Author: Trafficblast

The latest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate presentation was chock full of new announcements, including word of a special dedicated service coming next year. Dubbed “Smash World,” the free service will let you post and watch videos of your glory moments.

Game director Masahiro Sakurai teased that the service will boast other unnamed features as well, and that it will be given regular updates throughout its lifespan. The brief glimpse at the UI shown during the presentation had a large array of video captures appearing on a mobile device.

Smash World isn’t the only extra coming to Smash Bros. in 2019. The presentation also revealed plans for DLC characters, stages, and music to come throughout the year. There will be five packs in all–each of which grants one character, one stage, and some music tracks–for $6 apiece. Nintendo is also offering a Fighter Pass for $25. In addition to those five characters, Piranha Plant is being added as a playable character, and he’ll(?) be free for anyone who registers their copy of the game by January 31, 2019.

As for launch day content, the presentation revealed a few more goodies in store on that front as well. Two more fighters joined the roster–Ken and Incineroar–and we finally got a closer look at both the Adventure Mode and the new Spirits Mode, along with how online matchmaking works.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches December 7. Check out our pre-order guide for more details.

Microsoft has announced a wealth of new and upcoming features for its Mixer streaming platform, in an update it has dubbed “Mixer Season 2.” The new features include more flexible ways to support streamers, and in the long-term, a progression system that rewards your participation with Mixer streamers.

First, viewers can participate with streamers with a wider array of responses called Skills. These are elements like animated gifs, stickers, and visual effects. Using a Skill on a partner’s channel goes to support them financially, and Microsoft promises they’ll be updated frequently. To send Skills you can use Sparks, a sort of in-app currency that you earn by watching streams. You can then use those Sparks to pay for Skills that support your favorite streamers. Sometime soon you’ll also be able to purchase Embers, a higher tier of virtual currency that can pay for special Skills to send to streamers.

Coming sometime in 2019, Mixer will add a progression system akin to a video game. You can level up by participating in chat, using Skills, or just tuning in every day. Consistent engagement will let you unlock new Skills. Microsoft says this will help differentiate watchers by their level of engagement, rather than splitting them into the binary of “subscribers” and “non-subscribers.” The company teased that progression can also be earned by gaining Applause from other users, but didn’t go into detail about how that system will work.

Other under-the-hood improvements are coming as well. Automatic bitrate switching will help users have a consistent viewing experience. Creators can use FTL streaming on more software and devices. And Mixer viewers will be able to report video issues more easily.

Mixer launched in 2016 as Beam and has been positioning itself as a Twitch competitor by offering similar features like a dedicated app and game purchases. These chances for Season 2 appear aimed at differentiating the platform more on its own, so we’ll have to see if its competition follows suit.

A Fallout 76 bug caused some PC users to accidentally delete the entire game, prompting Bethesda to extend the beta as a make-good. After warning users not to click any buttons on the client, it told them to allow the beta game file to redownload. The company later took responsibility for the bug and announced the extension.

Eurogamer reports that the bug only impacted PC users, but those affected had to redownload the entire 50 GB beta file. That could lead to long wait times and ISP data restrictions, so the company was compelled to issue a mea culpa. It will now run on November 2 from 11 AM to 8 PM PT. The tweet notes this extension is for everyone, so users on the PS4 and Xbox One get a little extra benefit without having been impacted by the bug.

Several test dates were already planned for next week: November 1 from 11 AM to 4 PM PT, November 3 from 2 PM to 6 PM PT, and November 4 from 11 AM to 6 PM PT. You’ll be able to keep your progress from the beta into the full game, so read up on all the upcoming beta times and how you can still get in before the game launches in our beta guide.

If you’re already exploring the wastes and looking for some advice, check out our guide for some beginner survival tips and what you should check out first. Fallout 76 launches for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 14.

Red Dead Redemption 2‘s world includes some nice callbacks to the first game in the main story, but also through Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the environment. One of these Easter Eggs involves Bonnie MacFarlane, who was one of John Marston’s biggest allies in RDR1. In the Red Dead Redemption lore, Bonnie gets married, but it doesn’t work out.

In Red Dead Redemption 2, you can find a man lying by the shore of the Flat Iron Lake (see exact location below), and at first he appears dead. You poke him and he emerges from his slumber, thrusting a letter into your chest before collapsing and dying on the beach. The “Letter To Bonnie MacFarlane” appears to be written by her divorced husband.

Where to find the man

It is very sad.

In the letter, the unnamed man apologises to Bonnie for how things get “out of control” in his head, before going on to say he and Bonnie and destined to be together. Unfortunately for him, that’s not going to happen.

Here is the full text of the letter:

“Dear Miss MacFarlane, I’m sorry. I said it. I’m sorry. You’re right. I do let things get out of control in my head. I always have. I see that but I love you. We are meant to be together. It is our destiny. I know it is. I saw us in a dream, raising kids. You were very happy as my wife and I was proud to be your husband. Dreams don’t lie and neither do I.

