Escape From Tarkov has been battling cheaters for years, with seemingly mixed results. Developers Battlestate Games are stepping up their efforts not only to ban cheaters but to show other players that “justice has been served”, by releasing the usernames of thousands of players banned for allegedly cheating.
With the launch of Destiny 2: Lightfall, players are diving into the game’s story and unearthing some hidden clues about where the story could go next. In a surprise detail hidden in one of Lightfall’s activities, one of Destiny 2’s more memorable supporting characters, the Awoken Warlock Asher Mir, makes a quick cameo — and most players have likely missed it.
Thanks to some Destiny 2 fans on social media and content creators on YouTube, the community has uncovered evidence of Asher Mir’s return in the game’s plot. Hidden in the Partition activity on Neomuna, which sees guardians explore a repurposed Vex network, Asher Mir’s digital self is located on a hidden platform, and he signals to the player to approach him. Though he does not speak, he gives the familiar glare he would give when players visited him on Io.
However, he has left a more direct message for players in a lore description on the Inside Line sparrow, which is available for players from the season pass rewards. When inspecting the lore for the Inside Line, there is a morse code message that says, “STILL ALIVE INSIDE NETWORK IDIOT KIDS.”
For those who played OG Destiny 2, Asher Mir was a prickly character who commonly made snide comments. In short, it’s classic Asher Mir.
Asher Mir’s origins
As one of the original characters from Destiny 2’s launch in 2017, the supporting vendor Asher Mir was on the planet Io, which was taken over by the Vex, Cabal, and Taken factions. As one of the planet’s primary characters, he would give players details about Io’s history and clues about the Vex Pryamidion — a Vex stronghold that stretched across time and space. In the earlier phases of Destiny 2, Asher Mir was the foremost expert on The Vex, and would conduct experiments into the Vex network and explore the Pyramidion and its many permeatations.
However, with Beyond Light’s launch in 2020, Bungie sunsetted a sizable portion of Destiny 2’s content, including several planets, activities, and characters. This mass vaulting, unfortunately, included NPCs like Asher Mir and Sloane from the planet Titan. Storywise, the Darkness had invaded the Sol System and swallowed up several planets, erasing them from existence. In 2023, with Destiny 2 in a vastly changed state from its debut, many players who jumped into the game recently have no idea who this character is. Nevertheless, for long-time fans of Destiny 2, this is the clearest confirmation that Asher Mir is still alive, which could lead to more from him in the future.
We’re still uncovering more details about Destiny 2: Lightfall, so be sure to check back with IGN for more updates, along with our finalized review.
For the month before the 3DS and Wii U eShops close for new purchases on 27th March, each day we’re going to highlight a specific eShop game for one of those consoles and give a short pitch as to why we think it deserves your love and attention — before it’s too late. The chance to add these to your library will be gone for good soon and, for one reason or another, these eShop-exclusives are close to our hearts.
Today, Alana nominates 3D Gunstar Heroes, a 3DS-specific re-release of Treasure’s seminal run-and-gun shooter from the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis.
Her reign is built on a mountain of bone. Dead by Daylight’s latest Killer is The Skull Merchant, a ruthless apex hunter driven to pursue prey worthy of her talents.
After years of experimentation, she has finally perfected her deadliest tool: Drones, designed to observe and track any Survivor in its vicinity. Meticulously handcrafted using the skulls of her many victims, these grotesque combinations of bone and metal cast an oppressive shadow.
To effectively master this Killer, you must be prepared to set traps, analyze key points of interest, and capitalize on emboldened Survivors. While The Skull Merchant comes with three Character Perks – Game Afoot, Thwack!,and Leverage – this guide is focused on her Power and how to use it.
The Drone Zone
The Skull Merchant’s Power, Eyes to the Sky, allows her to position multiple Drones in places of her choosing. Some potential places could be around Generators, Hex Totems, or areas that may see heavy travel. You will also have a Radar device, which will allow you to track the location of Survivors under certain circumstances.
Once a Drone has been placed, it enters Active Mode and detects Survivors within its surrounding radius. Note that will you be Undetectable while in this radius, and any Survivor that enters it will be revealed on your Radar. While inside the Active Zone, the Drone will gradually Lock-On to that Survivor, revealing their exact location through Killer Instinct. They will also become Exposed.
If several seconds pass and no Survivor enters the radius while the Drone is in Active Mode, the Drone will switch to Scouting Mode. While in Scouting Mode, the Drone will slowly rotate to catch Survivors in its line of sight. It’s far safer for a Survivor to approach during this time, provided they can avoid the Drone’s rotating sightlines. Should the Drone detect them however, it will immediately enter Active Mode.
