The superhero genre is showing no signs of slowing down, and the DC side of things have been going through major changes thanks to co-CEO James Gunn's new shared universe. While fans are looking forward to upcoming DC movies like Man of Tomorrow, Zack Snyder has been posting throwbacks from the DCEU, including lots of photos of Henry Cavill's Superman. The filmmaker recently put up another one, but some fans aren't happy in the comments.

Moviegoers who watched the DC movies in order saw as the former DCEU ended after Aquaman 2, making room for the newly formed DCU. We've been treated to a handful of projects from the DCU's first phase Gods and Monsters, but that hasn't stopped Snyder from looking back at his time directing for the studio. Case in point:

This a striking image of Henry Cavill's Superman, with the Man of Steel bathed in red light. And while there are plenty of folks in the comments section who still want DC to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, there are also a number of comments criticizing the director for constantly putting out content like this on social media... especially as Man of Tomorrow is filming and Supergirl is about to hit theaters. You can see some of those responses below:

• Wait, every time there’s a DCU post about superman update or a picture posted by Gunn, you make another post to stir up attention 😂😂😂😂😂that’s so weird to notice - akarthedream
• Bro's coping with his own fans, move on bruh😭✌💔🥀 - eyeditz.ae
• Honestly, this is a bit rude with the cast of the new Superman production. It's like they're being put in the middle of an irrational dispute for something that was solved a couple of years ago. - juan_arrazola.96
• omg man you need to move on - anabtriizz
• This poster explains exactly why Snyder dosent understand Superman. - jackcadams

Zack Snyder has tons of loyal fans who were able to convince Warner Bros. to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League years ago. I've been reporting on the director's DCEU throwbacks for a while now, and this one is the first I've seen with so many people criticizing him. This might be a sign that audiences are invested in the new shared universe, and David Corenswet's version of Kal-El. Although the comments asking the studio to #RestoreTheSnderVerse are also present.

It should be interesting to see if these naysayers get louder on Snyder's social media as he inevitably releases more Superman throwbacks. He's made his love for Henry Cavill very clear, but there's a new actor playing the Last Son of Kypton. And it looks like David Corenswet has his supporters as well.

Corenswet will reprise his role in Supergirl, which hits theaters on June 26th as part of the 2026 movie release list. Man of Tomorrow will then follow suit on July 9th 2027, with the actor once again takin center stage in his sequel.

Great news! CinemaBlend is joining forces with the internet’s hottest new quiz company Lil Snack to bring you an assortment of new teasers. This week, we're rolling with Studio Ghibli and offering 4 games to help you prove you knowledge of the treasured animators. 

Just click on one of the icons above to play and start testing your knowledge immediately. And if you're looking for more games, you can head over to Lil Snack, where you'll find a bunch of additional games you can fire up and play right now.

There’s no denying it. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is one of the greatest Spider-Man movies ever. It won an Academy Award for Animation (beating Pixar!), it introduced Miles Morales to a public that may not have read the original Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli comics. And it also established Spider-Man for a whole new generation. For example, Miles Morales is my son’s Spider-Man. Not Peter Parker. Miles Morales. Which meant that when Playstation’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales came out, I just had to get it! For the both of us, of course. Not just for myself. Ahem.

But anyway, after beating the game, I noticed quite a few similarities between the popular movie and the game, but also many differences. Let it be known, the Miles you’re getting in the video game is almost nothing like the one you’re getting in the movie. This is not a bad thing at all since I love that there are different versions of Miles, just as there are different versions of Peter Parker. Here’s hoping that we can someday get a sprawling Miles Morales movie or game with the different variations like we might be getting with Peter Parker in the next mainline Spider-Man movie. Web-shooters crossed! But in the meantime, here are 5 major differences between the Miles Morales in the movie and in the game. Oh, and MAJOR spoilers up ahead for both the movie and the Playstation title, so wall crawl at your own discretion. Thwip!

Miles Morales’ Age

Miles Morales is a 14-year-old middle school Student in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. This is likely because the movie is PG and aimed at a young adult audience. In the film, Miles is just starting out at Brooklyn Visions Academy after winning a lottery. He has a roommate, who I’m assuming is Genke Lee, even though his name isn’t uttered in the movie. And he’s having a hard time just growing up and going through puberty, which he apparently already went through because he’s (deepens voice) a man.

The Miles in the video game is a bit older, at 17. He’s a senior in high school and has spent a lot of time idolizing the original Spider-Man and is actually filling in for him. Unlike the Miles in the movie, this one has lost his father, so that influences a lot of his decisions. He just wants to live up to his father’s high standards and do right by his memory.

Miles’ Relationship With His Uncle Aaron

In the movie, Miles has a very close relationship with his Uncle Aaron, who is voiced by the always magnificent Marhershala Ali. So, it’s super surprising (If you didn’t already know) that his uncle is the stealthy villain, The Prowler. A lot of Miles’ internal conflict in the movie is both about how he’s supposed to deal with his uncle not knowing that he’s Spider-Man, and also after the death of his uncle at the hands of The Kingpin. No matter the dimension, Spider-Man always has to lose somebody close, and in this dimension, Miles has to lose his Uncle Aaron. It breaks him, but it also pushes him to be greater.

In the video game, Uncle Aaron actually knows Miles is Spider-Man early on, even giving him a train ticket so he can fast travel all over the city. This Uncle Aaron is also an outcast in the family once Miles’ dad learned that he was The Prowler, but he also doesn’t want Miles to get hurt, so he tries to lock him up to prevent him from getting in the middle of a company called Roxxon. In the end, Miles breaks free and The Prowler makes good. So, no death for Uncle Aaron in this version. Thank Odin.

Miles’ Experience As Spider-Man

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is amazing since it acts as both an origin story for Miles Morales and also the Spider-Verse in general. In that way, we get a Miles just starting out and one who doubts himself for a great deal of the movie. This is fine since we also arguably get the greatest Peter Parker of all time with Jake Johnson’s portrayal of Peter B. Parker. So, it really doesn't feel like a slog getting to see Miles try and fail before he ultimately succeeds.

In the game, Miles Morales has actually been working with Peter Parker for about a year now and learning the ropes, er, the webs from him. He’s gotten the hang of pretty much all of Spider-Man’s abilities and is just learning his new powers, like the venom strike and invisibility along the way. But he’s definitely not as green as the Miles from the movie, which is a blessing. That doesn’t sound too fun as a game, now does it?

Miles’ Responsibility As The Web-Slinger

This is one area where the movie and the game are actually pretty similar. In the movie, the old Spider-Man, voiced by Chris Pine gets murdered by Kingpin, leaving a gaping hole in this dimension for a Spider-Man. Miles Morales soon learns that he must become this dimension’s Spider-Man, and he does so out of necessity. It’s all just a leap of faith.

In the game, Miles also has to take over as Spider-Man out of necessity, but this time, it’s because Peter Parker is going on vacation with Mary Jane. So Miles is now in charge, and he grows as a character throughout the game. And he has to learn fast, too, because his villain might just destroy the whole city. And about her…

Miles Morales’ Villain

In the movie, Miles Morales’ main antagonist is The Kingpin. Yes, he gets chased around by The Prowler quite a bit early on, but The Kingpin is the one who sets all the problems in motion. But here’s the thing. While The Kingpin is definitely a Spider-Man villain through and through, most people often associate him more with Daredevil. So, while I love The Kingpin in this movie, I kind of think that another villain might have been better. Like maybe the female version of Dr. Octopus. But you know what, I’m going to stop right there since this movie is pretty much perfect and I shouldn’t really complain.

But the video game’s villain is a lot more interesting. In the game, Miles must face off against The Tinkerer, who is a low-grade, D-level Spider-Man villain at best, but is made relevant by the fact that this version has a close relationship with Miles. Because in the game, The Tinkerer is actually Miles’ best friend Phin Mason (the original Tinkerer’s name was Phineas Mason), so the connection between them is much closer, making for a very intriguing match-up.

And those are just 5 major differences between the movie and the game. But what are your thoughts? Have you played Spider-Man on the Playstation 4 or 5 (I sure hope so, since I spoiled almost the entire game)? If so, which Miles do you prefer? Sound off in the poll or in the comments section down below.

This poll is no longer available.

I feel like it's been a really long time since I really heard much about Fortnite, the Battle Royale game that only a few short months ago was one of the hottest names in entertainment. Much of that is largely because the game is simply so ubiquitous now. To be sure, Epic Games is still raking in the cash from the popular shooter, and they may be about to bring in even more, because the game just announced that Deadpool is joining the fight.

The trailer for Fortnite's new Season 2 dropped today, and it included the revelation that Deadpool is part of the game's new season, though exactly what that means isn't entirely clear yet.

While Fortnite might have been a game that hadn't made as much noise in recent months, the inclusion of Deadpool in the game has certainly changed that. The internet is sort of freaking out, nobody more so that Deadpool co-creator himself Rob Liefeld.

Fortnite's structure is insidiously brilliant. The game itself, which pits up to 100 people on a large, but ever shrinking map, to kill each other until only one remains, is free-to-play. Anybody can download the game and join the fight right now. And all players are on an equal footing. While many multiplayer games reward consistent players with new abilities that will give them a permanent advantage over those less skilled or newer, Fortnite doesn't do that.

Instead, the game uses a Battle Pass system, which is something players purchase, and then, as they play, they unlock various cosmetic rewards, new skins, outfits and emotes (brief animations) that let players differentiate themselves. This is where Fortnite makes its money, to the tune of almost $2 billion last year. That was down from $2.5 billion in 2018.

While the game certainly isn't hurting for funds, there clearly has been a drop in players, and bringing Deadpool into the game seems designed to try to entice players to spend more time with the game, including those that may have put it down on a more permanent basis. It appears that plan might work out.

While Deadpool joining Fortnite has certainly succeeded in increasing interest in the game, those players will have to wait and see exactly what is needed to unlock the character. Normally something like the Deadpool skin would just be available to purchase with in-game currency, earned from playing the game, but instead Deadpool looks to be unlocked by executing secret challenges, and those challenges will be available over the course of the new season, so to get Deadpool, you'll need to keep coming back to Fortnite over the next few weeks.

Deadpool isn't the first time that a Marvel character has been part of Fortnite, Thanos made an appearance during a previous season of the game, and Star Wars also joined the game around the time The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters, so clearly Disney and Epic Games have an ongoing relationship.

Is the idea of playing as Deadpool in Fortnite enough to get you to return to the game, or maybe give it a try for the first time? Let us know in the comments.

The deal between Universal Parks & Resorts and Nintendo to bring attractions based on the video game developers' popular characters to Universal's theme parks is several years old, and while a new Nintendo based land was promised for the company's flagship Orlando location, details have been kept very quiet. First, we were expecting a new land expansion at one of Universal's existing gates, but when rumors of a new third gate began to circulate, many expected the new land, called Super Nintendo Land, would be part of the new experience, which has been named Epic Universe.

This morning as part of an investor call for Universal's parent company, Comcast, it was officially confirmed Super Nintendo Land will be part of Epic Universe when it opens in 2023. While the news is not, in itself, too shocking, as this is what most people expected to hear, it is the first time that Universal has started actually talking about what the plans are for Super Nintendo Land in Orlando.

A recent music video released to promote Japan's version of Super Nintendo Land, which is set to open this summer, gave us a first glimpse at some of the elements of those attractions, like ride vehicles for a Mario Kart attraction, and special smart phone enabled Power Up Bands, that will allow guests to "keep score" throughout the land.

Expectations are that all of these elements will transfer from Japan to Orlando, although, because Super Nintendo Land is being constructed as part of an all new theme park, there's certainly the opportunity for Orlando to do even more since there are virtually no constraints on how Super Nintendo Land can be designed.

The conference call certainly didn't downplay the importance of Super Nintendo Land, it was compared to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in terms of the impact the new land is expected to have. Wizarding World certainly raised the bar when it comes to concepts of immersion in theme parks, something which certainly influenced the creation of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge by Disney Parks.

Of course, while Super Nintendo Land has now been officially confirmed for Epic Universe, it marks the first and only new land to be announced so far. There have been a number of rumors regarding other areas that might join Super Nintendo Land, such as a Universal Monsters area, a Star Trek land, and more, but nothing else has yet been confirmed.

The one benefit of having Super Nintendo Land officially confirmed for Epic Universe is that we now know exactly how long we're going to need to wait to see it. Of course, the down side is that amount of time is three years. Epic Universe is currently set to open sometime in 2023.

Over the weekend, Detective Pikachu opened to $58 million, the best debut ever for a video game adaptation. Couple that box office with decent, although not great, reviews and the plans for a Pokémon cinematic universe don’t seem entirely farfetch’d. Cinematic universes have team-up movies and long before 2012’s The Avengers, Nintendo was teaming up its iconic characters, including Pikachu, for a free-for-all battle in Super Smash Bros. (Pokémon aren’t entirely owned by Nintendo, but just go with me).

Super Smash Bros. would almost certainly be the biggest video game movie that could be made and the writers of Detective Pikachu would be interested in such a project, but it would have to be done in the right way. Writer Dan Hernandez explained:

Dan Hernandez brings up a great point that may seem obvious but isn’t always. For a movie on the scale of a Super Smash Bros. to work, there would have to be multiple movies introducing the various characters to audiences prior to having them all appear onscreen together in an adaptation of Nintendo’s popular fighting game.

Basically, Dan Hernandez advocates for the MCU approach to team-up video game movies, not the DCEU one where the studio just skipped ahead to the team-up without the build up of solo films. It’s not enough to just have multiple movies introducing characters though in advance of a Super Smash Bros. movie, those introductory movies have to be good.

As Dan Hernandez told Screen Rant, Kirby and Mario and Star Fox and Link all need to have the best possible solo films to make the movie of Super Smash Bros. work. On that latter character, the writer actually seemed to be quite interested in tackling a feature film adaptation of The Legend of Zelda.

Sensational solo movies build audience investment and that’s why Avengers: Endgame worked so well, as one of Detective Pikachu’s other screenwriters, Benji Samit, explained:

I tend to agree that great solo movies and a build-up would be an absolute necessity for any attempt at a Super Smash Bros. movie. Yet, even if those prerequisites were met, it would still be a daunting task. Unlike the MCU, where all of the characters technically exist in the same universe, Super Smash Bros. is pulling from multiple, seemingly incompatible properties.

The MCU is able to impose a house style and tone that despite varying from film to film, basically allows for everything to fit together. Making a medieval warrior Link, a bounty hunter Samus and an Italian plumber Mario all exist in the same film is far more difficult. But at least animation allows for greater suspension of disbelief.

I think the focus should first be on getting good live-action movies of these characters, without any eye towards a team-up film. After all, we may be 20+ years removed from 1993’s Super Mario Bros., but video game movies by and large haven’t advanced that far in quality since then.

Still, the thought of a Nintendo Cinematic Universe building to a Super Smash Bros. movie is intriguing. Such a thing would be a ways off, if it ever happens, but a Super Smash Bros. movie is just one possibility raised by Detective Pikachu.

With the dam possibly hopefully finally breaking on good video game movies, these kinds of discussions will hopefully become less wishful thinking and more realistic speculation.

Detective Pikachu is now playing. Be sure you know what ticket to buy before going to see it and check out our 2019 release schedule for all the biggest movies headed to theaters this year.

The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Shazam!

Shazam! sets itself apart from your normal superhero blockbuster by having a hero who is, basically, a 15-year-old kid. As such, Shazam/Billy Batson’s passions are largely similar to the sorts of things that average teenagers love, like eating junk food and occasionally skipping school.

One other thing that’s a big part of Shazam! is video games. We see our main characters playing against each other at one point, but that’s far from the only time that video game references are made in Shazam! Here are five surprising references to video games found in the new DC superhero movie.

Mortal Kombat

As mentioned, there is one very clear video game reference in Shazam! As we see the adult superhero and his friend/brother Freddy playing the classic fighter Mortal Kombat, apparently using money they swiped from ATMs, based on all the new stuff we see surrounding them. Specifically, the two are playing the recent Mortal Kombat X and Shazam is playing as Raiden, the god of thunder. It's a fitting choice considering both Raiden and Shazam can shoot lightning from their hands.

However, that’s not the only reference to Mortal Kombat in Shazam! Another reference comes later, when the superhero version of foster brother Eugene, uses a classic Mortal Kombat line. The game series is best known for its collection of brutal and violent finishing movies, where characters can eviscerate their opponents in various ways. It’s called the Fatality, and Eugene uses the classic phrase after Shazam has taken Silvana’s eye and defeated him for good.

