Month: January 2020

Xbox Game Pass is adding another four games to its Xbox One library over the remainder of January, including a few recent favorites. This comes just after Microsoft announced another set of PC games on the service. As always, the two lineups can be had with separate subscriptions, or one combined “Ultimate” subscription.

According to the post on the Major Nelson blog, the console version of the service will get A Plague Tale: Innocence and Indivisible on January 23, followed by Sea Salt and Fishing Sim World: Pro Tour on January 30.

A Plague Tale comes as no surprise since it was just announced for the PC service, but it’s still a treat as it was one of GameSpot’s best games of 2019. Indivisible also received a warm reception, especially for its lovely art style, creative combat system, and representation of Southeast Asian culture. Sea Salt is an action-strategy game in which you play as an elder god punishing humanity for defying you. Fishing Sim World is exactly what it says on the tin–a detailed simulation of everyone’s favorite way to sport while you nap.

In aaddition to A Plague Tale, the PC version of Game Pass also recently announced Children of Morta and Gris. A number of games are preparing to rotate out of the subscription soon, including Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Resident Evil 4, Saint’s Row the Third, The Division, and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.

Xbox Game Pass is an all-you-can-eat subscription service, granting a library of roughly 100 games. The Xbox One and PC libraries are slightly different, and you can subscribe to either one individually for $10 per month. Game Pass Ultimate combines the two, and also includes a subscription to Xbox Live Gold, for $15 per month. Check out some of our recommendations if you’re just getting started.

Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One

• A Plague Tale: Innocence — January 23
• Indivisible — January 23
• Sea Salt — January 30
• Fishing Sim World: Pro Tour — January 30

Leaving Xbox Game Pass Soon

• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Resident Evil 4
• Saint’s Row the Third
• The Division
• Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

One of the reasons why Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto left Bungie was because of the extended periods of crunch that negatively impacted his life. Speaking during a roundtable interview for his new game, Disintegration, Lehto said his new studio, V1 Interactive, is taking a stance against crunch and trying to do right by its employees for their health and happiness.

“One of the reasons I left Bungie–and I know one of the reasons people from the industry have joined us here at V1–is that many of us have seen the bad side of extended crunch periods that would go on for months and months … and what kind of human toll that took,” Lehto explained. “We don’t want to experience that, we don’t want to replicate that at all again [at V1]. So at V1, one of our primary goals with the studio is making sure that we create an atmosphere where everybody is intimately involved with what we’re working on, so there is a lot of responsibility on everybody’s shoulders. And everybody wears several hats.”

“We also value, incredibly, the health of everybody here–both physically and mentally. Making sure they have that time outside the office to be with their family,” Lehto added. “And we support them to be home when they need to be home, to go to their kids’ school concerts and to have the weekends to themselves. That is a very important part to me, and it’s one thing we’ve extended to everyone here at the studio.”

“We also value, incredibly, the health of everybody here–both physically and mentally.” — Marcus Lehto

Lehto assured people that he and his team work hard, while he also acknowledged that the team pushes extra hard when milestones come up. However, these periods of extended working hours are limited to around “a week or so.”

“It’s not like we don’t work hard–we work really hard. And at the end of every milestone, we maybe spend a week or so working extra hours,” he said.

This kind of intense work schedule, so long as it doesn’t lead to burn-out, can actually be a good thing, Lehto said. That’s because it brings the team even closer together as they collectively grind on a particular objective. So long as these periods of crunch are few and far between, this can be a positive, Lehto said.

Bungie is known for its periods of crunch. Engineering boss Luke Timmins recalled to GI.biz in 2017 how the 18 months leading up to the release of Halo 2 in 2004 were “brutal” and nearly destroyed Bungie. The developer was crunching for nearly the entire 18 months, he said, and during that time, developers were spending at least 50 hours per week.

“The Halo 2 crunch almost killed Bungie as a company,” he said. “It is the most I’ve ever seen humans work in a year and a half. It was brutal.”

