The Minecraft movie, which has been in the works for years now and has gone through multiple directors, has found a new release date. The film is scheduled to hit theatres on March 4, 2022, developer Mojang announced on its website. The movie, which is live-action, was at one point scheduled to come to cinemas in 2018, so it's taken quite a while to get to this point.Mojang also shared new plot details for the Minecraft movie. It'll focus on a teenage girl and her "unlikely group of adventurers." They must defeat the evil Ender Dragon and save Overworld.Peter Sollett (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist) is directing the Minecraft movie, which is coming from Harry Potter film studio Warner Bros. Before Sollett, Warner Bros. had hired Stranger Things director Shawn Levy to direct, and while It's Always Sunny star Rob McElhenney was also attached to direct, but both of those men dropped out for various reasons."We want to make the movie--just as we make the game--for you," Mojang said. "We're inspired by countless things, but none as much as the incredible stuff our community creates in Minecraft every day."Minecraft currently boasts 91 million monthly active players, which even tops the success of Fortnite. It has already spawned a variety of adaptations and licensing, from books and collectibles to Telltale's Minecraft Story Mode. Info from Gamespot.com

As with many of the Inside Xbox livestreams, the latest one had plenty of news and announcements that paint a clearer picture of Xbox's future. You may have heard about Sony revealing details on the next PlayStation console, but Microsoft has a new console of its own coming soon--an Xbox One S without a disc drive. The all-you-can-eat game downloading service Game Pass will get a new tier option that packs in Xbox Live Gold, and Gears 5 multiplayer will be shown very soon. What's probably the most exciting thing is head of Xbox Phil Spencer stating that Microsoft's E3 2019 presentation will feature "things nobody has seen before" from the company's new game studios.If you want to watch the stream yourself, check it out here. Otherwise, read through all the good stuff we plucked out from Inside Xbox.Xbox One S All-Digital Edition ConfirmedRumors and leaks preceded this reveal, so it wasn't much of a surprise when Microsoft made the official announcement for its disc-less Xbox One S. The new version of the console will launch on May 7 for $250 USD and come bundled with Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, and Forza Horizon 3. It's built with the same exact specs as the Xbox One S, sans the disc drive of course.Read the full Xbox One S All-Digital Edition story here. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate AnnouncedCombining Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold into one subscription option has also been rumored for a while. Microsoft confirmed that it's bundling the two services and calling it Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which sensibly coincides with the all-digital Xbox One S announcement. While it's available for a few select users, it'll launch in full later this year for $15 a month.Read the full Xbox Game Pass Ultimate story here.Phil Spencer Says Big Things From New Studios Coming For E3 2019Inside Xbox concluded with a few words from head of Xbox Phil Spencer. He affirmed Xbox's presence at E3 by saying, "We are the platform holder that has a live stage show...We're taking the responsibility of being out there representing gaming." He continued to say that some of Microsoft's newly acquired studios will have things to show that nobody has seen before.Read the full story on Phil Spencer's comments here.Spencer Also Says He's Been Grinding In Destiny 2 Using Project xCloudWhile Microsoft's cloud-based game streaming service Project xCloud is still in development, Spencer stated that he's been using a sort of alpha build himself. He said he's still trying to grind out light level 700 in Destiny 2 and has been doing strikes on his phone using an Xbox controller.Gears 5 Multiplayer Reveal Coming SoonThe focus of the Gears 5 content during the Inside Xbox stream was esports. The Coalition's studio head Rod Fergusson stated that TBS's show ELeague will be doing a six-part series on the professional competitive scene for Gears of War in June, which will include a Gears 5 multiplayer reveal. A Gears 5 invitational competition will also take place in July, ahead of the game's release later this year.Read the full Gears 5 Multiplayer Reveal story here.Ninja Gaiden 2 Is Now Backward CompatibleThe 2008 stylish character-action game Ninja Gaiden 2 is now backward compatible on Xbox One along with a suite of visual enhancements for Xbox One X. Like any of the backward compatible games, you can either use an existing physical copy of the game or download it digitally.Read the full Ninja Gaiden 2 Backward Compatible story here.Splinter Cell And Fable Games Get Xbox One X EnhancementsWhile we may not have a new game in the storied stealth-action franchise from the Tom Clancy extended universe, three last-gen Splinter Cell games just got Xbox One X Enhancements. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (Xbox 360 version), Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist now include enhanced visuals and resolution. The same treatment was extended to the RPGs Fable 2 and Fable 3.Game Bar For PC Gets A Major UpgradePC gamers got a little bit out of the Inside Xbox stream as well; Windows 10 users are getting a significant update to Game Bar. It'll now be widget-based with modules that you can pop in and out to customize the things you want. For example, you can have chat volume mix, Spotify, and streaming accessible while staying in-game using the new Game Bar overlay.Rage 2 Gameplay WalkthroughTim Willits, director at developer Avalanche Studios, walked us through a brief Rage 2 gameplay segment. Rage 2 is confirmed to feature the coveted, overpowered gun of Doom fame, the BFG 9000. There will also be Arcs, which are sci-fi-styled underground tombs with weapons and abilities to earn.Xbox Fan Fest At E3 2019Xbox Fan Fest will be expanding this year by offering 700 tickets. This grants you access to Microsoft's E3 stage presentation, hands-on with upcoming games, some swag, and much more. Tickets are acquired via random drawing and those 18 years old and up can enter starting April 19 at 9am PT--winners will be announced on April 25.Info from Gamespot.com

