If you’re a fighting game fan of a certain age, you might remember the PS1 fighting game Bushido Blade, where clashes were determined by a single decisive blow from a razor-sharp katana or rapier. If you’re looking for a more modern take on that concept, the upcoming Die By The Blade might be just what you’re looking for.
As shown in a recent gameplay presentation, Die By The Blade is a 3D fighting game where every hit has the potential to end the fight. Players circle endlessly around one another, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, and it looks quite impressive, especially considering it’s under development from a very small team. The game is currently scheduled for a 2021 release, with a Kickstarter that will launch in October No word yet if it will include an unlockable character with a gun, as Bushido Blade did.
While Die By The Blade looks especially promising, there are other games that have attempted to take the Bushido Blade concept to the next level. One Strike (and its upcoming sequel, Two Strikes) both offer similar samurai showdowns, albeit in a 2D environment. The truly depraved among us may recall Deadliest Warrior or its sequel Deadliest Warrior: Legends, which pitted Genghis Khan against Sun Tzu in the dumbest way imaginable.
ScourgeBringer will be leaving Steam Early Access and officially launching on October 21. At the same time, the game will be released on Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. ScourgeBringer will be available through Xbox Game Pass for PC on day one as well.
A new trailer teased the different areas and diverse enemy types that will be available in ScourgeBringer on day one. Embedded below, the trailer showcases The Entangled Ingress, The Still Bastion, The Wasted Pit, The Living Walls, The Old World, and two secret, possibly optional areas. The first is called The Beyond while the latter remains unnamed–we’ll likely have to discover it for ourselves when ScourgeBringer officially launches.
Developed by Flying Oak Games and published by Dear Villagers, ScourgeBringer is a fast-paced action platformer with a roguelike gameplay loop. You play as Kyhra, the latest person to enter a mysterious monolith in order to stop the end of the world, only to discover a constantly changing dungeon full of monsters and alien-looking machines.
ScourgeBringer had one of our favorite Xbox Summer 2020 Game Fest demos. The game encourages you to strategically take advantage of Kyhra’s incredible speed to deal with enemies as efficiently as possible. Her melee slash attacks allow her to levitate in mid-air, and when combined with her dash, quick parry, double-jump, and lock-on firearm, you can feasibly clear an entire room of enemies without touching the ground if you’re skilled enough. It’s pretty satisfying to pull off.
EA Play (formerly known as EA Access) is now live on Steam, so if you’ve been looking to hop into any EA titles using PC’s most popular storefront, now’s the time.
Subscribers can get in on EA Play for $5 USD a month, or $30 USD for a full year. Your subscription will give you access to members-only benefits like in-game challenges, members-only events, other exclusive content, and a 10% discount on EA digital purchases through Steam. This discount will work on full games, new releases, pre-orders, expansions, game packs, and points.
You’ll also get instant access to a library of EA games called The Play List, including titles from banner franchises like The Sims, Dragon Age, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Need for Speed, and FIFA. Note that there are some titles included you’ll have to have the Origin client installed to use, so you’re not quite free of it yet.
Select new EA game releases will also be available to play for up to ten hours prior to launch. If you check one out during your time with EA Play, your progress will carry over should you pick up the full release, since what you’ll be playing is actually the game itself and not a demo proper. But if you play a fully released game using EA Play, you’ll have to purchase it if your subscription lapses, much like the PS Plus system.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
While we all patiently wait for The Haunting of Bly Manor to come to Netflix, it’s important to remember that every single week new content arrives to the streaming service. This week is no exception as there is a fine mix of classic movies and brand-new Netflix original content.
Last week, Bill & Ted Face The Music arrived in theaters and digitally, and why not celebrate your love of ’80s time travel movies by rewatching the Back to the Future trilogy? Hitting the service on Tuesday this week, you can relive the adventures of young Marty McFly, who is friends with a cooky old scientist, and McFly borrows his time machine to go back in time and court his mother when she was a teen. Then, McFly goes to the future, then goes to the past. He’s a very busy teenager.
If you’re in the mood for a little bit of espionage, you’re in luck as two James Bond movies arrive this week. On August 31, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace land on Netflix. The first two movies in Daniel Craig’s run as 007 will hopefully hold you over until No Time To Die lands in theaters. After multiple delays, it’s now debuting on November 20.
