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Destiny 2: Forsaken is ushering Bungie’s latest sci-fi shooter into its second year with a smorgasbord of new missions, modes, enemies, equipment, and more. Prominent among the new additions is Gambit, a unique Destiny 2 mode that blends PVE and PVP together into one seriously fun competition.

Most of the time in Gambit, you won’t be shooting other players directly. But you’re always competing with another team of Guardians, so you’ll want to bring your A-game to every match. And that means having the right loadouts, knowing the best strategies, and being prepared with a complete understanding of everything Gambit has to offer.

As a hybrid mode that isn’t just PVE or PVP, Gambit allows you to explore new play styles that straddle the line between both. Based on our early experiences with the mode, here are some of the best ways to ensure your team comes out on top. For more on the game, check out our Forsaken review-in-progress.

How Gambit Works

Destiny 2’s newest game mode is aptly named, as almost every move you make is a gambit that risks your progress and points for a greater advantage over your opponents. Teams of four players compete to defeat enough enemies to be the first to summon a large “Primeval” boss enemy and defeat it, while periodically invading one another’s areas and killing other players to slow the opposing team’s progress. Besides these “invasions” of one player into the opposing team’s play area, the two teams are totally separate.

You’ll spend the bulk of any Gambit match defeating enemies and gathering the Motes they drop. You can carry up to 15 at a time, and although there’s no direct adverse effect for holding onto them, you’ll lose them all permanently if you die, setting your team back significantly.

You’re meant to bank these Motes periodically at the station in the center of the map, getting your team closer to summoning your Primeval. Doing so in increments of five sends a “blocker” enemy to the opposing team’s area, preventing them from banking their own Motes. Banking five Motes sends a small blocker, ten sends a medium, and 15 sends a large blocker that takes significant firepower to defeat. The bars along the top of the screen show not just how many Motes your team has banked (the red and blue bars), but also how many Motes each team’s players are holding (the gray portion of the bar that’s not yet filled in).

The notches on these bars represent the 25 and 50 marks. Reaching these milestones opens a portal to your opponents’ side, allowing one player on your team to invade their space and try to slow their progress. The invading player gets an overshield, and can see their opponents’ locations for the duration of the invasion, even through walls. They invader is sent back to their side if they get four kills (a team wipe), if they die (which drops three Motes for the invaded team to pick up), or at the end of a 30 second timer.

When your team has banked 75 Motes, a large Primeval boss enemy appears. It’s accompanied by smaller, but still tough enemies that provide it with extra protection–taking them out makes the Primeval more vulnerable to damage. Once your Primeval is summoned, your opponents get to invade periodically, and any deaths while an invader is present restore the boss’s health. The first team to defeat its Primeval wins the round, and each Gambit match is best out of three.

The Best Gambit Tips and Strategies

That all may sound rather complicated, but once you play a few matches it starts to seem simple. But don’t worry–you’ll quickly realize just how tactical Gambit can be. The amount that strategy matters varies from match to match, depending on the skill of your opponents, but fighting a coordinated team can be incredibly frustrating if your side doesn’t have its act together. Here are some important rules, tips, and strategies if you don’t want to get your butt handed to you.

Communicate. Obviously it’s possible to solo queue into Gambit matchmaking, but it’s not advised. Playing Gambit with any degree of strategy requires tons of communication, and you’re generally not going to luck into a team of three other random players who all have mics and are willing to use them. Try to form a team by playing with friends, joining a clan, using an LFG site, or finding a Discord server dedicated to Destiny 2 on your platform of choice.

Coordinate when you bank Motes. It can be tempting to bank your Motes whenever you have enough to send the other team a blocker (five or more), or whenever you start worrying about dying and losing them. But coordinating with your teammates on when to bank Motes is absolutely crucial. Sending one small or medium blocker to the other side won’t slow down your opponents much; sending three or four simultaneously is a different story.

Pay attention to how many Motes your teammates are carrying. If you have two Motes and your teammate has 14, don’t dash ahead of them to catch up. Let them fill up on Motes so they can send a large blocker to the other side. And if you see that a teammate who’s carrying a lot of Motes is under heavy fire–from normal enemies or even from an invader–it’s smart to attempt a rescue.

Send blockers with your invader. The notches on the Motes progress bar that represent 25 and 50 Motes are important. Once your team has banked a total of 25 Motes, a portal opens to the opposing team’s map. Communicate with your teammates so that once your team is carrying 25 total–when the grey progress bar passes the first notch–you bank them all together, spawning multiple blockers and opening the portal simultaneously. That way when your invader goes through, your opponents can’t hastily bank all the Motes they’re carrying, giving the invader time to take them out and deny them those Motes.

