Game also receives an anniversary discount.
If you’re a fan of the awesome RPG Citizen Sleeper, then you might want to invest in a new Design Works artbook from video game cuture specialist Lost in Cult.
The official fundraiser is open now and will close on July 2nd, 2023 at 6pm GMT. Lost in Cult is looking to raise a total of £75,000 (roughly $93,000) in order to produce the various Design Works SKUs and fulfill orders for customers.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Today we’re happy to reveal the PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for May. The Monthly Games lineup of GRID Legends, Chivalry 2 and Descenders will be available to PlayStation Plus members on Tuesday, May 2 until Monday June 5.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the games in turn.
Welcome to GRID Legends: a high-stakes driving experience that combines thrilling and unpredictable motorsport, incredible race variety and an immersive narrative that puts you at the heart of the action. Take the spotlight in an engrossing racing story, brought to life by a world-class cast including Ncuti Gatwa in a ground-breaking extended reality production. Face fierce personalities, paddock politics, on-track drama and the infamous Ravenwest Motorsport, as a fly-on-the-wall documentary captures every moment.
Return to the ultimate medieval battlefield in this multiplayer first person slasher inspired by epic medieval movie battles. Players are thrust into the action of every iconic moment of the era – experience large-scale conflicts in sprawling medieval environments ranging from Tournament grounds to full-scale castle sieges. Pick your playstyle with 4 classes and 12 subclasses, each with their own unique weapons and abilities and much more then charge headfirst into stunning 64-player cinematic battles. The PS5 version runs in 4K at 60fps.
Descenders is a fast-paced extreme downhill biking game that’s easy to pick up, but difficult to master, featuring an in-depth physics system that lets you control every subtle movement of your rider. Take on different jumps, slopes and hillbombs every time you play with procedurally generated levels. Earn special mutators each time you play, and work out which abilities work best for your riding style and earn new bikes and threads as you build your online Rep system.
PlayStation Plus members have until Monday May 1 to add Meet Your Maker, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Tails of Iron to their game library.
Greetings, Guardians. Today we welcome back Guardian Games! From May 2 to May 23, the annual celebration of our favorite classes and a time for friendly competition between our fellow Guardians will be available for all players. We’ve got new rewards, a returning game mode, class-based matchmaking, and another shot at getting the statue in the Tower. There’s no sleeping on the dream, so let’s get into it!
As always, medals are the name of the game. Complete your favorite activities to earn medallions that can be banked in the Tower. The class with the most medallions at the end of the day wins that day, but it all comes down to who had the most winning days.
Want to put in extra work for your class? We got you. Head on over to the OG of GGs, Eva Levante, to pick up a Contender Card and earn some shiny gold and platinum medals for the squad. The winning class will have bragging rights, as well as a commemorative statue on display in the Tower for the entire year. Go for the gusto. Go for the win.
It’s time now for precision, Guardian. Guardian Games 2023 marks the return of the Supremacy Crucible mode. Steady your sights and strike your target to collect their crest in this high paced returning Crucible mode.
In addition to all your favorite activities rewarding medallions, we’ve got some more ways to band together and earn medallions with your fellow Guardians.
First up, we’ve got the classic Guardian Games playlist featuring Battlegrounds and strikes that should be familiar to veteran players and a new way to play for newer Guardians. The playlist has three different ways to play: Recreational, Training, and Competitive.
Recreational is where you’ll get your bearings and get ready for the trials and tribulations of the other playlists. The Guardian Games: Recreational playlist will be available all week and scoring will be enabled. Once you’ve had enough time to stretch in the Recreational playlist, you’ll want to head over to the Training playlist.
In the Training playlist, you’ll find one strike available each week. Scoring will be enabled, so throw on that build that makes everything explode—looking at you Void Titans—and pump those numbers up.
Not to be outdone, we have the Guardian Games: Competitive playlist. Now this isn’t a playlist to mess around with – this is for those that want a challenge and some extra gear. This playlist is only up during the weekend, scoring is available and here’s the kicker: certain scores mean more rewards. Make your mark in this playlist and take home the hardware back to the Tower to show other classes what they’re missing.
It wouldn’t be a party without gifts, right? We’ve got you covered with new rewards up for grabs:
You know your role and play it well. To turn up the heat on the competition a little bit, we’re introducing class-based matchmaking for the event. Whether you’re dicing deep into the Guardian Games playlist or want or showing rival classes how you roll in Supremacy, you can match up with other Guardians in your class.