Once you place your Drones, you’ll have the ability to recall them or manually set them to Active Mode, though you cannot force a Drone to return to Scouting Mode. Consider using this if you predict that a Survivor is attempting to approach and disable a Drone, though you’ll have to primarily trust your instinct on this one. Remember, the more Survivors actively stressing about Drones, the better.
Key Placements
One of The Skull Merchant’s biggest strengths is her ability to keep tabs of Survivor locations. When you first spawn into a Trial, remember that Survivors will generally spawn at a considerable distance. As the Skull Merchant does not have cross-Map mobility to effectively disrupt their early game plans, you should try to get into a mindset of predicting their future actions.
While you make your approach, you’ll notice several Generators that have yet to be touched – the closer together they are, the better. These are ideal areas to station a Drone, as Survivors will eventually make their way toward those Generators. From there, they will have to choose whether to ignore the Drone and commit to the Generator, build progress to become Exposed and revealed through Killer Instinct, or attempt to disable the Drone and receive a Claw Trap.
Claw Trap: Whenever a Survivor successfully hacks and disables one of your Drones, they will receive a Claw Trap. When a Survivor receives a Claw Trap, their location will be trackable on your Radar until the Trap’s battery dies.
Because Drones create such a perilous zone for Survivors, it’s effective to widen the scope of your web by placing multiple. That way, you maximize the possibility of a favourable outcome. You’ll either end up targeting an Exposed Survivor or gain the ability to track a Claw Trapped Survivor on your radar. It may happen that a Claw Trapped Survivor attempts to draw you away to an inconvenient location – in that case, it’s up to you to decide whether taking that chase is worth it.
At the end of the day, The Skull Merchant is a Killer who specializes in trap placement, so don’t be discouraged if you lose a few Generators in the early game.
Drones and Radar
Dealing with all these Drones can feel overwhelming – especially when your initial placements prove ineffective, and you’re left improvising on the fly. Drones can have significant value in a chase, especially when you’re pursuing a Survivor around a complex loop with limited line-of-sight.
Not only will their exact location eventually be revealed by Killer Instinct if they remain in the Drone’s Active Zone, but you’ll also get the immediate benefit of becoming Undetectable. That means you won’t have to worry about hiding your Red Stain, and Survivors will have a harder time gauging your location.
As for your Radar – remember, you have it for a reason, so use it to obtain crucial information on Survivor whereabouts. The leftmost light informs you where you can place a Drone, while the rightmost one informs you when a Survivor is inside a Drone’s Active Zone. The Radar will remain unlit when your Power is on Cooldown. Keep an eye on those visual signals!
The Skull Merchant is all about control, and you’ll soon find that an effective setup can lead to some truly merciless results. The Skull Merchant is now available in Dead by Daylight’s Tools of Torment Chapter on Xbox.
Ever wished to play as one of the characters from your favorite horror movies? Dead by Daylight is a 1v4 multiplayer game that draws from all corners of the horror world from a powerful slasher to a terrifying paranormal entity.
Choose between playing an unstoppable Killer and one of 4 Survivors trying to evade a gruesome death. Each character has their own deep progression system and plenty of unlockables that can be customized to fit your personal strategy. Work together to escape, or stalk and sacrifice every Survivor.
This Edition of Dead by Daylight gives you access to a roster of 7 Killers (The Trapper, The Hillbilly, The Wraith, The Nurse, The Hag, The Huntress and The Doctor) and 9 Survivors (Meg Thomas, Claudette Morel, Jake Park, Dwight Fairfield, Ace Visconti, Nea Karlsson, Bill Overbeck, Feng Min and David King). It also includes two cosmetic add-ons packed with outfits for various characters.
From Software’s next game isn’t an Elden Ring or Dark Souls sequel. It’s a sequel to an older series that existed long before those action-RPGs took over the gaming landscape. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is the developer’s next game, and it’s slated to release sometime this year. It’s up for preorder now at all the usual retailers (see it at Amazon). Read on to see what comes with the game, plus what to expect from this blast from the past.
Armored Core is a series of mech shooters that dates back to the early days of From Software, with the first installment hitting the original PlayStation in 1997. The company put out a lot of games over the ensuing years, but it kept making Armored Core games every few years, with the most recent installment being 2013’s Armored Core: Verdict Day for PS3 and Xbox 360.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is about a dangerously unstable new fuel source found on the planet Rubicon 3. Various corporations and resistance groups are vying for control of the substance. You play as a freelancing mercenary, and you create your very own mech that you can use to maneuver and blast through a series of missions.
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Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed or on Mastodon @chrislreed.
Update: A Collector’s Edition will be available, too.
Update : After last month’s teaser, Riot Forge and Digital Sun have announced that The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story will be launching on Switch pretty darn soon, on 18th April 2023 (via Gematsu).
