Tell Us: What Was the First Time a Video Game Scared You?

Hey, listen! We love hearing your feedback on Nintendo Voice Chat, and now you once again have the chance to make your voice heard on NVC.

At the bottom of this article, you will find an option that lets you share a brief video with us and the IGN community, powered by audio and video commenting tool, Yappa.

We want as many NVC fans as we can get to answer this question for next week’s episode:

Let’s get spooky! What was the first time a video game genuinely scared you?

Here’s how you can participate:

  • Create a Yappa account or sign in with a Facebook, Google, Disqus, or LinkedIn account.
  • Look for the video commenting box at the bottom of our articles on both desktop and mobile web. Note that the feature is currently not available on our mobile apps.
  • Hit the green bar with the speech bubble icon, allow access to your mic and camera if your permission settings require that step.
  • You can choose between audio and video recording. We’d prefer video to see your face (and only your face, please — although Samus and Master Chief helmets or God of War face paint, etc. are cool with us), but you can use the audio-only option if you’re having a bad hair day.
  • When you can see your face, hit record to start recording your video. Hit stop when you’re done. You can leave a message that’s up to 45 seconds long.
  • You can rewatch your video and then choose to cancel or post.
  • If you’d rather upload a video you recorded separately, you can use the Upload Media function to do so. This’ll be handy to show off your amiibo or classic games collections. But please, no copyrighted content.
  • You can watch and share videos from fellow commenters by clicking on their icons and you can follow contributors you like as well.

Still have questions? You can learn more details about the new commenting system. And, please remember to follow our guidelines for commenting.

Now go and Get the Thing!

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Logan Plant is the production assistant for Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Facebook Quietly Rolls Out Game Streaming

Facebook Gaming has launched multiple cloud-streaming games on the Facebook browser and app. In a blog post, Facebook explained a few details about its goals and expectations for cloud gaming.

Currently, five games support cloud streaming through Facebook. The lineup includes Asphalt 9: Legends, Mobile Legends: Adventure, PGA Tour Golf Shootout, Solitaire: Arthur’s Tale, and WWE SuperCard.

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Facebook plans to roll out more games in the future, and the first addition will be Dirt Bike Unchained, which Facebook will add in the coming weeks. Starting next year, developers will have the choice to add in-app purchases in their cloud games.

Facebook plans to focus on free-to-play games to begin with, since those are the experiences players are used to finding on the platform. At launch, all games will be playable with your touch screen, or a mouse and keyboard, since the service is launching with games designed for mobile.

Apple users won’t have access to Facebook’s new gaming experiment. The company says it won’t launch the service on iOS yet, saying, “While our iOS path is uncertain, one thing is clear. Apple treats games differently and continues to exert control over a very precious resource.” Instead, the cloud games are launching in beta on Android devices and the web.

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For now, the service is only launching in select parts of the United States. Access is rolling out across California, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia, with plans to expand access in the coming months.

Facebook said it believes mainstream cloud gaming has a long way to go, so the company isn’t promising major breakthroughs anytime soon. Facebook Gaming’s cloud service also won’t be designed to replace your current gaming hardware. Instead, the goal is to add another option to quickly jump into playing games.

Facebook and Oculus recently released the Oculus Quest 2, which we called, “one of the best VR headsets you can buy today” in our Oculus Quest 2 review. However, players will want to be careful, because you will lose all your Oculus games if you delete your linked Facebook account.

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Story first reported by Gamasutra.

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Logan Plant is a news writer for IGN, and the Production Assistant for Nintendo Voice Chat, IGN’s weekly Nintendo show. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

Ambitious Dark Souls Sequel Mod Will Feature Bloodborne-Style Rally System

Four or five years ago, Dark Souls modding was in its infancy, with any modification requiring the use of hex editors and dodgy mod tools to implement. However, the modding community has come a long way in just a few short years, with 2019’s Daughters of Ash representing almost a total overhaul of the game, complete with new bosses and restored content cut from the original game. Now, the developers behind many of the most notable Dark Souls mods are teaming up to create what modder Grimrukh calls a “direct sequel” to Dark Souls 1, and it will feature a Bloodborne-style rally system.

