Month: September 2020

September is another busy month for Pokemon Go players. Niantic has a variety of events and activities lined up for the game over the next few weeks, from the Mega Evolution-themed Mega September event to a new Victini Special Research. There’s also September’s Community Day, which takes place on Sunday, September 20. To help you prepare for the event, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about September’s Community Day below.

September’s Featured Pokemon: Porygon

The Virtual Pokemon Porygon is the featured Pokemon for September’s Community Day. Throughout the event, Porygon will spawn in the wild much more frequently than normal, making this a good opportunity to stock up on Porygon Candy. On top of that, you’ll be able to catch a Shiny Porygon in the game for the first time during the event.

September’s Community Day Move: Tri Attack

If you can evolve Porygon2 (Porygon’s evolved form) into Porygon-Z up to two hours after September’s Community Day ends, it’ll learn the event-exclusive move Tri Attack. This marks the first time this attack will be available in Pokemon Go, and it’s a useful one; in addition to dealing damage, Tri Attack has a chance of lowering the opposing Pokemon’s Attack and Defense stats.

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There’s an important milestone in every adult’s life when they realize that their parents aren’t just monolithic figures known only as Mom and/or Dad, but people in their own right who have hopes, dreams, thoughts, and desires that have nothing to do with their children. That’s not exactly new territory in other art, but it’s a rarity in games. In the few that do explore that idea, it’s usually Dad who gets the attention. That makes Dontnod’s Tell Me Why a fascinating anomaly right off the bat. It is, without question, a shattered portrait of a single mother, pieced back together by those who knew her best. The framework of the game screams narrative murder-mystery, but the game takes a Knives Out approach to that; the question of who killed Mary-Ann Ronan is answered by the end of the first episode. Why she died is a far more complex question, and the answers depending on unreliable, traumatic memories throws another wrench into the mix.

The memories in question mostly belong to Mary-Ann’s twin children, Tyler and Alyson. The facts from the start are these: Mary-Ann and her kids live in a tiny middle-of-nowhere town in Alaska called Delos Crossing. The family is poor, relying on handouts from other folks in town, while all the entertainment comes from either nature itself or Mary-Ann’s fantastical imagination teaching her kids how to tell stories with and to each other. Over time, however, Mary-Ann’s mental health deteriorates, culminating in a fateful night where Mary-Ann suffers some sort of mental break and attacks Tyler, who is later accused of killing her in self-defense. Tyler is sent away to live in a group home, while Alyson is taken in by a family friend, a cop named Eddy. Fifteen years later, Tyler and Alyson finally reunite to go back to their old house and clear it out to be sold, only to unearth some harrowing truths about their mother and their hometown–and everyone’s roles in how Mary-Ann died.

There are quite a few mysteries to be unraveled in Tell Me Why, but calling Tell Me Why a mystery suggests the game is more action-packed, twisty, and turny than it actually is. It’s actually closer in tone and mechanics to Fullbright’s Gone Home than Dontnod’s own Life Is Strange. There’s still quite a lot of Life Is Strange in this game’s blood, though. Most of Tell Me Why involves simply walking around, pressing A when you come close to anything highlighted to hear characters expound on a particular object and continue the story, making dialogue choices for characters along the way. The developers’ design ethos is familiar, they’re excellent at making towns and communities that are awash in detail, places that feel rich, lived-in, and full of history and culture. That’s particularly special in Tell Me Why, given the cultures represented here that are rarely if ever presented with this kind of TLC, if they’ve ever been presented at all. In particular, the way the indigenous Tlingit tribe is simply woven into the fabric of Delos Crossing, and doesn’t call out to itself as exotic or foreign is just excellent. There’s much to be said about the existence of The Other being portrayed not as a strange curiosity, but a fact of life in a narrative.

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Evergate surprised me. It looked at first to be slightly derivative of Ori and the Blind Forest, and I became interested in it because of those similarities, not in spite of them. In actuality, its common traits with Ori are superficial, and its strong focus on the puzzle part of the puzzle-platformer genre makes for a rich and wholly distinct experience.

You play as Ki, a small wisp occupying the afterlife and awaiting reincarnation by journeying through the Evergate. When a crisis threatens to undo the entire afterlife itself, Ki assists by going through the Evergate to relive key memories throughout time and solve the mystery behind the looming disaster. If that concept sounds heady, it is. The game doesn’t give you much exposition to start, so you spend the first few hours piecing together the mythology at play. Characters freely throw out terms without explanation, and it’s on you to catch up.

The main gameplay hook bears a strong resemblance to one of the main platforming mechanics in the Ori games. In those, the “Bash” move lets you spring off objects in mid-air, shooting in a particular direction. Evergate uses the same basic concept, but plumbs the depths of it as a deep well of puzzle mechanics. The entire game is built around a series of nodes with different effects, as long as you have a clear line of sight to an ethereal white object or grounding. As you progress further, finding these sightlines and discovering the order of nodes to hit becomes increasingly complex–and often acrobatic, as you use a time-slowing mechanic to line up your shot in mid-air.

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One of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, has contracted COVID-19.

In a post on Instagram, The Rock revealed that in addition to himself, his wife and his two children contracted the virus about three weeks ago.

“My wife Lauren, as well as my two baby girls, and myself, we have all tested positive for COVID-19. I can tell you that this has been one of the most challenging and difficult things we have ever had to endure as a family,” he said.

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Netflix continues to sign top talent to create new shows and movies for its platform. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, having left England and relocated to California, have reached a deal with the streaming network to create all types of content for the platform.

Through a new production company, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will make documentaries, docu-series, feature films, scripted shows, and programming for children, according to The New York Times, which broke the news.

Markle played a major character on the legal drama Suits, but the report said she has no plans to start acting again. However, she and her husband may appear in some of the documentary shows they are producing for Netflix.

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PlayStation 4 users can now grab some extra goodies for Call of Duty: Warzone, but only for a limited time. The “Warzone Combat Pack” is now available for PS Plus users on PS4.

The bundle, which is available all month, includes a series of cosmetic items like the Lock and Stock skin, the Drill Bit weapon blueprint, and the box cutter tactical knife. The bundle also comes with a Price Check weapon charm and a token for double XP, among other things.

You can see the Combat Pack in action in the video below, while we’ve collected some images of the items in an image gallery further down the page. Of note, the video displays some items that we did not come across in our own experience–for example, we found the Yellow Belly handgun blueprint instead of the Drill Bit, so your experience may vary.

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Welcome to Elk, a narrative-heavy adventure game with some intriguing twists, has announced a release date. The game will be available on Steam and Xbox One on September 17, letting players experience Elk Island and all the stories it holds.

The announcement trailer, below, shows how the game mixes story-telling with puzzles and mini-games, and also introduces one of the game’s most interesting elements–many of the events in it are based on real events, and the game features footage of people telling their stories.

These events are often horrible moments within people’s lives, and the trailer suggests that the game will switch tones throughout.

GameSpot previously covered Welcome to Elk in the article 6 Upcoming Narrative Games To Get Excited About. The brief playable demo we played raised a lot of questions: “Is the island limbo? What’s the connection between the real-world stories and the ones told in game? The Welcome to Elk demo was all of 10 minutes long, but I am already surprisingly invested in exploring this island.”

If you want to experience Welcome to Elk before release, you can play the recently released demo, Welcome to Elk: The First Stories, on Steam.

On today’s Save State, Persia talks about Microsoft acknowledging the wait for an Xbox Series X release date and price, Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s new subclass customization, and Big Yeetus coming to Fall Guys.