Game News
Minecraft's Camel-Filled Update Finally Has A Name: Trails And Tales
After announcing a game-changing update was headed our way late last year, Mojang has finally revealed the name of the new 1.20 update for its survival game Minecraft. The upcoming update will now be called Trails and Tales.
Per Minecraft tradition, the content Trails and Tales adds to the game will be themed around the name, similarly to how the Caves and Cliffs update introduced new aquatics and caves for players to explore. The 1.20 update aims to do the same by telling "unique stories" and having players "riding towards the horizon on a camel."
According to the official Minecraft blog, the Trails and Tales has no release date, but is scheduled to arrive "later this year." The blog explains that the new update is meant to encourage players to go out and explore so that they can come up with their own stories as they encounter mobs and mine materials.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDestiny 2: Lightfall's Strand Fragments Unlocking Today, More Than A Week Early
Destiny 2: Lightfall's new Strand subclass is not available to you until you complete the campaign, but even then, it's not fully available. That's because you have to unlock Aspects and Fragments--the system first introduced with Stasis that lets you customize how the subclass works--over time using Strand Meditations. But even if you've done enough grinding to have tons of those, more than half of the available Fragments are locked until a future date. Or at least, that was the plan, as Bungie has now announced that it will roll out an update today providing access to all Fragments.
Acknowledging that it's heard criticism about Strand--something that could change with more Fragments available--Bungie announced a live update is coming sometime today, March 2, that lets you unlock any Fragment. To be clear, you still need to earn Strand Meditations and actually unlock these Fragments, a process that will need to be repeated across each of your classes if you play more than one character.
But the key thing is you'll have the option of grabbing any Fragment you want, instead of being limited to the first six. Previously, four more Fragments were set to unlock on March 7, with another four unlocking after the world's first completion of the Root of Nightmares raid, meaning that would happen no sooner than March 10.
Continue Reading at GameSpotEU Antitrust Regulator Delays Ruling On Microsoft Buyout Of Activision Blizzard
The European Commission, the European Union's competition regulator, has announced that it has pushed back the provisional deadline to rule on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The ruling is now set to release on April 25.
As spotted by VGC, the news comes only a day after EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager urged caution. When asked by Bloomberg whether regulators were "racing" to get a ruling, Vestager said, "I think that’s a very important discussion because we cannot be in a race. We need to serve the specific markets where we have jurisdiction."
"And I also hope that people working with us appreciate that we have a different legal framework. I think in Europe we are the ones with the highest bar, the most heavyweight legal obligations. We need to produce a recent decision that will eventually go public but that will also have to stand up for very tight scrutiny in court."
Continue Reading at GameSpotSony Ordered To Reveal Third-Party Exclusivity Deals As Part Of FTC's Activision Blizzard Buyout Lawsuit
Sony will need to produce all of its documents related to third-party deals from 2019 to the present, despite the company's attempts to have the request thrown out, a Federal Trade Commission judge has ruled.
Microsoft subpoenaed copies of every Sony third-party licensing agreement from 2012 to the present, as well as documents and communications related to Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan's declaration to the FTC. This comes as part of its defense-building process ahead of the FTC's lawsuit against Microsoft regarding its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal.
Sony argued that such a request had no value and that producing the documents would be a burden. Sony also requested to not produce files handled by specific Sony employees, with the argument being that some of those documents were in Japanese and would be too difficult to search through.
Continue Reading at GameSpotHow To Find Secret Nezarec Dialogue Across Neomuna In Destiny 2: Lightfall
When exploring Neomuna in Destiny 2: Lightfall, you may come across some muffled sounds that in-game captions call "Unintelligible Whispers." On the Destiny Lore subreddit, one player shared that equipping Nezarec-related gear--Nezarec's Whisper glaive works too--turns those whispers into clear dialogue.
Nezarec's name has been around in Destiny for a long time, but recent references to this character since Season of Plunder are hard to miss. Season of Plunder also revealed that Nezarec is associated with the Lunar Pyramid on the Moon, and now, people of Neomuna in the CloudArk are having nightmares. Additionally, Tormentor names in the Lightfall campaign mention Nezarec. The Hypernet Current shares its voice, so you know that those other whispers scattered around Neomuna are also Nezarec's voice.
Using the Nezarec's Whisper glaive to listen to secret lines in Maya's Retreat on NeomunaThe video shared by Myelin Games shows that you can listen to Nezarec's dialogue in the Thrilladrome Lost Sector. Revisiting a spot in Maya's Retreat where we first came across the whispers, we uncovered another set of lines. The Root of Nightmare raid is set to begin on March 10 and hints at Nezarec's involvement.
WoW: Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Will Introduce Randomized Treasure Vaults And A Powerful New Ring
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight's next major update is around the corner, and Blizzard is sharing more information on all the new activities players can expect, including details on the new Zskera Vault system.
