Legends of Tomorrow: Season 3 Premiere Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

If the season premieres of The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow shared anything in common tonight, it’s that neither did a particularly good job of paying off on their respective cliffhangers from last season.In the case of Legends, Season 2 wrapped with the team confronting the fact that they seemed to have broken time for good, resulting in a bizarro version of Los Angeles where pyramids loom and dinosaurs run amok. But as with Flash, that dramatically different status quo didn’t last long before the genie was stuffed back in the bottle. The difference, however, is that “Aruba-Con” made up for this abrupt return to normalcy with more of the zany fun that makes the series such a joy to watch in the first place.

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Call of Duty: WWII – 9 Things We Want Fixed Before Launch

Call of Duty: WWII takes the series back to the semi-modern warfare of the Second World War for the first time since 2008’s World at War, but in abandoning the franchise’s increasingly futuristic trajectory, the gameplay has had to change. Exoskeletons and nano-bot-fuelled superhuman advanced movement is gone, which decreases player escapability. An arsenal of familiar weapon categories play to their expected ranges (for the most part), instead of the lasers and other bizarre sci-fi shooters of recent titles. Amid the return to a focus on shooting trumping abilities, I have some quibbles with what I experienced in the recent multiplayer beta.

Here’s a list of nine things that developer Sledgehammer Games should consider tweaking or changing before the final release of Call of Duty: WWII on November 3.

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American Horror Story: “Mid-Western Assassin” Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Note: Due to the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas last week, tonight’s broadcast of American Horror Story, which featured a mass public shooting, was heavily edited for TV. The original version is available on VOD and the advance press screener that I watched was also unedited. Tonight, I saw the edited version too, and the cuts made don’t effect the overall episode score as nothing story-related was eliminated.

“Mid-Western Assassin,” with all its shocking savagery, which was not at all out of the realm of the show’s toolkit considering how one of the biggest and scariest moments back in Murder House was Tate shooting up his school, drove us deeper into Kai’s schemes to show us, truly, how the sausage was made. Meadow’s escape last week was, indeed, a ruse to further drive Ally over the edge.

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Xbox Live Issues Reported, Destiny 2 Affected

It looks like Xbox Live is running into some issues today. Bungie reported on Twitter that it is aware of issues players are encountering when trying to connect to Destiny 2 on Xbox One. The developer reported that people are also having trouble getting into Destiny 1 on the console.

It appears this problem is on Microsoft’s end. Microsoft’s “Xbox Live Status” page shows that Core Services such as signing in to an account, creating one, and recovering one are affected, along with search functionality. Affected platforms include Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Windows. 10. Additionally, Purchase and Content Usage on Xbox 360 is affected. This pertains to buying things, redeeming codes, and downloading.

As always, your mileage may vary with these matters. So if someone is working for someone, it might be broken for someone else.

This is going to be a developing story. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on the issues, as we’ll report back with new details as they become available.

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 – 10 Essential Crafting Recipes

Get Crafty

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is out now, and reviewer Brett Todd described it in GameSpot’s review as “one of the most captivating role-playing games ever made.” It’s also a very robust game, which means it can be difficult to learn all its intricate systems.

In particular, the crafting system in Divinity: Original Sin 2 requires a lot of trial and error. That can be intimidating when you’re trying to navigate its many menus and learn how everything works. But you’re in luck; click forward to see 10 of the more useful–and interesting–crafting recipes you’ll want along your adventure.

For more on Divinity: Original Sin 2, check out our guides roundup, and be sure to read our review. You can also watch the video version of this guide for more help.

Skillbooks

If you’ve been playing for a bit, you might have a few spell scrolls you haven’t used. Scrolls are useful in a pinch, but they’re one-use; if you want to memorize the spell itself, you can combine it with a book from the same school of abilities to make a skillbook and unlock the full spell. For example, combining a Fireball scroll with a basic Pyrokinetic book will get you the Fireball skillbook.

Combination Skills

Once you have some skill books, you can create hybrid spells by combining skill books from different sets. There are a total of 48 new skills you can create by crafting an elemental book with a non-elemental book. For example, you can combine Necromancer and Hydrosophist skillbooks to get the Blood Rain skillbook.

Glowing Idol Of Rebirth

Want to cheat death, but you’re low on resurrection scrolls? If you talk to Dorotya in the Undertavern beneath Driftwood during Act 2 and start the quest A Web of Desire, you have the opportunity to get an item called Ashen Idol of Rebirth. (If you miss it, you can always just pickpocket her.) If you combine it with a resurrection scroll, it will become the Glowing Idol of Rebirth, which will automatically resurrect you if you die.

Snow Boots

If you aren’t careful, you and your party members can slip on icy surfaces, and slipping will cost you a turn in combat. But, if you combine nails with any footwear, it will permanently grant you immunity to slipping and falling. Definitely craft these before taking on cryomancers.