Likewise, be careful of blockers and invaders arriving simultaneously. If the other team knows what they’re doing and they’re faster than you, chances are they’ll use this exact strategy on you. You have two options when an invader and blockers arrive together: You can quickly take out the blockers and try to bank your Motes before the invader can kill you–which will usually involve burning a Super–or you can turn all your attention to killing the invader and sending them back to their side. Either way, it takes communication, awareness, and coordination among your teammates.

Save your Super and power ammo for invading. Chances are you’ll pick the best one or two PVP players on your team to be the designated invaders. When heavy ammo pops up at stations around the map, let these players pick it up. And if you’re the invader, save your super and your heavy ammo for when you’re deep in enemy territory.

If you have a ton of Motes when you get invaded, hide. Hiding may be relatively ineffective, considering the invader can see more or less exactly where you are at all times. But taking cover can force the invader to expose themselves trying to get to you, allowing your teammates with fewer Motes to take the risk and defeat them. Again, communication is key–“Invader is here, I have 15 Motes, I’m taking cover!” is a valuable callout.

When the other team spawns their Primeval, don’t invade right away. Summoning your Primeval opens you up to more frequent invasions. It can be tempting to head to your opponents’ side right away when that happens, especially if your team is lagging far behind, but it’s unwise. Killing opposing Guardians when their Primeval’s health is full will set them back a few seconds; killing them when they’ve already done some damage to their boss’s health will restore its health, more significantly impeding their progress. It can be the difference between your team losing and catching up for the win.

That said, don’t wait too long to invade once the other team’s Primeval starts taking damage. Given how powerful Forsaken has made us, burning down a boss to zero health can take a matter of seconds with the right loadouts. An invasion even with your foes’ Primeval still at half health can be too late if they’re good. You’ll get a feel for the timing eventually.

The Best Gambit Guns and Loadouts

Before Destiny 2: Forsaken’s release, Gambit was briefly available for a single day for players to try out. The king of the Gambit meta quickly emerged as Sleeper Simulant, an Exotic linear fusion rifle that players of Destiny 2’s Warmind expansion had the ability to acquire. With its powerful and accurate shots, Sleeper excels both at taking down PVE bosses and at sniping enemy players from across the map. Its rounds even ricochet and penetrate targets, allowing skilled players to take out multiple opponents with a single shot.

With Forsaken’s release, Sleeper may soon be considered a relic from Destiny 2’s first year–or maybe not. Given how new this all is, it isn’t yet clear what will come out on top once players have discovered all the new guns and armor Destiny 2: Forsaken will offer. For now, here are some general tips.

Don’t be afraid to pick a focus. Coordinate with your teammates before you starting matching and don’t be afraid to choose a focus area. You can always choose who goes to invade when a portal opens. Those players your team has designated as invaders can spec their loadouts for PVP, while those who will remain behind killing adds can choose equipment and abilities better suited to PVE. Ultimately everyone will wind up doing some of both, but it’s OK to focus on one style or the other.

Your super is crucial. We’ve yet to experiment enough with Destiny 2: Forsaken’s new Super abilities, but suffice to say which Supers you and your teammates choose is important. You’ll want a good blend of add-control supers, damage dealers, and PVP-focused abilities; during the Gambit preview event before Forsaken’s release, Hunters’ tether proved helpful for taking down the Primeval, Golden Gun and Warlocks’ Dawnblade were great for invading the other team, and even the Titan class’s generally underused Ward of Dawn bubble proved useful for taking shelter inside when you were invaded.

The PVP meta is always changing. Are hand cannons or SMGs on top right now? Are snipers viable again with Forsaken’s changes to ammo and weapon slots? Is Sleeper still the best choice for your heavy? These meta dynamics shift and change with the seasons, and with Forsaken having just arrived, you should feel free to experiment and change your loadout if what you’re using isn’t working.

We’ll have more tips and strategies as Destiny 2: Forsaken continues to evolve. For now, have fun in Destiny 2’s most unique challenge yet.

Jeff Goldblum’s portrayal of Dr. Ian Malcolm in 1993’s Jurassic Park is iconic. However, Malcolm was almost completely written out of the script, and the one who delivered the bad news was none other than director Steven Spielberg.

In one of the special features for the home release of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom–titled Fallen Kingdom: The Conversation–filmmakers and the cast sat down to discuss the movie. There, Jeff Goldblum recounted when he almost lost the role of Ian Malcolm.

