Even as Fortnite gears up for another Avengers marketing event, Epic Games is dealing with rampant cheating. The company announced over 1,200 bans handed out to cheaters in the first week of the World Cup Online open tournament. Punishments were given to players sharing and boosting accounts, switching regions, teaming up to trade kills, and even using software modifications. In one strange case, a professional eSports player was tattled on by the person that sold him the cheating app. Cap would give you detention for that.
The Fortnite World Cup Online open tournament will continue until June 16th. The finals will occur on the 26th through the 28th of July.
Cuphead, that dastardly but charming cartoon side-scroller from Studio MDHR, just launched on Nintendo Switch and got a free update on other platforms. The 1.2 update brings older versions up to par with the Switch advancements like character selection right from the beginning of the game, fully animated cinematics, and updated art and effects for enemies.
The PC update comes with a caveat. The developers had to update the whole game to a new version of the Unity engine, leaving less capable systems behind. If you’re stuck on DirectX 9, you’ll need to play an old branch of the game, which means you won’t experience any of the new content. The good news is that this is perfect fodder for debating which version is actually harder and more a measure of your gaming skills.
The Quinault Indian Nation, a federally recognized self-governing tribe in Washington state, is suing Valve over gambling rights. The lawsuit, filed in Grays Harbor Superior Court, alleges that Valve runs the equivalent of an unlicensed virtual gambling outfit through Steam via skin and loot box purchases. The nation’s lawyers further accuse Valve of benefiting from third-party trading sites and purposefully acting slowly and ineffectually to combat those sites’ exploitation of children. More pragmatically, the Quinault Indian Nation says Valve is cutting into their legal casino business.
“By providing Washington residents with an illegal, online form of gambling, Valve offers unlawful alternatives to gambling at the lawful and highly regulated Quinault Casino, which takes away revenue from both Quinault and local governments.”
The Quinault Indian Nation wants Valve to cease its online gambling business, and asks the Washington Gaming Commission to regulate the practice, or shut it down permanently. You can read a copy of the filing here.
Microsoft has announced the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition console. It’s the same as the current Xbox One S, but with one big difference. There’s no physical media player. Just like the name implies, the budget console is meant for gamers willing to give up discs and go all-in on virtual consumption. Buyers of the new console will get $50 off the price of the regular Xbox One S, putting pre-orders at a svelte $249.99, in exchange for giving up their game resale rights. To sweeten the deal, the All-Digital comes bundled with Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, and Forza Horizon 3.
Gaming and technology have changed quite a bit since the first Xbox debuted in 2001.
The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition will be available starting on May 7th. Oh, for the bygone days, when gamers lost their minds at the idea of an Xbox that required an online connection!
The next PlayStation console will feature premium specs, and will probably have a premium price. Wired got an exclusive sneak peek at what Sony is working on for the as-yet-unnamed console, and if the goal is met, the box is going to follow the trajectory of the previous PlayStation products. According to Mark Cerny, the system’s lead architect, the next PlayStation will have more powerful processors, higher-end graphics capability, faster storage, and crisper audio.
The announced specifications are a blend of old and new. A solid state drive will speed the console’s storage, but they are aiming to have it accept games on physical media, even as other companies gear up for an all streaming future. A variant of the Navi graphics processor will push graphics into 8K and ray-tracing (something no console has done yet) but the basic architecture will allow for backwards compatibility for playing PS4 games.
Sony says this console won’t be ready for 2019. In fact, the company has already bowed out of holding an E3 conference this year. They have no details on price or services as yet, but alleged leaks have set the initial retail ask at $499.
Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment announced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on Saturday. It’s a single player action game centered on the story of a Jedi apprentice named Cal Kestis after the events of Revenge of the Sith, when the newly seated Emperor is purging the galaxy of his enemies. It’s a bad time to be a padawan still struggling with basic stuff like lifting rocks.