Street Fighter

Mortal Kombat is one of the best known tournament fighter games ever made, but one title that might be even more well known is the Street Fighter series. The title predates Mortal Kombat by a few years and has had several more games to its name.

Again, the reference here comes from Eugene at the end of the film. His adult superhero version has the lightning power of Zeus that he gained from Shazam. At one point, upon firing his lightning at one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he shouts “Hadouken,” a reference to the call of Street Fighter members Ryu and Ken, who use the word when sending a fireball toward an opponent.

Watch Dogs

While Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are two game series that many people are familiar with, even if they’ve never touched a video game console, the rest of the references begin to get a bit more obscure. While those familiar with AAA console games will know the name Watch Dogs, others may not. The game is an open world action game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto but with the twist that the player has the ability to “hack” computer systems in order to manipulate the environment.

Eugene makes reference to the game as one of the reasons he has picked up some skills as a hacker. I’m not entirely clear how, since all hacking in Watch Dogs is done by pressing a single button. There really isn’t much opportunity to learn actual hacking.

Uplink

Alongside Watch Dogs, however, is a reference to another hacking-themed video game, and one that might be slightly more useful to learning hacking. Uplink is another game that Eugene apparently plays, or did play, quite a bit. It’s actually sort of impressive since the game was originally released back in 2001, making the title older than Eugene is. It’s possible Eugene played the mobile version that was released in 2012. Still, it’s nice to know the kid likes to play older video games too.

Uplink doesn’t have you control an avatar of any kind, but instead is a game that looks like you’re using an actual PC interface. The “hacking” works more like the way that you see hacking portrayed in movies, as opposed to actual hacking, but since Shazam! is a movie after all, it seems likely that Uplink is a realistic version of hacking for that world.

PlayStation Move

The most utterly bizarre video game reference is the unlikeliest one in the movie to notice. Rather than being referenced in dialogue or shown clearly on screen, one scene shows one of the supporting characters armed with a Sony Sharpshooter, a gun peripheral that was designed to be used with the PlayStation 3’s Move motion control.

Back when the Nintendo Wii was the biggest thing to hit video games since, well, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony tried to come up with its own version of the tech. The Sharpshooter was essentially a plastic shell for the system that turned the standard Move controller into a light gun. The thing is, the Move was never a major hit, and the Sharpshooter was an additional peripheral, making it even less popular. Where somebody found one of these, and why they thought using it was a good idea, is anybody’s guess.

Fortnite?

This last one I’m not sure is specifically meant to be a video game reference, but it’s too close to one not to mention. During the Shazam “super power testing” montage, we see the superhero doing a little dance while he’s waiting for Freddy to get ready to film him.

The dance he’s doing is called the Floss, and, while it wasn’t created for a video game, its popularity as a dance move has become immensely more popular thanks to being an available emote option in Fortnite, the most popular game in the world right now. The dance and the game have become so popular together that they're currently the subject of one of several lawsuits against the game.

From the obvious to the obscure, there are some really fun video game references in Shazam! With all indications being that we're going to get a sequel to Shazam! sooner rather than later, video games will probably continue to be a touchstone of this franchise, and we can look forward to more references in the future. Shazam has made appearances in real life video games before. One has to wonder if Shazam could actually become a video game character within the DC film universe, allowing Billy Batson and Freddy to actually play as their superhero counterparts in some future movie.

Electronic Arts has finally come to terms with Belgium's laws and has announced that it will be removing the loot boxes from FIFA 19 after the Belgian gambling commission found this game, and other titles, in violation of current gambling laws.

According to ComicBook.com, Electronic Arts has walked back its once defiant attitude about not removing the loot boxes from FIFA 19 last year when Belgium required game publishers to relinquish support for loot boxes in various titles, including Overwatch and the 2K Sports games like NBA 2K after loot boxes were found to be in violation of regional gambling laws.

Companies would essentially need to comply with those regional laws and remove the loot boxes from their games, but not every company wanted to play ball. Electronic Arts was initially unfazed by the threat of legal prosecution by Belgian lawmakers, but after months of going back and forth with the country's authorities, Electronic Arts decided to finally relent.

In a letter to the community Electronic Arts stated that the changes would not be material in affecting its finances, but that players would still be able to participate in the Ultimate Team modes, just without the ability to purchase loot boxes with real money, stating...

So, just to clarify, what this means is that you'll still be able to access all of the standard features within FIFA 19, including the Ultimate Team packs, however, instead of using real world money to purchase the loot box packs, you'll only be able to purchase them using in-game virtual currency. No more real money purchases.

The gambling commission in Belgium and the Netherlands determined that loot boxes fueled by real-money purchases were the equivalent of playing roulette or gambling with a slot machine. In most countries, spending real money on a wager for a potential reward is oftentimes classified as gambling. In the United States this law has been in place since as far back as 1912. However, lawmakers leave it up to regional gambling commissions to determine what is and is not classified as “gambling.” If the offense is serious enough then it may end up in court where fines or requisitions are doled out.

In this case, Belgium required publishers such as Blizzard Entertainment, 2K Games, Valve, and Electronic Arts to remove loot boxes from games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, along with sports games like FIFA 19. The other publishers complied rather quickly, but EA attempted to fight off the mandate for as long as possible. Even with all of its money and publishing power, though, EA still had to bow down to the regional authorities after loot boxes were prohibited in Belgium.

For years now there have been rumors that GameStop was going to sell the business, or that the company would eventually abandon the brick and mortar retail space in favor of digital distribution. These rumors never quite panned out, but last year it looked like a pretty good indicator that the company was finally going to follow through and sell the business. However, we're back to the point where the news didn't pan out and GameStop has announced that it won't be selling the company. Only this time, it came with a hefty cost.

CNBC is reporting that GameStop's original plan to sell the business came to a halt when the board members realized that there wouldn't be enough financing for a prospective buyer, so the sell was scuttled.

The decision to pull out of selling the the company actually caused the company's stock to plunge by 27.2%, with CNBC reporting a market capital loss of $430 million, with the stock now being valued at $11.28. This is down from the 52 week high of $17.04 from back in September of 2018.

The stock price fluctuated quite a bit throughout the previous year, with December nearly matching the figures in January, dropping all the way down to $11.67 on December 24th during the Christmas holiday.

However, even with the loss in market valuation coming from the abandonment of selling the company, GameStop is still a long ways away from cashing out and calling it quits. In fact, this comes during a time when the company just recently sold its Spring Mobile business for a hefty $735 million in immediate cash proceeds.

The board has yet to decide how it wants to spend that money, but the article notes that the funds could be used to pay down debt, or reinvest in the core business of video games and collectibles. This doesn't explicitly explain if that means the stocking of more/different video games or publishing video games and collectibles, the latter of which could prove to be very profitable if handled properly.

So, where did all the talk of selling the business even come from?

Well, in a letter from the board to the shareholders, it was mentioned that a discussion of selling the company came about during June of 2018, where the option was placed on the table. However, this was all just based on potentialities and there was nothing set in stone at the time nor thereafter.

In looking over the options, the board concluded that selling GameStop just wasn't in the cards at the moment, and after acquiring three-quarters of a billion dollars in the Spring Mobile sale, it just didn't seem prudent to sell the business at this time.

What does this mean for the future of GameStop? Will the company keep selling used games at marked up prices? Probably. Will the company keep selling brand new games at the suggested retail price, including hotly anticipated titles like Anthem and Far Cry: New Dawn? Probably. Will collectible Amiibos and hardware accessories for the major gaming platforms still be available? Probably. So, what exactly will change on the consumer end? Well, not much... for now. It's basically going to be business as usual just until the board of directors assigns a new permanent CEO and choose a proper direction for the brick and mortar retailer.

While Fallout 76 may have gotten off to a rocky start, the team at Bethesda is clearly putting in the work to improve the game in many, many ways. Their latest patch notes, for instance, highlight a collection of quality of life changes as well as a massive list of bug fixes.

If you’re playing Fallout 76 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One or PC, then you can go ahead and download the latest patch as of this writing. And, while it might not add any major new features, it certainly covers a laundry list of issues that needed addressing within the multiplayer survival game.

Once you get rolling post-patch, it might take you a while to notice what, exactly, Bethesda has changed. They’ve released a rather sizable set of patch notes you can peruse, but we’ll touch on some highlights here in case you just want the basics before diving back into the game. As a quick note, Bethesda says they were able to make this many adjustments thanks to community feedback, so be sure to keep sharing your thoughts through the usual channels.

Under the “General” heading, Bethesda simply states that several improvements have been made to in-game performance for Fallout 76 and that servers have received additional stability upgrades.

While you can read up on the various adjustments made to things like weapon and perk stats, the real meat of the update that will affect the player experience is under “Design and Gameplay.” Carry weight, for instance, has been capped at an absolute 1,500 pounds over the character’s maximum carry weight. Some folks were using the uncapped carry weight as a super slow but reliable way to stock up on items. Unfortunately, having that many items in the game world can cause things to chug. This cap should help remedy the issue.

Another change is to the recipe menu, where players will now be notified if they already “Know” a particular schematic. Vendor recipes and plans will no longer be randomized, meaning you’ll finally have a reliable source for those items you need. More plans are also being added to the vendor list.

For those of you who enjoy confrontation while cruising through the wastelands of Fallout, you’ll now receive a message when someone has joined the hunter/hunted queue. Another message will pop up when the round is ready to begin, just in case folks missed the first alert and still want to join in on the action.

While a handful of quests and events have been adjusted, the real bulk of this week’s update is under the “Bug Fixes” tag. Bethesda has tackled a ton of issues with this update, so, hopefully, that’ll result in a smoother experience for all players.

Speaking of which, we’d be interested in hearing if any of our readers are still plugging away at Fallout 76. How has your experience been in these months following launch? Has the support helped improve the game in noticeable ways? Let us know in the comments below.

Square Enix and Tetsuya Nomura's Kingdom Hearts III has finally launched for the Xbox One and PS4, and gamers and critics alike are pouring out their opinions of love, hate, and everything else in between for the recently released Japanese RPG that finally concludes the long and winding story of Sora.

Most of the big sites are doling out a lot of high praise for the game. IGN, for instance, proclaimed that the game was everything that they had hoped for, scoring the latest entry an 8.7 out of 10, and noting that the ending – while mildly weird – did bring everything to a close in a satisfying manner.

This kind of lauded fawning carried over across several outlets, many of whom thought that the game did just about everything right, from the mini-games to the character development, and especially the combat.

PlayStation Lifestyle in particular had more than a thousand words to share about many of the game's different aspects, worlds, characters, and story elements. But even with whatever small flaws that they encountered during the playthrough, it was still hailed as the best that Square Enix has delivered in the series since its debut back in the early aughts on the PlayStation 2, writing...

Several other outlets also shared a similar measure of enthusiasm for the high-fantasy adventure that Tetsuya Nomura and the crew at Square Enix crafted around Sora's big finale against the Heartless in the latest game.

However, the story of good and evil didn't entirely sit well with all reviewers. While it may be a classic tale of light attempting to triumph over darkness with a few noteworthy characters from popular Disney properties like Pirates of the Caribbean and Big Hero 6 tossed in, the execution of it left some reviewers feeling as if the story was convoluted and overwrought.

Eurogamer criticized the storytelling mechanics as being more complex than they needed to be, and felt a more simplified approach to bringing closure to the character arcs could have been handled with more expository restraint...

Eurogamer's critic wasn't the only one who had problems with the crossover game's story structure. Metro also took shots at the game's pacing and inclusion of characters from worlds like Monsters Inc., and Tangled who only had the most flimsy of excuses to even be included in the game. Metro ended up scoring Kingdom Hearts III a rather unflattering 6 out of 10, but with ample reasons to back it up. The outfit wrote...

The key takeaway here is that even for the critics who didn't like the game's pacing and overabundance of cinematics, they still recommended the game for diehard fans who have been following the series and its overtly complex story for nearly 20 years.

As noted by Gamespot, even with the complicated lore it was still a fun “frolic” through a crossover that only comes once in a lifetime.

If you're the kind of gamer who thoroughly enjoys the Disney-branded licenses and the characters (and Hollywood voice actors) that come along with them (even if their placement in the story doesn't always make sense) it seems as if Kingdom Hearts III is the big-budget JRPG event of the generation, even more-so than Square's own Final Fantasy XV.

You can nab a copy of the game right now for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Unfortunately, the game isn't available on PC, but maybe if enough PC gamers politely ask Nomura for a port he might open his heart and oblige?

The issue has reportedly been resolved, but it was a scary day for many Xbox One users who discovered multiple problems were plaguing the console. Folks kept a mostly cool head online and, for that, Microsoft’s Xbox Support crew is grateful.

The above tweet went out this afternoon to signal the all clear for Xbox One users. While specific details have not yet been provided, the team seems confident that folks can get back to using their consoles like normal. So, what happened?

This morning, all sorts of social media posts started popping up from concerned Xbox One users. What’s pretty wild about this situation is that there wasn’t just a single issue causing trouble. Some folks experienced system freezes while others reported a static black screen when they booted up their game console. Still others claimed they were having trouble with various console functionalities, such as accessing and controlling the sidebar or even using their various save files.

The good news is that Microsoft jumped on the case immediately and let folks know early on that they were hunting down the issue. Word spread quickly, resulting in many folks taking a deep breath and giving the support team the time they needed to address the issue. They continued to update the community through social media concerning progress and, a few hours later, the issues were taken care of.

Based on what we’re seeing around social media, the problems indeed seem to have been resolved and folks are back to playing Halo, Gears of War and Forza as if nothing ever happened. Still, it’s easy to understand why something like this would have folks in a tizzy. Some of us are old enough to have lived through the dreaded Red Ring of Death, so turning on your Xbox and facing an entirely blank screen is understandably frightening.

As the Xbox Support crew noted, though, folks were surprisingly chill about the situation. That might have been due to the fact that everyone was able to quickly learn that they weren’t the only one experiencing technical difficulties and, thanks to the support team’s prompt note, everyone knew that the issue was at least being looked into.

While many panic in these types of situations, some folks find other ways to spend their time while the tech wizards do their work. Twitter user XCIXJames, for instance, reconnected with some familiar faces.

As for the more “personal” tales from today’s Xbox One kerfuffle, we’d be interested in hearing your take in the comments below. Did you boot up your console and see any of these problems firsthand? What was your initial reaction? How long did it take for you to find the updates from Xbox Support and learn that the world wasn’t ending? Is this situation something that will haunt you for years? Give us the deets.

After more than a decade working exclusively under Sony's publishing wing to make games specifically for the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4, French gaming studio Quantic Dream has announced that it's finally going multi-platform after signing a deal with an unlikely publisher.

Gamespot is reporting that NetEase has stepped in to finance Quantic Dream's projects from here on. The Chinese publisher is known for a number of free-to-play MMORPGs for PC and mobile devices, including Chrono Blade and Revelation Online, along with a number of other licensed games from other studios such as the Chinese release of StarCraft II and World of Warcraft.

Under NetEase's publishing wing, the company will control a minority stake in the French developer, which will now no longer be beholden to producing exclusives for the PlayStation platform under Sony. The article points out that Quantic Dream is already working on new engine technology with cross-platform support, which means that the next title that the company produces will be multi-platform.

Now according to studio head David Cage, Quantic Dream will continue to push boundaries and set examples by making the games that the company has always been known to make. In fact, it was Detroit: Become Human that prompted NetEase to reach out to establish a business partnership with Quantic Dream. The president of NetEase was so taken aback by Detroit that he made everyone in the studio play the game because he found it to be so profound.

It's interesting that NetEase would even want to dabble in the AAA dramatic-story direction when it comes to producing games, especially since the company just recently signed deals to produce an unnamed title from Bungie, along with partnering with Blizzard Entertainment for the mobile release of Diablo: Immortal, the controversial game that swarmed headlines during its reveal last year at BlizzCon.

Most people aren't familiar with NetEase's library of games outside of publishing free-to-play titles or mobile cash shop games, so it will be interesting to see how people react to a game being published by NetEase for home consoles.

As for Quantic Dream... the founders and studio heads aren't saying exactly what the new projects are, but one of them is obviously large enough that the development team has had to expand from 150 heads in order to accommodate the scope of the new project. The new technology that the studio is working on is also cross-platform compatible with Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation game systems, but it's not made clear if the engine will specifically accommodate the current eighth generation home consoles or if the team is scaling it for the next generation of home consoles.

