Man of Medan is set almost entirely at sea on an enormous, abandoned boat. Loosely based on the real-life mystery of the OSS Ourang Medan, which became a shipwreck in the late 1940s after its entire crew were lost under mysterious circumstances, Man of Medan is also the first part of Supermassive Games' proposed Dark Pictures Anthology--a series of short, branching horror narrative experiences in the vein of its tremendous 2015 surprise hit, Until Dawn. If you've played Until Dawn, you'll know what to expect. But despite a smart online co-op mode, Man of Medan's weak narrative ultimately makes it a disappointing first installment.The game's plot jumps between five different playable characters who are all experiencing the same event. You'll determine their ultimate fates by making decisions for them, as well as responding to quick-time events. There are reportedly 69 different potential deaths you can experience (including those of non-playable characters), but it's also entirely possible that your whole crew will survive. Alternatively, they might all die. Man of Medan's main selling point is that your decisions will affect how things play out, how the relationships between your characters will develop, and what you'll uncover and experience along the way.In conversations, and at pivotal points in the plot, you'll often be given three options, one of which is always to say or do nothing. So focused is Man of Medan on its story, there are no puzzles to solve or combat systems to master outside of these choices, just lots of exploring and quick-time events. However, the game is plagued by a big central problem: a fundamentally weak plot.The story isn't engaging, as the player is given little reason to care about the characters and the horror tropes being explored mostly feel hackneyed and uncreative. After a brief prologue scene set in the '40s, you spend Man of Medan's four-hour (give or take) runtime in the present day. The story opens with the crew planning a dive to a previously untouched sunken fighter plane from World War II, which ultimately leads to a series of events that sees them trapped on the Medan, a seemingly haunted abandoned ship, held captive by a pirate gang who are convinced that the ship--which is riddled with dead bodies--contains treasure. Naturally, things start going bump in the night, and the gang finds themselves dealing with various ghouls and terrors too.There are plot holes and character inconsistencies throughout, some minor, some more blatant. It’s perhaps easy to forgive the questionable presence of rats all over the boat, still gnawing on hunks of meat that have been on the ship since the 40s, but it’s less easy to excuse how blasé the characters act about the horrifying situations they find themselves in. They're mostly unlikeable, too--There's the cool but insecure Alex, his dorky younger brother Brad, Alex's outgoing, wealthy partner Julia, Julia's obnoxious but well-meaning brother Conrad, and Fliss, the captain of the small boat the four have chartered at the story's opening. The dialogue is generally not very good; at times it successfully recreates the feeling of watching a fun-but-silly teen slasher, occasionally hitting that good-bad sweet-spot as a character awkwardly refers to something as ‘lit’ or flirts awkwardly, but it can also be annoying when the five central characters' interactions sound stilted and unrealistic. Without spoiling anything, the story also explains a little too much about what's happening on the Medan in a way that makes repeated playthroughs much less satisfying.There's also an over-reliance on jump scares, which cheapens the horror experience. One standout sequence midway through the game that does a great job of getting under your skin, as Brad finds himself stuck in a looping hallway that grows just a bit weirder every time he travels down it, but otherwise Man of Medan is reliant on spring-loaded cats and lots of suddenly-morphing faces. On the plus side, it looks tremendous--the character models can be a bit waxy, but the ship is extremely detailed and creepy, and the game effectively communicates how unpleasant the act of exploring a creaky rustbucket full of dark corners and rotting corpses must be. The trade-off, at least on a base PS4, is that animations frequently stutter, breaking the mood as frames slip away.There are pacing issues, too, especially with the extremely slow opening section that weighs down repeat playthroughs. While you can see different scenes or experience unique outcomes with each playthrough, some scenes will be essentially unchanged each time, which can quickly grate. You'll also occasionally have to check in on 'The Curator', an omnipresent suited man who is clearly meant to be the mascot for and host of the Dark Pictures Anthology. He's a pompous version of the Crypt Keeper (from Tales From The Crypt), but without any of the "good evening, boys and ghouls" merriment you want from a horror anthology host, and as a result, he doesn't quite fit.Multiplayer is Man of Medan's big addition to the formula laid out by Until Dawn. There are two forms of co-op: Shared Story, in which two players tackle the game together online, and Movie Night, where up to five players can play together offline, playing through the chapters of whichever characters they are assigned at the start. Playing together on the couch is perhaps meant to evoke that "don't go in there" feeling of watching a fun horror movie with friends, but Man of Medan's relatively straightforward level designs, which never make it seem dangerous to wander off-path and explore the open doors and alternate pathways you encounter, don't particularly facilitate this. Death is more often down to a failed QTE rather than a dialogue choice you made or because you decided to investigate something spooky. In fact, right near the end, a mistimed button press can be the difference between everyone surviving and everyone dying--being responsible for that in front of your friends is more embarrassing than it is funny.However, so many of the game's issues feel like much less of a problem when you jump into the smart and innovative online mode. It is, without a doubt, the definitive way to experience Man of Medan, especially if you're playing with another person who is familiar with the material. Shared Story sees you both playing at the same time, taking control of different characters as their scenes play out simultaneously. You'll both, eventually, get a turn with every character (if they live long enough), and often your paths will diverge. Once the five main characters meet after the initial prologue, Shared Story immediately offers a more engaging experience than the single-player campaign can.Early on, for instance, I played through a sequence where two characters dived down to inspect something underwater, while my co-op buddy stayed on the boat and experienced a different part of the story. In single-player, you'll still see both scenes, but one will be greatly truncated. In online co-op, some scenes are expanded, or you might occasionally see parts of the story, or make choices, that cannot be accessed in single-player.This led to the two of us conspiring to make certain things happen, to bend the game's story to our will. We were more successful with some outcomes than others (a failed quick-time event led to an unexpected death early on), but working together to achieve dramatic satisfaction, and choosing when to reveal what just happened and when to let the other player try to figure out what we'd done in our scenes, was a delight. Each player won't see every scene when playing this way, and it's entirely possible to play without ever communicating, which makes the plot more unpredictable.No matter how much or little you choose to share, though, Shared Story is absolutely the right way to play the game. It's very well designed; my co-op partner and I never found ourselves waiting for the other player to hurry up and trigger the next cutscene, and being able to see how your friend is trying to direct a scene, and deciding whether to help or hinder them in that, is excellent. It feels like you're working together to wring as many interesting outcomes as you can out of the game, and effectively doubling the number of potential choices leads to a much stronger sense of variety.Man of Medan is still telling a weak story, though, as much as Shared Story plasters over this with its excellent take on co-op, which lets you plan things out and work together to craft the narrative you want to tell (and kill the characters you find the most annoying). If you can organize a session with someone else who owns the game and play through the whole thing together, it's an excellent experience; but if you're after another single-player horror narrative experience like the one offered in Until Dawn, it's very disappointing. As a show of the potential for the Dark Pictures Anthology, Man of Medan is largely a success, but as a first episode, it leaves plenty to be desired. Info from Gamespot.com

