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Half-Life: Alyx doesn’t have a lot of weapons to choose from, but it does have the essentials: a pistol, shotgun, and SMG. Between these three, some grenades, and Alyx’s handy gravity gloves, you’ll be perfectly suited to take on enemies, Combine and Xen alike.

For the first time in the Half-Life series, you’ll also be able to upgrade your weapons using a collectible resource called resin and a machine called a Combine Fabricator. In this guide, we’ve mapped out each weapon’s upgrades and resin requirements, so you can save up and plan accordingly.

We’ve also broken down a few other essential items in Half-Life: Alyx, from important tech like Alyx’s multitool to collectibles you should key an eye out for around the world.

How To Use The Combine Fabricator

A Combine fabricator is a large piece of machinery you’ll come across a few times on Alyx’s journey, which allows her to upgrade weapons. It costs resin to buy each individual upgrade.

Before you can use a fabricator, you have to solve a multitool puzzle or two to unlock it. There might even be occasions where you have to solve an environmental puzzle to power it on first. But once you boot them up, you just need to insert your weapon of your choice, select your desired upgrade, and deposit the required amount of resin to get the process started.

For help finding and storing resin, scroll to the consumable items section of this guide.

Half-Life: Alyx Weapons

Pistol

The pistol is the first weapon Alyx gets, a gift from friendly resistance member and Alyx’s guide throughout her journey, Russell. It’s a modified M1911 with HUD elements on the grip that let you check how many rounds are left in the magazine.

To reload the pistol, press the button on your controller mapped to release the current magazine, physically retrieve a new magazine (either from Alyx’s backpack or somewhere in the environment), and then physically load it in. The pistol holds 10 rounds at the start of the game, with an additional 10 added with the bullet reservoir upgrade. Before you can fire, you need to pull the slide back to chamber a round. You can do this physically, by grabbing the slide, or pressing a button on your controller to automatically activate the slide release.

Fun fact: You can actually rack the slide multiple times to eject fresh rounds. Be warned though, this will empty the magazine and Alyx sadly can’t pick up the individual bullets and manually load them back into the mag. Half-Life: Alyx has fun with some of its manual firearm operations, but it doesn’t get overly technical with it.

Find the list of pistol upgrades possible using the Combine Fabricator below.

Upgrade	Description	Cost
Reflex Sight	Adds a display that highlights tactical targets	10
Burst Fire	Adds a toggle between three-shot burst and single-fire	20
Bullet Reservoir	Adds a reservoir that holds 10 additional bullets	30
Laser Sight	Adds a reservoir that holds 10 additional bullets	35

Tip: You might be tempted to buy the reflex sights right away, since it’ll be the first upgrade you can afford for the pistol. But Half-Life: Alyx is not like typical first-person shooters. You won’t be able to lock into an “aim down sights” mode–you’ll have to do this manually. That’s all well and good, but the reflex sights don’t add much more of an advantage than just aiming down the iron sights anyway–highlighting weak spots is a nice touch, but not essential. If you really want precision, save up for that laser sight and get it as early as possible. Then do the bullet reservoir after that.

Shotgun

The shotgun is great for killing headcrabs in a pinch because it doesn’t require the same precision as the pistol. It’s also extremely effective against the more heavily armored Combine soldiers.

Shells can be more scarce than handgun ammo, but can take some enemies out in a single well-placed shot. If you can afford it, the grenade launcher add-on gives the shotgun a powerful long-distance option, making it much more versatile in larger, more crowded combat arenas.

To reload the shotgun, you have to press the release button on your controller to expose the tube magazine. Shells must be loaded manually and just like any other ammo in the game, you can load in shells you’ve retrieved from Alyx’s backpack or picked up in the world.

The shotgun can hold six shells, plus one in the chamber. After you’ve loaded in your shells, you have to physically whip the shotgun up with a flick of your wrist to lock the hinge back in place. You can also use your other hand to manually bring the barrel back up. Then, pull the slide back to chamber a round if there isn’t one already.

Tip: After loading six shells, chamber one, then open up the shotgun again to load that extra one in.

If you want to load a grenade with the grenade launcher add-on, simply touch a grenade to the end of your shotgun to attach it, or place one on with your other hand.

Find the full list of shotgun upgrades possible using the Combine Fabricator below.