The news that has everybody buzzing is that EA has committed to not having microtransactions or loot boxes in Fallen Order. It’s like The New Republic after the evil Empire of Battlefront II. No crazy revenue scheme? What’s going on? Will there be a First Order Starkiller base of a season pass hiding somewhere? Whatever the plan, it’s amazing to see such a basic promise celebrated. Tell people “we won’t cripple this game with horrible free-to-play mechanics” and they dance in the streets as if this wasn’t the norm for decades before. “Let the past die,” seems appropriate.
Frontier Developments is adding a beginner’s zone to Elite Dangerous. The April update, besides including some quality-of-life features such as an easier to use docking computer and a better autopilot during supercruise, will come with enhancements to the new player experience. For freshman pilots, Elite Dangerous can be a bit of a bear, and it’s hoped that changes like a safe beginner’s zone and an in-game handbook will allow newbies the opportunity to get a better grip on the game before being thrown in with the space wolves. The safety area will give players time to earn their first rank before pushing them out to open space.
The baby play zone update will launch on April 23rd for all platforms.
Kit Harrington was the guest host of the most recent Saturday Night Live, and while he gave an underwhelming performance as the main bad guy in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, he did fine as a needy NPC in the above sketch. The “new game” he’s supposed to be in isn’t specifically The Division 2 (there’s a zombie towards the end of the gag) but that hasn’t stopped Ubisoft from commenting.
“You’ll be happy to know that Damien and Ethan are now less chatty with our Invasion update. All hashed out!”
The Division 2 doesn’t actually have a Damien or Ethan that I know of, but I’d play a few missions like that in the middle of gathering widgets for the various bases. I assume a real effort to reconstruct a plague-ridden Washington D.C. would be filled with juggling drama queen personalities.
Frontier Developments has partnered with another amusement park to give players a recreation of a real roller coaster. Thanks to a deal with North Carolina’s Carowinds park, the next update for Planet Coaster will have Copperhead Strike added to the game for free. Copperhead Strike debuted in March of this year, and is the state’s first “double-launched” coaster, meaning it has a second powered launch midway through the ride, allowing for longer, more gravity-defying stunts. If this rendition is as good as the previous Steel Vengeance recreation Planet Coaster gave players, then virtual coaster enthusiasts will be getting a real treat. Plus, it’s nice to see some of the less famous amusement parks getting exposure.
Copperhead Strike will come to Planet Coaster on April 16th, along with the release of the Classic Rides DLC.
Ubisoft is ending production of ships for Starlink: Battle for Atlas. The toys-to-life game fell below the publisher’s expectations, prompting the team to cease the manufacturing for the physical modular ship toys. According to the developers, content updates are still planned for the game, including digital ships, pilots, and weapons. The next large update includes more exclusive Star Fox missions for the Nintendo Switch version of the game.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Blackout battle royale mode is getting a new map. Treyarch and Activision have announced Alcatraz, a smaller, tighter combat arena that they are calling “close quarters battle royale” to describe its mix of claustrophobic prison interiors and rocky island setting. Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage only had terrorists to deal with on The Rock, whereas Blackout fans will have to contend with zombies as well as hordes of enemies.
Alcatraz is available for the PlayStation 4 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 today. The new map will launch for other platforms later due to the marketing deal with Sony.
It’s April 1st, which means you’re going to find a lot of bull-puckey on the internet today, even with Microsoft banning pranks internally. What’s not a load of lies is Google’s free treat for everyone. Starting today, and through the rest of the week, you can play the classic game Snake on Google Maps. Just navigate to the user menu and select “Play Snake” and you’ll be running over people with a train in various locations in no time. That’s better than any dumb prank.
One of the head-scratching decisions during the launch of Borderlands 2 in 2012 was the implementation of the SHiFT rewards program. Periodically, Gearbox Software, or its marketing partners, would publish codes that could be redeemed for in-game goodies. These rewards included Golden Keys that would exclusively open a Golden Chest in the hub town of Sanctuary. Every time a player opened the chest, it would give them high-level rare equipment – arguably some of the best stuff in the game. The idea was that the release of codes would keep fans engaged in a meta-game of seeking out and sharing codes in the real world.