It's been a tumultuous month for Peter Parker. After the deal brokered between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios allowing the character to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe collapsed, speculation has been swirling from all sides about what Spider-Man's live-action future may look like. Many fans have been holding out hope that the two studios will reach some sort of agreement before--but, unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.As reported by Variety, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra did not mince words when questioned about the ability for a compromise to be reached. "For the moment," Vinciquerra said, "the door is closed."However final these statements may seem, Vinciquerra also insisted that there is no "ill will" between Sony and Marvel over the deal and, cryptically, mentioned that it's "a long life," implying that while things are decidedly off the table right now, the future is still full of potential.Vinciquerra went on to nod to Sony's upcoming Spider-Man centric shared universe outside of the MCU, which kicked off with Venom last year. "Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well," Vinciquerra said. "I think we're pretty capable of doing what we have to do here."So, if there's a bright side to all of this, it looks like the possibility of Tom Holland's Peter Parker encountering Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock on the big screen might actually be on the table. What this means for the Spider-Man plot lines left dangling in the MCU in the wake of Spider-Man: Far From Home and Avengers: Endgame, however, is really anybody's guess.As for the (somewhat playful, somewhat serious) speculation about Disney's potential acquisition of Sony to resolve the issue, Vinciquerra stated plainly that "Sony Pictures is not for sale." Info from Gamespot.com

The story of Stephen King's It may not be new--the book is over thirty years old after all--but given how different the most recent movie adaptations are from the source material, it's a given that the ending would have some pretty major departures as well. How do the Losers manage to face down the nightmare that is Pennywise once and for all this time around? Where do they end up after the fact? How does the new movie stack up to the '90s miniseries and the original novel in terms of concluding each Loser's individual story?Get ready for some major It Chapter 2 spoilers as we break down exactly what it took to destroy the monster that devoured the children of Derry, Maine every 27 years.Defeating PennywiseThe adult Losers--minus Stan, who, in keeping with his story in the book, killed himself before the reunion--eventually find their way back to Neibolt House, where they retrace their steps from 27 years ago. They wind up back in the sewers, but things are different in Pennywise's cistern-based nest this time. There's no longer a giant stack of debris surrounded by floating bodies. Instead, there's a wooden hatch that the Losers are able to open and climb down into the place where Pennywise actually arrived from space millions of years ago.Think the Lighthouse cave from the movie Annihilation and you'll be in the right ballpark for what this strange new cave actually looks like--lots of oil-slick colored rock protrusions and surreal lighting effects, coupled with some warping, maw-like caverns in the ceiling.It's in this sub-sewer area that the Losers are able to attempt the Ritual of Chüd, which involves them all burning "tokens" from their past and then chanting "turn light into darkness" as they hold hands around a ceremonial leather jug which Mike says will be able to trap the deadlights--Pennywise's true form. Bill's token is Georgie's boat, Bev's is the poem Ben wrote her, Richie's is a literal token from the arcade he played Street Fighter in, Mike's is the rock that hit Bowers from the rock fight in 1989, Eddie's is his inhaler, and Ben's is the page of his yearbook that Bev signed. They use a shower cap for Stan, given context by a flashback earlier in the movie where it's revealed that Stan was afraid of getting spiders in his hair in their underground clubhouse as a kid.Unfortunately, things don't actually work according to Mike's plan, and rather than trapping the deadlights, the Losers only succeed in summoning Pennywise himself into the nest area. He attacks, sending each Loser off into a new individual nightmare which nearly kills them before they each manage to fight their way back to the nest. During the final confrontation, Mike is nearly killed, but Richie manages to distract Pennywise long enough to save him--a move that gets him caught in the hypnotic deadlights, just like Bev had been 27 years ago. It's Eddie who finds the courage to rush to Richie's aid, throwing a piece of wrought iron fence like a javelin into Pennywise's maw.Eddie rushes to Richie's side, believing he's killed It, but as he's leaning over Richie's body, Pennywise skewers him with a claw and flings him across the cave. The Losers frantically try to save him, while Eddie chooses that moment to tell them that, earlier, during another Pennywise nightmare where he saw the leper from his childhood, he was certain he could kill it. He confesses that he almost choked it to death. This inspires the Losers to attempt a new plan--they'll "make Pennywise small," first literally, by forcing him into tight quarters, and then metaphorically when that fails, because they realized, with Eddie's help, that Pennywise functions primarily on belief.It's not completely clear why or how this revelation is different from the similar revelation they had as children when they began to beat Pennywise to death almost three decades ago. Apparently getting pummeled by children was less effective than being yelled at by adults.They (minus Richie, who at first refuses to leave Eddie's side) begin hurling insults at Pennywise, proclaiming that he's not scary or dangerous at all, which miraculously begins to shrink Pennywise down into a pathetic blob. When Pennywise is weakened enough, Mike reaches in and tears its heart out, holding it for all the Losers to crush in their hands.With Pennywise defeated, the nest begins to collapse. The Losers are forced to leave Eddie--who died as Pennywise was killed--behind as they escape, dragging Richie away as he yells "we can still help him!" Neibolt House collapses into a sinkhole as they stumble outside.The AftermathWith their ordeal over, the Losers immediately head to the quarry, where they re-live their childhood by jumping off the cliffside into the water to wash the mud and blood off themselves. Richie, still grieving Eddie's loss, sits in the water and sobs as the other Losers gather around him. Eventually, Bev and Ben finally share a kiss after Bev was able to remember that it was Ben, not Bill, who wrote her secret admirer poem all those years ago.When the Losers leave the quarry, they realize the scars on their palms are gone. Their oath is finally fulfilled.Each surviving Loser is then given a brief epilogue. Mike, finally satisfied that the job is done, leaves Derry. Bill returns home--presumably to his wife--and begins a new book. Ben and Bev move in together onto a yacht with a dog. Richie returns to Derry's Kissing Bridge, where he secretly carved his "R + E" love confession for Eddie when he was a child and re-carves the E. Each Loser gets a letter from Stan, which is read as the final narration. He admits that he killed himself because he was too scared to return to Derry and he knew they wouldn't be able to defeat Pennywise if they were all alive and not there--so he "took himself off the board."Why Stan decided that the fear of being killed was somehow worse than actually killing himself isn't exactly clear, but the tone of the scene is deeply sincere and meant to feel nostalgic and sweet rather than tragic. (It is extremely tragic.)Unsurprisingly, there are no post-credits stingers or special moments after the credits roll. The story has reached the end of the source material, for one, and everyone (except Stan, Eddie, and Richie--so, uh, 4 out of 7) managed to get their happy ending. This time around--unlike the novel--the Losers don't intend to forget their friends or their experiences when they all go back to their lives, as Mike explains, "because they have more they want to remember." Info from Gamespot.com

