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The upcoming Xbox console exclusive game Towerborne has debuted on Steam Early Access and already has "Very Positive" reviews. Developed by The Banner Saga studio Stoic, Towerborne will be published by Xbox Game Studios. A side-scrolling beat 'em with RPG and action-adventure elements, not to mention co-op support, Towerborne has been hotly anticipated by fans ever since it was first revealed at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase. View the full article

Today’s Spotlight is for Call of Sentinels, an arena roguelike where players complete missions for various deities, who will in turn reward you with unimaginable elemental power to crush your foes. In Call of Sentinels, missions consist of rounds where you complete specific quests for different sentinels. The player can choose between multiple quests, and […] Source View the full article

Earlier today, Nic did me a great injustice by waving aside my suggestion that he write about Shroom And Gloom, because "I want to read you describing mushrooms in interesting ways". Nic, I have no interesting ways to describe mushrooms right now. I used up all the mushroom lore I've ever gleaned from real-life foraging when I wrote about Morels 2, and I spent most of that article whining about unicorns. The best I can do as regards Shroom And Gloom is to say that these Shrooms do indeed look very Gloomy, possibly because some **** human has wandered into their warren and is now stabbing and eating them. Read more View the full article

Not to be confused with the four secret Loong bosses, Chen Loong is a recurring character in ****** Myth: Wukong. At first, the dragon will appear to the Destined One as a mighty foe, but after beating Chen Loong in combat, the boss yields to the monkey ****. This NPC can then be persuaded to help the Destined One for the duration of his journey. View the full article

The final Aftermarket Part in season five has arrived in Modern Warfare 3, and it’s absolutely devastating. Aftermarket Parts will be missed once MW3‘s live content ends because they have the ability to completely change a ******* and make it something fun and different. The JAK Devastators Conversion Kit is another one of many of these examples. View the full article

Payday 3’s director is “stepping away” from his position following the game’s troubled first year. In a bid to turn the sequel’s fortunes around, on Wednesday Starbreeze confirmed new interim leadership for Payday 3’s second year of content. Former game director Miodrag Kovačević is now serving as a senior game designer on the project, according to his LinkedIn profile, while Andreas Häll Penninger and Almir Listo will be “the creative force behind the upcoming updates”. Read More... View the full article

After years of dominance over PC gamers, there's potentially a new rival to Nvidia and AMD in town. The upcoming Loongson 9A2000 graphics card is launching in China with up to ten times faster performance than the 9A1000 it's replacing. That sounds good, but the ****** is always in the detail, and there's a catch here. That's because, according to reports, the Loongson 9A2000 is comparable in performance to an RTX 2080, Nvidia's former flagship card from two generations ago that launched back in 2018. Gaming has moved on a long way since then, so a card with similar performance isn't likely to appeal today unless it's very cheap. It's certainly not going to challenge the best graphics cards out there from Nvidia today, especially as the 9A2000 lacks support for DirectX 12. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: This terrible Nvidia GPU is now somehow a $1,000 fashion accessory Nvidia's new RTX 4070 graphics cards are slower and too expensive Win this awesome ****** Myth Wukong Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super GPU View the full article

Modern Warfare 3’s year in the Call of Duty sun is winding down, but not before one more season in the spotlight adds new content like The Haunting and more. With multiple weapons added per season of MW3, the arsenal for players has grown exponentially since launch. The final season of MW3 adds two more guns, and they both sound like they’ll be a lot of fun, including the DTIR 30-06. View the full article

Blue Gems are one of the resources you can get on the Aberration map in Ark Survival Ascended by mining blue crystals. Unlike Red Gems, which are ******* to come by, there are a few efficient and accessible farming spots for Blue Gems. Here’s how to get Blue Gems on Aberration in Ark Survival Ascended. View the full article

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players are unhappy that the game's new Haunting event skins will not carry over to ****** Ops 6. Unique skins and collaborations are nothing new for the Call of Duty brand, with much of this additional content carrying over across multiple games. This is not the case with the latest Haunting skins in Modern Warfare 3, with players quick to share their disappointment, frustration, and anger online in response. View the full article