The game will be available on the Switch eShop for $29.99USD / £24.99, or you can shell out $39.99USD for the Digital Deluxe edition. Fans will also be able to bag a Collector’s Edition for $169.99USD which includes a statue, a unique comic, an art book, an art print, enamel pins, and an exclusive vinyl version of the soundtrack.
The latest entry in the Guilty Gear series, Guilty Gear -Strive-, is now available on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows!
Xbox is no stranger to fighting games and we are excited to rejoin this passionate community. Even better, Xbox Game Pass allows gamers to pick up new and exciting titles with incredible ease, and with Guilty Gear -Strive- coming to Xbox and Game Pass, this is a match made in heaven (or hell).
With revolutionary graphics, an intense story mode, online multiplayer pitting players from all over the world against each other, and more, Guilty Gear -Strive- provides the cutting edge of the fighting game experience. And now you can experience it for yourself on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows!
The Cutting Edge of Fighting Games
Guilty Gear -Strive- has received such awards as The Game Awards 2021 Best Fighting Game and 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards Fighting Game of the Year for its balance of ease of entry and the deep game mechanics Guilty Gear is known for!
A Smooth Online Experience for Players Across the World
A balance between accessibility for players new to Guilty Gear and the gameplay that defines the series. Step onto the stage of intense battle, from the exciting stage wall break system, to the deep game mechanics designed to bring out the strategy unique to fighting games, to the rollback netcode allowing players far apart to enjoy smooth online matches!
The Story Comes to a Climax!
Guilty Gear -Strive- brings more than just matches with its next generation visuals, further evolved down to the smallest details and hardly distinguishable from hand-drawn anime. Don’t miss the hefty Story Mode delving into the deep world of Guilty Gear.
The in-depth story of Guilty Gear has been told across more than 20 years. Now, the many interconnected fates of the cast come to a conclusion! What shocking truth awaits them?
Guilty Gear -Strive- brings jaw-dropping visuals, incredibly fun head-to-head combat, and a blistering hard rock soundtrack to Xbox. The game has been optimized for the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows, bringing the performance you expect on the platform you love. We look forward to seeing the many Xbox gamers jumping online with some of the best netcode around and showing the world that they too are ready to ROCK!
Take this chance to play Guilty Gear -Strive- with your friends and family!
Amazing graphics and animations! New revolution in fighting games!
[Game Contents]
“Guilty Gear -Strive-“ is the latest entry in the critically acclaimed Guilty Gear fighting game franchise. Created by Daisuke Ishiwatari and developed by Arc System Works, “Guilty Gear -Strive-“ upholds the series’ reputation for groundbreaking hybrid 2D/3D cell-shaded graphics and intense, rewarding gameplay.
There is a fully voiced story mode diving deep into the Guilty Gear universe, new characters joining fan favorites, and robust rollback net code.
◆Amazing Graphics and Animations
The cutting-edge 2D/3D hybrid graphics pioneered in the Guilty Gear series have been raised to the next level in “Guilty Gear -Strive-“. The new artistic direction and improve character animations will go beyond anything you’ve seen before in a fighting game!
◆New Revolution in Fighting Games!
Guilty Gear -Strive- brings a number of new and innovative game play mechanics designed to allow players new to the series to quickly learn the fundamentals while maintaining the deep, creative gameplay Guilty Gear is praised for. New additions to the series such as a wall-breaking mechanic will allow for new and exciting approaches to battle.
◆The fate of the universe will be determined…
The story of Guilty Gear, spanning over 20 years, will finally come to a conclusion in “Guilty Gear -Strive-“. The trials and tribulations of the series’ heroes and villains will finally be resolved. Discover the astonishing truth awaiting at the end of all things.
As you fight your way through the unforgiving hordes of Remnant 2’s procedurally generated soulslike levels, you’re going to need bullets – and a whole lot of them. And that’s where the Gunslinger archetype comes in. With a six-shooter at their hip and enough lead to bury an army of baddies, this western-themed outlaw makes ungodly levels of DPS their calling card. After going hands-on with the Gunslinger myself, I pulled out the spitoon and took a seat at the campfire with principal designer Ben Cureton to talk about the Gunslinger’s marauding ways.
“So the Gunslinger in Remnant 2 is all about weapons,” Ben told me. “They’re the master of weapon handling, fire rate, and ammo generation. And the fantasy for the gunslinger is they’re constantly switching between weapons. They’re rarely running out of ammo. It still can happen, but it’s much more rare than another class. And they shoot just much faster on average than every other class in the game. They’re just a rain of bullets everywhere.”
Replacing the Ex-Cultist from the previous game, The Gunslinger is a mid-range powerhouse designed to keep the bullets flying. Unlike the reformed cultist of yesteryear though, the Gunslinger mostly drops their role as a hybrid support class and goes all-in on dealing as much damage as possible. One of the main ways the Gunslinger accomplishes that is through its Prime Perk: Loaded, which instantly reloads all of your weapons once you’ve activated any of the archetype’s skills. If I was playing my cards right, I never had to spend valuable time reloading in combat by activating my skill right when I needed a fresh magazine for my weapons.