NHL 20 is slated for release on September 13 across Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but EA Access members can start playing right now. A 10-hour Play First trial for the hockey simulation game is out now on both platforms. It's the full version of the game, but limited to 10 hours of total playtime. EA typically releases its new games on EA Access about five days before release, so this is something of a change of form given that NHL 20's release is still a full seven days away. It's not immediately clear why EA chose to release NHL 20 on EA Access so early, but hockey fans aren't complaining.The NHL 20 file size on Xbox One is about 30 GB; it's likely similar on PlayStation 4. The game brings back the pond hockey mode from NHL 19, while it also has its own unique spin on battle royale. In addition, NHL 20 makes a major change for the commentary and broadcast package. EA has also released a list of the top 50 players, and Connor McDavid is No. 1.Keep checking back with GameSpot for lots more on NHL 20.Info from Gamespot.com

You wouldn't be blamed for thinking that the latest game in the Gears of War franchise is another entry from the middle of the original trilogy's Locust War. Shooting gooey reptilian monsters, exploring ruined labs, and chainsawing other players are the things Gears does best, and Gears 5 squarely focuses on strengthening those core elements. The underpinnings of the series haven't been tweaked much in its sixth entry, but The Coalition adds a lot of new stuff in its second game since taking the reins on the Gears of War franchise. While Gears 5's story is largely obsessed with the past, and to some degree, Gears 5 stays there too, the new additions help revitalize the series' best old ideas.And there are a lot of new additions. On the cooperative multiplayer side, characters get new abilities so that they each play a little differently. Expansive progression systems in competitive and co-op multiplayer draw from games like Fortnite and Call of Duty to give you a constant feeling of advancement. Even the story campaign has something of an RPG-like progression system, as well as a few wide-open areas that change up the series' traditionally linear approach. The Coalition hasn't moved far from the fundamentals of Gears gameplay--you still move deliberately, diving between cover positions behind chest-high walls and other debris to pop out and shoot at enemies with a variety of guns. Carefully timing your active reloads gets you the most out of your firepower, and you're always searching the battlefield for new weapons better suited to the enemies you're taking down. Gory executions and melee kills are still essential at close quarters. But the game has grown significantly, with a free Battle Pass-like system, hero shooter-inspired characters, and other improvements that are all welcome evolutions for a 13-year-old franchise.While the new elements don't stop Gears 5 from feeling true to the earlier games in the franchise, at least in its 12-hour story campaign, there's also a lot of ground that's being revisited. The Locust are back, but they're called the Swarm now. You'll spend some time trying to convince straggly bands of surviving humans to join forces with the fascist COG army to fight the Swarm, but these folks aren't called the Stranded anymore; they're Outsiders. Most of the game concerns bringing a franchise superweapon, the Hammer of Dawn, back online to use against your enemies. Gears is undoubtedly back in the same territory it covered with the trilogy that wrapped up back in 2011, and while some of the tools in this war are different, the war has mostly gone unchanged. Gears 5 is weakened somewhat by being mired in the past; there are some strong moments in its campaign, but it struggles to move forward in a way that's a satisfying continuation of the narrative.The story picks up not long after the events of Gears of War 4, in which JD Fenix--son of series poster boy Marcus Fenix--and his pals Del and Kait discovered the Swarm threat and set out to stop it. You'll mostly just run around shooting various groups of Swarm monsters from behind cover in much the same way you always have in previous games--but Gears 5 breaks things up with a few variations on the gameplay that improve on its predecessors.Instead of focusing on JD and his relationship with Marcus as in Gears 4, the sequel recenters on Kait, who lost her mother to the Swarm at the end of the last game. Gears 4's ending suggested that Kait has a connection to the Locust horde that Marcus helped to genocide 25 years ago, and a good portion of Gears 5 is about exploring that connection and uncovering secrets long buried by the COG government.The first and last Acts are more traditional Gears fare, in that you're guided through a series of missions that are mostly about taking objectives, backing up other squads, and killing giant monsters. But in the middle of the game, Gears 5 changes the pace with two open segments. You hop aboard a skiff, which is essentially a dogsled with a sail on it, and zip over the terrain of a snowy valley and across a vast desert. These areas feel fundamentally different from past Gears games, allowing you to explore and look for side objectives where you can pick up small subplots of story and grab hidden collectibles and upgrades, advancing the main plot (or not) at your own pace.The open areas don't take you too far out of the Gears norm--you won't be accosted by roaming forces or stuck in a shootout in the middle of the wilderness. Arriving at any point of interest usually sends you on a short mission where you'll explore a building or wander into an arena filled with enemies. They're like mini Gears levels that you can take or leave, usually with an ambush to tangle you up and some weapons, upgrades, or a bit of lore waiting at the end.Story On A Small ScaleWhat's really enticing about these areas, though, are the many small moments they allow between characters. Act 2 finds Kait and Del on their own as they explore Kabar, a frozen alpine region full of old COG labs and fortifications that you'll search for Kait's answers. But the entire segment is fleshed out through a series of character-building conversations between Kait and Del as they hang around together, basically on a shooty road trip. Gears 5's writing is at its best in these character conversations, and the intimate time spent with characters in Acts 2 and 3 help you feel closer to them. Listening to Kait tell Del what she's worried she might uncover, or Kait making fun of Del for dropping tons of esoteric knowledge about things like the commercial lumber industry, bring you closer to the characters than any number of battles with AI teammates do.Kait provides an interesting alternative viewpoint to the proceedings as Gears 5's protagonist as well. She's fundamentally an outsider--in the sense of her anti-COG upbringing, her somewhat arms-length relationship with the