Jason Damron, the voice actor behind The Storyteller - the main character of a long-running and popular fan-made Fallout lore video series on YouTube - appears to have *****. This is according to a tweet posted earlier today by Damron's account, which uses his online handle Kankennon and is the same one credited in the descriptions of the most recent Storyteller videos starring him. "Hello everyone, I am Emily Damron, Jason Damron's (the Storyteller) daughter," it reads, "I just wanted to share that on Saturday September 7, my father passed away after a horrible year of health. He was diagnosed with stage four adrenal ******* that spread to the liver." Read more View the full article

Since the "30 or 40 people" that Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks plays DnD with regularly all use AI "for either campaign development or character development or story ideas", he says it's a "clear signal" that Wizards of the Coast should be embracing the technology. Cocks made the remarks on Tuesday while answering questions at a business conference hosted by Goldman Sachs. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: DnD sizes explained All Lego Dungeons and Dragons Minifigures, ranked The Final Fantasy TTRPG starter set beats DnD in one key way View the full article

Last night, on September 10, the Miracle Worker Commander deck was revealed on MTG Weekly, with lots of exciting and creepy new cards. But rather than Miracle, we're more excited about the return of another powerful Magic: The Gathering mechanic, Escape. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Netflix ******* its MTG series and forgot to tell anyone Old, unloved MTG card spikes in price by 2260% Best MTG Arena decks September 2024 View the full article

Neil Gaiman was accused of ******* ******** earlier this year, and it's now being reported that as a result production on Good Omens season 3 is being paused. Back in July, a report was released alleging that Nail Gaiman had committed ******* ******** against multiple women, one of which allegedly had signed a non-disclosure agreement following her experience with the author, others having previously served as nannies for his child. Currently, Gaiman has denied the allegations against him, but earlier this week Deadline reported that production has been paused on the Amazon Prime and BBC adaptation of Good Omens, a popular show based on books he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. While a spokesperson provided no comment to Deadline, the outlet claims that it had heard there are discussions about possible production changes. However, Deadline has now reported that Gaiman himself has offered to step back from the third and final season of Good Omens. This is apparently so that production can continue on it, but according to Deadline this is not an admission from Gaiman that any of the allegations are true. Amazon is reportedly believed to be considering Gaiman's offer, but no final calls have been made just yet. The show is currently in pre-production, and was originally slated to be released in January, 2025. Read more View the full article

The MTG card ***** Switch has seen a massive boost in value in the past week. This artifact card has been creeping up in price since Bloomburrow came out, but that gradual ascent has become jet-propelled over the last couple of days. One month ago, the card cost just $1.20, according to MTG Goldfish. But since then an incredible 2258% price spike has seen its value hit $28.30 - and there's no sign it's stopping there. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Busted Magic: The Gathering mechanic returns in Duskmourn precon Netflix ******* its MTG series and forgot to tell anyone Best MTG Arena decks September 2024 View the full article

It’s been a fun year of Warzone during Modern Warfare 3, but the seasons are changing and the clock is about to turn on a new Call of Duty. There’s one more season of MW3 left to go before everything switches over to ****** Ops 6, and it’s bringing one of the most popular events in CoD with it: The Haunting has returned with new guns, creepy operators, and limited-time modes galore. View the full article

Dragon's Dogma 2 will be releasing a new update that will reportedly address its CPU issues, reduce crashes, and bring a wide list of improvements to the base game. Even though the launch of Dragon's Dogma 2 was immensely successful for Capcom, many players felt that the game had a lot of unrealized potential. Putting its technical issues aside, the game introduced a unique and exciting combat system, but the community frequently critiqued its lack of ****** variety, its somewhat disappointing main quest, and its empty open world. View the full article

The Enigmatic Sigil in Devas of Creation is one of the key components to crafting rare rarity weapons, tools, and armor to ****** higher-level bosses and get loot. Roblox’s Devas of Creation is an MMORPG where you choose one of the classes and start your journey as a Novice. You can use a diverse range of weapons, armor, and tools to harvest resources and defeat a bunch of mobs in your quest to become the strongest in the game. However, you’ll several different rarities of Sigils to make your favorite gear, and you can only find them in a particular place. View the full article