The outfit has definitely found a niche within the choose-your-own-adventure style genre dating back to Indigo Prophecy for the PS2 and OG Xbox. Quantic Dream managed to acquire quite the fame and adulation for other outings such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. Now that Detroit: Become Human has finalized the company's exclusivity commitment to Sony, we'll see what the French gaming studio is capable of working on a multi-platform title under NetEase.

It's already that time of the month where Microsoft is rolling out info on the free Games With Gold that come with an active Xbox Live subscription. The offerings for February have been outlined and it includes some classic Assassin's Creed and Star Wars titles to help fill out your digital software library.

Over on the Major Nelson blog there's an outline for what will be available and when. It starts with Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon on the Xbox One between February 1st and February 28th. While Super Bomberman R for the Xbox One will be available between February 16th and March 15th.

For the Xbox 360, Assassin's Creed Rogue will be free from February 1st to February 15th. From February 15th to February 28th, Star Wars: Jedi Academy for the OG Xbox will be available.

Keep in mind that both Xbox titles are also backwards compatible so you can play them on the Xbox One. This is real good news for people who probably didn't know about Star Wars: Jedi Academy because it's one of the best Star Wars games ever made. It features some really impressive lightsaber mechanics and was one of the few games that featured built-in lightsaber dismemberment, meaning that depending on where you attacked someone it could sever that body part. This made lightsaber duels far more interesting than typical games because one or two hits would instantly end the fight, so parrying, dodging, blocking, and using fancy evasive techniques to avoid being killed were even more important. It also used to have a rather small but dedicated online multiplayer community that competed in duels across famous locations from the popular space-fantasy series.

You'll now be able to check the game out on the Xbox One, with all of the latest enhancements offered by the newer hardware tech.

Gamers will also be able to take a stroll through one of the most underrated Assassin's Creed games to come out last generation. Rogue was a highly underrated entry in the series, but had one of the more compelling stories and a combination of all of the features from previous games combined into one outing.

The game sported the naval travel from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but with all the hunting, and mechanics that were present in Assassin's Creed III, along with both gun and sword-based combat, so players were given a wide range of ways to take down foes.

Sadly the Xbox One offerings look a little thin compared to the Xbox 360 and OG Xbox offerings. However, if you're into 8-bit side-scrollers you might enjoy Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, since it's the precursor to the upcoming Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which is the original Kickstarted game set to come out for home consoles and PC platforms later in the year.

Super Bomberman R originally came out back in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It was a throwback to the older Super Bomberman games that were widely popular during the 16-bit era on the SNES, only the new game is in full 3D, and offers gamers some of the latest in tech afforded by today's generation of systems. If you missed out on the game before it might be worth checking out for free when it becomes available in February via Games With Gold.

The competition between Steam and the Epic Games Store continues to ramp up, this time with Epic Games attempting to lure gamers in with some free games to keep them coming back for more. In this particular case the free game being given away is the Jackbox Party Pack, which you can grab for a limited time at no cost whatsoever.

The news comes courtesy of an update over on the Epic Games Store, where there's an announcement that you'll be able to get your hands on the original Jackbox Party Pack for free on PC by registering an account to make use of the Epic Games Store, and then heading to the Jackbox Party Pack store page and downloading the game to have it added to your software library for free.

You'll need to make quick work of the offer, though. This deal won't be available forever. You'll have up until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 7th to get your hands on the game. And, unlike the free weekends on Steam or Xbox Live, the game is yours to keep for as long as you have an Epic Games Store account.

As part of the store's nascence into the digital distribution market, Epic Games decided to offer gamers free games for the first year of the store's operation. So, every two weeks a new free game will be added to the list all the way up until the end of 2019.

During the initial launch of the store gamers were able to get their hands on Subnautica, the underwater exploration game from Unknown Worlds. The game was already highly popular when it was released into Steam Early Access years before. Epic needed something fun and worthwhile to get heads turning and paying attention to the Epic Games Store.

This was followed up with the availability of Super Meat Boy, which was also given away for free for two weeks as well. The game originally came out way back in 2010, and eventually made its way across various game consoles and platforms.

Epic seems to be mixing up the sort of games offered on the platform and showcasing the limited variety of games currently available. It's a pretty big leap to go from Subnautica which is a survival simulator, to a hardcore platformer like Super Meat Boy, to a multiplayer party game like the Jackbox Party Pack.

Obviously, this is to get a wide canvas over a number of different market demographics. People who like Subnautica are also typically going to be interested in other survival simulators like DayZ or Rust, and so long as Epic can, at some point, deliver those games more people might check out the store.

People who like Super Meat Boy are likely going to be fans of platforms like Super Mario Bros., or Freedom Planet. If Epic starts offering more platformers and side-scrollers, more of those gamers might be lured onto the platform.

And, finally, for gamers who enjoy casual games and party games like Jackbox Party Pack, Epic might be able to bring in more of those kind of gamers by offering up more board games and tabletop-style titles to further expand its reach. If you happen to be one of those gamers, you can grab the free offering of the Jackbox Party Pack right now.

Another shot has been fired in the PC platform war, as Deep Silver has announced that the upcoming first-person shooter, Metro: Exodus, will now launch exclusively on the Epic Games Store. This announcement is coming in pretty close to the wire, as Exodus is set to launch on PC and game consoles on February 15.

The upcoming Metro game is just the latest example of a publisher jumping the Steam ship, with titles like The Division 2 and the final season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead already pledging their allegiance to the Epic Games Store.

As noted in an update via Polygon, though, this doesn’t mean these types of exclusivity deals are permanent. Similar to what we’ve seen on games consoles for years now, it looks like Metro’s deal with Epic is simply a timed exclusivity. Come February 14 of next year, it looks like Exodus will finally arrive on Steam.

Moving forward, we wouldn’t be surprised to see even more publishers flirting with Epic Games Store exclusivity. The storefront is actually curated, which means you won’t be finding a bunch of shovelware choking the library of games (for now, at least). Also, since the storefront only launched like a month ago, visibility for any new game is going to be super high.

Finally, and clearly the most enticing to publishers and developers, there's the earnings split being offered. Game creators get 88 percent of their earnings on the Epic storefront, compared to the 70 percent being offered by Steam. Folks were upset about the earnings split on Steam well before the Epic store appeared, so it’s no wonder some big-name publishers and games are so eager to take this new option for a spin.

According to their own statement, Steam’s parent company, Valve, isn’t too pleased with this sudden shift for Metro: Exodus, saying it’s “unfair” to folks who already saw the game advertised on the Steam marketplace. According to Deep Silver, customers with outstanding pre-orders for Metro: Exodus through other digital retailers will be honored, but anyone looking to pre-order the game now or purchase it following launch will only be able to do so through the Epic Games Store. That seems like a pretty reasonable compromise, especially since Exodus doesn’t offer cooperative or multiplayer options. In other words, a smaller “audience” on Steam won’t have an impact on the game post-launch.

According to the initial report, both Epic and Deep Silver are excited about this partnership, highlighting the revenue split as a major factor that will allow developers to invest more earnings into their various projects or even pass the savings on to the players. That second scenario seems like a bit of a stretch, but I’m all for developers/publishers earning a bigger cut on their own products.

At this point, the battle between Epic and Valve seems pretty serious. If more games abandon Steam, Valve might be forced to reevaluate its own practices in order to make its storefront more attractive.

Streaming is all the rage these days. Tons of companies are trying to get in on the burgeoning market of stay-at-home streaming for all manner of product, whether it be television streaming, movie streaming or video game streaming. And based on the latest reports within the tech sector, it appears Apple may be planning to get in on a gaming subscription service, too.

According to Cheddar, sources have apparently leaked that Apple is working on a streaming service. The website reports that the subscription service would work similar to Netflix, except instead of streaming television shows and movies, you would be streaming video games.

The site notes that Apple has been working on this service since the second half of 2018. There isn't a definitive date on when this service is supposed to go live, and since it's still early in development, the sources told Cheddar that Apple could very well abandon it if it turns out that it doesn't look like a very profitable venture.

The report goes on to say that Apple has also discussed partnering with various developers, working as a publisher and rivaling the likes of Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, and the rest of the herd.

This comes amid Apple's pursuit of other streaming media, including shows being developed to rival the likes of Netflix and Hulu.

Hardware sales are supposedly petering out on the market plateau and Apple has to find new ways to drive profit. Gaming makes sense given that analyst have said that video game apps drive plenty of profitability through the iTunes App Store. So pursuing a subscription based service that targets the core and the mid-core audience would make a lot of sense, right?

Well, the main thing to consider is that right now that's the plan of a lot of other services as well. PlayStation and Microsoft already occupy slots in the console space for streaming and digital subscription gaming with the PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass.

On the PC side, there's no shortage of streaming and subscription services. From Utomik to OnLive to PlayCloud, there have been a number of competitors attempting to leverage the business for streaming purposes, but it hasn't always worked out. The biggest issue has always been infrastructure.

Right now, trying to provide users with high-quality streaming options and top-notch frame-rates just hasn't been viable. Either the costs are too high or the technology doesn't afford gamers the sort of playability and stability that matches the kind of quality that you would get from dedicated hardware.

Apple would obviously have to solve the infrastructure conundrum first before tackling the software availability problem. There's also an issue with attempting to play AAA games with mobile controls, which hasn't always historically been a fan-favorite. Amazon is also hoping to get in on the game-streaming business with its own take on the service, but details are still sketchy on its service, too.

It makes sense why Apple declined to comment to Cheddar about the streaming service because until all the logistics are in place, it would be terribly dangerous to announce something and not have everything worked out from a technological perspective. It could definitely be a big thing and worth keeping an eye on if Apple does decide to follow through with a game streaming service

With the Super Bowl 53 just right around the corner, it's that time of the year again where Electronic Arts rolls out a simulation of the upcoming game within its very own Madden NFL 19 video game to see who might win between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams.

EA Sports rolled out a minute-long video recapping how the game will go down between the Super Bowl finalists as they go head to head in Sunday's game. The video was posted up over on the official EA Sports YouTube channel, giving gamers a look at how the electronic game will simulate the real-life encounter set to take place on February 3.

The video is kind of a jumbled, incoherent collage breaking down the players rather than the plays. Unlike the Tecmo Super Bowl prediction, which actually played through an 18-minute simulation of what would happen between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots, EA Sports' simulation within Madden NFL 19 was more of a spotlight on the key players who might help bring their team to victory, specifically a victory that the game predicts will go to the Rams in a final 30 to 27 showdown in the fourth quarter.

It's hard to get a proper breakdown of who scored what during which quarter, but it looks like Tom Brady makes the first play to help push the team into touchdown territory with the help of James White. In fact, the board states that Brady will make two touchdowns during the game and one interception. There's a turnover from a sack by Aaron Donald from the Los Angeles Rams, though at which point in the game this happens I'm not sure. What we do know is that after a back and forth, there's an interception from Devin McCourty later into the game, followed by a field goal from the Patriots.

While Tom Brady may be the star quarterback of the game, Jared Goff will apparently help his team land two late-game passing touchdowns for the Rams along with Robert Woods, while also taking an interception.

I kind of preferred the older simulation videos where we were better able to see exactly how the game played out and what sort of plays would lead to the team's victory (or loss). Sometimes the Madden NFL games were scary accurate in how they would depict a game to play out, from early leads to late-game comebacks, to last second scoring, it was pretty impressive how close the games would simulate the Super Bowl to real life events... before they happened!

Even still, a lot of people are actually excited about the upcoming game and think that the Rams have a good shot at taking home the victory at Super Bowl 53. The question is, which game will prove to have their prediction come true? Super Tecmo Bowl or Madden NFL 19? We'll find out this Sunday.

Beyond the scheduled DLC packs that Insomniac Games and Sony had planned to release for Marvel's Spider-Man, it appears fans of the game will be treated to some specially themed DLC based on other popular Marvel franchises, including two outfits from the Fantastic Four.

The news comes courtesy of an update over on the official PlayStation Blog, where it was announced that two new outfits have been added as part of a free update to the open-world, web-slinging action game. This includes a Bombastic Bag-Man outfit and Future Foundation suit for the friendly neighborhood Spider-man.

The Bombastic Bag-Man outfit is obviously a nod to the Fantastic Four costume from the classic comic book. Given that the Fantastic Four property has managed to make its way back into the good graces of Marvel after Fox had the media rights to it for a while, Insomniac decided to take advantage of it by including the Bombastic Bag Man outfit to the game in celebration of the recent comic book based on the four-hero quartet being written by contributor Dan Slott.

The outfit itself is based on Spider-Man's long-time history with the Fantastic Four, dating back to when it originally tried to join the team all the way back in The Amazing Spider-Man #258 where Spider-Man donned a Fantastic Four costume after he acquired the group's help to get the alien symbiote outfit off of him, which left him in his tighty whities and no mask. He was given the outfit so he wouldn't have to web-sling back him practically naked, but since they didn't have a spare mask, they gave him a bag to put on his head.

The other outfit on display – the Future Foundation costume – is from the time when the Fantastic Four were calling themselves the Future Foundation and donned black and white outfits. Spider-Man also managed to get himself in the mix with a black and white outfit as well.

Both outfits are free with patch update 1.14, and all you have to do is make sure the game is installed and your system is connected to the internet. Make sure you have a PlayStation Network ID that's properly signed into PSN, and presto! You'll be able to get your hands on the two new suits at no extra charge.

The suits join an already illustrious collection of cool suits featured in Marvel's Spider-Man, spanning the long-running comic book, television, and movie series, even Sam Raimi's highly beloved trilogy starring Tobey Maquire.

Previous to this update the game received a number of other slight patches, fixes, modifications, and upgrades, along with a healthy selection of DLC starring some of Spider-Man's most renown antagonists, such as Silver Sable and Black Cat.

Insomniac has basically taken a rather reserved approach to the DLC, giving gamers an outline of what was to come and how much DLC would be available for Marvel's Spider-Man. But beyond the paid content, the developers also wanted to treat gamers with some free content as well, including content based on the Fantastic Four. Some gamers believe this could be hints at something bigger coming down the pipeline featuring the four heroes, but that's all just speculation for now.

Now that the Anthem VIP demo weekend has wrapped and we’ve all had a moment to decompress, it’s time to dig into what BioWare nailed, what needs some attention and what the game might look like down the road.

As a reminder, we’re talking about a demo for an online, multiplayer game, so all of the pros and cons discussed here should be taken with an appropriately-sized grain of salt. BioWare actually set the expectations a couple of days before the demo launched, letting everyone know that the build included in the demo was six weeks behind in bug fixes and boasting completely different balance in both combat and commerce from the launch version of the game. In other words, it’s entirely possible the things I didn’t like during my time with the demo may be changed when the game launches on Feb. 22. Heck, they might even alter something I liked by then so, again, nothing here should be considered set in stone.

As a final reminder, there’s still another demo for Anthem just over the horizon. While the VIP demo was limited to folks who pre-ordered the game or are members of EA or Origin Access, the next demo is going to be totally open to the public. You can actually download the demo client right now, just so you’re ready to roll first thing on Friday, Feb. 1, when the final demo goes live.

I actually plan on diving into this second demo just to see if any adjustments have been made following the VIP run. There were definitely some technical issues in need of attention (more on that later), so whether or not BioWare is able to tackle those concerns between demos could provide a glimpse into how things will run once the final version of Anthem goes live.

The Good

It’s always hard to get a full read on a game based on just a demo but, if there’s one thing I walked away from Anthem feeling pretty positive about, it’s the moment to moment gameplay out on the open map.

Anthem just feels right. From the flying to the shooting, the game is a joy to play. You know how everyone was praising Spider-Man last year for making you really feel like the web-slinging Marvel superhero? Well, the same can be said for Anthem, only you need to replace Spidey with Iron-Man. Heck, half of the people I ran into while exploring the missions and free roam areas had their Javelins decorated like either Iron-Man or War Machine, and that includes a Hulkbuster design for the Colossus Javelin.

I’m not going to get too deep into the controls, but BioWare clearly spent a lot of time making sure the game controlled well. Similar to how teams like Bungie and Infinity Ward have basically perfected the feel of first-person shooting, BioWare has absolutely nailed down explosive action from a third-person perspective. With a little practice, you’ll be moving from flight, to ground combat, back to flight like a mechanized murder ballerina, triggering some flashy and fun abilities along the way.

Those abilities are another strong suit for Anthem, with experimentation proving that some really fun synergies can be pulled off on the fly. And that works between classes, too, which probably explains why BioWare is stressing that Anthem will be more rewarding when played as a team.