Unfortunately, the Golden Keys were a balance problem. Why hunt for in-game loot when the best stuff could be had by plugging in codes? Sites like this one made it trivial to find codes, so it was easy to amass hundreds of Golden Keys. The in-game loot that dropped naturally off enemies, even bosses, rarely equalled the quality of Golden Chest contents, so who was going to waste time on the loot treadmill if they had keys to spare?
You’d think this issue would’ve been resolved by now, but Gearbox is apparently still keen on SHiFT rewards. During the announcement for Borderlands 3, the studio released codes good for more Borderlands 2 loot. (C3W33-RZ6ZJ-TFJ6C-TTJ33-RFHX5 for 100 keys, W3KJB-H9CBW-XRBRW-JTBTJ-9JRXK for 25 keys, and C35TB-WS6ST-TXBRK-TTTJT-JJH6H for an handful more.) They also announced that there will be codes specifically for the HD remaster of the first game launching on April 3rd. The studio seems committed to the SHiFT program, so I assume it will be used in Borderlands 3 as well. It’s a big assumption, I grant you that, but here we are in 2019 still copy-pasting codes to get loot.
When Telltale Games shuttered at the end of 2018, beyond the tragedy of people suddenly losing their jobs, one of the practical issues for fans was the potential for The Walking Dead: The Final Season abruptly ending in limbo. Two episodes were released when the studio announced its bankruptcy and closing, putting the game in serious trouble. Luckily, Skybound Games came to the rescue, and with the help of many of the Telltale team, they were able to see it through.
This is it. The final episode of a journey that began in 2012. It’s perhaps appropriate that the game series ends properly only thanks to a miraculous resurrection.
Battlefield V’s Firestorm mode is live now. It features all the stuff you’d expect from a battle royale game from DICE. You drop onto a battlefield sans any weapons or equipment, madly scramble to get kitted up, then kill other players as a circle of death forces everyone into an increasingly smaller play area until only the final survivor (or team) remains. The Battlefield V wrinkle is that there are tanks and other armored vehicles to fight in and over, and most of the structures are fully destructible, which is as it should be since we’re talking about a series built on “levelution” and squads of players riding on camels. It’s a fine interpretation of battle royale, but it remains to be seen how well this Johnny-come-lately does against the already established heavyweights that are either free-to-play or have been around for months. Regardless of how its received by the audience, there’s one thing Firestorm does perfectly that none of the other games do well.
Firestorm takes its name from the apocalyptic ring of fire that encircles the battlefield. In other battle royale games, the circle of death is a technobabble contrivance that lays bare the gamey nature of the mode. It often has no basis for existing in the in-game fiction except it must exist to make the mode work. It’s a blue crackling field of energy controlled by some sadistic arena AI. It’s a red circle of radiation that pulses inwards because of reasons. It’s artillery that blankets the countryside. It may as well just be a pair of giant game designer hands that pushes players together. It’s not even much motivation to move! There are well-known tactics that depend on staying just outside of the safe area during the final moments of the match to maximize a player’s distance from the action. None of this is true in Firestorm. It’s literally a flaming circle, the aftermath of overzealous incendiary bombing, that destroys everything. Nowhere is safe. Houses and barns are chewed into spectacular conflagrations. Trees burst into match-paper kindling. Fire races along the ground, melting roads and reducing grass to ash. The visual and sound design of the storm is panic-inducing. Even if you could keep calm, being overtaken by the fire is a death sentence measured in seconds. That’s the other thing. It’s fast, unlike most danger zones in battle royale. The safe circle contracts at a breakneck pace once it gets going. No dawdling here! You move, or you get covered in fire. Firestorm is terrifying.
In Koushun Takami’s 1999 Battle Royale novel, the island the students are forced to fight each other on is divided into a grid, and being in a grid sector after it’s been declared off-limits results in an explosive collar decapitating the offender. The zones change a few times during the book, pushing the surviving students around the island’s geography and forcing them to engage. It’s a great system in the story, but too complicated for videogames which would need some intelligent grid sectoring to chase players around and would require too much of the players’ attention. The constricting circle of death we’ve settled on works well because it’s simple to understand, can be parsed quickly on a minimap, and is relatively easy to program. Firestorm takes that concept and makes it more than a barely motivating gameplay mechanic.