In a big change for E3, Sony has backed out of the show this year. Microsoft and Nintendo are still attending as representatives of "The Big Three," but Microsoft's broadcast is the only live show of the bunch. Nintendo's is a pre-recorded Nintendo Direct. Xbox executive Phil Spencer talked about this unique setup today on the latest episode of Inside Xbox.He said he and his team understand the "responsibility" of being the only one of The Big Three to have a live stage show presence as it relates to representing the gaming industry at a time when all eyes on the gaming business."This is going to be an interesting one," he said. "We are the [only] platform-holder that has a live stage show. It's kind of just us this year. I feel the responsibility of that. I want to represent gaming. I think it's an important time where the larger community--news [organisations] and other things--are looking at the gaming industry at E3."I think it's a time where we kind of pop above a lot of the noise that's out there. The whole team, we're taking the responsibility of being out there representing gaming and wanting to do a good job of that."Microsoft is rumoured to announce at least one next-generation console at E3 this year, while the company is also expected to discuss Halo Infinite--or at least its engine--at the event. We also recently learned that Microsoft will show off never-before-seen games from some of the studios it acquired recently during the show. There will of course also be surprises.Microsoft's E3 2019 briefing takes place on Sunday, June 9, at 1 PM PT.While Sony won't be at E3 2019, that doesn't mean the company has no announcements to make. Just this week, executive Mark Cerny shared the first details about the PlayStation 5, and you can bet the company will talk more about the console at some point in the future. Info from Gamespot.com

Update: Nintendo just published the official 15-minute video showcasing everything that's in the spring 2019 update for Smash Ultimate, including all the Persona-related content coming to the game. The update launches April 17 as $6 DLC.The main character from the wonderfully great RPG Persona 5, codenamed Joker, should be coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate any day now. It's been said that he'll be joining the battle as the 70th character on the roster sometime this month, but to hold you off until then, you can check out his official character render for the game below.It's the same character model that was first leaked by Best Buy, but it can now be dug up on Nintendo of Europe's official page for Smash Bros. Ultimate. This came to our attention via a tweet from users @PushDustIn and @Digita1Lucas. You can see him out in all his glory, sporting his Phantom Thieves get-up when he enters the Metaverse.Sourced from Twitter user @Skyplayer37I confirmed this myself by digging through the page's source code which was also shown by Twitter user @RealHeroOfWinds.It's legit.Joker's arrival in Smash Ultimate will coincide with the game's version 3.0 spring 2019 update. This isn't the only Persona 5-related news that you should be hyped up for. During a two-day special live concert, called Persona Super Live: P-Sound Street 2019 in Japan, details on a new version of the RPG titled Persona 5: The Royal will be revealed on day one, April 24. On the second day, April 25, the show will reveal the true form of the mysterious game Persona 5 S.Info from Gamespot.com

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is getting a lot of new content with the 3.0 update, including a stage-builder and video editor, along with a brand-new DLC character: Joker from Persona 5.Version 3.0 launches on April 17, and the new stage-builder and video editor are free, while Joker is a paid character costing $6 USD. Joker also comes with a new Mementos stage, which features music from the Persona series. Check it out in the video embedded below.The stage-builder, which was rumoured, lets you create custom stages. In handheld mode, you can draw on the tablet screen using your finger to create new stages. The tools are robust enough to make all kinds of things, it looks like, and the tools support multiple layers to edit your stages in an even deeper way. Created stages are stored in a new "Custom" tab on the Stage Select screen. You can also view and download other people's creations, though you'll need Nintendo Switch Online to do that. The video below shows how it all works.Additionally, the video shows off how the new video-editing tools work, while it also reveals you'll be able to queue up stage downloads from the Smash World part of the Nintendo Switch Online app. You can also view recommended Stages and watch videos from Smash World.Version 3.0 also adds new Mii Fighter Costumes to buy, including the Morgana Hat from Persona 5, the main protagonist costume and the Teddie Hat from Persona 4, and another protagonist outfit from Persona 3. You can also buy Tails and Knuckles outfits from Sonic the Hedgehog. The costumes cost 75 cents each.Here is a video showcasing the new Mii Fighter Costumes:With more than 12 million copies sold worldwide, Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of the best-selling Nintendo Switch games ever. Info from Gamespot.com

The big Version 3.0 update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will add a number of new Mii Fighter costumes that players can purchase for less than a dollar each.There are six new costumes coming, including those based on Tails and Knuckles from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, as well as the Morgana Hat from Persona 5 and costumes based on the protagonist of Persona 4 and Persona 3, among other items. Each costume costs 75 cents each, and they go on sale April 17 with the Ver. 3.0 update.Smash Bros. Ultimate's Version 3.0 update launches on April 17, and it also adds Joker from Persona 5 and a new Mementos stage as paid DLC. In terms of free content, the update introduces a new Stage builder and video editor, while there are updates to the Smash World portion of the Nintendo Switch Online app as well.Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.Info from Gamespot.com

