Month: September 2019

Pokemon Go‘s September Community Day takes place in only a few days, and shortly after the event, Niantic will roll out the game’s third and final wave of Ultra Bonuses. This last batch of rewards will include the first appearance Gen 5 Pokemon, and the developer has been teasing some of the new monsters that players can expect to encounter.

The latest teaser features a silhouette of Yamask, an unsettling Ghost-type first introduced in Pokemon Black and White. According to Yamask’s Pokedex entry, the Pokemon carries around a mask of the face it had when it was alive, and it would occasionally look at the mask and begin to cry. Yeah.

Niantic hasn’t confirmed how many Gen 5 Pokemon will initially arrive in Go, although this marks the fourth teaser the developer has dropped in the lead up to the final wave of Ultra Bonuses. Prior teaser images featured the silhouettes of Black and White’s three starter Pokemon: the Grass-type Snivy, the Fire-type Tepig, and the Water-type Oshawott. You can take a look at them below.

The third wave of Ultra Bonuses will arrive on September 16. In addition to the aforementioned Pokemon, we know that Klink and its Shiny form will appear in Raid Battles, while Shiny Patrat and Shiny Lillipup will be available in the wild. Mewtwo will also return to five-star Raids during the final week of Ultra Bonuses, and this time, it’ll know the Psychic-type attack Psystrike. Players will also have a chance to encounter Shiny Mewtwo.

In the meantime, the second wave of Ultra Bonuses are still available, giving you a few more days to hatch region-exclusive Pokemon from 7 km eggs and encounter all four forms of Deoxys in Raids. This month’s Community Day, meanwhile, takes place this Sunday, September 15, and it features the Gen 4 starter Turtwig.

Like its predecessors, Borderlands 3 contains a bunch of side missions to do. Three of those missions are extended collectible-focused quests that will see you travel to every planet in the game and search out specific items. In comparison to the search for Eridian symbols, which can be completed for extra lore, and the hunt for Claptrap parts, which is good for some more cringy Claptrap jokes, the quest for Typhon de Leon’s audio recordings doesn’t seem all that important. But they are.

As Tannis explains, Typhon de Leon is the very first Vault Hunter. It’s his adventures and prestige that initially inspired the likes of Borderlands‘ Roland, Lilith, Brick, and Mordecai. Though a few of Typhon’s major exploits are well-known, the vast majority of what he did has never been told. Borderlands 3 provides the first opportunity to learn about the man’s adventures.

At first, Typhon’s quest is presented as a way to learn a bit more about the adventures of the first Vault Hunter and gain some extra loot in the process. When all of the Typhon de Leon recordings in a certain location are found, Tannis will point you towards a T-marked chest that contains some of the gear that Typhon de Leon talks about in his adventures. You’ll want to look for these recordings. Not for the loot–though some of it is pretty good–but for the recordings themselves.

Why? Well, as it turns out, some of the information learned in the quest’s recordings do relate to a fairly big story reveal in Borderlands 3’s campaign. As a result, I wish I’d found more of them early on. You should do as much of this side quest as you can before visiting the fifth planet that becomes available in Borderlands 3. If you want to know why and don’t care about spoilers, then keep reading.

If you’re still on the fence about picking up Borderlands 3, consider reading our roundup of reviews on the game. In GameSpot’s Borderlands 3 review, I wrote, ” Borderlands 3 has a few stumbling blocks when it comes to bosses, but these fights are overshadowed by the game’s rewarding gunplay and over-the-top humor. The game’s character-driven narrative acts as a satisfying finale for the loot-shooter franchise, and the new mechanics and features–especially the reworked skill trees and weapon manufacturer effects–give you plenty of agency in how you want to play through it.”

Full warning: The remainder of this article goes into one of the biggest story spoilers in Borderlands 3’s campaign. If you don’t want to be spoiled, this is your chance to click away.

Eventually, the campaign will take you to the planet of Nekrotafeyo–which in it of itself is a massive reveal for the franchise–and here you’ll discover Typhon de Leon. As surprising as it is to see him alive, though, that’s not the big reveal.

The big reveal is what you learn next: that Typhon is the father of Tyreen and Troy Calypso, the twin antagonists of Borderlands 3. Apparently their repeated declarations that the vaults are their god-given right isn’t all bluster. A lot of information about Typhon, his wife, and their kids is loaded into the few hours of story that follow, and much of it makes a bit more sense and hits with greater emotional impact with the added context provided from Typhon’s audio recordings.

