Month: October 2019

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint has plenty of challenging enemies to fight, who each demand you to be at your tactical best. Compared to its predecessor, enemies are far more intelligent and organized. Aside from the special ops-trained Wolves unit, one of the most significant additions to the enemy roster are drones, and gosh, are they a handful.

If you play stealth, the best way to avoid these mechanical headaches is to cover yourself with Cloaking Spray, which can make you invisible to them for a limited time. However, if you didn’t choose the Panther class, then this repellant isn’t available until after you complete the side mission called “Cover Up”–which is given to you by Skell scientist Christina Cromwell.

You can only meet Cromwell after you rescue Jace Skell and take him back to Erewhon. That said, the version of the Cloaking Spray you’re given lasts 30 seconds instead of a full-minute and offers +10% Drone Evasion instead of +100%. We highly recommend unlocking the Panther class if you’re ever considering tackling a mission stealthily.

Your only other option for taking out Drones “quietly” is waiting for it to get to a side of the map that isn’t populated by guards. A well-placed shot from a powerful sniper rifle should suffice, but still, cross your fingers that the resulting explosion doesn’t alert the opposition. It’s not the best, but there are simply no guaranteed options to incapacitating them silently.

If you don’t mind fighting drones directly and alerting everyone around you, then stock up on EMP grenades and rockets. Ground drones can’t access elevated positions, so it’s best to attack from there to inhibit their capabilities. For the more powerful drones, it’s best to cheese it and use an attack helicopter with rockets to destroy them, especially if you’re under-leveled.

In Breakpoint, drones are a constant headache no matter the approach you choose to take, but it’s best to be prepared. If you find any other useful tactics, let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, we’ll be updating this guide with more findings in the coming days.

For more about Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, check out our spoiler-free beginner’s guide and our guide about how blueprints work. For everything else Breakpoint-related, read our feature rounding up everything you need to know.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is out now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can read our most significant thoughts about the full game so far in our early review impressions. You can also check out what other outlets think of the game in our review roundup.

It’s hard to overstate how much better Destiny 2 has become in the last year. The Forsaken expansion and the smaller updates that followed added variety in activities that meant you could earn rewards while playing your favorite content, as well as a huge amount of new, weird lore to sift through and fun secrets to uncover. It’s not a stretch to say Destiny as a franchise was the best it’s ever been in the second year of Destiny 2.

The new Shadowkeep expansion builds on those foundations in just about every way. While returning to the moon is a pretty good time in and of itself–the expansion leans hard on the spooky locale, which was part of Destiny 1 but refreshed and enlarged for Destiny 2–it’s the smaller improvements to the way the game works that are really the standout. Destiny 2 is a stronger experience in Shadowkeep because Bungie has found ways to make it even more fun to play.

Forsaken made some effort to establish Destiny 2 as a game that’s constantly evolving. Instead of dropping a series of big content updates with little happening between them, Destiny 2’s second year became a drip-feed of new stuff that helped keep the game compelling, for the most part, month after month.

Bungie has said this approach is how it wants to handle the game going forward, and Shadowkeep represents a big step in that direction. That means at least across the first few days, the expansion feels a bit truncated; there’s a lot more Bungie has detailed that’s just not in the game yet. Destiny 2 story campaigns have always been a touch lackluster–they usually pack cool individual missions, but they almost always end quickly and rarely amount to more than chasing down some big enemy and putting them in the ground. Shadowkeep’s main story is also on the short side, wrapping up in a four or five dedicated hours (and less once you start leveling alternate characters who benefit from the high-level gear you’ve already procured). It’s also clearly the first part of a much larger tale, one that Bungie says will play out over the entire year. As such, it presents something of an unsatisfying journey; it’s the first few steps, rather than a complete arc, and you might be a bit surprised when it’s suddenly over.

Shadowkeep sees the return of a Destiny 1 character, Eris Morn, who was central to two previous expansions: The Dark Below and The Taken King. Here, Eris has learned that the death-worshipping enemy alien race, the Hive, has discovered something on the moon that’s conjuring up phantoms of past foes and allies, returning deadly facsimiles of them to life. In a way, it’s a big reunion tour of old Destiny content. Eris is back, you return to the D1 location of the moon, which we haven’t seen in two years, and you fight slightly watered-down versions of big bad guys you’ve previously defeated, such as Dark Below raid boss Crota and Destiny 2 vanilla boss Ghaul. Since we haven’t been back to the moon for two whole years, it’s something of an amped-up nostalgia trip. But we’re still waiting to reach the long-term endgame content that will wrap up some of these story threads.