Prioritizing completing your weekly quests is essential if you want to claim lots of XP and level up the battle pass in Fortnite. This means you oftentimes have to complete tricky tasks like searching containers at named locations before taking damage. You need to know what both containers and named locations are for this quest, which can make it a tough one to work through. It also requires you to act very quickly, so you may need some guidance to successfully finish this one. Here’s how to search containers at named locations before taking damage in Fortnite. View the full article

Jack Huynh, AMD's senior VP and GM of computing and graphics, emphasized the need to provide AI-powered PCs at more affordable prices, with Kraken Point targeting the mass market, while Strix Point and Strix Halo cater to the premium segment. Read Entire Article View the full article

Gold Gold Adventure Gold is a game that relies on raw enthusiasm and moxie to power you through a blizzard of confusing references. It boldly describes itself as a "Cult-of-the-Lamb-lite, Rimworld-lite, Majesty-like mixed with ****** & White with a pinch of Against the Storm". Whoa there, pardner, save a few subgenres for the rest of us! I think that's half the New & Trending keywords on Steam in one sentence. If you're mystified, best watch the announcement trailer - it paints a clearer picture, though it does involve a startling amount of cartoon decapitation and dismemberment. Read more View the full article

Last month I went hands-on with Crimson Desert to try out some of its brutal boss battles. I left the demonstration impressed by its fast combat system and spectacular monster designs, but curious as to what the wider world and gameplay of Crimson Desert looks like. What happens between those epic clashes? Now, thanks to a 53 minute gameplay video from developer Pearl Abyss that’s available to watch here on IGN exclusively, I have a much clearer picture. If Crimson Desert’s combat is a mix of **** of War and Dragon’s Dogma, then its wider gameplay is more reminiscent of modern *********’s Creed and other quest-driven open world adventures. The gameplay video introduces us to Kliff, Crimson Desert’s protagonist who sports a gruff Scottish accent and a no-nonsense attitude. After a prologue establishes a ******* conflict between the Greymanes and the marauding ****** Bears, Kliff’s major goal is made clear: explore the continent of Pywel in search of his surviving Greymane allies who have been scattered following the battle. Kliff also presumably wants revenge against Myurdin, the demo’s first boss ******, considering the ****** Bear chief seemingly murdered him. Quite how Kliff ******** alive after having his body filled with arrows and his throat slit is a mystery left for the full game. The bulk of this preview demonstration is set in Hernand, a medieval town populated by a fun range of fantasy races that wouldn’t look out of place in any Tolkienesque fantasy story (look out for the giants and the antlered elf-like beings among the crowds). Similarly, Kliff’s interactions around its beautifully rendered streets are very much what you’d expect of a modern open world adventure game – there’s a horse you can whistle for, NPCs to be spoken to (via cutscenes, there's no dialogue options here) and hostile regions to infiltrate. That last one is where Crimson Desert has a little fun, as the demo shows Kliff changing into Hernandian Banquet Attire in order to walk past a castle’s guards unnoticed, much like how you can wear disguises in games like Hitman and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I hope there are plenty of opportunities to do this, and various outcomes to your trickery; it would be fun if you could use disguises to open up new conversations as well as gain entry to forbidden zones. Inside the castle, Kliff pilfers an ‘Abyss