Upgrade	Description	Cost
Laser Sight	Adds a laser projection for better targeting	10
Double Shot	Adds the option to fire a second shot immediately after the first	25
Autoloader	Adds a mechanical shell feeder to quickly load the shotgun	30
Grenade Launcher	Adds the ability to attach and launch grenades	40

Tip: The laser sight is a nice thing to have, but shotgun blasts are so wide and you’ll probably be using it in close proximities anyway that it isn’t entirely necessary. Save up for one of the more advanced upgrades!

SMG

The Combine SMG is a powerful firearm that utilizes power cells.

There are 30 rounds in each power cell. It’s probably the simplest weapon to reload as it’s mostly automatic–just pull out a power cell and attach it to the side.

If you have the extended magazine, you can push the same button used to eject a pistol magazine to open up the SMG and load multiple power cells through the side. Use a whipping motion or close the side to ready the weapon.

Upgrade	Description	Cost
Reflex Sight	Adds a display that highlights tactical targets	15
Laser Sight	Adds a laser sight for better targeting	25
Extended Magazine	Allows multiple power cells to be loaded into the weapon	30

Tip: Just like the pistol, the reflex sight isn’t the most important upgrade you can get for the SMG. Go for the laser sight first.

Grenades

There are two types of grenades in Half-Life: Alyx. Both require just one hand to use, but be extra cautious about your surroundings (in real life) when throwing them.

Unlike ammo, grenades cannot be stored in Alyx’s backpack–only in her wrist pockets, meaning you can only carry up to two at a time.

Combine Grenade

This is the standard grenade you’ll find in the game, and also the type that is compatible with the shotgun’s grenade launcher. Just press a button to active it and manually throw once it’s armed. If an enemy throws one at you and you’re quick enough, you can even pull it in with the gravity gloves and toss it back before it blows.

Xen Grenade

These are explosive orbs you can find on tentacle-like Xen creatures in certain overgrown parts of City 17. You’ll have to be quick to snatch it from the tentacle’s grip. Once you do manage to grab one, activate it, and throw. (If you’re using the Index, you can squeeze your controller to activate it.)

Half-Life: Alyx Tools

Gravity Gloves

Alyx’s gravity gloves (or the “Russells”) will be your most powerful tool in Half-Life: Alyx. They aren’t as strong as Gordon Freeman’s gravity gun, but they are far more wieldy. You’ll use them primarily to pick up items (near or far) with just a flick of your wrist, like telekinesis. HUD elements on one glove display your health and resin. Alyx also has wrist pockets that let her store a single item in each one, which is great for setting aside grenades, healing syringes, and key items for solving environmental puzzles.

Even without the power of the gravity gloves, Alyx’s hands are an important tool. This is a VR game, so everything you do is built around using your hands (or hand, if you’re playing single-handed mode) to manipulate the world. Scavenging through a messy locker to find ammo, picking up barrels, opening doors, plugging in wires, depositing or retrieving items into your backpack, pulling levers, crushing supply crates, throwing explosives–all of these actions will be done manually.

Multitool

Alyx’s multitool, as the name suggests, is a tool with multiple uses. It is probably meant to be an early prototype of the EMP tool she’s seen using in Half-Life 2. In Half-Life: Alyx, you’ll use it to bypass Combine security measures like forcefields, rewire electronics, and solve puzzles to access locked equipment like storage lockers and Combine fabricators.

You can press the trigger button to use the end of the multitool to interact with the environment, but everything else is motion-based. You might need to press it into a port to power a piece of equipment up or trace along the walls to rewire and reroute electricity. There are a number of different multitool puzzle types that are randomly generated too, requiring you to manipulate objects in 3D space.

Half-Life: Alyx Consumable Items

Ammo

Ammo for your weapons is probably the #1 item you’ll be on the lookout for in the environment. This includes:

• Handgun magazines
• Shotgun shells (individual or in packs)
• SMG power cells

Luckily, you can find ammo pretty much anywhere: on shelves, in lockers, drawers, cabinets, and boxes, etc. Be on the lookout for supply crates (light wooden boxes with a yellow “supply” label on them (you’ll recognize these from previous Half-Life games), which can be shot, smashed, or broken open. They often contain ammo and other important items. You can also sometimes loot ammo from bodies.

