Fortnite: Chapter 2’s Season 4 costumes have some entertaining Easter eggs for players to uncover. Mjolnir, Thor’s magical hammer, can only be wielded by skins that it deems worthy. The hammer will transform into a boring pickaxe if you hold the hammer as someone else besides Thor or Captain America.
The hammer became a big part of Season 4 after it created a crater in the map last season. Players had to visit the crater while wearing the Thor skin in order to unlock it. Thor’s not the only one that can hold it–Captain America deemed himself worthy in both the comic books and franchise of blockbuster movies by picking the hammer up.
Other costumes have special accessories and Easter eggs as well, but they are limited to the specific Season 4 battle pass skins. Some players are disappointed; they wish they could use the special Marvel back blings and pickaxes with any costume.
Mystique, one of the costumes that unlocks later on in the Season 4 battle pass, lets players disguise themselves as other players they’ve killed. The camouflage doesn’t last long–it’ll go away if you travel too far from the scene of the fight. It’s one of several emotes that unlock alongside the battle pass skins.
“This battlepass is by far the best [..] in terms of innovation for cosmetics,” said Redditor Jonathan287. “All the different types of transformations with Iron Man, She Hulk, etc, Mystiques cool feature, new pickaxe animations, different new gliders with animations, amazing emotes, and pickaxes. This is by far my favorite battle pass.”
Star Wars has had a major presence in video games for decades, but the franchise is expanding to somewhere it’s never gone before this September: The Sims 4. During Gamescom Opening Night Live, EA announced The Sims 4 is getting a Star Wars expansion, Journey to Batuu, and it’s now available to pre-order as a bundle for PS4 and Xbox One at Amazon. The Sims 4 Star Wars bundle gets you the base game and the new Star Wars expansion for $40, so it’s a great intro to The Sims 4 if you’ve never picked up the game. If you already have the base game, you’ll be able to download the expansion on its own for $20 when it releases September 8.
The expansion takes your Sims to the Black Spire Outpost on the world of Batuu, which is occupied by both the Resistance and the First Order. Your Sim will have to choose which side to align themselves with, and as you complete missions, you’ll earn reputation points with the faction you’ve associated yourself with, which in turn affects how the locals react to them.
In Journey to Batuu, you’ll also collect parts to assemble your perfect lightsaber, with different hilt and kyber crystal options available at Savi’s Workshop, and you can earn rare pieces by completing missions. Your Sim can also purchase droids by collecting scrap metal around Batuu–once assembled, you can name your doid and it’ll follow you around, help you out on missions by searching crates or distracting foes, and even return home with you after your Sim leaves Batuu. Besides keeping your droids, you’ll also receive a bunch of Star Wars-themed updates in decor, home design, and recipes once you return to the normal Sims world.
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The Sims 4 Star Wars expansion: Journey To Bautu Official Trailer | Gamescom 2020
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The Star Wars expansion for The Sims 4 is only the latest video game venture announced for the popular franchise. Space shooter Star Wars: Squadrons releases October 2, while Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is slated for Spring 2021.
Fall Guys is getting a $50,000 Twitch Rivals tournament today. Top streamers from all around Twitch will be competing in ten rounds of the game show battle royale. May the best blob win.
The tournament kicks off at 1PM PT / 4PM ET / 6AM AEST on the official Twitch rivals channel. Big names like Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Edwin “Castro1021” Castro will be competing alongside their four-person squads.
On August 27 we got a special preview of the medieval content coming to Fall Guys Season 2, though it won’t arrive until October. New games where players need to dodge giant axes and push blocks in order to get over high walls, alongside special knight and wizard skins, are on the way. Developer Mediatonic hopes this keeps the hype around its game alive as the initial honeymoon phase wears off.
Just like every other major gaming event this year, Gamescom adapted its show to fit the current state of the world. Instead of filling the halls of Koelnmesse with far too many people, Geoff Keighley delivered Opening Night Live, a liveshow that showcased trailers, made announcements, and provided in-depth looks at upcoming games.
On this episode of Generation Next, Lucy, Jordan, and Tamoor sit down to discuss the major beats of the show. More importantly, they compare 2020’s Gamescom with 2013’s, which occurred shortly before the PS4 and Xbox One launched. They compare and contrast how Sony and Microsoft’s approached messaging around the launch of new generation hardware in both years.
And because you asked, GameSpot’s techspert Michael Higham also joins the show to offer some insight into how to buy a new TV or monitor for PS5 and Xbox Series X, so if you’re in the market for an upgrade, you’ll get some information on what to look out for before handing over your hard-earned money.