Director Charlie Kaufman–known for his work on Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind–has a new film debuting on September 4 called I’m Thinking Of Ending Things. Much like Kaufman’s other work, his latest film is going to be a trip. “Despite second thoughts about their relationship, a young woman (Jessie Buckley) takes a road trip with her new boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his family farm,” reads the official description. “Trapped at the farm during a snowstorm with Jake’s mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis), the young woman begins to question the nature of everything she knew or understood about her boyfriend, herself, and the world.”
Below, you’ll find everything coming to Netflix this week. For more info about the streaming service, take a look into the future to see what’s coming for the rest of September.
What’s new on Netflix this week?
August 31
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
September 1
Adrift
Anaconda
Back to the Future 1
Back to the Future 2
Back to the Future 3
Barbershop
Coneheads
Grease
Magic Mike
Muppets Most Wanted
Not Another Teen Movie
Pineapple Express
Possession
Puss in Boots
Sex Drive
Sister, Sister: Seasons 1-6
The Promised Neverland: Season 1
The Boss Baby: Get That Baby! – Netflix Kids
Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices – Netflix Kids
Felipe Esparaza: Bad Decisions – Netflix Comedy
September 2
Freaks- You’re One of Us – Netflix Movies
Chef’s Table: BBQ – Netflix Docs
September 3
Love, Guaranteed – Netflix Movies
Young Wallander – Netflix Series
September 4
I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Netflix Movies
Away – Netflix Series
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
At long last, the third installment in the Bill & Ted franchise is out in the world. Bill & Ted Face the Music is showing now in select theaters and available digitally, giving fans what is likely the final chapter of Bill and Ted’s saga. What many fans already know is that it took over a decade to get to this point. How different is the finished product from the initial idea, though?
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Bill & Ted Face the Music. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, just drop whatever you’re doing and check it out now. Look no further than GameSpot’s review of the film to explain why.
As it turns out, a lot of the movie you see on screen dates back to the first meeting between stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, and writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson back in 2008. “The starting point was always the same,” Matheson told GameSpot. “It hasn’t worked out, it didn’t go the way they were told it was going to go when they were 17 or 18 years old. That [much] we knew. It had to be that way.”
Additionally, he revealed that the idea of sending Bill and Ted into the future was an early concept. “The basic thing of traveling into the future to steal the song from themselves we hit on that pretty early and those scenes where they go to amateur night, and they go to Dave Grohl’s house, and they go to prison, and they visit the old men–those scenes are remarkably similar to what we wrote in in 2010,” he said.
However, quite a bit evolved over the years, including the entire subplot about the duo’s daughters. “The girls traveling along, having their own journey that was something that came later–and picking up historical figures themselves,” Matheson noted. “Dennis, the robot was something that came later.”
What’s more, the stakes and ending of the movie were originally not as grand. “Our original ending was a much smaller ending, the ending that Chris and I originally wrote,” Solomon added. “It was very personal and very small. But the other thing that evolved over the course of the writing was the stakes of the world–saving reality and all that–that grew, the more we rewrote it.”
It may have taken 12 years and a number of revisions, now Bill and Ted Face the Music is real, at long last, and is available to watch right now. If you’ve seen it and still have some questions, check out our ending explainer.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Let’s face it: nobody likes cheaters. PUBG Corp certainly doesn’t. According to a recent tweet, the free downloadable game PUBG Mobile banned a staggering 2 million accounts from August 20 to 27, along with nearly 1.5 million devices. As the breakdown image attached to the tweet reveals, 32% of players were banned for using x-ray vision, 27% used auto-aim, 12% used speed hacks, and 22% were banned for unspecified reasons.
