.
