Apex Legends just surprise-launched last week, but Respawn already has imminent plans for its first live event. Respawn recently teased that it will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with some special loot to collect.
A blog post from Respawn’s Vince Zampella says it will be “introducing some limited-time Valentine’s Day themed loot” later this week. It doesn’t mention just what those new cosmetics will be, exactly when the update will drop, or how long it will last.
These new items might be randomly distributed in Apex Packs, the game’s version of loot boxes. Those tend to grant random cosmetics and crafting materials. You can also unlock Legendary skins for the various characters.
This news came alongside word that the game had reached 25 million players in just its first week, including well over 2 million concurrent players. The studio is also kicking off the Apex Legends Twitch Challenge, which pits 48 streamers against each other in the battle royale game for your amusement. Apex has already become a massive success on Twitch, toppling the other most popular categories easily.
The promotional campaign for Captain Marvel is currently in full swing as we approach its March 8 release date in US theaters, but IGN has some extra insight you won’t find on a billboard or trailer. We visited the southern California set of Captain Marvel last year along with a small group of press and got to watch the cast shoot a key scene from early in the film. We’re going to break down everything we saw, so beware of some minor spoilers!
The scene took place inside a spaceship belonging to the Kree elite military strike squad known as Starforce. The entire interior of the ship was built there on set — as were the insides of some other alien ships, some quite massive — and was decked out with racks of alien blasters. Take a look at yours truly aboard the ship trying his hand at wielding some Kree weaponry.
The Division 2 will have an open beta after all. Ubisoft confirmed the impending beta will launch for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on March 1, giving you a chance to try it before the full game launch on March 15.
Word of a possible open beta began circulating recently, when the official account mentioned rewards for participation in either the private or open betas. This came just after a community developer mentioned an open beta during a livestream. Participating in the beta will grant you a DC Patriot weapon skin, and completing the Invaded mission will get you a Capitol Hill arm patch.
The private beta was reserved for pre-orders or those drawn randomly, and came with its share of technical hiccups. Ubisoft even recommended restarting every few hours to stave off one bug. It included two main missions, five side missions, open-world activities, a Dark Zone, and an endgame Invaded mission.
The first Division took place in New York City following a pandemic bio-engineered virus that made the social order break down. This sequel moves a few hundred miles south to Washington DC. For more on The Division 2, check out everything we know and our favorite new features. Microsoft recently announced two Division 2 Xbox One bundles. Those will come alongside the game on March 15.
2018’s Aquaman brought in more than $1.1 billion at the box office, making it one of the most commercially successful movies of the year. Success at that level pretty much guaranteed a sequel would happen, and now Warner Bros. is reportedly starting to lay the groundwork for it.
According to The Wrap, Warner Bros. has hired the first movie’s co-writer, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, to come back to write the script for the sequel. However, it’s unclear if James Wan, who directed the first Aquaman, will return for the follow-up. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wan is in the midst of making a deal with Warner Bros. to produce the sequel, however.
With more than $1.1 billion globally at the box office, Aquaman is DC’s biggest hit since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. It was reported that Warner Bros. would make Aquaman 2 before the first movie even hit theatres, so it is no surprise at all that the film is advancing through the early stages of development.
In December, THR said Aquaman actress Amber Heard was paid at least $1 million to appear as Mera in the film. For the sequel, Heard will earn more, according to the report. Aquaman actor Jason Momoa will presumably get a bigger payday for the rumoured sequel as well.
In addition to Aquaman 2, Warner Bros. THR says Warner Bros. is developing a Aquaman spinoff called The Trench that is a horror movie. The film will reportedly have a smaller budget than Aquaman and other tentpole DC films, and it won’t feature the stars of the mainline Aquaman.
With New York Toy Fair just around the corner, there a lot of announcements trickling out from the world of toys and collectibles, but here’s a doozie:
McFarlane Toys has entered a three-year licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer products to produce collectibles based on the DC Multiverse.
Starting in 2020, McFarlane Toys will begin releasing 6″-12″ ultra-posable action figures based on characters from DC’s stable of characters from comics, movies, and video games – along with corresponding vehicles and accessories.
There are no further details at the moment, but the prospect of a Batman or Superman action figure from McFarlane Toys is enough to pique the interest of even the most casual of toy enthusiasts. These figures will be available from both mass and specialty retailers.
