Month: October 2019

At the start of Season 3: Meltdown, Tae Joon “Crypto” Park was added to Apex Legends as the eleventh playable character. Like Season 1’s Octane and Season 2’s Wattson, you’ll need to drop 750 Apex Coins or 12,000 Legend Tokens to unlock him.

In the following guide, we detail all of Crypto’s unique abilities and how to best use them to counter other characters or shore up holes in your own squad’s defenses. If Season 3 is your introduction to Apex Legends, don’t worry–the new character, map, and gameplay changes make the battle royale very welcoming to newcomers. Below, you’ll find the rest of our character guides, giving you all the information you need to get started with the Legend of your choice.

Other Character Guides

• Wraith Guide: Be The Best Interdimensional Skirmisher
• Caustic Guide: Be The Best Toxic Trapper
• Gibraltar Guide: Be The Best Shielded Fortress
• Lifeline Guide: Be The Best Combat Medic
• Mirage Guide: Be The Best Holographic Trickster
• Pathfinder Guide: Be The Best Forward Scout
• Bangalore Guide: Be The Best Professional Soldier
• Bloodhound Guide: Be The Best Technological Tracker
• Octane Guide: Be The Best Adrenaline Junkie
• Wattson Guide: Be The Best Static Defender

Crypto’s General Overview

Crypto is Apex Legends’ second recon character. In this regard, his role on the battlefield is similar to Bloodhound: hunt down and identify enemies. However, unlike Bloodhound, who’s an aggressive tracker that seeks out squads to kill, Crypto places less emphasis on being on the frontline, as he’s better suited at finding enemies while remaining hidden.

Rarely does Crypto excel at spearheading his squad’s offensive. If you want to play as Crypto, you’re typically going to fulfill a support role, aiding your teammates in increasing their kill counts. Unlike most of the other Legends, Crypto does not possess an ability that allows him to easily escape a fight. As such, you need to ensure firefights are already stacked in your squad’s favor before you engage. Once you emerge from hiding and join the fray, you have to commit.

Crypto’s Abilities

Tactical Ability: Surveillance Drone – Deploy an aerial drone that allows you to view the surrounding area from above.

Crypto’s drone has a variety of uses. It can open and close doors, crack open loot bins, and retrieve fallen teammate’s respawn beacons. Point the drone’s camera at any of the Champion Squad banners throughout the arena and it will show you how many squads are in your immediate vicinity. Crypto can only summon one drone at a time, but he’s got an unlimited supply. Once the drone is destroyed, however, there’s a 40-second cooldown before he can summon another one.

Passive Ability: Neurolink – Enemies detected by the Surveillance Drone within 30 meters of your position are marked for you and your teammates to see.

Though you can tag enemies with your drone, marking them with Neurolink is what best helps your squad. Doing so highlights the enemy for your entire team, allowing allies to see targets through walls or smoke.

Ultimate Ability: Drone EMP – Your Surveillance Drone sets off an EMP blast that deals shield damage, slows enemies, and disables traps.

Crypto’s ultimate ability does 50 shield damage–outright destroying white body armor–and slows all enemies with an effect similar to Wattson’s Perimeter Security fences. Like other Legends, Crypto is affected by his own ultimate ability, so make sure you’re not in the blast zone when you activate the Drone EMP. The EMP blast is not limited by terrain, allowing you to use the attack as a bunker buster to hit a team hiding in a building.

Tips To Play As Crypto

Crypto is the only Legend to have his passive and ultimate ability tied to his tactical. This limits what you can do with him–every ability has to be done through your drone. Thus, mastering how to maneuver the drone to dodge enemy shots or weave among obstacles should be your first priority. Once your drone is destroyed you have to wait almost a full minute to use it again, and you won’t have access to any abilities until then. Keep your drone alive, only sacrificing it as a means to distract foes so your squad can retreat.