Out of nowhere, Nintendo announced all the key details for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's big Version 3.0 update today. In terms of new features, Ultimate is adding free stage- and video-editing tools for everyone to use.A video from Nintendo showcases how each of these features will work. Building off the Stage builder from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Wii U, the new version features tools that players can use to create basically whatever they want. In handheld mode, players can use the touch screen to draw to make their creations. Some of the things you can do include create moving platforms and spinning traps, or anything else you can think up and design.The Stage builder also features front and back layers for a further level of depth. The custom stages will live in a new Custom tab of the Stage Select screen. Players can also share them with the community. People are able to rate creations, so in theory the best ones should surface. The stages can also be viewed using the Nintendo Switch Online app, and players can even queue up a new stage download so when they get home it should start downloading.As for the video editor, it does what you would expect. You can combine your saved video clips and adds subtitles and sound effects. As you'd expect, you can then share your creations in the Smash World page in the Nintendo Switch Online app.Skip to around 11 minutes in the video above to check out the stage builder and video editor.The Version 3.0 update for Smash Bros. Ultimate launches on April 17. In addition to the Stage builder and video editor, the update adds Joker from Persona 5 as a new paid DLC character, as well as a number of different Persona and Sonic Mii Fighter Costumes. Info from Gamespot.com

On the face of it, Heaven's Vault sounds like chaos: It's a planet-surfing science-fiction adventure game in which you play as an archaeologist who gets caught up in a doomsday prophecy. But it's a much calmer experience than you might expect--you play as Aliyah, an archaeologist employed by a university on Iox, the wealthiest, most opulent planet within her nebula, to track down Renba, a professor who has disappeared. Throughout the journey, you'll peel away at the complex and ambitious lore of the world and meet the interesting characters who inhabit it, but not without some slow sailing.You spend much of the game hunting for clues to determine not only Renba's fate, but also the nature of his research and the discoveries he was making in his travels. For most of the game, the exact details of Renba's mission are pleasantly unclear, and major theories the player concocts early on can be proven incorrect by later discoveries. To get to the bottom of things, you'll need to investigate various moons throughout the nebula, some settled, some abandoned. You'll also build and maintain friendships or trade alliances with folks who can provide you with assistance, collect artifacts and clues, and mess around with the game's neat translation mechanic.Throughout the game, Aliyah will encounter many passages written in "Ancient" script, which require translation to decipher. This will begin as guesswork, but as you progress you'll develop a better understanding of what different glyphs within longer words might represent. There's a two-tiered system in place for translating words: If you encounter an inscription of a full phrase, you can guess any of the words you're not certain of until you have a full, hopefully coherent sentence. If you find what Aliyah will describe as a part of a longer phrase, a list of potential words you've already translated or guessed will appear on the screen, and you must see if the part of text matches up with any of the words you already understand or have guessed at. These partial texts can confirm your definitions--if you've decided that a word means 'water' in a previous translation, for example, and it pops up again as part of a longer phrase, Aliyah might declare that she is either now confident in the translation of that word or believes it's wrong. After a while, you'll build up a much bigger vocabulary of translated words, making it easier to fill in the gaps.Across the game's somewhat excessive running time, I lost track of what the actual advantage of all this translation was to my progression, as correct translations tend to prompt conversation options rather than key clues for where to go next. But it's still an interesting and exciting mechanic, as so much of the pleasure of Heaven's Vault is about uncovering the lore of the world you're in and the characters who occupy it. You're dropped in largely unaware, and while the game builds an exhaustive timeline of events, stretching right back to ancient times, it's mostly on you to figure out the nuances of the occasionally abstract game world.Heaven's Vault opens near its own ending--the very first scene tells you where your adventure will end, which is a curious structural choice for a game that is so contingent on player choice. It's meant to indicate, perhaps, that your story is always going to end up the same way, although how you reach that ending will differ dramatically between players.This seems to be a fair claim, too. During my playthrough, I compared notes with another player to make sure that our choices mattered, and we discovered that our paths diverged completely at several points. Heaven's Vault unfurls in substantially different ways depending on how you play it and which choices you make. You can miss entire characters and plotlines, or experience hugely different relationships with the game's small but well-developed cast of recurring figures. The writing is mostly strong throughout, with dialogue flowing naturally and feeling in line with decisions you've made, and the moment by moment plot of Heaven's Vault genuinely feels like the culmination of your choices. There are some strange issues with character development--at one point a character demanded I come to visit them so that they could tell me about a major discovery and let me in on "certain confidences," only for them to reveal nothing when I visited with them, and a major character stopped trading goods with me for reasons I don't fully understand, substantially slowing down my progress through the game.When you're bouncing easily between locations, making discoveries and having interesting chats with Aliyah's friends and co-workers--not to mention your robot companion, Six--Heaven's Vault is a pleasure. It's perhaps too easy to lose track of the spine of the plot, but in the first half especially, there's a constant influx of discoveries and revelations that give the game a propulsive hook. But the scope and ambition of Heaven's Vault get the better of it in the back half. It took me 22 hours to finish the game, and it felt like a lot of those last 12 hours was spent on busywork--particularly when it comes to the game's sailing mechanic.In one of the lore's weirdest elements, traveling across the nebula necessitates that you "sail" the rivers between