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Riot has announced a new publishing initiative called Riot Forge, which will partner with third-party game developers to work on new games set in the League of Legends universe. Riot says “multiple titles” are already in development at Riot Forge.

One of the goals for Riot Forge is to create games set in the League of Legends universe, but are different from its flagship MOBA game on PC. The company says Riot Forge titles will be “completable game experiences” in “different genres and various platforms” that complement the live service game.

“We are humbled by our partner developers who are so passionate to work on games set in the LoL IP,” said Riot Forge head Leanne Loombe.

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A new large-scale casino heist is coming to Grand Theft Auto Online in GTA 5 next week. The Diamond Casino Heist will be available on December 12, and Rockstar promises it’s the biggest and most complex crime to hit the game yet, featuring some differences compared to how past GTA Online heists have worked.

The announcement details the massive operation. You’ll be working with the Cheng family to infiltrate the casino. Like any good heist, you’ll have to plan your entry point from multiple options, security measures will change unpredictably, and once inside circumstances will require quick thinking and responses mid-mission. Unlike other heists, failure isn’t necessarily an end-state; if a piece of the plan goes wrong, you may have to improvise to find another way on the fly. But if absolutely everything goes sideways you can always shoot your way out. The bevy of choices promises high replay value for the heist, with scenarios unfolding wildly differently from one another.

To set the stage for your daring heist, you’ll need to set up a retro arcade business property as a front operation. In the floor below the arcade, you can practice all the skills a heist needs like hacking keypads and cracking vault doors. You can also store your equipment and getaway vehicles there, and if you’re already a business owner, you can add a Master Control Terminal to the staging area. You’ll need to own a Penthouse to start the mission, as well.

For now, the Diamond Casino & Resort website features an Easter egg teasing the upcoming event, so you may be able to glean clues from it. Or you can spend some time before the big event rewatching Ocean’s 11 and finding the best jazz soundtracks to play while you pull off your daring stunt.

Now that we’re past the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, we can start getting back to normal with a nice, relaxing weekend. Ubisoft hopes to help with this by offering a free-play weekend for The Crew 2 on PS4 and Xbox One. Microsoft is also offering a free-play weekend for Trailmakers to all Gold subscribers.

The Crew 2 is available to everyone on PS4 from December 5 until December 8, while both The Crew 2 and Trailmakers are free to play for Xbox Live Gold subscribers from December 5 at 12:01 AM Pacific until December 8 at 11:59 PM PT–unfortunately, no specific times were given for the PS4 version. If you want to keep the games after that, you can pick them up at a discount. Unfortunately, it seems that only the Deluxe edition is discounted on PS4, while all versions of the game are on sale for Xbox One. Prices aren’t live on PS4 yet, but we’ll update this article when they’re revealed.

To download them to your consoles, head over to their store page on the PS4 or the Gold member area on your Xbox One and select the game you want to install on your console. Alternatively, you can click the links below and install them on your devices remotely.

• The Crew 2 on PS4
• The Crew 2 on Xbox One
• Trailmakers

Our The Crew 2 review scored the game an 8/10, and while critic Edmond Tran was disappointed by the lack of multiplayer interaction, he still enjoyed the game quite a bit.

“I’ll fondly recall both the tension of flinging sprint boats back and forth through the narrow, artificial canals of The Venetian in Las Vegas, and the easygoing satisfaction of an hour-long hypercar race from New York to San Francisco, where I listened to a podcast and enjoyed the rolling scenery,” he wrote. “Despite its shortcomings, The Crew 2 still displays admirable strengths, which lie in its player-friendly features, freedom of movement, and its willingness to bend the rules in order to make things exciting and varied for an accessible, American-themed thrillride.”

Trailmakers released earlier this year and, like The Crew 2, features racing and exploration by land, sea, and air. However, in Trailmakers, you create your own vehicles out of blocks. GameSpot doesn’t currently have a review of it, but it has “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam, so the Xbox One’s free weekend is the perfect chance to try it out yourself.

“Realistic” World War I multiplayer FPS, Verdun, has received a brand-new update on Xbox One. The update, billed as more of a remaster, is available for free to all owners of the base game, and it comes with an assortment of changes and enhancements to the original experience.

Developers M2H and Blackmill Games released the patch notes for this Verdun Xbox One remaster, which can be viewed below. In addition to the patch notes, the two studios also put out a featurette, below, going into detail about the various changes available in the free update. These include improvements to the user interface, audio, graphics, controls and settings, and more.

Visual improvements aren’t all that is in Verdun’s free remaster update. The game also comes with new content, such as a brand-new map, additional squads and weapons, support for up to 24 AI players, and more.

Verdun has been around for a few years now. It first launched on Steam in April 2015, then made its way to PS4 in August 2016 and jumped to Xbox One in March 2017. We scored Verdun a 6/10 in our original 2015 review, saying, “Verdun somewhat succeeds in its lavish goal, but its road to glory is lengthy still. Until then, it sits on the edge of the line, waiting for the rallying cry.”