It is cool, however, to hang out on the moon, especially because its spooky factor has gone up. Lunar tunnels are filled with frightening screams of hidden terrors, there are plenty of tough enemies to dispatch, and the whole place carries an air of haunted mystery. It seems we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s hidden on the moon so far. Destiny is at its best when it’s full of secrets for the community to band together to discover, and it appears there will be lots to find on the moon during Season of the Undying, the first season of Year Three.

The new content is all generally pretty fun, though it does feel a bit thin, at least in the early going and especially compared to the big, layered content offering that was Forsaken. Part of the issue is that the new seasonal approach means we’re still waiting on additional activities, like the Vex Offensive, which starts in the days to come and is effectively a part of Shadowkeep that’s not yet available. The story campaign has some exciting moments as Guardians band together to attack and infiltrate the new Scarlet Keep location and discover what the Hive is up to. Nightmare Hunts, the new high-level gear-grind activity on the moon, are pretty much mini-Strikes, making them quick, palatable boss fights that help you grab new gear. Exploring the moon has a lot to offer as well–though a lot of the location is made up of old areas, they’re deep and maze-like, and every trip into their depths feels deliciously dangerous.

Where Shadowkeep really excels, however, is less in the content to work through and more in the myriad smaller changes Bungie has made to totally revamp Destiny 2. The biggest changes focus on making character builds a bigger part of the experience, giving you a chance to experiment with weapons and armor not just to make your character more powerful in general, but more powerful in ways that specifically meet your particular play style and needs.

Driving that focus is the new approach to weapon and armor mods, which allows you to mix and match elements that were previously unmovable perks on particular pieces of gear. In the past, you had to spend so much time switching gear in order to make your overall stats go up that more nuanced numbers, like how fast your grenades recharged or how quickly you moved, could generally be ignored. Making sure you had the best rolls on particular gear only really mattered in the game’s toughest activities and to the most hardcore of players.

With Armor 2.0 and the new weapon mod system, you can move those perks (now as individual mods) between armor sets to build a few pieces of gear with exactly the capabilities you want. You’re also no longer penalized for experimenting since mods aren’t consumed on use. It means that once you start to get some pieces of armor and weapons that work really well for you, it’s possible to continually tweak them to fit how you want to play the game and your particular role on a team.

I’m still early on in the process of seeing just how useful the system is–moving mods around is great, but how much freedom you actually get and whether you really need to care about them will become more apparent after spending more time in the endgame and upcoming seasonal content. But even early on, the system is providing more opportunities to think and develop character builds than I’ve been doing through most of the five years I’ve played Destiny. On paper, this is an improvement Destiny desperately needed.

The early leveling system has been improved significantly as well, making the climb to the endgame a lot more reasonable. Leveling up your character is (mostly) gone in favor of constantly chasing gear with better Power numbers. Up to the soft Power level cap, every drop is a useful one–giving you a chance to try out a host of different weapons and armor in various circumstances before you get to Shadowkeep’s toughest content. Shadowkeep’s change to move experience points from a needless character-leveling system to a battle pass also helps a major ongoing Destiny problem of running out of things to do as you approach maximum level. Everything earns you experience to advance your battle pass, so there’s a lot less wasted time chasing useless rewards.

Evaluating a game like Destiny 2 is always tough, especially now that Bungie’s putting more of its chips on long-term, evolving content. There’s still a lot that won’t be clear until I’ve been able to spend more time with the game. My initial experience with the post-soft cap endgame climb is that it is, in fact, pretty grind-heavy. After only a couple of days, however, it’s tough to really get a sense of how satisfying or frustrating the path to reach Shadowkeep’s pinnacle activities will be.

I’m also still waiting for new activities that will launch in the days to come and change from there. No review of a Destiny expansion would be complete without addressing its raid–Bungie’s raids are consistently the most inventive, clever, and difficult experiences in Destiny, but we won’t see the raid until it launches on October 5. A new seasonal activity also drops with the first completion of the raid, and seems likely to advance the story and help with providing higher-level players with more to do.

What’s clear from just the first few days of Shadowkeep is that it represents a shift in the fundamentals of Destiny 2, and that has only improved the game. Returning to the moon is full of spooky fun, and while Shadowkeep might not be as huge as Forsaken, it still provides some impressive additions to the world that will take time to fully explore. More meaningful choices in Shadowkeep, even in the early hours, are pushing me to think beyond just packing my most powerful guns and shooting everything in my path. It remains to be seen just how much new choice and nuance these improvements will provide at the highest levels of play, but they absolutely represent a giant leap forward for Destiny 2.