All ammo can be stored in Alyx’s backpack. Just be careful when doing so–the specific gesture might take some getting used to and it’s possible to drop things on the floor if you’re not very deliberate.

Resin

Resin looks like little glowing hockey pucks. It’s a Combine material used to upgrade your weapons using Combine fabricators. Just like ammo, resin is a common item in the game and can be found pretty much anywhere.

Be sure to be extra observant when scavenging for resin, because you can often stumble on some hidden in the far corners of levels and in hard-to-reach places. You will only encounter a few Combine fabricators in the game, and there’s no backtracking once you progress to the next chapter, so make sure you collect as much as you can and save up for the upgrades you want. That way you can make the most out of every opportunity.

Resin can be stored in Alyx’s backpack–again, be careful when doing so and make sure it actually ends up in the backpack and not on the floor!

Healing Syringe

There are two ways to heal yourself in Half-Life: Alyx. You can use the wall-mounted health chargers when you find them, or keep a healing syringe or two on hand (or in your wrist pockets–though you can definitely carry them around by hand too, if you want.)

To use a health syringe, just press the action button to activate it and then physically stick it into your arm or body. Everything but Alyx’s hands are invisible, but it will still work. You don’t have to hold it in either–the healing effect will occur instantly, and then you can discard it.

Unlike ammo and resin, healing syringes cannot be stored in bulk in Alyx’s backpack. You can only store one in each wrist pocket, which means two is the maximum amount you can stash away for later use. Be mindful to use the wall-mounted health chargers (if possible) before syringes you have stashed.

For more, check out our Half-Life: Alyx puzzle guide, accessibility options guide, and read our full review.

Half-Life: Alyx is primarily an action game, but like other games in the Half-Life series, there are some light puzzles to solve along the way. In more standard Half-Life fashion, there are environmental “puzzles” that require you to pull levers, push buttons, and operate machinery–since you’re playing as Alyx, you’re also a hacking whiz who can rewire electronics using her handy multitool. But Half-Life: Alyx has even more uses for the multitool, including solving some traditional spatial puzzles.

You’ll encounter a number of multitool puzzles while playing Half-Life: Alyx. They come in many forms and are often used to lock access to important devices, like Combine fabricators and supply lockers. There’s also a special one for disarming laser tripmines.

These puzzles are randomly generated each time you encounter one, but the logic to solve them is always the same. Below we’ve broken down the common multitool puzzle types and explained how to solve each one. Again, the exact solutions won’t be the same, but the method of solving them will be. Some puzzles have “lose” conditions, but there is no consequence for failing a multitool puzzle–if you do fail, you just need to start it over.

Please note, these puzzles were all solved using both hands. Half-Life: Alyx offers a number of accessibility options, including a one-handed mode. We haven’t tested the multitool puzzles in one-handed mode proper, but they can all be solved one-handed regardless.

Electricity And Rewiring Puzzles

Rewiring electronics is one of the main things Alyx’s multitool comes in handy for, and it’s one of the major environmental puzzles you’ll encounter. If something is powered off, just locate the electrical panel, button, or mechanism that needs connecting and hover your multitool over the wall. The wires will start glowing.

Trace your multitool along the wall to follow it (you may need to walk or move to fully follow along), and if you come across any wiring intersections, you may be able to rotate them by pressing trigger on your multitool. You can do this to reroute power along the path you need.

Laser Web Puzzle

This is one of the more complicated puzzles you’ll come across. You have to use your multitool to grab the glowing white orbs and reposition them so that the red lasers shooting out of them align with the red orbs.

Every single red orb must intersect with the red laser to fully solve the puzzle–when the lasers are touching a red orb, that path will turn blue. Once the web of lasers is all blue, you’ve solved the puzzle.

Orb Laser Tube Puzzle

If you were wondering, no, these are not the official names. I’m trying my best.

This puzzle requires you to guide a laser through a tube so that it perfectly aligns with a red orb on another axis. To do this, you have to use a free hand to grab and rotate the floating orb until the laser crosses through it, then slowly tweak the orientation until the laser shoots out the other end in a way that intersects with the red orb. This one’s all about positioning and being able to make very slight adjustments.

Bullet Hell Puzzle

To solve this puzzle, you have to bring the lock and key points together by picking either one up with the multitool and guiding it through a dynamic maze of “enemies,” like a bullet hell. You do this by activating the multitool above the point you want to control, then tracing it along the face of the globe. You also need to use your other hand to rotate the globe.