Full Verdun Xbox One Remaster Patch Notes

Major Additions/Improvements

• New Map:
  • St. Mihiel
• New Squads:
  • ANZAC & Tirailleurs Sénégalais
• New Weapons:
  • Webley Fosbery, Entrenching Tool, Senegalese Machete, Pétard Explosive, OF1 Grenade, Berthier “Sénégalais”
• Frontlines Bot support:
  • 24 players
• Updated graphics with improved weapon & character art, animations and shading
• Completely revamped UI with new features such as the spawn map and overview map
• Completely revamped sounds with higher quality and more authentic sounds and effects
• Improved controls to make it more responsive and allow for more customization
• New localizations:
  • Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Brasilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish
• Added a prestige system to the game. When you reach level 100 you can choose to prestige in your account screen and gain a new prestige rank, level & icon
• Added a new and improved tutorial system with tooltips and an intro video about Frontlines
• Added bullet penetration mechanic
• Added team damage penalty to all game modes e.g. hitting a friendly player will now give you a 10 point penalty
• Added map voting at the end of a match. You can pick between two maps. When the time is up, the voting results will be displayed
• Networking improvements:
  • Smoother and more accurate movement
• Overhauled the squad leveling system:
  • Every user now has a squad-level per squad, these levels combined will form the total squad level. For older squad levels we have a legacy system in place
• Added various improvements to prevent spawn killing
• Improved death cam
• Added first-person gas choking animation
• Better match up between the third- and first-person animations
• Added more custom match options
• Added better match balancing measures to prevent unbalanced games
• Barbed wire no longer kills but slows down and injures the player
• Prone/MG deployment improvements
• More stamina:
  • You can now sprint for 100 meters
• Various level fixes and improvements
• Added more options to customize HUD and controls
• Improved ragdolls
• Putting your gasmask on or off is now interruptible
• Added end game camera animations
• Weapons now have full accuracy through iron sights.
• Added recoil kick to LMGs
• Suppression effect is nerfed
• New medal:
  • “Most binoc kills”
• [X1 Only] Adjusted “Extreme Headhunter” and “Do you even die” achievement requirements
• You can now abort reloading by firing
• Rebolting can now be canceled by melee
• New Frontlines rule based on community feedback. Both defenders and attackers may no longer be further away than 2 sectors from the currently contested sector
• The game will now switch to a better host faster
• Various loadout adjustments based on community feedback
• Various weapon stats adjustments based on community feedback
• Tweaked aura sizes based on community feedback
• Adjusted call-in cooldowns based on community feedback