Generation Next is GameSpot’s weekly video show all about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Each Friday, join PlayStation Pro Tamoor Hussain, Xbox Xpert Jordan Ramée, and Console Connoisseur Lucy James as they discuss the biggest stories about the new consoles.
Mega Evolutions have arrived in Pokemon Go, giving players the ability to power up certain Pokemon into new forms. In order to Mega Evolve a Pokemon, however, you’ll need to collect that monster’s Mega Energy, which can primarily be obtained through Mega Raids.
These new Raid Battles having you facing off against a Mega-Evolved Pokemon, and they’re quite challenging. To help you out, we’ve put together this rundown on Mega Raids and rounded up some tips to help you conquer each of the new Mega Raid bosses.
What Are Mega Raids?
Mega Raids are a new tier of Raid Battles that will periodically occur at Gyms. These are roughly equivalent to Legendary Raids in terms of challenge, except they feature a Mega-Evolved Pokemon as the Raid boss.
If you can defeat the Mega-Evolved Pokemon, you’ll receive its Mega Energy, which you’ll need to Mega Evolve your own Pokemon. The faster you defeat the Raid boss, the more Mega Energy and other rewards you’ll earn after the battle. You’ll also get a chance to catch the Raid boss (in its standard, non-Mega-Evolved form).
Mega Blastoise Raid
Mega Raid Bosses And Counters
Currently, there are four possible bosses you can encounter in Mega Raids: Mega Venusaur, Mega Charizard X, Mega Charizard Y, and Mega Blastoise. Each is about on par with Legendary Pokemon in terms of their strength and CP, so you’ll need to team up with other players and bring the appropriate counters before challenging them.
Mega Venusaur
Like its base form, Mega Venusaur is a Grass/Poison type, which makes it weak to Fire, Psychic, Ice, and Flying Pokemon. Some good monsters to bring along when facing it include Ho-Oh, Charizard, Mewtwo, Metagross, Kyurem, and Rayquaza.
Mega Charizard
Mega Charizard Y also shares the same typing as its base form: Fire/Flying. Rock types like Rhyperior and Tyranitar have the biggest advantage over it, but Water and Electric Pokemon will deal super-effective damage as well. Good counters include Kyogre, Suicune, Swampert, Raikou, and Electivire.
Mega Charizard X, however, is a little different. This form is a Fire/Dragon type, so you’ll want to counter it with Rock, Ground, and other Dragon Pokemon. Rhyperior and Tyranitar are still reliable counters, but you can also bring along Dragonite, Salamence, Rayquaza, and other Dragon types–just keep in mind that they’ll take super-effective damage in return if Mega Charizard X knows any Dragon-type attacks.
Mega Blastoise
Mega Blastoise is a pure Water type, making it weak to Grass and Electric Pokemon. Venusaur, Tangrowth, Exeggutor, Raikou, and Electivire will all be especially helpful when challenging it.
Newegg is kicking off the weekend with an awesome gaming PC deal that knocks a fair chunk of change off its price. The ABS Master gaming PC is $1,300 (down from $1,500) and comes with a Steam key for the standard edition of the upcoming Marvel’s Avengers. This deal is only valid until September 6, and supplies are limited, so you’ll want to order soon if you’re interested. It comes with free shipping and can arrive as early as September 3–or even sooner if you increase your shipping speed.
The ABS Master gaming PC comes equipped with an i7-10700K processor, an RTX 2060 Super, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. That makes it one heck of a machine that’s capable of running most modern games at 1080p with high settings. It also comes with a 512GB SSD. I’d recommend buying an extra SSD if you want to store a lot of games on your PC at once. The ABS Master also comes with a keyboard and mouse.
Marvel’s Avengers, on the other hand, releases September 4. As for its specs, Avengers requires 16GB of RAM, 110GB SSD space, an i7-4770K processor, and a GTX 1060 graphics card. The ABS Master gaming PC more than meets those requirements, so you’ll be ready to go for its launch. Some of the unique features of the PC version include an unlocked frame rate, full customization of key and button mappings, and a 30GB high-resolution texture pack–the latter is included in the 110GB SSD space requirement.
We’ve seen a couple of betas for Marvel’s Avengers, but if you want to learn more about how it plays, check out our Marvel’s Avengers video breakdown. We cover every aspect of the game, including the gear and cosmetics systems as well as the single-player campaign and multiplayer.
Madden NFL 21 is a tale of two games, really. It introduces The Yard, the best new Madden game mode in more than a decade, situating itself nicely alongside the breezy and fun Superstar KO mode that arrived last year. But outside of these exciting inclusions that are well-suited for short sessions, Madden NFL 21 feels all too familiar, even for an annual sports sim. The tentpole modes that require a deep investment haven’t received meaningful updates, and the on-the-field gameplay doesn’t do much to move the series forward and is hampered by surprising technical issues.