And while this one is definitely a personal preference, I appreciate the fact that Anthem features plenty of creepy-crawlies. Human and robotic enemies are fine and all, but there’s something about finding yourself in a nest of massive bugs that look like they crawled out of Starship Troopers that really gets my gears turning. Game designers seem to get more creative with those types of enemies, too, so it’s nice to see the landscape crawling with hostile alien life.

Customization was another check in the “Good” column in Anthem, as the demo let players pretty much run wild with their own creativity. From a purely visual standpoint, players can swap out various components of their Javelin to create a more unique look. From there, you’ve got collectible vinyls to create different looks on your exoskeleton, all of which have half a dozen segments to customize with your colors of choice. You can even customize the material that portion of the Javelin is made of and, to top it all off, give it a more rugged appearance with some wear and tear.

On a more practical level, it looks like Anthem is going to offer quite a bit of loot to collect and, like all of the best loot-driven games, said gear is going to have a real impact on how you play the game. There were a bunch of guns available in the demo, and you could find more rare (and therefor more powerful) versions of that gear out in the wild. The same goes for your Javelin’s grenades, abilities, Ultimate and the like. While there are four classes to choose from, it looks like there will be plenty of room to make your version of, say, the Ranger play totally different from the Ranger crafted by a pal.

The Bad

As BioWare has already admitted, Anthem had something of a rocky VIP weekend on the technical side. On day one, plenty of folks simply had trouble getting logged into the game. From there, the most persistent issue was one that saw the game stuck on a perpetual loading screen. That issue actually plagued me through the entire weekend, which certainly put a damper on my initial experience. But again, this is an earlier build of a totally online game we’re talking about, so I’m not going to just start raving about “my concerns” just yet. The team is already working on the known issues, so hopefully they won’t even be a concern once the open demo rolls around.

But outside of the technical issues, I still left the VIP demo feeling a bit lukewarm.

For starters, the game forces you to explore the central hub from the first-person perspective at a pace that is so slow I was convinced I was doing something wrong. The vast majority of NPCs were not available for dialogue in the demo, so I couldn’t really get a good feel for the world in Anthem or the people who inhabit it. The few story beats on offer were intriguing but, again, it’s hard to care about a “super important mission” if I don’t fully understand why it’s important or why I should care.

My biggest gripe, though, was that even though this was a new setting with fresh enemies and all that jazz, I couldn’t help but feel like I’ve been here before. This might not be an issue for folks who don’t play the types of games I play, but I had a hard time feeling compelled to keep exploring beyond the basics of the demo due to the fact I’ve already kind of burned out on these types of games.

It feels kind of hacky just making a bunch of comparisons, but I would argue that it’s not exactly my fault if Anthem feels like an amalgam of so many other games that have come before it. Outside of the flying, exploring the map in Anthem feels almost identical to exploring the various regions of Monster Hunter World or Destiny 2. You run around collecting resources and shooting predictable bands of baddies, you occasionally take part in a live event to grab some fresh loot and you maybe drop into a cavern you hadn’t noticed before in order to do some exploring. The problem is that nothing here feels different from the games as service titles I’ve been plowing through for the past several years outside of the fact that dropping into another area occasionally comes with a lengthy load screen.

Also, Anthem does this weird thing where, if you decide to drop into a live event, it automatically teams you up with nearby players. Maybe there’s an option I missed but, otherwise, it was infuriating to get bored with an event and try to leave only to have the game tell me I was abandoning my team and cut to a load screen to drop me back into the fray.

And yes, I got a bit bored while playing Anthem, even though we’re only talking about a three-day demo. The frequent load freezes likely had a role in this, though, so I’m trying not to hold it against the game too strongly just yet. But while Anthem nails the moment to moment gameplay, it turns out I’ve simply become weary of that very specific gameplay. I’ve been doing this for years in games like Warframe and Diablo, and I’m not sure I’m looking forward to doing it all over again.

The Road Ahead

After spending a few days with Anthem, it’s clear that BioWare has put in the effort to make this a big, bombastic game that piles rewards onto the player and encourages everyone to team up with a bunch of friends and go exploring. Whether or not you’re ready for another game like that is obviously going to be up to you. I’ve seen plenty of people raving about how much fun they had in the VIP demo and I can absolutely understand why that is. For me, though, it felt like I was playing yet another looter shooter that, at least in the demo, didn’t have much “new” to offer.

I can’t help but feel from this limited experience that BioWare got caught up chasing the Destiny formula. The problem is that it took them like five years to build their own genre entry and, in that time, the market has become flooded with these types of games. Heck, The Division 2 is another game that falls squarely in this corner of the games market and it launches just a month after Anthem.

But that’s not to say I’m totally off the Anthem hype train. Outside of the technical glitches, the VIP demo hinted at a shooter that’s as big as it is deep, so hopefully that’s exactly what BioWare is able to deliver. The team has also teased more dynamic DLC, with stories that actually impact the game world rather than simply taking place within it. And outside of the campaign, it sounds like players have all sorts of live activities, seasonal events and the like to look forward to.

After playing the VIP demo, I have little doubt that Anthem is going to be a solid game. I’m just not sure it’s the type of game I feel like playing anymore.

This is the final in a series of features looking back at the various installments in the Kingdom Hearts franchise in anticipation of Kingdom Hearts III.

There have been several games that were released following Kingdom Hearts II, but two of them also actually take place after that title in the overall chronology of the series. The first of these, which technically takes place after the conclusion of Kingdom Hearts II gameplay, but prior to the actual ending of the game, was called Kingdom Hearts: Coded.

Coded is a unique game in that its initial version was only ever available in Japan, and it was actually a title for mobile phones. It's a game that reminds me the most of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for two reasons, the story is most closely associated with that game, and it also tries to combine different gameplay types together into a cohesive whole, that also only has limited success.

Following Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, when Sora and company were having their memories put back together, and the events of Chain wiped from their heads, Jiminy Cricket's journal of the first game was also erased. Donald, Goofy, Mickey and Jiminy are trying recover the data, the physical journal apparently acts more like a piece of computer software, and like a computer, the journal apparently has bugs in it. The Disney team then creates a digital Sora out of the journal's data to fight the bugs and fix the journal.

Where Chain of Memories tried to combine hack-and-slash RPG with a card battle game, Coded combines the RPG gameplay with other elements. Each Disney world plays differently and you get puzzle solving, turn based RPG combat, and RTS battles mixed in.

Unfortunately, because the game takes place inside the Journal of the first Kingdom Hearts, then, also like Chain of Memories, we're playing through a lot of Disney worlds we've seen before.

In the end, however, Coded actually does have some important tie-ins to the rest of the game series. The final episode of the game (it was released episodically in Japan) sees Digital Sora go back to Castle Oblivion and speak with a digital Namine. We learn that of three people whose hearts are closely tied to Sora (the three heroes of Birth by Sleep) and the events that took place in Chain of Memories get remembered. In the final moments of the game we see King Mickey writing a letter to the real Sora about what he has learned, and it's this letter that Sora, Kairi, and Riku are reading at the end of Kingdom Hearts II.

Coded, then leads directly into the next title Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. Based on the knowledge that Sora could be the key to rescuing the characters from Birth by Sleep, and the belief that Xehanort has not been truly defeated, Yen Sid decides it is time for Sora and Riku to earn their Keyblade Mark of Mastery, the same honor Terra and Aqua were attempting to earn in Birth by Sleep.

They are sent to awaken seven "Sleeping Keyholes," worlds that have been rescued from Darkness, but have not yet awoken.

Unfortunately, the pair gets separated and end up in paralleled versions of the seven worlds. You play as each, swapping frequently between the two.

Gameplay is similar to Birth By Sleep as everything is based around the Command Deck. You can equip a limited number of spells, items, and special attack to a rotating wheel. Each has a cool down before you can use it again, so combining these with normal attacks is the way to defeat your enemies. You also have some strange allies, as, rather than fighting alongside Disney characters, your support is made up of dream creatures that are essentially Pokemon.

One of the highlights of Dream Drop Distance, a game with a ridiculous name, but it was on the 3DS, is that it actually includes some new Disney stories to delve into. You get to visit the characters of the largely underappreciated Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Three Musketeers, and even a world based on Fantasia.

Even the worlds that we've seen before don't feel like retreads. Sora's portion of the Pinocchio themed world isn't inside Monstro the whale. Also, the version of Tron's Grid that you visit is based on the movie sequel, Tron: Legacy, rather than the original film from the 1980s.

A few villains we thought were dead reappear, specifically Xehanort's Heartless and his Nobody. It seems that thanks to a handy bit of time travel, Xehanort is looking to consolidate his power by building a new Organization XIII using various aspects of himself. To combat them, the forces of light will need more help, which means rescuing the Birth by Sleep heroes, and also training Kairi to use a Keyblade.

It's here, more or less, that Kingdom Hearts III will take place.

The only other Kingdom Hearts game that's been made is Kingdom Hearts X, a mobile game that tells the story of the days leading up to the Keyblade War. While the game itself would seem to only set the stage for the rest of the titles to come. It, and the Back Page movie released in the 2.8 Prologue, do leave some dangling threads that have yet to be resolved. Namely, what happened to the Master of Masters, the man who created the first Keyblade and really set this all in motion? Where did his apprentice Luxu go, and what was in the box his master gave him?

I would also expect to see the return of the X-Blade. Kingdom Hearts X tells us it shattered into 20 pieces, seven of pure light, and 13 of darkness. Organization XIII will make up the 13 pieces of darkness. Our seven Keyblade wielders will be the pieces of light.

It seems likely that all these questions will be answered one way or another when Kingdom Hearts III arrives. It's been an interesting, occasionally convoluted, ride. The fact that so many still care about how this story will ends shows just how much people love this wild game series that turned Disney characters into RPG heroes. Everybody loves Mickey Mouse. Some people prefer him with a sword shaped like a key in his hand.

It's rare that an entire city or state becomes part of the promotional material for a game, but it happens on occasion. San Francisco was the lifeblood of Watch Dogs 2 and Ubisoft made no reservations about using the setting to promote the game. The company also did something similar with the fictional Hope County in Montana being a major selling point for Far Cry 5. Well, it appears Montana was rather flattered by Ubisoft's gesture. The state has begun using the game to promote tourism.

According to PCGamesN, Montana has teamed up with Ubisoft and there's now a VisitHopeCounty.com website. The county isn't real, but the state is. Hope County is the fictional location that houses various small towns where a militant doomsday religious group has gathered in order to recruit for the impending Armageddon.

As pointed out by PCGamesN, the website avoids getting into the nitty gritty of the game's plot, but it does mention the violent revolution that ends up taking place within Hope County that involves police deputy Rook and a few other rebels who get into a civil war with the Eden's Gate religious cult, led by Joseph Seed.

If you head over to the Hope County website, there's a FAQ page that mentions Far Cry 5 at the very top, mentioning that the game is set in America and gives players the freedom to navigate a "serene-looking yet deeply twisted world." It surprisingly breaks down how players will get thrust into the middle of the silent coup that no longer stays silent, and will join up with the residents of the county to fight back as part of the resistance.

I'm a little shocked they would even mention the violent aspects of the game, but I'm sure anyone who is familiar with Far Cry knows there's some measure of violence involved. As mentioned, it avoids pointing out that Joseph Seed proclaims himself to be a prophet of God (Spoiler Alert! And yes, it turns out to be true) and also skips over the manufacturing of the drug Bliss, or the torture camps that Jacob Seed establishes, but it does give a few reasons why Ubisoft decided to set the game in Montana. It points out that the design team enjoyed the varied topography of Montana and the small towns scattered about the largely untouched region.

However, if you were hoping to find landmarks from Far Cry 5 inside of the real life Montana, you'll have to look elsewhere. The FAQ page points out that many of the landmarks and locations featured in the game are designed using "creative liberties."

The partnership with Ubisoft, however, was still opportunity enough for the state to take advantage of the exposure brought on by Far Cry 5, and the website offers a number of resources for vacation lodging, ranging from cabins and camping to chalets and condominiums, along with a list of activities available in Montana such as hunting, fishing, hiking, and off-road vehicular adventures.

PCGamesN also points out that this isn't the first time that a state has teamed up with a publisher to promote tourism due to a real-life location being featured in a game. Bethesda and West Virginia had a partnership as well for Fallout 76, which actually did feature real-life landmarks from West Virginia.

While some people might consider visiting Montana due to Far Cry 5, gamers will be able to return to Hope County once more when Far Cry: New Dawn launches on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC on February 15th, 2019.

When Bungie and Activision split apart, the former announced that it would still support Destiny 2 even without the publishing support of the latter. Bungie is holding true to that. And even though there have been some hiccups with the Crimson Days event, the developer has made sure to keep the ball rolling by rescheduling when the Crimson Days event will get underway.

Over on the official Bungie website, there's a breakdown of the rescheduling efforts for the Crimson Days event, which appeared on the 2019 roadmap. There's a small section in the update that rolls out the details for the Crimson Days, which states...

For whatever reason, the event was moved back by a week, but you'll still be able to get in on the Crimson Days, which originally made its appearance in Destiny back on Valentine's Day in 2016. This was originally supposed to take place directly after the Mayhem! event, which is scheduled to take place between January 29th and February 5th between the end of the month and the start of the new one.

Even still, Bungie is not only keeping to its promise of supporting Destiny 2, but doing so with regular events that nearly start and stop one week after the next. The Mayhem! Event is for gamers who want to test their mettle in the Crucible, while the Crimson Days will be a cooperative event for those who like teaming up with friends and taking the fight to the enemy.

Following Crimson Days, there will be some cleaning up and fixing up of certain features heading into the launch of the Season of the Drifter. According to the update, bounties that were acquired in the previous seasons will have a maximum possible power reward. The idea is to lessen the need for players to hoard the keys, and instead cash them in for the maximum power reward even for events and bounties from many seasons ago.

Bungie seems resolute on fixing up Destiny 2 as much as possible now that the company is free from being under the wing of Activision. Some gamers felt that perhaps the publisher was restricting the developer to focus more on monetization methods rather than gameplay mechanisms and fun-factors. Given the fact that Activision lamented the lack of revenue that the game was generating, and the eventual termination of the partnership between the two companies, it's likely that the suspicion from gamers was true.

We'll see how well Bungie can maintain the growth and updates for the sci-fi first-person shooter in the coming months. However, in the short term, gamers will be able to dive into the Crimson Days event starting in mid-February on home consoles and PC.

For a short while, Soulja Boy was all over the video game news sphere, but not for the reasons you might expect. He wasn't starring in a new game and he wasn't producing some indie title to break into the industry. No, he was basically reselling Chinese knock-off consoles filled with unlicensed ROMs and calling them his own. Well, SNL figured it would make for a great skit.

The sketch was uploaded over on the Saturday Night Live YouTube channel, but it aired during the actual live broadcast of the show as part of the Weekend Update segment. It was a segue in from the topic of the 35 day government shut down taking place between Trump and the Democrats over getting funding for the wall. SNL satirized Soulja Boy by having him come on to talk about the government shut down, but instead he said he didn't know anything about that and began talking about running for President of the United States in 2020.

They finally got around to the video game controversy after debate about Trump being a tough opponent during the 2020 Presidential elections, to which Soulja Boy said that he was the original one to hustle to the top, bringing out the SouljaGame handheld device. Hilariously enough, they begin making fun of the fact that the SoulaGame devices were Chinese knock-offs, listing some of the games on the device -- such as Fork-Knife, instead of Epic Games' Fortnite, or Reg Dread Recession, instead of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. There's also a riff on Nintendo's classic platformers called the Super Manjeno Bros., which is obviously supposed to be a parody of Super Mario Bros.

So there's a couple of things to get through that some of you may not be familiar with. First up, the entire skit is based around an interview that the real life Soulja Boy had on a morning radio show called The Breakfast Club. The interview went viral as Soulja Boy began to rip into other rappers for stealing his “bars," and saying that he was the originator of certain lines and beats. When the hosts mention rapper Drake, Soulja Boy got up from his chair and drawled out a long “Drake?!” in an indignant manner before going through a list of reasons why he was the progenitor of Drake's rapping style before Drake was popular.

SNL decided to parody Soulja Boy's Breakfast Club interview with his recent but somewhat short-lived foray into the wonderful world of video games. For those of you who haven't been keeping track, Soulja Boy released several gaming devices called the SouljaGame Consoles. This consisted of handheld devices and home consoles that were all priced above $99.

The devices came prepackaged with emulators containing hundreds of unlicensed ROMs from major video game publishers such as Sega, Capcom, SNK, and... Nintendo.