city-boy soldiers with whom she fights, and her apparent ties to humanity's greatest enemies. The game doesn't necessarily spend a ton of time exploring that idea, but in the conversations between Delta squad members, we get a much better sense of the distance Kait feels from her friends.Unfortunately, the rest of Gears 5's story is uneven. Though Kait's desire to find out more about her connection to the Locust is a strong drive to push the narrative forward, Gears 5 pretty much wraps up what feels like her central drive by the middle of the game. The rest is just about Delta cruising around completing various tasks to fight off the growing Swarm threat, while the more personal stuff is left to linger. Exploring the destroyed desert facilities of the COG's old human enemies, the UIR, is a fun diversion full of a lot of pitched battles, but as far as the characters are concerned, nothing impactful happens outside of a bunch of big action set pieces. Gears 5 plays out its best story moments early, and it ends without doing much with the reveals and turning points it does create.The story ultimately feels somewhat truncated and meandering, but the campaign is still fun to play. Some key changes in the structure do a lot to provide new opportunities in the old framework. Since you're exploring areas at your own pace, you'll often come across unaware Swarm soldiers searching for ammo or prepping for combat, which gives you a chance to stealthily take some out. You also have a new set of abilities for your squad to use on the battlefield thanks to Jack, the R2-D2-like robot that follows you around on missions. Jack can zap enemies to injure them, flash enemies to stun them and make them break cover, ping their locations, turn you invisible, and even take over an enemy's mind for a brief period.Jack effectively provides Gears 5's campaign with a progression system, and coupled with the more varied gameplay and some slight squad control in the form of marking targets, he helps take Gears out of its cover-shooter comfort zone somewhat. Quickly swapping through and using Jack's abilities gives you a chance to make new decisions in combat or take advantage of different ways to play that you couldn't before, like by activating invisibility to slip through the front lines for a flanking position or using the Stim ability to strengthen yourself so you can melee to death a hulking Swarm Scion.Jack has a skill tree that lets you improve his abilities along a few different paths, allowing you to tweak his capabilities to better fit your playstyle. He's also the major reason to complete side missions and search all those nooks, crannies, dead ends, and side areas that litter Gears 5. While those side activities sometimes give a bit of a better understanding of the story or the world, the big reward is almost always an item that helps you improve Jack's abilities.Multiplayer, But MoreAs with the campaign, The Coalition doesn't reinvent the series' standard multiplayer in Gears 5--but much of it sees improvements aimed at adding customization and support for varied playstyles. The franchise's usual competitive multiplayer is back, where two teams of five players face off, with options segmented into more casual Quickplay and more hardcore Ranked playlists.Gears 5 multiplayer doesn't fix what isn't broken--it's striking how much Gears 5's competitive modes feel like, say, Gears of War 3, and are fun in the same ways. Since it isn't changing the core feel of the gameplay, The Coalition has expanded on it by offering more options for multiplayer, so you can find the modes you like, and metagame progression systems, to make your time feel more meaningful.Quickplay includes a bunch of different game types that fit the Gears framework, while pushing you to play a little differently in every match. Its modes include classics like King of the Hill, as well as Gears of War 4's weapon-based Arms Race (a literal race to get kills with a host of different guns) and Dodgeball, in which you can't respawn unless a teammate kills a member of the opposing squad. The Ranked mode, on the other hand, plays things straighter with simpler modes like Team Deathmatch.It's very easy to see the influence live service games have on Gears 5, with an overall level-up system for your multiplayer persona, the ability to unlock more guns for your starting loadouts, and lots of customization options. They're all of a type similar to what you'd see in something like Fortnite--nothing that would draw you into multiplayer on its own, but plenty to give you new unlocks to chase and to help multiplayer feel like it has more depth than just a series of matches to play. Exactly how big an influence those progression systems have on how multiplayer actually plays is tough to get a sense pre-release, so we'll be putting in more multiplayer after Gears 5's launch and will update this review accordingly. It should be noted also that, like live service games, Gears 5 also includes customization items you can grab by spending money on premium currency.Specializing In Co-OpThe bigger refinements come in Gears 5's co-op modes. Here, Gears 5 furthers an emphasis on teamwork and specialization, and again, the live service influence is apparent.Horde mode returns, in which five players team up to take on 50 waves of enemies while building fortifications and buying new weapons in between each round. It sees some tweaks to the rules, with elements like shared resources, the ability to spend those resources on character perks to make yourself stronger, and greater character specialization that gives you more of a particular job as you work together to survive. New to the cooperative scene is Escape, in which you race through a Swarm Hive as a squad of three, trying to outrun deadly gas as you find your way out and kill enemies along the way. Escape differs from the other modes in that you have limited weapons and ammo, forcing you to search for more resources as you go and to work together to stay alive, especially on higher difficulties.Both modes add more ways to engage with Gears 5 on their own, and they share their own live service-style progression systems that let you level up characters, customize their capabilities and loadouts, and generally make them more your own. The characters you choose in both Horde and Escape each have different roles and special abilities, including an Ultimate ability that charges up over time. You can even play as Jack the robot in an almost purely support role, providing something for players who prefer backing up teammates over scoring headshots. On the surface, Horde and Escape play pretty similarly to Gears' other modes, and it'll take some advancement through the progression systems to find out just how specific you can get with your character builds and how differently they really play from one another. But the possibilities are there to provide you with fun new ways to think about Gears' pop-and-shoot gameplay and teamwork.Gears 5's additions make the whole package feel denser and more involved--even if it still plays very similarly to Gears games in the past. To some degree, there's almost too much progression to deal with; it's a lot to learn and keep in mind, and the character additions don't always seem to have a big impact on how you play at lower levels. It's an area that's tough to gauge without spending more time with Gears 5 multiplayer post-release, and we'll be digging into that portion of the game more in the coming days before finalizing the review.But what makes Gears 5 work well is that those additions feel like a useful evolution of the core Gears concept, even if a lot of these ideas--like an involved character progression system or a Battle Pass-like rewards path--are also becoming commonplace among shooters. 13 years after the franchise's first release, The Coalition's additions to Gears 5 are all things that seem right at home with the elements that give the series its identity. The upshot is there are lots of options, and while you might not play them all, there's probably something that fits the kind of player you are.Gears 5 is very much a return of those best elements of Gears of War, but with a focus on making the game feel somewhat more adaptive to your particular ways of playing. Whether you want campaign or co-op, Competitive or Quickplay, there's an option for you in Gears 5, and plenty of stuff to reward you for time spent and skill gained. Gears 5 might suffer from some of the same storytelling missteps as its predecessors, and it might not venture far out of the past, but the new ideas it brings to the series are all good reasons for fans to return.Info from Gamespot.com