Bungie is said to have adopted policies and practices after that to lessen the instances of crunch, but it still happened. For the first Destiny, there was a “department-wide crunch” for the engineering team, Timmins said, though the team never had to crunch on any of the game’s numerous expansions. Destiny 2 also had no “full, enforced crunch,” he said.

In 2019, following Bungie’s split from Activision for the Destiny series, Bungie announced it would delay a Destiny 2 patch so its developers did not have to crunch.

As for Lehto, he left Bungie in 2012 while the original Destiny was just getting started.

Going back to Lehto’s new game, Disintegration, the first beta test for the FPS launches on January 28–here’s how to sign up. The game, which is made by a team of around 30 people, mixes FPS and strategy elements to create a type of game that Lehto says has never existed before. You fly around the map on a “grav-cycle” while simultaneously commanding soldiers on the ground. Check out the gameplay footage above to see Disintegration in action.

Here are some other things Lehto said about Disintegration:

• The “incredibly ambitious” campaign will take you around 9-10 hours to complete, though it could stretch into the mid-teens depending on how you play
• There will be no ranked multiplayer or stat-tracking at launch, though this could be added down the road
• There will be microtransactions that allow players to customize their grav-cycles
• It’s possible V1 will support the PS5 and Xbox Series X down the road, but nothing is confirmed yet. The same is true for Nintendo Switch

Disintegration is published by Private Division, the independent games label run by Grand Theft Auto parent company Take-Two. Private Division also published Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds and Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets’ new game, Ancestors.

The Witcher is really, really popular–so much so that Netflix’s CEO gave it special mention above all others during the company’s latest earnings report. Reed Hastings not only called out The Witcher as the company’s latest big win, he described the series as a “massive new franchise.” He also suggested that it will continue to live on for years and years.

Hastings said he was really happy with The Witcher’s performance and that it helped Netflix end 2019 “on a high note.” He described the show as a “massive new franchise that will develop season after season.”

His line about “season after season” suggests that Netflix is keen to invest in The Witcher for a number of seasons to come. Netflix believed in The Witcher from early on, as the company greenlit the second season before the first even premiered.

Season 2 is expected to debut in 2021, and it seems Season 3 may follow after that, though no announcements have been made.

The Witcher Season 1 was viewed by 76 million accounts over its first four weeks, and the show is tracking to become Netflix’s “biggest” season one of any Netflix show ever. Netflix recently changed how it counts viewers, so the numbers are inflated–but still impressive.

A collection of Mortal Kombat remasters that Warner Bros. reportedly pulled the plug on back in early 2019 appears to have been resurrected, based on a new rating spotted in the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) database. Mortal Kombat Kollection Online, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch, has been rated PEGI 18 due to “frequent strong violence.” The entry can still be found in the PEGI rating database at the time of writing.

The explanatory text provided alongside the new PEGI rating describes Mortal Kombat Kollection Online as “the original Mortal Kombat trilogy that MK fans always wanted” and makes reference to “[u]pgraded art, gameplay, and online features.”

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In April 2019 it was reported that Blind Squirrel Games (BioShock: The Collection, Forklift Simulator 2019) had been preparing to work on a remastered collection of the first three Mortal Kombat games following a successful pitch to Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, but Warner Bros. quickly opted not to have Blind Squirrel Games continue on the project. WB reportedly claimed it could not “trust development of such an important project to a team without any completed game titles.”

The PEGI scheme covers the bulk of Europe and the UK (and Israel) in a similar fashion to North America’s Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).

There’s certainly plenty going on in the Mortal Kombat realm at the moment, with Joker joining the Mortal Kombat 11 roster next week, production on the upcoming live-action film reboot wrapping last month, and the recent announcement of the new animated movie Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge.

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Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.