In a first for the franchise, Borderlands 3 leaves Pandora’s solar system and takes you to never-before-seen planets. Fairly early in the game’s campaign, you and the rest of the Crimson Raiders board the spaceship Sanctuary III and begin a treasure hunt for vaults scattered throughout the universe. Overall, you’ll visit five planets in Borderlands 3’s campaign–though you can travel to a few other interstellar locations that aren’t tied to planets, like a Maliwan station and Torgue’s Circle of Slaughter.

Your journey begins on Pandora, the planet that’s been the setting of Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and much of Tales of the Borderlands. You’ll next go to Promethea, the capital planet of Atlus. Unlike Pandora, Promethea does have civilization, with sprawling cities full of towering skyscrapers. Your main contact on Pandora is Tales from the Borderlands’ Vaughn, who’s now become a bandit leader, while your go-to person on Promethea is the coffee-addicted Lorelei.

You’ll also get to finally visit Athenas–which is first mentioned in Borderlands 2. Athenas is home to the pacifist monastic organization known as the Order of the Impending Storm, which used a young Maya’s reputation as a Siren to scare the rest of the planet into obeying them for years. Maya eventually killed the Order’s leader and traveled to Pandora to be a Vault Hunter in order to learn about the origin of the Sirens. In Borderlands 3, the Crimson Raiders turn to Maya to provide you with the information you need to know to make your way around Athenas.

Eden-6 is also on your itinerary, a lush jungle planet that acts as the planetary base for the Jakobs weapon manufacturer. Like Pandora, no actual civilization has been able to gain traction on Eden-6. This is largely thanks to the planet’s ecosystem–the most dangerous wildlife in Borderlands 3 is found on Eden-6, ranging from the semi-sentient monkey-like Jabbers to the fire-breathing dinosaur-like Saurians. Though many of your missions on Eden-6 come from Wainwright Jakobs, you’ll also turn to his boyfriend, Sir Hammerlock, and the mercenary-turned-rebel leader Clay for getting the lay of the land.

The final planet in Borderlands 3 is a bit of a spoiler, so click away now if you want to keep it a surprise. Again, minor story spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

The fifth planet you visit in Borderlands 3 is Nekrotafeyo, the former home of the long-dead race that created the Vaults, the Eridians. A planet that’s long believed to be a myth, Nekrotafeyo now contains the secrets of the Great Vault, a place that supposedly contains an immense power. The Great Vault can only be opened by acquiring the unique totems of four different vaults. You begin Borderlands 3 with one already in your possession–the map found in the vault at the end of Borderlands 2–so you’ll need to race to find three more before the Calypso twins can get their hands on the power found in the Great Vault.

In GameSpot’s Borderlands 3 review, I wrote, “Borderlands 3 has a few stumbling blocks when it comes to bosses, but these fights are overshadowed by the game’s rewarding gunplay and over-the-top humor. The game’s character-driven narrative acts as a satisfying finale for the loot-shooter franchise, and the new mechanics and features–especially the reworked skill trees and weapon manufacturer effects–give you plenty of agency in how you want to play through it.”

Given the series traditional love for referencing pop culture, and given how prevalent battle royale games have become in the years since the release of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, it’s of little surprise that the sub-genre would appear in Borderlands 3. In Borderlands 3, you can participate in a battle royale side quest that’s given to you by Moxxi. It’s called Kill Killavolt.

In Kill Killavolt, Moxxi tasks you with killing one of her ex-lovers, Killavolt. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to get to him as he’s taken to wearing a near-indestructible suit that channels massive amounts of electricity. Moxxi believes the only time he’s vulnerable is when he’s having sex, and thus tasks you with entering the battle royale competition in which the sole victor wins the opportunity to spend the night alone with Killavolt. Moxxi then gifts you with a means of shorting out Killavolt’s suit, which will allow you to hold your own against him once he’s let his guard down around you.

Despite taking place within a battle royale, several of the standard rules for a battle royale do not apply to the mission. You can afford to die without losing all of your progress, for example, and the battlefield you’re thrown into does not shrink as time goes on. Like a battle royale, however, you do have to kill all of your competition. And this mission lasts a very long time, so you’ll need to regularly stop to loot for ammo and health or you’ll risk finding yourself in a firefight without any means of defending yourself. So yeah, Borderlands 3 kind of has a battle royale, if only in the loosest sense of the term.

When we say this mission is long, we mean it takes up an entire area of Borderlands 3 and can last up to 40 minutes. It goes on for such a long time that there are additional side missions you can find to do in the midst of participating in the battle royale–one of which even gives you a grenade launcher that shoots explosive poop that’s very helpful for fighting against Killavolt. You’ll know which side mission gives you the poop gun, trust us–it’s very difficult to miss. You can see the gun in action in the video embedded above.