From August 20th to August 27th, 2,273,152 accounts and 1,424,854 devices have been permanently suspended from accessing our game, out of which these are the reasons: ⬜ 12%: Speed Cheats ⬜ 22%: Other ⬜ 27%: Auto-Aim Cheats ⬜ 32%: X-Ray Vision pic.twitter.com/0U7JFeSxtF
PUBG Mobile recently announced its 1.0 update, along with a $2 million esports tournament. That update will bring up to a 36% improvement in frame rate and a 76% reduction in lag, according to a press release from Tencent. According to Sensor Tower’s estimates, the game “has doubled its lifetime revenue in just over seven months to more than $3 billion globally.” The Chinese version of the game, titled Game For Peace, is responsible for the majority of the revenue, with the United States coming in second. PUBG Mobile will also add New Erangel to the game in the coming weeks.
Recently, in a somewhat confusing move, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney promoted PUBG Mobile in a tweet. This is the latest move in the ongoing legal battle between Epic and Fortnite over Fortnite’s removal from the App Store.
Will Smith and his The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-stars will be reuniting in mid-September to record an unscripted look back at the cultural impact the series has had since its debut. The special is set to tape on September 10, which would place the upcoming production as taking place literally 30 years after Fresh Prince first premiered on NBC in 1990.
The reunion special will air on HBO Max, and according to a release, will debut “around Thanksgiving.” Returning cast members include Will Smith, Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Joseph Marcell, Daphne Maxwell Reid, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Alfonso Riberio. Noticeably absent from the list is James Avery–who played family patriarch Philip Banks–who died in 2013. HBO Max is reportedly teasing additional “special surprise guests.”
Marcus Raboy (music videos for Ice Cube, Naughty By Nature, and countless artists since 1991) is attached to direct the special, with showrunner Rikki Hughes executive producing alongside Miguel Melendez, Lukas Kaiser, and Brad Haugen for Westbrook Media.
Project Cars 3 really stretches the definition of a sequel. It bears no resemblance to previous Project Cars games, tossing aside the franchise’s traditional tough-as-nails racing for a more approachable formula that a wider range of players can enjoy. The result is a racing game that leans heavily into territory that should be familiar to Forza players, meaning you can enjoy its racing without extensive knowledge of the inner workings of each car you drive. But it’s also a racing game that struggles to bring together all of its new elements cohesively.
Core to Project Cars 3’s transformation is its overhauled handling system. You’ll have more than enough downforce in the front to bend around each corner with the right amount of car, only briefly having to counter-steer to prevent the back from whipping out from underneath you. It makes racing faster and more action-packed, and it’s exhilarating when you’re chaining together one perfect corner after the other.
The suite of assists lets you cater the experience to your needs in a granular way. There are standard difficulties to choose from, but each option–including stability assists, traction control, and ABS brakes–can be tweaked independently to deliver the right amount of challenge. Having more options to tune Project Cars 3 to your preferred playstyle is a welcome addition to the series, opening it up to more players than before. There’s still just a hint of simulation constantly present that reminds you to still take care of how you approach each turn, which is aided by markers on the racing line pointing out each braking zone and apex. Having markers instead of a dynamic racing line keeps some of the thrill intact when tackling a track for the first time, challenging you to come to grips with its best lines and limits. It’s exhilarating to perfect a track after mastering each corner, even if Project Cars 3 sometimes rewards some messy sectors when it shouldn’t.
AI difficulty can be adjusted independently of your assists too, which is useful if you enjoy racing without the stresses of feathering the brakes or shifting gears. Unfortunately, even at its highest settings, the AI fails to muster up convincing challenges in medium to long events. Cross-country road sprints were especially telling, with any semblance of challenge evaporating before I reached the halfway point most of the time.
Every action on the track rewards you with some XP, from clean overtakes to sitting in the slipstream of an opponent. The HUD can get a bit messy with all the information it’s trying to convey while you’re focusing on the road ahead, flashing with each new reward that you obtain. It’s helpful having a shortcut on the D-pad to turn everything off entirely at any point, but some visual issues cause the entire overlay to intermittently flash during a race, which can be even more distracting. The race engineer that you can choose to have blaring in your ear during a race also falls flat, rarely conveying important information that helps you with each lap and pronouncing your victories with hollow fanfare.