Guardian Games is a global celebration of what it means to be a Guardian. From Paris to Texas, Guardians from around the world are going to compete against one another for the ultimate prize: that beautiful statue in the Tower. Oh, and year-long bragging rights, of course.
While banking medallions and grabbing crests will be at the top of mind, remember to have fun. I’ll be out there trying to make my fellow Titans proud. I hope to see you there doing the same for your favorite class.
Bungie
Dive into the world of Destiny 2 to explore the mysteries of the solar system and experience responsive first-person shooter combat. Unlock powerful elemental abilities and collect unique gear to customize your Guardian’s look and playstyle. Enjoy Destiny 2’s cinematic story, challenging co-op missions, and a variety of PvP modes alone or with friends. Download for free today and write your legend in the stars.
AN IMMERSIVE STORY
You are a Guardian, defender of the Last City of humanity in a solar system under siege by infamous villains. Look to the stars and stand against the darkness. Your legend begins now.
GUARDIAN CLASSES
Choose from the armored Titan, mystic Warlock, or swift Hunter.
• Disciplined and proud, Titans are capable of both aggressive assaults and stalwart defenses. Set your hammer ablaze, crack the sky with lightning, and go toe-to-toe with any opponent. Your team will stand tall behind the strength of your shield.
• Warlocks weaponize the mysteries of the universe to sustain themselves and destroy their foes. Rain devastation on the battlefield and clear hordes of enemies in the blink of an eye. Those who stand with you will know the true power of the Light.
• Agile and daring, Hunters are quick on their feet and quicker on the draw. Fan the hammer of your golden gun, flow through enemies like the wind, or strike from the darkness. Find the enemy, take aim, and end the fight before it starts.
COOPERATIVE AND COMPETITIVE MULTIPLAYER
Play with or against your friends and other Guardians in various PvE and PvP game modes.
• Exciting co-op adventures teeming await with rare and powerful rewards. Dive into the story with missions, quests, and patrols. Put together a small fireteam and secure the chest at the end of a quick Strike. Or test your team’s skill with countless hours of raid progression – the ultimate challenge for any fireteam. You decide where your legend begins.
• Face off against other players in fast-paced free-for-all skirmishes, team arenas, and PvE/PvP hybrid competitions. Mark special competitions like Iron Banner on your calendar and collect limited-time rewards before they’re gone.
EXOTIC WEAPONS AND ARMOR
Thousands of weapons, millions of options. Discover new gear combinations and define your own personal style. The hunt for the perfect arsenal begins.
105 GB hard drive storage space required as of November 10, 2020. Subject to change. Requires broadband internet. After November 10, 2020 see www.destinythegame.com/size-requirements for current requirements prior to purchase.
Destiny 2 may contain flashing patterns and images that may produce adverse effects for a small percentage of people sensitive to them.
Bungie, Inc. makes no guarantee regarding the availability of online play or features and may modify or discontinue online services with reasonable notice at any time. Using the software constitutes acceptance of the Destiny Software License Agreement available at www.bungie.net/sla.
© 2023 Bungie, Inc. All rights reserved. Destiny, the Destiny Logo, Bungie and the Bungie Logo are trademarks of Bungie, Inc. Published and distributed by Bungie, Inc.
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Xbox has announced a new PC Game Pass referral program that lets existing members gift a free trial of the subscription service to a friend.
Every Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass holder will be able to send a total of five friend referrals by clicking the “Give PC Game Pass” button located on your Game Pass home screen menu. Each trial can be redeemed to grant access to a 14-day PC Game Pass trial, as long as the target of your generosity is new to the service.
Microsoft has launched the program to coincide with the release of Arkane’s first-person action horror shooter Redfall, which was released earlier today on Game Pass for Xbox consoles and PC.
Beyond Redfall the trial unlocks all of the content usually contained in the PC Game Pass service, including hundreds of games ranging from Rare’s pirate adventure title Sea of Thieves, to Playground Games’ high-octane offering in Forza Horizon 5. The trial also provides access to all the titles included in an EA Play membership, along with any new first party Xbox Studio games launching onto the service during the trial period.
The new program will be welcome news to gamers hoping to give Game Pass on PC a try, especially considering that Microsoft recently ended a long standing promotion that offered a one month trial of the subscription service for $1.
