This article and video contain very mild, early spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.
The Last of Us Part II is a fairly grim game, but it isn’t all doom and gloom. One early section flashes back to a happier moment in Joel and Ellie’s lives, when Joel gives Ellie an incredible gift: a trip to an abandoned museum, full of dinosaur skeletons. Now, Game Maker’s Toolkit, has dived deep into how that section was made
Evan Hill, a former Naughty Dog level designer who led the creation of the museum (the level is called “The Birthday Gift”), says that he was given a brief two-paragraph summary of the museum’s narrative function from director Neil Druckmann, but was given freedom from there.
Sony’s next PS5 event is reportedly happening in August, while Baldur’s Gate 3 has been delayed. And in September, Xbox Game Pass xCloud support starts.
BlizzCon 2020 was canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but the event will come back next year–albeit in a different state. Activision Blizzard announced during its fiscal earnings call that it will host a virtual BlizzCon event in early 2021.
BlizzCon executive producer Saralyn Smith had suggested the possibility of an online replacement for BlizzCon to take place early next year, but at the time the plans had not yet been confirmed. The company promised more details as plans develop, and this is the first confirmation that it’s definitely happening.
“We’re talking about how we might be able to channel the BlizzCon spirit and connect with you in some way online, far less impacted by the state of health and safety protocols for mass in-person gatherings,” Smith wrote at the time. “We’d want to do this as soon as we could, but given that this is new-ish territory and the different factors involved, it will most likely be sometime early next year.”
While we know next to nothing about this year’s Call of Duty, publisher Activision said co-developers Raven Software and Treyarch will show off the game “fairly soon.”
This news came during a recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, where Activision president Rob Kostich said Warzone helped the Call of Duty teams rethink how content is revealed while also confirming that Call of Duty 2020 news is on the way.
“It’s Warzone, I think, that’s caused us to rethink how, when, and even where we reveal our upcoming title,” Kostich said. “So we can’t wait to share it with the community, and we think it’s gonna be very different and more engaging than anything we’ve ever done before.
Disney’s Mulan has been a victim of multiple COVID-19 related delays and was recently taken off the schedule entirely after being bumped from its August 21 release date. However, on a quarterly earnings call, Disney’s chief creative officer Bob Chapek announced new release plans.
Mulan will be headed directly to Disney+ on September 4–but there’s a catch. It will not be included with the monthly Disney+ subscription, but instead be provided under a video-on-demand price point Chapek referred to as “premium access” for $29.99.
Nioh 2 was never a game starved for content, but the first of three planned pieces of DLC, The Tengu’s Disciple, is a substantial addition all its own. It introduces the coastal Yashima region with three new areas and 10 new missions that can, and most likely will, take players at least 10 hours to complete. Even more than that, there’s also a brand new weapon type called the Splitstaff, a large handful of new enemy types, challenging new boss fights, new armor and weapon sets, new soul cores, and new guardian spirits. The quality of the DLC campaign itself isn’t anything to write home about, but this is still an incredible value and a great reason to sink your teeth back into Nioh 2’s stellar combat.
The Tengu’s Disciple essentially fits into Nioh 2 as a side story that takes place after the events of the main game. Your character finds a dagger at a shrine that suddenly transports them back in time to the Heian period, where they join forces with real life Japanese historical figures Minamoto no Yoshitsune and the warrior monk, Benkei. There are some cool cutscenes that set up some of the boss battles, but like Nioh 2’s main story, the plot in The Tengu’s Disciple is an afterthought largely just used to frame the action.
But man, oh man, is that action still as good as ever – and The Tengu’s Disciple only serves to add new wrinkles on top of that layer of excellence. The big new draw is the addition of the Splitstaff, a new weapon type that scales primarily with Onmyo Magic, giving those who choose to specialize in Onmyo Magic a much needed secondary weapon type to accompany the Switchglaive.
The Splitstaff is a tricky weapon to master, and early on, it actually didn’t click very well with me. It relies very heavily on its active skills which are unlocked deep into the skill tree, and beyond that, it also has a unique quirk in that if you hold down the attack button slightly, the staff will transform, extending out and dealing an extra hit. Hold the button down too long though and you’ll drop the combo, so there’s a special rhythm to attacks with the Splitstaff that just doesn’t exist with other weapons.
Once I got over the initial learning curve and built up some skill points that could be invested in the extremely strong multi-hitting attacks of the Splitstaff, I learned to really like it. Aesthetically, it brings back memories of playing Ninja Gaiden with the Lunar staff, but even beyond that its range is fantastic, it’s really good at inflicting elemental status ailments, and it offers a completely different style of play compared to my other main weapon, the Switchglaive, all while still allowing me to utilize powerful Onmyo magic.
I ended up using my Splitstaff/Switchglaive build all throughout the DLC, which took me about 12 hours total if you include some backtracking to find a trio of items required to unlock one of the missions. Spread all throughout its 10 missions are a fairly large handful of new enemy types, including giant crab yokai with Groucho Marx facial hair; gross fleshy monstrosities called Nuppeppo that have a nasty tendency to suck you up and spit you out like a nightmarish version of Kirby; nastier versions of the monkey-like Enki enemies called Kiryokis; and more small variations on other existing enemies. The crabs are pretty irritating to fight due to them being impervious to damage from the front, but the rest of the new enemy types are fun and challenging new obstacles to learn how to deal with.
Of course the biggest challenges come in the form of the bosses. I don’t want to spoil them, but there are some great surprises in store for fans of the original Nioh, along with some super fun fights that rank up there among Nioh 2’s best boss battles to date.
If you’re a Nioh 2 superfan, one of the most enticing additions for you will no doubt be the Dream of the Demon difficulty, which essentially serves as Nioh 2’s New Game++. As you’d imagine, Dream of the Demon raises the level of all enemies, along with the gear that they drop, but it also remixes enemy locations, and introduces incredibly tough red enemies that are much stronger than your garden variety yokai. Just to illustrate how deep into Nioh 2 you have to be in order to survive Dream of the Demon, I have poured nearly 107 hours into a character who is level 159. To survive the very first mission of Dream of the Demon, I’d need to be nearly a hundred levels higher.
Disney announced during an investors call Tuesday that the studio will release their oft-delayed live-action retelling of Mulan in both available theaters and on the Disney+ streaming service on September 24, 2020.
Video games are made by teams of dozens, if not hundreds of people, and that means that every aspect of a given game has likely passed through many hands before it gets revealed to the public. Still, sometimes it takes an outsider to see the obvious. This was the case with the battle menu for the upcoming Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and the results are quite amusing.
Back in June, John Ricciardi–the co-founder of notable localization company 8-4–joked in a tweet that translators should change the battle menu of the eighth Yakuza game to spell SEGA. Well, as a recent behind-the-scenes video revealed, it appears that the localization team took Ricciardi’s advice.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon was awesome. Excited to see it in English for the first time! BTW, not too late to change “More” to “Etc” or “Extra” to make the menu options basically spell out SEGA pic.twitter.com/kcUoim06hC
— John Ricciardi | BLACK LIVES MATTER (@johntv) June 11, 2020
— John Ricciardi | BLACK LIVES MATTER (@johntv) July 31, 2020
As you can see from the two above tweets, the “More” option has changed to “Etc.,” which means it now spells the name of the game’s publisher. It’s a nice touch, and one that fits in well with the goofy, self-referential tone of the franchise.
Sony’s next PS5 event is reportedly happening in August, while Baldur’s Gate 3 has been delayed. And in September, Xbox Game Pass xCloud support starts.
Warzone and Modern Warfare are getting a bunch of new content with Season 5. Here’s what’s coming in the new season.