Artifact’, which is where Crimson Desert gets a little more unusual. The device opens up a pixelated portal in a wall, and walking through it transports Kliff to a digital-like realm (reminiscent of the Animus in *********’s Creed) that leads to the Library of Providence. There, an alchemist called Alustin reveals that the Library is at the centre of all worlds and that there are beings who plan to bring “everything to nothingness”. While I can’t say I’m impressed by Crimson Desert’s writing in this demo – this exchange and others feel cluttered and wrapped up in themselves – it does point to a much grander, more mythical plot beyond Kliff’s hunt for his allies. That ambition of something larger is made abundantly clear when Alustin’s ally, White Crow, gives Kliff the glider-like ‘Crow Wings’ ability, which allows him to leap off the Library’s floating island and reenact Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s title sequence. It’s a little bold to use this motif – can Pearl Abyss really craft something that lives up to the wider meaning of that iconic visual? – but even if it falls short, the magnificent view and subsequent glide to earth is a thrill all the same. Back on the ground in Hernand, Kliff soon finds himself in a duel with a local knight. It’s another good example of Crimson Desert’s ****** mechanics (more on that in our gamescom preview), but it also triggers the start of the demo’s major questline. Impressed by Kliff’s combat prowess, a local peacekeeper tasks him with finding and eliminating some local bandits who ****** using a red mist. Heading out in search of such villains, Kliff comes across a burning house and throws nearby vases of water to save the clergyman trapped inside. It’s not clear from the demo if such objectives organically occur around the map, Red ***** Redemption 2-style, but what is soon clear is that this blaze is the work of those aforementioned bandits. The local ******* says one of their men, Hubert, fled the scene in an attempt to bait the enemies away and asks Kliff to find him. payment is another one of those Abyss Artifacts, once again suggesting the worlds-beyond-worlds are of high importance to Crimson Desert’s story. I hope this results in a decent amount of weirdness that helps set the largely typical setting apart from other fantasy games. Pearl Abyss is making good progress in its transition from ****** Desert Online’s MMORPG into single player territory. Hubert is found at a bandit camp that allows the demo to show off Kliff’s stealth abilities. It’s pretty classic stuff and looks very reminiscent of silent takedowns in the *********’s Creed games – not particularly challenging, but an alternative option to Crimson Desert’s more publicised melee brawls. Hopefully when we go hands-on again, stealth will prove a worthwhile addition rather than a shallow tacked-on extra. With Hubert freed, Kliff is approached by the goblin Shakatu, a merchant of the Goldleaves guild. He explains that the Goldleaves are currently under the command of the evil Split *****, someone Kliff must now *****. In return, Shakatu offers money and his services, things Kliff believes will be helpful in finding the missing Greymanes. Arriving at the Goldleaf camp, it quickly becomes clear how all these quests are linked. The goblin guards use red mist as part of their battle tactics, and so reveal themselves as the very same miscreants that were causing trouble for the people of Hernand. And so Split *****’s ****** not only allows Shakatu to take over and help Kliff, but also fulfils the task set by the peacekeeper back in town. I hope Crimson Desert features plenty more of these overlapping goals and storylines, and forms a wider narrative that feels enjoyably interlaced. That would certainly make up for the uneven quality of the writing shown in the demo. View the full article

