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Super Mario Maker 2 brings the course creator to Nintendo Switch with a bevy of new tricks to delight creators and players alike.

When it comes to San Diego Comic-Con, there is a ton to see and do at the show, but the fans spending all that money to visit the biggest pop culture convention of the year probably want to take some things home with them. Luckily, there are plenty of exclusive toys to take home from Funko Pops to action figures from Hasbro, Mattel, and more. And speaking of Hasbro, it’s just revealed a really cool SDCC exclusive based on Overwatch, along with a blaster headed to retailer GameStop

First is the Overwatch Ultimates Series 6-Inch Reinhardt Figure with the Bundeswehr Skin. The 6-inch figure looks massive, as the latest addition to the Overwatch Ultimates Series–which also included Reinhardt with his normal skin. Check the exclusive figure out below.

The figure includes six accessories, and you can get the Comic-Con exclusive figure at the Hasbro Booth (#3329) for $60. There are limited quantities for this item though. If you’re not attending SDCC this year, there is a chance you may be able to get it. The Overwatch figure may be available at select conventions and online retailers after the show, depending on the supply.

That’s not the only Overwatch item Hasbro is announcing today. Coming exclusively to GameStop is the Soldier 76 Blaster and Targeting Visor. Modeled after the weapon as seen in the game, the motorized blaster fires 30 rounds at 90 feet per second. Check it out below.

This blaster and visor will run $131 when it arrives this fall. The set comes with the blaster, the visor, and 30 Nerf rounds. It has electronic lights on the blaster, and there is recoil action as you operate it. However, you may want to pick up some batteries, as this puppy requires six D batteries. We’re discussed both Overwatch and Fortnite Nerf blasters in the past, and the company does a great job at bringing these gaming weapons to life. The Soldier 76 Nerf blaster won’t be available until this fall, but you can pre-order the item now.

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Mario is a video game icon not only because he’s a plucky and affable dude, but because he’s the face behind some of the best platformers of all time. Nintendo has carefully guided his adventures for decades, but something happened in 2015: It gave players the keys to design and share stages in Wii U‘s Super Mario Maker, and the Mario we thought we knew took on a whole new light. He was no longer a laidback high-jumping hero; Mario became a hardened speed demon, a death-defying daredevil forced into unruly gauntlets crafted by evil geniuses who know his every hop, skip, and jump like the back of their hand.

With the Wii U and 3DS versions of Mario Maker abandoned by Nintendo at this point, Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch brings us back to that heady time from years past. The game itself is largely familiar, though the more you play and create, the more you notice all of the little additions tucked inside and appreciate how they elevate the potential for creativity in new ways. Mario Maker 2 is a robust level creation tool and a fantastic open-ended platformer that will no doubt spur a new era of competition among players and creators alike.

Due to the fact that so much of Mario Maker 2’s potential success lies in the hands of its players, we are going to give the community time to acclimate and a chance to show us what it’s made of at large before weighing in with our final verdict. But so far, it’s amazing what the right players can do when given the tools to craft Mario’s world.

The intuitive drag-and-drop system is back–you don’t, however, have the luxury of a built-in Switch stylus, so consider buying or devising one before getting into the game as using your finger alone can cause you to occasionally misplace objects. You can create while your Switch is docked, though ultimately that should be a last resort considering how quickly you can place objects in handheld mode, even with the lack of stylus. Picking and placing ingredients for your level, or painting wide swaths of land, is a quick and painless process, and there are intuitive means of copying, pasting, and undoing your work as needed. You are once again given access to the components of games including Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U, along with their numerous enemies, objects, and mechanisms. You select a game theme and work within that toolset, but you can easily switch to another one on the fly and retain most of your work–only occasional elements aren’t transferable.

The big exception is the newly included set based on Super Mario 3D World, which can only be used in isolation. Lest you mistake the “3D” aspect to suggest you’re breaking free from side-scrolling Mario, you aren’t–you’re just given access to unique elements from that game, such as the never-not-strange Cat Mario power-up. Far from being the only notable addition, the sum total of which are too numerous to list here, the Cat Mario suit is up there with the ability to make slopes, craft custom scrolling for stages, and set level-clear conditions as one of the most impactful additions to the Mario Maker formula. That’s just judging by our pre-launch experience, but time will tell what seemingly average element gets twisted into a diabolical weapon in the hands of the craftiest creators. In Mario Maker 2, as in the original, even the smallest variable can have a huge ripple effect

For new creators, there’s the chance of becoming overwhelmed with the number of options available at the start, but that’s where Yamamura’s Dojo comes in. Yamamura is a pigeon, but a very wise and insightful pigeon at that. If you need help wrapping your head around the basic concepts that go into conceiving and creating a level, Yamamura’s your bird. His catalog of 45 lessons (divided into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced sets) walk you through everything from laying tracts of land and placing Goombas to the more philosophical side of level creation, even navigating the meta side of being a creator unleashing their work for others to judge.

