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Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s Gigantamax Toxtricity event has ended, but a few new Gigantamax Pokemon have begun appearing in the games. For a limited time, Gigantamax versions of Gengar and Machamp will be featured in Max Raid dens, and you’ll have a second chance to catch Gigantamax Snorlax.

All three Gigantamax Pokemon will spawn in Max Raids more frequently until 4:59 PM PT / 7:59 PM ET on March 25. Unlike past events of this sort, none of the Gigantamax Pokemon are version-exclusive; you’ll have a chance to encounter their raids in both Sword and Shield.

Gigantamax Snorlax was previously available in Max Raids earlier this year. If you missed your chance to catch one back then, you now have another opportunity to add it to your collection. Snorlax’s G-Max Move is G-Max Replenish, which inflicts damage on the opponent and restores any Berries that Snorlax or its allies have consumed during the battle.

In addition to the new Max Raid events, a few freebies are still up for grabs in Sword and Shield. Until the end of the month, you can claim 20 free Battle Points as well as a free Bottle Cap. The former can be used to purchase competitive battling items from the Battle Tower, while the latter can be used to Hyper Train one of your Pokemon, increasing its base stats. You can see all the free gifts available right now for Pokemon Sword and Shield here.

Pokemon Sword and Shield are getting two big expansions this year, Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra, each of which introduce a bunch of new and returning Pokemon to the games, along with new mechanics, areas to explore, and more. The Pokemon Company also recently revealed a new Mythical Pokemon for Sword and Shield called Zarude, which will be featured in the upcoming film Pokemon the Movie: Coco.

Indie game developers are having a tough time right now, with the postponement of GDC and other big events that, in a normal year, can provide a big boost to a game’s marketing. It’s even more challenging when you find out that your intended release date is close to that of big-name AAA games in the same genre, as Rockfish Games has.

An update on Everspace 2‘s Kickstarter has outlined the game’s bad luck around timing, and given a little insight into how uncertainty around coronavirus has impacted their small studio. “It sounds like right out of a sci-fi horror movie: An aggressive virus is spreading around the globe, causing great uncertainties, severe supply chain issues and cancellations of big international events pretty much everywhere,” the studio said in the Kickstarter update.

“Unsurprisingly, all our GDC meetings with major platform holders and potential console co-publishing partners have been canceled, too. We are now setting up conference calls or meetings at upcoming events. Right now, we are prepared for everything and are hoping for the best. In short: We have to deal with a lot of uncertainties regarding business development, external game production as well as marketing and PR.“

The developer ultimately made the decision to push back the Steam Early Access release from its intended date in September to early December this year, which is not easy for a game that has to answer to almost 8000 Kickstarter backers, but a better option than competing with industry giants.

“Some AAA blockbuster titles will hit our initial Steam Early Access release date,” the Kickstarter update reads. “The hotly-anticipated open-world sci-fi shooter RPG Cyberpunk 2077 was recently pushed back to September, plus the brand new sci-fi looter shooter RPG Outriders from Square Enix has just been announced to release the same month, too.”

“Obviously, there is quite an overlap between those audiences and ours, so we have decided it wouldn’t be wise to directly compete against two sci-fi shooter RPG juggernauts, leaving not much room for any other sci-fi shooter coming out at the same time.”

Originally slated for an April 16 release, CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 has been pushed back to September 17, 2020.

The subsequent delay to Everspace 2’s release will also impact its Alpha and Beta releases, with the closed Alpha now scheduled for the end of May, and the closed Beta for August.

Everspace 2 is a sequel to 2016 sci-fi roguelike Everspace, and promises space exploration, RPG elements and plenty of loot in its single-player adventure. The game will be available initially for PC, with console releases on PS4 and Xbox One scheduled to drop six months later.

Activision and Infinity Ward are reportedly launching a free-to-play, standalone Call of Duty: Modern Warfare battle royale game called Warzone.

The report comes from YouTuber Chaos, who recently posted a gameplay impressions video that has now been removed. The video explains in detail that Warzone is free-to-play and does not require players to own Modern Warfare. It’s multiplatform and cross-play, too.

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Warzone is reportedly a 150 player battle royale with support for solo, duo, and three-person teams. There are two modes: one which seems a fairly traditional fight-to-the-last-player-standing, and another called ‘Plunder’, which the video does not detail beyond it being a respawn-based mode focusing on collecting cash.

Cash is apparently part of the traditional mode, too; it can be looted across the map and is used at buy stations to purchase killstreaks, as well as revive tokens to get killed team members back in the fight. It looks like building a good stockpile of cash may be important for long-term survival.

Purchasing revives is not the only way to bring back dead squaddies; when you die you reportedly are taken to the gulag, where you must compete in a 1v1 match that is essentially Modern Warfare’s Gunfight mode (the map used in the video is even Gunfight’s Gulag map). Winning this 1v1 will throw you back into the match. Apparently this feature won’t be available in the later minutes of a match.