EA Sports has done well as of late with recognizing that not every player wants to sink a dizzying number of hours into Franchise or Ultimate Team. With Madden NFL 20, EA added Superstar KO, a sudden death overtime mode where each player gets one possession. It returns in Madden NFL 21 largely unchanged, retaining its excellent high-stakes matches. With Madden NFL 21, EA has added a second casual game mode that is even better than Superstar KO.
The Yard is easily the most over-the-top game mode to ever appear in Madden. Inspired by backyard football, teams of six compete on an 80-yard field, getting three possessions each to try and score. You can play against the computer, team up with one or two friends, or see how you stack up online against other players. While it doesn’t feature NFL Blitz-esque hits, you can get really imaginative with the stripped-down playbooks. You’re allowed to throw unlimited forward passes behind the line of scrimmage, and many of the plays are set up to encourage this. Adding to this mechanic is the ability to snap the ball to any of your teammates. The Yard hinges on extravagant plays, as it requires you to move the ball 20 yards for a first down. Due to the limited number of blockers, there’s a delay before the defense can pass the line of scrimmage.
Where things really get interesting is the scoring system. After scoring a touchdown, you can choose to go for one-, two-, or three-point conversions, which require you to score from different yard lines. There’s a risk-reward element in play here, as you can lose by a decent margin even if you score three touchdowns. Bonus points are rewarded for passing the ball multiple times on a scoring play. The basic setup and chaotic variables in play create some of the most thrilling Madden moments I’ve ever experienced, and games typically only last around 20 minutes or less. It’s both brief and delightful, making it the antithesis of Madden’s long-running Ultimate Team mode.
Unfortunately, Madden NFL 21 begins to show its blemishes in the familiar modes. Franchise, once again, hasn’t received any noticeable improvements. It still gives you the opportunity to manage every aspect of your team over the course of many NFL seasons, but it’s essentially the same loop that’s been in place for the past few years, giving little reason to upgrade if you primarily play Franchise. This is particularly disappointing because The Yard and Superstar KO show that it’s possible to rework the best aspects of Madden to create an experience that’s fresh and exciting again.
Face of the Franchise: Rise to Fame, the single-player story mode, is the worst part of the package by far. EA Sports hit its stride with Madden NFL 18’s Longshot, thanks to a surprisingly moving cinematic story. Since then, the story mode has been altered significantly to give players more time on the sticks and less time watching cutscenes. This year’s iteration of Face of the Franchise attempts to reintroduce more narrative after last year’s lackluster Face of the Franchise: QB1.
It doesn’t work–at all. Rise to Fame is set up as flashbacks told to a reporter back at the high school where your legendary journey began. Of course, there’s a stereotypical brash starting QB named Tommy who gives you a hard time. Quickly, it’s revealed that the starter has a health condition that he’s been hiding, which thrusts you into the limelight in the second half of a game.
After playing a few games in high school, you pick to play at one of 10 NCAA programs, and your rival-turned-wide-receiver joins you. It flashes forward to your junior year when you’re told by the coach that you’ll split time as quarterback with your frenemy–yes, he wants to play QB again–in the upcoming season. The problem here is that your play on the field really doesn’t matter at all. Despite winning in blowout fashion in the two collegiate games I started, all of the cutscenes mentioned how the team was struggling. Even after winning the College Football Playoff semifinal in dominant fashion, I was benched in the first half of the National Title game for Tommy. The story only gets more ridiculous from there, but quickly leads you to the NFL, where it starts to play out more in the fashion of the traditional Franchise mode.
It’s nice that Madden has continued its focus on narrative modes that mirror offerings in NBA 2K and MLB The Show, but Rise to Fame entirely misses the mark. Unless you really want to guide a player with your name to the Hall of Fame, it’s not worth checking out–you’re far better off jumping straight into the normal Franchise mode. Groan-inducing writing, stiff animations, and a disjointed story arc make Rise to Fame every bit as lackluster as last year. Since there’s more of it here, it’s actually even more disenchanting.
The card-collecting Ultimate Team mode doesn’t fare any better than Franchise when it comes to new features. At this point, EA has added so many superfluous details that half the time it feels like you’re playing a tedious management sim rather than a football game. It also doesn’t help that Ultimate Team remains steadfastly committed to microtransactions, which puts players who don’t feel like spending money on digital cards at a disadvantage.