Editor's Note: This review takes a fresh look at Fortnite in 2024, replacing our previous review from 2018. You can read more about our review policies and philosophy here. It’s wild to think about how much of gaming culture over the last decade has been defined, at least in part, by Fortnite. This is a game that began humbly before expanding wildly into a juggernaut of an online sandbox, where somehow Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender can ****** a sports car into a Stormtrooper outpost before popping out and ********* Family Guy’s Peter Griffin with a neon ******** rifle and then gliding away on a Cacodemon from *****. But despite the absurdity of that sentence, Fortnite isn’t just a collection of branded cardboard cutouts scattered throughout a cartoony island: It’s managed to grow to this level because it’s also an enduringly fun battle royale shooter, and its momentum has been built on by season after season of updates that go all-out to pull you back in right when you thought you were done. Whether you’re playing in Fortnite’s signature mode that allows you and up to 99 others to mine resources and then magically build structures like ramps and walls for cover on the fly, or the more traditional building-free battle royale mode that’s all about smooth moving, punchy *********, and fun vehicles, its bounty of extra objectives, smattering of NPCs and named locations, and in-game missions set it a cut above other games in the genre. Each match starts even before the Battle Bus drops you from the sky, as you pick out a quest from dozens of different missions and objectives that infuse each of the roughly 15-minute rounds with extra purpose and direction. Maybe you want to take care of some daily missions to jump a few levels ahead in your battle pass, or maybe you want to find a specific NPC like Centurion, who can help you in battle by either selling you powerful weapons and healing items or squadding up with you to help stack up some eliminations and chase the number one spot. Regardless of where you choose to land on the island or why, Fortnite’s mission structure cleverly guides you towards engaging with its large, interestingly *****-out map by peppering locations and quests throughout the island and naturally encouraging you to discover things off the beaten path as you run, drive, or glide from objective to objective. Stumbling upon a character who can help you hide or a vault with extra gold that you can use to buy items and services from NPCs is more rewarding than simply running to find loot and staying alive the longest within an ever-shrinking safe zone. When you land, your priorities might immediately be influenced by a mission or even a randomly selected match quest, which prompt you to do weird things like emote at a named location or eliminate an opponent with a specific type of ******* in order to earn experience points for your battle pass. Of course, the catch is that everyone else is trying to ***** you as you do this, so you have to balance it with the task of gearing up with a healing item and guns. Naturally, everyone knows the best of those items will be at defined spots like The Underworld or Doomstadt… and the fact that people know this makes those landing zones riskier to explore because you’re all but certain to run across others straddling the line between brave and *******, which leads to scrappy, no-holds-barred showdowns. But Fortnite lets you play it safe as well, so if you prefer to land somewhere less contentious you’ll still be able to find weapons and other helpful tools like shield potions off the beaten path. Epic isn’t afraid to mix the balance up with more creative ideas. Either way, few players will have a fully stocked and organized arsenal at this point, making these early moments especially tense and tough unless you beat others to a treasure chest or good ******* that tips the odds in your favor. Sometimes that ******* isn’t immediately available – I’ve landed at a hotspot only to have to slowly chip away at an opponent’s health and shields with my pickaxe before I even got the chance to loot anything plenty of times. This exchange of blows is a lot slower than the gunslinging Fortnite usually expects from you, but it’s not so much bad or boring as it is a goofy byproduct of you and your opponent looking each other ***** in the eye after realizing you’re both out of options and hoping you come out on top. Thankfully, weapons are plentiful on the island, with several types designed for different situations stashed in every chest and building. The main guns are pretty typical: ******** rifles are reliable in most skirmishes, but less useful in a close-quarters encounter than a shotgun or submachine **** would be. Alternatively, the DMR and ******* rifle outpace all of those in long-range combat. However, Epic isn’t afraid to mix the balance up with more creative ideas, and so it also includes a ton of cool one-off weapons themed after its many regular events. For example, during the annual Star Wars event for May The 4th you can wield Stormtrooper blasters, Chewbacca’s bowcaster, and even a lightsaber if you get lucky and find one randomly on the map or defeat a formidable Darth Vader NPC. These days, a nearly non-stop rotation of different crossovers bring new types of mythic weapons and tools to the table, with several additions being made specifically for one season or event before being shelved indefinitely. Logging in on a random day could land you something as silly and mundane as Peter Griffin’s Pump Shotgun (which is just a normal shotgun that deals extra damage) or as useful as the explosive Kamehameha from Dragon Ball Z and the deadly and accurate power of Waterbending from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Even when they’re especially powerful, event items and weapons are easy to come by, meaning you’re a lot less