As the new year approaches, Microsoft has announced the free games Xbox Live subscribers will get next month as part of its Games with Gold offering. For January, Xbox users can get their hands on Breakdown, Dead Rising, The King of Fighters XIII, and Little Nightmares.All four games are available to any Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S owner with an Xbox Live Gold or Game Pass Ultimate membership. Check the list below to learn the availability of each.Free Xbox Games With Gold For January 2021Little Nightmares: January 1-31The King of Fighters XIII: January 1-15Breakdown: January 16-31Dead Rising: January 16-February 15Developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, Little Nightmares is a 2D horror platformer where players must survive a massive industrial ship called The Maw with the fragile, yellow rainjacket-clad child Six. Having released to much critical acclaim in 2017 and receiving a few pieces of DLC thereafter, Tarsier Studios announced a sequel was in the works in 2019. Little Nightmares 2 drops on February 11, 2021.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

There's really nothing quite like getting invested into a great shooter. With games like Destiny 2 reinventing itself with new mechanics and storytelling, and Doom Eternal leaning further into combat puzzle formula, the shooters of 2020 offered players new ways to embrace fast-paced action and responsive shooting gameplay in satisfying ways. Along those games, there were also other shooters like Half-Life: Alyx that embraced new technology to further enhance the sense of immersion and reshape our view of what first-person shooters are capable of.In GameSpot's best of 2020 coverage, we've pulled together a selection of the year's best shooters across different platforms. This particular breakdown focuses on games that GameSpot has given a score of 8 and above, which includes both first and third person shooters. For more on 2020's best games, including a breakdown of GameSpot's Game of the Year pick Half-Life: Alyx, be sure to check out our hub page of all the year's standout titles.Destiny 2: Beyond Light -- 8/10“Beyond Light might not be the biggest expansion, but it does feel like we've entered a new chapter in the game's life, with new priorities and an approach that makes the game more resonant in a way that goes beyond satisfying shooting. On the whole, Destiny 2 might be more of the same than it is different, but what's the same about it--like its phenomenal raids and tight, satisfying gameplay--is still largely pretty great, and what's different is mostly making the game all the more worthwhile.” -- Phil HornshawContinue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The action-adventure genre is among the most prominent in gaming. As experiences that are easy to pick up but still demand a level of finesse to play, they're frequently where folks go for a balanced mix of fun and challenge. If you're a fan of the genre, then you'll be happy to know that 2020 was packed with several standout gems.In the following roundup, you can find a selection of action-adventure games that GameSpot has scored 8 or higher throughout 2020. The games below cover a wide range of styles within the genre as a whole, from action-RPGs and platformers to first-person shooters and beat-'em-ups. Whatever you lean toward, these action-adventure games are well worth playing and come highly recommended.Like previous years, we've determined as a team some of the best games this year. For a look at what GameSpot finds as this year's finest games, be sure to check out our Best Games of 2020, but if you're keener to see what's in store next year, jump into our hub for the Most Anticipated Games of 2021.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

2020 was unsurprisingly light on superhero movies, and, in fact, this was the first year since 2009 that no Marvel movie hit the big screen. But that doesn't mean we were completely lacking in quality cape-and-cowl content--far from it. While the MCU may have been MIA through 2020, the vacuum was filled by an unexpected bright spot by the name of Birds of Prey--or, perhaps more accurately, called Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, the title it held onto for about a week or so after it hit theaters. But it's just Birds of Prey now, and that's what really matters.Birds of Prey was a movie that nobody saw coming, especially given Margot Robbie's introduction to the role of Harley Quinn back in 2016's Suicide Squad. The movie really had no right to shape up the way it did, not with so much stacked against it. Sitting down in a theater to finally see it at release--just a month or so before the pandemic really took hold in early February--there was an overwhelming sense of both trepidation and curiosity from the crowd. Everything about this could so easily go south, or just become a Suicide Squad Part 2. It could have brought the DCEU's winning streak to a crashing halt and regressed all the progress made right back to the rain-slicked, grey-toned monotony of days gone by.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Every year at GameSpot, we give a variety of awards to the best games that came out. Aside from our top 10 list, category awards, and overall pick for Game of the Year 2020, we also wax about our favorite games and moments. We've already published our Editor's Spotlight Awards, which features our team's favorite games that didn't make it into our main awards. But we also have our Editor's Highlight Awards, a roundup detailing our favorite moments, game mechanics, and cultural events in the world of gaming this past year.These highlights encompass a wide range of things that we loved experiencing in games in 2020, whether it was Ghost of Tsushima's outstanding Guiding Wind mechanic or the first time we celebrated a villager's birthday in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This year may have been tumultuous due to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, it was also one packed with some outstanding moments in games and the joyous community surrounding it.As a note, there are potential spoilers around the games we've discussed below, so be wary as you read through our various highlights. But what were your biggest highlights in games this past year? Let us know in the comments below!Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