“When I first met Steven Spielberg at Amblin, he came in and said, ‘You know, there’s a movement afoot, a new rewrite is happening, and your character, Ian Malcolm, is being written out,'” explained Goldblum. “‘We probably wanna give these funny lines and kinda incorporate your character into the Sam Neil character.'” The moment Bryce Dallas Howard found out he wasn’t in the movie–seen below–was priceless.

Goldblum said he made his case to keep Malcolm in the film but doesn’t think he had any real impact on the final decision for Malcolm to stay. “I was just thrilled to be there and trusted that [Spielberg] would do something great,” he concluded.

Regardless, Goldblum went on to play Malcolm three times in Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and in Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom. While Malcolm merely bookends the latest dino-romp, he is the bridge between science and ethics for the series. “He embodies the spirit of Michael Crichton,” producer Frank Marshall said during the special feature entitled “Malcolm’s Return.” “He’s in the original book and he’s sort of the voice of reason.”

In fact, according to executive producer Colin Trevorrow in the same special feature, much of Malcolm’s dialogue from Fallen Kingdom actually came from the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. “And it’s amazing how many ideas that apply to this movie are in the original book.”

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is available digitally now; the home release (4K, Blu-ray, and DVD) is on September 18.

Square Enix has announced it is remastering Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, and it will launch in 2019. A short trailer for the game made its debut at the PlayStation Lineup Tour, a pre-Tokyo Game Show event, and teases the return of the multiplayer RPG.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was originally release for Nintendo GameCube in 2004. The game tasks players with battling enemies and solving puzzles so that they can safely gather Myrrh, an energy source that sustains the crystals needed to protect the world from Miasma. In the original release, multiplayer was enabled by connecting Game Boy Advances using a link cable, however, the remaster will have internet connectivity.

In GameSpot’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles review, Brad Shoemaker awarded it an 8/10, saying that it is “a fun action RPG with its own style and a fair amount of replay value.”

He continued: “It doesn’t exactly fit into the Final Fantasy series proper, aside from the involvement of crystals and a few familiar monsters and magic spells, but it’s good enough to stand on its own without any famous franchise names attached to it. Crystal Chronicles plays specifically to those who will appreciate it, and it serves as a fitting return for Square to the Nintendo partnership that first brought the company to fame so long ago.”

The PlayStation Lineup Tour has delivered a few other surprises too, including a new Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer that shows the Big Hero 6 world and characters. In it, Sora, Donald, and Goofy meet with Baymax and Hiro to defend San Fransokyo from the Heartless.

In addition to that, a new trailer for From Software’s Sekiro: Shadow’s Die Twice was also released. It shows off some of the things that differentiate it from the studio’s other big games, Dark Souls and Bloodborne–most notably the traversal. Watch the new Sekiro TGS 2018 trailer here.

From Software has released a new trailer for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ahead of the start of Tokyo Game Show, which begins on September 20. The trailer is, as is typical for From Software titles such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne, moody and ominous. It shows a shinobi seeming lying dead on the floor, but quickly cuts to gameplay, with the lead characters acrobatically launching himself around the environment.

This kind of movement is the big distinction between Sekiro and the Dark Souls series. The main character has a grappling hook, and can quickly climb up walls, hide in the rafters, and generally engage in sneaky ninja behaviour to take out his enemy. Despite this, the combat still looks and feels very familiar to previous From Software games, though perhaps with the intensity turned up. In the trailer the main character is shown taking on towering, gruesome beasts in brutal combat. Kitao has also posted some pretty sweet artwork for the game on Twitter, which you can see below.

From Software previously discussed the interesting development history Sekiro has had, confirming that it originally began life as a new instalment in the classic Tenchu series. “When we originally set out to create something different from Dark Souls and our previous titles, we thought it would be interesting to make a Japanese themed game,” explained community manager Yasuhiro Kitao. “So from that we started going in the direction of the shinobi and ninja, and of course Tenchu was an IP with that history; that was the original impetus for this project.”

Activision immediately came on board, but over time the project changed into something else, which is why Sekiro is now launching as a new IP. “[A]s we developed and as we partnered with Activision, and started building it together, it started becoming its own thing. The game we wanted to make was no longer just Tenchu, so it really evolved into its own thing,” Kitao said.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice introduces a resurrection mechanic, which is also a key difference from the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne. When you die in battle, you’re able to use a limited number of life tokens to instantly revive, which creates interesting strategic considerations. Your protagonist also has a prosthetic arm that can be outfitted with a shuriken, axe, and other kinds of weapons akin to the Trick Weapons from Bloodborne.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 22, 2019.