moons, steering your ship across literal bodies of water that act as pathways between locations. They only flow in one direction, so the only meaningful control you have comes when paths diverge in two directions and you must choose which way to turn. There's little to do out on the waters--you can steer left and right, fold your sails in to go slightly faster, stop to observe any interesting landmarks you pass, and check your map. Sailing isn't particularly exciting, yet it makes up a huge portion of Heaven's Vault.For the first half of the game, sailing feels like a mildly irritating distraction with moments of beauty, taking up a few minutes at a time. But in the back half, the sailing mechanics come perilously close to ruining the whole experience. The sites you need to visit in order to progress are marked on the map as large areas to explore, and while you can make the search areas smaller by finding more artifacts throughout the game, at some point you're almost definitely going to have to find it by scouring those areas yourself. The layout of the river can become infuriating at this point. When you're traveling to a moon you've been to before and miss a turn, you're given the option to rewind to a point just before the turn; however, when you're searching for an unknown site, no such option exists, and a wrong turn can mean a long, slow course correction as you follow the one-way rivers back to where you just were, potentially eating up to half an hour.The game has additional pacing issues throughout--Aliyah moves very slowly, and there was a section of the game where I found myself bouncing repeatedly between the game's two main locations, Elboreth and Iox, in the hopes of triggering new dialogue options between characters that would make the search for the next site easier. (Thankfully, you can skip the rigmarole of sailing to these two particular locations by asking Six to do it for you.)Heaven's Vault can be a fiddly experience--although patches hit during the pre-launch period that cleaned up most major issues, I continued to encounter a lot of camera problems throughout, and at one point, a site that took half an hour of sailing to find failed to load when I reached it. When I eventually sailed back there, it ended up being the least interesting site in the game. While some of these places you're searching for are teeming with plot development, others can feel like a chore.There's plenty to be charmed by in Heaven's Vault. The art style is pleasant, and the orchestral soundtrack is often beautiful. The writing and lore can occasionally make the game feel like an adaptation of a book that doesn't exist, and it's hard not to get invested in learning more about the game's world. It's just a shame that there's so much tedium to get through as well, and that the experience doesn't always reach the greatness it occasionally shows itself to be capable of. Heaven's Vault excels in creating a well-constructed, branching narrative, but expect long sections of it to feel like a slog.Info from Gamespot.com

My Time at Portia starts off predictably when you disembark into its expanse of rolling hills and curious ruins. Like the Marvelous Interactive titles it clearly draws inspiration from (namely Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons), it sets you up with the holy trinity of prologues: a father, a child, and a ripe plot of land. No time passes at all until you're welcomed by a well-meaning public servant who tells you that your absent parent left a legacy of building and being a Home Depot whiz before disappearing like the evening tide. Now, fresh off the boat, you're tasked with taking over for your old man and making yourself invaluable to the people whose lives he enriched, which suggests My Time at Portia will be a more fulfilling adventure than it actually ends up being.Portia has a distinctly post-apocalyptic feel, which lends a sense of intrigue to what would otherwise have been a familiar traversal of yet another sleepy town to be spiced up by the voiceless city-slicker of a player-character. The game paints a tidy, watercolor-inspired picture that wouldn't be out of place on a postcard; a "wish you were here" would fit nicely against the giant, scraped-out husks of metal that loom over lush fields and quaint cottages like relics from a bygone age. In fact, they are: Humanity in My Time at Portia is said to have gotten too ambitious in the past by exploiting technology and science to reach lofty heights that it was struck down for. Now, it's back to the Agrarian Age for the foreseeable future, and you're the closest they've got to Noah and the Ark.These monolithic reminders dot the various landscapes of My Time at Portia, and they're an effective and unintrusive way to ensure you're clued into the broader message around hubris leading to the apocalypse. It makes for an interesting plot device, which would be well-utilized if it went beyond making the world more visually interesting, or even beyond the inclusion of one faction of NPCs dedicated to keeping the town of Portia back in the comparative Dark Ages. But that's about as far as it goes: aesthetic as opposed to substance. No storylines really pursue it, nor do the townsfolk seem to care. You're not provided with the opportunity to engage meaningfully with the setpiece of the world's past, which is a shame given how interesting it seems.Instead, the majority of the experience remains relatively familiar and unbroken by a loop of crafting, fighting, and gathering missions. The crafting system is the game's real treat, though. As the child of a master-builder, you're given access very early on to plans created by your father. These plans function like crafting blueprints; they stay on your person as you romp around the world in search of materials, and you can easily refer to them and check exactly how much tin ore you need to convert into whatever arbitrary amount of bronze bars you need to prop a bridge up.You're also given the ability to use a crafting station back at your house which tells you exactly what you're missing to build a particular item. There's no need for guesswork, and you also get to visually appreciate the nitty-gritty of what you're building as completing various parts of items sees them come to life before your eyes on the workbench. This wonderfully intuitive approach ties neatly into what you're told is the protagonist's innate skill as a crafter, which means that you spend less time wondering how many rocks you have to crack open and more time thinking about the next great creation taking