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Fortnite has lots of unique Back Blings to choose from, but some of the best ones available are Pets. They’re super cute and interactive, so you may want to know all of the available Pets in Fortnite. Pets react to everything happening around them which makes them some of the most unique and special Back Blings you can use. They’re quite rare and hard to come by though, so here are all of the Pets you can get in Fortnite. View the full article

Halo creators 343 Industries are having a bit of a glow-up. They're now calling themselves Halo Studios, a piece of rhetorical doubling-down that reminds me of those dril tweets about "James Bond, author of James Bond". They've also abandoned the proprietary Slipspace game engine used by Halo Infinite in favour of Epic's Unreal Engine 5, which will be the basis for "multiple new games". To celebrate the occasion, Halo Studios have released some footage of Project Foundry, an expansive Unreal Engine 5 prototype and spawning vat for actual Halo games, which is billed by the Xbox Newswire as a kind of ur-Halo - "a true reflection of what would be required for a new Halo game using Unreal, and a training tool for how to get there". Read more View the full article

Lunar is a 2-in-1 foldable keyboard that doubles as a mini PC. It is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U CPU (eight cores, 16 threads) with a 3.3 GHz base clock that can boost up to 5.1 GHz. The chip is paired with up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X... Read Entire Article View the full article

There's a new folding keyboard on Kickstarter that has an AMD Ryzen gaming PC built right into it. Made by ******** company Linglong, the Lunar packs a powerful computer into a small, portable keyboard that folds in half, making it easy to fit in your pocket. This Linglong PC doesn't look like a traditional PC. It's packed with enough power to make it competitive against some of the best mini gaming PCs out there, thanks to the power of its AMD processor. The design of the Lunar has more in common visually with a travel keyboard, however. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: This AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D benchmark ***** beats the 7800X3D gaming CPU by over 28% This AMD Radeon GPU now has a great price, beats Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Best graphics card 2024 View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

When Atlus revealed Metaphor ReFantazio as the first original project under its new Studio Zero division, I was licking my chops in anticipation. An all-star team of ex-Persona devs with series director Katsura Hashino at the helm, working on a post-medieval acid fantasy turn-based RPG? Get in me. Having rolled credits after spending just over 80 hours uniting the kingdom of Euchronia, I can confidently assert that Metaphor is so much more than the Persona reskin many feared would materialize and that this bold, beautiful adventure might be Hashino's finest project yet. Initially, Metaphor ReFantazio has all the telltale signs of a classic succession thriller after Euchronia's monarch is murdered, promising ******* conflict between its myriad factions - chiefly the crown theocracy, led by his holiness Sanctifex Forden, and the young upcoming military superstar Count Louis. However, just as the threat of civil war palpates, the royal magic wielded by the late king kicks in, forcing the throne's candidates to lay down their arms (sort of), pick up their picket signs, and start campaigning. If you were looking for an escape from election season, I'm sorry to say this thrilling RPG isn't it. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Is Metaphor ReFantazio on Game Pass? Atlus "actively working" to improve the Metaphor Refantazio Steam demo Metaphor Refantazio is already a hit on Steam, though it isn't out yet View the full article

From the shimmering sands of Diablo 3's Caldeum to the bloodstained, defiled churches of Diablo 2's Rogue Encampment, Sanctuary is easily one of the most macabre, fully-realized worlds I've ever encountered in my [redacted] years playing videogames. My ******, rotting heart has always found a home on Kurast, the jungle that frames Diablo 2's third act, and the earthly home of my favorite Prime Evil, Mephisto. As someone who's always loved the shaman-style aesthetic, Kurast was always equal parts beautiful and twisted, but seeing it reimagined in Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred truly took my breath away. Perfectly weaving native iconography with emerald green yet oddly eerie foliage, Diablo 4's Kurast - and Nahantu as a whole - is my favorite Diablo zone ever made. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Diablo 4 patch notes add tempering changes ahead of Vessel of Hatred Diablo 4 DLC difficulty levels and world tiers The best Diablo 4 builds to use right now View the full article