Temtem, a new PC MMO that is clearly inspired by Pokemon, has just launched in Early Access on Steam. The game, which costs $35, lets you catch, train, and battle with your Temtem, and explore the world alongside other players.

It’s a good proposition for PC players who want a Pokemon-style game, or even players who were disappointed with Pokemon Sword/Shield, which it’s currently cheaper than. That might not remain the game forever, though, as developer Crema has suggested that the game’s price will rise in the future, before it has left Early Access.

On the game’s Steam page, a developer Q&A states that the game is about 50% complete right now, and will take about 20 hours to play through. The final product will be much bigger, but people buying the game now are paying less than customers will have to pay for later versions of the game.

“We believe in giving advantages to our early supporters, so the current Early Access price will be raised gradually as we ship new content and features,” it says. It’s unclear when this might happen, or how high the price would go, but if you’re interested in the game it might be worth picking it up sooner rather than later.

In her hands-on preview, Kallie Plagge said that the game is an interesting twist on what we’ve seen before from the Pokemon series.

Gears of War boss Rod Fergusson has spoken about the importance of inclusive game design and diversity in the workplace. During his keynote address as PAX South, Fergusson said he was inspired by the Stephen Frost quote, “Unless you consciously include, you will unconsciously exclude.”

“We had to find a way to welcome new players and create an on-board for them. The way we really focused on doing that was through inclusive design,” Fergusson explained.

The veteran game developer said his perspective as a straight white man limits his ability to create games that appeal to people from all different walks of life and social circles.

“If you live within your own tower, and your own insular base–I’m a straight white old male–my social circles and my demographics and all the people I reach could potentially be limited, or if not limited, biased in some ways,” he said. “If I don’t consciously make the decision to break out of that idea and go and talk to other people and hire people who are diverse to bring new opinions and new ideas and grow–if you don’t do that intentionally, then you are going to accidentally leave people out.”

Over the years, Fergusson said the Gears of War franchise has done more to “lean in” to further inclusivity and diversity. He acknowledged that the franchise is known for being macho–it features giant men and huge guns, after all–though he said he is proud of the steps the studio has taken to make games that appeal to more people. The latest entry, Gears 5, features the Kait Diaz in the lead role; it’s the first female protagonist in the series.

The newest episode of GameSpot’s Audio Logs features Fergusson speaking about, among other things, inclusive game design. Check it out in the video embed above.

Fergusson’s talk at PAX South was wide-ranging. He also touched on his time working on BioShock Infinite, while he also recalled leaving 2K over “creative differences.”

The next Gears game coming up is Gears Tactics, which is a turn-based strategy game for Xbox One and PC made by Splash Damage. No new entries in the mainline series have been announced, but given Gears 5 was such a huge success, a sequel is likely in the works.

Production on the first Disney+ MCU TV show, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, is well underway and, naturally, as filming progresses so do the “leaked” photos of characters on set courtesy of fans lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the action as it unfolds. That’s exactly how we’ve received our first real look at Wyatt Russell’s new MCU character, John Walker–AKA US Agent.

If your immediate reaction to Walker’s look is “wait, isn’t that just a new Captain America suit?” Don’t worry–you’re not alone. Fans on social media are eagerly pointing out the similarities between Walker’s patriotic uniform and the many costumes worn by Steve Rogers across the MCU’s phases 1 through 3. But these overlaps aren’t a coincidence and they’re certainly not an accident. In fact, Walker looking like a knock off Steve Rogers happens to be the entire point of his character.

No, really. That’s it. That’s John Walker in a nutshell. Let me explain.