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Since the beginning, the central conflict in the Assassin’s Creed series has been freedom vs. control. For the most part, we’ve been placed on the side of freedom and fought to give others the right to choose how they want to live. Ironically, we haven’t had much choice in how we go about it, and have repeatedly followed a controlled narrative in each entry that forced us to kill certain characters, spare others, and react to the world in a specific way.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey changes that and delivers an unprecedented level of freedom in its combat and dialogue. The game even allows you to choose your romantic partner, personal allegiance, and which people deserve to die–including normal civilians and several of the assassination targets.

In the opening eight to ten hours of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, our travels through ancient Greece introduced us to a large supporting cast of characters, gave us our first taste of Odyssey’s naval combat, and allowed us to experience the effects of choosing certain dialogue responses over others. We got a pretty comprehensive idea of the differences in combat and how the introductory skills in Odyssey work too, as we played through the game’s opening hours with Alexios as a powerful melee fighter and bow wielder, and then again with Kassandra as a speedy and stealthy assassin who relied on small daggers.

As we played through Odyssey’s opening chapters, we noticed the game repeatedly go out of its way to give the player the ability to choose. Kassandra and Alexios may be its protagonists, but the next Assassin’s Creed is all about you living your own odyssey. For the most part, it works, but some of the new innovations suffer from solely focusing on the player’s needs and not those of the game’s characters.

New Skills Are Unlocked Quickly And Make Fights More Fluid

You level up and unlock new skills fairly quickly at the start of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, giving you plenty of opportunities to experiment with new abilities. At the start, the only abilities available to you will be different types of archery shots, melee attacks, and stealth skills. The higher end abilities that sheath your blade in fire or perform other seemingly magical attacks are locked until you progress a certain ways through the story.

Like Assassin’s Creed Origins, the use of these skills runs on an adrenaline meter. However, adrenaline fills a lot faster in Odyssey, so it’s easier to chain together many skills in a row to pull off devastating combos in combat or stealthily slice your way through an enemy compound in mere moments.

Kassandra and Alexios do not use shields, so the shield bashing skills from Origins are gone. However, plenty of Bayek’s other abilities make a return, including using a special vision to sense and tag enemies through walls or controlling the trajectory of an arrow after you’ve fired it into the air.

The new skills are way more fun, though. Spartan kick deals tons of damage and is a good way of putting some space between you and a powerful enemy. Ubisoft has even nicely stationed several foes alongside the edges of cliffs or towers in the early areas whose sole purpose seems to only be to stand there until they’re sadisticly kicked into oblivion. Compared to Bayek, Kassandra and Alexios have a lot more creative stealth skills as well, including a particularly effective one that allows you to throw out a knife into a person’s back and immediately appear behind them to finish them off before then throwing the knife into another target. It’s like Kassandra/Alexios are teleporting from one enemy to the next, but the game describes it as them being so fast and sneaky that enemies can’t keep track of them.

Instead of putting all your points into new skills, you can also spend them on upgrading your existing ones too. For example, the teleporting knife throwing skill only chains up to two targets at first, but you can use additional points to raise that number. And if you don’t like the skills you’ve unlocked or upgraded, Odyssey lets you respec your protagonist at any time.

Romancing Someone Can Be A Little Creepy

In our time with the demo, we only found one person we could flirt and start a relationship with. Her name is Odessa and she’s a direct descendent of the legendary Greek hero Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey. Odessa is attracted to both Kassandra and Alexios so you’ll be able to romance her regardless of which character you choose.

Romance in Odyssey plays out a lot like the romantic storylines in Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of the dialogue choices for when you meet someone you can romance will have a little heart next to it. Clicking that choice causes Kassandra/Alexios to flirt with that person. Do it enough times and the game transitions into a scene where both characters are intimate. It’s very straightforward and easy to do if you want to romance someone, and just as simple to avoid it if you don’t want to.

The problem with romancing Odessa, is that you have to be a huge creep to “woo” her. If you choose to romance Odessa, you have to continue flirting with her and pushing for her to have sex with you while she’s asking you to help her gather medicine for her dying father or pleading with you to save her life from some men who want her dead. And when you do help her and she finally agrees to have sex with you, you can ask if she wants to go again. She resists–saying she’s tired from the sex you both had literally seconds prior–but she appreciate your advances and you can then offer for her to serve on your crew so she can find the meaning in her life she’s been desperately seeking. She’s then available to help you in boarding parties during naval combat.