There are a couple varieties of this particular puzzle and they ramp up in difficulty. They start with static “enemies,” which requires only your own precision. You’ll eventually encounter ones with moving “enemies,” which require a bit more dexterity; and in the late-game they have moving “enemies” that also leave a deadly trail behind them. Touching any of these obstacles mid-puzzle is an instant fail and you will need to start the puzzle over.

Tip: You can drop the lock or key at any point if your arms or wrists get twisted up. The red “enemies” won’t terminate the puzzle if your multitool is detached, giving you a chance to rest and take your time. But be careful when re-engaging the multitool and make sure you’re clear of where the bullets are moving!

Laser Tripmine Puzzle

There are a few ways to get past a laser tripmine in Half-Life: Alyx. You can shoot them so they explode. You can throw something in their path so they explode. You can walk into one, I guess? (Not recommended.) Or you can disarm them using Alyx’s multitool.

You’ll find yourself in situations where having a tripmine explode is not ideal. To disarm it, carefully approach one without intersecting its laser and use the multitool on it to activate the puzzle. The puzzle requires you to guide a tiny orb through a series of hoops, sometimes while being chased by dangerous red particles. If you don’t solve this puzzle correctly or get caught by the red particles, don’t worry–the tripmine will not explode. The only way to set off a tripmine is to cross the path of its laser, so be extra careful of your arm and hand placement when trying to disarm it.

If you’re having trouble with crouching down for long periods or are unable to, check out our accessibility options guide and a guide to playing Half-Life: Alyx seated for a list of height adjustment options.

Don’t forget to check out our weapons guide, Easter eggs guide, and of course, our full review of Half-Life: Alyx.

Half-Life: Alyx is a full-length Half-Life game built exclusively for virtual reality. While it works with most of the mainstream VR headsets available, it requires a VR-ready PC to run. These are already more barriers than your average game has–VR can be expensive, it can require a dedicated space to play in, and it can be a chore to set up if you’re new to it. But even outside of that, VR has an accessibility issue. It can be physically demanding to play and it still gives many people motion sickness.

There will be some people who can’t play Half-Life: Alyx at all due to some of the movement-based gameplay and more precise motor skills it requires. There are ways around some of its more complex gestures, but you’ll still need to be able to reach out with at least one hand, bring your arm back over your shoulder, hold and press buttons on a VR controller, and whip your arm back to use the Gravity Gloves. Luckily, Half-Life: Alyx does have a set of accessibility options designed to make it more playable for players with disabilities or who have other special needs that must be met to have a comfortable and fun experience.

Find an extensive breakdown of Half-Life: Alyx’s accessibility options below. We’ll expand this list out if we learn any more. If you’ve found your own workaround or see something we’re missing, let us know in the comments!

Difficulty Settings

Half-Life: Alyx comes with four difficulty settings, which adjusts combat.

• Story – The simplest of combat.
• Easy – Moderately challenging combat.
• Normal – Challenging combat.
• Hard – Very challenging combat.

Right And Left-Handed Modes

At the start of the game, you’ll be able to assign your weapon hand to your right or left hand.

Movement Types

To combat motion sickness and give players a more flexible range of options to suit their tastes, Half-Life: Alyx offers four different movement types. We’ve listed them below, along with the in-game descriptions.

• Blink (default) – Teleport to destinations with a brief screen fade. The most comfortable movement type.
• Shift – Teleport to destinations with a fast linear movement.
• Continuous – Move continuously based on your head orientation.
• Continuous Hand – Move continuously based on hand orientation.

Let’s dive into each one with a bit more detail.

Blink

The default Blink movement type is recommended for players who get motion sickness from VR. It works by having you use the controller to point at where you want to “teleport” to, and blinking you there with a brief, but not jarring fade-out and fade-in. The “blinking” is what reduces the motion sickness, by removing the element of “motion” from traversal. This is becoming standard in a lot of VR adventure games.

With the Blink movement option, you can also rotate your orientation before you skip to a new destination, meaning you can quickly warp behind an enemy and turn to face them in a single move that doesn’t actually simulate or depict the motion of turning. You can also make small adjustments to your position with the flick of a joystick, which you can customize via your in-game preferences.