Titled Dark Souls: Nightfall, the project would represent the most ambitious mod for Dark Souls ever, including an entirely remixed world map, an overhauled combat system based on the QuickSouls combat mod, and brand-new NPCs with voice acting. As the above tweet shows, modders like Meowmaritus are using complex code to implement a Bloodborne-esque rally system in the creaky Dark Souls 1 engine–when you take a hit, attacking your opponent will give you some of your health back.

It’s still unclear when Dark Souls: Nightfall will come out, though Grimrukh did say that it’s been in development for much of 2020. However, given that huge mod projects tend to take years to come out, it’s best to wait and see on this one. While we haven’t seen much in the way of a new Souls game recently, the Demon’s Souls PS5 remaster is on its way, and we’ve got all the info on it.

Blizzard Legend Chris Metzen Opens Tabletop Gaming Company

Blizzard legend Chris Metzen has created a tabletop gaming company with former Blizzard Vice President, Mike Gilmartin.

Together the two opened Warchief Gaming, a small company that will focus on tabletop games, but neither are ready to say exactly what they’re working on just yet. Metzen, a former Blizzard senior vice president behind the likes of Warcraft and Overwatch, and Gilmartin, the former vice president of quality assurance at Blizzard, spoke to VentureBeat about the excitement around Warchief Gaming and the joy of working on something much smaller than a Blizzard game.

“The basis of our friendship and having done this (gaming) club over the last couple of years, to me it felt like a very safe foundation,” Metzen said in regard to the friendly tabletop gaming club he’s enjoyed being a part of since he left Blizzard in 2016. “There was no version of me going back to some big game company. There was no version of me going back to Blizzard, as much as I love it, and I truly do. I don’t have that in me anymore. I don’t want to be a giant corporate officer. I don’t want to direct giant teams anymore. Maybe one day, but I’m not that guy today.”

Metzen is instead happy directing considerably less people alongside Gilmartin at Warchief Gaming. He said that even after his “glorious” Blizzard experience, it’s the intimate scale of tabletop gaming that he comes back to and that tabletop gaming is his path forward for now.

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He’ll tread that path with his new company, Warchief Gaming, although he told VentureBeat that he and Gilmartin aren’t ready to say what the tabletop gaming company is specifically working on just yet. The former Blizzard vice president said he’s more interested in his own ideas at this point in his life as opposed to the ideas of a larger company like Blizzard.

“But in this phase in my life…I’m interested in owning my own ideas,” Metzen said. “I’m interested in being able to develop them the way my gut tells me I should, without oversight of people I don’t know. That’s a big theme for me, that ownership and authorship.”

Warchief Gaming takes Metzen back to the period he experienced before Blizzard became the massive company it is today. He said there’s a purity to be found in the smaller scale projects like that of Warchief Gaming and that this new scale is “so much more freeing and simplified.” Metzen continued and said that at this smaller sale, he has a more balanced work-life relationship, something he considers “an absolute gift.”

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“We’ve been on big stages and now we’re back in a garage, playing punk rock that we played as kids,” Metzen said. “It feels awesome…For all my nervousness, I know we’re on the right track. We’re going to come out and make some cool s**t.”

There aren’t any Warchief Gaming games for you to pick up just yet but there are plenty of other tabletop games to play in the meantime. Check out our list of the best fantasy board games and then check out our list of the best classic board games. If you’re looking to jump into the world of tabletop gaming for the first time, here’s a list of the 11 best board games for beginners.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Avatar 2: Kate Winslet Wears Wings Underwater for Her Sea Person Role

Kate Winslet’s role in Avatar 2 is still shrouded in mystery, but now we know that she had to wear wings underwater while filming.

Anyone that’s kept up with Avatar 2 knows that the movie is tackling water in a big way. Concept art shown for the movie puts a lot of focus on Pandora’s water features, new underwater crabsuit vehicles were developed for the film, and Winslet’s character, Ronal, is a part of the planet’s “sea people.” Now we know that Winslet had to wear a wing-like contraption while filming underwater after the official Avatar Twitter posted a picture of the actress on October 26.