Patch 10.7 will allow max-level players to explore the Dracthyr starting zone of the Forbidden Reach, offering new story quests that will explore the origins of the game's newest playable race. Hidden within the Forbidden Reach is the Zskera Vault, where, once a week players will be able to enter a "randomized treasure room" filled with "puzzles, monsters, and mysteries," in order to score some valuable loot, according to a Blizzard blog post.
To access the vault and its treasures, plates will need to explore the Forbidden Reach to acquire keys, although six keys will be provided to players via an introductory quest. The keys are bind-on-account, so they can be used by any character on an account.
Continue Reading at GameSpotHalo Infinite's Community Forge Playlist Is More Popular Than Team Slayer
Halo Infinite added the much-anticipated Forge mode in November, and, despite remaining in a beta state, the map- and mode-making tools have proven to be very popular with the community. It's also been announced that the Halo Infinite playlist containing maps and modes made by fans using Forge is the most popular in the game overall.
Developer 343 Industries has announced that as of January 2, 2023, Halo Infinite players have collectively built more than 1 million creations using Forge. Additionally, players have together logged more than 8.5 million custom game matches since the Custom Game Browser launched in December 2022. The Custom Game Browser lets people seek out and find custom game types created with Forge, and there are some really fun and unique ones out there.
Halo's Forge tools debuted back in 2007 with Halo 3, and have been updated and improved in subsequent Halo launches leading up to Halo Infinite's robust Forge tools.
Continue Reading at GameSpotHow To Easily Get A God Roll Grenade Launcher In Destiny 2: Lightfall Right Now
Heavy grenade launchers are among the biggest beneficiaries of the update that released alongside Destiny 2: Lightfall, having gotten some very nice buffs. That hopefully means you recently got your hands on a good Wendigo, but if not, fret not: There's a god roll grenade launcher you can potentially get your hands on right now through a bit of trickery. Here's how it works.
Among the new Season of Defiance weapons you can obtain is a heavy grenade launcher called Regnant. It's an adaptive-frame type, just like Wendigo, and it can roll with some excellent perks. You might luck out and get a great one, or you'll eventually be able to unlock its pattern and craft one. But through an apparent glitch shared by YouTube channel Above, once you've obtained one Regnant, you have another avenue to securing that god roll.
Assuming you already have gotten Regnant, head into your Collections and find it in the grenade launcher section. Typically, you can't pull weapons with randomized perks from here, but Regnant is an exception. And although the version you see lists Rangefinder and Pugilist as its perks, the version of the gun you receive will actually have randomized perks. Therefore, provided you can afford the cost--1,000 Glimmer, 10 Legendary Shards, and seven Enhancement Cores--you can pull copies of the gun indefinitely until you get what you want.
Continue Reading at GameSpotLOTR: Return Of The King Is Coming Back To Theaters For 20th Anniversary
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is seemingly headed back to theaters in April to celebrate the movie's 20th anniversary. Multiple movie theater chains, including Regal and Cinemark, have updated their websites with showtimes for Return of the King. Based on the listings, it appears Return of the King will come back for a limited time beginning April 13.
Cinemark's website states that the runtime is 4 hours and 20 minutes, so it seems the theater will show the extended version of Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning epic. That's good news because for many, the extended edition is the best version, even if it is very, very long.
Return of the King opened in theaters in December 2003, so its 20th anniversary isn't actually until later this year, but any good Hobbit would want to celebrate early and often.
Continue Reading at GameSpotXbox Controllers Get Big Discounts At Target
Xbox Series X|S controllers are discounted at Target for a limited time. The exact savings depends on which color option you pick, but you can save between 15% and 32% on a new wireless controller.
For example, black controllers are just $44.49 (from $60), while the white option is $50 (normally $60), and red controllers are down to $44.49 (normally $65). There are several other color options available.
See deal at TargetThe deal lasts through Friday, March 3--or until they run out--and is only valid for Xbox Series X|S controllers bought through Target’s online store. Select models are eligible for local delivery or in-store pickup if you don’t want to wait for shipping, though Target’s standard shipping time is only a few days, so you won’t be waiting long for it to arrive if those options aren’t available.
Continue Reading at GameSpotCoD: Warzone 2 Ashika Island Easter Eggs You Should Try
Season 2 of Call of Duty: Warzone 2 added the brand-new Ashika Island Resurgence map, and the small island is plentiful with Easter eggs. Here we walk you through a few newly discovered Easter eggs, each of which will be worth trying early in your match to score some high-tier rewards.
Power Plant Easter eggAshika Island's Power Plant location was already a great place to loot, but now there's a small Easter egg step to complete here for extra rewards.