Quick turn angle options are in 15 degree increments:

• 15 degrees
• 30 degrees
• 45 degrees
• 60 degrees
• 75 degrees
• 90 degrees

Quick turning is great if you need to rotate just slightly and can’t or don’t want to physically do so. You can also do small backward and forward steps just to get slightly closer or farther from something without making a big jump.

This is the mode we recommend for the average player just starting out, those who are new to VR, and those who are prone to motion sickness.

Shift

Shift is similar to Blink, only instead of teleporting with a fade, it zooms you over to your destination. The rapid simulated motion may be jarring and create a sense of vertigo for inexperienced players or those with a sensitivity to it, so be careful.

Continuous

Continuous and Continuous Hand are both the closest movement type to conventional first-person video games. Rather than a teleport, it’s a continuous motion. You push your controller’s joystick forward to move and turn your head in the direction you want to move. This might be the most jarring for players who are prone to motion sickness or not accustomed to VR, but experienced VR players sometimes refer to this type as the most “immersive.”

Continuous Hand

Like Continuous motion, Continuous Hand is a smooth, continuous motion controlled by one of your controller’s joysticks. What makes it different from the standard Continuous mode is you use your hand instead of your head to point in the direction you want to move. That means you can push forward on the joystick to move forward, and still look around without changing direction.

If you play around with controls, you can combine and use the Blink and Continuous movement styles at any time.

Accessibility Options

Half-Life: Alyx also has a set of accessibility options to account for disability and other impairments.

Single Controller

Using single controller mode maps all actions to a single controller, so you can play Half-Life: Alyx with one hand.

Height Adjust

Certain segments of Half-Life: Alyx require you to duck behind cover, crouch to get through small passageways, and otherwise kneel or bend your body in ways that won’t be feasible for some players.

Height adjust mode lets you use the controller to toggle crouching or standing. There are a few hybrid options too that you can experiment with.

Here’s the full list, with in-game descriptions, below.

• Height Adjust: Crouch – Crouch action only. Stand is disabled. When the crouch action is enabled, toggle to quickly duck or adjust to a lowered position.
• Height Adjust: Stand – Stand action only. Crouch is disabled. When the stand action is enabled, toggle to raise your position to help with reach. Recommended during seated play.
• Height Adjust: Crouch And Stand – When the crouch and stand actions are enabled, use them to lower or to raise your position on two separate inputs.
• Height Adjust: Hybrid – Hybrid uses a single input for both crouch and stand actions. To crouch, click to lower your position. To stand, press and hold to raise your position.

All actions must be manually bound to inputs in SteamVR settings.

Seated Mode

You can play Half-Life: Alyx seated, but you’ll want to adjust some options when setting up SteamVR to make sure it’s tuned correctly. Check out our full guide on how to play Half-Life: Alyx seated for more details.

Weapon Select Orient

This option in the interface menu allows you to change the orientation type for selecting weapons from the in-game context menu. Find the available options below with our descriptions.

• Hand – Use your hand to point to the weapon you want to select.
• Head – Use your head to point to the weapon you want to select.
• Hybrid – Utilize both methods.

Light Sensitivity

You can turn light sensitivity mode on to reduce the strength and flickering of lights in-game.

Subtitles and Closed Captions

Half-Life: Alyx offers subtitles and closed captions for dialogue and in-game sound effects. You can adjust the size and width of the text and reading speed.

Additional Accessibility Options

There are other ways to adjust the game to suit your specific needs, including reducing motion sickness.

Barnacle Lift

If you’re prone to motion sickness, this is an easy one to overlook. Barnacles are those pesky ceiling-dwellers in Half-Life that will pull you up if you cross their path. If you turn Barnacle Lift off in preferences, they won’t be able to grab and pull you off the ground. You’ll still take damage, but at least you won’t get sick!

If there’s something we missed or more options you think Valve should add, let us know in the comments! For more, check out our review of Half-Life: Alyx, our weapons and upgrades guide, and our puzzle guide.

When Half-Life: Alyx was first announced, Valve billed it as a “full-length entry in the Half-Life series.” Half-Life games, not including the shorter episodes, have usually been around 12-15 hours long. So is Half-Life: Alyx really a full-length Half-Life game? And how long does it take to beat?