“I had to learn how to free-dive to play that role in Avatar, and that was just incredible,” the tweet reads. “My longest breath hold was seven minutes and 14 seconds, like crazy, crazy stuff.”

Considering Winslet is playing one of the movie’s sea people, it’s not too imaginative to think that her character will be underwater for most, if not all, of the movie. This especially makes sense now knowing that Winslet learned to free dive and hold her breath underwater, presumably while filming, for over seven minutes. What’s odd about all of this is that like every other character in Avatar 2, Winslet’s Ronal will likely be CG so it begs the question if all of this underwater filming and breath holding is fully necessary.

We’ll all learn how her underwater work translates to her character, Ronal, when Avatar 2 hits theaters on December 16, 2022. The sequel to Avatar wrapped filming back in September and director James Cameron said Avatar 3’s shoot will be almost done around that time.

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For more Avatar 2, be sure to check out some new plot details revealed earlier this year and then check out Edie Falco’s General Ardmore from Avatar 2. If you’re curious about Winslet’s Avatar 2 role, read about how she insisted upon doing all of her own water work while filming underwater.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

PlayStation Boss Hints At Possible Mergers And Acquisitions

Sony’s PlayStation division is considering the possibility of mergers and acquisitions as it looks ahead to the future of PlayStation 5. The comment came from PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who hinted at the strategy as one way Sony could grow its first-party studio output.

Ryan told Reuters that the company plans to grow its studios organically, but added that “where we can bolster our in-house capability with selective M&A [mergers and acquisitions] that might be possible.”

In the same interview, Ryan said that the company is seeing “very considerable” demand, but is aiming to get enough stock on store shelves to meet that demand. He said that it’s possible that some people who want to buy on launch day won’t be able to find it.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

‘PS5 4K Movie Essentials’ Series Is Up for Preorder

Sony is coming out with a new line of 4K UHD Blu-rays aimed at PlayStation 5 owners. Called the “PS5 4K Movie Essentials” line, it contains reissues of movies Sony thinks gamers are likely to enjoy. And judging by the picks, Sony is probably right. You’ll find new editions of films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Venom, Baby Driver, Hellboy, and more. We have Amazon links for the whole line below.

Amazon has them listed with December 1 release dates, and the majority of them are going for $30.99. All of the movies come with a 4K UHD disc, plus a standard Blu-ray disc and a digital copy of the movie. If you place a preorder and the price comes down before release, you’ll only have to pay the lowest price it drops to, even if it goes back up.

Sony’s PS5 4K Movie Essentials

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Also of potential interest to anyone getting a PS5 or Xbox Series X in the near(ish) future, a whole mess of great movies and TV series are coming out in the fourth quarter of this year. Here’s a look at some of the most exciting upcoming collections.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Deals: Seagate External Hard Drives and Switch Memory Card on Sale Today

Amazon is having a 1-day sale today on Seagate external hard drives. Score a 5TB portable drive for under $100 or a massive 10TB desktop drive for under $170. You can use these for your PC or for the next generation consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. For Nintendo Switch gamers, there’s an excellent deal on a Samsung MicroSDXC card as well.

Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive for $98.49

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X Compatible

This diminutive yet spacious drive can increase your storage capacity for your PC, PS4, or Xbox One. It will also be compatible with the upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Portable drives are completed USB powered so there’s no second power cable required. They’re also much smaller than standard external drives and performance-wise they are equally capable.

Samsung EVO 256GB MicroSDXC Card for $29.99

Nintendo Switch Compatible

The Switch only comes with 32GB of onboard storage. Increase your storage capacity 8-fold for under $30. For most people this card alone is more than enough capacity. This is a faster U3 card compared to other budget cards (which are U1) so it’s good for smartphones and GoPros as well.

More Hard Drive Deals

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More Video Game Deals

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Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends roughly 1/4 of his income on stuff he posts. Check out his latest Daily Deals Article and subscribe to his IGN Deals Newsletter.