shape in your backyard.Crafting is also the only aspect of the game that feels integral to actually getting anywhere with the story--everything is expensive, and the most effective way to make money is to grind out crafting items to sell. But while the reliance on grinding isn't a surprise if you're a genre fan, the combination of quick day-night cycles in the game, timed quests, and the time commitment needed to actually get anything crafted is a recipe for dissatisfaction. Time feels like it crawls by unless you're occupying yourself with busywork, which unfortunately ends up detracting from the charm of the lively hustle and bustle of the town of Portia.However, while the crafting is robust and an essential part of your experience with My Time at Portia, the other integrated systems--relationship management, dungeoneering, animal husbandry, and farming--aren't as engaging, fleshed out, or vital by comparison. Being able to gift your way to a perfect marriage does a disservice to some of the unique personalities that you can court, and you feel discouraged from spending time on farming because of how time-consuming and expensive it is to acquire enough land to turn those parsnips into a profit. The main story forces you to invest heavily in crafting and once you’ve tried your hand at the carpentry trade, it can be hard to look elsewhere when the demands of time and money limit your ability to engage in the other systems.Among the cacophony of mechanics, there's a wistfulness for depth. An upgrade system has you picking various skills, ranging from increased experience gain to a higher chance of getting more items, each time you level up. But it's hard to actually feel the effect of these perks, and there isn't one clear build which gives you a significantly better performance over the rest. Min-maxing attributes is rarely the point of lifestyle sims, so it makes sense that rewards seem more like a little bit of gas in the tank rather than a whole new engine. But failing to actually use your skill points on anything is unlikely to disadvantage you at all, which cheapens the purpose behind giving you a mountain of options in the first place. Being a little bit more efficient at carrying out objectives in a game that's all about repetitive grinding isn't a bad thing, but you find yourself wishing that the improvements afforded to you were more significant for the time invested.Your time at Portia is likely going to be an idyllic one, interspersed with chores and chatter and putting household items together for your neighbors. You'll spend your time idly dangling your legs off the edge of the pier, participating in fishing tourneys, ushering in holidays with your partner, and fending off local wildlife. However, the ruins of a time long forgotten will always darken the horizon, and there'll be a part of you that wonders what more there could have been before you find yourself shunted to the next life goal in a long series of life goals. That feeling is unfortunately hard to shake, and it's a shame that there's not as much to the world of Portia as first appears. Info from Gamespot.com

When you're struggling, Pathway sends you a dog to help out. It's that kind of game. You might have seen your squad massacred in the North African desert, but look! Here's a cute puppy called Donut. He's even got sharp teeth and the "Anti-Fascist" character trait that means he does +20% damage against Nazis. In moments like these, Pathway picks you back up and says maybe you can still complete the mission after all. Pathway is generous like that.Heavily indebted to the genre of mid-20th-century pulp adventure of which Indiana Jones is the obvious cultural touchstone, Pathway depicts a world where the Nazis are plundering ancient artifacts to harness their powers in occult experiments and so must obviously be stopped by an international band of mercenaries. It's a light, breezy, knock-about game of turn-based combat that understandably always wants you to succeed at killing Nazis, with or without a surprise canine companion. However, it lacks tactical depth and, while killing Nazis is a noble pursuit, its moral stance is less sure-footed when it steps into the territory of tired colonialist tropes.The core of Pathway is in its XCOM-style combat. Every encounter is preceded by a planning phase in which you place each member of your squad onto the battlefield. Smart players can take advantage of this head start by positioning their squad to, say, rush an exposed enemy on the first turn. In an early sign of Pathway's charitable spirit, you get this planning phase even when your squad has been ambushed and, unlike in XCOM, you'll never see an enemy already in cover on the first turn of a fight.During combat, each squad member can typically perform separate two actions--move and shoot, heal and reload, or some combination thereof--and much of the time an encounter consists of outflanking an enemy to get off a shot at them around whatever cover they happen to be hiding behind. Characters can also perform special actions depending on the weapon they carry and, in some cases, the skills they possess. Pistols, for example, allow for a special double-shot action that can target two enemies, while characters require specific skills to use items like grenades or medkits in combat.And that's about as deep as it gets, unfortunately. Aside from minor variations in clip size and range, all the guns function in much the same fashion and can drop most enemies in one to two shots. As a result, a character with an assault rifle plays no differently to one with a shotgun. The only meaningfully different weapon is the knife, not merely the game's only melee weapon but the weapon with the highest damage potential. Since there's no "zone of control" or "attack of opportunity" mechanic (outside a special action reserved for sniper rifles), it's perfectly feasible to run right up to enemies, jump over their cover and attack from the adjacent square. In fact, it's often the most effective approach, no matter how silly it looks or tactically uninteresting it becomes.Fights can still be challenging, even on the default normal difficulty. A way of evening the odds is to have the enemy greatly outnumber you. Unimaginative, sure, but it gets the job done. At other times, some enemies will have access to special abilities that you don't, while others can move further than your squad. These factors create situations where you're encouraged to think several turns in advance, coordinate attacks between your squad members, and time your limited special