So Nintendo has something rather odd-looking in the works. Without any prior warning--and in spite of having a Direct presentation literally the day before--Nintendo announced a new experience coming to Switch with a new video, which can be watched below.It's not exactly clear what Nintendo is advertising, though the company does say that more information will be revealed on September 12. All the video reveals is this circular peripheral for Switch that seems to have a tremendous amount of give, as people in the video can't seem to crush it or stretch it apart no matter how hard they try.Based on what people are doing in the video, Nintendo may be announcing something for Switch that's akin to Wii Fit--an exercise experience for the Wii console that utilized the Wii remotes' motion sensors and an additional pressure-sensitive peripheral to walk you through various physical activities. Until September 12, however, there's no way to know for sure.During the latest Direct, Nintendo made several large announcements. It honestly felt like one of the company's E3 presentations. Most of the reveals were for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Banjo & Kazooie are now a playable fighter in the game, and Nintendo announced that more DLC characters are on the way--including Fatal Fury's Terry Bogard. Several new Mii Fighter skins are coming to Ultimate as well, with the notable standout being one of Sans from Undertale.Speaking of Undertale, developer Toby Fox was announced as the composer for GameFreak's upcoming RPG, Little Town Hero, which is coming to Switch on October 16. Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise--a sequel we never thought we'd ever get--was announced for Switch too, scheduled for 2020. Switch is also getting another Assassin's Creed port as well: the Rebel Collection, which combines Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Rogue in one package. Finally, on October 15, an Overwatch port is coming to Switch.Info from Gamespot.com

The Nintendo Switch finally has SNES games. Announced in September 4's Nintendo Direct, the Switch's SNES offerings are now available to download from the Eshop for all Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.You can download Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online (yes, that's its real name) by going to the Nintendo Switch Online tab of the Eshop and navigating to the Special Offers section. It's a free download that's only available to those with an active Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Amazon Prime members can get Nintendo Switch Online for free through a special promotion but should act fast as that deal ends soon.20 SNES games are available at launch (see the full list below). Each game supports suspend points (aka save states) and a rewind function that lets you rewind your gameplay to retry that crucial jump or collect that power-up that escaped your grasp.Nintendo plans to release a SNES-style controller for the Nintendo Switch, though no release date has been revealed. It will retail for $30 USD exclusively available to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. We'll report back when Nintendo releases more information.Nintendo Switch Online Super Nintendo GamesBrawl BrothersBreath Of FireDemon's CrestF-ZeroJoe And Mac 2: Lost In The TropicsKirby's Dream CourseKirby's Dream Land 3PilotwingsStar FoxStunt Race FXSuper EDF: Earth Defense ForceSuper Ghouls 'n GhostsSuper Mario KartSuper Mario WorldSuper Mario World 2: Yoshi's IslandSuper MetroidSuper Puyo Puyo 2Super SoccerSuper TennisThe Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The PastInfo from Gamespot.com

We're quickly nearing the migration of Destiny 2's PC version from its current home on Battle.net to its new home on Steam. That move gets completed on October 1 with the launch of Shadowkeep, and Bungie has already suggested players link their accounts to Steam now to facilitate the transfer. There's another caveat, though: If you're already a PC player, you should log in before October 1 for a bit of housekeeping.In its most recent This Week at Bungie blog, the developer noted that it has stopped selling Silver, Destiny 2's premium currency, on Battle.net ahead of the move to Steam. If you don't already own any Silver on PC, you don't have to worry--when the Steam transfer goes through, you'll be able to buy Silver as normal. But if you already own some Silver on PC that you purchased from for the Battle.net version, you're in danger of losing it in the migration."Players should be aware, however, that all in order for recent Silver purchases to successfully transfer to Steam, players MUST log in to Destiny 2 on Battle.net before October 1 to claim their purchased Silver," Bungie wrote on the blog.Easy enough, but the October 1 deadline means it's worth popping into Destiny 2 sooner rather than later to make sure your premium currency transfers successfully. While we're in a bit of a dead period awaiting the launch of Shadowkeep, there's a community event taking place on Mars this week that encourages players to take part in Nightfall Strikes and Escalation Protocol events. There's also another Iron Banner event coming before the end of the Season of Opulence and the start of Destiny 2 Year 3.Info from Gamespot.com

The woods are easy to be scared of. It's difficult to reorient yourself if you get lost, with each passing moment bringing night closer and making an already unsettling wrong turn seem life-threatening. In Blair Witch, the woods are a character you have to fight against at every turn. Each cracking branch underneath your feet will startle you, every bit of movement in the distance trying to trick your senses into believing something is there. At its best, Blair Witch does a lot with very little to instill a strong sense of paranoia and dread, but it struggles to maintain that atmosphere throughout.You play as Ellis, a former police officer that takes it upon himself to head into the infamous Black Hills Forest in Burkittsville, Maryland to investigate yet another child disappearance during 1996. Ellis is troubled; he suffers frequent panic attacks that allude to post-traumatic stress from his time in the military and the police force, and he's pushed away everyone who cares for him as a result. Ellis is the perfect candidate for the persuasions of Black Hills Forest, making his ventures deeper into the woods more perilous with each passing second.To keep you from succumbing to stress and anxiety, you have Bullet--a gorgeous and loyal police dog given to you by your former sheriff–to keep you on track. Sticking close to Bullet keeps you calm and also lets you follow his helpful hints. Bullet will sniff out clues for you to inspect and trails for you to follow, making the labyrinthine forest easier to navigate. Bullet is also great at alerting you to imminent dangers nearby, barking at enemies lurking in the trees and unseen foes buried in a thick fog. In a way, Bullet's job is to escort you throughout most of Blair Witch's runtime, and it's truly disconcerting when he's not by your side.Ellis' vivid and violent panic attacks are just one side effect of Bullet's absence, letting the horrors of Black Hills flood his reality and warp it. The woods themselves twist and turn, with trees overlapping each other to trap you in looping pathways or rearrange your understanding of where landmarks are. It makes it difficult to ever feel safe in any spot, since you don't know where to run should you need to. The general, overwhelming silence of the woods is undercut delicately