Originally called Super-Patriot, John Walker was introduced back in the mid ’80s with a pretty simple purpose: He was, first and foremost, meant to be a supervillain that could exemplify the darker side of patriotism against Steve Rogers’ heroism–someone who believed that Steve, and by extension Captain America, was espousing all the wrong values in American society. Walker thought Steve was “outdated” and wanted to replace him, even going as far as to manufacture fake crises that he could act on to earn himself media attention. Getting the press on his side was one of Walker’s biggest goals and something he actually had a ton of success in (the public being tricked into believing that Captain America actually sucked was a fairly common recurring theme in his ongoing comic, especially through the ’60s and ’70s). By the end of Walker’s first story arc, he had the media in the palm of his hand and Steve both blackballed by the public and physically on the ropes.

Naturally, this whole fiasco culminated (at least indirectly–Steve being threatened with a major tax fraud case by the government was also part of it–don’t ask) into another common, recurring theme in Captain America comics: Steve Rogers becoming completely disillusioned with both the government and his mantle and deciding to give it all up and reinvent himself. He quit being Captain America, turned over the shield, and created a new identity for himself: The Captain. He also grew a beard and fought a bear. It was a very exciting time.

But of course, simply handing the shield and the costume back to the government didn’t put an end to them. This was before Steve’s identity as Captain America was publicly known, so inventing a new Captain America was as easy as handing the suit and the shield over to someone else. This is where media darling John Walker got his chance, adopting the mantle as the new Captain America while Steve was off living as a renegade hero.

But, of course, it all went very, very wrong not long after–who could have guessed that a radically patriotic supervillain would eventually make an extremely bad Captain America?

Naturally, Walker was eventually sent in to try and stop The Captain, a fight that resulted in Steve exposing Walker for the monster he was and returning to his proper station. Stripped of his title, Walker was forced to do some real soul searching before he eventually took on the name US Agent and adopted a modified version of the costume Steve wore as The Captain because apparently he’s genuinely never had an original thought in his life.

Obviously, Walker’s story can’t play out exactly the way it did in the comics in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. For one thing, Steve is off the table thanks to Avengers: Endgame–but that doesn’t mean the themes of the story will change much. Judging by the set photos, we can assume Walker’s government-sponsored status is going to be in full effect, but instead of being sent after bear-punching vigilante Steve Rogers, he’s likely going to be aiming for Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson, the two men directly in the running to pick up the Captain America mantle in Steve’s wake. But the idea of the government trying to promote a patriotic superhero that they can keep on a very short leash certainly doesn’t need to change–after all, Steve Rogers made a pretty spectacular point of burning his bridges back during Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, so it’s only natural that Walker come into play in one way or another. But regardless–looking like a “knock off Captain America” is exactly what he’s supposed to be.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier hits Disney+ in the Fall of this year.

The upcoming PS4-exclusive Ghost of Tsushima is one of the biggest games coming in 2020, and while we won’t be able to play it until later this year, you can grab a free PS4 dynamic theme right now. Developer Sucker Punch tweeted a series of region-specific codes that will grant you the atmospheric and beautiful theme that can be seen in the tweet below. However, you better act fast, as the codes are only valid until January 31.

Each code applies to a specific region, which means you’ll have to use the correct one for where you live. If you want to redeem the code on PC or mobile devices, all you have to do is go to the PlayStation Store website, click your account’s avatar, select “Redeem Codes,” and then put in your code. However, if you’d like to do this on a PS4, then go to the PlayStation Store and choose the Redeem Codes option on the navigation bar on the left. Once that’s done, you’ll have a brand-spankin’ new dynamic theme for your PS4.

• Americas: BEFB-AMNR-R4F6
• Europe/AU/NZ/Russia/Middle East/Africa/India: 38BE-G6N8-L93A
• Japan: N4TK-59NH-2LH3
• Korea: EM56-NTNC-EHX8
• Rest of Asia: DHLN-HANF-F6LH

Ghost of Tsushima releases on PS4 this summer. It’s Sucker Punch Productions’ first game since Infamous: First Light, which released all the way back on August 26, 2014. If you’re interested in learning more about the upcoming PS4 exclusive, including insight on its combat, story, and historical accuracy, then we have everything you need to know about Ghost of Tsushima.