Half-Life: Alyx Game Length – How Long It Takes To Beat

Based on GameSpot editors Chloi Rad and Michael Higham’s hands-on time with playing (and finishing) the game, Half-Life: Alyx takes about 15 hours to beat, set across 11 chapters.

This was only tested on Normal difficulty. Half-Life: Alyx also offers Story Mode, Easy, and Hard, which may make your time with the game significantly longer or shorter. Story and Easy mode are meant to lighten the combat so players can enjoy the story, while Hard makes enemies a bigger threat. There are also a number of puzzles and challenging combat sections in the game that will likely affect overall playthrough time depending on your ability. Regardless of difficulty level and individual skill level though, you can expect to spend roughly 15 hours in Half-Life: Alyx.

Because it’s a VR game, we don’t recommend playing Half-Life: Alyx for more than a couple of hours at a time. Take breaks frequently and be mindful of your real-life surroundings when swinging things around!

If you’re about to dive into the game for the first time, check out our list of Half-Life: Alyx tips for beginners, weapon upgrades guide, and a breakdown of Half-Life: Alyx’s accessibility options. Don’t forget to read our review of Half-Life: Alyx, which calls it “a tremendous VR experience that captures and elevates what makes the series special.”

Many of us currently have more time on our hands than we know what to do with, and finding things to keep yourself entertained while stuck indoors is crucial. It’s a great time to own a console or gaming PC, as the first big games of the year are coming out just as we’re all desperate for something to play. And fortunately, you can find some fantastic deals on games from the past few years if you’re looking to save some money. Amazon’s latest batch of deals slashes the prices on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch games, including critically acclaimed hits like Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. (While the sale focuses on console games, you can find some fantastic PC discounts at GOG, Fanatical, Green Man Gaming, and other PC-focused sites right now.)

PS4 players will find a lot of good stuff on Amazon right now, including console exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition and The Last of Us Remastered for $15 each along with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition for $20. Journey to the Savage Planet, a colorful first-person adventure game released in January, is down to $20 on PS4. You can also snag our 2019 Game of the Year, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, for $37.49. Meanwhile, Death Stranding is on sale for just $30 on PS4, the best price yet for Kojima Productions’ debut title.

Outside of PS4-specific deals, you can snag Borderlands 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition for $20 each on both PS4 and Xbox One. If you somehow don’t own Grand Theft Auto V by now, its Premium edition is just $18 for Xbox One and comes with a bunch of extra content and upgrades. Fighting game fans can jump into the action in Mortal Kombat 11 for $25 on Xbox One or $27 on Switch or PS4. The newest single-player Star Wars adventure, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, is also on sale for $40 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Switch game deals are a bit lackluster on Amazon right now following the huge Mario Day sale, but you can still find several first-party games for $10 to $15 off, which is always a great price to snag them at. If you’re a new Switch owner or just haven’t picked up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild yet, it’s down to $49.49 on Amazon. Rocket League is a great couch multiplayer game if you’re looking for something to play with your roommates or family, and the Ultimate Edition for Switch is just $24.

You can check out all the best game deals at Amazon right now below. Be sure to note the shipping estimates–right now, many Amazon goods have longer shipping times due to stock running low and Amazon prioritizing health and household goods in its warehouses.

Best game deals at Amazon

Animal Crossing has always allowed you to plant a toilet in the middle of your house, but they were always more decorative than functional. However, this latest entry New Horizons is a next-gen experience, and they wanted to add in the features that fans have been clamoring for. That’s right: You can now poop.

To be clear, however, you must meet certain conditions in order to achieve your digestive dreams. In New Horizons, if you eat fruit, you gain energy that allows you to perform feats of strength, like digging trees out of the ground. Once you sit on the toilet, your energy will slowly drain to zero, accompanied by a slightly upsetting sound effect. However, once you’ve made the decision to poop, you cannot cancel it, so be careful out there.

This isn’t the only surprise addition to New Horizons, however. The game allows you to get free items by playing the mobile spin-off Pocket Camp, some of which are exclusive.

The third-person survival shooter World War Z has a new update that turns on cross-play between PC and Xbox One, with PS4 getting added “at some point in the future.” We’ve compiled the full patch notes below.

This latest patch for World War Z is called the “Crossplay Update,” a free piece of content that is part of the game’s Season Two content roadmap. You can check out an overview of the roadmap below.