likely to lose to another player just because they had a super-powered ******* that your normal **** couldn’t compete with – that includes this season’s Marvel-themed pickups like Doctor *****’s Gauntlets, which let you pelt opponents with powerful blasts of energy, or last season's jet-powered Nitro Fists, which rocket you up into the air before slamming down to create a shockwave around you . Instead, you’re more likely to lose because they’re better at building than you are. The fine art of creating structures in combat is as definitively Fortnite as it is divisive, with detractors often complaining that ********* at an opponent prompts them to explode into an instant Eiffel Tower as they turtle up and ****** a *******’s nest to ****** back from. It’s absolutely absurd, but I like that building adds a literal depth to combat that takes Fortnite’s already engaging, tense ********* mechanics and knocks the skill ceiling up a few notches as you learn to juggle the usual dance of aiming, dodging, and reloading with quickly laying down cover and managing your limited resources. This battle royale can still be enjoyed without mastering building. Epic has made it pretty easy to wrap your mind around the building controls, with quick shortcuts on both keyboard and controllers that make it simple to build a ramp to help climb a hill or set up a wall to defend yourself while you reload. It’s not mandatory, though: As an admittedly weak builder, I can confidently say that I’ve managed to eke out wins without much reliance on ensconcing myself in wood, stone, and metal, so it’s not like this battle royale can’t be enjoyed without mastering that skill, either. You can learn to take advantage of high *****-rate weapons like SMGs or the drum **** to quickly dismantle an opponent’s creation before sniping them through the holes you made, or just rush them down with a shotgun and take them out where they thought they were safe. The main difference when you join a No Build match, which trades the ability to build for extra shields, is the flow and pace of combat. In the default mode, shootouts between equally matched players often last longer as both parties scramble to out-build, out-heal, and out-****** each other in climactic moments that always push me to the edge of my seat before ending in either a frustrated groan or a sigh of relief. In No Build, combat is much tighter and leaves less room for missed shots as there are fewer places to hide. Since building takes extra cover out of the equation, these fights are also more often locked to the close quarters areas already on the map, and reward those who rush down their opponents rather than trying to snipe them from far away. In either mode, plenty of chokepoints and events pop up randomly to force confrontations or provide an extra advantage for those willing to seize it. Maybe the train’s passing by where you landed – if you’re lucky, you can snag a ton of goodies from its chest before someone else does. From there you might head toward some NPCs that you can see in the distance, who will open ***** at you with the kind of flailing aim that would make a Stormtrooper look like a deadeye. After clearing their camp, you could be rewarded with an early forecast of where the safe zone at the center of Fortnite’s deadly storm will head next, which is the kind of intel that can give you the jump on the other remaining players and be waiting when they rush to what they think is safety. Other optional events, such as NPC bosses with substantially better aim, pepper the map and offer useful rewards and nominal challenge, but chasing those also makes your location known: echoing gunfire and the ******’s health bar popping up on nearby players’ screens exposes you for others to swoop in and capitalize on your being distracted. Meanwhile, friendly NPCs offer something completely different: You can buy worthwhile items like guns, healing items, hints, and sometimes even disguises that are reminiscent of the popular Gary’s Mod game Prop Hunt which you can activate and use to camp out as a chair, barrel, or other piece of furniture you might find scattered around the island. You can also hire certain NPCs to help you out in a ******, which can make a difference in team-based modes where a shootout is more chaotic than just two people unloading their weapons at each other. All these options means there’s always something interesting to do beyond simply looting and *********. Moving around the map feels incredible, too. You can sprint, crouch while sprinting to go right into a slide (ripped straight out of Apex Legends), jump farther than normal, and even mantle while running. This may not sound like a lot compared to the aforementioned Titanfall spinoff’s acrobatic movement, but Fortnite’s current movement options are just enough to keep combat dynamic and challenging. You aren’t so mobile that fights become frustrating, but there are still cool opportunities for some daring escapes after a showdown gone awry. There’s just a dizzying amount of things going on in every match. And when running around on foot just doesn’t cut it, there are plenty of cars and motorbikes scattered around the island like ride-sharing scooters for you to find. Each produces a brain-ticklingly satisfying purr as you zoom around and rock out to in-game radio stations with a diverse library of licensed tracks from the likes of Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, AC/DC, BLACKPINK, and more. Even if you’re not necessarily going anywhere specific, it’s hard to resist the thrill of jumping a car off a high bluff to get some air time backed by an energetic track, which last season not only enabled but encouraged thanks to its beefier and more customizable vehicles that would make George Miller Swoon. There’s just a dizzying amount of things going on in every match, and because of that Fortnite accommodates