When it came time to decide GameSpot's top 10 shows of 2020, it wasn't an easy task. In a year where many of us spent months at home locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TV was an escape. That should be evident in our top 10, filled with shows that made us think (Devs), scream in terror (The Haunting of Bly Manor), relive past glories (The Last Dance), and simply feel good (Ted Lasso). When it came to deciding our top TV show of 2020, though, the answer was clear.FX's What We Do in the Shadows Season 2 was the perfect escape from this year. It made us laugh nonstop, it constantly surprised us, and it managed to take a stellar first season and actually improve on it to create a more interesting world, filled with disco vampires, socially awkward slayers, and a society of the undead that wants nothing to do with the characters we've grown to love since the series premiered in 2019.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

2021 is just around the corner now, and Pokemon Go is kicking off the new year in a big way. Developer Niantic has outlined a variety of events it will be hosting in the first month of 2021, including a New Year celebration, new Pokemon Spotlight Hours, and lots of Legendary Raids. You can read more about January's biggest Pokemon Go events below.Table of Contents [hide]New Year's Event New Year's EventPokemon Go New Year's event Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

On the evening of December 20, WWE held one of its best PPVs of the year, TLC. The evening saw a couple exciting matches featuring wrestlers use tables, ladders, and chairs. We saw a man get set on fire in the middle of the ring--RIP The Fiend, for now--and Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens was one of the best matches of the year. Check out all the results below.The main card of WWE's PPV TLC kicked off with a championship TLC match between Drew McIntyre and AJ Styles. However, along the way, Money in the Bank contract holder The Miz got thrown into the mix, and it didn't go too well for him.The Thunderdome has moved to a new location, and TLC will take place at Tropicana Field in Tampa, Florida. That's right. It's a WWE PPV in the middle of a baseball stadium. However, since you can't attend the show in person, you'll have to watch it the old fashion way--through the WWE Network.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Steam runs a number of big seasonal sales each year, but it has revealed that the most recent--the Autumn Sale that coincided with the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend--was its biggest yet. The sale drew in new users to Steam, as well as a huge number of returning players.While the sale exceeded previous events according to a number of benchmarks Steam tracks, the one it chose to highlight was a record amount of revenue going back to developers and publishers. The blog post says that, while it's difficult to quantify how many games are finding success on Steam, the data shows that there are more games than ever grossing at least $10,000, all the way up to $1,000,000.Valve also reveals that just under a million players spent money on Steam for the first time during the Autumn Sale--which isn't too surprising in a year that has seen rapid increases in the number of people gaming on all devices, due to the pandemic keeping them inside. The peak number of concurrent players logging on for the sale also increased by around 7 million when compared to last year's Autumn Sale.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Destiny 2's big Beyond Light update may have started the process of retiring much of the game's old content, but Bungie is also bringing back some old favorites--starting with the original Destiny raid, Vault of Glass. In a new interview with Polygon, assistant game director Joe Blackburn has explained how he's working to make sure the new version of Vault of Glass plays just how you remember, despite the differences between Destiny and the current version of Destiny 2.Blackburn said that the goal of the re-release is to make running Vault of Glass in Destiny 2 feel the same as it did when players got into it for the very first time. He explains why this means that some tweaks are necessary, rather than including the original version of the raid as a straight port."The guardians have become significantly stronger in this amount of time," Blackburn explains, saying that the raid team went back into the original raid to see how it played, before deciding that "we would smoke this with Destiny 2 weapons and armor mods."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Genshin Impact's big 1.2 update is arriving on December 23, bringing with it a huge new area, a host of new rewards and content, and some well-overdue quality-of-life updates. The update will bring two new 5-star characters across two banners--first, the sword-wielding Geo alchemist Albedo, and later in January the Cryo archer Ganyu.Developer Mihoyo has now revealed the event banner for Albedo, showing that 4-star characters Bennett, Fischl and Sucrose will all be easier to obtain while wishing on the "Secretum Secretorum." The new main character Albedo is a Geo sword user who seems to be designed for a support role.Albedo's story quest "Princeps Cretaceus Chapter" will launch at the same time as his banner and will be a pre-requisite for the Dragonspine-centered The Chalk Prince and the Dragon event. Accordingly, the story quest will temporarily be available to all players above AR20 without the need for a story key. After the event, the level requirement will be raised to AR40 and a story key will be required.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series is packed with many beloved scenes, but one stands above all for the director, and it's not a scene he directed.Sitting down with The Lord of the Rings super-fan Stephen Colbert, Jackson said one of the scenes that best captures the spirit of the project is one that came in late and was not originally planned. In The Two Towers, Jackson wanted to properly introduce Gollum, but the director remarked that he didn't have a sequence that effectively demonstrated Gollum's two-persons-in-one existence as Gollum and Smeagol. "We knew we needed it, but we had no time to shoot it," Jackson said.Director Peter Jackson tells us his favorite scene from The Lord of The Rings franchise. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/dikYtMK612 — A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) December 12, 2020So Jackson turned to his partner in real life and on The Lord of the Rings, screenwriter Fran Walsh, to write and direct a scene that showcased Gollum's identity. The scene from The Two Towers shows Gollum grappling with his pained existence, bouncing back and forth between what he wants and what the seduction of the One Ring is compelling him to do.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The finale of The Mandalorian Season 2 last week contained not one but two big surprises. You can read about the first here, while the second was that a spin-off Star Wars show titled The Book of Boba Fett is on the way next year. Now the logo and more details have been revealed.The Book of Boba Fett will be produced by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Robert Rodriguez, and star Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett and Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand. Favreau is the showrunner of The Mandalorian, while Filoni is an executive producer of that show, as well as being responsible for animated Star Wars series such as Rebels and The Clone Wars. Rodriguez directed one of the recent Mandalorian episodes, and helmed movies such as Alita: Battle Angel, Spy Kids, and Sin City. As for the logo, check it out below:The Book of Boba Fett, a new Original Series, starring Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen and executive produced by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Robert Rodriguez, set within the timeline of The Mandalorian, is coming to @DisneyPlus Dec. 2021. pic.twitter.com/YT2zbLufI8 — Star Wars (@starwars) December 21, 2020Favreau was interviewed by Good Morning America, where he revealed that The Book of Boba Fett will start production soon, ahead of its December 2021 premiere on Disney+. He also confirmed that The Mandalorian Season 3 is on the way too. However, that won't start filming until after the Boba Fett series, so we won't see that before 2022.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