Xbox recently revealed some of the titles that will be coming to Game Pass in the the coming month, including the fairlytale action-adventure Ravenlok (May 4), the action RPG Weird West (May 8), the tactical cyberpunk-inspired Shadowrun Trilogy (May 9), and the turn-based title Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 (May 11).
While the new friend referral system is ideal for Redfall’s co-op nature, the shooter has had some significant problems out of the gate. Our review in progress highlights a number of display issues and bugs, which, combined with a degree of “vanilla” mission design and a “lifeless world”, left IGN’s Luke Reilly feeling underwhelmed at the state of the game.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
It was a Wednesday in March, and the Dreamworks dream team of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen had flown into Seattle to join Bill Gates for a press conference. The four men, seated on tall Hollywood director’s chairs, were estimated to be worth a combined $11 billion – and that was in 1995 money.
Together, Dreamworks and Microsoft were going 50-50 on a new game studio, investing a total of $30 million. “I’m spoiled,” said Spielberg, as recorded by the LA Times. “I worked with the best studios and the best actors, and it would be silly to get into the interactive business without Microsoft. They’re the best company in the world. It does seem like a marriage that was destined to happen.” I was a marriage that would produce a famously strange child in Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
Apex Legends Season 17, or Arsenal, is coming May 9th and brings in a brand new Legend, major map changes to World’s Edge, new Firing Range, Weapon Mastery, and an overhauled Rank System. Every season, Respawn aims to improve and bring meaningful updates to Apex and Season 17 is looking to be an especially ambitious one. Here’s everything you need to know about everything coming to Apex Legends Arsenal on May 9th.
Let’s go over the new Legend, Ballistic, first. I have a separate lore video for him that you can watch on this channel. Ballistic is an Assault Legend so he gets the passive benefits of unlocking the class specific Assault bins throughout the maps and can additionally carry more ammo per stack in his inventory.
Here’s how Ballistic’s kit works:
Ballistic is an incredibly strong Assault Legend that is certainly going to change the game. As an additional note, the weapon Ballistic puts into his Sling slot can be switched out with any weapon he has in his inventory but that weapon will lose all of its attachments and the previous Sling weapon’s attachments will still have to be looted unless the attachments on the swapped gun match the Sling weapon.
Weapon Mastery is a new way to level and get additional achievements in Apex in Season 17. Similar to how Call of Duty does Weapon Camo challenges, Apex’s Weapon Mastery will involve specific challenges to level the weapons to unlock new weapon trackers, banner frames, and Legendary skins for each weapon when you master them.
All weapons will start at level one in Season 17 even if you’re a long-time player. You level your weapons through playing the game and the leveling will not reset over seasons. Every 20 levels, a weapon trial will unlock that will grant you a reward upon completion. Once you hit level 100 for a weapon, you’ll get a Legendary skin for that weapon.
World’s Edge is getting some massive reworks as a refresh for Season 17. The notorious Fragment East and West (the Point of Interests in the middle of the map) are getting a facelift with a new POI addition planted on site called the Monument, the Museum of Apex Legends. This museum has actual exhibits detailing the history of the Apex Games and features almost a bunker-like structure that has sniper nests accessible via ziplines inside the museum.
The Warehouse from Fragment has also been relocated to where Lava City once was, between Dome and Big Maude, and is called Stacks. Lava all across the map have been raised so you can now travel across it, so there are no more chasms. For example, the lava underneath Harvester has been raised so you can’t fall off into the middle anymore and it has a new center section with additional loot.
There’s also been a new vault added to Skyhook to improve the loot around World’s Edge and Trials has been changed to also improve loot health. The map rotations for Season 17 include World’s Edge, Kings Canyon, and Olympus. Additionally, Mirage’s party boat Mirage a Trois is now permanently only in World’s Edge.
There will be a new Survival Item called the Evac Tower. It’s a mobile redeploy that can be set anywhere on the map to raise a redeploy balloon for you and your team to use. Anyone in the area can see when the Evac Tower is raised since it will deploy with a rocket upward to place the Tower and anchor it.
This Tower is not permanent and will disappear after a certain amount of time and can also be destroyed if you or enemies shoot at the balloon so you’ll have to be careful when using the Tower to escape. Valkyrie’s ultimate is still the better choice but at least this option is available if you don’t have a Valk on your team.
The Firing Range went through a pretty decent change last season, with the customizable dummies and hitfire feedback, but now it’s been reworked to be even bigger. The entire Firing Range has been remade from the ground up as an actual map with multiple buildings and environments made to create a mock battleground for players to warm up and practice in.