Killavolt is one of the earliest bullet-sponge bosses in Borderlands 3, as he’s (obviously) resistant to shock damage but he also wears shields–which are strong against everything except shock damage. So make sure you just have a big damage dealer firearm before taking Killavolt on. You’ll need it.

In GameSpot’s Borderlands 3 review, I wrote, “Borderlands 3 has a few stumbling blocks when it comes to bosses, but these fights are overshadowed by the game’s rewarding gunplay and over-the-top humor. The game’s character-driven narrative acts as a satisfying finale for the loot-shooter franchise, and the new mechanics and features–especially the reworked skill trees and weapon manufacturer effects–give you plenty of agency in how you want to play through it.”

This is an advance review out of the Toronto International Film Festival. Abominable opens Sept. 27 in the US, Sept. 19 in Australia, and Oct. 11 in the UK.

Abominable is an adorable if somewhat derivative animated adventure in which a group of kids journey through China in an effort to return their Yeti friend to his home atop Mount Everest — a storyline that makes sense considering the film is a co-production between America’s DreamWorks Animation and China’s Pearl Studio, and has therefore been fine-tuned to appeal to both markets. But while the kids are likable and the Yeti impossibly cute, this tale has been told countless times before, and oftentimes in more engaging fashion.

Continue reading…

Like most games these days, Borderlands 3 is currently experiencing its fair share of launch-day issues. One of the most prominent manifests on PlayStation 4 when two players are playing in split-screen and one pops open the menu to tweak their gear or skills. After numerous players reported this issue and IGN confirmed it with our own testing, A 2K representative confirmed to us that it and Gearbox are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. The complete statement follows.

“We are aware that in some cases during split-screen couch co-op play, players can experience lag while in heavy combat and one of the players goes into their ECHOdevice and tries to navigate the skill trees and menus. While we will continue to work to optimize the Borderlands 3 experience, we’d advise split-screen players to prep for combat ahead of big encounters, and not leave a teammate to fight solo mid firefight!”

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It’s been 35 years since Ghostbusters first hit theaters in 1984, giving the world one of the best horror-comedy movies of all time. Since then, the franchise has spawned a sequel, cartoon adaptations, video games, a reboot, and an upcoming continuation of the original film. What it hasn’t led to, however, is a haunted maze at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. At least, not until this year.

Ghostbusters is a featured Horror Nights 2019 attraction at both Universal Studios Orlando and Hollywood, giving fans a chance to step into the movie and experience some of its biggest scares–and funniest jokes. Because that’s the line you have to carefully walk when you’re adapting a film like Ghostbusters into a haunted maze. Thankfully, the creative teams at both parks–who created two different mazes–were up to the challenge.

“That is a question we asked ourselves for a couple weeks. How do we tackle comedy and horror?” Charles Gray, show director at Universal Orlando, admitted when GameSpot asked about finding the right balance between horror and comedy. “All the punch lines and everything is delivered a very specific way.” He’s not wrong. Chances are when you think of Ghostbusters, Bill Murray delivering a classic Venkman line floats through your head just as often as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man getting roasted.

Instead of trying to work around those iconic lines and moments, though, Gray and his team instead integrated them into the horror. “What at first was a challenge of all these things you want to see [and] things you want to hear that are not scary, [we then] started to develop a way to use us to our advantage,” he continued. “So as you go through and you are enthralled by the decor and the scenery of the scene, all of a sudden, boom, a terror dog is right next to you, because you’re so engrossed in what’s around you. We also found ways to include lines of dialogue that you wanted to hear at the end of other triggers. So randomly as you go through the house, you will hear those lines that you want to hear.”

The result is a maze that doesn’t skimp on the silliness or the screams. While you’ll see some of the best scenes play out from the movie–and indeed encounter a Venkman proclaiming, “We came, we saw, and we kicked its ass”–you’ll also get slimed by Slimer, venture through the iconic firehouse headquarters of the team and face-off with the aforementioned giant marshmallow monster.

It’s unlike just about anything the Horror Nights teams on both coasts have tackled before. And while it might not be the most disturbing maze you’ll see at Horror Nights on either coast–good luck surviving House of 1,000 Corpses–it’s definitely one of the most fun you’ll experience.

Halloween Horror Nights is open now at both Universal Studios parks. It runs through November 2 at Universal Studios Orlando and November 3 at Universal Studios Hollywood.