These lessons will help get a novice creator up to speed, and the fact that there’s nothing holding back knowledgeable designers from the start was a smart move by Nintendo, too. As mentioned, the limited pool of creators has thus far made some truly impressive stages that utilize Mario Maker 2’s robust toolset well. The overall level of logic inherent to a Mario game remains largely the same–no digging under the hood to rewrite traditional cause-and-effect rules, for example–but the spirit of Mario Maker 2 comes alive when familiar elements are combined by masterful players, often in ways that Nintendo would never employ in a traditional Mario game.

So far, that unexpected creativity often manifests itself in oddball stages packed with an unreasonable number of enemies, diabolical platforming tests that demand superhuman reflexes, or clever contraptions that move Mario and key items around an environment with calculated chain reactions. Not every stage is a winner, but because the fundamental controls and elements of the world are tried-and-true, it’s rare that you run into a custom stage worth getting upset about. Ultimately, dozens (soon to be hundreds, if not thousands) of alternative stages are seconds away, a convenience that’s easy to take for granted. It’s not an understatement to say that the speed at which you can browse, download, and play levels are key factors that make exploring Mario Maker 2 so easy and enjoyable.

Discoverability plays a part in what levels you find, and beyond basic lists such as popular, new, and trending courses, there’s a detailed search function that lets you narrow stage selection by attributes like theme and difficulty. You can also sort by tags that indicate the type of stage at hand, be it an auto-scrolling level or puzzle-centric challenge. After playing, you can leave feedback on the level for other players to consider–a simple but meaningful chance to contribute to the community and learn from your peers. This is all to say that Mario Maker 2’s online stage selection is both organized and catered to the wider player base. You don’t have to involve yourself in every aspect of it if you just want to play a bunch of random Mario levels, but it’s great to see that you can become deeply involved with your fellow makers if you desire.

One of the hotly contested elements pre-launch was online multiplayer, which comes in both co-op and competitive forms. Nintendo’s initial plans to limit these modes to random matchmaking drew the ire of some fans who quite reasonably expected to be able to play with their friends. Nintendo has since made it clear that feature will come, just not in time for launch. While we’d like to weigh in on the current stage of playing alongside strangers, this is a key feature that we were unable to test as needed prior to launch. Keep an eye out for the full review after launch for our analysis of the game’s multiplayer components, including the co-op level creator mode.

The other major addition to Mario Maker 2 is a proper story mode, a campaign of 100 Nintendo-made levels ostensibly designed to show you the breadth of the game’s potential, so far as Nintendo’s creators see it, anyway. The story is typical Mario fare set in an overworld with NPCs and a few fun surprises, taking things a few steps further than The Super Mario Challenge from the 3DS Mario Maker. It’s not an amazing addition in light of the countless levels sure to come from other players, but it’s an enjoyable alternative if you prefer a more coordinated campaign. There’s the slight missed opportunity to give you creative tools as a means of solving purpose-built puzzles, to give you that hands-on learning in a practical scenario, but they are given to you as options to overcome stages that you repeatedly fail. It’s not as if there’s a drought of custom stages online, even before release, though Nintendo’s batch of stages are nice to have if you want to dig into stages handmade by the developers themselves.

With the story mode and dozens of custom-built stages under my belt, I’m anxiously waiting for the floodgates to open upon Mario Maker’s 2 release. What I’ve played so far has proven, once again, that the Mario series is worth all the admiration it gets, and Mario Maker 2 is an excellent tool for picking it apart by pushing its enemies, mechanisms, and Mario, to their limit. I’ve yet to make a stage of my own that I think is worthy of sending out to other players, but I’m committed to getting there. Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I’ve got the itch to join the creator’s club. And thankfully, even if you aren’t an instant success (like me), Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable.

The Coalition boss Rod Ferugsson has spoken more about how Gears 5 was inspired by the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. In an interview with IGN, Fergusson said Gears of War 4 felt like Mad Max: Fury Road in that it was really the story of Kait Diaz, with playable character JD Fenix serving as the facilitator. This is not unlike how Fury Road’s story was really all about Furiosa, even if Max was the title character.

“Mad Max: Fury Road was really Furiosa’s story, and Mad Max was the facilitator of her story,” Fergusson explained. “That’s what we did with Gears of War 4. It was really Kait’s story about saving her mom, and JD was there to facilitate it.”

But with Gears 5, Fergusson and the team decided it would be more impactful to shift the perspective to Kait herself. “It’s actually more impactful to live the story then to watch the story. So rather than being JD watching Kait go through a bunch of stuff, why not be Kait and go through it yourself,” he said.