Civilization VI told a straightforward story of the consequences of your actions. Fail to keep your people happy and they would put down their hammers and raise pitchforks. Be rude to the other leaders and they would soon refuse to deal with you. Beyond that, however, you could go about building your empire mostly unconcerned with any repercussions to your decisions. Last year’s Rise and Fall expansion added some complexity to the tale with the introduction of its Loyalty mechanic. Operating in isolation was no longer possible. Settlements on the fringes of an empire could, if they liked what they saw across the border, decide to rebel. Players who took their citizens’ loyalty for granted would find themselves leading no one.
This kind of accountability is extended in multiple directions with Gathering Storm, the second major expansion for Civ VI. Through the institution of a World Congress, Gathering Storm lets leaders reward and punish each other for certain actions, allow them to pass sweeping resolutions that affect every civilization, and ultimately secure their diplomatic favor. And with its new World Climate system, Gathering Storm makes you accountable to the world itself by hitting you–sometimes painfully hard–with the calamitous consequences of exploiting the map’s rich resources.
Your path to victory in Civ VI was predictable once you’d established the foundation of your empire by the Modern Era, but the new World Congress and World Climate systems add enough dynamism to keep you working right up to the new Future Era. Gathering Storm encourages you to “play the map,” taking advantage of the surrounding resources, and then adapt the repercussions of your decisions reflected on that map. As an expansion focused on consequences, however, it can take some time for the new stuff to make its presence felt.
The World Climate system is the most meaningful change, but it doesn’t really kick in until you’ve started extracting strategic resources like coal and oil. Early on you’ll encounter floods, hurricanes, blizzards, and endure the odd drought or volcanic eruption. These weather events pass in a couple of turns, potentially reducing your population, injuring units and pillaging improvements, but they can also fertilize tiles to reward you with greater yields in future.
But weather is not climate. Once you start burning coal and oil to fuel both the power plants in your industrial districts and the battleships and tanks that comprise your military force, you start pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As those emissions rise, tallied by the new World Climate report that tracks the cumulative contributions of each civ and resource, the world will progress through up to seven phases of climate change. Sea levels will rise, at first flooding coastal tiles and eventually leaving many of them completely underwater. Weather events will increase in both frequency and severity, simultaneously desiccating your farmlands through drought and ravaging your cities with tornadoes.
The choices you’re forced to make here are difficult and meaningful. Resources like coal and oil are powerful and refusing to exploit them will cede an immediate advantage to any rival. Through the Industrial and Modern Eras they fuel the most effective units in your navy and army. Do you really want to rely on defending your homeland with frigates while the enemy has ironclads? Further, consumable fuel resources are the first ways you’re able to power your cities. A concept debuting in Gathering Storm, powering a city–say, via a coal power plant–boosts the yields of various districts and buildings. Can you really afford to let your research labs and stock exchanges sit idle while your coal-guzzling neighbor is sprinting ahead in the science race?
Later you’re able to develop methods of harvesting renewable energy resources such as wind and solar farms, but by the time you’re able to deploy them, you may find yourself lagging too far behind a less eco-friendly rival or, worse, suffering the consequences of irreversible damage to the planet. Helping to mitigate such destruction and preserving the natural environment will slow down the effects of climate change. This forces new, perplexing early game decisions. Chopping down that nearby rainforest will give a quick boost to producing a settler, but leaving it untouched may mean future settlers will live to see a world that still has air to breathe. Before Gathering Storm, this wasn’t a choice–you chopped for the short-term gain because there were no long-term consequences. Now, every decision is purposeful. Now, every tile in your empire is asking: “Are you sure you want to do that?”
The World Congress is slightly less successful at providing new and meaningful choices than the World Climate system. What it does, though, is make you far more aware of what other leaders are up to. Once the congress convenes, from the Medieval Era onwards, you’ll find yourself voting on various resolutions every 30 turns. You might be asked to vote on boosting or banning certain types of great people, or whether trade routes to particular civs or city-states should receive bonuses. You don’t just get one vote; instead, you can spend a new form of currency called Diplomatic Favor to vote as many times as you can afford. Favors can also be traded with other leaders, just like any resource, meaning diplomatic players will need to give away valuable luxuries or strategic resources in order to fully exert their influence on the World Congress.
In theory, these resolutions should enable the diplomatic player to tip the scales in their favor. In practice, though, their effects aren’t transformative. You might get an extra trade route here, a slightly slower Great Engineer there, but nothing that feels game-changing. The randomness doesn’t help–if you could propose a resolution rather than merely voting on the ones that pop up that would provide a better return on the investment.