with reverberating environmental sounds that heighten your sensory tension, making you jump at every little noise. Blair Witch achieves its most tense moments when seemingly nothing is happening at all, letting your imagination get the better of you just as Ellis begins to question his own sanity.This doesn't persist all the way through, and it's Blair Witch's more surreal elements that don't quite stick. There are two types of enemies: those that burst into dust when you shine your flashlight on them, and those that you can't kill at all and have to avoid instead. When Bullet alerts you to enemies ahead, you can simply shine the light in the direction he's barking if they're killable; if they're immune, you can easily spot them as red outlines on your camcorder and sneak past them with little trouble. Either approach doesn't require much thought and neither of these encounters are that suspenseful, going so far as to remove you from the tension of the environment around you.There's also the occasional puzzle as you venture through the woods, and although they are less intrusive to the overall atmosphere, they're hardly any more inventive than the enemies. The main puzzle mechanic works with your camcorder and red-labelled tapes, which in tandem let you manipulate parts of the environment around you. A massive log might be blocking your path ahead, but you're able to move it by rewinding a tape shot from the same location backwards a few seconds and continuing on your way. A locked door can be overcome in the same way, so long as you keep the tape associated with it paused at a point where the door stands open. The idea of manipulating time to your advantage is clever, but the solutions are so obvious that it's never satisfying to solve the puzzles they're attached to.So many of these enemy encounters and puzzles disrupt the flow of navigating the eerie woods that they get in the way of its overall effect, as well as the story's pacing. Blair Witch doesn't tell a complex tale, and its twists are drawn out over such a long time that it's easy to see them coming way before they have any chance to land impactfully. Each narrative thread comes to a head in the final chapters, where the subtlety of the woods is replaced with over-the-top surrealism that attempts to quickly wrangle all the loose ends thrown at you up to this point. Their resolutions are disappointingly predictable, making the promise of "your actions are being watched" at the beginning of the game an empty one.There are additional endings to see if you follow some incredibly strict rules on subsequent playthroughs, but the one you're probably going to see on your first run-through is likely the one that will stick with you. You're only given one big choice to make that is both obvious and has a tangible impact on one facet of the ending you get. The rest of the choices are almost impossible to follow without looking up what they are first, and even then, they seem more like mundane challenges than intelligent pivots for the story to make based on your actions. The lack of clarity in the choices makes subsequent playthroughs far less inviting, especially when the faint spark of new puzzles and unfamiliar scares is no longer there to entertain you.For all the gripping tension that its setting instills, Blair Witch can't maintain its initially frightening atmosphere and ends up losing it entirely by its conclusion. It doesn't capture the paranoid horror of its namesake in the same way, partly due to wonky enemy encounters that tread on the ambiguity of its central antagonist and one-note puzzle-solving that rips you out of its meticulously crafted atmosphere. While it's still unnerving to have the silence of empty woods pierced by the alerted barks of your canine companion, Blair Witch can't recapture its tense opening moments and carry them through to a strong and captivating finale.Info from Gamespot.com

The Creature has laid out a dozen traps, all of which can only be deactivated by the glowing ball carefully balanced on the tip of my sword. At a glance, I can tell it's going to take an impressive display of geometry to bounce the ball into every target before an approaching laser cuts me in half. The Creature threatens that a worthless piece of trash like me has no place in its mountain before it disappears back into the shadows with a haughty growl, convinced that at least one of its pinball death machines will stop me. Unfortunately for me, this time around, it's right, and the Creature smugly returns to pick my limp body off the floor and throw it out of its well. After muttering a few curses under my breath, I pick myself up, restructure my loadout, and head back into the monster's home.In Creature in the Well, you play as BOT-C, a robotic engineer tasked with maintaining a weather machine that's built into a mountain and designed to dispel the constant sandstorms that blanket the town of Mirage. Angry at the townsfolk for encroaching on its home and "worshiping" a machine for protection against the storms, the Creature that lives in the town well breaks the contraption. You set out to undo the damage only to learn that the Creature has filled the caverns of its home with deadly traps to stop you.Developer Flight School Studio refers to Creature in the Well as a "pinbrawler," a term coined by the studio to describe a top-down hack-and-slash dungeon crawler that utilizes pinball-inspired mechanics. It just so happens that the Creature's traps transform every room in the mountain into a giant pinball machine, allowing you to siphon energy from the bumper-like nodes that power the Creature's inventions by flipping balls into them. The energy you absorb can be used to unlock doors that lead further into the mountain.This fairly straightforward concept of hitting balls into bumpers evolves into more difficult puzzles as you delve into the areas beyond the first dungeon. Additional concepts are introduced at a steady pace, building new types of enjoyable challenges on what the game has already established so you're not blindsided by whatever you're up against next. Early on, the game only really tasks you with learning how to bank your shot, presenting puzzles where you need to angle the ball off of walls to hit nodes in a certain order. But then Creature in the Well starts adding cannons that shoot at you, lasers that disintegrate you, and other types of threats that need to be deactivated or dodged while you're also trying to position for your next shot.Few of the challenges in Creature in the Well are an equal combination of pinball and hack-and-slash. Instead, they fluctuate between the two to curate welcome variety in its dungeon-crawler gameplay. One room may not have a ball for you to use so you'll need to time your attack and use a shot from an enemy cannon as your ball, for instance, while another may task you with figuring out how it's possible to hit every node in a room within a specific time limit. Most of these challenges lean into the hack-and-slash inspirations and are more enjoyable as a result--largely because the flurry of frantically dashing between enemy traps as you try to calculate the trajectory of all the balls bouncing around the room produces the same thrill as battling your way through a difficult mob in a typical dungeon crawler.The pinball-focused rooms are designed to be a test of your intellect, but none of them are overly difficult. As a result, they mostly just stand out in stark contrast to the more plentiful hack-and-slash rooms as the handful of moments in Creature in the Well when the action slows down. They're still good, but Creature in the Well is just better as a pinball-inspired action game than a geometry-focused puzzle one, as its hack-and-slash mechanics better lend themselves to quickly overcoming obstacles through good reaction and precision instead of repeated trial-and-error. Though Creature in the Well does occasionally repeat puzzles, these duplicates rarely show up and they're typically only after the game has given you a chance to expand your arsenal or encouraged you to learn a new strategy. Tackling these