“I’m heading off to make my fortune and when I come back as a rich man, you’ll see what a fine husband I will make you, and a father to our children. And no, I won’t grow up. On that subject you’re wrong. I’ve got so many things to say to you. I’m going to continue with the writing of this letter later, but believe me when I say, we are destined for a long, happy life together. Even your father will come to believe it and accept me, no matter how humble my birth.”

After you’re done reading the letter be sure to loot the boxes nearby his corpse; you’ll find money, whiskey, a watch, and other items.

:/

GameSpot will have a big video coming up soon where we round up some of the more notable and interesting Easter Eggs we’ve found so far in Red Dead Redemption 2, so check back with us for that.

The Resident Evil 2 remake is right around the corner, and Capcom is playing into your survival horror nostalgia with a little treat for long-time fans. The company announced that the classic costumes for Leon and Claire will be unlockable in the game for free.

That means Leon’s “Classic Police Costume” and Claire’s “Classic Jacket Costume” will be available for all players. As some eagle-eyed fans have noted, Claire’s is slightly different than her original look, which had black sleeves and a high neck from the shirt worn under her jacket. As an homage, though, it’s recognizable.

This comes just after a new trailer revealed exclusive costumes that you can get by purchasing one of the game’s Deluxe and Collector’s Editions. Those included a Military and Elza Walker outfit for Claire, and the Arklay Sheriff costume for Leon. Both also have a Noir costume for that smoky old-school look. All of those are included in both the Deluxe and Collector’s Editions, which come with a few different goodies. The Deluxe includes an exclusive pistol and additional music options, while the CE has all that plus some physical items: a 12-inch Leon statue, art book, and RPD renovation blueprints.

The Resident Evil 2 remake is coming on January 25, 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. While the remake is striving to stay true to the mood and tone of the original, it’s taking some big liberties. The controls and camera are more akin to later Resident Evil games, making for a uniquely fresh take on the classic.

Capcom has announced Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0, and Resident Evil 4 are getting Nintendo Switch ports. All three ports are currently scheduled for 2019, but a specific release dates haven’t been revealed yet. Capcom tweeted that more info is coming “soon.”

The original Resident Evil first released in 1996, and it went on to spawn an entire franchise of zombie-killing video games. Some, like the 2002 prequel Resident Evil 0, are also third-person survival horror games, while others are more action-centric or play out in first-person. 2005’s Resident Evil 4 is widely considered as the best in the series, and received critical acclaim upon release.

When Resident Evil first released, we gave it an 8.2/10 in our review, praising it for “the gorgeous, photorealistic, dilapidated rooms and abomination-filled corridors” and describing it as a “genuinely” scary experience. In our Resident Evil 0 review, we gave the prequel an 8/10, wishing the game had acknowledged all “the things that have made Resident Evil a nuisance to some” but enjoying the gameplay and story all the same. We awarded a 9.6/10 in our Resident Evil 4 review, assuring that the game would blow away anyone who’s “entertained by any other mature-rated action game.”

While Switch owners may appreciate them, this certainly won’t be the first time these games been ported to another platform. The original Resident Evil is available on Playstation, PC, and Nintendo DS. There’s also an HD remaster for GameCube and Wii, as well as a remake for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and PC. Resident Evil 0 is available on GameCube and Wii, with an HD remaster on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and PC. Resident Evil 4 can be played on GameCube, PS2, PC, Wii, and mobile, with a HD remaster available for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, and PS3.

The last new game in the main-line franchise was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which went first-person but retained the survival horror roots of the original game. A remake for Resident Evil 2 is in the works and scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on January 25 in 2019.

They don’t call it the Wasteland for nothing in the Fallout series. The alternate history, nuclear war-ravaged world is complete with mutated creatures, radiation-soaked zombies, and a mess of other scary things that hunt anybody foolish enough to go wandering around. But despite the hardships of the post-apocalypse, the Fallout series has also always had its survivors, whether they’re farmers learning to live in an irradiated world, organizations hoping to rebuild society, or warlords trying to rule whatever’s left.

Fallout 76 takes a different approach. Rather than the usual single-player RPG that finds players leaving an underground Vault to discover the Wasteland and the people who live in it, Fallout 76 removes NPCs, devoid of various characters to interact with, and replaces them with other players.

The result is a Fallout game that feels a bit strange. Through about eight hours in various sessions of the Fallout 76 beta, it’s been hard to shake a feeling of loneliness while playing the game. Even though you’re surrounded by other players from the start, there’s a feeling that West Virginia is already dead, and you’re picking clean its corpse.