Now Nintendo is notorious for being litigious about its branding and copyrights. The company will even legally impose upon fan-made creations and projects, even if it's made for free, such as the Another Metroid 2 Remake that was made as a 30th anniversary celebration for the franchise, which was sent a cease and desist letter.

Many gamers tried to warn Soulja Boy that he should – on his own accord – cease and desist selling the consoles containing the unlicensed ROMs. But he persisted until Nintendo reportedly got involved, and then he pulled the devices from his store page. He didn't give up, though, he tried again with another Chinese knock-off console based on Sony's PlayStation Vita, which kept him in the video game news circuits just a little while longer.

If there’s one thing Nintendo has become known for over the years, it’s finding fun ways to play video games. And based on a recent patent, it looks like the company has still got an eye set on bringing 3D gaming into the living room.

The folks over at Comicbook recently stumbled upon a patent filed by Nintendo that shows the company is still very much into the idea of 3D gaming. They pioneered glasses-free 3D with the appropriately-named 3DS console, and it looks like they want to bring that same experience onto the big screen. The patent is pretty straightforward, highlighting two different setups for the proposed technology. While one option allows for a glasses-free option and the other requires some special specs, they both rely on a camera placed on the television screen that tracks the movement of your eyes.

The idea, according to the patent, is that this would allow whatever hardware the device is plugged into to crate realistic 3D images, adding depth to a video game that isn’t actually there.

Of course, patents like this are getting filed pretty regularly, so we shouldn’t hold our breath just yet. It sounds like Nintendo is just kicking the idea around at the moment but, even in these early stages, it’s best to get your patent rolling. They may try to make this a Switch peripheral, they may be fine-tuning it for a future console, or they might end up scrapping it completely. The point is that they are clearly still interested in bonkers new tech, and we’re 100 percent here for it.

Nintendo is, at its heart, a toy company. Sure, they make fantastic games; but only after they’ve created a fun new piece of hardware meant to push everyone’s favorite pastime in unexpected new directions. They made gaming on the go possible with the Game Boy, took a swing at far-too-early VR gaming with the Virtual Boy and, over the past several console generations, they’ve taken a swing at altering the way folks interact with their games. Heck, even the Nintendo 64 and GameCube sported totally unique controllers. Nintendo keeps trying new things, even when they seem to find formulas that work.

What’s really interesting here is that Nintendo seems to be shying away from the emergent VR market. Virtual reality gaming grew by about 30 percent last year, leading industry analysts to speculate that there could actually be a future for that type of gaming in the years to come. Rather than try to figure out a way to put their own spin on VR gaming, it looks like Nintendo is instead going a completely different route. Not totally unexpected given their past, but it’ll be interesting to see if this new 3D tech actually pans out.

What do you think, folks? Does this type of 3D gaming on the couch seem like something you’d buy into? Would you rather Nintendo focus on a VR solution of their own? Let us know in the comments below.

The Anthem VIP demo hasn’t exactly gone off without a hitch but, according to BioWare Head of Live Service Chad Robertson, the team is working to address the biggest concerns as soon as possible.

In case the terminology is throwing you for a loop, the “VIP demo” for Anthem was only open this weekend to folks who pre-ordered the game or were a member of EA Access or Origin Access. That velvet rope was actually pulled aside quite a bit more than that, as VIP participants were granted three codes to give to friends. Also, literally hundreds of additional codes were passed out from various websites, influencers and the like throughout the weekend.

In other words, and as reiterated in the recent update from Robertson, the teams at EA and BioWare were well aware of the fact that this was going to be a massive demo and were prepared for exactly that.

But when everything came tumbling down the moment the demo launched, the natural assumption from many folks was that the servers simply were not prepared for the number of people who were trying to play the game all at once. Robertson reiterates that was not the case, but rather some unanticipated problems popped up and started causing problems this weekend. These are exactly the kinds of issues betas and demos are meant to uncover so, hopefully, things will run more smoothly in the future.

Also worth pointing out is how prompt and open this response was. In instances such as what we saw in Anthem this weekend, it’s not uncommon for a developer to simply tweet that they are aware of some issues and working to fix them. BioWare went a step further to give players a better idea of what went wrong, and that openness typically goes a long way toward creating some goodwill within an online community.

On top of the initial platform connection issues, probably the biggest gripe this weekend concerned infinite loads within the game. As of this writing, I’ve probably only played a grand total of two hours of the demo (not from lack of trying) due to this issue. Basically, at any point in the demo you are greeted with a load screen, there’s a chance you will just be stuck there indefinitely. The only option after that is to reboot the game and pretty much start whatever you were doing from scratch.

According to the update, BioWare is working on these issues and might have some of them addressed before the VIP party ends this weekend. Otherwise, the aim is to have fixes ready to roll by next weekend, which is when the Anthem demo will be open to everyone. After that, the team will only have a few weeks left to get ready for the Feb. 22 launch.

There's no doubt that Call of Duty is a blockbuster franchise across any stretch of entertainment media. It's managed to become a mainstay heavy-mover in the sales department since the seventh generation of gaming. Activision actually decided to thank fans for making the series the billion-dollar franchise that it is, year in and year out.

Over on the official Activision blog, there's a retrospective for each Call of Duty game that has come out in the past 10 years, along with a small “thank you” from Activision for making the series as big as it is, with the staff stating...

The blog also contains a complete list of the top 10 games from each year that managed to top the charts from the Call of Duty franchise.

The list includes the following games:

2018 – Black Ops 4

2017 – WWII

2016 – Infinite Warfare

2015 – Black Ops III

2014 – Advanced Warfare

2013 – Ghosts

2012 – Black Ops II

2011 – Modern Warfare 3

2010 – Black Ops

2009 – Modern Warfare 2

Technically, it started before Modern Warfare 2. The series really took a step into the blockbuster era with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare back in 2007. The game came out during an explosive moment in gaming, competing with other high-profile games like Halo 3and the original Mass Effect. Yet it managed to hold its own and go on to become one of the best-selling games of the year.

In 2008, Treyarch introduced gamers to the highly lauded and viscerally violent Call of Duty: World at War. It was one of the first World War II games featuring a dynamic story mode that allowed you to play different factions that weren't just the U.S., and British forces. The game was also the first one to include the Nazi Zombies mode, which would go on to become one of the most popular features in a Call of Duty game.

The mixture of Hollywood-style cinematic set-pieces in over-the-top, straight-laced campaign modes, combined with the ever-growing multiplayer options, is what helped keep Call of Duty in the books as a best seller. That's the case even with negative-hype surrounding a game like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which had one of the most downvoted trailers on YouTube. EA also gave Activision a real run for its money with the release of Battlefield 1, which usurped a lot of the market share from Call of Duty.

However, Activision bounced back the following year with the 2017 release of Call of Duty: WW2, which would put the company back in the good graces of gamers and set the stage for the 2018 outing of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, which extricated the campaign mode in favor of a Battle Royale mode. Despite losing out on one of the franchise's core features, the game still went on to become a best-selling title of 2018.

So by now most people know that Telltale Games has gone under and there won't be anymore Telltale's The Walking Dead titles after the final season wraps up. However, Skybound Entertainment wants to keep making games and bringing fans new titles based on the property, so the company is asking fans what they want to see next.

The news came via a tweet on January 24th, 2019 from over on the official The Walking Dead Twitter account, where fans were asked what kind of game they would like to see next in the widely popular series.

This comes shortly after the third episode for The Walking Dead: The Final Season was released on behalf of Telltale, courtesy of Skybound Entertainment. For those of you not in the know, since Telltale dissolved during the middle of releasing the four episode arc for the final season, Skybound Entertainment stepped in to fund and develop the remaining two episodes in the season by bringing in the staff from Telltale to finish up the season.

Obviously, with the last episode prepping to drop soon, Skybound is looking ahead at what can be done next with the series instead of waiting around while twiddling thumbs. The actual Skybound Games account hopped into the thread to clarify that the teams are taking suggestions even beyond the currently available games and series, as noted in the tweet below.

This means that the teams are likely looking for games that aren't just retreads of what Telltale did, nor is the team looking to redo what Overkill Software and Starbreeze recently put out with Overkill's The Walking Dead.

Some fans hopped in to offer some fantastic suggestions, including a really detailed outline of how an open-world, sandbox game could work based on the AMC television series, explaining how the design would be similar to survival-simulators but structured like Red Dead Redemption 2's story chapters.

A few more people also suggested Grand Theft Auto-style open world games where you run around and attempt to survive. That would likely put it in direct competition with games like DayZ or Rust. Both games gained a lot of popularity during their early launches due to their similarity to the harsh survival reality featured in the AMC television show The Walking Dead.

A lot of people kept asking for a Season 5 of Telltale's rendition of The Walking Dead, but it's highly unlikely that Skybound will go that route, especially since there was a massive trail-off in the sales for Telltale after the first season of The Walking Dead. Repeating that business move again would likely end in failure, unless the company decided to do something wildly different with the way the story and gameplay unfolded.

People are still lobbing suggestions at Skybound for a new game, so there's still time to slip in an idea about what sort of genre or style of game the company can tackle next. Heck, maybe the studio will go in a completely different direction and make a pinball game based on the zombie property? Right now it's all still in the planning phase so feel free to join the discussion on Twitter.

Hollywood actor Terry Crews is everywhere. He's been on television, in movies, and he'll be starring in the upcoming release of Crackdown 3 for the Xbox One and Windows 10 on PC. However, he's not done with gaming after that -- he also wants to take a shot at playing Jax in Mortal Kombat 11.

Over on Terry Crews' official Twitter account, the actor tweeted out his admiration for the art that was put together by Bosslogic, who is known for drawing fan art featuring famous actors as other fictional characters. His latest run of images consists mostly of Mortal Kombat characters played by famous actors. For instance, he has Keanu Reeves from John Wick playing the blind warrior Kenshi (which looks really badass, by the way), and Wonder Woman's Gal Gadot as Kitana (which looks super cool), and Guardians of the Galaxy's Chris Pratt as Johnny Cage.

It was Bosslogic's turn of former football player Terry Crews into the metal-armed special forces agent Jax which managed to get the attention of Ed Boon, who said that Bosslogic was "killing it." The creative director for the upcoming ultra-violent fighting game then tagged Terry Crews into the tweet and Crews was quick to respond with a bunch of fire emojis while saying “I would love to do this!!!” hinting at the idea of wanting to step into the role of Jax for Mortal Kombat 11.

Now keep in mind that stepping into the role of a character is no quick feat. It's not quite like movies or television where at the twelfth hour you can replace someone else and hop into the right costume and memorize the right lines to don the role. For video games, oftentimes there's the costume fitting, the makeup process, the scanning process you have to go through for the model, and then the voiceover work that has to be done. All of that has to take place before the character is put into the developmental pipeline.

So on average it can take anywhere between a few weeks to a few months to finalize a character for actual use within the game, and in the case of Mortal Kombat 11, the game is due out on April 23rd, 2019 later this year during the spring. That would mean that if NetherRealm Studios have not already scanned, cleaned-up, voiced, and mo-capped Jax for the game, they would have to get Crews into the office and start on that like right away, right now if they wanted him done in time for release.

However, if the character already has his moves mapped out but the model, the skin, and the voiceover work isn't done quite yet, they would need to hurry if they actually had plans on using Terry Crews for the game. It's not impossible but it seems a little unlikely at this point.

Then again, it all depends on the pipeline. Photogrammetry tools have really picked up pace in recent years with better floating point capture paradigms that more accurately capture the object, so that's less time in clean-up and faster turnarounds for getting characters and objects up out for the game, which is how Capcom is able to get higher quality assets implemented into games like Resident Evil 7 or the remake of Resident Evil 2 in much quicker times than before.

This isn't the first time that Crews has stepped up to offer his services for a video game. He also tried to use the media zeitgeist to land a role in Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch as Doomfist. He came close but he didn't quite make it. He did, however, manage to use that wave of momentum to end up in Microsoft's upcoming Crackdown 3.

But then again, it doesn't even mean that in this particular case Terry Crews would have to be recruited for playing the character within the game. Heck, he could be given a role in a live-action counterpart. You might remember a few years ago that there was a short lived series based on Mortal Kombat X, so if NetherRealm and Warner Bros., try something like that, it could work out after all.

Just a few days out from launch, GameStop canceled some pre-orders for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3 special edition PlayStation 4 bundle. The company's initial reasoning was an "unforeseen issue," but it later explained further on social media.

The above tweet comes to us from user “Kenny tran” (via Gamerant), who recently received an update from GameStop explaining that his Kingdom Hearts 3 PS4 bundle had officially been canceled. Kenny included the email from GameStop in his tweet, which noted that a $25 coupon to the store’s website was being offered as compensation. There was also an apology for “any frustration” the cancellation may have caused.

Shortly after, additional folks started popping up on social media explaining that their PS4 bundle had also been canceled, and that GameStop had sent an identical email. GameStop later addressed the furor on Twitter, explaining that they messed up by overselling:

In case you’re wondering why this is such a big deal, it’s because we’re not just talking about a standard PS4 Pro with a copy of the game included. Sure, these folks can simply buy the game by itself, but the actual console and its controller boast a bunch of spiffy artistic designs from the game. In other words, they wanted this very specific console, they pre-ordered it to make sure they could get it, and now they’re being told nearly a year later that their pre-order has been canceled.

The problem many have with these kinds of issues is that these folks were willing to lay down their reservation bright and early specifically so they wouldn’t have to deal with shortage issues. If GameStop wasn’t going to be able to fulfill their order, it stands to reason they would have pre-ordered the very specific item they wanted somewhere else. Instead, they trusted GameStop to fulfill their order, as advertised, and now their chances of finding the console elsewhere are basically zero. That $25 coupon is understandably frustrating these folks who have had their pre-orders canceled.

As the initial report points out, pretty much their only option at this point is to turn to sites like eBay, where folks are selling the consoles for a hell of a lot more than they are worth. And again, that wouldn’t be an issue had the retailer they decided to purchase their console from come through on their end of the transaction.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this happen. Similar issues popped up a couple years ago when the Nintendo Switch launched, as Nintendo had trouble keeping up with demand. And then, when the NES Classic Edition launched, plenty of folks had their pre-orders canceled due to an unexpectedly limited supply.

We’ll keep our eye out for any additional updates on this mess but, for now, it looks like some folks who were expecting to have a Kingdom Hearts-themed PS4 next week are simply out of luck.

Exactly seven days after the launch of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, a patch has been added to the game, including a new opening movie boasting an appearance from Dan Smith of Killer7 fame. I mean, director Suda51 has to be up to something, right?

If you have Travis Strikes Again on your Nintendo Switch, you can simply update the game and the new intro movie will play. Otherwise, the folks at Nintendo Insider were kind enough to post it online, if you’re just curious to see what happens. Having checked things out myself, it’s probably also worth noting that the Grasshopper Manufacture logo that follows the intro movie has gone from a white to green. That might not be important but, at this point, who knows?

In the original intro movie, we find out that an assassin by the name of Bad Man is on the hunt for Travis Touchdown, the world’s top killer. Travis killed Bad Girl in the second No More Heroes game, kicking off this quest for revenge. Long story short, the duo get into a tussle and eventually get sucked into a virtual reality video game machine. Yeah, it’s pretty weird.

In this new intro trailer that now plays before the original, we find out that Bad Man didn’t just stumble upon Travis at the start of the game. Instead, we learn that Killer7’s Dan Smith put him on the trail and also gave him the Death Ball (a video game) that triggers the game machine in the first place. What’s really cool about this cameo is not only that it adds yet another connection to a previous Suda51 game, but Smith is once again voiced by Michael Gough.

Killer7 originally launched for the Nintendo GameCube way back in 2005, only finally making its way to PC last year. While this could certainly just be an example of Suda51 having fun with his insane universe, there’s a possibility this is all pointing to something greater. There’s no telling if additional updates are planned for the core game and we know for a fact there’s some DLC coming, so maybe this isn’t the last we’ll see of Mr. Smith in Travis Strikes Again.

For me, this was a pitch-perfect addition to the Switch’s bizarre action romp. TSA already crosses over with the free-to-play Souls-like, Let it Die, and characters from Shadows of the Damned pop up in totally unexpected ways. It’s also worth mentioning that Travis has an extreme love from the main character in Hotline Miami, leading me to wonder if some sort of “killer collaboration” is brewing in the background.

That’s just speculation, though. For now, enjoy this blast from the past and, if you’re looking for an absolutely bonkers beat-em-up experience, Travis Strikes Again launched last week exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

As we get closer to the release of Kingdom Hearts III we're taking a look at the rest of the series.