Forging the relationship feels very formulaic and unnatural. There are cute moments–especially at the start–but the overall experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It’s a moment where Odyssey’s message of this being a journey for the player gets in the way of the gameplay. The Odessa romance is purposely built for you to have the girl if you want her, and dispose of her if you don’t–you can literally leave her locked in a cage on an island. By the end, we didn’t feel like we’d formed a loving connection with a special person; rather we’d chosen to recruit someone who felt indebted to us. Hopefully there are other romantic storylines in Odyssey that feel a bit more like actually falling in love.

Shaping The Protagonist’s Words Can Create Amusing Consequences

Despite having the choice of choosing what Kassandra or Alexios can say to someone, the dialogue in the game has been structured to fit a specific archetype. Kassandra and Alexios are hot-headed, stubborn, and very opinionated so all of their dialogue choices reflect that. When an annoying woman is badgering the protagonists about finding her stolen wood, they can either ask her to be patient with a hint of annoyance in their voice or angrily yell at her and tell her to shut up while they go get her wood. Both answers are technically the same–in both instances Kassandra and Alexios are getting tired of being badgered about getting this woman’s wood they already agreed to find–but the player decides whether or not the protagonist should keep their emotions under control.

There are a few moments where you’ll be able to use dialogue to solve problems. For instance, you can help a praying woman by having the protagonists speak out and pretend to be the god Hermes. It’s hilarious how easily the woman believes in the ruse, but it convinces her to return home to her family. You can continue the charade by following her home and leaving the gold she was praying for on her doorstep.

During the demo, we also got to see how our dialogue choices can affect the game’s story. Not all of the choices in Odyssey lead to the result you think, and you’ll have to be careful. A positive action does not always yield a positive response. Early on in the game, we learned about some plague victims. After investigating the situation, it seemed like the civilians in quarantine were clean, so we allowed them to return to their lives. It wasn’t until much later–after we’d sailed away from the island–that we learned the plague had spread from those civilians and killed more people. Ubisoft informed us that had we allowed the guards to continue detaining the quarantined citizens against their will, the plague would have ended.

Another surprise was the lack of complete censorship in Odyssey’s dialogue. Although a few words–like “mercenary” and “hello”–are spoken in the native tongue, the protagonist and the other characters they meet all freely swear without being censored by the Animus. We’ve never heard an Assassin’s Creed protagonist drop so many f-bombs before. It’s a little jarring at first but we quickly got used to it, and it occasionally makes Kassandra/Alexios’ angry outbursts a little funnier.

Naval Travel Is Tedious

Naval travel is so slow in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. From a historical sense, it’s understandable that Odyssey’s protagonists wouldn’t have access to the same technology seen in Assassin’s Creed 3, 4: Black Flag, and Rogue, so their vessel would be slower than Ratohnhake:ton’s Aquila, Edward’s Jackdaw, and Shay’s Morrigan. That doesn’t change how annoying it is when it comes time to sail on a longer voyage, and it certainly doesn’t help that the ocean lacks the same vibrant life and activity that made exploring so enjoyable in Black Flag. After playing the mandatory naval missions, we steered clear of the optional ones.

Naval combat is still pretty fun, although you’ll often be ramming into and sinking ships in the beginning of the game instead of boarding them. If you do choose to only wound a vessel and leap aboard, an army will no longer follow after you. A few sailors might join you, but you’ll mostly be on your own. If you want a boarding party, you’ll have to recruit people for the job–in a similar style to Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. You find someone you want to recruit, knock them out with a Spartan kick or melee takedown, and then abduct them. When they wake up, they can be assigned as an officer within your crew.

Officer recruitment is another unfortunate example where Odyssey’s mission to cater to the player has a negative effect on the gameplay. It would have been nice to have specific missions devoted to acquiring officers–similar to Assassin’s Creed 3’s assassin recruit missions–so each member of your crew had a bit more personality. But again, your crew’s story and their choices don’t matter, it’s yours that does. It’s also a little weird that everyone you kidnap is just okay with serving under you, even if just prior to being knocked out you killed every one of their fellow soldiers. Apparently, no one you abduct has a family who misses them either.

Like the weapons and gear you find, each potential officer has a rarity level and extra attributes. For example, a common enemy archer we recruited increased the number of arrows our ship could fire by a tiny percent and he brought a small contingent of soldiers with him when he joined us while boarding an enemy ship. Meanwhile, Odessa–who’s very skilled with both a bow and sword and considered a rare character–increases our ship’s arrow barrage damage by a significant amount, remains by our side while on enemy ships, attracts a sizable boarding party, and can kill most sailors in just one to two hits. At the start, you can only assign one officer, but if you choose to upgrade the size of your ship then you’ll be able to pick up to four.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey releases on October 5 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game comes with certain in-game bonuses depending on where you pre-order it from and what edition you buy, of which there are quite a few.