Though Ultimate Team has a long list of solo challenges that introduce you to the basics, they’re all relatively bland. Rather than emphasizing the mostly solid on-the-field simulation gameplay, Ultimate Team demands that you spend an inordinate amount of time in the menus micromanaging a growing collection of players with attributes that are often quite lower than reality. To get them closer to their real-life counterparts, you have to sink a dizzying number of hours into the mode, much of it spent completing mundane tasks and playing online against those who sometimes buy their way to a good team.
While there’s much to do in Ultimate Team whether you play solo against the CPU or online, nothing here moves MUT in a positive direction. Assembling and modifying your team is a monotonous task that forces you to examine a slew of different attributes in addition to a player’s overall rating to compose the best team possible. It’s certainly deep and filled with customization, but now more than ever, the dullness of it all is much more apparent.
Despite its shortcomings in the most prominent game modes, Madden NFL 21 still offers better on-the-field gameplay than in previous years–most of the time. The biggest change I noticed came with run defense. Last year, the run game was far too challenging to stop, but this time CPU defenders smartly fill gaps and notice ball carriers more often while engaged with offensive linemen. Tackling in the open field also received noticeable improvements, including new animations and fewer (unrealistic) broken tackles.
On the offensive side of the ball, the main improvement comes with your evasive moves, which can now be utilized with the right stick. Making cuts in the open field to evade defenders feels far more intuitive than before. Two new moves, a side hurdle and dead leg, add to the number of ways you can make the defender miss. Since hesitation running is big in football, it’s nice to see the dead leg added. Directional hurdles–called jurdles–let you jump left and right rather than just forward, which comes in handy when you’re running along the sidelines. All told, ball carrier moves are more dynamic, giving you new ways to catch defenders off guard.
Quarterback play is a tad more in-step with the real thing, as there’s more nuance to throws made with defenders breathing down your neck. While QBs can now hasten their release, the accuracy of passes when under pressure can vary wildly depending on the player. This also means that attempting throws with a backup QB in the same fashion as you would with, say, Patrick Mahomes can lead to some big misses. And new Superstar and X-Factor abilities further emphasize the disparity between the stars and role players, including numerous new receiver abilities that give those with hot hands high-percentage opportunities to nab anything thrown in their direction.
When Madden NFL 21 is running without a hitch, the football gameplay is quite good, even if it’s only incrementally better than last year. Sadly, in its current state, Madden NFL 21 has some real issues, especially in regard to kicking. On more than half of my kickoffs, field goals, and punts, there was some fairly extreme lag with the kicking meter, which led to laughably errant kicks. More than usual, receivers simply do not turn back to look at the ball at all, even when it hits them directly in the back of the head.
There are also bigger-picture issues with the overall experience. Sometimes the field didn’t fully render, forcing me to quit and reload. Other times the game got stuck in a loading loop after finishing a contest. Lagging animations aren’t super common, but I encountered one or two every few games. While I assume these issues will get patched with the planned day-one update, they add up to create an inconsistent and sometimes frustrating experience.
As the PS5 and Xbox Series X loom–PS4 and Xbox One editions come with free upgrades to next-gen–Madden has reached a crossroads. One side of the road is freshly paved and inspired thanks to the shenanigans featured in The Yard, while the other is beaten down and filled with potholes. With far more technical issues than normal and large chunks of recycled content, Madden NFL 21 feels more like an update than a brand-new game.
Note: This post spoils some of the story points of Control’s AWE DLC. If you’d rather experience those moments in the DLC, hold off on reading this until after you’re done.
The folks at Remedy Entertainment have been pretty clear over the years that they would really like to continue the story of 2010’s Alan Wake. Despite two DLC additions and a smaller, combat-focused pseudo-sequel, there’s been no resolution to the story of the titular writer, who ended the original game trapped by an evil supernatural entity called the Dark Presence.
There are connections to Alan Wake in other Remedy games, but up until now, we’ve only gotten them as Easter eggs and hints. But Control’s final DLC addition, AWE, is very focused on tying the world of Alan Wake to the world of Control. And the end of the DLC makes it very clear: We’re headed back to Bright Falls in the future to continue Alan Wake’s story.
The AWE DLC sees Wake using his ability to alter reality through his writing to send a message to Control protagonist Jesse Faden, which directs her to the previously sealed and unknown Investigations Sector. There, we see the conclusion of one of the hanging story threads of Alan Wake–the fate of Dr. Emil Hartman, the psychiatrist who tried to understand and utilize the reality-bending powers of Cauldron Lake and artists including Wake, the Anderson brothers, and Thomas Zane. In Alan Wake, Hartman gets nabbed by the Dark Presence, but apparently survived the run-in. What happened to him after that was a bit hazy, and Control fills it in: He became a big gross monster and got locked in the Oldest House.