While it may have been last season of Fortnite: Battle Royale that was Marvel-themed, that doesn't mean the game's connections to the franchise have ended. A small new set of challenges, dubbed Wakanda Forever, have been introduced to the game for the next three weeks, and completing them will earn you the Wakandan Salute emote--and the long-awaited Black Panther skin is finally approaching its release.The Wakanda Forever challenges are available for free, and there are only three total you'll need to complete. Fortunately, this just involves playing the game--you won't need to hunt down any unmarked locations or do anything unnatural. However, one of the three challenges is mislabeled: Despite saying you only need to play five Duo or Squad matches, you actually have to do this challenge with a friend, Epic clarified on Twitter; it's working to update the in-game text now. Each of the three challenges has a corresponding XP reward, and once you finish all three, you'll unlock the emote, which was popularized by 2018's Black Panther movie. You just have to do all of this by January 12 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET.Wakanda Forever ChallengesPlay Matches (10) -- 10k XPOutlast opponents (500) -- 20k XPPlay Duo or Squad matches with a friend (5) -- 20k XPCoinciding with this, Epic's ongoing Fortography event, where players submit their best Fortnite screenshots, will focus on the new emote. You can submit yours by tweeting with the #Fortography hashtag.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The awaited 1.5 update for Stardew Valley has arrived on PC, and ahead of its release indie developer Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone outlined some of what we can expect from the big patch.In a tweet, Barone highlighted a couple of key features for new farmers just starting out after the version 1.5 update goes live. Those include a new farm type, Beach Farm. According to an attached screenshot, sprinklers don't work on a beach farm, but it's great for foraging and fishing, and sometimes you'll a supply crate will randomly wash up ashore. There's also be a new Advanced Game Options menu, which lets you toggle aspects like your community center bundles, mine rewards, and whether monsters will spawn on your farm.Barone followed up shortly after with an update that the patch is now live. He had said just recently that it could release on PC this year, followed by consoles early next year.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com