Month: January 2018

My preliminary hours with the Sea of Thieves closed beta were spent wrestling the Microsoft Store into submission and pondering question after question about the game’s progression, replayability, and the PC version. It wasn’t a pretty start, but the more time I spent with Sea of Thieves the more enamored I became with its emergent potential. Somewhere between stumbling onto a magical weeping chest that flooded my hold with tears, and my first successful player versus player piracy I realized that no matter how many hours Sea of Thieves proves capable of providing me at launch, it will be time well-spent.

Sea of Thieves has a lot going for it: a unique immersive setting, a surprisingly accessible learning curve, and possibly the best looking water of all time (which you can witness in glorious detail in the videos below.) But not even the dazzling glimmer of that perfect ocean can outshine the radiance of the game’s most outstanding quality: its impeccable multiplayer design, which coerces cooperation and inspires emergent gameplay. Nowhere is this more apparent than onboard your chosen vessel. Here, controlling your speed, navigating to your destination, and indeed staying afloat all necessitate communication and coordination between you and your crew. This reliance on your fellow pirate is enhanced by a nearly nonexistent HUD, which is blissfully free of waypoints or a minimap. All of these elements add up to a dynamic and thoroughly enjoyable multi-crew vessel experience, where no one is idle for long and no task feels like busy work.

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Developer Matt Makes Games concurrently announced both its latest hit release Celeste as well as its previous great archery combat game TowerFall Ascension for the Nintendo Switch last year. And while it may have seemed a TowerFall port would likely be released first, it still has yet to be released — but don’t worry, it’s still on its way.

Speaking to IGN as part of a larger discussion about independent games on the Nintendo Switch, developer Matt Thorson explained that he always intended to release Celeste before porting over TowerFall.

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The conclusion of DC Comics event Dark Nights: Metal will bring about some big changes for the Justice League comic line, IGN has learned from DC.

Following the events of Metal, which ends on March 14 with Issue #6, there will be a four-issue weekly miniseries that kicks off on May 9 called Justice League: No Justice co-written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, and Joshua Williamson with art by Francis Manapul.

Upon concluding, ‘No Justice’ will set the stage for a family of Justice League comics starting in June, with the flagship title being written by Snyder and the others by Tynion, Williamson, and more. No artists have been revealed for any of these titles.

Metal, written by Snyder and drawn by Greg Capullo, features the Justice League battling seven evil Batmans who are invading the DC Universe from the Dark Multiverse.

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Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams appears to have revealed when the eighth and final season of the show will premiere when it debuts in 2019.

In an interview with Metro, Williams, who plays Arya Stark in the hit HBO series, said Season 8 will finish filming at the end of this year and will premiere sometime in April 2019. “We wrap in December and we air our first episode in April,” Williams said. “That’s a four-month turnaround for these huge episodes.”

Williams also briefly touched on the longer wait for this final season, as Game of Thrones will skip 2018 entirely. “There’s a lot that goes into the final edit,” Williams said. “You would not want to rush this season at all. We owe it to our audience and our fans to really do this final season to the best of our abilities.”

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Epic Games is shutting down its free-to-play MOBA Paragon in April.

As detailed on a recent blog post, Epic will continue operating Paragon servers until April 26. Until then, matchmaking times and quality will continue to degrade throughout these few months as the player population decreases.

“After careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn’t a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable,” reads Epic’s statement. “We didn’t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon. We have failed you — despite the team’s incredibly hard work — and we’re sorry.”

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Blizzard announced it is using social media like YouTube to track down toxic Overwatch players.

Game director Jeff Kaplan said in a new developer update, which you can watch below, Blizzard has begun proactively searching social media sites to “look for incidents of very toxic behavior.” Kaplan specifically cited YouTube as one of the sites which Blizzard is using to find toxic users. Kaplan said Blizzard has been actioning these users “oftentimes before anybody has even reported them.”

Kaplan cited three recently added Overwatch features Blizzard has been using to fight toxicity: allowing console users to report players, notifying players when a user they complained about has been banned, and giving in-game warnings to players who have been reported.

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Every good open-world adventure has a bunch of secrets and tricks to success – and Monster Hunter World is no different. Despite having a whole mess of formal tutorials and instructions, there are still a few things that you’ll only figure out being out in the field. Here are 17 things that Monster Hunter World keeps off the main tutorial pages.

Unlike other RPGs, Monster Hunter doesn’t limit you to selecting just one or two starting weapons at the beginning of the game. You’ve got access to all 14 weapon types, so make good use of them!

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Video games are a young medium, all things considered. But while games don’t have quite the long history of their visual siblings like film and television, they do enjoy some four-plus decades of commercial success dating back to the rise of the arcade classics like Pong.

So with no small dosage of nostalgia we’re remembering those games that celebrate major milestones this year: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and yes, even 40 years. And while there are more games that meet the criteria than we can include – Mario Party, Burnout Paradise, and Grim Fandango to name just a few – there are some real gems included below that deserve a little recognition on their big anniversaries. So, without further ado, here are our picks for 25 game anniversaries you’re going to want to remember in 2018!

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