When you head inside the building and drop to the lower level, you'll notice stairs and a pathway that heads underground. The door on the right is locked in this hallway, but there are switches on the wall that you can interact with to open it.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDestiny 2 Partition: How To Access And Complete Lightfall's New Weekly Activity
Partition: Hard Reset is a fast-paced endgame weekly activity available after completing the Bluejay quest, which is part of the Hall of Heroes questline after the Destiny 2: Lightfall campaign. The recommended Power for this activity is 1790, but if you're Power 1750 or above, you should be able to do it solo. Partition also has numerous modifiers from Champions, elemental shielded enemies, elemental surges and threats, and more.
Nimbus and Osiris will take you into the Vex Network to fight both the Vex and the invading Shadow Legion, and this guide will help you access Partition and provide some tips.
How to access PartitionWhen you finish the Lightfall campaign, get the Unfinished Business quest for the Deterministic Chaos Exotic machine gun, and it'll ask you to visit the Hall of Heroes. Grab the Hall of Heroes quest from the hologram named Quinn Laghari. It's a lengthy questline with multiple parts, and one of those is the Bluejay quest. The Bluejay quest will introduce you to Partition.
Continue Reading at GameSpotJohn Wick: Chapter 4 - Trailers, Casting News, And Everything To Know About Keanu Reeves' Latest Action Thriller
Nostalgia is a powerful drug, and for the past five years, Reeves has been one of its top suppliers. In 2019, Reeves starred in John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. In 2020, he starred in Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020), a sequel to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991). Next, he starred in The Matrix Resurrections (2021), which was both a sequel and a reboot to the original Matrix trilogy.
And now, Reeves will star in the fourth John Wick film, aptly titled John Wick: Chapter 4. Get ready for kinetic camerawork and wall-splattering headshots. Here's everything we know about John Wick: Chapter 4 so far.
What's the release date?John Wick 4 will debut in theaters on March 24, 2023. Its running time is 2 hours and 49 minutes, which makes it the longest movie in the John Wick franchise so far.
Continue Reading at GameSpotOverwatch 2's Third One Punch Man Skin Is Tatsumaki, The Terrible Tornado
Blizzard has revealed the third Overwatch 2 skin coming as part of its One Punch Man crossover event, with support hero Kiriko getting a Terrible Tornado skin. The two previously announced skins were Mumen Rider Soldier 76 and Saitama Doomfist.
Revealed on Xbox Wire, the Legendary Terrible Tornado Kiriko skin will be part of a bundle costing 2,100 Coins (roughly $21 USD). The bundle will also include a Victory Pose and Name Card. This bundle, along with the rest of the One Punch Man cosmetics, will be available in the Overwatch 2 shop from March 7 to April 6.
The Terrible Tornado bundle includes a skin, victory pose, and name card.Speaking with Xbox Wire, art director Dion Rogers explained how One Punch Man came to be one of the first major crossover events for Overwatch 2. Rogers said that as the team spoke with various anime studios about the possibility of the crossover, when One Punch Man came up, many of the team members, including game director Aaron Keller, expressed their love and excitement for it. One character artist was so excited about the idea that he began drawing up Saitama Doomfist art during the meeting discussing the crossover.
Continue Reading at GameSpotVampire Survivors 2 Is Unlikely, Would Have To Offer Something "Radically New"
Sleeper hit Vampire Survivors continues to be a very popular game on Steam, with thousands of simultaneous players at any given time. However, in an exclusive interview with GameSpot, studio head Luca Galante says that a Vampire Survivors 2 is "unlikely" for now, though he didn't rule it out entirely.
In the interview, Galante explains how the game transformed from a hobby project that initially failed to attract his goal of 100 players to a monster hit that dominated the Steam sales charts for months. When asked about the future of the game, Galante stated that a hypothetical sequel to the game is unlikely, because its current DLC plan has achieved so much success.
"With the way Vampire Survivors is designed, we can deliver both new content and new game mechanics on the existing game, so why make a sequel?" he tells GameSpot in the piece. "I think that if we make a sequel or a spiritual successor, then we should offer something radically new."
Continue Reading at GameSpotHow Vampire Survivors Went From Hobby Project To Game Of The Year
By any measure, Poncle's Vampire Survivors is one of the biggest surprise Steam hits of the past few years, perhaps even longer. The content-rich roguelite quickly garnered an impressive amount of buzz last year after it debuted on Steam in late 2021, eventually becoming one of the service's best-selling games. But when Poncle's Luca Galante first started working on the project in his spare time, he was just hoping to get 100 people to play the game on Itch.io, a goal it originally failed to reach.
"I just wanted to get a few players to help with feedback and suggestions as I kept adding content to the core game, and have a laugh together at the silly references," Galante tells GameSpot. "I was hoping for maybe around 100 people to play it and comment on itch, but that didn’t happen."