Technically, the first game in Kingdom Hearts chronology is Kingdom Hearts X, a mobile game that tells the story of the Keyblade War, an event that took place a long time before the events of the first Kingdom Hearts game. However, the important part of Kingdom Hearts chronologically starts with 2010's Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. 10 years before Kingdom Hearts we meet three Keyblade users, Terra, Aqua, and Ventis.

A new sort of evil has been seen throughout the worlds called the Unversed. Terra and Aqua are sent to search out the cause of the evil. Meanwhile, Ventis, being told by a random stranger that his friend Terra will never be the same again, runs off as well.

What makes Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep unique, and a lot of fun, is that players then have the ability to play through the same story with all three characters. The three characters cross paths with each other at various points, but you only ever see the story from one character's perspective at a time.

This makes it not only necessary to play through the game as all three characters in order to get the whole story, but a lot of fun, as the first campaign will leave you with many questions about what the other characters did that you'll answer as you play through a second or third time. You'll be waiting with anticipation as you await an event for a character that you know is going to happen because you saw the results or heard about it from another story.

In addition to new playable characters, Birth by Sleep is full of new places to go exploring as well. You get to play through an entire collection of Disney worlds that we haven't seen before. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty all make appearances along with later Disney films like Lilo & Stitch. Each playable character arrives in each world at a different time and/or in a different place, so while all of the Disney Princess' worlds tell a story more or less identical to the classic Disney movie, you have to play all three characters to get the whole story.

Each character also plays differently. Terra is big and forceful, a Keyblade tank, if you will. Aqua's abilities are more geared toward magic than combat. While Ventis is a good balance of the two, the closest to Sora of the three.

And speaking of Sora, the events of Birth by Sleep are more than directly related to the main games. While most of the other spinoff games in Kingdom Hearts aren't strictly necessary to get the most important story beats, Birth by Sleep is absolutely vital to the larger story. You learn a great deal more about Xehanort, the ultimate big bad of the series, who is expertly voice acted by the great Leonard Nimoy (incidentally, the other Keyblade master of the story Eraqus, is voiced by Mark Hamill in a perfect, and likely intentional, bit of sci-fi franchise combat).

Xehanort is on a quest to reforge the X-blade (here, using the greek letter X, so it's pronounced key-blade) because he wants to restart the Keyblade War, believing that darkness and light should be in equal balance, rather than seeing darkness consumed by light. He very nearly succeeds, but the combined efforts of the three characters puts the weapon, the protector of Kingdom Hearts, out of his reach.

You also do see Sora, Riku and Kairi and you begin to learn how they became part of this story at all. The three characters here and the three characters of the main games are literally linked together in the story. Terra, like Riku, is constantly battling the darkness inside him.

One benefit of the fact that Birth by Sleep is a prequel to everything that came before it, the story is pretty self-explanatory and clear on its own. While there are references to the stories that will come, understanding them isn't necessary to enjoy the story of this game.

While Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep was well reviewed and also a solid selling game in its day, I can't help but wonder how many people didn't get a chance to play it when it was new because of the platform where it could be found. While the PlayStation Portable wasn't a bomb of a handheld console by any stretch, it never did nearly as well as the Nintendo DS, which was also the console where more Kingdom Hearts games were released.

I certainly never touched this game before getting a chance to play it in the Kingdom Hearts 2.5 ReMix. I'm certainly glad that the game is available to play in full now. While all the spinoff games add something to the story, and many have tried to do something unique with gameplay, Birth by Sleep is the only one that to me really felt like another Kingdom Hearts game. Even though you play as other characters, it still fells like the real companion to the two console titles.

And from everything that we know going into Kingdom Hearts III, the events of this game will be vital to the end of the story. Both of the two games in the franchise that take place after the end of Kingdom Hearts II (we're getting there next) deal with the characters from Birth by Sleep in some way. The game also ends on something of a cliffhanger for the characters, so their story obviously isn't over yet.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep 0.2 - A Fragmentary Passage, was released as part of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and it acts as both a playable epilogue to Birth by Sleep and a prologue to Kingdom Hearts III. It's the final set of events that takes place chronologically before the events of the upcoming PS4 title. In that game you play as Aqua as she attempts to find a way out of the land of darkness she has found herself in.

So now, we have more or less the whole story between the beginning and the end of Kingdom Hearts II. There's just a couple of gaps to fill in and a bit more story to tell before we get to Kingdom Hearts III.

When the sales for the Nintendo Switch looked like they were slowing slightly during the middle half of 2018, some gamers and analysts suggested that perhaps Nintendo needed to cut the price of the system down to $249, which has been a sweet selling spot for a lot of home consoles. However, according to Nintendo's president, the Switch won't be seeing a price cut anytime soon.

Nintendo Everything is reporting that, during a discussion with Sankei News, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa weighed in on the Switch's success and answered a question about the company's ambitious goal of shifting 20 million SKUs globally throughout the fiscal year. Furukawa noted that the company is maintaining this goal and there won't be any price cuts for the Switch in its attempt to reach said goal...

It makes sense given that people are still buying the Switch in droves. The console is a sales monster not just in Nintendo's home region of Japan, but also abroad. The console was the best-selling system in the United States and the rest of North America for 2018, capping off the year by moving close to 2 million units throughout the month of December alone due to the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

And, speaking of which, the game managed to shift more than 5 million copies during the first week of release, making it one of the biggest games to launch in the history of a Nintendo platform. It was also the 5th best-selling game of 2018, even though it only just released in December, putting it up alongside other big sellers such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

Furukawa also reiterated several other successes for the Switch, such as Super Mario Party for the home console, which launched in the crowded month of October, but still managed to move more than 1.5 million copies out of the gate. This even while going up against heavy-hitters from Ubisoft like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

The Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee games also moved millions of copies across the Switch, totaling more than 3 million during the first week of release, which is extremely impressive.

Basically, Nintendo is relying on the old tried and true model: software moves hardware.

So, the company is focused on putting out quality software to keep people buying the hardware. This is also why Nintendo recently announced that Metroid Prime 4 was being delayed due to having development restarted under Retro Studios. According to the company, Metroid Prime 4's development was simply not quite up to par and did not meet Nintendo's quality seal of approval.

Given the fact that when games do meet Nintendo's quality seal of approval, they end up shifting millions of copies and making the company lots of money. So it's easy to understand why it's so stringent on maintaining certain standards. And so long as quality software keeps being released, gamers will keep purchasing the hardware even if it doesn't get a price drop, as evident with the current sales momentum of the Nintendo Switch.

The Anthem VIP demo went live today and, based on early reports, folks are having a hard time actually getting into the game. According to EA, that’s due to the fact that too many people have piled onto the server all at once.

The Anthem VIP demo has been pitched as a somewhat limited affair. There was an alpha hosted last December but, this time around, participation has been limited to folks who either pre-ordered the game or are members of EA Access or Origin Access. It looks like that figure is higher than EA anticipated, as the servers immediately crashed once the demo went live at 12 p.m. ET, Friday.

According to the most recent update, players have slowly but surely started to trickle into the game, with EA customer support’s official Twitter feed offering updates.

It’s nice to hear the team is working to get things in order, but this still comes as something of a surprise, all things considered. To be clear, we’re well aware of the fact that this is exactly why demos like the VIP run exist. The whole point is to give EA and BioWare an opportunity to stress test servers and see if any unexpected bugs or other issues pop up under the weight of a more limited audience.

But, still, EA knows how many people subscribe to the Access programs and how many people have pre-ordered the game, so they should have had a pretty decent estimate concerning the amount of server space they’d need to get the VIP demo off to a smooth start. Then again, maybe they planned for too little initial space intentionally, just to test how the servers would crumble under the load. If they force the bridge to collapse early, they might have a better handle on needed problem solving down the road.

Either way, it looks like they’re figuring things out pretty quickly, so, hopefully, everyone will be able to log in and actually take part in the demo soon. As a reminder, this VIP demo is only running through the weekend, but plenty of websites and social media feeds are giving away codes for access, so keep your eyes peeled if you’re not currently a “VIP” but want to give Anthem a gander.

Or, you could just wait a week! Starting Friday, Feb. 1, the demo will be open to all comers. If you’re in no particular hurry, feel free to download the demo now and wait until next week to jump in once EA has worked out more of the kinks.

As a final note, there are also reports of a never-ending load screen slowing down some players once they get into the game. According to EA, the current solution is to pull an IT Crowd and simply “try turning it off and on again.” If you’re still having issues, it sounds like your best bet is to just walk away for a while and try again later.

Ubisoft's latest DLC for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey was called “Shadow Heritage” and it managed to court quite the controversy due to a story development that takes place with the two main characters, Kassandra and Alexios. Well, after the storm mellowed following an apology from the director of the game, Ubisoft decided to address the controversy and make some edits.

After releasing the DLC and courting a lot of negative feedback, Ubisoft decided to address those concerns over on the Ubisoft forums, where a community manager apologized for upsetting fans and said that some changes would be made to the DLC to address those concerns. Specifically, Ubisoft will be altering a cutscene and changing some of the dialogue in the Shadow Heritage DLC. According to the community manager this will be done to reflect some of the choices players make in relation to the non-romantic storyline.

Additionally, the developers will also be altering the trophy and achievement for completing the cinematic (although it seems kind of pointless to have a trophy for something that doesn't require much active participation from the player), and it will be present with the other changes as part of the 1.2 update for the DLC.

The community manager doesn't give a time frame on when these changes will be rolling out, other than that it will be available in the “upcoming patch.” Does that mean it will happen before the next episode is released or as some sort of a hotfix? The post doesn't necessarily clarify that point.

What is clarified is that, for the next DLC episode, titled Bloodline, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey fans will have more consideration made from the developers for the choices and paths that were made throughout the base game. How much the DLC will actually cater to those choices isn't explicitly explained, but I'm sure we'll find out once the DLC becomes available.

This all started because of what happened at the end of the Shadow Heritage expansion. Spoilers Ahead if you haven't played the DLC or need a quick refresher of what got the controversy started. Basically, the DLC ended with Alexios or Kassandra hooking up with either the son or daughter of Darius, the first of the proto-Assassins (since the actual Brotherhood didn't begin until Assassin's Creed: Origins). Alexios or Kassandra (depending on who you're playing) ends up creating an offspring with the character they hook up with. You don't get a choice in whether or not they do get with the other character, and instead the story just plays out – regardless of your past romantic choices – with Kassandra starting a family with Darius' son, or Alexios starting a family with Darius' daughter.

The child they make is supposed to be the start of the lineage that eventually leads up to the original Assassin's Creed starring Altair and Desmond Miles. Ubisoft clumsily attempted to corral the storyline back into place so it makes sense for the lore's timeline, but in doing so they invalidated all of the past romantic choices made by the players throughout the base game.

So, a lot of players were angry about those choices being invalidated and questioned why Ubisoft would even implement such romantic choices if they were going to be forced into a relationship with a preset character in the DLC? It makes sense as a complaint, based on the fact that Ubisoft heavily promoted Assassin's Creed: Odyssey as a true RPG experience built around player choice, but the company definitely should have taken more care in recognizing that if the story was going to make sense in any capacity, there would have to be some sort of sensible continuity to make the genealogy make sense for the prequels to eventually link up with the original trilogy.

Hopefully, the edits that will be made can help fans accept this storyline a bit more.

It's never a good thing to find out that a couple of years after a game has been announced that the development on said game is being restarted. That's what has happened with Metroid Prime 4, which was announced back in 2017 shortly after the release of the Nintendo Switch. However, recently Nintendo announced that development was being restarted with another developer at the helm. The good news, is that new developer is the same one that made the previous Metroid Prime games so good.

In a three minute video posted up over on the official Nintendo YouTube channel, head of development, Shinya Takahashi, gives gamers an update on the development status of Metroid Prime 4. He openly admits that after two years of development, the game does not meet the quality standards that Nintendo strives for, and that in light of this, the development is being restarted. This is because the company wants all of its published games to meet a certain standard. When Metroid Prime 4 failed to meet that standard, Nintendo felt it was time to restart development and have producer, Kensuke Tanabe, work hand-in-hand with the developer of the original Metroid Prime game, Retro Studios.

Yes, development is being restarted completely from scratch. This means that the game will not be released according to its original internal development schedule that Nintendo had laid out for the title, but will now be delayed until its complete or meets Nintendo's standard.

So then how long should we expect the game to cook in the developmental oven? Well, typically it takes anywhere between two and three years to develop a fully polished game built on an existing framework. If there is no existing framework then it means the developers have to utilize some research and development techniques to build a new framework, which in itself can take anywhere between several months to several years to complete.

In this case, Takahashi doesn't deep dive into the actual minutiae of Retro Studios' tactics for redesigning Metroid Prime 4 from the ground up. So we don't exactly know how much work they have to do. If it's a new engine? That's another three to five years in wait time. If it's reusing an existing engine? It's going to be about two years at a minimum.

Had things gone smoothly with the original development team, Metroid Prime 4 potentially could have seen a fall 2019 release, since it was announced back at E3 2017, and was likely in development just a little bit before that time.

Just last year it was being reported that Bandai Namco was involved with the development given the long history that Nintendo and Namco have with making games with one another, but apparently that all fell through. Now Namco is known for making some quality Nintendo products. The company helped produce the latest Super Smash Bros. outing, which ended up becoming one of the best selling games of 2018, and Namco was also involved with developing Pokken Tournament for the Wii U and Nintendo Switch as well.

Whatever happened with the development of Metroid Prime 4, it clearly was a problem for Nintendo. Hence, the company decided to adopt Shigeru Miyamoto's legendary motto for game design, which is: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”.

According to Kingdom Hearts III head Tetsuya Nomura, the pre-launch leaks of Square Enix’s highly anticipated game may lead to changes in how Square Enix releases games in the future. According to Nomura...

The above comes from an interview between Nomura and Japanese gaming magazine, Famitsu (via Kotaku), in regards to some copies of Kingdom Hearts III that leaked before the game’s actual launch. Nomura explained that only four copies were unaccounted for, but he considers that four copies too many. You can’t blame the guy for being so disappointed. That would hold true for a game that only spent a couple years in development, and Kingdom Hearts III was in the works for more than a decade.

When the copies of KH3 got out several weeks ago, Nomura hopped on the internet to encourage folks to avoid spoilers and, more importantly, not help spread them. He also noted that the game’s biggest surprises, including a secret movie, were post-launch downloads that could not even be seen after playing the leaked copies of the game.

So what’s the solution? According to Nomura, it might be to just avoid worldwide launches altogether. Doing a worldwide launch means there are oodles more moving parts in the process and more ways for copies of the game to turn up missing. Nomura’s thinking seems to be that, if a game launches in one region at a time, there’s less of a chance that folks will get their hands on the game before they should.

Of course, this seems like the exact opposite of what Nomura wants in one big regard. If he’s worried about folks getting spoiled on a game because of leaks, it stands to reason even more will get spoiled if a game launches in stages. Using Kingdom Hearts III as an example, if it launched in Japan first, spoilers from legitimate copies of the game would flood the internet long before the game launched in other territories.

But, again, I can’t really fault the guy for his concerns and frustration. His team poured an insane amount of time into making KH3, all while working with one of the most tight-lipped and influential media machines on the planet: Disney. Pile on fan expectations after all these years of waiting and it’s a wonder the guy isn’t on a one-man crusade against leakers in general.

As for how to get the game’s secret movie, Nomura offered a pretty big hint in the original interview. There are items in the game called “Lucky Marks,” which are everyday items that just so happen to look like Mickey Mouse. You’ll want to find as many of those as possible while adventuring through the worlds of Frozen, Tangled, Pirates of the Caribbean and beyond, and be sure to take a picture of them while you’re at it.

When it comes to gaming, the industry seems to just keep growing hand over foot each year. More people are getting into games, both casual and hardcore, and more people are spending money on games the world around. But, in America specifically, there was a massive amount of money being spent on video games last year.

According to Variety, American gamers contributed a whopping $43.4 billion in revenue for the gaming industry throughout 2018. This is according to numbers gathered from the Entertainment Software Association and the NPD Group.

The article notes that there has been an 18% year-over-year annual growth spur compared to the $36.9 billion that was generated within the U.S. gaming industry back in 2017. This included hardware sales and accessories going up by 15% in 2018, while software sales saw an increase of 18% in 2018, up from the $30.4 billion generated in 2017.

This accounted for sales across home consoles, personal computers, tablets, and mobile phones. And speaking of mobile... that particular sector of the industry was up 5% in 2018 compared to 2017, generating revenue from more than 210.9 million mobile users across North America.

