Month: May 2020

Xbox Series X is scheduled to be released in Holiday 2020, and when it does, Microsoft should offer a service similar to the once prominent Xbox Live Arcade. Combined with the welcome practices and services that Microsoft has made since the release of Xbox One, something like Xbox Live Arcade could be a beneficial way of both promoting and curating the indie game library on Xbox Series X.

Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) launched with Xbox 360 back in November 2005. The service promoted and hosted games that weren’t a part of the rest of the Xbox Live Marketplace. Each game on XBLA was priced under $20 USD and had free trials, creating a library of games with a much lower bar for entry. You could try them out prior to deciding whether to buy them and they were much cheaper than the traditional $60 USD retail price of a AAA game. Right from the start, XBLA was used to promote games created by small teams and indie studios that were released for Xbox 360–a market that had traditionally only excelled on PC, not consoles.

I discovered plenty of cool-looking indie games and experimental titles through XBLA, like Mark of the Ninja, Minecraft (yes, really–I actually hadn’t tried it prior to its release on Xbox 360), and Telltale’s The Walking Dead. These games also released on other systems, but XBLA helped them gain traction on Xbox 360, the service prominently featured at least one new game every Wednesday. XBLA Wednesdays became this huge event (which, admittedly, began to peter out near the end of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle), where new games were spotlighted and celebrated by the Xbox brand. If you were a small studio or solo creator and you could get your game to launch on Xbox 360, you were likely guaranteed to have your game promoted for a whole week.

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Borderland 3 developer Gearbox has unveiled the next DLC for the game, a “harsh” revenge tale called Bounty of Blood: A Fistful of Redemption. It’s a western-themed expansion that pits you against a bloodthirsty gang called the Devil Riders. Bounty of Blood will be released on June 25, and Gearbox also offered a slight taste of what to expect after that. It will feature one of the game’s most iconic enemy types.

During the Borderlands Show broadcast, DLC director Matt Cox called it a “harsh story of revenge and redemption” and teased an unseen narrator, who is said to be a new character. In fact, Bounty of Blood stars a new cast of characters, like the reformed brawler, Juno, and your guide, Rose. And no western epic would be complete without a steed, so you’ll get to ride a Jet Beast mount.

The main town Vestige, located on the frontier planet Gehenna, will change based on your actions in the DLC, like storefronts reopening and the theater showing lost film reels. NPCs themselves will change based on your choices in side-missions as well.

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Fortnite‘s Storm the Agency challenges have arrived alongside the game’s 12.61 update, giving you a few more tasks to complete before Season 3 of the battle royale shooter officially begins next week. One of the trickier challenges from the bunch asks you to open a faction locked chest at three different spy bases. If you’re having trouble tracking those down, this guide will explain where the spy bases are and how to complete the challenge.

Where Are The Spy Base Locations?

Much like the safe houses you need to visit for a separate Storm the Agency challenge, spy bases have been a fixture of the map since the start of Season 2. These are a bit more overt than the safe houses, however; while those are disguised to look like regular buildings, the spy bases are all named locations, so they’re much easier to track down. We’ve marked down where a few of the chests at these bases are located below:

The Grotto

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Gearbox has issued a new Borderlands 3 hotfix, but unlike most of the weekly updates this one is particularly light. In fact, it only addresses a single issue, but the team notes that it’s working hard on a bigger patch to come next week.

As detailed in the announcement, this week’s hotfix only addresses one bug: reports that the “Talk” prompt would sometimes fail to appear if you were in multiplayer during the Pandora’s Next Top Mouthpiece mission. That bug risked blocking progression for players, but it should be resolved as of May 28 at 12 PM PT.

The update suggests that fixes next week should be more substantial since the reason this week update is so light is that “testing resources are currently being directed at the upcoming patch on June 4.” That date will also mark the end of Revenge of the Cartels, which will be replaced by the next mini-event, Takedown of the Guardian Breach.

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A new game from publisher Devolver Digital is launching on the Epic Games Store today, May 28–and it won’t cost a cent. The game, Sludge Life, has been on our radar since it was announced for its wild sense of style and mellow graffiti gameplay. It’s also full of cat butts, and features a dedicated button for farts, as all games should.

The game involves exploring a small island on a planet with a serious sludge problem. You play as Ghost, a tagger looking to move up the graffiti food chain, and a lot of the game involves committing vandalism. There are no specific objectives given to you, but there are three potential endings to be discovered.

The game’s launch trailer is below, and once you’re done watching it you can jump onto its Epic Games Store page and download the game for free.

Sludge Life will be free on the Epic Games Store for 12 months, so you don’t need to rush to grab it. It’s also due to release on Nintendo Switch at some point, but that version will not be free.

If you end up loving the game and want to spend some money on it, the Sludge Life shop features plenty of merch, including a 7″ vinyl and an ashtray/lighter set. But there’s no obligation to do so, and no catch here–just a totally free game.

If you’re after more free games, here’s everything you can nab right now.

Fresh off of giving away Grand Theft Auto V and Civilization VI, the Epic Games Store is offering another popular title for free for the next week. Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is up for grabs until June 4 at the same time. The collection comes with Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, so really you’re getting two free games this week. To claim Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, simply sign up for a free Epic account and turn on two-factor authentication.

Normally, Epic reveals free games a week ahead of time, but during the ongoing Mega Sale, Epic has chosen to tease mystery freebies each week. Epic revealed Borderlands: The Handsome Collection as this week’s freebie before its unlock time in a now deleted tweet. A leaked list of the mystery freebies has proven to be spot on so far, which leads us to believe next week’s free game will be Ark: Survival Evolved.

Snagging Borderlands: The Handsome Collection from Epic will also net you a $10 off coupon–if you don’t already have one–to use during the Mega Sale on any game $15 or more except for pre-orders. Each time you purchase a game priced $15 or more, you’ll earn a new coupon.

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In a Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald wrote about backwards compatibility support for Xbox Series X. Microsoft’s next-gen console will support backwards compatibility for original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games and Ronald promises that thousands of those titles will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. New backwards compatibility techniques will allow the games to run at higher resolutions and with HDR support they originally lacked, too.

“With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites,” he wrote. “Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately.”

Series X won’t just play your old Xbox games–it will also improve how they look. “The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience,” Ronald wrote. “Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.”

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