Sometimes, you need a good meal or snack to power through those long gaming sessions, especially when it comes to the launch ******* of a game like ****** Ops 6. Little Caesars, anyone? Thankfully, Call of Duty is no stranger to collaborations. The popular FPS franchise has had cameos from many characters across Hollywood and beyond, such as Michael Myers, The Walking *****, Rambo, Nicki Minaj, and many more. But there are also brand collaborations, like with Monster Energy drinks, and again this year, the Little Caesars pizza chain. View the full article

If you're worried about whether the Silent Hill 2 remake might affect how you feel about the PS2 classic, the original director has this to say: don't be. Read more View the full article

Silent Hill 2 Remake was a troublesome proposition. Obviously it comes from a good pedigree - the original is one of the most renowned, admired videogames ever made - but with that reputation comes an enormous amount of expectation and dubiousness. When the original version is so good, how could Bloober Team possibly justify a new version of Silent Hill 2? Well, despite skepticism, SH2 Remake seems to be a big hit, with an enormous amount of glowing reviews from critics and players, and a healthy presence on Steam just before launch. It's apparently so good, in fact, that the director of the 2001 classic is eager to play, and suggests that the remake might even improve on the OG. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Silent Hill 2 Jacks Inn motel safe code Silent Hill 2 rivals the Resident Evil 2 remake on its Steam launch weekend Silent Hill 2 remake review - a respectful, overextended reimagining View the full article

The Rock Collector is one of the world quests you can pick up and do in WoW The War Within—and it’s all about epic **** battles. If you’re a fan of **** battles and you’re on a hunt to become the best **** trainer in Khaz Algar, then you’re going to love this quest. The quest itself takes place on the Isle of Dorn and it can be difficult even for the most experienced **** trainers. View the full article

According to Bloomberg's all-things-Apple-expert Mark Gurman, Apple will announce several products at the end of October. These include low- and high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro models and a 16-inch variant, all powered by the latest M4 SoC that is currently only found in the new iPad ***** and featuring mini-LED panels. Read Entire Article View the full article

***** has revealed that it’s working on an Alien Isolation sequel. The announcement was made on Monday to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the original game’s release. “On the 10th anniversary, it seems only fitting to let you know that we have heard your distress calls loud and clear,” said Al Hope, creative director at developer Creative Assembly. Read More... View the full article

One of the newest additions to Call of Duty: Warzone seemingly pokes fun at the difference between mouse and keyboard users and controller users. The debate regarding fairness between the two methods of play has long been a hot-button issue in the gaming world, with Warzone now making light of the situation with a new unlockable reward as part of the game's Halloween event. View the full article

Bethesdas Starfield has just released the first DLC for the game, titled Shattered Space, earlier this week. The new content expands the universe available to players by bringing them to Varuunkai, the homeworld of the theocractic House Varuun. There, players must investigate what happened to Anakskko Varuun, the Speaker of House Varuun, while working with House Vethaal, House Kadic, and House Dukhelf to discover what caused a massive ********** in the capital city of Dazra. View the full article

Another incredible Steam Deck bundle just dropped, thanks to Humble. This time you can get seven twin-stick indie games for just $12, a huge saving of $117 compared to their MSRP. The Steam Deck is one of the best handheld gaming PCs, and it shines brightest when playing indie titles that almost feel like they were designed with the console in mind. Every game in this Twin Stick 'Em Up bundle plays great on the Deck, even if Valve's rating doesn't reflect this situation. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Get this hugely underrated 2022 horror game at its lowest price yet Grab six amazing indie games on Steam Deck for just $12, saving over $80 Grab Starfield at its lowest ever price, but be quick View the full article

Did you get off on outsmarting enemies, tiptoeing around the xenomorph, and praying that your save file isn’t going to get permenantly screwed by a misjudged visit to a terminal in the original Alien: Isolation? Yes? Well then, you’re going to be thrilled to find out that a sequel is real, and in production at *****. Read more View the full article