However, while Vampire Survivors might have struggled to find an audience on Itch.io, Galante didn't lose faith. A few months after its Itch.io release, he decided to upload the game onto Steam, where it was met with a lot more excitement. Galante says some of this success comes from the three distinct sources that inspired the game. Its top-down bullet-hell gameplay, for example, was first kindled by a mobile game called Magic Survival, while its impressive visual effects came from the little-known platformer Lapis X Labyrinth. As for the Castlevania-esque set dressing, Galante says he simply had a royalty-free asset pack with that theme lying around, and it seemed fitting.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDeadpool 2 And Baywatch Star Jack Kesy Donning The Horns As The New Hellboy
Originally reported by Giant Freakin Robot and confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, Jack Kesy (Black Tom Cassidy from Deadpool 2, FX's The Strain) will take on the role of a younger Hellboy in the upcoming Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Kesy is the third actor to fill out the character's Right Hand of Doom after Ron Perlman and David Harbour.
Crooked Man is set in the 1950s' and finds Hellboy investigating rural Appalachia for the BPRD (the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, the agency where he works almost like a black-ops boogeyman). There, Hellboy and another agent uncover a small community haunted by witches, led by a mysterious foe tied Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man.
This will be the second Hellboy feature under the Millennium Media banner as it purchased the IP back in 2018.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDestiny 2 Terminal Overload Guide: How To Get Terminal Overload Keys In Lightfall's New Activity
Trouble is brewing on the streets of Neomuna, but fortunately, not even an army of time-traveling mechanical aliens and the almighty Shadow Legion of Calus can stand up to a few heavily armed Guardians. Similar to public activities such as Escalation Protocol and Altars of Sorrow, Terminal Overload is a challenging showdown between Cabal and Vex forces that plays out across three stages.
It's a high-level event, you'll want to finish the Lightfall campaign first and power up your Guardian for the battles that lie ahead. Up to six players can participate in Terminal Overload, and with some particularly nasty enemies to deal with, you'll want to ensure that you have a full fireteam ready for all phases of action.
How to prepare for Terminal OverloadYou'll want to make certain that you've reached a sufficient power level for Terminal Overload, as this mode recommends being at high level for the challenges that lie ahead. The current pinnacle cap of Destiny 2 is set at 1810, and that's a level that you've very unlikely to reach in your first week of playing Lightfall. There are ways to level up quickly in Lightfall, and the closer you get to the pinnacle level, the better your overall survivability odds. If you're looking for a guaranteed way to get up to power level 1770 at the very least, playing the Lightfall campaign on Legend difficulty is one of the best ways to do so, as you'll be rewarded with armor and weapons that are way above the current soft cap of 1750 once you're done.
Continue Reading at GameSpotSuper Mario Amiibo Figures Are Back In Stock At Best Buy
If you’re looking to fill out your Nintendo Amiibo collection, the Mario and Princess Peach figures from the Super Mario Amiibo line are back in stock at Best Buy. Each Amiibo is $16.
See Mario Amiibo at Best Buy See Princess Peach Amiibo at Best BuyThis restock is the perfect time to grab both Mario and Princess Peach ahead of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, which just had its release date moved up to April 5. Considering Amiibo tend to sell out quickly, and the Super Mario Bros. Movie will surely ramp up demand, it’s probably wise to snag these Amiibo while they’re still available.
Mario and Princess Peach aren’t the only Amiibo deals at Best Buy right now. The Metroid Dread pack, which includes figures of Samus in her Metroid Dread power suit and an E.M.M.I. enemy, is discounted to $25 (was $30) at Best Buy as well. The sale is a good excuse to grab the Amiibo set to complement the recent release of Metroid Prime Remastered’s physical edition.
Continue Reading at GameSpotDestiny 2: Lightfall Legendary Campaign Final Calus Boss Fight Guide
If you've made your way through most of the Legendary campaign of Destiny 2: Lightfall, there's a decent chance you're stuck on the final boss encounter against Calus. At the end of the mission Desperate Measures, you're in for a tough fight for a variety of reasons. Having spent quite a bit of time on it ourselves, we have some suggestions on what gear to equip and general strategies to finish the fight.
Desperate Measures spoilers ahead.
Recommended gearThis fight sees you finally squaring off against Calus in a circle-shaped arena. You can check our Lightfall Legendary campaign guide for more general tips and Exotic armor suggestions, but as for weapons in this fight, I'd recommend Osteo Striga, a void fusion rifle, and a linear fusion rifle (I used Cataclysmic, the origin trait of which can grant you health when reloading). Osteo Striga is great at both dealing with the many enemies you'll encounter and damaging Calus. The fusion rifle is good for killing the green-shielded enemies (who should be prioritized) and other tougher enemies, as well as melting the overshield that Calus periodically receives.
Continue Reading at GameSpot