so many different playstyles. Whether you’re vying for the top spot, jumping a sports car off a ramp with your friends in a parking lot, or checking off story missions, it rewards your time with XP for doing just about everything. Sure, some activities offer more points than others – being the last person or team standing at the end of a match will always be the most important objective – but Epic goes out of its way to let you have a blast even if you don’t place in the top 50. Experience points help fill out levels in the battle pass, which has both a free and paid tier and unlocks various cosmetics like skins for your character, weapons, pickaxe, and glider, as well as provides some in-game currency, called V-Bucks. That battle pass and its rewards have all but set the standard for how free-to-play games turn a profit, and while it’s fun to unlock outfits that let me dress up like Kratos from **** of War or Indiana Jones, I don’t like how commonplace the almost compulsive nature this monetization strategy encourages has become. Microtransaction Reaction Microtransactions make the multiplayer world go round, and the free-to-play Fortnite is no different. Its monetization strategy is relatively inoffensive compared to other battle pass-driven games when you look at it in a vacuum, as it can be actually completed without any real-money buy-in, but it takes advantage of its notably young audience with a store set up in a way that still feels pretty uncomfortable. Fortnite’s shop is explicitly designed to encourage impulsive buying thanks to its false scarcity. The skins and other cosmetics you have the option to purchase arbitrarily rotate, limiting their availability if you aren’t always checking in – some popular options do show up in the shop more frequently, but with months between each seemingly random pop-up, it’s an obnoxious system if you are just looking to buy one item you are interested in. Most individual skins will run you anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 V-Bucks (roughly USD $10-20), but character packs that come with emotes, backpacks called Back Bling, a skin, a harvesting pickaxe or other similar tool, and a glider can set you back much more, with most multi-skin packs costing at least 3,000 V-Bucks. Let’s say you want to earn The Battle Pass itself without buying into Fortnite. At 950 V-Bucks, it’s easily the best low-cost option to beef up your skin library, but with each season’s free Battle Pass tier typically netting you 300 V-Bucks, you’ll need to reach level 100 in at least 3 separate seasons and earn at least one V-Bucks unlock in a fourth. With each season lasting around ten weeks a pop, it would take you the better part of a year – about ten months – before you could unlock a Battle Pass for free. At that point, Epic’s earned your $10 whether you like it or not. I did this grind over the course of about three or four years, hopping back in when friends wanted to play or a specific event seemed cool and collecting a few V-Bucks here and there. It’s not super difficult to reach a high level on the Battle Pass since each week offers new quests with most being fairly doable within a handful of games, but it’s still demanding as it asks you to come back for a couple of hours back week after week. And much like the Item Shop’s false scarcity, most Battle Pass unlocks will never be available for purchase after the season is over. [/url] Thankfully, Fortnite doesn’t lock anything that impacts the actual gameplay of a match behind premium purchases, and even allows you to earn enough V-Bucks to purchase optional skins through grinding alone. With years of big crossovers under its belt, the store has become a modern gallery of sorts. Painstakingly created emotes that replicate moments from rich and influential works like Alien, Metal Gear Solid, Marvel, and Star Wars are immortalized next to silly bits of internet culture ranging from the Orange Justice dance to the Stonks meme. Fortnite is the only place where you can see Darth Vader throw up a Wu-***** W and rock out to C.R.E.A.M., or taunt other players with John Cena’s iconic “You Can’t See Me” gesture as Goku. It’s by no means the museum-quality homage to its source material the way the Super Smash Bros. series is to Mario, Zelda, or Donkey Kong, but it’s an impressively curated collection of culture all the same. The Indiana Jones content from Chapter 3, Season 3 in the Summer of 2022 is a great example of how Fortnite often makes its crossovers feel like more than just a cosmetic cash grab. Its special limited-time mission asked you to explore the ruins of an ancient temple and find four runes, then organize the same symbols to open a door to a long corridor with a ton of loot at the end and a golden figure on a pedestal… but pilfering the idol will have exactly the result you expect. It’s not just for show either: You could **** from attempting that heist. It’s impressive that such an iconic movie moment can be so seamlessly integrated into a completely unrelated game without missing a beat. Not every crossover gets a location on the map or special mission like this, but most will at least see some kind of cool inclusion like an emote and a skin or two that lovingly capture a character’s image and presence within Fortnite’s cohesive, cartoony style. For example, last season added Fallout’s iconic Brotherhood of Steel T-60 Power Armor to the mix, which worked perfectly in its **** Max-like apocalyptic wasteland. Somehow the T-60, Darth Vader, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Jill Valentine all look right at home next to one another, as if they were action figures on a shelf. It’s a showcase of Unreal Engine 5’s high-fidelity lighting effects. With Unreal Engine 5 powering everything, it’s no surprise that they look as good as they do: waving fabrics, shiny metals, and a bold cel-shading style adorn