The skills the Gunslinger has at their disposal are incredibly deadly in their own right, like Quickdraw, the first of three abilities I unlocked during my playthrough. “Quick Draw is something you’ve probably seen in every western ever made, which is they pull out their six-shooter and they fire six shots,” Ben explained. “And there’s two versions of that. One will auto-target enemies in front of you and shoot up to six shots. The special mode is if you hold the button down, you can actually aim it and it will always shoot six shots, but it will shoot exactly at the reticle. So you can use that for something that has a very visible weak spot, something that’s not moving too fast, bosses – things like that. It’s quite strong. And it’s especially good because it’s on a lower cooldown, and it’s something that you can use with the Prime [Perk] to constantly keep reloading your weapons.”
“By playing aggressively and using every ounce of gunpowder available to me, I was mostly successful at burning down Remnant 2’s most dangerous adversaries”
There’s also Sidewinder, a skill that let me ADS faster and move more quickly while aiming, and Bulletstorm, which made all my weapons fully automatic and improved their fire rate and reload speed. On top of that, the returning Trait system allowed me to increase how much ammo I could carry beyond the maximum capacity of other archetypes. All of these abilities helped me drown the enemy in a hail of gunfire in an incredibly challenging game where dealing damage quickly can save your skin.
If you’ve ever played a shooter with me, then you’ll know I despise reloading, so the Gunslinger fit me like a glove. Of course, the downside to being such a relentless DPS machine is that I was quite squishy, lacking the second wind available to the close-quarters Challenger archetype, or any kind of support abilities available to other classes when playing in co-op. This meant that during combat I had to focus on taking down enemies quickly, preferably at a distance, and try to end combat before it had a chance to begin. This became especially important during boss fights, where one false move could mean an undesired respawn loading screen. By playing aggressively and using every ounce of gunpowder available to me, I was mostly successful at burning down Remnant 2’s most dangerous adversaries while spending as little time as possible dodging their onslaught of attacks.
In endgame builds, when the Gunslinger is combined with a secondary archetype like the close-quarters Challenger, they can use their nigh-bottomless ammo reserves with DPS-focused skills like Rampage to become a mob-slaying machine that’s sure to leave even bosses shaking in their wicked boots. As someone who gets a kick out of spending hours buildcrafting to squeeze every last drop of DPS out of my character, the Gunslinger had me positively salivating, and I can’t wait to play more.
We’ll have much more on Remnant 2 as our exclusive IGN First coverage continues all March long!
Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2TB, which dropped to £200 – a fair price for one of the very fastest SSDs on the market. Now though, the same drive is down to £164, a scorching-hot deal for this level of flash-based firepower and one well worth bringing up again!
Niantic has announced that Peridot – its blend of Pokémon GO, Tamagotchi, and Nintendogs – will launch on May 9.
Pre-registration for the game is also available now, and users who sign up on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and play by May 23 will receive an exclusive party hat cosmetic. Peridot has been in development for around three and a half years and is Niantic’s latest attempt to recapture the magic of Pokémon GO’s launch period in the summer of 2016.
“Our team has been hard at work making Peridots real,” said Niantic. “They are immersive, amazing magical creatures that eat, sleep, play with toys, explore their environment, get bored, develop unique personalities, and are always in need of a loving adopter like you.”
Each Peridot also holds a combination of unique traits that change its colours and features, with Niantic promising an “infinite number” of different looks. While the aim of the game is to raise and have fun with a Peridot, players can also take on the role of Keepers to breed and discover as many types of Peridots as possible.
“When it comes to the day-to-day however, remember that it’s every Keeper’s job first and foremost to ensure their Dots are happy, healthy, and loved,” added Niantic.
“Feed your baby Dot, play with it and take it on adventures. With enough care and effort it will grow into a teenager and then an adult that can Hatch a new generation of Dots. It’s a circle of life in a way, except you can keep track of all your Dots and never have to say goodbye.”
Peridot was announced in April 2022, with Niantic seemingly using the ups and downs of Pokémon GO’s years on the market to create an improved experience from the get-go.
Escape From Tarkov has been battling cheaters for years, with seemingly mixed results. Developers Battlestate Games are stepping up their efforts not only to ban cheaters but to show other players that “justice has been served”, by releasing the usernames of thousands of players banned for allegedly cheating.
Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2TB, which dropped to £200 – a fair price for one of the very fastest SSDs on the market. Now though, the same drive is down to £164, a scorching-hot deal for this level of flash-based firepower and one well worth bringing up again!