actions.But still, most of the time you're not really feeling that pressure. Most of the time you're just moving and shooting, moving and shooting, with the odd moving and knifing thrown in. Where the lack of depth is truly exposed is in the slim variety of actions on display, a failure that can be attributed to the derivative nature of each character's skill tree. Indeed, when leveling up characters don't earn new abilities, they merely improve existing ones; they'll boost that chance to for a critical hit, perhaps, or beef up their HP. True, you can unlock the ability for a character to use an additional weapon, so that they can now carry a shotgun as well as a pistol, but it's hard to get excited about that when, again, weapons don't function in any meaningfully different way.The lack of variety extends to the maps on which the battles take place. There is barely a handful of scenarios--Nazi camp, desert village, underground temple--and you're served up a seemingly randomly-generated version assembled from stock parts each time you enter combat. A benefit of this approach is that you never know exactly what you're going to get, but on the flip side, it means that none of the individual battlefields are ever memorable and they all end up blurring into one by the end of a campaign. That's not to say the arenas are poorly designed; they're serviceable and little more.Linking one encounter to the next is a campaign structure that sees you plotting a pathway across a network of nodes. At each node, you hit a narrative event that could be anything from following some Nazis into a mysterious mineshaft to finding an oasis at which you can rest. Sometimes you might end up in a fight, sometimes you might find some treasure or a trader with whom you can buy and sell, and sometimes nothing happens at all. It's a bit like FTL, really, except instead of zipping across space you're driving a jeep across the Sahara. These narrative moments are fun and typically well-written. They often allow for choices that can lead to surprising results and occasionally let you utilize the skills of one of the squad characters you've opted to take on the journey. But they do a poor job of depicting the African people whose countries, from Morocco and Egypt and beyond, have been invaded by the Germans. The locals you meet are helpless simpletons, peaceful goat herders at best and, at worst, cowards hiding in ruined villages and collapsed caves until you wander by to hopefully rescue them. These poor people can't do anything until saved by a globetrotting band of wealthy adventurers.Further, throughout the entire game, you're collecting treasure, much of it ancient religious and cultural relics of the people you're ostensibly helping. Literally the only thing to do with this treasure is sell it to fund the purchase of more fuel for your jeep and ammunition for your guns. Retrieve an ancient inscribed vase from the altar room of a secret temple? That goes for $250 at the next trader stop. The suggested idea is you're keeping these precious relics out of Nazi hands, but surely there's a better option than looting them for yourself and then selling them back to the people you stole it from.Pathway looks and sounds great, it nails the pulpy attitude it's aiming for, and, of course, it's always fun to shoot Nazis. But the more I played, the more the cracks started to show, the more samey it all became, and the more uncomfortable some aspects of its design made me feel. I still enjoyed much of my time with Pathway. There's a pleasure to be had in both its aesthetic choices and the frictionless grind of its structure, but I came away wanting more--more tactical meat in its combat and a more thoughtful approach to the way it chose to represent its world. Info from Gamespot.com

Sony's beloved PS4 action game God of War came out one year ago this week, and to celebrate the birthday, the company is holding a week-long party of sorts. It kicks off with the release of new dynamic theme for PS4 that you can get right now. It shows a nice scene with Kratos and Atreus in the Lake of Nine. The theme is free for everyone. Then on Wednesday (April 17), Sony will release a new PS4 avatar set for God of War. It is also free. You don't need to have purchased God of War for PS4 to get the freebies. You can see images of the avatar sets and dynamic theme here on the PlayStation Blog.Shannon Studstill, the head of God of War developer Sony Santa Monica, penned a nice blog post about the game's anniversary. She said she was excited by the idea that game director Cory Barlog brought to the table years ago, but acknowledged it was no easy road."Change to a longstanding franchise comes with immeasurable doubt, a studio-defining risk, and a huge leap of faith," she said. "Thank you to our entire worldwide team; the Sony PlayStation family and you, the millions of God of War fans around the world who embraced that leap with us, on a journey we never expected. We made this journey together."God of War won multiple Game of the Year awards, including most recently at the BAFTAs. After such high praise for God of War, Studstill said she's enthusiastic about Sony Santa Monica's future games. "If I had to predict the next 20 years of Santa Monica Studio, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, we will continue to create games whose art reflects life, life reflects art, with stories we want to resonate for years to come," she said. "Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for embracing the new God of War and for helping Santa Monica Studio rise up to a new beginning as well. From our whole team to you, that has meant everything to us. Now, we have a long journey ahead."Info from Gamespot.com

Despite its commercial and critical success, Sony's PlayStation 4 action game God of War will not receive an expansion. This much has already been confirmed. And now game director Cory Barlog confirmed it again."There is no DLC coming for the game. Sorry," Barlog said on Twitter. His tweet came in response to another tweet where he seemingly teased something new for God of War. But as it stands, he was only referring to more reveals coming this week for God of War's anniversary celebration.Just so no one gets the wrong idea - there is no DLC coming for the game. Sorry. — Cory Barlog 🎮 (@corybarlog) April 14, 2019We already know about the free dynamic theme and avatar set, and Barlog teased that even more is coming. But it won't be an announcement of God of War DLC.In January this year, Barlog talked about pitching an idea for God of War DLC. However, it was "too ambitious," and people told him the idea was crazy, so it got scrapped."I had a really fun idea for a DLC that I only regret because I would love to have done that," Barlog told Kinda Funny. "But it was too ambitious."It would have been similar to The Last of Us 1's Left Behind or Uncharted Lost Legacy releases, which were big enough to warrant their own standalone releases. "It would [have] ended up being its own thing," Barlog said of the God of War expansion we'll never see. "Rightfully so, everybody said, 'Dude, this is crazy, this isn't DLC, this is a little too big."In other news, Barlog joked on Twitter that the next God of War game will be exclusive to the Epic Store.Info from Gamespot.com