Though his abilities would suggest a long-range approach, Crypto is actually at his best in mid-range combat. Equipping a mid-range scope on the G7-Scout, R-301, Peacekeeper, or new Charge Rifle gives Crypto the ability to deal damage quickly from a slight distance. When a battle starts, you’re best bet is to find cover and send your drone skyward. Be careful, as Crypto can’t move while using his drone. Put your drone behind the attacking squad so they’re sandwiched between it and you. That way, if they want to destroy it, they’ll have to turn their back on you. Exit the drone, leave your hiding spot, and begin your attack. Even if the enemy hides behind cover, you and your squad will still be able to see them thanks to Neurolink. As you continue to shoot the opposition, your squadmates should rush to overwhelm the enemy.

If Drone EMP is ready to go, all the better. Follow the strategy above but use the ability as you’re exiting drone view and beginning your assault. The enemy team will then have to turn their backs on you to shoot down the drone and stop the EMP, or they’ll have to respond to your attack and take shield damage and be too stunned to run away. Either way, the odds will turn in your favor. You may want to save your EMP if the match is almost over, though. Given its ability to disable traps, Crypto can ruin an entire team’s defense in the final circle–disabling Caustic’s Nox Gas Traps and Wattson’s Perimeter Security and Interception Pylon. Plus the enemy team will take shield damage and be stunned.

When your allies are down, let your drone do the heavy lifting for you–especially if your teammate’s banner is outside the safe zone. The drone takes no damage from being outside the zone, allowing you to safely pick up your teammate’s respawn banner.

How To Mitigate Crypto’s Weaknesses

Because of how dependent Crypto is on his drone, his main weakness is actually just going up against someone who’s a good shot. The drone has one HP, so any attack from any gun, grenade, or ability will destroy it. You can’t really be sneaky with the drone either. Not only does it make a ton of noise, but enemies are alerted to when Neurolink has marked them. However, there are a few things you can do to hide your drone and make it more difficult to destroy.

Bangalore, Caustic, Lifeline, and Gibraltar can all hide the drone with their abilities. Bangalore’s Smoke Launcher and Caustic’s Nox Gas Traps create a smokescreen that hides the drone if you’re in an enclosed space, and positioning your drone behind a Lifeline’s Combat Medic shield gives you just enough time to mark enemies before the forcefield goes down. Even after the drone has been destroyed, Neurolink lasts a few seconds, giving you time to emerge from cover and fire on the enemy. Gibraltar’s Dome Shield provides a longer solution of the same strategy.

The Legend that best counters Crypto is Bloodhound, as the technological tracker can sniff out the hacker’s hiding spot while he’s piloting the drone and unaware of his surroundings. There’s no way to directly counter this yourself. You’ll just have to trust your team to watch your back. If you don’t, we suggest exiting your drone view the second you spot a Bloodhound, unless you’re very confident that you’ll get the drop on them before they get the drop on you.

A huge amount of content dropped into Apex Legends at the start of Season 3: Meltdown, including a brand-new map, World’s Edge. Kings Canyon has (at least temporarily) been removed from the battle royale, forcing all players to land on the new battlefield, which is great, because it makes Apex Legends exciting again.

Despite featuring the same number of major landmarks, World’s Edge feels a lot bigger, stretching across three distinct, interconnected areas. Most of the northern part of the map is covered in ice, the result of a factory accident gone horribly wrong, while the south is dominated by volcanoes and lava pits. Both areas include small settlements and leftover dig sites from the miners that once frequented the planet. Snaking between both regions are pockets of civilization–mostly major cities and transport hubs–with a moving train connecting all of them.

Large, imposing cliffs are also sprinkled throughout the map, many too tall to climb for certain characters. The unfamiliar terrain gives an added utility to new character Crypto, whose drone makes it easier to scout ahead and plan where to go next. To get around these roadblocks without him, you need to scout through tunnels that have been carved into the landscape and take ziplines that criss-cross at numerous points. Jump towers populate the map for easy redeployment, and you can use the environment to your advantage as well–leaping into geyser spouts propel you high enough into the sky to glide to a new location, for example.

At a glance, you can tell that everything’s different, presenting a more even playing field for newcomers that join at the start of Season 3, as they don’t have to worry about Apex Legends veterans knowing the map’s layout like the back of their hand (for now). Granted, there are influences of Kings Canyon throughout World’s Edge–the Overlook location, for example, is just a smaller variation of Kings Canyon’s cliffside Airbase–but the new map is just too wholly different from Apex Legends’ first one to consider them different sides of the same coin. And World’s Edge is a good map because it’s so different.

