Power has been restored to large parts of the city since the rare outage on Monday morning.
China to test city of nine million over five days
The decision comes after Qingdao saw 12 new confirmed cases linked to a local hospital.
Australians sign Kevin Rudd’s call for inquiry into Murdoch influence
More than 100,000 people support Kevin Rudd’s call for a probe into Rupert Murdoch’s media influence.
US Election 2020: Anthony Fauci says Trump campaign ad quote misleading
The ad appears to show Dr Anthony Fauci praising Donald Trump, but he is talking about his own work.
PlayStation’s Top Games Of September Show A Successful First Month For Free-To-Play Rocket League
While there aren’t too many new games being released for the PS4 as we move closer to the PS5 release, Sony’s most downloaded games of September show some old favorites going strong. Although Rocket League only switched to a free-to-play model on September 23, it quickly rocketed to number one for the month.
As far as paid downloads, NBA 2K21 dominated the US PlayStation Store in September, joined by Marvel’s Avengers, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Madden 21, and Fall Guys. You can also check out the stats for the EU market here, which are slightly different.
However the free-to-play ranking is where it gets interesting–Rocket League sits at the top of the list, over newcomers Spellbreak and Genshin Impact, after only one week of being free. With Rocket League’s Endo Starter Pack sitting in the top ten DLC purchases for the week, it looks like going free-to-play may have paid off for the quirky sports game.
Amy Coney Barrett: Supreme Court nominee vows to ‘apply law as written’
Amy Coney Barrett will seek to justify her nomination by President Trump in a Senate hearing.
All The President’s Men
Marvel’s Avengers Player Base Is Dwindling, But Crystal Dynamics Promises New Content
Marvel’s Avengers released in early September, and now, five weeks later, the game’s playerbase has dropped off somewhat. Steam Charts shows that, on Steam, the game’s daily peak for the last week is 2400 players online (down from a 28,145 all-time peak), which is a problem for a service game like this once players have beaten the 10-14 hour campaign.
Kotaku noted this issue, brought about by the game’s somewhat lackluster endgame, and reached out to developer Crystal Dynamics to ask what their plan is to bolster the game’s population. Studio head Scot Amos gave the site a statement, promising an influx of content to keep players interested and give them new things to do.
“To our players: every day we fight to make the best game possible for our community,” Amos said. “We have a number of new content pieces coming in the weeks ahead including: a totally new War Zone mission type called Tachyon Rifts, a new Outpost that’s a jumping off point for new story missions in the future, and AIM’s Cloning Lab, which requires a coordinated high-level group of four players to beat with new top-end loot rewards for finishing it. And in each of these updates we do tuning and bug fixing to enhance the overall experience.”
Amos also teased the new heroes coming in the future, including two Hawkeyes–Kate Bishop and Clint Barton. They will come “in the near future.”
“Lastly, we will continue to add new content to the game in the coming months as we address issues and overall game balance, including loot distribution and quality of life features everyone is clamoring for to improve our day-to-day experience from accessibility to co-op communication tools to balancing the economy,” Amos promised.
Crystal Dynamics has been proactive with patching the game so far–one patch dealt with over 1000 issues.
Eat Oreos, Get Halo Infinite DLC
Microsoft has partnered with one of the biggest food companies on the planet for a new campaign focused on Halo Infinite. If you’ve been to a grocery store recently, you might have noticed an assortment of Halo-branded sweet snacks, and this is the result of a new deal between Microsoft and Mondelez, the company that owns brands like Oreo, Cadbury, Sour Patch Kids, Nutter Butter, and more.
Packs of Mondelez snacks with Master Chief on the box will come with codes to unlock special content for Halo Infinite, like the Monarch multiplayer armor for Halo Infinite. In Canada, this promotion is called Snack On With Xbox and in the US it’s called Level Up Your Game.
The fine print of the promo states that the Halo Infinite DLC included with the snacks will be available as a timed-exclusive for three months following the game’s release date in 2021. These promos are rolling out now presumably because the deal was in place before Halo Infinite’s delay to 2021.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure–New Trailer Shows Abilities, Levels, And Enemies From PS5 Launch Game
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is coming to PS5 on launch day, and it’s looking like a strong candidate for a day one purchase for anyone looking for something more family friendly than Demon’s Souls. A new trailer released over the weekend shows that the game, which spins off from the LittleBigPlanet series, is looking pretty good, even without any level-building.
This is the “story trailer,” so we get a glimpse at Sackboy’s personality, as well as some of the cutscenes you’ll encounter throughout the game. The visual style replicates the feeling of a hand-crafted world (much like Media Molecule’s Tearaway), and the authenticity of the fuzz on Sackboy’s body is an indication of the level of realism the PS5 is capable of.
In the trailer we get a look at some new gameplay elements, as Sackboy dodges between obstacles, rolls through a level in a ball, and teleports around one level. You can check it out yourself in the video below.
Th game’s two-to-four player multiplayer is shown off in the trailer, too, as multiple players work together to traverse puzzles and platforming challenges towards the end. This has always been a big part of the LittleBigPlanet franchise, so it’s good to see multiplayer back here.