According to real-world benchmarks published by Geekerwan, a Lenovo Yoga laptop powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V was noticeably faster than both the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally in a series of games, including ****** Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, Red ***** Redemption 2, Counter Strike 2, Elden Ring, and Genshin Impact. Read Entire Article View the full article

After nearly three years on the market, Lost Ark is finally transitioning into its fourth tier this week, marking one of, if not the biggest releases for the free-to-play MMORPG. This brings incredible changes that hopefully will get players interested in trudging through some of the games repetitive designs once more, as it looks to help stave away numerous issues it had in the past. While youll still be doing upwards of eighteen raids a week, and doing your chaos dungeons and guardians as daily adventurers to hone your character, there will be brand-new systems put into place to help alleviate some of the stress. View the full article

A lot has changed about both video games and the way we play them since the last mainline entry in the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series. As the first direct sequel since the PlayStation 2 generation, that means there’s something charming about Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s old school design and presentation compared to other fighting games on the market today. It’s tougher than Vegeta’s chest plate, and imbalanced in ways that are both annoying and lore accurate. Menus are labyrinthine, training tips are sparse and sometimes not very useful. But every battle is crafted with the sole purpose of putting the Dragon Ball fighting fantasy as it appears in the anime into our hands. The fast paced ki slinging, teleport kicking, and magical hair dying is great fun (when it’s not marred by responsiveness issues). The few areas Sparking! Zero does truly try to innovate, primarily with its branching story mode and create-your-own battles toolkit, are promising too. But playing this brawler can sometimes feel just as much like a labor of love as the effort to resurrect the series in the first place. Arena fighters don’t have a lot in common with their traditional cousins like Tekken or Street Fighter. Instead of the ****** taking place on a horizontal plane, they pair full 3D movement in largely open spaces with slimmed down movelists, trading technical complexity for spatial tactics. Tenkaichi further distanced itself from other games in its genre like Power Stone by turning up the speed, replacing throwable objects with big environmental features that can be blown up, and creating huge empty skies for wide open air combat. Other Dragon Ball games like the Xenoverse series have picked up the mantle of this particular form of arena brawling, but while both it and Tenkaichi capture the energy of Dragon Ball media – from how quickly characters can move the ****** from air to ground, melee to ranged, and back again in these big beautiful spaces – the latter was always the more all-out experience without stamina bars and with tons of flair. Sparking! Zero certainly carries on that tradition. At least in still frames, it’s undeniable how great characters and environments look. Every character, no matter what era of Dragon Ball they’re from, looks better than I remembered. In motion, things are a bit more dicey, with some cutscene animations in particular being awkwardly stiff. On the whole, the sound hits the mark as well. The raucous blasts of ki explosions and booming whooshes of Z Fighters flying at high speeds are ripped straight off of the screens of old TV episodes. Most of the iconic voices of the various series are recreated pitch perfectly by their original voice actors, too, which is an important detail to get right. (Although, in limited cases like Perfect Cell, even a returning cast member can make a change in line delivery that had me frantically googling to confirm that my memory hadn’t been punched into a cliffside by old age.) Another win for my inner child was the truly immense roster. More than 180 fighters pulled from every ***** and cranny of the series are playable, many needing to be unlocked first via the shop or story modes. There are so many folks on this roster from shows or movies I haven’t watched in ages (or in some cases, at all) that I had to wonder why the very few that didn’t make the cut got snubbed. Many of these characters are repeated in some fashion – there are 19 versions of Goku, for example – but they aren’t all simply reskins. They can have different special techniques and transformation trees, meaning base level Goku from the Saiyan invasion days has a different set of moves and much lower upside than Buu Saga or Super-era Goku, who can transform into various technicolor versions of Super Saiyan. These abilities can’t be changed, but I could modify each warrior with ability items that boost things like ******* power and health, though I barely noticed any benefit at all when doing so. Canonically strong opponents can be just as oppressive as you’d expect. The controls are universal for all characters, but some on the roster interact with the standard systems slightly differently than others, which is an appreciated layer of nuance. For example, Android characters can’t actively regain their ki in order to launch blast attacks, while gigantic characters like Janemba can’t be grabbed. Sparking! Zero makes no attempt to balance these differences, either; every time I was forced to ****** a character that was canonically stronger than mine in the manga or anime, they were just as oppressive in-game as I’d expect. I didn’t always like