There is now a dueling pit dedicated for 1v1s, a new Agility Course, and an entirely new town sized map. The loot layout has been adjusted so you can practice grabbing loot from deathboxes (which is great for shield swap practicing), and the Agility course lets you practice sliding, ziplining, jumping, climbing, wall bouncing, whatever you want in that arena.
The dummies are still customizable with the feedback on how your spray patterns look but the targets throughout the map have been improved. They’ll now light up different colors to give you feedback on where you hit them. You can keep track of all of your practicing through turning on Dynamic Stats that you can reset anytime you want.
The Ranked System is getting an overhaul in how matchmaking and entry costs work. In Season 17 you will need to complete ten placement matches to get assigned a rank. From that rank, you can grind to get to the level you want. The placement doesn’t work based on wins or losses, like Overwatch’s placements, but instead will work off a hidden MMR.
The placement matches help figure out your base skill level then will put you in a rank that the system thinks you’ll enjoy ranking up from. Ranked Points are now being called Ladder Points since you’ll be climbing the ladder up the ranks. There will not be any more splits and each season will be a full ranked season.
No matter what your rank is, all LP costs will be the same to enter ranked matches. It will be a flat cost of 35 LP to enter a match and the Kill Points are still the same with individual and team KP.
Apex Legends Season 17 will be dropping May 9th with all of these changes. What are you looking forward to most? Let us know! Be sure to subscribe to IGN’s Apex Legends game category to stay up to date on all of Apex news.
Stella is a Video Producer, Host, and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is on competitive FPS games and she’s previously reviewed Apex Legends, Hyper Scape, Halo Infinite Multiplayer, and Battlefield 2042. She regularly hosts and shoutcasts competitive Apex Legends and Halo Infinite tournaments when she isn’t streaming on her Twitch channel after work outs. You can follow her on Twitter @ParallaxStella.
The Kingston NV2 is a budget PCIe 4.0 drive, designed to be assembled from the cheapest available components to deliver a decent baseline of performance. That makes it often an aggressively priced SSD compared to others at similar speeds, and today Box are offering the 2TB model for just £77.50. That’s the lowest price we’ve ever seen for a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and a deal worth writing up, IMO.
Where’s the nearest Cooking Pot?
Nintendo is going all-out with the marketing for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (big surprise). There are the trailers, the tie-in Switch OLED model, the novelty pre-order bonuses (Zelda spoon anyone?), in short, the game is everywhere.
Now, Nintendo has managed to spread the marketing for the title even further, as it has today revealed a range of Tears of the Kingdom-inspired food and drink items that are now available to buy from Lawson stores in Japan.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
We know that gaming is best with friends, so today, we’re introducing the Xbox Game Pass Friend Referral offer, which lets Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members give up to five friends a free 14-day PC Game Pass trial. Invited friends must be new to Game Pass to redeem the free trial.
You can find Friend Referral invitations on the Game Pass Home screen, just click the “Give PC Game Pass” button to share.
The free trial comes with all the benefits of PC Game Pass, including new titles from Xbox Game Studios on day one, an EA Play membership, and you can check out the biggest PC and mobile games on PC from Riot Games. Link your Riot Games account and Xbox profile to unlock the greatest Agents, champions, little legends, XP boosts, and more in Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and Legends of Runeterra.
PC Game Pass lets you discover and play a curated library of hundreds of high-quality PC games from great developers around the world, including games like Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves, and more. With new games added all the time, there’s always something new to play. You can learn more about the latest games that will be available with the Game Pass library coming soon here.
This also means that starting today, you can share PC Game Pass with more friends and jump right into Redfall on day one.
For new members checking out the service, the best place to get started is with the Xbox app on PC. With the Xbox app you can browse games, play PC titles, and connect and chat with friends on devices.
Stay tuned to Xbox Wire, @XboxGamePass, and @XboxGamePassPC for more Game Pass updates.
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We were fortunate enough to sit down with famed sci-fi director Neill Blomkamp to discuss how he adapted the legendary racing simulator, the innovative camerawork devised to capture all the action on the track, and where he found inspiration from racing films of the past.
PlayStation Blog: The Gran Turismo Movie is a notable departure from previous films you’ve directed—it’s not based on one of your screenplays, nor is it dystopian sci-fi. What drew you to this project?
