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Dave went to see the new Mortal Empires mode for Total War:Warhammer 2, and dragged Tamoor in to talk about it. After a few hours and a few campaigns, here is what Dave thought about Total War: Warhammer 2- Mortal Empires.

Right on schedule, Microsoft today released a new TV commercial for the Xbox One X. Microsoft is going all out with the “Feel True Power” campaign, which kicks off with this spot during the Season 8 premiere of The Walking Dead and Sunday Night Football.

It’s a pretty slick trailer. The idea is that everything you do on your console–games, movies, etc., will look better if you have an Xbox One X. The console is 40 percent more powerful than the PS4 Pro and offers 4K support if you have a compatible TV. So of course, it uses the Kanye West song “Power.”

Microsoft is billing the Xbox One X as the “world’s most powerful console.” Indeed, it is 40 percent more powerful than the PS4 Pro. It doesn’t replace the Xbox One S, which will remain on the market and will sell better than the Xbox One X, according to Microsoft. All Xbox One S games play on Xbox One, and your controllers work as well.

The “Feel True Power” campaign is rolling out globally now. It is “designed to appeal to all gamers, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster to elicit emotions like awe, excitement, fear, and passion,” Microsoft says.

The Xbox One X launches on November 7, priced at $500 in the US. Keep checking back with GameSpot for lots more on the system in the days and weeks ahead.

Every Sunday, GameSpot takes a look at a handful of the hottest games launching that week, and this Friday is home to three very heavy hitters: Super Mario Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Before that, on Tuesday, PlayStation 4 players can check out Hidden Agenda, while the PC crowd finally gets its hands on Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 — October 24

Console players have had over a month to explore Destiny 2’s planets and raids, but it’s finally time for for those on PC to jump in. By this point you probably know everything you want to know about the game, but that doesn’t change the mountain of new guns, gear, and other loot waiting for you in orbit.

Further Reading:

• Destiny 2 PC’s Release Date, Unlock Time, Full Spec Requirements Revealed
• Destiny 2 PC Raid Unlocks One Week After Launch, Hard Mode Coming Later

Hidden Agenda — October 24

From the team behind Until Dawn comes another choice-driven adventure, but instead of getting teens through a haunted mountain lodge, you’re solving murders. Using Sony’s PlayLink app, a group of players can vote on those choices together–but someone is also named the mole, who is tasked with sabotaging the investigation.

Further Reading:

• E3 2017: Murder Mystery Party Game Announced By Until Dawn Developer

Assassin’s Creed: Origins — October 27

Much like a mummy rising from its sarcophagus, Origins is looking to breath new life into the Assassin’s Creed series with a totally new hitbox-based combat system. The ancient Egyptian setting also means lots of tall sphinxes and pyramids to parkour your way around.

Further Reading:

• Assassin’s Creed Origins PC Release Date, Hardware Specs Requirements Detailed

• Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Free DLC And Season Pass Revealed

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus — October 27

Machine Games’ followup isn’t pulling any punches. The Nazis have won WWII and taken over the United States, which means it’s time for BJ Blazkowicz to lead a new revolution. Expanded dual-wielding options and a melee axe mean it’s gonna be a bloody fight. Look for a Nintendo Switch version next year too.

Further Reading:

• Wolfenstein 2 Launch Trailer Showcases More Nazi-Killing, Giant Enemies, And A Surprise
• New Wolfenstein 2 Ad Shows A Nazi Getting Punched In The Face

Super Mario Odyssey — October 27

Mario’s latest adventure is all about free-form exploration. That means you can collect Moons, coins, and special costumes in any order you see fit, while making your way through a whole atlas of massive kingdoms. Also, shirtless Mario. Totally a thing.

Further Reading:

• All The Super Mario Odyssey Costumes So Far: Shirtless Mario, Dr. Mario, And More
• Super Mario Odyssey’s Peach Amiibo Puts Mario In A Wedding Dress, Apparently

The weekend box office numbers are in, and Tyler Perry’s new Halloween movie, Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, pulled in $21.7 million to land at No. 1 in the US and Canada, according to Entertainment Weekly. That’s about 25 percent below last year’s original. The film did not get the best critical reviews but it had an A-minus CinemaScore, meaning audience members generally liked it. This suggests the film could have a strong follow-on due to positive word-of-mouth.

Rounding out the top five movies at the US/Canada box office this weekend were the Gerald Butler disaster movie Geostorm ($13.3 million), Happy Death Day ($9.4 million), Blade Runner 2049 ($7.2 million), and Only The Brave ($6 million).

Notably, Geostorm reportedly had a $120 million budget, so it’s not off to the hottest start (though international receipts will boost the number higher). Additionally, the Michael Fassbender thriller The Snowman made only $3.4 million for its opening.

You can find the full Top 10 list for the October 20-22 weekend below, as rounded up and compiled by Entertainment Weekly.