that, but I respect the commitment. Unfortunately, the bar to ******** the varied techniques of its diverse cast is very high and extremely frustrating. Inputs are simple overall, but early on I often felt lost when combat picked up the pace. Part of that is admittedly on me - the last entry of this series I played with fervor, but that was right after Barack Obama was elected. The fast pace of Sparking! Zero compared to Tenkaichi 3 mixed with a lax tutorial system threw my 17-years-older reaction speed out of the ring with ease. But even beyond that, things like the timing on nailing teleporting defenses or the various applications of some of the directional rush combo enders had me praying to Shenron for mercy. I've spent a lot of time traveling back and forth between regular fights and the training mode to check and double check my understanding of when and how to use these techniques, but it hasn't really helped me ******** them consistently in battle. Also, compared to modern day fighting games, Sparking! Zero’s training options are rudimentary at best. There’s no expectation to layout frame data and hitboxes in a less competitively-focused game like this, but targeted drills or a more nuanced customization of CPU behaviors would go a long way to help beginners and returning players fly up to the high skill floor. The skill points system is at least a welcome tool to your combat belt. As you do damage and gain energy, a meter will charge that grants a skill point every time it fills. There’s a handful of ways to spend these points, the most common being on the unique skills each brawler has – that could be an ability that fully charges the ki meter for Vegito or Yajirobe's health restoring Senzu Beans. But points also need to be spent carefully on transformations and the new revenge counter system, which let me satisfyingly counterpunch foes while in the middle of a combo against me. An enhanced version of the perception counter from older games, called “super perception” here, allows you to block just about every kind of ******* so long as you time it well and have a skill point to spend, too. The window for ********** is razor thin and can be a bear to learn, but these are life saving options – and like ki, which is also used for a variety of offensive and defensive maneuvers, the resource management decisions you have to make on a moment-to-moment basis really add a welcome bit of strategy to an otherwise frantic fighter. There is definitely an old school approach to a lot of the progression and menus. There is definitely an old school approach to a lot of the progression systems and menus of Sparking! Zero. There's a long list of achievements that can be checked off organically just by playing, which usually grant in-game currency called Zeni, items, or other light cosmetics. Just about everything can be bought with Zeni – from new characters to costumes to soundtracks and even CPU ******* behaviors – and you get this cash at a healthy rate that never felt like I was being pressured to spend real money for any of it. There are microtransactions, like a $35 season pass covering three packs of characters, and two $15 music packs, but I didn’t see any option to buy them without leaving the action and going to the storefront directly, a rarity in 2024. On the flip side, so many of the menus are a hassle to navigate, often taking you all the way back to the top layer instead of letting you go back one screen at a time. For example, you can customize characters' abilities and costumes to be used in all modes, but those modes don’t have paths to the customization screen within them, so you have to exit one completely and go the long way to make adjustments. This was barely acceptable in 2005, and we certainly don’t have to live like this anymore. The flagship single-player mode is called Episode Battles, which is a truncated retelling of the biggest Dragon Ball stories from various characters' perspectives. Just about every Dragon Ball game has done this in some form or fashion, but this rather exhaustive version does a good job at keeping time between battles short, and prioritizing the important moments versus making you play every single skirmish (as Tenkaichi 3 did). The standout feature this time around, though, is that certain events can actually be cleverly changed for sometimes dramatic new outcomes. That could involve making a choice during a cutscene, like I did when I decided to have Goku help Piccolo against Cell instead of waiting for Vegeta and Trunks to complete their training, which is the opposite of what went down in the TV show years ago. That lets you prevent the Cell Games from ever occurring, providing a cool glimpse at a “what if?” future where the androids live in peace with Goku and his allies. I appreciated the effort to spice up stories that have been rehashed ad nauseam. This clear choice is way easier to ******** than the other, more frequent method you are given for an opportunity to alter events, which usually involves winning battles in specific ways to change their outcomes. Besides the fact that, and I must reiterate, these fights can be very difficult since powerful characters can become all but immune to your normal attacks and will always have the perfect defense to match your offense, it's unclear upfront what conditions must be met to unlock these alternative stories. You can lower the difficulty on a ******-by-****** basis in order to progress if you really need to, but these special tasks must be completed on the standard difficulty, making finding them very much an endgame activity. But I did really appreciate the effort to spice up stories that have been rehashed ad nauseam. There are also custom battles, which exist