Neill Blomkamp: So, it’s actually a dystopian science fiction script I sold to Sony that started the conversation. As the pre-production process went on I started to get very eager just to work on something, and at that point they said, “How about Gran Turismo?” My first thought was, “Wait, how do you make a film out of a racing simulator?” But I read the screenplay, and I personally own three [Nissan] R35 GTRs—I have a personal obsession with Nissan and the whole Nismo lineage—so I was immediately intrigued as a car lover.
I’ve also been very close to video games in a lot of ways throughout my career, and I had never come across something like Gran Turismo where the movie itself treats the game as a game. It’s based on a true story about Jann Mardenborough who learned to drive playing the game before driving professionally in real life, competing against other real drivers. It’s just an amazing story.
Another reason I signed on was because my stuff tends to be a lot darker and more dystopian, as you mentioned, but this movie felt, well, very inspirational. It had never crossed my mind that I would direct a movie where the audience would leave the theater feeling uplifted and inspired. This was really appealing to me.
Are there any particular creative challenges—or benefits—to working within an IP like this?
One great thing is that there weren’t a bunch of executives who would say, “Well, actually, we think it should be like this.” If you’re working on another IP with a more established universe or narrative everyone has preconceived ideas about how things should be. But, with Gran Turismo, you have a well-known IP that doesn’t carry these preconceived notions about what its film adaptation should look like. This gave me a ton of creative freedom to just go out and, you know, make it.
Without an established plotline or fictional universe to draw on, in what ways did you pay homage to the game? How did you extract the game’s DNA into something recognizable for a film?
For one, the film tries to take you along the journey of someone who first experienced these legendary tracks virtually, and then took what they learned within a simulation and applied it to a real-life scenario. And so, I tried to visually connect those two points together using a lot of the imagery from the GT games, like the lines you’d take driving the track and the markers and checkpoints, as well as the awards for leveling up and things like that.
And then there are a whole bunch of smaller easter eggs—tiny moments like recreating some of the in-game victory poses that we got our actors to do in the movie. There’s also a ton of cool cars for gearheads to spot as well; we did our best to drop interesting cars all over the place whenever we could.
On that note, what are some of your favorite cars that make an appearance?
I mean, there’s a Generation 1 NSX at the beginning of the film, which is a big deal for me. I have a lot of love for that car.
And at the other end of the spectrum, we also wanted some really glitzy choices that would be true easter eggs for car lovers—like the Koenigsegg Gemera, a still-unreleased car, a 4-seater with 1700 horsepower. It’s kind of like a Bugatti Rolls Royce.
From the limited clips we’ve seen so far, it looks like some of the cinematography directly references the in-game chase camera. We also get glimpses of a pretty serious looking rig to film the cars at high speeds. Can you walk us through your process here?
Well, it really came down to creating something that would just be cool to watch on a large cinema screen, and for that we doubled down on FPV drones to carry IMAX sensor-approved cameras. There’s a ton of airborne, high-speed drone work in the film, and we utilized a pursuit-arm mounted to a high-speed vehicle. In this case, we actually mounted it to an R35 GTR, which could actually keep pace (pretty much) with a lot of the GT3 cars in the film.
So between that car and the drone work, you already have some cool dynamic angles. But, I was also obsessed with recreating camera angles players know from the game: so, for the third-person chase perspective, we built an R1 rig that could position a camera such that the entire car would fit within the frame.
To capture the driver’s POV (cockpit view), our stunt driver would lie back so we could mount a camera where his head should be. We liked including nods to the game in these kinds of ways.
There’s a rich history of movies that depict the on- and off-track drama of motorsport, from classics like Le Mans and Gran Prix to the more recent Ford vs. Ferrari. Which films in the genre did you look to for inspiration, if any?
The one film that I can genuinely point to and say is directly referenced in Gran Turismo is Steve McQueen’s Le Mans. That movie is insane. You can tell how fast they’re going. You can tell how dangerous it is. You can even tell how polluting the cars are. It’s amazing.
In the beginning of that movie, they spend a ton of time pushing in on each character before the race—the hero, the villain, the clock—and then it starts rapidly cross-cutting between them. There’s a very similar sequence in our film with our protagonist and his opponents that was directly inspired by the McQueen classic.
Usually there’s someone exploding or some, like, genetically mutated creature running amok in my films. I just never would have thought in a trillion years that I would have made a race/sports movie. It’s even surprising now, saying it.
Gran Turismo 7 is now available on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, as well as PlayStation VR2 following a free update earlier this year.
Gran Turismo arrives exclusively in theaters this August.