recurrent puzzles with newfound efficiency each time helps reinforce that you are getting better (plus, it's really fun).Creature in the Well doesn't have much in the way of tutorials, but the game is fairly well-structured and teaches you most of what you need to know without exposition. The game never tells you that each room is optional, for example, but it provides enough opportunities at the start of the first dungeon to earn a surplus of energy so that you can try opening a few doors in the early areas without completing every puzzle. Likewise, almost as if it assumes most players will try, regardless, to complete every room at the start of the game anyway, Creature in the Well hides its first secret area relatively early in its campaign so that you learn hidden doors are only revealed by fully completing puzzles in certain rooms. In this way, you absorb enough of the basics to beat the campaign, but a few of the game's aspects that help alleviate some of its tougher challenges could have used additional explanation.The game doesn't tell you how to heal in the hub area after dying, for instance, and it doesn't explicitly reveal what BOT-C's core upgrades actually do. Without this knowledge, moments of Creature in the Well can, at times, feel frustratingly stacked against you, though it thankfully never gets to the point where the disadvantage feels impossibly unfair. And it's likely you'll eventually stumble into these mechanics and features before Creature in the Well's story is through. However, these things--that there's a pool of water in the hub you can bathe in to replenish your health and that core upgrades allow you to pull off more powerful strikes that siphon off extra node energy--feel like crucial information. Learning the purpose of the core upgrades, specifically, helped alleviate most of the struggle I was having with the late-game dungeons.There's an excellent diversity to each tool's effect--most of which seem inspired by traditional dungeon crawler powers and weapons--allowing for various playstyles.These dungeons are each structured around certain thematic challenges. To help you better respond to a dungeon's specific test, every one contains a tool designed to handle its threats. For example, the Lockdown Systems mostly contains rooms with nodes that move or require you to strike balls through a tiny opening. This area hides the Dual Blades, twin swords that help you make precision and long-distance shots by revealing a ball's travel path, allowing you to course correct before you even swing. Every tool is fun to experiment with, and it's exciting to discover how you might use a new one. And though each tool is designed for its specific dungeon, their special abilities can be reapplied in different ways to overcome the challenges found in other areas. You're thus encouraged to return to dungeons you didn't fully complete to see if the new tools you've acquired can help you solve any lingering optional puzzles you previously couldn't get past.Every tool is divided into one of two categories, charge and strike, and you can equip one of each to combine their special effects and build different loadouts for BOT-C. I most enjoyed pairing the aforementioned Dual Blades with the Focus Hammer, a strike tool that allows you to slow down time, to transform BOT-C into a sniper-like fighter. There's an excellent diversity to each tool's effect--most of which seem inspired by traditional dungeon crawler powers and weapons--allowing for various playstyles.The best moments to test out these different playstyles are in Creature in the Well's boss battles--each located at the end of a dungeon and all of which see you go up against the titular Creature. Each battle sees the Creature throw several waves of challenges at you that you must complete in a single run, with each consisting of a culmination of more difficult variations of the puzzles seen in that particular dungeon--further encouraging you to fully explore every area and experiment with multiple tool loadouts in each one. The boss battles are fast-paced and demand a higher level of tactical awareness than the rest of the game, as the Creature will also just randomly outright attack you as you're trying to hit the nodes scattered throughout the arena. Whereas most of the dungeons allow you the time to dissect how a problem can be solved, the boss battles force you into piecing together the solution on the fly.Though the abrupt change in pace between the slower dungeon puzzles and faster boss battles can be a little flustering, learning the different patterns of the Creature and overcoming them are gratifying challenges that require both careful aim and situational cognizance. Beating each boss rewards you with more dungeons to explore--and thus new challenges to tackle and tools to find--as well as lore-focused texts that further flesh out Creature in the Well's history. Though most of this lore isn't compelling enough to regularly be a fulfilling reward, the promise of more dungeons and new weapons eases away that disappointment.Both Creature in the Well's dungeons and boss battles are also improved via the portrayal of its antagonist. The Creature is terrifying, largely because you never actually see the entirety of it or learn its motivations. From start to finish, the Creature is a pair of glowing eyes and skeletal arms, most of its body covered in shadow. It growls, taunts, and even threatens you, but it never reveals what it is, remaining this demonic-like enigma that refuses to be understood or stopped. The Creature appears at seemingly random points in every dungeon, watching you from just out of your reach and cultivating this paranoia that it doesn't even have a physical form for you to fight. So when you do actually win and manage to push the Creature back a little further into the mountain, the battle feels hard-won, a boss fight on par with one in a traditional dungeon crawler.Creature in the Well manages to inject the geometry-focused experience of pinball into the frenzied gameplay loop of a dungeon crawler to craft a unique puzzle action game. On occasion, the game's hands-off approach to conveying information is a hindrance, but the well-structured dungeons and monstrous antagonist more than make up for it--producing an engaging hack-and-slash experience that allows for satisfying experimentation.Info from Gamespot.com

As is typical of any game developed by Remedy, live-action is used in wonderful fashion in Control. These primarily come in the form of short informational clips featuring Dr. Casper Darling, the head researcher of the Federal Bureau of Control. He's played by Matthew Porretta, who absolutely shines in these videos. If he seems familiar to you but you simply chalked that up to his role in past Remedy games, you might be as shocked as I was to dig a little further into his IMDB history.Remedy fans may know Porretta best as the star of the Alan Wake games, in which he voices the titular character (even that might come as a surprise to you, given he doesn't play the live-action version). But go back a couple more decades, and you'll find Porretta also portrayed Will Scarlet O'Hara in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights. If, like me, you both watched Men in Tights numerous times as a kid and found yourself captivated by Darling throughout Control, this revelation is downright flabbergasting.While perhaps not as memorable as some of Robin Hood's other companions (namely, Dave Chappelle's Ahchoo), O'Hara does have one of the movie's best moments, in which he mistakenly cuts his pants off.None are quite as revelatory as Porretta, but Control does have a number of other actors with past roles you might be familiar with, including Director Trench's James McCaffrey, who starred in the Max Payne games and played Jimmy Keefe on Rescue Me. Emily Pope is played by Antonia Bernath, who's been in a number of video games (including Hitman 2's Sierra Knox) as well as Downton Abbey. Meanwhile, Simon Arish actor Ronan Summers (who was in Hitman 2 as Rico Delgado, as well as in Forza Horizon 4 as Scott Tyler) is hilariously credited as "'drop the leg' guard" in Guardians of the Galaxy.Whether or not the names and faces of Control are familiar to you, the performances are terrific across the board. Darling's videos and the various Hotline calls, as well as the semi-hidden puppet show, are real highlights. The curious use of live-action, along with things like the large, bold font that announces your entrance into a new area for the first time, combine to help provide Control with an extra dose of flavor that helps to elevate an already great game into something that will likely stick with you for a long time.Info from Gamespot.com