somewhere between Mario Maker and the Universe Mode in a WWE game. Using a tool box full of special modifiers that limit what characters can and can’t do in a given scenario, as well as some triggers that help program particular outcomes after conditions are met, these battles can potentially resemble more of a puzzle than just mashing digital action figures together in dream situations. There’s a shoddy system for putting together dialogue so that some sort of narrative can be added to them, but the best it can do is loosely set up the make-believe stakes. I had no plans to write my own entire Dragon Ball arc, but I'm not sure the tool is up to the task even if I wanted to. There are quite a few custom battles made by developer Spike Chunsoft baked in, and they don’t really stretch the imagination that much. A few of them present interesting scenarios and specific parameters for victory, like seeing **** Goku spar with a Master Roshi who can only be beaten by the kamehameha. But I haven't come across an “a-ha!” creation that really shows me the potential for this mode yet. Sparking! Zero at least seems to break the Tenkaichi curse of truly abysmal online multiplayer by supplying some solid network play. When wired up, I found minimal latency and lag issues on the live servers, or at least not enough to blame it for me dropping a combo or missing a parry. There is a local split-screen option for people who want to duke it out in person, but it’s disappointingly limited to one stage: the white void of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Even still, playing Sparking! Zero with real people that you can hit with a dramatic one liner or a guttural power-up scream is still the best way to do it, by far. Online modes are pretty straight forward, but the DP battle stands out as the most interesting way to play. It constricts your up-to-five-member teams by assigning a point value to every member of the roster, giving you 15 points maximum to split between them. Stronger characters are more expensive, so you could keep your team small and full of high-cost heavy hitters like the Kais or furry SSJ4 Saiyans, or hope a full host of cheaper characters like Krillin and Yamcha can overwhelm the opponent. I liked starting with a character's cheaper base form, knowing that with decent play I would be able to transform them into the stronger forms over time, the early discount coming at the risk of getting beat down before I can get my power up to speed. That extra angle of strategy is something that takes good advantage of the untuned nature of a lot of these characters, and really doesn’t exist anywhere else in the genre. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Halo’s move to Unreal Engine 5 would make it easier for developer Halo Studios, née 343 Industries, to take Xbox’s flagship first-person shooter multi-platform, including a launch on PlayStation 5, tech experts have said. Speaking to Eurogamer, Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter said moving to Unreal 5 makes for “easier” multi-platform development than porting across the existing Slipspace engine. "It stands to reason that an engine designed for deployment across multiple platforms would be easier to work with than existing technology built for Xbox and PC,” Leadbetter said. While Microsoft’s multi-platform video game push has seen the likes of Rare’s Sea of Thieves and Obsidian’s Grounded make the jump to PS5, the company has yet to announce any Halo game for a non-Xbox console. Despite a backlash from some ********* Xbox fans, Microsoft’s multi-platform push appears to have been a success. Sea of Thieves, for example, topped Sony's sales chart earlier this year, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said the company’s franchises are stronger for heading to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Indeed more PS5 launches are coming, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, albeit a few months after MachineGames’ adventure hits PC and Xbox, and id Software’s *****: The Dark Ages. Could Halo be next? In August, Spencer said Xbox’s multi-platform push is in part about bringing in more money to Microsoft’s gaming business — with the pressure now on to deliver following Microsoft’s eye-watering $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard last year. “... we run a business,” Spencer said. “It’s definitely true inside of Microsoft the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery we have to give back to the company. Because we get a level of support from the company that’s just amazing and what we’re able to go do. “So I look at this, how can we make our games as strong as possible? Our platform continues to grow, on console, on PC, and on cloud. It’s just going to be a strategy that works for us.” Microsoft has so-far used older games released over a year ago for its multi-platform push as opposed to brand new games, but that will soon change with the release of Indiana Jones. The most dramatic move would be to bring Halo to PlayStation, given the shooter's symbiotic relationship with Xbox. But would Microsoft actually go through with it? As former Xbox boss Peter Moore recently told IGN, Microsoft will be debating whether to bring Halo to PlayStation as we speak. Halo's shift to Unreal comes amid a tumultuous time for Xbox that has seen an eye-watering 2,550 staff cut from the gaming business this year and multiple studio closures. All the while, sales of Xbox Series X and S have fallen dramatically, Xbox Game Pass growth has stalled, and Microsoft faces a backlash from ********* Xbox players about its potentially wavering commitment to exclusives and the console business. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