The creepy feeling comes early in the game, after you leave Vault 76, where you’ve waited out the first 20 years of nuclear fallout. Your job as one of Vault-Tec’s best and brightest is to rebuild the world. You’re a little late doing that at the start of the game, thanks to over-partying the night before the Vault opens. As a result, the main quest at the beginning of the game has you following the Vault’s former Overseer as she travels the world hoping to find and take control of three remaining nuclear missile silos–ostensibly to keep those weapons from ever being used again.

Tracking the Overseer’s path through the Wasteland takes you the town of Flatwoods near the Vault, where you learn about some folks trying to make the post-apocalypse a better place: the Responders. This group, mostly consisting of former first-responders like paramedics and firefighters, roam the Wasteland looking to help people, and have set up several communities for that purpose. When you arrive in their town, you take part in an automated process to join up as a volunteer. It’s a tutorial that has you wandering around town, trying to find the people who can teach you to cook, clean your water, and perform other essential survival tasks. The state of the town makes what you’re going to find a foregone conclusion, though, and before long you confirm that none of the nice people of Flatwoods has survived.

Your Responder volunteer training continues apace, thanks to audio diaries left behind by the Responders who didn’t make it, and which give you a sense of the lives they lived as they fought to survive their new world. Before long, you intercept a Responder radio signal that directs you to their headquarters at Morgantown, a larger city with an airport. The signal is pretty desperate: the Responders are expecting an attack by zombie-like people called the Scorched, and they need all hands on deck in order to repel it.

Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

Fallout 76’s lack of NPCs turns its setting into a ghost world, with the player arriving just after the worst has already happened. Stumble on the cabin of an old moonshiner and you might find evidence of his existence, but not the man himself. Head over to Grafton, a town where the mayor is broadcasting a radio signal asking for assistance, and you find the humans are dead and a computer is running the show. The world of West Virginia was full of people before–it just isn’t anymore.

Contrast that with previous Fallout games and it becomes clear why Fallout 76 just feels a bit off. In past games, pretty much the first thing players do is stumble into post-apocalyptic civilization, where the people of the Wasteland aren’t just eking out lives for themselves, but often thriving. One of the first people you meet in Megaton, the first town in Fallout 3, is its sheriff, which shows that the settlement isn’t just a bunch of people barely hanging on, but one that has laws, and someone to enforce them. Places like Diamond City in Fallout 4, or the Strip in New Vegas, show just how strong civilization can become. These aren’t just places where you pick up quests, they’re evidence that Wasteland life continues. They make the world feel substantial and lived-in, and they give your actions in that world stakes.

Fallout 76 makes its approach a little more uncanny by constantly supplying audio diaries and information about those lost souls in whose wakes you follow. A group of audio tapes left by the Responders called Survivor Stories gives the characters just enough backstory to make their absences more haunting. Your path following the Overseer is similarly replete with bits of character-building audio, as your leader visits the important places from her pre-Vault life and talks about her memories. All these tiny stories are well-written and well-acted, which makes them stand out even more. There was life in the Wasteland in Fallout 76–we just missed it.

Adding other players to Fallout 76 at the expense of NPCs is a trade that sacrifices something essential about the Fallout games. The series has always been both somber and satirical in equal measure, but at its heart it was at least a little bit hopeful. The world didn’t end when the nukes fell, it just changed.

Filling the Wasteland of Fallout 76 with players doesn’t make it feel any less dead. We might build camps and buildings, but it’s likely we’ll all eventually put on party hats and aviator sunglasses, flash goofy emotes at each other, and try to murder each other. There’s a transitory lightness to the multiplayer side of games like this that no amount of audio logs can overcome.

Without characters, Fallout 76 has no narrative balance against the people just screwing around in the Wasteland, and therefore, nothing to make the world feel substantial. It’s sad, because the fascinating, engrossing stories of the people who once populated Fallout’s West Virginia are there. They’re just not around to make you care anymore.

The Birds of Prey have found their villain. The upcoming DC universe film that centers around the female trio of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) will find them doing battle with the evil Black Mask. Now, according to a new report, we know who is taking on that role.

According to Deadline, Ewan McGregor is joining the film’s cast to play the baddie that first appeared in a 1985 issue of the Batman comic book. In the comics, Black Mask is a vicious Gotham City mob boss named Roman Sionis. Pitting him against the Birds of Prey certainly make it sound like this will be a much more grounded movie than when we last saw Harley in Suicide Squad–or films like Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, for that matter. For more information, make sure to check out our explainer on who Black Mask is.

The Birds of Prey movie will be directed by Cathy Yan and will be rated R. The film is currently scheduled for release on February 7, 2020, which means it will arrive before Wonder Woman 1984 hits theaters on June 5, 2020.

There is still plenty more DC action before then. Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa arrives in theaters on December 21, with Shazam following on April 5, 2019. The Joker movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix, is expected to release on October 9, 2019. The DC universe can’t be contained to movies, though. It looks like Suicide Squad is also crossing over with PUBG.