World’s Edge’s greatest strength is that it forces you to adopt new strategies for playing Apex Legends. After a pre-season and two whole seasons on Kings Canyon, I’d grown intimately familiar with every aspect of the map. I had my favorite spots, but I could go anywhere and comfortably know I’d be able to hold my own. No matter the location, I had strategies for looting it, fighting in it, and effectively escaping it. And, as a result, I could feel myself settling into familiar tactics and habits.

The same can’t be said for World’s Edge. The map seems designed to encourage long-distance duels, not close-quarters firefights like on Kings Canyon–in fact, the sheer distance between locations means you can easily go an entire match without running into another squad until the final circle. Snipers were rarely too big of a threat on Kings Canyon; if someone had a lock on you, a safe hiding place was never too far away. But on World’s Edge, getting caught out in the open can easily be a death sentence.

Which isn’t to say World’s Edge is unfairly balanced. Quite the opposite actually; the new map is designed with the same careful attention to detail as Kings Canyon. Despite the longer distance between landmarks, World’s Edge is almost completely interconnected. As opposed to solely relying on clearly marked paths on the ground, though, World’s Edge also puts those aforementioned underground tunnels and ziplines to use. Getting the drop on enemies from above by hopping from one zipline to the next, or coming up behind them from below presents satisfying ways to navigate to the next fight. Multileveled environments, like Capitol City and Sorting Factory, further emphasize verticality.

This added emphasis is certainly different from the horizontally-focused Kings Canyon, which prioritized having good spots to bunker down, so it’s a bit understandable as to why many veteran players dislike the new map. But World’s Edge encourages you to keep moving even if that’s not the strategy most Apex Legends players are used to. Most of the tunnels are wide at the ends but narrow in the middle, for instance, funneling you forward to get past a confined space. There aren’t many piles of high-tier loot outside the golden vaults either, so your squad has to stay on the move to gather the weapons, gear, and supplies necessary to survive. You can’t expect to land and find everything you need immediately.

Admittedly, there are certain areas I dislike in World’s Edge. Anytime a teammate tags The Dome, Skyhook, Refinery, or The Epicenter as a drop spot, I grow apprehensive. But that uncomfortable feeling, one created because I don’t know those locations very well, is why having a new map is exciting–it makes Apex Legends feel fresh again. I do want to return to Kings Canyon and meet the twelfth Legend but, for now anyway, World’s Edge is what Respawn’s battle royale needs.

There is, to put it mildly, a lot of new stuff going on in Destiny 2. The launch of Shadowkeep and Season of the Undying has brought a significant amount of changes and new content. As you advance through the season pass’s premium rewards, you’ll earn a new type of currency called Vex Mind Components. Ikora is said to accept them, but visiting her at the Tower doesn’t offer any option to trade them in. Here’s what we know about these new items so far.

Provided you’ve purchased Shadowkeep (and thus have access to the Season of the Undying’s premium track of battle pass rewards), reaching season rank 12 will earn you 25 Vex Mind Components. These are stored in the Consumables area of your inventory, and they’ll have to sit there for the time being. The description states, “Rare synthoneural components, essential in Vex Gate Network communication and navigation. Offer this to Ikora in exchange for Vex weapon artifacts.”

Chatting with Ikora will yield a familiar sight: She doesn’t have anything in her inventory. But that’s likely to change this coming Saturday, October 5, when the major event of Season of the Undying–the Vex Offensive–begins. (The new raid, Garden of Salvation, also launches that day.)

Once the Vex Offensive begins, you’ll presumably be able to hand in the Vex Mind Components as part of the new activity. We don’t know all the details at this point, but we’ll report back with details on exactly what these items get you and how it all works. Presumably you’ll be able to earn Vex Mind Components in other ways, but you’ll earn more as you work your way up the premium battle pass: It rewards you with 25 components at ranks 12, 32, 52, 72, and 92.

In the meantime, you can scope out some of the spots on the moon where the new activity may take place. In several areas around the map, you can see a diamond icon with a Vex symbol inside of it. These are designated warpgate hot spots known as Vex Invasion Zones, and the description states, “Sol Divisive Vex incursions are targeting this area and could strike at any time. Guardians are advised to remain on high alert while attempting to travel to or through this location.”