Image: Atlus Persona is one of the rare video game series where people actually talk about the menus. They’re functional, sure, but they’re also so incredibly stylish that you almost don’t mind constantly pausing to equip gear or heal your party. So when I had the chance to talk to longtime Persona director Katsura Hashino about his new game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, which continues this tradition of beautiful menus, I had to ask how they do it. The answer, as Hashino explains it, is simply a lot of work: In general, the way most game developers make UI is very simple. That’s what we try to do as well — we try to keep things simple, practical, and usable. But maybe the reason that we’ve achieved both [functionality and beauty] is that we have unique... Continue reading… View the full article

Fortnite and Disney are working together to give fans an experience on a completely different scale, and some new information has come to light, letting players in on some interesting details. While Fortnite has taken part in dozens of collaborations with all sorts of brands and franchises, there's no doubt that Disney is the company with whom they've worked the most. This season, Absolute *****, is completely centered on Marvel characters, so it's a clear example of the massive scale of these collaborations. View the full article

Is Metaphor ReFantazio on Game Pass? Some of Atlus' most successful games have launched on Microsoft's subscription service, including Persona 5 Royal and more recently Persona 3 Reload. It's unsurprising, then, that the studio's latest turn-based RPG, Metaphor ReFantazio, could also expected to make an appearance. The love child of multiple Atlus IPs, including the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, Persona, and Digital ****** Saga, Metaphor ReFantazio looks to synthesize the best the studio has to offer into its grandest adventure yet. This bold new RPG marks a departure from the schoolyard antics we're used to in Atlus' most popular releases, plonking us in the middle of a fierce post-medieval election campaign for the crown. To find out if Metaphor will take its place on the Game Pass throne, read on. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Metaphor ReFantazio review - the crowned prince of turn-based JRPGs Atlus "actively working" to improve the Metaphor Refantazio Steam demo Metaphor Refantazio is already a hit on Steam, though it isn't out yet View the full article

EA Sports FC 25 was the best-selling game in the *** in September, which included the release of a handful of high-profile titles. EA’s football game comfortably topped the monthly chart, despite a 4.6% decline compared to the launch sales for EA Sports FC 24. That’s according to GSD data published by [Hidden Content], which covers physical game sales from major markets and digital sales from most leading publishers, excluding Nintendo and 505 Games. Read More... View the full article

Players have a limited amount of time to receive the Bird Call emote in Fortnite for free, and they will have to do it before that window is gone. Once it is, you will have to wait until it appears in the Item Shop, and the timeframe for that is still unknown. To ensure you get this emote, read the rest of this guide to know for sure. View the full article