Jesse’s big goal is hunting down Hartman before he can get loose and murder everyone in the Federal Bureau of Control, and along the way, she uncovers a bunch of lore tidbits about him, Alan, and Alice Wake, Alan’s wife. Unlike the rest of Control, there’s not really much to spoil there, even at the end of the DLC. The final moments of the story of AWE are more of a teaser for the future than a conclusion of what we’ve seen so far.
After removing Hartman, Jesse and Langdon, the guy in charge of the FBC’s Panopticon area that contains and monitors all its supernaturally alive Altered Items, receive a message in the Investigations Sector. It suggests that there’s some kind of new Altered World Event occurring in Bright Falls, Washington–the setting of Alan Wake. Bright Falls is the location of at least two different past AWEs, with one in the 1970s and another in 2010, which is the story of Alan Wake. As a result, the FBC has had a monitoring station in the town for years. The message is coming from that station, but here’s the weird thing: The signal says the event is happening years in the future. And because of the lockdown, the Bureau shouldn’t be able to receive a signal at all.
We see Alan in the Oceanview Motel, speaking with a double of himself that claims to be Thomas Zane. It’s a whole thing.
There’s also some telling dialogue from Wake himself, which suggests an explanation for what this whole Hartman hunt is really about. Wake gets in touch with Jesse because he “needs a hero.” The implication is that AWE is a try-out for Jesse and that Wake is planning to write her into the story that will finally save him from the Dark Place 10 years after the events of Alan Wake put him there. The last dialogue he has sounds like Wake’s next step will be to write Jesse into his story.
We also get some implication in all this that the events of Control are actually Wake’s creation–he’s using his ability to alter reality through his writing to create the world of Control, specifically to then create a way to save himself. Whether that means Jesse is a creation of Wake, just being driven by him, or just intersecting with his story now, however, is unclear.
Altogether, the signal mentioning a Bright Falls event happening a couple years in the future really sounds like Remedy pointedly saying Alan Wake 2, or some variation thereof, is on its way, probably dropping in or around 2022. It might also be that Control 2 and Alan Wake 2 are one and the same. But we know from a blog post from Remedy creative director Sam Lake that AWE is only the beginning and that the studio is working on another game in the shared universe. It really sounds like the end of AWE has just confirmed what we can expect: the conclusion, or at least continuation, of Alan Wake’s story, more than 10 years later.
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During the Future Games Show, a new trailer for Chinatown Detective Agency: Day One was shown off. Releasing for PC on September 30, Day One is a free prologue to Chinatown Detective Agency, an upcoming Carmen Sandiego-inspired mystery adventure game set in 2032.
As seen in the trailer, you play as Amira Darma, an INTERPOL agent turned private eye who sets up shop in Singapore and whose investigations take her around the world. In the trailer, you meet three of the individuals who you’ll interact with in Day One: Rupter Zhou the fixer, Tiger Lily the kingmaker, and Keeran Iyer the reformer.
Unlike most mystery-driven adventure games, Chinatown Detective Agency asks you to be intuitive enough to know when to look for clues beyond the game. You’ll have to think like a detective and find the answers you seek through real-world investigations. Maybe that means popping into Google to look up the airport code that Amira needs or tracking down the origins to some quote you discovered in-game and then deducing how that information is relevant.
Chinatown Detective Agency also has some management features. You only have so many hours in the day, so you’ll need to decide which tasks are worth doing and which leads are worth pursuing. Additionally, as you make contacts and hire staff, you’ll need to manage your growing business and keep your allies happy if you want to be successful.
Again, Day One is just the free prologue to the full Chinatown Detective Agency and will only be available on PC. The full game is scheduled to launch in early 2021, releasing for both PC and Nintendo Switch.
Fox is developing an animated comedy version of its hit series X-Files, according to Variety. Details are extremely sparse still, but creator Chris Carter will be executive producing, and Rocky Russo (Paradise PD) and Jeremy Sosenko (Brickleberry) are attached to write and executive produce.
The show, currently titled The X-Files: Albuquerque, will “revolve around an office full of misfit agents who investigate X-Files cases too wacky, ridiculous, or downright dopey for Mulder and Scully to bother with. They’re essentially the X-Files’ B-team.”
In other words, it sounds like a series similar to CBS’ Star Trek: Lower Decks, another animated series expanding on another already-popular series–also about a band of second-stringers who live within but operate in the deeper margins of a pre-existing world and lore.
The X-Files ran for nine seasons on Fox through to 2002 before it was revived for another two in 2016 (and also expanded into two movies). Based on what has been announced so far, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do not look to be involved in this new animated show.
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