After almost two long years of waiting, Game of Thrones Season 8 has finally premiered on HBO. Our review of the premiere episode is below, but we have plenty more GoT goodness beyond that. For more theorizing, check out why the crossbow Qyburn gave Bronn matters, what weapon Arya asked Gendry to make for her, and 17 other Easter eggs, references, and callbacks to earlier episodes you might have missed. And for a deep dive into each episode of Season 8, check out GameSpot of Thrones with Westeros superfans Lucy, Ryan, Tamoor, and Dave each week as we count down the final six episodes of Game of Thrones.The final season of Game of Thrones is here. The premiere episode aired on HBO tonight, marking the beginning of the end. There are just five more episodes left to go now, and Game of Thrones has a lot to fit in before the finale if the show wants to wrap up every loose end created over the last eight years. For now, though, Season 8 Episode 1 was focused on one thing above all others: setup.Events in Winterfell set up the battle to come, as well as the interpersonal conflicts that will ultimately help determine the outcome of that battle. The characters in King's Landing continued to maneuver for the inevitable conclusion of the war of Westeros's Great Houses, and offscreen, the White Walkers struck their first blow south of the Wall.There were some monumental events in this episode--which will hopefully be the case for every episode of the final season. But from Jon finally riding a dragon to his finding out that he's the true heir to the Iron Throne, even these long-awaited, emotionally charged moments are really just setup for conflicts to come.Jon learning that he's a Targaryen is something book readers have been waiting for ever since the first book was published back in 1996 and fans originally theorized about his true parentage (the books are so far behind at this point that the theory still hasn't been confirmed officially in the source material). Jon and Daenerys being related doesn't necessarily spell doom for their blooming relationship--Targaryens of old frequently married within their own family to keep their Valyrian bloodline going strong. But as Jon replied to Sam in this premiere, voicing the revelation is akin to treason. Dany, on the other hand, has been self-assured regarding her right to the Throne since the beginning--and come to think of it, she probably won't take well to this news. Based on this episode, it's shaping up to be one of the major conflicts of the final season.The sight of Dany's Unsullied marching through the streets of Winter Town was enough to stir any Game of Thrones fan's blood, whether you started with the TV show or have been reading the books for 23 years. Old school Game of Thrones fans are much more comfortable in the in-between, perpetually waiting for the next book to come out or the next season to premiere. To be so close to the end is actually slightly uncomfortable, but for better or worse, here we are.One thing that will always feel good is watching long-separated Starks finally reunite. And this was an episode of reunions. From Jon and Arya to Sansa and Tyrion, these are conversations fans have speculated about, theorized on, and dreamt of for years. And by and large, they delivered exactly what we wanted: Arya flirted with Gendry and was vaguely threatening toward Sandor, while Sansa and Tyrion showed something approaching a mutual understanding. If nothing else, it's simply fun to see these characters come back together after so very long apart.For books fans, though, the show still can't help but feel a bit like fan fiction. Some characters, like the Hound, were so far removed from the story the last time we glimpsed them in the books that it seems unlikely they'll ever actually re-enter the books' events. Others, like Cersei, have changed so much from the source material that they're barely recognizable. I'm not saying whether that's good or bad--it just is. Since author George R.R. Martin hasn't been able to finish a book in eight years, this is the situation we're in.In King's Landing, events progressed pretty much as you'd expect. Euron arrived with the Golden Company, and Cersei continued to deride everyone around her, which will hopefully be her ultimate downfall. Euron finally getting in her pants may have been a big event for him--and no doubt Jaime wouldn't be thrilled if he were around--but for Cersei, using her sexuality to control the people around her isn't anything new. She's up to the same old tricks, but as this war comes to an end, old tricks might not cut it anymore. That said, we wanted to see those elephants as badly as you did, Cersei.There are only five episodes left of Game of Thrones. For longtime fans, it's bittersweet to get the ending from HBO's series instead of the books that we've loved for decades. But despite some ups and downs, HBO has done a fine job finishing what George R.R. Martin apparently can't. And I'm excited to see exactly how they do it over the next five weeks. Info from Gamespot.com