You don’t progress Project Cars 3’s campaign by winning races, but instead by completing the three challenges in each of its events. These challenges are often easy enough to pull off without too much effort, from executing a certain number of perfect corners or setting the fastest lap. Others feel counterintuitive to the flow of the action on track. Some sticklers force you to hang back behind opponents to draft them for a set amount of time before pulling off an overtake, while others require strings of perfect corners in conditions and on tracks that punish just one poor turn. Thankfully, if you’re just looking to continue with the campaign, there are more than enough opportunities to complete challenges without having to return to those you dislike. But removing a race win as the ultimate goal does dilute the feeling over victory that should accompany crossing the line ahead of everyone else.
Campaign events are collected across 10 series, each of which requires a car of a certain spec to compete. You start at the bottom, with traditional road cars and old classics, slowly working your way up to exotic racing machines designed top to bottom for a track day. Purchasing the cars you require for each series isn’t much of a hurdle given the generous amount of credits doled out for each event you partake in, but it’s still exciting to get behind the wheel of a new car to learn its ins and outs on familiar tracks. The steady progression never keeps you locked into one series for too long, or forces you to grind out its objectives to get access to the next class. It feels in step with the pace of your own improvement too, making each step up to a new tier feel earned and adequately challenging to undertake.
If you’re too attached to any one of the cars in your showroom, Project Cars 3 does also give you the ability to customize its performance to make it eligible for tiers it realistically shouldn’t be in. You can have one of the lowest Class E vehicles you start out with go toe-to-toe with some of the game’s most powerful supercars, which really drives home how much of a departure this sequel is from its simulator roots. It does eliminate the constant need to change vehicles if you prefer sticking with what you like. Customization also extends to cosmetics, letting you choose from numerous decals, sponsor stickers, and even tire brands to personalize your favorite set of wheels. It’s not as robust or freeform as I’d like, but it’s enough to make your showroom stand out from the stock crowd.
Customization does mean interacting with Project Cars 3’s messy menus, however, which are just one part of an uneven presentation in and out of races. After a race, you’re taken back to the event menu for the same event, making it very easy to accidentally kick off the same race and sit through the two loading screens that accompany getting in and out of it. When applying customization options to cars, my custom designs would sometimes reflect as equipped but wouldn’t appear when in a race. Other times, the textures on my car would flicker in certain weather conditions, with restarts not resolving the issue either.
Project Cars 3 nails the details of each of its vehicles when they’re intact, but slight collision damage looks unrealistic and just out of place most of the time. The dynamic weather during races can be a treat too, especially when tracks are bathed in dark clouds and heavy rain. But clear weather produces flat lighting that accentuates the lack of detail in the track designs, sapping some of the splendour out of iconic settings.
Project Cars 3 might not be the sequel you expected from the series, but its shift to a more arcade style of racing is one that makes the series approachable for the first time. It’s not a clean cut from its roots, and Project Cars 3 retains just enough of its simulation options to provide enough of a challenge with all of its assists turned off. The transition isn’t seamless, with some confounding racing objectives and uneven AI that takes the sting out of some events. But if you’re looking for another way to get out on a virtual track, Project Cars 3 is an exhilarating new alternative
Pokemon Go has a handful of events lined up for September 2020, starting with Mega September–a three-week event revolving around Mega Evolutions. Each week will have a different focus, and if players can hit certain milestones, Niantic will introduce additional Mega-Evolved Pokemon in the game.
Although Mega-Evolved Pokemon are the primary focus of Mega September, there will be plenty of other rewards available during the event, including new Shiny Pokemon to catch. You can see a full breakdown of the Mega September event below.
Week 1: Mega Raids
September 1 (8 AM local) – September 7 (10 PM local)
The first leg of the Mega September event revolves around Mega Raids, a new tier of Raid Battles that pits players against a Mega-Evolved Pokemon. Throughout the week, Mega Raids will occur at Gyms more frequently than usual, and you’ll get an increased attack bonus if you raid alongside friends. If players around the world can clear two million Mega Raids before the week ends, Niantic will introduce Mega Pidgeot as a Mega Raid boss.
In addition to increased Mega Raids, Niantic will offer limited-time Field Research tasks during Mega September. Completing these tasks will net you additional Mega Energy for Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise. There will also be increased spawns of the following Pokemon:
Abra
Magnemite
Exeggcute
Rhyhorn
Tangela
Electabuzz
Omanyte
Aerodactyl
Murkrow
Treecko
Torchic
Lotad
Roselia
Finally, you’ll have a chance of finding Shiny Lotad in the wild during Week 1 of Mega September.