When it comes to headsets, a comfortable fit is just as important as sound quality, and in my experience, Steelseries' Arctis line of headsets are some of the most enjoyable to wear. For the Nintendo Switch, however, your choices have been limited. The Switch doesn't allow Bluetooth headphones to be used with the system, so if you wanted to use them or any other wireless headset, your only option was to buy a third-party dongle. Now Steelseries has released the Arctis 1 Wireless, which is the first wireless headset to work with the Switch straight out of the box.Arctis 1 Wireless Headset$100 USD / $140 CADSee it at Steelseries.comThis is made possible due to the inclusion of a 2.4 GHz dongle that plugs into the Switch's USB-C port. In docked mode, the USB-C dongle can be plugged into a USB adapter that is also included. This USB adapter also makes the headset compatible with the PS4 and PC. Xbox One users can plug this headset into their controller with the bundled 3.5 mm cable but unfortunately won't be able to take advantage of the wireless functionality.Unlike other Arctis headsets, the microphone doesn't slide into the headset. Thankfully, it is still detachable (just make sure you don't lose it). All of this coupled with the Arctis 7's speaker drivers and the Arctis 1 Wireless seems like a great, versatile option for someone on a budget. Info from Gamespot.com

In a surprise announcement via Twitter, creative director of the upcoming game Ghostwire: Tokyo, Ikumi Nakamura, stated that she is leaving Tango Gameworks and Bethesda/Zenimax. She made a huge splash at E3 2019 when she gave a presentation for the reveal of Ghostwire: Tokyo and charmed everyone with her own charisma. She spent nine years with the studio and was a lead art designer for both The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2. She also worked on Bayonetta with Platinum Games and Okami with Capcom.After 9 years as Creative director & Art Director at Tango and Zenimax - I felt here is one of ends of the journeys . I learned from the talented people I've worked with and I respect. 🙏😊 Contact me if anyone wants to work with me! →　https://t.co/4VKLdY2ejl pic.twitter.com/Hbsuta3Rgo — Ikumi Nakamura @TGS2019 (@nakamura193) September 4, 2019Nakamura-san hasn't stated what she'll be doing next, but her follow-up tweets suggest that she could be moving on to another project. It's not uncommon for creative directors to leave their positions before their project launches--recently, Sebastian Stępień left CD Projekt Red as creative director of Cyberpunk 2077 and Tim Longo left 343 Industries having worked on Halo Infinite.Ghostwire: Tokyo was one of the surprise announcements of E3 2019, which came out of Bethesda's press conference. It's an action-adventure game taking place in Tokyo that incorporates horror elements, but won't be a survival horror game like The Evil Within. In the reveal trailer, citizens disappear as a spooky atmosphere envelops the city before supernatural entities start to surface. From what we gathered, you'll be investigating the nature of the disappearances and come in contact with many spirits, some peaceful and some dangerous. You can watch the trailer below.A release window and platforms have yet to be detailed--famed game developer Shinji Mikami (best known for the Resident Evil series) and his studio Tango Gameworks are at the helm for Ghostwire: Tokyo.Info from Gamespot.com

I don't mean to alarm you, but we're already almost three-quarters of the way through the year. Yes, that's a terrifying thought, but at least Amazon Prime members can still claim their free PC games for the month of September--there's always a silver lining. As part of Twitch Prime, a benefit that comes with all Amazon Prime subscriptions, four games are available to claim this month until October 1. Be sure to pick them up if The first is Yoku's Island Express, which combines pinball with a delightful, Metroid-inspired platformer. Critic Alexander Pan scored it a 9 out of 10 in our Yoku's Island Express review and said it "takes two unlikely genres and combines them into one playful, natural experience. The game’s audio and visual design is simply joyous and the large game world seamlessly combines its pinball puzzles with some brilliant level designs."The other three games available this month are Manual Samuel, Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones, and Chicken Assassin: Reloaded. GameSpot didn't write reviews of these games, but all of them do have Mostly Positive to Very Positive user reviews on Steam.Other Twitch Prime benefits available this month include guns, outfits, and Gold for Red Dead Online, in addition to Madden NFL 20 Ultimate Team content, Elder Scrolls Online mounts, and cosmetics for The Division 2. There's a lot more, including bonuses for Apex Legends and Rainbow Six Siege, so be sure to check out all of the Twitch Prime benefits and loot. Before you can claim your free Twitch Prime games and loot, you need to link your Twitch account to your Amazon Prime account. If you're not yet subscribed to Amazon Prime, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial. After the trial ends, your Prime membership costs $119 / £79 a year. Prime gives you benefits like free two-day shipping, access to the Prime Video streaming service, and much more.SIGN UP FOR TWITCH PRIME »How to link an existing Amazon Prime account to Twitch »Free Twitch Prime games for September 2019Yoku's Island ExpressManual SamuelStealth Inc 2: A Game of ClonesChicken Assassin: ReloadedInfo from Gamespot.com

Following months of speculation, Nintendo has confirmed that Overwatch is coming to Nintendo Switch. The company made the announcement as part of its Nintendo Direct presentation. Overwatch: Legendary Edition releases for Nintendo Switch on October 15. It costs $40 USD, comes with three months of Nintendo Switch Online, and is currently available for pre-order at Best Buy. It's important to note that the game is only available as a digital download, and there won't be any physical game card included.Overwatch: Legendary Edition$40Pre-order at Best BuyOverwatch director Jeff Kaplan said in 2017 that porting the game to the Nintendo Switch would be challenging, but noted that the studio was open to the possibility. Then last year Blizzard senior producer Pete Stilwell said the work on Diablo 3 had helped familiarize the studio with the platform.More recently the rumors have gained steam thanks to a series of leaks. First an Overwatch-themed Switch case appeared briefly on Amazon, which suggested a port incoming. Most recently a leak that turned out to be legitimate for Plants vs. Zombies suggested that other games were real too, and Overwatch was on that list. Nintendo Direct September 2019 News Nintendo Direct Livestream News Recap (September 2019): SNES Games, Overwatch, Smash DLC, More Every Switch Game And DLC Surprise-Released During The Nintendo Direct Overwatch Coming To Nintendo Switch All 20 SNES Games Coming To Nintendo Switch Tomorrow Super Nintendo Games Coming To Switch September 5 Nintendo Direct: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Adds Banjo-Kazooie To Roster Today New Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC Character Revealed, And More Are On The Way Nintendo Direct: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag And Rogue Come To Switch Nintendo Direct: Divinity Original Sin 2 Is Out On Switch Right Now Pokemon Sword And Shield Have Trainer Customization And Camping Info from Gamespot.com