Mobile gaming definitely takes one of the largest pieces of the pie in terms of overall revenue due to microtransactions and cash shops being readily available and easily accessible to casual gamers. This is also pushed heavily by recognized brands courting a lot of kids and people short on time who want to invest a little bit of the free moments to a quick game or two, such as Candy Crush Saga or Pokemon Go. Cross-platform connectivity through mobile gaming with popular intellectual properties like Fortnite have helped a lot as well.

Obviously, all of the doom and gloom about mobile gaming killing off the hardcore gaming market did not come true. Various analysts from a decade ago put forward the notion that smart devices would become powerful enough to rival anything that was being done on home consoles. However, technology did not sit still in the console nor PC space, and smartphones – while definitely more powerful now than from a decade ago – still have trouble capturing the core demographic due to the limitations of the controls.

Nintendo attempted to fix that problem with the Nintendo Switch, which allows gamers to play from the comfort of their couch or while on the go by using the Switch in the tablet mode, complete with touchscreen controls. This hybrid approach to gaming has actually paid off big time, as the Switch ended up becoming the biggest selling console of 2018, due in large part to a steady roll out of exclusives and the big AAA release of Super Smash bros. Ultimate in December, which went on to become one of the biggest selling games of the year alongside Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Gaming in general has been up over the past year, even with some of the major hiccups that some recognized brands like Fallout encountered near the end of the year. But even with a few trips and stumbles along the way, Americans are still heavily invested in the world of interactive entertainment.

The day is nearly upon us where Square Enix's highly anticipated crossover JRPG with the wide world of Disney will be released onto a store shelf near you or a digital distribution network online for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. However, ahead of the game's release there are already some guides popping up teaching you to unlock the Kingdom Hearts III secret movie.

Kotaku has an article about how to unlock the secret movie in the game, after it was revealed to Famitsu in an interview from Tetsuya Nomura. It's explained that after the game launches, the Epilogue video will be made available on Wednesday, January 30th and gamers will have to complete the full game in order to unlock this video.

After unlocking the video and seeing the game's first ending, on Thursday, January 31st, players will be able to unlock the secret video only after they have completed the game and met certain criteria. This includes taking an in-game photograph of the Mickey-shaped “lucky marks.”

So, how many lucky marks will you need to photograph in order to unlock the secret movie? Well, the harder the difficulty the fewer the marks are required.

For Kingdom Hearts' Beginner difficulty setting you will need to photograph the most lucky marks, but on the Normal setting you will only need so many, but Nomura doesn't give a figure, simply saying that the requirement for the Normal mode “isn't that strict, I think.” Well, that's real helpful isn't it?

We do know that for the Proud mode, you can “skip some” and you only need a “few” lucky marks in order to unlock the secret ending.

What do these lucky marks look like in Kingdom Hearts III? Well, they're basically objects positioned in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head – the classic Mickey logo with the three circles, two of which represent his ears and the large circle in the middle representing his head. In one example it's three broken barrels on the beach in the Pirates of the Caribbean section, where we see Sora and Goofy on the beach. While taking the selfie there's a yellow highlight over the three barrels, which are in the shape of Mickey's head. If you snap a photo with the objects in the frame, it will count it as having captured a lucky mark.

It reminds me of the photograph challenges in Marvel's Spider-Man, or some of the miscellaneous challenges in Final Fantasy XV where you could also take photographs in that game as well.

The Kotaku article does note that unlocking the secret movie overall in Kingdom Hearts III will be easier than in previous entries of the series. So, you shouldn't have to go around and about trying to tirelessly figure out what to do and how to do it.

Also, this isn't much of a spoiler given that Nomura doesn't give away any aspect of the game's story, but rather just gives gamers a heads-up on how to unlock the secret movie. It's not like it's the sort of thing that people would just figure out by playing the game. But, he did want to give people that heads-up leading up to the release of the game so they know what to do when the game launches on January 29th for the Xbox One and PS4.

Nintendo's Switch exclusive, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has managed to set a sales record for the company since releasing in December of 2018. Given how big a game it is and how much people have been clamoring to get their hands on it, it's not a complete shocker given the hype surrounding the game.

The news about the record being broken came courtesy of NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella, who posted the news on his official Twitter account, and revealed that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate set a launch month dollar sales record as a platform exclusive, managing to oust the previous king of the throne, which was none other than Microsoft and Bungie's Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360 from back in 2010.

Can you believe that? That Halo: Reach had managed to hold on to that title for so long and defend it for nearly a decade?

That, in a way, speaks volumes to the symbiotic relationship that Bungie and Microsoft had when it came to building out the Halo franchise and the quality of games that the developer used to make back when it was under Microsoft's publishing wing. Now that Bungie is out from under Activision and has full control over the Destiny franchise, I'm curious if the company will get back to making record-breaking games like back when Bungie was producing content for the Xbox 360?

As for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the game didn't just manage to break sales during the month of December, it also managed to land a spot as one of the top 5 best selling games of 2018, coming up just shy behind some of the other heavy hitters released throughout the year, including Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 and Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

According to Piscatella, the game has exceeded all other previous outings of Super Smash Bros. games, including Brawl for the Wii U and 3DS by over 70%.

And, even though Super Smash Bros. Ultimate wasn't the top-selling game of 2018, it was most definitely the top-selling game within the U.S. in December, managing to best aforementioned heavyweights such as Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Battlefield V.

In combination with other worthwhile exclusives on the Nintendo Switch, such as Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Tennis Aces and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, they all helped Nintendo to generate the highest software revenue as a publisher since 2009, along with generating the most hardware dollar sales and moving the most units for a single platform since December, 2010. So, Nintendo is back in the black, making money and generating hype as if it were the Wii era all over again. Basically, it proves that the Switch's success in 2017 wasn't a fluke or a fad.

The Big N is sometimes down for the fight with certain outings, but the company is never out. And, with the Switch's success it looks like Nintendo is aiming to climb back to the top of the console market mountain, and it's doing so with the help of blockbuster first-party exclusives like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

At long last, Kingdom Hearts III is finally upon us and, based on some early reviews, it looks like the long, long, long, long wait has been well worth it.

It’s official, Kingdom Hearts III is happening. I didn’t want to accept this as a fact until actual copies of the game were played by human persons and, based on the steady stream of reviews that have been hitting the internet throughout the day; it appears that that is finally the case. And, if you think that level of skepticism is silly, then you clearly didn’t watch the first teaser for this game after beating Kingdom Hearts II a full 13 dadburn years ago.

But, after much teasing, project resets and two console generations have come to pass, we have finally reached the launch of Kingdom Hearts III. Thankfully, it appears Square Enix has put forth a very solid effort, as early reviews for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game have been unanimously positive. The game is resting at an 89 on Metacritic at the moment, based on 17 reviews. That number will likely shift a bit as more folks plow through its lengthy campaign but, for now, it looks like KH3 will likely make insanely-patient series fans happy.

Up toward the tippy-top of the spectrum is a take from Gameinformer, which calls the game a “dream come true” for fans of the series, with a plot that manages to tie in everything from the main games to the multiple spinoffs such as Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days. According to this glowing 9.5 review, this is absolutely the game diehards have been waiting for.

A little further down the review track is USG, delivering a 4.5 to the latest action RPG epic to come out of the unlikely partnership between Disney and Square Enix. This review notes that there are some occasional frame rate issues when the action gets intense, but, apparently, nothing to be too concerned about. This review points out that KH3 stays true to its PS2 roots in a lot of ways, all while managing to bolt on plenty of more modern niceties.

IGN had a similar take with its 8.7 review, saying that fans of the series should be satisfied with the conclusion, if not even remotely surprised. This review notes that the new Disney-themed worlds are a bit of a mixed bag, too, saying that the Frozen and Tangled maps feel a bit lackluster, while the new map for Pirates of the Caribbean apparently works swimmingly as a miniature Assassin’s Creed.

One of the lowest reviews as of this writing comes from Gamespot but, since it’s an 8, it’s not like that’s a huge knock against the game or anything. While this review throws praise at the bite-sized stories within the Disney and Pixar worlds Sora and his pals visit throughout Kingdom Hearts 3, it also points out that the overarching story is just as convoluted as ever.

So, what do you think, folks? Does it sound like the wait has been worth it? Are you excited to finally play Kingdom Hearts III? Let us know in the comments below.

As we get ready for the release of Kingdom Hearts III**, we continue our look at the previous games in the series.**

Kingdom Hearts II came out for the PlayStation 2 in 2005. For fans of the Final Fantasy and Disney crossover, the wait felt a lot longer than a minor three years. Considering how long we’ve been waiting for the third console installment, three years seems like nothing.

Kingdom Hears II picks up right where Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and also 358/2 Days, leave off. What makes things interesting is that you play through the game’s introduction as Roxas. This is all fairly confusing as, since Kingdom Hearts II came out before 358/2 Days who Roxas is or why he's important has not yet been explained. Even once that's made clear, why Sora is where he is requires having played Chain of Memories to understand.

Eventually, it’s explained that Roxas not only isn’t the hero of the new game, he barely exists. Roxas is inside a digital recreation of a place called Twilight Town so that the part of him that is needed to restore Sora’s memories can be harvested. Once completed, Sora awakens outside of the town, with no memory how he got there.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy then discover that they were not as successful as they thought in stopping the Heartless. On the hunt for Mickey Mouse and Riku the trio travels to another set of Disney worlds, some we’ve seen before (Agrabah, Hercules’ Coliseum) others that we have not, (Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mulan).

The new worlds are the high point of Kingdom Hearts II. Entering the world of Tron was a particular favorite of mine, and the fact that Bruce Boxleitner would reprise his role, five years before returning to for Tron: Legacy, is especially cool.

While it’s not too surprising that Square Enix couldn’t afford to pay Johnny Depp to return to play Captain Jack Sparrow (or any of the rest of the Pirates of the Caribbean cast for that matter), it does keep that particular level from feeling quite as special. The soundalikes don’t do a terrible job, but they are clearly soundalikes. Other new characters to the series, like Mulan, are voiced by their original voice actors

Most of the same Final Fantasy characters return for Kingdom Hearts II, though we also get to meet Final Fantasy VII’s Tifa and Final Fantasy X’s Auron for the first time. Auron becomes the first Final Fantasy character to join your party, though his appearance is far too brief.

Things get more confusing on the plot when we learn that the villain that our heroes thought they vanquished in the first game, Ansem, actually wasn’t at all who they thought. First, the person they fought wasn’t a person, but actually a Heartless of the person. Second, the person wasn’t actually Ansem at all, but somebody who only claimed to be Ansem.

In actuality, the villain of the entire Kingdom Hearts series is a man named Xehanort. In the first Kingdom Hearts, you defeated his Heartless. In Kingdom Hearts II your main villain is Xenmas, the Nobody of Xehanort who is also the leader of Organization XIII.

As with most game sequels, Kingdom Hearts II succeeds by sticking with the parts of the game that worked and polishing those parts that did not. Combat is even faster and more fluid. More enemies can appear on screen at once, making some of the battles just absolutely massive. Sora fights entire armies largely by himself.

The newest addition to the game is the Drive system, which allows Sora limited access to new abilities. These abilities can be leveled up, giving Sora new permanent abilities as well. Reactions are also a common addition to major battles, which are essentially quick time events but of a sort that often requires much faster reflexes.

There are a few tweaks to the gameplay that are a little less successful. While you still have a limited pool of magic, as one would expect, it no longer refills by picking up dropped orbs as it did in the first game. Orbs to fill your Drive meter have largely replaced magic. Instead, you simply use your magic down to zero and then the meter will begin a slow refill process. Once it is full again, you can use it.

Cure spells take all your magic, which means there’s a natural refresh rate between when you can heal yourself unless you have a lot of potions. This adds a new layer of strategy to your combat. Your NPC party members are also capable of healing you of course, but you can rarely count on that.

I’m not a huge fan of this change, though certainly, tastes will differ. There are ways to use magic in strategic ways, any amount of magic will give you the full effects of a cure spell, so using most of your magic bar for attack, followed by a quick cure at the end is almost like using twice the magic.

My replay of Kingdom Hears II that I undertook recently might actually be the first time I’ve played it since I originally beat it on the PlayStation 2. While I could have recited the story of the first game from memory, many of the details of this one felt new.

In the end, this is probably good, as I’m getting ready for Kingdom Hearts III, to get the events of the previous games clear in my mind. The lore isn’t actually quite as confusing as I had first felt, though exactly why we had to have multiple characters using the same name is still not clear. It seems to be adding complexity only for complexities sake.

At the end of the day, Kingdom Hearts is ultimately a JRPG, so we should probably expect those sort of things.

By the end of Kingdom Hearts II, both the Heartless and the Nobody of Xehanort have been defeated and Sora, Riku and Kairi have returned home. Things appear to be at peace, but then Sora gets a letter from Mickey Mouse and, while we aren’t told what it says, it clearly means the story isn’t over yet.

Blizzard may have been in the news in recent times for a lot of the wrong reasons, but it doesn't mean that the company isn't trying to wipe away all the tarnish from the PR slate and get back to business. And what better way to do that than to introduce some brand new skins into the Overwatch universe as part of the Lunar New Year event?

The announcement about the Lunar New Year event came courtesy of the official Overwatch Twitter account, which revealed that between January 24th and February 18th, there would be some new events and new skins available within the team-based hero shooter.

The first tweet showcases Reinhardt with a skin based on the Chinese hero Guan Yu, a legendary warrior who oftentimes appears in video games based on China's highly romanticized three-dynasty era. Anyone who is a fan of Dynasty Warriors will probably instantly recognize the red-faced warrior with the flowing black beard. Obviously, Blizzard's art team took some liberties with giving Guan Yu a more stylized makeover that fits in with Reinhardt's persona.

The Year of the Pig event doesn't start and end with the Guan Yu Reinhardt skin, though. Blizzard also unveiled a Zhuge Liang Zenyatta skin.

I can definitely say that it's a very fitting skin for someone like Zenyatta. The renown tactician and brilliant mind of Zhuge seems to fit perfectly with the zen-like characteristics of Zenyatta. The omnic is given a beard and a cap with a golden pin through it, along with some matching eyebrows and a long flowing white, black, and emerald robe.

It actually looks far more fitting than I would have expected. Fans of Zhuge Liang – especially as the mastermind leading the rebels to victory in movies like Red Cliff – will surely find the skin a worthwhile addition to Overwatch.

On the opposite end of the spectrum there's a Zhang Fei Torbjorn skin for those of you who like to hear those explosions and watch things go boom.

The scroungy dwarf is given a black-haired makeover and a gruff look to match his alter ego of Zhang Fei. It's a decent look for Torbjorn, but I doubt it's going to do much to get more people playing him... not like Reaper, anyway.

The emo-gunner probably has one of the coolest makeovers yet, sporting a masked Lu Bu theme, appropriately called Lu Bu Reaper. The twin shotguns are redesigned to look like cannons and Reaper's mask almost has a Shredder-like design from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's capped off with some long flowing red feathers.

Hanzo also received a new legendary skin as well, turning him into Huan Zhong Hanzo, complete with a long white beard, traditional Chinese armor, and yellow garb.

Beyond that, Blizzard also teased three additional skins for the other cast mates who will be receiving legendary skins for the event, this includes a festive dragon skin for Orisa, a warrior skin for Brigitte, and a runner skin for Tracer.

You'll be able to get your hands on the skins throughout the Overwatch event up until the middle of February.

Licensed properties getting video games has been a thing since forever, dating way back to the old days when companies like Atari thought that it would be cool to make a quick buck on half-finished titles like E.T. Well, the long and illustrious history of licensed video game properties will get just a little longer now that American Ninja Warrior is joining the fray.

The announcement for the new game was made over on the GameMill Entertainment YouTube channel. The trailer features a minute worth of gameplay from the upcoming game called American Ninja Warrior Challenge. It's being made in collaboration with the NBC network, and it will be available for the Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch starting March 19th, 2019.

The trailer showcases some of the gameplay elements, which appear to mix in standard analog controls with quick-time event button prompts. We see the player-character running, sprinting, jumping, and climbing across various obstacles throughout the course, and some of the segments will require pressing the appropriate button prompt at the right time, otherwise you'll fail and have to start the course all over again. The objective is obviously to reach the end of the course in record time.

As showcased in the trailer, players will also be able to create their very own Ninja Warrior, including choosing their outfit, appearance, color scheme and name. You'll also need to train them up and boost their stats, complete challenges to earn money in order to unlock new gear, and attempt to become the best in the field.