While we wait for this to begin, there’s plenty to do in the meantime once you finish Shadowkeep’s relatively short campaign. That includes tracking down dead Ghosts and completing Essence quests.

Ahead of Fortnite Season 11, which kicks off in just a few days, developer Epic Games is tweaking the way matchmaking works in the hit battle royale game–although not all of these changes have been warmly received. In particular, many in the community have expressed concerns over the fact the game now pairs players from different platforms together, potentially giving those on certain platforms an advantage.

In a new post on the official Fortnite website, Epic addresses these concerns, although it appears the developer is holding firm on its changes. “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. “The new matchmaking system, however, accounts for various skill levels across different platforms and control inputs, and groups players of similar skill levels together.”

The developer continues: “Our goal with the new matchmaking system is to create fairer matches for all of our players, which includes special considerations for each platform. This means that where similar skill exists, players may be paired against opponents from ALL platforms–whether they’re using mouse + keyboard, a controller, or touch input. We are closely monitoring match analytics and your feedback, and we’ll make adjustments to ensure everyone is playing a fair match.”

As part of these matchmaking changes, Epic is also introducing AI bots to the mix beginning in Season 11. According to the studio, these will “behave similarly to normal players” and are intended to help players hone their skills. The better players become, the fewer bots will appear in a match, Epic says.

Season 10 of Fortnite is being extended an extra week; the season will now end on October 13, with a set of Overtime challenges slated to go live on October 8. In the meantime, you can still complete any of other other weekly challenges from this season. If you need help finishing up any outstanding missions, you can find all of our maps and guides in our complete Fortnite Season 10 challenges roundup.

The latest game from developer Quantic Dream is a big success. Detroit: Become Human, which was originally released in May 2018, has now passed 3 million copies sold. Quantic Dream announced on Twitter that the game has hit 3.2 million copies on PS4 globally.

This is just the latest sales milestone for Detroit. In December 2019, publisher Sony announced that the game had reached 2 million copies sold.

Sales of Detroit are expected to continue to grow, as the game is scheduled to launch on PC later this year. The game is releasing as a timed-exclusive for the Epic Games Store.

Quantic Dream worked with Sony for a long time on its big games, including Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit, but the company is going multi-platform for its next release. Heavy Rain was released on PC in June, while Beyond: Two Souls came out for PC in July. Like Detroit, both titles are exclusive to the Epic Games Store through a timed-exclusivity deal between Epic and Quantic.

Detroit tells the story of three androids living in the future and grappling with their sentience. In this future, androids are deeply life-like and interwoven with society, and the game overall was generally well-received. For more, check out GameSpot’s Detroit review.

Since Monday, I’ve spent 24 full hours belly-crawling my way across Auroa – the fictional island-chain setting of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint on Xbox One X, most of it with a co-op partner by my side. I can confirm that, during nearly all of that time, I have been having fun with Ubisoft’s latest tale of Ghosts and grunts – though I’ve had to stop and ask myself that question and really think about it a couple of times. Part of the lack of undeniably fun moments is due to the fact that I feel like I’ve played this game already, several times over.

Breakpoint is exactly what I’ve come to expect from a Ubisoft open-world game: lots of progression systems that reward your every move; a big and beautiful open world to run, drive or fly across; and a few dozen outpost bases littered with bad dudes you can takedown in a number of ways. That’s a good thing in that Ubisoft’s open-world formula is so often used because it works well – it’s a good time if you like overlapping progression, constant reinforcement, and collectibles – but also that it feels a bit too familiar and is hard to get excited about. In this particular case, it’s also littered with bugs, glitches, and weird design choices that can halt its momentum right when it seems like it’s going to start picking up speed.

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Ahead of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint’s launch on October 4, Ubisoft has addressed its philosophy towards microtransactions and why it chose to remove some Time-Savers items that weren’t supposed to be available quite yet.

As reported by USGamer.net, Ubisoft took to its forums to discuss in-game purchasable content and how it “aimed at offering a fair and rewarding experience to our players however they want to experience our game, in solo, co-op, PvE or PvP.”

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