Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania is, at its core, a repackaging of the GameCube's Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 (including a smattering of extra stages from the PS2/Xbox title Super Monkey Ball Deluxe) with a fresh coat of paint. The gameplay and stage layouts, with a few exceptions, remain the same as they were 20 years ago, but now in crisp and shiny high resolution. And, really, that would be fine on its own, as the engaging, pick-up-and-play charm of rolling a cartoon monkey around various imaginative challenges remains every bit as fun now as it was two decades prior.However, Sega has also seen fit to update elements of the gameplay to broaden Super Monkey Ball's already wide appeal. Gone are the lives and continues of previous Super Monkey Ball games, removing a source of pressure and frustration. Instead, you have infinite tries to work out each level, though you'll still need to restart from the beginning should your monkey roll out of bounds. You are also given the option of a Helper Mode system, which doubles your time, shows you an ideal path through the level, and enables a slow-motion feature should you choose to turn it on. It's a nice form of "training wheels" for getting a handle on some of the more difficult stages that doesn't go completely overboard in holding your hand--though the game pestering you about turning on Helper Mode on each stage you fall out of more than a few times grows old very fast.There's a catch to using the Helper Mode. In the older games, you'd need to complete a set of stages without using a continue to unlock the hidden EX levels. Since lives and continues are no more, Banana Mania instead rewards you with EX levels for completing a gauntlet of stages without the use of Helper Mode, encouraging you to finish those tough stages without additional assistance. Turning on Helper Mode also disqualifies you from the online leaderboard rankings and prevents the game from saving your score. It's a nice way to keep things from getting too frustrating while encouraging players to attempt a tougher challenge later.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It's impossible to talk about action role-playing games without mentioning Diablo II. The original release of Blizzard's sequel in 2000 was an inflection point for the nascent genre, defining the direction all games after it would take. It's one of those games whose DNA you can still trace in modern ARPGs such as Path of Exile, Lords of Wolcen, and the eventual Diablo III. But it's also a game that has been drastically improved upon in the two decades since its release, which makes its 2021 remaster a confusing re-release that does very little to address how the genre has evolved since, making it challenging to recommend over modern contemporaries outside of reasons of nostalgia or short-lived curiosity.Like all of the games it would eventually inspire, Diablo II is a dungeon-crawler, albeit stripped down to the genre's fundamental basics. You progress through the campaign over a series of acts, each contained within their own map. These maps have distinct areas and enemy-ridden dungeons you'll need to explore, eliminating scores of enemies that drop all sorts of color-coded loot that help you get more powerful as you go. The more you progress, the stronger you become, allowing you to deal the damage required to take down incredibly dangerous bosses that provide a challenging climax to each act. The campaign is also not the end of your journey, with additional difficulties incentivizing you to restart and continue crunching enemy skulls for more powerful loot, and so on.Where Diablo II differs strongly to its most recent entry, Diablo III, is in its role-playing. Here you're given three separate skill trees to invest points into, each of which will go a long way in defining what type of style your chosen class will take. My Necromancer, for example, focussed on summoning the dead over dealing out curses and magical damage, which led me to invest most of my skill points in only one of the three trees. You additionally need to manage staple role-playing attributes like strength, dexterity, vitality, and more, although these don't function as you might expect. Points in each mostly determine what gear you can equip, and not necessarily how much damage (physical, ranged, or magic) you deal. This can be initially counter-intuitive to how you imagine each point invested will play out, with established Diablo II players already knowing that the majority of these points need to go into vitality and little else if you can already equip all the items you need.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