As you can see, the “Crossplay Update” introduces a number of new additions to World War Z, including four new extra character skins, more missions, adjustments to horde mode, and more. The headlining feature, however, is the inclusion of cross-play between PC (via the Epic Games Store) and Xbox One. With this new feature, PC and Xbox players can fight together in PvE; it can be turned on and off in the settings menu.

World War Z’s “Crossplay Update” also makes a number of quality-of-life improvements, including UI fixes, server stabilization, clipping issues, and much more.

World War Z Cross-Play Update

New Features

• Added Virus Sample functionality in Campaign:
  • AI Director will randomly spawn containers with Virus Sample that players can pick up.
  • Virus samples can spawn from Bombers that are taken down without them exploding.
  • The containers are fragile and they will begin to apply negative effects to players as they break.
  • If players will manage to finish the mission with containers intact, they will get increased rewards.
  • AI Director can spawn several Virus Samples, Bomber will also drop them.
• Added 4 new weapon variants with unique perks:
  • Pistol – Increased penetration and damage vs special zombies.
  • Machine Pistol – Full auto variant, reloads primary weapon after a special zombie kill.
  • Classic Battle Rifle – Semi-auto variant, no penetration but deals a lot of damage.
  • Battle Rifle – Full auto variant.
  • Thumper Grenade Launcher – Incendiary grenades.
• War Heroes character skin pack (included for Season Pass owners).

Horde Mode

• Slightly reduced difficulty in Hard mode.
• Significantly reduced difficulty in Normal mode:
  • Less Special Zombies will spawn in Normal mode.
  • Increased preparation timer between waves by 20% in Normal mode.
  • Supply points rewards will begin to scale down later in Normal mode.
  • Added significantly more random pickups in Normal mode.
• Increased Auto Turret maximum ammo.
• Capped by 10 the amount of Auto Turrets that could be placed simultaneously.
• Fixed one of the shops not spawning items.
• Reduced the amount of ammo secondary weapons drain from ammo boxes by 50%.
• Reduced ammo crate cost from 100 to 70.
• Significantly increased both XP and currency rewards.

Difficulty

• Tweaked Extreme difficulty settings to restore pre-patch balance (it was changed to support crossplay).
• AI Director will spawn less secondary weapon pickups.

AI

• Reworked Bomber drop, he will spawn better Primary and Heavy weapons when killed.

Perks

• Fixed several issues with perks stacking.

UI

• Minor UI and localization fixes.

Stability

• Fixed several gameplay crashes.

Levels

• Fixed some gameplay bugs that were causing an inability to progress in levels.
• Fixed issue that allowed players to clip through geometry in some places.

PC Specific Fixes

• Added crossplay between Xbox in PvE.

Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s latest Max Raid events are coming to an end very soon. The events are scheduled to wrap up this Wednesday, March 25, at 4:59 PM PT / 7:59 PM ET, making this your last chance to catch some rare Gigantamax and version-exclusive Pokemon.

There are two concurrent Max Raid events going on now, the first of which features Gigantamax Snorlax, Machamp, and Gengar. All three of those Pokemon are currently appearing in Max Raid dens in both games. Since Gigantamax Pokemon are normally incredibly hard to find, this is a good chance to catch to catch them before their spawn rates return to normal.

On top of that, developer Game Freak recently kicked off a second Max Raid event that makes a handful of version-exclusive Pokemon available in the opposite game. Galarian Corsola, Ponyta, Oranguru, and female Indeedee are appearing in Max Raids in Pokemon Sword, while Galarian Farfetch’d, Darumaka, Passimian, and male Indeedee are appearing in Shield. This event likewise ends on March 25.

Time is also running out to claim some freebies in Sword and Shield. Until the end of the month, you can download 20 free Battle Points and a free Bottle Cap–good for Hyper Training one of your Pokemon’s stats–via Mystery Gift. You can also claim three free TR94s, which can teach a Pokemon the Ground-type attack High Horsepower. You can see all the free gifts available now for Pokemon Sword and Shield here.

In other Pokemon news, Nintendo recently released an update for Sword and Shield that “fixed several issues,” including one that would cause the game to crash if you received a hacked Pokemon through Surprise Trade. Sword and Shield have two big expansions on the way this year: Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra. The first arrives this June, while the second will follow sometime in fall.