Week 2: Mega-Evolved Battles
September 11 (8 AM local) – September 17 (10 PM local)
The second week of Mega September challenges players to use Mega-Evolved Pokemon in Gym battles, PvP battles (excluding the Go Battle League), or against Team Go Rocket. If players can win 275 million battles using Mega-Evolved Pokemon, Niantic will introduce Mega Houndoom to Mega Raids.
In addition, there will be another event-exclusive set of Field Research tasks to complete, this time revolving around Mega Beedrill, which you can obtain by completing the “A Mega Discovery” Special Research questline. You’ll get additional Beedrill Mega Energy for completing the new Field Research tasks. Mega Beedrill will also receive a CP boost when used in battles.
On top of that, Bug-type Pokemon will be appearing much more often than usual during Week 2 of Mega September. You’ll be more likely to run into the following monsters in the wild:
Caterpie
Weedle
Paras
Venonat
Scyther
Pinsir
Ledyba
Spinarak
Wurmple
Kricketot
Burmy
Week 2 will also introduce a new Shiny Pokemon to the game. This time, you’ll have a chance to encounter Shiny Ledyba. Niantic also teases that there will be event-exclusive Timed Research tasks during Week 2, while Team Go Rocket will have new Shadow Pokemon on their teams for the event.
Week 3: Mega-Evolved Buddies
September 22 (8 AM local) – September 28 (10 PM local)
The final week of the Mega September event is all about improving your friendship level with your Mega-Evolved Pokemon. Your pocket monsters will stay in their Mega-Evolved forms for 12 hours instead of the usual four during Week 3, giving you much more time to use them in battle, take snapshots with them, and other activities. Poffins will also last for twice as long during the event.
On top of that, large Pokemon like Snorlax, Doduo, Lapras, Alolan Exeggutor, and others will appear in the wild and as Raid bosses more often during Week 3, and you’ll have a chance to encounter Shiny Doduo. You’ll receive more Beedrill Mega Energy from Field Research tasks that you complete during the event, as well.
Finally, Niantic is offering Timed Research quests during Week 3 of Mega September. Complete these and Niantic says there’s a chance there will be an exclusive Timed Research for Pokemon Go’s Halloween 2020 event. That has not yet been dated, but it will feature another new Mega-Evolved Pokemon: Mega Gengar.
Ubisoft’s sci-fi take on the battle royale genre, Hyper Scape, hasn’t exactly set the world aflame so far, but this week’s new patch will make some much-requested changes to the game. As a patch preview video posted by Ubisoft Montreal reveals, the update will nerf several weapons, adjust controller aiming, and add some new features.
We are excited to give a sneak peek at Patch 1.1 coming next week! 🎮 Controller aim update 🔫 Hexfire + Mammoth nerfs 👑 Crown adjustments And much more! 📺Watch @Drjennog and @MrPope go over the patch highlights here: https://t.co/AbsiynabVy
First, the update will reduce the clipsize of the Hexfire minigun and the overall damage of the Mammoth shotgun, since both of these weapons are widely-considered overpowered by the community at the moment. Second, the patch takes aim at the game’s controller support, giving players more options on how to adjust the acceleration and sensitivity of their sticks, as well as reducing the default sensitivity.
The patch also overhauls the game’s Crown Rush gamemode, making it harder to use movement options to escape your pursuers when you have the Crown. Ubisoft is adding some basic features to the game as well with this update, such as a player stats and a report button.
In GameSpot’s Hyper Scape review, critic Jordan Ramée opined that while the game has a wealth of interesting ideas, the execution of those concepts leaves a lot to be desired. “Hyper Scape is an okay battle royale game,” they wrote. “The game has solid weapons and hero-like Hack abilities, but you’re at the mercy of being lucky enough to get what you need to have a higher chance of winning…At least the individual moments in Hyper Scape are fun. A match could be ruined by the randomness working against you, but that doesn’t stop moments like turning into a ball and trying to out bounce three enemy balls any less fun in how ridiculously silly it is.”
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