FIFA 22 opens on a close-up shot of a steaming-hot cup of coffee, before panning out to reveal that it's David Beckham stirring the teaspoon. The former Galactico is enjoying some breakfast pancakes on a Parisian balcony, while a few doors down your avatar is being woken up by a friend telling them that they're late. It's a bizarre opening to a football game that also features Eric Cantona feeding pigeons, Thierry Henry and cover star Kylian Mbappe attempting to act on the Parc des Princes pitch, and blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos from boxing star Anthony Joshua and F1 driver Lewis Hamilton. What's the point of all this, you might be asking? Well, it's all for an elaborate tutorial, of course. This lavish opening might have more style than substance, but it ushers in what feels like a new era for FIFA, as next-gen technology and a shift in tempo combine to significantly improve the on-pitch action.During the opening tutorial, you'll learn how to sprint and dribble by darting past coffee tables on the streets of Paris, then cover the basics of attacking and defending under the guidance of both Henry and Mbappe. Running through these fundamentals will be useful for series newcomers, but it's an odd way to kick off the latest version of FIFA for everyone else. That's mainly because it only shows off one new feature: the ability to switch to a specific defender by pressing in both thumbsticks. Player switching has been overly cumbersome in the past, so it's nice to have a reliable way to take control of the best-placed player without having to scroll through each backtracking defender until the cursor lands on the right one. The only problem with this is it's still not quite fast enough in the most hectic moments and ends up feeling redundant as a result. The rest of the tutorial, meanwhile, consists of features that were introduced in last year's game, like being able to influence AI runs by telling your teammates which direction to head in.FIFA 22 doesn't introduce any mechanical additions such as this, but that doesn't mean it rests on its laurels and fails to move the series forward. Instead, it's the inclusion of innovative new technology, and a more considered pace, that iterates and improves on the series' core gameplay. HyperMotion is the fancy marketing term for this new technology, but it's more than just simple jargon. By using Xsens MoCap suits, HyperMotion allows the developers to use motion capture on all 22 footballers in a real-life match. Previously, EA would utilize motion capture to record specific movements, whether it's a player striking a ball or lunging in for a tackle. By capturing a full 11v11 match, all of that authentic movement is implemented and immediately palpable in FIFA 22, both at an individual and team level.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It's Week 3 in Fortnite Season 8, and that means Week 3 challenges are here. If you're just jumping into the new season, you'll notice a revised challenge system where new NPCs added every Tuesday bring with them five quests each. This week, it's the Lovecraftian monster, Big Mouth, who is offering new challenges for players who greet them, as well as Grim Fable, the Red Riding Hood-inspired hero, who brings her own questline. Here's where to find the new NPCs and how to complete their quests.Big Mouth Quests - Fortnite Season 8 Week 3Open chests in Steel Farm (2)Search an ice machine (1)Open ammo boxes at Dirty Docks (2)Buy a health item from a mending machine (1)Search a supply drop (1)Grim Fable Quests - Fortnite Season 8Hide in a haystack at Corny Crops (1)Destroy beds in Holly Hedges or Pleasant Park (3)Collect a harpoon gun (1)Hunt a wolf (1)Emote within 10m of wildlife (1)Fortnite's Halloween-inspired characters are popping up a lot lately.Starting with Big Mouth, you'll find them at The Orchard, the small farmland north of Corny Crops. Head to Steel Farm, east of Corny Crops and open any two chests. You can search ice machines at gas stations or within Believer Beach, Catty Corner, and Weeping Woods. Then you'll need to head to Dirty Docks and open two ammo boxes. They're randomized around the map, but look under staircases and in buildings to find them most reliably.To buy a health item from a mending machine, look for them also near gas stations, like the one just south of Steel Farm. To complete Big Mouth's quests, you'll need to search a supply drop, which are the blue loot crates that drop onto the island at random. They're more frequent in Team Rumble, if you can't find one in battle royale.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Square Enix will have a big presence at this year's all-digital Tokyo Game Show, which will include presentations for some of the publisher's most anticipated upcoming games, including Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.Kicking off Square Enix's Tokyo Game Show stream will be a new look at Forspoken on October 1, which received a new trailer as part of a recent PlayStation Showcase. A Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy presentation will be streamed on Saturday, October 2. Square Enix's single-player only Marvel game is set to release on October 26.Final Fantasy spin-off Stranger of Paradise will have its own hour-long presentation as part of the show on Saturday. A limited-time, PlayStation 5-exclusive demo for the Dark Souls-like action title was released over the summer and saw players battling Chaos himself. Square Enix was adamant about gaining player feedback over the course of the demo period, so perhaps this new look at the game will include changes based on players' suggestions.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