US/Canada Box Office Estimates For October 20-22:

1. Boo 2! A Madea Halloween — $21.7 million
2. Geostorm — $13.3 million
3. Happy Death Day — $9.4 million
4. Blade Runner 2049 — $7.2 million
5. Only the Brave — $6 million
6. The Foreigner — $5.5 million
7. It — $3.5 million
8. The Snowman — $3.4 million
9. American Made — $3.2 million
10. Kingsman: The Golden Circle — $3 million

Halo: The Master Chief Collection had a very rocky launch in November 2014. An ambitious game that packages together four Halo games and their multiplayer modes, the game struggled mightily out of the gate, with matchmaking times proving extremely lengthy and in some cases not working at all. Microsoft was quick to address the issues and the experience has improved dramatically. Still, Microsoft sees the issues as a “black eye” for the franchise. Last week, developer 343 announced yet another way it’s making it up to fans and sticking with the game. The Master Chief Collection will receive significant updates and improvements over the next year or longer, including an Xbox One X update and a wider update that will “help bring it forward and modernize many of the game’s systems to take advantage of Xbox platform advancements since its original launch.” It’s nice to see Microsoft’s commitment to the game, but why did things go so badly at the start? Halo franchise director Frank O’Connor recently addressed that in a lengthy and thorough blog post on Halo Waypoint (via Polygon).

Starting off by saying he’s no engineer and is making no excuses for what happened, O’Connor said, “in terms of chicken/egg scenarios, fixing the existing ‘vanilla’ Xbox One MCC was the Chicken that laid the Xbox One X enhanced version egg.” O’Connor suggested that it wasn’t always Microsoft’s plan to revisit The Master Chief Collection, but there have been a “series of changes to the Xbox architecture,” including the OS and back-end networking systems, that have “cracked open an opportunity we’ve wanted to seize for many, many months now.”

O’Connor said the launch of The Master Chief Collection was “one of my lowest ebbs, professionally.” He added: “Every angry mail I received, I took to heart. I felt like I had personally let our fans down. I have not spent a single day since the night the game fell down in matchmaking where I didn’t think about it.”

O’Connor added that one piece of resounding feedback was, “How could you not know that matchmaking was going to break?” The director explained that Microsoft tested the game’s matchmaking systems “incorrectly and with some (as we discovered later) faulty assumptions.” He added that the testing processes for the game differed from the norm because the games in the package were already tested for balance. Additionally, O’Connor acknowledged that 343 “we made mistakes in some of the scenarios we asked for.”

“We had, with the best intentions, created a massive and ambitious project that almost read like a Halo fan’s wishlist. As a player, I was incredibly excited. And as an employee, I was proud of the work and effort the team had poured into making this thing so big,” O’Connor said.

He added that The Master Chief Collection began as an idea to make Halo 2 HD, and leave it at that, but the idea came later to expand the scope to include the entire Master Chief saga in one package. “And so the project ballooned in scope and scale and ambition. We threw a ton of resources behind it internally and worked with some trusted partners,” O’Connor said.

But at launch, the game’s matchmaking systems struggled significantly. O’Connor acknowledged that its own multiplayer testing sessions “never got to the kind of scale” that could reflect a live environment.

“So we genuinely didn’t know until the day it released, how bad the matchmaking in particular was going to get,” he said. “I’m not going to ignore the other bugs, they were real, and important, but the way the UI and matchmaking protocols interacted with each other exacerbated many of the smaller items and amplified a couple of them in unpredictable ways.

“The short version was that for Xbox One we built some of the underlying systems to work on a brand-new platform, which was fundamentally, quite different to both the original consoles the games were designed for. We also had some very new (and frankly these have evolved since then and are now much better) online systems on a new console and made some educated, but (with hindsight) ultimately faulty, assumptions we made during development and testing.”

He also offered up an easy-to-understand metaphor for why the matchmaking struggled.

“Each potential player was assigned a kind of ‘ticket’ which would then grant them entry into a match or session–picture a virtual waiting room at a train station–when the train arrives (a match)–everyone has to board–or the train can’t leave,” he said. “Issues arose when folks left sessions before games had started that would cause the initial ticket distributions to fail, and that sometimes meant very long wait times for matches as tickets were issued and reissued–especially in countries with lower populations.”

O’Connor added that Microsoft made assumptions about how things would work. This was a mistake, and he said Microsoft wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Frankly, we don’t assume anything anymore. While we had some valid reasons to believe the game would function properly in the retail environment, we’ve shifted our development philosophy to basically assume nothing anymore,” he said.

Part of this effort going forward is the previously discussed “flighting” program, which is 343’s way of enlisting the community to help test updates in a live environment before they are rolled out to everyone. In addition to this, 343’s own testing will get “much more rigid.”

O’Connor added that he wants people to know how committed 343 has been and continues to be in the area of listening to and responding to feedback.

“Everyone here puts their heart and soul and sweat and tears into building our games,” he said. “I can tell you without hesitation that I have never heard someone here dismiss or ignore or belittle complaints. We always take them to heart. It’s the internet of course, so sometimes folks take it too far, with threats or other inappropriate reactions, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand the anger or disappointment those came from.”

You can read O’Connor’s full blog post here. If it doesn’t answer all of your questions, O’Connor said he plans to write another post in 2018 that will cover an “even more detailed technical breakdown” of what happened, why, and how 343 addressed it. “That’s what we owe you–that and a game we can both finally be satisfied with,” he said.

The Star Trek Podcast: James Frain (Sarek) beams in to talk “logic extremists,” Vulcan style parenting, and much more!

Our WWE TLC live blog is complete – now with all the match results, including Finn Balor vs. AJ Styles and Kurt Angle’s long-awaited return.