The game will play out very much like the eponymous television series. You'll start by competing in the local city courses and attempt to work your way up the ranks until you reach the national TV edition of American Ninja Warrior, and set about becoming the best in the world by completing the four-stage course that's based on the original Mt. Midoriyama from the Japanese version of the show.

Gameplay will be accompanied by the over-the-top commentary team of Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbajabiamila, who will provide play-by-play voiceovers of the action taking place onscreen, along with color commentary to keep things spicy.

There's also going to be the inclusion of offline multiplayer modes so players can compete with each other for the best times, along with online leaderboard support so you can challenge your friends for the best score.

It reminds me of the old American Gladiator games on the Sega Genesis and the SNES that came out during the era of the 16-bit wars.

The feedback for this game hasn't been all that hot, and most licensed property games are rarely ever lauded by gamers or critics. Only a couple of rare occasions did we see such games make a positive dent in the gaming sphere; X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes to mind, where the game was closer to the likes of the 2017 movie Logan than the 2009 movie counterpart it was originally based on. But, otherwise, it's an uphill struggle to get gamers excited about licensed property games. Nevertheless, you can look for American Ninja Warrior Challenge to launch this upcoming March for home consoles.

With the Super Bowl right around the corner, it's that time of the year again where video game simulations are used to predict who might come away the victor at this year's big event. Well, with the teams in place and the action set to get underway soon, Tecmo Super Bowl was used to simulate the potential outcome of the upcoming real life sporting event.

The 18 minute video simulating the Los Angeles Rams taking on the New England Patriots for the glory and honor of coming away the winner of Super Bowl 53 was posted on the official Tecmo Super Bowl YouTube channel.

The Rams start the game after winning the coin toss, but the Patriots end up with an early turnover and 7 points on the board before the end of the first quarter. But with just seconds to go, the Rams tie it up with a touchdown and a 1-point conversion. The Rams repeat their success in the second quarter with 7 more points. They score a field goal in the third quarter for a 10 point lead. Tom Brady manages to score a touchdown in the fourth quarter along with a conversion to put the New England Patriots back in the running. This is followed by another touchdown and one between the goal posts, putting the Patriots up to 21 over the Rams' 17. However, at the last second Bryce Hager manages one final touchdown and helps push the Rams up to 24.

The final score turns out a 24 to 21 tally in favor of the Rams with that last second touchdown and 1-point conversion through the post. It was surprisingly intense and a serious back and forth game where both teams put in a lot of tactical efforts to edge up the field and score whenever possible.

The comment section found the game to be “incredible” and even if you aren't a fan of football, it's not hard to see how the dynamic last-second plays from both teams throughout the four quarters would make for amazing television in real-life... assuming things play out that way.

Now, what's actually crazy is that while these simulations might just be games, Electronic Arts' Madden NFL series has had a very, very, scary accurate prediction of exactly what happened in a couple of Super Bowl games. From crazy pass-plays to incredible and unbelievable comebacks, the Madden NFL simulations manage to pinpoint what can happen in ways most people probably didn't think imaginable.

But, the big question is if Tecmo Super Bowl will be able to replicate the success rate that we've seen from the EA Sports titles in predicting the outcome of the match? Well, time will tell.

It's become somewhat of a tradition to use the EA Sports and 2K Sports games like the annual NHL outings or NBA 2K to make predictions on how some big games will play out, but it's nice to see other games get in on the fun like Tecmo Super Bowl. We'll find out how close this particular prediction is when Super Bowl 53 gets underway on February 3rd, 2019.

Ubisoft recently rolled out the “Story Trailer” for upcoming FPS Far Cry: New Dawn and, from the looks of things, the insanity meter is about to get cranked all the way up to 11.

Quick spoiler warning for folks who haven’t played Far Cry 5 yet, and you can feel free to continue reading after skipping this single paragraph. For those of you who finished the campaign, you know that it ends with the nuclear destruction warned by the game’s antagonistic cult coming to fruition. That was a pretty wild twist, so it’s cool to see Ubisoft Montreal decide to play around with that unexpected turn of events in the form of New Dawn.

This latest trailer for New Dawn begins the same way the game got teased in the first place. Ubisoft hinted at a post-apocalyptic setting in a short reveal late last year, then gave us an even better look at the madness to come with a full-on reveal trailer during The Game Awards.

While that Game Awards trailer painted the world in broad strokes, this new Story Trailer gives us a better idea of what, exactly, is going on in this formerly peaceful Midwestern town. It’s a pretty compelling intro, too, with a voiceover stating “I was six years old when I first saw the sun.”

As we’ve already learned, New Dawn takes place years after a nuclear blast has ravaged the landscape. In fact, this game goes an extra step further than series like Fallout, moving the narrative to a point where the land has been largely reclaimed by beautiful vegetation and some rad-looking, mutated woodland critters.

We learn that, once folks crawled out of their various bomb shelters (Doomsday prepping FTW!), they formed a new and peaceful society. But this wouldn’t be much of a video game if things remained all sunshine and rainbows, so, of course, a group of marauders led by some maniacal twins have decided to swoop in and take control.

Our protagonist is encouraged to visit New Eden to seek help, which is of course led by a religious fanatic with a familiar face. Honestly, it’s kind of cool to see such a direct sequel to a Far Cry game that still manages to completely change the formula.

While the voiceover in the trailer is a young woman, scenes throughout the trailer make it look like the player will take on the role of multiple characters. That, or maybe we’ll get to create our own survivor before diving in. Still not clear on that one. Either way, it looks like we’ll be getting up to some over-the-top antics in a bright and colorful future gone mad.

As for the game itself, Far Cry: New Dawn is nearly upon us. It launches Feb. 15 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

If you’ve been on the losing end of the majority of firefights in Fortnite, you might just need to get better at the game. Or, as it turns out, the way you’re playing the game might be putting you at a disadvantage. According to a new report, a faster frame rate could be giving some players an edge in Epic’s 100-player shooter.

The folks at Digital Foundry are known for putting video games through their paces, running oodles of tests and comparisons to figure out how technology has an impact on the games we like to play. When a possible issue pops up in a game as huge as Fortnite, it’s no surprise the group was quick to actually put various claims to the test.

When folks asked if frame rates in Fortnite had an impact on the actual gameplay, Digital Foundry set things up and ran a simple test. They set up a series of walls in the game and placed their character an equal distance away using three different setups. One has the game running at 300 FPS, the next has the game running at 60 FPS and the last has the game running at 30 FPS.

As you can see in the video, there doesn’t seem to be a difference between Fortnite running at 300 FPS and 60 FPS. Between 60 and 30, though, there’s a noticeable drop in rate of fire for the in-game gun.

This is further proven over time. As the first wall is destroyed in the video, the speed is slowed down to 25 percent so you can see that the collapse happens ever-so-slightly faster in the games running at a higher frame rate. As rounds continue to fire and walls continue to fall, the gap gets bigger. By the time the final wall falls in the faster setups, the player running at 30 FPS needs to fire about nine more bullets before their own wall collapses.

According to this research, that proves that the game’s frame rate indeed has an impact on the fire rate of guns or, more specifically, the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS is an increase of 5.2 percent. The tweet notes that no other advantage is noticed outside of the faster fire rate and, yes, Epic has stated it plans on fixing this issue in an upcoming update. But still, it shows that players have been working at a distinct disadvantage when playing at a lower frame rate. In a game like Fortnite, where every bullet/moment can mean the difference between earning a Victory Royale, that’s actually a pretty big deal.

As noted in the comments, this has been an issue in other online games such as Warframe but since that game is primarily cooperative, it hasn't been as big a deal. Some other folks took this opportunity to humorously claim that this is clearly the reason they haven’t been winning their matches as well.

As we approach the release of Kingdom Hearts III we're taking a look back at the franchise.

Following the success of the original Kingdom Hearts, a sequel was sure to be on the way, but console games take time. What were all the fans to do while they waited for Kingdom Hearts II? Somewhat surprisingly, the answer became, pick up a handheld system, because more games were originally designed for handhelds then have ever seen the light of day for consoles. Two of those were the direct sequel to the original title. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and the oddly named Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.

While these two games came out five years apart, on either side of Kingdom Hearts II, I'm covering them both together as the storylines of the two are very much related.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories originally came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 and it turned the real-time action RPG into a strange combination of hack and slash and card battle game.

Chain of Memories opens right where the first Kingdom Hearts leaves off. Sora, Donald, and Goofy are looking for the "Door to the Light" to rescue Mickey Mouse and Sora's friend Riku, from the world of Darkness. They chase Pluto, who appears to have a message from Mickey, but they lose him and instead come upon a castle standing alone in the middle of nowhere. They enter the castle, called Castle Oblivion, where they discover they have lost all their abilities, a neat trick to allow the game to "start over." A man in black informs them that Castle Oblivion will cause one to lose their memories, but in doing so can reveal new ones. Sora is given a set of cards made from his memories that he can use to open doors. These doors open on the same Disney worlds that were visited in the original Kingdom Hearts.

Each world includes all the same characters as the original game, since all of this is supposed to come from Sora's memories. The major difference is that all of the combat is based on cards. Everything from magic spells to each individual swing of the keyblade is governed by cards. In addition to being within range to hit the enemy, you have to be sure the number on your attack card is higher than the one you're being attacked with.

This certainly adds an extra strategy element to the game, though I can't say overall that I was a fan. By trying to be both a card battle game and a hack-and-slash combat game, it ends somewhere in between and doesn't really do either one particularly well.

From a story standpoint, Chain of Memories is actually a pretty important game, which is funny, since by the end of it, all the events of the game are wiped from Sora's memories. This is the introduction of Organization XIII, and other important characters like Namine and DiZ, who would appear in Kingdom Hearts II with little to no explanation as to who they are. Once the main game is completed, you then get to play as Riku, thus the game gives you more insight to his story as well.

In the end, the biggest sin of Chain of Memories is that it's just really repetitive. If you love the game, that's fine, but if you're not into it, it gets dull quickly. You enter a room, defeat the heartless in a fairly simple battle, then earn cards you can use to open more doors. Rinse, reapeat. Only the boss battles require much of anything in the way of strategy.

The game would be re-released as Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories for the PlayStation 2. Having played that version (or technically the PS4 remaster) for the first time recently, I think I preferred it on the GBA. The card battle aspect becomes even more of a hindrance to what feels like it should be a simple hack-and-slash RPG.

In 2009, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days would be released for Nintendo's next handheld, the Nintendo DS. What links this game with Chain of Memories is that they largely take place during the same period of time. While Sora is busy climbing Castle Oblivion Organization XIII was busy doing other things as well as messing with him.

As Kingdom Hearts II would explain, when Sora gave up his heart to rescue Kairi in the original Kingdom Hearts a Nobody was created. Nobodies are shells of people with strong hearts, that usually contain the memories of the original person, but are missing a heart of their own. Roxas was the Nobody of Sora, though he existed without Sora's memories. The black-hooded people of Organization XIII would make Roxas one of their members, as they are all Nobodies who seek Kingdom Hearts in order to one day give themselves the hearts they lack. Because Roxas was the Nobody of Sora, he could wield the keyblade, and thus Organization XIII could harvest hearts for themselves.

358/2 Days would be a much more traditional Kingdom Hearts style game, though with the noted lower resolution graphics of the DS, though it should be said that for the DS, the graphics were pretty good. It would also only go to some of the same Disney worlds as the original game in the series, and because Roxas works for Organization XIII, you have fewer interactions with Disney characters, and none with anybody from the world of Final Fantasy.

However, the most telling thing about 358/2 Days may be the fact that the game never saw an update for modern consoles. If you pick up either the PS3 or PS4 version of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 ReMix all you'll get is the game's cutscenes in HD, which work fairly well to tell the story the game needs to tell from a story perspective, which only shows how inconsequential the gameplay is to the larger Kingdom Hearts experience.

Still, because Kingdom Hearts II doesn't really explain many of these details, these games are necessary if you want to really understand the franchise. Sora and Riku take down members of Organization XIII you'll never really meet in Chain of Memories. Understanding the group's motives makes much more sense in 358/2 Days .

After gamers began questioning the sales data for Fallout 76 and noting how much controversy surrounds the game, there were rumors that began to sprout up indicating that Bethesda might make the switch from a premium-based product to a free-to-play design for the most recent entry in the Fallout series. This is a move typically made by a company to recoup sales on a game that may have performed under par. However, Bethesda made it public and made it clear that the game won't be going free-to-play.

In a very curt message responding to a customer who irascibly complained that he wanted his money back if Fallout 76 goes free-to-play, Bethesda's official Twitter account responded with the simple line "There is no truth to this rumor" putting to bed any talk about the game switching from the current model that the company has in place for it.

So, where did the rumor start? And where did it come from?

Well, going as far back as December 10th, 2018, ShackNews posed a question as the title of an editorial about the game, asking "Is Fallout 76 Ever Going Free to Play?" Within the article the outlet answers the question in the second paragraph by saying "No," and explaining that there was no evidence that the game was going free-to-play.

The question itself was posed based on players who began circulating the discussion of the possibility due to the perceived low sales, and the litany of controversies that have surrounded the release of the game, from the lack of refunds being issued, to the canvas bag mix-up, to accidentally doxing customers, to the whole rum bottle debacle.

However, all of those issues are separate from the actual gameplay itself, which has shown no signs of being reoriented or re-engineered for free-to-play purposes. Yet within various communities the discussions just kept popping up that the game might go free-to-play, especially as a talking point by some YouTubers. This also made its way onto the Fallout sub-reddit several days ago but was then promptly deleted.

Various other forums like ResetEra also hopped onto the discussion bandwagon after picking up the news from SegmentNext, but the thread was also closed due to a lack of substantiation.

What prompted SegmentNext to do an article about the game potentially going free-to-play? EB Games.

Apparently, the Australian retail outlet has been pulling new copies of the game from store shelves, and the article reports that there was a distributor recall that resulted in EB Games not receiving additional SKUs of Fallout 76.

This led some people to presume that if the game was no longer going to be sold as a premium package from certain retail outlets in certain regions, then surely Bethesda might attempt to make money on the game through an in-game cash shop using microtransactions, typically a monetization model associated with freemium multiplayer games, or games looking to gain a second wind on the market, such as Turtle Rock Studios' Evolve, which briefly went from a premium-priced game to a free-to-play title.

However, now that Bethesda has come forward to deny that the rumors are true, gamers can rest assured that they won't be playing Fallout 76 as a free-to-play title anytime soon.

The latest free game through Twitch Prime is actually brand new, with members being able to play Pikuniku before it can be purchased on other platforms.

Twitch Prime has turned out to be a rather fantastic perk for folks who enjoy playing games as much as they enjoy watching other people play them. Similar to PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold, Twitch Prime grants folks a rotating roster of free games on a regular basis. If you subscribe to Prime, you can just grab the games at no additional cost.

For a very limited window (through January 23) you can actually grab the charming puzzle game, Pikuniku, before it's even available to purchase on other platforms. If you're a Prime subscriber, you can just pop into the free content page while logged in, claim your copy and start playing it right this very minute. Honestly, not a bad way to build buzz around your indie game in this crowded winter season.

Coming from Devolver Digital, Pikuniku tasks players with making other people happy by exploring and solving puzzles. What, exactly, does that entail? Well, according to the game's description, you'll be doing everything from helping folks face their fears to uncovering a deep state conspiracy. So, yeah, the game sounds like it's a bit on the wild side.

If you miss out on the early access period, you'll still be able to claim Pikuniku via Twitch Prime through Feb. 28. The only difference is that, after the early access period, you won't be able to brag that you're playing a game you can't even buy elsewhere yet. The game officially launches on PC and Switch this Thursday, Jan. 24, and it's already getting rave reviews from various outlets.

Speaking of the Switch, Pikuniku actually already made an appearance of sorts, as it was one of the featured T-shirts available in the Nintendo-exclusive action game Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. If you have enough in-game dough, you can purchase the shirt and have Travis Touchdown or Badman wear it while beating up bugs invading various video games.

Outside of Pikuniku, Twitch Prime actually has a killer lineup of free games still available through Jan. 31. Hyper Light Drifter and Orwell are in the mix, but the big standout is the Devolver Digital Holiday Pack. That pack boasts seven games including Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2, Broforce, STRAFE, Crossing Souls, The Swords of Ditto and The Messenger. Not a bad collection at all, especially since The Messenger only came out a couple of months ago.

As a final reminder, if you already have Amazon Prime, access to Twitch Prime is a free add-on to your subscription. Just link those two accounts and, boom, you're ready to roll. Once you've done that, download the Twitch launcher and feel free to start playing your free games.