Here is more from the official Gears 5 description regarding Kait and her place in the story and wider Gears of War universe:

“Kait was born and raised beyond the COG’s formal jurisdiction. Her mother, Reyna, was the leader of her isolated Outsider village. Yet Kait also has deep family ties to the COG: her late father was a widely admired lieutenant colonel during the Pendulum Wars and her uncle, Oscar, was a highly decorated frontline Gear in the early years of the Locust War. Even after her induction into the COG, her true loyalties are unknown, even to her.”

Gears 5 launches in September for Xbox One and PC. It could also be releasing on Xbox Project Scarlett, but Microsoft isn’t talking about that yet.

One of the biggest storylines in the gaming industry over the past year is how Epic is going after Steam with its own store and paying for exclusives. Now, Epic founder Tim Sweeney has offered some insight into why the company is pushing so hard.

In a Twitter thread, Sweeney spoke about how Epic believes pursuing exclusives is the “only strategy” to change the current 70/30 revenue split between publishers and storefronts. The 70/30 model is considered to be the industry standard, with 70 percent of revenue going to developers/publishers and 30 percent to the storefront.

However, Epic’s new Epic Games Store only takes 12 percent, giving 88 percent to publishers/developers. This makes the story theoretically more attractive, and on top of that, Epic is paying some studios to release their games as timed-exclusives.

“We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney went on to say that other independent games retailers have done “great work” in recent years, but none of them have been able to even hit 5 percent of Steam’s scale (outside of the stores run by huge gaming publishers). While Epic’s pursuit of exclusives might make the company unpopular with some subset of Steam users, the strategy of pursuing exclusives does work, Sweeney maintains.

Sweeney went on to say that the 30 percent “store tax” can erase any profits a developer might see, which creates a “disastrous situation.” If the Epic Games Store can become No. 2 behind Steam, or if it can spur change on Steam with regards to its revenue split, the result would be a “major wave of reinvestment in game development and a lowering of costs,” he said.

Ultimately, pursuing exclusives as Epic has done is a benefit to gamers in the long-run, according to Sweeney. It may not be easy to get to a new, better place, however. “There are LOTS of challenges along the way,” Sweeney admitted.

You can read Sweeney’s full comments on exclusivity below.

One of the latest Epic Games Store exclusives is Shenmue III, and like with other titles that took Epic’s money, people are not happy about it.

Tim Sweeney Statement On Epic Games Store Exclusives

“We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry.

For example, after years of great work by independent stores (excluding big publishers like EA-Activision-Ubi), none seem to have reached 5% of Steam’s scale. Nearly all have more features than Epic; and the ability to discount games is limited by various external pressures.

This leads to the strategy of exclusives which, though unpopular with dedicated Steam gamers, do work, as established by the major publisher storefronts and by the key Epic Games store releases compared to their former Steam revenue projections and their actual console sales.

In judging whether a disruptive move like this is reasonable in gaming, I suggest considering two questions: Is the solution proportionate to the problem it addresses, and are gamers likely benefit from the end goal if it’s ultimately achieved?

The 30% store tax usually exceeds the entire profits of the developer who built the game that’s sold. This is a disastrous situation for developers and publishers alike, so I believe the strategy of exclusives is proportionate to the problem.

If the Epic strategy either succeeds in building a second major storefront for PC games with an 88/12 revenue split, or even just leads other stores to significantly improve their terms, the result will be a major wave of reinvestment in game development and a lowering of costs.

Will the resulting 18% increase in developer and publisher revenue benefit gamers? Such gains are generally split among (1) reinvestment, (2) profit, and (3) price reduction. The more games are competing with each other, the more likely the proceeds are to go to (1) and (3).

So I believe this approach passes the test of ultimately benefitting gamers after game storefronts have rebalanced and developers have reinvested more of their fruits of their labor into creation rather than taxation.

Of course, there are LOTS of challenges along the way, and Epic is fully committed to solving all problems that arise for gamers are for our partners as the Epic Games store grows.”

Looking for the best budget gaming TV? We’ve picked out a diverse list of cheap HD, Full HD, and even 4K TVs to meet your needs.

If your piggy bank was hoping to shed some winter weight before the start of bikini season, then Amazon Australia is here to give it a workout. Amazon Prime Day, the online retailer’s biggest yearly sale this side of Black Friday, is promising a “two-day parade of epic deals” when it kicks off midway through next month.

This year’s Amazon Prime Day is set to start on July 15 at 12:01am AEST and run for 48 hours. After that, an additional 17 hours of deals from the US will still be available to Aussie shoppers, ending July 17 at 5:00pm AEST. This means that Australian shoppers will enjoy 65 hours of sales in total, making our Amazon Prime Day event the longest in the world.

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I’ve handpicked and tested the essential PS4 accessories you need to complete your PlayStation 4 gaming setup.