After Nintendo recently announced the main voice cast for its upcoming new animated Mario movie, actor and co-star of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film John Leguizamo took to Twitter to voice his disappointment that "they went all white." In the nearly 20 years since the original's release, Leguizamo has been among the most outspoken of the movie's complicated and flawed legacy as a box office dud.Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, and Jack Black are among the number of actors starring in the upcoming film. All are name actors and huge stars, and while Leguizamo expressed his excitement over the reboot, he said the original has "groundbreaking colorblind casting" and voiced further disappointment that there are "no Latinx in the leads." Check out the full tweet below, which also includes a quick mention that he's "the only one who knows how to make this movie work script-wise."So glad #superMariobros is getting a reboot! Obviously it’s iconic enuff. But too bad they went all white! No Latinx in the leads! Groundbreaking color-blind casting in original! Plus I’m the only one who knows how to make this movie work script wise! pic.twitter.com/lNokmdpwMq — John Leguizamo (@JohnLeguizamo) September 27, 2021Mario will talk "a lot" in the movie, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto said during the briefing. Queen's Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy plays Princess Peach, while It's Always Sunny's Charlie Day voices Luigi. Jack Black voices Bowser, while Keegan-Michael Key plays Toad. Seth Rogen portrays Donkey Kong, and Mario's video game voice actor, Charles Martinet, will perform "surprise cameos."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Unexpectedly, Jennifer Lopez released a short 8-bit browser game called Hit Play. It's not a standalone product like other celebrity games that come to mind--for example, Kim Kardashian's mobile RPG Hollywood--but is instead part of a marketing campaign for Jennifer Lopez's footwear collab with DSW.Reminiscent of old flash games and the golden age of early browser games, J.Lo's game takes 10 minutes tops to run through. It follows a J.Lo-inspired protagonist running through the streets of three different cities (New York, LA, and Miami), and the goal is to get as many points by jumping and running into floating pink shoes. At the end, you get led to the J.Lo x DSW collection. (If you were ever bored and played Google's Dinosaur browser game, J.Lo's Hit Play is a lot like that.)In the past few years, there's been quite a few game-slash-fashion hybrid crossovers and collaborations. Epic Games recently collaborated with Balenciaga to bring certain pieces from the fashion house into the actual game. Balenciaga itself also made its own game using Unreal Engine called Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow. Another label, Gucci, also released a Gucci Arcade collection that consists of 1970s and 80s-inspired video games, with of course, the avatars wearing Gucci clothes.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

We're in the endgame now of Destiny 2's latest narrative arc, as all the pieces are finally beginning to fall into place. Two queens plot, an amnesiac murderer demands answers, and Hive war god Xivu Arath shows no signs of slowing down her assault on the Awoken ascendant realms.With your your newly-acquired trace rifle though, the odds are still in your favor as the sixth week of Season of the Lost shines a spotlight on hitting a few rounds of Astral Alignment, polishing a piece of gear to its highest level, and putting champions in their place.Like previous weeks, you won't have to complete every objective within seven days as Destiny 2 stacks new seasonal challenges on top of older ones. The advantage to this system is that it not only allows you to prioritize the tasks you deem most important, but you can sometimes complete multiple challenges at the same time.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Battlefield 2042 open beta is coming up very soon, and it'll give players a first taste at, among other things, how progression works in the sci-fi shooter. DICE is making some changes to the progression system with the new game, and the studio outlined all the key details in a blog post. We're rounding up the key details here.XP And Level CapPlayers progress by earning XP, and similar to past games, DICE will reward players with more XP if they play the objective and work as a team for the duration of a match. Players will also get XP for getting kills, assists, and offering support to teammates.Ribbons are back, too, and they are another way to earn XP in Battlefield 2042. Ribbons can be earned by completing certain objectives, and each has up to three tiers.