Things are pretty rough House Lannister in Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Cersei holds the Iron Throne, but she's paid dearly for it--her three children have died in her pursuit of power, and she's been at war for pretty much her entire reign. Through it all, though, she's had her twin brother Jaime at her side, and their relationship justified many of her sacrifices and most ruthless instincts.That changed at the end of Season 7. After Jaime and Cersei met with Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion, the Lannisters pledged to help with the war against the White Walkers. But once everyone had left King's Landing, Cersei revealed that she planned to double-cross everybody else and leave them to get wiped out by the White Walkers. Jaime wasn't happy about Cersei forcing him to break his promise, so at the end of the season, he struck off north alone, leaving his sister behind.Cersei had already threatened Jaime about betraying her, and it's well known that she hates her other brother, Tyrion. In the premiere of Season 8, we see how Cersei plans to deal with Jaime and Tyrion--she's sending Bronn to kill both of them with a crossbow. Cersei likes to make a statement with her murders, though--which is why the weapon Qyburn gave to Bronn to use on the traitorous Lannisters is a significant one. It's the same crossbow Tyrion wielded way back in Season 4, and used to kill his father, Tywin Lannister. That was after Tyrion was tried and convicted of poisoning King Joffrey, and Tywin sentenced Tyrion to death, even though he was innocent. Jaime helped Tyrion escape, but before he did, Tyrion went to Tywin's room. There, Tyrion found Shae, his former lover who testified against him, and killed her. After that, Tyrion found Tywin on the toilet, and finished him off with a crossbow decorated with gold. (There's even more Lannister history with the crossbow--it's the one Joffrey used to cradle while torturing women, and eventually used to kill Varys' spy, Ros.)Cersei sending Bronn with that same crossbow is a reminder of Tyrion's betrayal of the Lannister family. She blames Tyrion for the deaths of her children--since Joffrey's death, she's maintained that Tyrion was responsible, but even learning from Jaime that Lady Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg) poisoned her son hasn't changed her mind. She also blames him for the deaths of Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) and Tommen--as Cersei said in Season 7, when Tyrion killed Tywin, it left the Lannisters exposed."Do you have any idea what you did when you fired that crossbow?" Cersei asks Tyrion. "You left us open. You laid us bare for the vultures and the vultures came and tore us apart. You may not have killed Joffrey, but you killed Myrcella, you killed Tommen. No one would have touched them if Father was here--no one would have dared."Making sure that the same crossbow Tyrion used to kill Tywin is used against him is exactly the kind of poetic message-sending Cersei loves. Like playing "The Rains of Castamere," it's a power move that builds her reputation, shows her spite for her enemies, and strikes fear in others. The question now is whether Bronn will actually try to kill his two former employers.Info from Gamespot.com

Game of Thrones is approaching its end in Season 8, and some of the elements that have been in play since the beginning are finally starting to wrap up. Among the biggest are the secret of Jon Snow's true identity, the prophecy that Daenerys heard in her travels across the Narrow Sea, and other mystical things that look to be important to the final battle of the Night King--they're all related, and they're all going to have major implications for the war with the White Walkers.One giant hanging thread is the question of the Prince That Was Promised, a longstanding prophecy about the hero who will appear to kill the Night King with the help of the Lord of Light. Also known as Azor Ahai, the question of who will fill the role of the Prince That Was Promised has been teased since Season 2 and the introduction of the Red Witch Melisandre and Stannis Baratheon. The premiere of Season 8 might have given a new hint as to who Azor Ahai is, and could be answering a question fans of both the show and the books on which they're based have had for years.It starts in Season 7, when Jon had a bonding moment with Drogon, touching the dragon and seemingly gaining his trust. In the Season 8 premiere, Jon actually rides Rhaegal, Daenerys' other surviving dragon. It's an extension of that moment Season 7, solidifying Jon's bond with both Daenerys and the dragons. We saw in Season 7 what might be the reason for Drogon trusting Jon: he's actually the son of Daenerys' brother, Prince Rhaegar. He's member of the royal family of dragon riders who consider themselves to be "blood of the dragon." (It's also worth noting that Rhaegal is named for Rhaegar, Jon's father--a fact Jon will likely find very meaningful.)Jon riding a dragon seemingly answers a question fans have been wondering about for years, thanks to a prophecy that doesn't appear in the show, but is in George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books on which Game of Thrones is based. In that book, Daenerys had a vision of Rhaegar when she was in the House of the Undying in Qarth, in which Rhaegar said his son Aegon was the Prince That Was Promised. He also told Daenerys "the dragon has three heads." (In the show, Daenerys sees the Red Keep in ruins and the Iron Throne frozen, and is visited briefly by the ghosts of her husband Drogo and their baby, Rhaego.)First off, we now know that Jon is, in fact, Rhaegar's son Aegon. That might mean that he's the returned Azor Ahai--the hero the red priests of the Lord of Light have been expecting to show up and defeat the Night King, using a flaming sword called Lightbringer.The second part of the vision is still an open question, though, if the show is going to address it. Fans have interpreted "the dragon has three heads" to suggest there will be three key people who will ride Daenerys' dragons--and maybe even three Targaryens. That tracks with the revelation that Jon is a Targaryen, and now seeing him riding a dragon.The question is whether "the dragon has three heads" will actually be born out by the show now that the Night King has turned Daenerys' third dragon, Viserion, into an undead wight. Fans have been expecting a third dragon rider, but now the third dragon rider is the Night King himself.But there's still room for another hidden Targaryen to appear. As fans have theorized who might be the third of the dragon's three heads, a lot of speculation has fallen to Tyrion Lannister. There's a rumor in Westeros that Tyrion isn't really the son of Tywin Lannister, but that the Mad King Aerys Targaryen raped Tyrion's mother, Joanna Lannister. That might be part of the reason why Tywin was so awful to Tyrion his whole life, and fulfill Daenerys' vision. Tyrion also had his moment with the dragons under the pyramid of Meereen, which makes him one of the few people they seem cool with.In any event, it seems the dragon has two heads, at least. And if Game of Thrones doesn't address Rhaegar's words through the rest of Season 8, it seems there might still be a few tidbits for fans of the novels to look forward to--if Martin ever finishes the series.Info from Gamespot.com