Editor’s note: We will be playing more Shadowkeep, including the Garden of Salvation Raid, before finalizing this review and the score. Stay tuned for the final review in the coming days.

The first week of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is coming to a close and Xur has appeared again. Here’s where to go to find him and check out his exotics with the new Armor 2.0 system. Captured on PC.

Epic has waded into the discussions around whether Fortnite’s new skill-based matchmaking system is balanced, saying the goal is to create “fairer matches.”

The new matchmaking process disregards what platform you’re playing on, and instead attempts to drop you in with players of similar skill. It means you could be playing on a map with mobile and PC players together.

“With the rollout, we’ve seen a lot of discussion about potentially unfair competitive advantages from pooling players together across platforms and input devices,” Epic wrote in a blog post. “The new matchmaking system, however, accounts for various skill levels across different platforms and control inputs, and groups players of similar skill levels together.

Continue reading…

The iconic on-rails zombie shooters that dominated 90s arcades, House of the Dead 1 and 2, are being remade.

Publisher Forever Entertainment confirmed on Twitter that a deal has been signed, though no further details are available at this point. We don’t know what platforms the remakes will land on, nor when they might release.

“Hi Guys! We confirm the signing of the agreement regarding remakes of the games ‘The House of the Dead’ and ‘The House of the Dead 2’,” reads the tweet. “No platforms or release dates have been confirmed, and unfortunately we can’t say anything more for now.”

Continue reading…

Director Martin Scorsese has shared his view on comic book movies, admitting that although he has previously given Marvel movies a chance, in his opinion they are “not cinema.”

As reported by Comicbook.com, the veteran filmmaker recently sat down with Empire magazine for a career-spanning interview, in which he was asked about the superhero genre and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told the publication. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Continue reading…

This competition is sponsored by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. 

 

To celebrate the launch of the epic X-Men: Dark Phoenix on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital Download, we’ve teamed up with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Toshiba to offer you the chance to experience an immersive event and film screening session at a central London location. A part of London will be transformed into an X-Men Dark Phoenix world, where you can experience the two sides of Jean Gray. Guests will then watch the star-studded culmination of the X-Men saga on a premium Toshiba home cinema set-up.

Continue reading…

If you love both space fantasy and dinosaur bones (and who doesn’t?), a new graphic novel called Alien Bones has found a way to combine the two into one epic, all-ages adventure.

Created by writer Chris “Doc” Wyatt (Marvel’s Rocket and Groot) and artist Chris Grine (Time Shifters), Alien Bones stars a ten-year-old boy named Liam Mycroft, who roams the galaxy with his paleontologist father in search of dinosaur bones on different planets. When his father disappears in the ruins of an ancient civilization, Liam must team up with his friend Dianna and his faithful robot and dinosaur sidekicks to unravel a giant mystery that affects all life in the universe.

We have an exclusive preview of the graphic novel below, one that shed slight on the cosmic threat Liam and his friends are faced with in this epic adventure:

Continue reading…

Joker spoilers ahead!

The Clown Prince of Crime finally has his own, standalone film in the aptly-titled Joker, and the movie has officially arrived in theaters. And although it may not be your average comic book movie–the MCU, this is not–Joker still has plenty of Easter eggs and references that you might miss on your first viewing.

These range from nods to Batman history, to surprise cameos you may not have noticed, and beyond. So without further clowning around, here are the Easter eggs and references you might appreciate in Joker.

“Super Rats”

The “super rats” mentioned on the news don’t refer directly back to anything in Batman history, but given that Gotham is basically New York City, rats and Batman’s hometown go together like Joaquin Phoenix and getting way too into movie roles.

Beyond that, there’s a lesser-known Batman villain called Ratcatcher, and an episode of the 1960s TV show called “When The Rat’s Away, The Mice Will Play,” although it doesn’t seem like the episode actually had anything to do with rats.

1. “Super Rats”

The “super rats” mentioned on the news don’t refer directly back to anything in Batman history, but given that Gotham is basically New York City, rats and Batman’s hometown go together like Joaquin Phoenix and getting way too into movie roles.

Beyond that, there’s a lesser-known Batman villain called Ratcatcher, and an episode of the 1960s TV show called “When The Rat’s Away, The Mice Will Play,” although it doesn’t seem like the episode actually had anything to do with rats.

2. Murray Franklin

There’s more to Murray Franklin than meets the eye. The late night talk show host is played by Robert De Niro, the star of the Martin Scorsese movies (Taxi Driver, King of Comedy) that Joker director Todd Phillips pays homage to with this film. Even more significantly, Franklin is strikingly similar to the Jerry Lewis character De Niro played opposite in King of Comedy.