Bug Fixes & Smaller Improvements

• Squad Defense no longer AFK kicks you if you are dead
• Improved backward and sideways crawling animation
• “Most kills of higher rank” medal is now “Most kills of higher or equal rank”
• Ragdoll fingers are no longer always in the trigger position
• Reduced possibility of big rotations happening when you attack someone in melee
• We now show network stats if they are not healthy values. It shows:
  • Host migration, jitter, ping, and packet loss
• Reduced all command order cooldowns to 5 seconds
• Fire now damages players. Affected maps:
  • Flanders, Champagne
• Fixed deploy widget sticking around when switching to a different specialization
• Fixed first person hiccups when shooting and moving with MGs
• Removed blending during weapon swap/draw to prevent weird weapon spins
• Adjusted timing of sighted stance animations to better fit the in-game speed
• Third-person swap/draw time now matches first-person
• Third-person reload animation matches first-person animation more closely
• Better match up between the third and first-person animation status of recharging rifle
• Better match up between the third and first-person animations status of sighting a weapon
• Better animations when you are sighted and the player switches stance
• Third-person melee animation speed now always matches first-person melee animation speed
• The pitch of your third-person weapon model now matches the first person pitch more closely
• Your gun will now always move a bit when holding breath while walking
• Recharging/bolting of first/third person is now synced better
• Third-person reload now always has the same duration as first-person reload
• Third-person reload will now stop when bashing during the reload
• Gasmask overlay is no longer visible after the end of the match
• No more melee suppression through walls
• Going prone on a hill doesn’t cause skewed characters anymore
• Guns block your view less during sprinting over rough terrain
• Team kills will no longer give you a kill on the scoreboard and add progress towards achievements
• You will no longer miss the spawn during a MC switch when the timer is just about to hit 0
• You can no longer deploy a MG while jumping
• You can no longer aim after pressing jump
• Melee shock should only be caused by running people with melee weapons. Also, it shouldn’t trigger unless the enemy and victim are facing each other
• Fixed a bug where Squad Defense wins would count toward ‘highest multi-kill’ stat instead of a winning streak
• Grenade Training 3 now correctly gives extra score
• Repeating weapon types will no longer spawn another case when the reloading/recharging has been interrupted and a case has already been ejected
• Fixed health regen delay being 0 during first player life
• Fixed animation glitch when starting sprint during weapon unsight
• Grenade throw time tweaks
• Fixed gas effect staying longer than the visual
• When not spawning on a player, you will now look in the correct direction on spawn
• Added an option to enable manual reloading, so you won’t reload your gun when trying to shoot without having loaded ammo
• Increase stab/bash range so you no longer have to crouch to hit prone targets
• Remember mini-map zoom setting between maps
• Near order points adjustment:
  • Non-NCO still get 15 points when killing near an order, NCO now only gets points for each squadmate that actually follows the order. This prevents NCO to just use the order for itself and to encourages placing better orders
• Teamwork points adjustment:
  • When making a kill in the squad aura, you now get 5 points per other squadmate that is also in the aura.
• No longer allow a 1 man squad to create a new match in Frontlines/Maneuver (unless there are no active matches). This prevents sharded matches. Users are encouraged via chat warning to change squad setup or use “Play Now” instead.
• Fixed MG deployment indicator staying after dying
• Fixed a case of retreat bonus not being triggered
• Frontlines:
  • Fixed a case that let players spawn on NCO who is in a ‘desertion’ area
• Made ammo crates always refill full amount of grenades in Squad Defense
• Fixed Engineer and Sentry squad being able to spawn in ‘No Mans Land’ and verified that they now do allow spawning when they are supposed to.
• Improved melee by allowing more trade-kill grace time
• Fixed a case where you could get stuck in ADS & ‘This report’
• Fixed a case where ladders were often not detected by making ladder collisions not affect movement. This improves some ladders that were not climbable
• Made movement up a slope as a fast as moving on flat terrain
• Fixed an issue where auto-balance triggers with a one player difference
• Fixed weapon snapping when firing a full auto weapon and toggling ADS at the same time
• Fixed rifle snapping when changing stance during reload
• Reduced instances of weapon snapping from and to ADS
• Added a trigger audio when firing a gun without ammo
• Peep sight edits for P17/14, Lewis and Bar. Their sights are now smaller and less obstructing
• Fixes in upper/lower body third-person animation timing/transitions to counter characters “dabbing” when sighting/unsighting.
• Made reinforcing bars on German gas mask (somewhat) transparent. This makes the German gas mask more on par with the Entente variant
• Various improvements to bayonet stabbing:
  • Bigger hit radius, faster damage application, no more locking on teammates when friendly fire/team damage is enabled
• In team-based matches, a player spawn penalty is applied only when the player’s team is winning or when the teams are tied
• You can no longer (accidentally) call-in abilities outside the map
• Your arms/weapon react to strafing and moving backward
• Fixed a case where a jump-like animation occurs when quickly ADSing after shooting
• Frontlines:
  • Defending squads will now be spread out in the defending sector before the start of the match
• Spawn protection against explosions (artillery/grenades) raised from 2 to 4 seconds as artillery/grenades can be in progress during your spawn
• Fixed an issue where bayonet stats differed, stats for all bayonets should now be the same
• Artillery projectiles are now removed if the owner leaves or changes faction. This prevents team killing by changing faction after calling in artillery.
• Increased the time you have to retreat to another sector in Frontlines.
• Preventing spawning in sectors that are about to be captured if you are a defender.
• Flamethrower damage is more consistent
• Third-person character now matches the first person vision more closely when a player goes prone. Reduces invisible prone issues when not deploying
• Improved gasmask checking on spawn, should resolve the ‘spawning in gas’ issues
• Reduced bouncing on downward slopes, you now stick better to the terrain
• Explosions & rifle shots cause body parts to have a force applied instead of merely dropping to the ground
• NCO artillery call-ins are now also shown on the map to friendlies
• Allow reload actions directly after inserting a stripper clip to be canceled
• The ability to switch role while under attack or dead is added to Squad Defense
• Fixed a bug which caused the height of the third person character model not matching the first-person model (mostly noticeable when prone)
• Fixed a bug where revolver per shell reloads could not be canceled by pressing the fire button
• Improved arm movements when moving, crouching, lying prone for some weapons
• Various smaller bug fixes and improvements

Paramount Pictures is promoting its upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie at CCXP19 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with nine fan-made posters with unique and awesome designs.

This Brazil Comic Con is taking place from December 5-8 and, although there is no Sonic the Hedgehog panel, there is a Sonic booth that has photo and social ops, as well as these posters on display. IGN will be in attendance and will be posting coverage throughout the weekend.

You can see each of the posters in the below gallery.

The names and countries of these wonderful artists are as follows; Walber Santos (Brazil), Jairo Dutra (Brazil), Eduardo Vieira (Brazil), Hiro Kawahara (Brazil), João Santos (Brazil), Pablo Espoinosa (Mexico), Sergio Murrieta (Mexico), Jaye Atienza (Philippines), Aleksey Rico (Russia), and J Molas (Spain).

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Netflix dropped three new character posters on Thursday for their upcoming adaptation of The Witcher featuring Geralt of Rivia, Ciri, and Yennefer.

Henry Cavill, known for playing the Man of Steel himself, will be playing Geralt. He is a fan of The Witcher games, and his performance draws inspiration from those who have portrayed the White Wolf before him. Cavill is joined by Freya Allan who plays Ciri, and Anya Chalotra who is playing Yennefer in the upcoming series.

While many fans’ first exposure to Geralt of Rivia and the world of The Witcher came by way of 2015’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, this Netflix series is actually being adapted from the series of novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski. If you’re interested in reading through the books prior to the release of Season 1, we’ve got you covered.

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