these skins with a punch that hits the sweet spot between cartoonish and hyper-detailed. Even on the less powerful Nintendo Switch, Fortnite runs surprisingly well with a mostly steady framerate and consistent look – though that comes at the price of a really low draw distance, making anything but a small spec of movement hard to sus out from even moderately far away. Of course, on other consoles and PCs, it runs like a dream. It’s also a graphical showcase with Unreal Engine 5’s high-fidelity lighting effects on full display as the time of day changes, bathing its levels in harsh sunlight, golden evening rays, and glowing street lights. Most of the skins you unlock in battle royale transfer over into the other games found within Fortnite’s main menu, each of which is chock-full of its own stuff to do. Lego Fortnite, for example, is a full-scale Minecraft-style co-op survival game with its own story and quests to explore and complete, while Fortnite Festival harkens back to the days of Rock Band. Even if I wasn’t as interested in playing them, it’s cool that the shared battle pass and cosmetics make your efforts in one impactful to the others. There’s also a staggering amount of stuff that other players have made within Fortnite, and opening up the infinite tunnel of user-generated content reveals even more fun to be found. Like any game with creative tools that allow you to share your work, it’s a literal mixed bag here with Epic Games’ curation efforts doing some heavy lifting to help the cream rise to the top. One of my favorite user-generated game modes serves as a ******* range of sorts that lets you try out any version of each ******* available in Battle Royale with unlimited ammo. But there’s tons of other stuff, with whole worlds inspired by games like Phasmophobia that are so popular they have their own followings on Twitch. Somehow, nearly all of these disparate ideas work together seamlessly, with only a few exceptions for what you can bring where depending on what mode you’re playing – for example, you can only wear the Xenomorph skin in game modes with a “T for Teen” ESRB rating or higher – but most carry over, which makes even the fun diversions from the battle royale grind feel worth your time. That said, Fortnite’s wide range of universes don’t always collide gracefully. Watching characters who would never wield a **** – let alone ***** someone – do both of those things in Fortnite is equally silly and a bit ******, because it often completely betrays the defining characteristics of their source material. No matter how funny it is to see Batman unload a clip into his foe before hitting The Griddy, it just doesn’t feel right. By cementing itself as the place for titans of various mediums and industries to cross over, Fortnite has transformed into more than just a game, whether we like it or not. It’s become the modern water cooler, as both a shared social space and the kind of rare cultural monolith that helps create connections thanks to its seamless crossplay and built-in voice chat – which is so well-supported it’s even one of the very few games that supports native voice chat on the Nintendo Switch. Playing on Xbox, I can easily squad up with my roommate on his Switch in the same room and my buddy playing on his PC across the country without a hitch, which is truly impressive given how much trouble some other games can have with that sort of setup. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Space Marine 2 has its first patch following its record-breaking launch, but don’t expect big changes — those are coming in a larger update due later in September. Publisher Focus Interactive announced that a small hotfix (hotfix 2.1) is out now for the Saber Interactive-developed Warhammer 40,000 action game across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S (check out the patch notes below). It focuses on crashes and bug fixes, with a PC-only optimization for behavior on high-end CPUs thrown in. The big, hotly anticipated patch that Focus has already confirmed adds the much-needed ultrawide support and private PvE lobbies is due out later this month. We’ve got plenty more Space Marine 2 coverage, including details on its post-launch roadmap, the upcoming addition of class matching for co-op after players found themselves locked in a class standoff ahead of Operations mode missions, and a report on those creepy flying ******* you keep seeing on the Battle Barge. IGN's Space Marine 2 review returned an 8/10. We said: "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 may not break the third-person shooter mold, but it looks amazing, makes good use of its Warhammer lore, and has brutal combat that just feels great." Space Marine 2 hotfix 2.1 patch notes: Crashes and bug fixes Fixed some rare possible crashes when starting the gameFixed a rare possible ****** that occured during the first cutsceneFixed several other rare crashesFixed several rare bugs that were causing soft locks in the story mode PC Only Optimized CPU behavior on high end CPUs 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

The PS5 Pro’s announcement yesterday wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was the price: at $699.99, it debuts as Sony’s most expensive console ever. It brought back memories of the PS3’s controversial price tag, a console that when adjusted for inflation is the same $779 price point of a PS5 Pro with the additional disc drive. It’s a very expensive PlayStation, and I ***** it’s a test of what’s to come for next-gen console pricing. For years, console gamers have been used to purchasing hardware at a significantly reduced price compared to what you could build yourself in the PC gaming space. Yes, you can find components that match the PS5 or Xbox Series X on paper, but it’s still difficult to hit the price points that consoles sell... Continue reading… View the full article