Poison Weapons

If you stumble upon an Ooze Barrel while out exploring, hold onto it! If you combine any weapon with a barrel of poison, that weapon will permanently gain poison effects. It won’t add a ton of damage, but it will help you chip away at your enemies’ health.

Attar Of The Blood Rose

If you’ve explored Radeka’s Cave in Act 1, you’ll know about the Blood Rose. There is only one in the game, so get it before you progress. If you combine the Blood Rose with an empty potion bottle, you’ll get Attar of the Blood Rose. It gives a +1 bonus to all attributes until you die, so as long as you keep the party member who drank it alive, that’s a fantastic permanent stat increase.

Charming Arrowheads

These are some of the most useful arrows in the game. You can craft them easily with honey; combine an arrow with a honey source to get a Charming Arrowhead. (We recommend beehives, since they have infinite nectar.) Hitting an enemy with one of these arrows will charm them into fighting for you for a few turns.

(Mostly) Infinite Lockpicks

Whenever you’re running low on lockpicks, you can craft your own! You can combine nails and a repair hammer or soap and a key, and you’ll get brand-new lockpicks for all your totally legitimate needs. Note that undead party members can also use their finger as an unlimited supply of lockpicks.

Potion Mixing

This one might seem obvious once you think about it, but it’s very useful! You can combine minor healing potions to increase their potency, which is great when you’ve leveled a bit and the minor potions aren’t cutting it. You can take a minor healing potion to a regular one all the way up to a giant healing potion for tons of health regen.

Prankster Poison

This one’s for when you feel like messing with your co-op partner. Combine a flask of poison with red dye to get a “healing potion” that… will poison them, just for giggles.

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Arrow Season 6 Trailer Teases Deathstroke’s Return, Vigilante Unmasking

Arrow is returning and after five seasons, things are changing on The CW’s DC universe lynchpin. The Season 5 finale of the series left the fates of most of the show’s characters in question as the island of Lian Yu exploded while Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and his son William (Jack Moore) looked on. Now, in a new trailer for Season 6, it seems the two are having to move on while the status of Team Arrow remains in question.

Naturally, that won’t stop Oliver from suiting up as the Green Arrow to patrol Star City and keep it safe. As long as people want to bring harm to his home–including a returning Anatoly Knyazev (David Nykl)–he’ll never stop. Now though, that choice is a riskier one than ever. As far as viewers know, the team solely consists of only Oliver and Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) now. All trailers and photos from the new season have done a good job of keeping the mystery alive of who survived the island.

Instead, a lot of the focus falls on Oliver’s new life as a father. While viewers have met William before, this is the first time he’s played such a major role in the show. Given that he knows his dad’s secret, it should be interesting to see how the young man’s presence changes Oliver’s vigilante mission.

Of course, he may not have much of a choice given all that’s coming in Season 3. The sizzle reel not only teases the return of Anatoly, but the arrival of crime boss Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo), who will be causing trouble this year. There’s also a quick look at the mysterious role being played by Michael Emerson, who has yet to be named.

The trailer also touched on two of the biggest stories left open-ended in Season 5. Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett) is back, which brings Deathstroke to Star City. The relationship between Oliver and Slade is a peculiar and complicated one that became an uneasy alliance in the finale, as he attempted to help the team leave Lian Yu. What the status of the relationship will be by the end of Season 6 is anybody’s guess, but it looks as if Slade has come for help.

Finally, this trailer gives the first look at Vigilante since last season. This is a character many fans expected to be unmasked by now. As the show shifted its focus to Lian Yu toward the end of the season though, Vigilante faded into the background. Now he’s back and will actually be unmasked this season. In fact, you can see the moment he’s around to finally remove his mask in the teaser.

There’s a lot of ground to cover when Arrow returns but with or without his team at his side, the Green Arrow doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.

Arrow returns Thursday, October 12, at 9 PM on The CW.

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Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy Episode 4 Review

Talk about a rollercoaster ride: Following on the heels of the weakest Guardians episode of the season, Who Needs You is right up there with the first in contention for being the best so far. This introspective side adventure does almost nothing to advance the “Stop the bad guys!” plot, but taking a break from that obligation allowed Telltale to give us a snappy couple hours crammed with meaningful character moments, supplemented by just enough action to keep it from feeling like a soap opera.

Drax takes his turn at center stage this time around (though I’m sure he’d insist he has never been on a stage, as he is not an actor), but I was somewhat disappointed by the relative brevity of his flashback sequence. He gets a mere one scene with his deceased daughter, but it’s one of the most powerful and tear-jerking scenes in a Telltale game since the first season of The Walking Dead and contains the first moment in any series where I felt like letting the choice timer run out and saying nothing sent a far more powerful message than any of the other options I could have chosen.

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