More compelling are the choices to be made around actually pursuing the new Diplomatic Victory, awarded to the leader who first reaches 10 Diplomatic Victory points. You’re still essentially voting your way to the top, but you’re also competing with other leaders to send the most aid to another civ recently devastated by floods, for instance, or to generate the most great people points to win the Nobel Prize. Diplomatic Favor is also earned via alliances with other civs and becoming the suzerain of a city-state, so the Diplomatic Victory is genuinely a case of demonstrating you can lead the world.
These are the two biggest new features in this add-on, but Gathering Storm also includes countless smaller tweaks that in combination with the above make it an essential purchase for Civ VI fans. There are new World Wonders to build, such as the Great Bath or the University Sankore. There are new Natural Wonders, new military units to fill in the gaps between eras, and nine new leaders, including the series’ first-ever dual-nationality leader (Eleanor of Aquitaine can represent either England or France).
Thoughtfully, the new leaders are balanced between those that are clearly geared towards Gathering Storm’s prominent additions–Kristina of Sweden is all about winning diplomatic favor while the unique abilities of Kupe, the Maori leader, incentivize leaving untouched as much of the natural world as possible–and those who embrace some previously overlooked facet of the game. In the latter camp, Matthias Corvinus heads a Hungarian empire whose military force is best composed of units levied from allied city-states, while in the Inca, lead by Pachacuti, we finally have a civ that wants lots of mountain tiles throughout its lands.
Gathering Storm is overall a great expansion, ushering in two significant new systems that work hand in hand to deepen the experience. The embellished diplomatic options extend the range of interactions with other leaders, allowing you to work cooperatively towards common goals or pull the strings to your advantage behind the scenes. While the introduction of climate change delivers new strategic choices whose consequences resonate ever-more-loudly as you advance throughout the eras. It isn’t simply more Civ, it’s a whole new way to play Civ.
Pokemon Go‘s next Community Day is quickly approaching. The event is scheduled to take place around the world this Saturday, February 16, and now developer Niantic has shared a few more details about it, including what special event-exclusive move players will be able to learn this time.
As previously revealed, the featured Pokemon for this month’s Community Day will be Swinub, a Ground/Ice-type originally from Gold and Silver. If you manage to evolve it into its final form, Mamoswine, up to an hour after the event ends, the Pokemon will know the Rock-type attack Ancient Power. You don’t need to catch a Swinub during the Community Day in order for it to learn Ancient Power, but it does need to evolve by the end of the event.
While Swinub and its first evolution, Piloswine, were introduced in the series’ second-generation games, Mamoswine wasn’t added until the Gen 4 installments Diamond and Pearl. In those titles, Piloswine would only evolve into Mamoswine after learning Ancient Power; in Go, however, the Pokemon evolves with a new evolutionary item called the Sinnoh Stone, which can be earned through Trainer Battles.
To make it easier to get a Mamoswine, Niantic is giving players a chance to earn up to five Sinnoh Stones by battling other trainers during the Community Day, as well as an additional five by battling the Team Leaders. As an added bonus, you’ll also get triple the normal amount of Stardust for capturing Pokemon during the event.
In addition to the upcoming Community Day, a special Meltan event is currently underway in Pokemon Go. Through March 4, players will have a chance of encountering Shiny Meltan each time they open the Mystery Box in Go. Moreover, the time you need to wait to open the Mystery Box has been reduced by three days, allowing you to find Meltan much more quickly than before.
Total War: Three Kingdoms, the latest entry in the strategy series, is not going to make it out on time. Developer Creative Assembly announced today that the title will now arrive on May 23, which is around three months later than its previously scheduled March 7 release date.
Creative Assembly brand director Rob Bartholomew said in a statement that the team needed “a little more time” to ensure that the “revolutionary” features and systems in the game are ready. Creative Assembly will also spend the extra time working on fixing bugs, adding polish, and ensuring the localization is done right.
“We all know those little details make a big difference,” Bartholomew said. “We’re lucky to be in a position to do the right thing for our games, and in this case it means taking the time to get everything ready for you. It’s more important to give you a game that you can enjoy to the fullest, rather than stick to a release date just because. We know not everyone’s going to be happy about this, but ultimately, we believe this the best thing for the game and our players.”
The delay does not affect pre-orders, Creative Assembly said. However, if you do run into an issues with your pre-order, Creative Assembly said you should reach out to the retailer where you pre-ordered or to publisher Sega’s support staff.
While Three Kingdoms won’t be out on time, fans don’t have to wait much longer to see more of the game in action. The next live gameplay stream will take place on Wednesday, February 13, with another one coming a week later. More details are available on the Total War website.