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Nintendo Switch is a fantastic console for playing games at home or on the road thanks to its hybrid nature, but having a large library of titles to dip into will quickly exhaust the console's internal storage. With just 32 gigabytes of space on the regular Switch and Switch Lite models, and 64 GB on the Switch OLED Model, digital real estate is at a premium on these devices. Fortunately, that tight gaming squeeze can be expanded with a micro SD card, storage devices that now offer hundreds of extra gigabytes of space without breaking your bank balance.It's well worth investing in a micro SD card, and if you're looking to pop one into your Nintendo Switch, here's how you can do it. We recommend SanDisk Ultra microSD cards, as they offer great performance and reliability at a reasonable price. See SanDisk Ultra at Amazon Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

One of the best-kept secrets on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles is a feature called Gamesharing. This essentially allows you and a friend to access each other's library of games, no matter where in the world you are. It's also easy to set up, taking the sting out of high game prices. Here's how it works.How to activate Gamesharing on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S Step 1: To start setting up Gamesharing, you'll need the login information for your friend's Xbox Live account. Next, turn on your own Xbox console and sign into your Xbox Live account.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Whether you're bored or embarrassed by it, changing your gamertag on Xbox can make for some refreshing identity spring-cleaning. One thing to bear in mind is that while your first name-change is free, subsequent changes will cost you $10 each. Here's how your online persona can be changed.How to change your Xbox Gamertag on PCGo to the Xbox website and sign into your account from the top-right corner.In the top right corner of the profile page, click your account name and icon and choose Xbox Profile.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Today, Activision officially revealed that Call of Duty Season 6 will start on October 7, and the news comes with a new cinematic intro trailer that shows things are about to drastically change for Warzone's Verdansk map.The Season 6 cinematic continues the Black Ops Cold War narrative from Season 5, which saw Stitch and Kitsune launch the Numbers brainwashing broadcast to compromise Alder and other agents. The recent Season 5's outro trailer had Woods and Hudson discussing that Alder had gone rogue in Verdansk, and they needed to find him. View this post on InstagramA post shared by Call of Duty (@callofduty)There was also a tease from a recent Call of Duty Season 5 blog post that suggested something was happening under the map. Today's trailer seems to answer that question of what's been going on under Verdansk, as several explosives were detonated in the underground bunkers. The trailer shows major points of interest like the Verdansk stadium getting demolished.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

An unreleased melee weapon from 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has been revealed, and it's far from a traditional weapon. Discovered from Twitter user ModenasHD, the melee weapon is a busted-up cinderblock that would have surely packed a punch in the game.In the video below, you can see the cinderblock in action, as the player whacks it against a wall. There appear to be two main animations, one swinging from the side and one slamming it down from top to bottom. The inspect animation is also pretty slick and finished-looking, showing the soldier wiping it clean and peering through its two openings.Another video shows the cinderblock in action, including its brutal finishing move. In one of the animations, the player whips the block down onto the enemy, breaking their leg and splitting the cinderblock in two. The other half is then used to finish the foe for good. You can watch both videos below.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass subscription has proven itself to be one of the most valuable services for accessing classic, current, and upcoming video games. If for some reason you need to cancel your subscription, doing so thankfully isn't a hassle and you won't need to jump through any hoops to call it a day with Game Pass. Here's how you can cancel your subscription and save some cash every month.Before you begin, it's worth noting that cancelation will result in you losing several of the other less-obvious benefits associated with the service. Discounts on games, access to the Xbox Game Pass titles currently installed on your console, and online multiplayer through Xbox Live Gold if you have the Ultimate version of the subscription, are just some of the features you'll have to do without.You'll also no longer have access to Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming and several monthly perks for select games, although you can gain some of these vital features back with a separate Xbox Live Gold subscription.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com