3. Who’s Laughing Now?

Arthur’s character bears more than a passing resemblance to De Niro’s character in The King of Comedy. In particular, Arthur’s tendency to imagine himself on the Murray Franklin show, chatting with the host and interacting with the audience, called De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin to mind. (Side note: If you haven’t seen The King of Comedy, fix that as soon as possible–it’s an excellent film.)

4. You Talkin’ To Me?

Arthur’s other clear influence is Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, another mentally ill loner who lashes out violently. The scenes where Arthur is toying around with the gun in his apartment specifically resemble the similar scene in Taxi Driver that features the iconic line, “You talkin’ to me?”

5. Send in the Clowns

The song that the Wall Street guys sing to Arthur as they bully him on the train is “Send in the Clowns,” which was written by American composer Stephen Sondheim for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music.

6. Bryan Callen’s Cameo

You might recognize one of Arthur Fleck’s co-workers as Bryan Callen, a comedian who played Eddie in The Hangover, which was also directed by Todd Phillips. Callen said on the podcast The Fighter and The Kid that he plays an aging stripper in Joker, so his part may have originally been larger.

7. Young Bruce Wayne

Young Bruce Wayne–AKA Future Batman, not that a sequel is guaranteed or anything–is played in this movie by Dante Pereira-Olson. You might recognize the young actor if you’ve watched Joaquin Phoenix’s 2017 movie You Were Never Really Here, in which Pereira-Olson played the childhood version of Phoenix’s character.

8. Oh Hi Alfred

Batman’s perpetual butler, assistant, and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth, has a brief appearance in this movie as well. He’s played by Douglas Hodge, who you might recognize from his previous roles in Penny Dreadful, Black Mirror, Red Sparrow, Lost in Space, and more.

9. Detectives Garrity and Burke

Bill Camp and Shea Whigham’s characters, respectively detectives Garrity and Burke, have no direct analogs in Batman history. However, there is a detective Tommy Burke in the comics, who “is the comedian and ladies’ man of the Gotham City Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit,” according to his DC fandom wiki page. That doesn’t sound at all like Wigham’s character in Joker, so to be honest, knowing this movie, the name might actually be a coincidence.

10. Justin Theroux’s Cameo

As Arthur prepares for his appearance on the Murray Franklin show, he studies a tape featuring the appearance of a guest named Ethan Chase, on the show promoting something called American Playboy. Chase is actually played by Justin Theroux (The Leftovers, Maniac, Mulholland Drive) in a small but fun cameo.

11. Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

The film playing at the event Arthur crashes in order to confront Thomas Wayne is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, a 1936 comedy that was deemed “culturally significant” and preserved by the Library of Congress in the US National Film Registry in 1989. It’s a commentary on poor working conditions in the age of industrialization–themes relevant both to Joker as a movie, and to the real world in 2019.

12. All About That Paper Boi

The Arkham clerk who Arthur gets his mother’s records from is played by Brian Tyree Henry, who you might recognize as Paper Boi in Donald Glover’s FX show Atlanta–not to mention Miles Morales’s dad, Jefferson Davis, in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

13. In a White Room

The song “White Room” by the band Cream is featured in the movie, evoking obvious associations with the austere, padded rooms of mental hospitals like Arkham. That said, the rest of the lyrics–“In the white room with black curtains near the station,” etc.–don’t really have much to do with anything.

14. Marc Maron’s Role

We’ve known for some time that the G.L.O.W. star and host of popular podcast WTF with Marc Maron had a role in Joker, but his appearance in the movie was actually so quick that you might have missed it entirely. Maron appeared only in one scene, as Murray Franklin’s producer.

15. Zorro the Gay Blade

One of the movie references spotted toward the end of the film is Zorro the Gay Blade on the movie theater marquee. This is a real movie, considered a sequel to the 1940 film The Mark of Zorro. It was released by 20th Century Fox in 1981, which helps place the exact year in which Joker is set.

16. Arthur, Meet “Arthur”

You can also see a poster for the movie Arthur at the theater toward the end of the movie, another 1981 film, starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. Beyond the title, it doesn’t seem to have any relation with the movie Joker, besides placing it in a specific year.

17. “That’s Life”

Murray Franklin’s catchphrase is derived from the song, written by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon. The famous 1966 version by Frank Sinatra also plays during the movie. It’s a song about being down on your luck, but picking yourself back up, and having a sense of humor about your misfortune–which is undeniably appropriate for this film.