Warzone’s map is apparently large and completely custom made – meaning no reused building assets – and, like Black Ops 4’s battle royale mode Blackout, will feature classic maps. This time they will be from Infinity Ward’s back catalogue, such as Broadcast, Overgrown, Scrapyard, and Terminal.

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Currently there is no official word from Activision or Infinity Ward regarding Warzone, but Chaos notes in his video that he attended a pre-release preview event in order to capture his gameplay footage. It’s currently unclear if Warzone is due for imminent launch or is still some months away.

For more Call of Duty, check out the leaked Warzone map, which looks identical to that seen in Chaos’ video. There was also a report that Warzone will feature a ping system and vehicles, two features this latest leak also supports.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

The team on EA’s new Command & Conquer Remastered have been hard at work hunting down the original assets used in 1995, though some creativity is needed when files go missing.

EA has posted a new video with Producer Jim Vessella, chronicling his search for the original HD copies of Command & Conquer‘s iconic FMV cutscenes. The team decided that they had to use the original footage, as remaking the cutscenes would never be the same, but finding the files was a challenge.

While Vessella managed to track down archival tapes of the footage, it was only saved in a low quality VQA format. The only option left was to upscale the footage, using AI to improve resolution, increase frame rate, and improve the audio.

To get the best result, Vessella went to the community, with some fans having already worked on their own upscaling projects for C&C’s beloved FMV cutscenes. The final result was only possible with the help of fans, which underlines how much passion is going into this remake.

The result is shown as a side-by-side in the video, and while it’s not perfect, it’s still a smooth graphical update on some of the most iconic FMVs in gaming.

As a bonus, the team managed to unearth over four hours of never-before-seen B-roll footage, which will be packaged with the remake on release.

The team behind Command & Conquer Remastered continue to chronicle the work that goes into remastering a 25-year-old game, providing a fascinating insight into how remasters happen as well as the broader history of game development. You can read more about how the team dealt with lost audio files here.

With the news that Final Fantasy VII Remake will take place exclusively in Midgar, it’s not surprising that the city is going to be expanded and reworked. In the remake, the city will be a sprawling, living city–just to make you feel bad about blowing part of it up.

A new interview with producer Yoshinori Kitase and co-director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed some of the thought that has gone into designing a larger, more complete Midgar.

In the original game, players only spent a few hours at the start of the game in Midgar, while the remake promises a full game’s worth of content in the city.

While this content will include a whole lot of side quests, environmental storytelling will be just as important in the streets of Midgar. “We really wanted to show the everyday lives of Midgar’s citizens,” said Kitase in the interview. “[Partly] to show how they lived in this massive city powered by Mako energy, how and when they’d be using it, to tell that aspect of the story.”

“The original version went straight into the bombing mission. We wanted that feeling that things were already underway, you were in the middle of the action. Yet if you immediately went from there into the panic caused by the bombing mission afterwards, you wouldn’t understand the impact it had on the inhabitants’ everyday lives before that event interrupted them. That’s why we started with this domestic kind of scene.”

The city’s expansion into a more lived-in place isn’t just window dressing–it’s carefully designed to make the player think about the consequences of their actions when they do undertake the bombing mission. “The player gets to see how the [Reactor bombing] impacts the city,” Hamaguchi said. “We want them to feel conflicted about the effects of their actions. That’s why we depicted this area in such detail.”

Eagle-eyed fans of the series may also notice that Midgar takes some of its aesthetic from Advent Children’s version of the city, in keeping with the decision to use the critically-panned 2005 movie as visual inspiration.

“We did refer to Advent Children and other previous series’ work when rebuild Midgar,” Hamaguchi said. “But one of the main things we actually set out to redo was the scale of the city itself. The original wasn’t that realistic if you consider the size of the individual buildings and how big they were in comparison to the overall city.”

You’ll be able to explore Midgar for yourself when Final Fantasy VII Remake launches on PS4 on April 10. A demo of the first act is available right now, and playing it will net you a free PS4 theme. Check out our impressions of the first four hours of the game, as well as our extensive pre-order guide to make sure you get your hands on the remake as soon as possible.

NHL 20 has received a new patch, but don’t expect much from it. The official patch notes for Patch 1.5.1 are just one sentence long, adding one new feature.

The March 8 update for NHL 20 adds content from the recently announced esports tournament, the 2020 NHL Gaming World Championship, for the Hockey Ultimate Team mode.

That’s it. That’s the update.

Some people on Twitter roasted EA Sports for this, including popular NHL streamer Nasher. He joked that this update was so large and substantial that it brought back the much-requested features like GM Connected mode and a story mode for Be A Pro. But this was just trolling. He joked that these features might be added in NHL 27.

The NHL Gaming World Championship starts qualifier matches on March 10. Anyone can take part in the online qualifiers for a chance to rise through the tournament and win $60,000. For more on the tournament, check out the detailed breakdown on NHL’s website.