Note that I don’t make that statement as a criticism. Battlefield 2042 was released in the middle of the pandemic, with almost two whole years of its development affected, and as a long-time series fan—but also a video game journalist familiar with how this stuff works—I’ve made peace with the fact the game was clearly rushed out the door by executives to meet a short-term financial goal, regardless of the damage it has done to the brand’s long-term standing.
Well, we’re now at that “months of updates” point, which in previous Battlefields would have been the stage where the game had been added to substantially, but in 2042’s case is just where it’s within touching distance of par.
This week saw the release of Season 3, which adds a huge new map (set in Sweden around two boxy robot arms factories), a new anti-tank vehicle, a railgun and a new specialist, whose unique weapon is a miniature air-bursting explosive rifle.
Battlefield 2042 | Season 3: Escalation Gameplay Trailer
It’s all good! The map, Spearhead, is a big one, and like Stranded before it is cleanly differentiated by having two big indoor playgrounds for close-quarters combat, surrounded by wide-open spaces for snipers and vehicles. I’ve been having a great time with it, as its long design and rocky terrain between the two buildings means games often turn into meatgrinders over the central control points, leading to huge, explosive battles.
The new Specialist, Rasheed Zain, is also something the game has needed; his air-bursting rifle is able to kill enemy forces bunkered down in cover or around corners, giving infantry the kind of space-clearing ability that was previously only available to vehicles or the rare few who can actually use grenades properly.
I’m not quite as sold on the other two main additions, the railgun and anti-armour tank. The latter, the EMKV90-TOR, plays like StarCraft’s Siege Tank; you can drive it around for a bit with limited firepower but when you really want to mess stuff up, you can lower its suspension and snipe enemy tanks from across the map.
The railgun, meanwhile, is all about timing; it’s useful as both a medium and long-range weapon, but only if you can master the way it charges itself then discharges automatically when ready. Nearly all of the game’s current roster of weapons and vehicles feel somewhat contemporary, with gentle concessions made to the fact this game is set 20 years in the future; these two additions look, sound and feel more like Halo weapons.
Image: EA
When you look back at all the work and updates the game has received since launch—not just new stuff but revisions of old maps and tweaks to things like Specialist appearance and their soundbytes, giving the game a more cohesive tone—it’s clearly a much-improved experience!
I think when the unpopular Specialist system is reworked next month to revert to traditional Battlefield classes, that year-long effort to make this the game it should have been will be done. Which, given how disastrous the game’s launch was, will be one hell of an achievement.
And yet, it also can’t have us help but wonder: what could this game have been if the last 12 months had been free to add to the game, rather than just perform emergency repairs? I really like the setting of 2042, one of the few blockbusters to ever take the threat of climate change seriously, and its near-future arsenal has been so much more fun to use than the historical gear available in the last few games.
We’ll never know! A pandemic and the investor class conspired to curse this game, and so if all we can look forward to is one last Season 4 update before the whole thing gets binned and everyone moves onto the next Battlefield, then that’s what I’ll be looking forward to. Me and the other people who have been enjoying the game since launch. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
As the rest of Team Kotaku are off chasing turkeys through their local Macy’s (I’ve done more research about what a Thanksgiving is this year), once more I have the keys to the site, have locked everyone out, and then immediately lost those keys. While I’m stuck here, I figure I should tell you about some awesome-looking indie games that are coming soon.
Look, it could be worse. I was trying to work out some sort of feedline for the phrase, “May Seize Day Per Raid.” [Ghost of Ari sweeps through Kotaku HQ’s dusty halls] A better use of all our time would be if I let you know about a whole bunch of ace-looking indie games that you’d be in danger of not hearing about otherwise. Let’s get them on wishlists, push up their YouTube views, and then tell all the other kids about them at recess.
As always, I am not personally vouching for these games. These are randomly selected from a vast pile of emails that I’ve received following a clarion call, and unless I say so, I haven’t played them. It’s all about grabbing the opportunity to use this huge platform to highlight the sorts of games the gaming media usually ignores. So let’s get going!
Microtale
Heart Of Muriet
See, this is what it’s all about. House Of Muriet is a voxel-based RTS, which entirely eschews micromanagement in favor of strategic play. It’s about wizards, building settlements, researching magical abilities, and making stuff explode. Also, OMG, watch that trailer. Normally when I read “voxel” I worry, but not this time. It looks like someone made a stop-motion film in Minecraft, and the result is absolutely spellbinding.
A Cold War-era spy sim, that lets you pick a nation’s intelligence agency, and then play as them from 1946 to 2020, across a world map. The video above is an absolutely incredible example of how to present a game that’s otherwise primarily a picture of a map, making it look thrilling. With 74 playable countries, and the claim that it’ll let you rewrite history Paradox-style, this is enormously ambitious.
Released last month, I’m most annoyed with myself for still not having made time for Harmony’s Odyssey. Just based on colorfulness alone, it qualifies for anyone’s attention. It’s a gorgeous-looking action-adventure, packed with puzzles where you rearrange reality in a series of dioramas. I’m so glad MythicOwl emailed, because it’s the reminder I needed to finally get on and play this.
No, you can’t move for “roguelike deckbuilders” right now, so it’s something that Jupiter Moons caught my eye, and for a second time! We’ll be a mecha pilot, fighting off pirates and bandits from the moon colonies of Jupiter, but because it’s now, we’re using cards to do it. This is a case of the trailer really selling it within a crowded market, that combination of intricate build-outs for your mecha, and then the fast pace of action, despite being done by flinging cards around the screen. Also, I really like the look of the art. And it was already wishlisted.
You can immediately see why Wholesome Games recently got excited about Gourdlets. It’s a city-building sandbox, except, it really means it. So many city-building games that say “sandbox” just mean, “you can put the buildings where you want, while ticking off this list of objectives.” Not this: there are apparently no goals, no objectives, just the pleasure of building a cute little city, and then watching the gourdlet vege-people move in, and interact with what you’ve created. Which sounds just so very lovely.
I will be honest: When I read Luis G. Bento’s blurb for the apparently yelled CORPUS EDAX (which I think is Latin for Body Eater…), claiming he was making an immersive sim in the vein of Deus Ex and Fallout, my out loud response was, “No you’re not.” Because a person can’t do that. And then I watched the trailer, and…blimey. He might be. Now, that footage above is described as “pre-pre-alpha,” and it’s not just you, it has no sound, but come on! It looks impressive, right? Also, you’ll note there are no guns in this “retro-futuristic” (no) RPG, where instead you fight only using objects you find lying around. Like in real life.
If you’re of a certain age (it’s called: Old) you’ll remember the heyday of 2D Disney platformers. There was Aladdin, The Lion King, and er that’s it. But both were adored, combining a half-decent platform game with Disney’s animation style. That’s what developer Valhalla Cats aims to do with Stars In The Trash. You can see in the footage that it looks lovely, if more ‘80s Euro-animation than Disney. I really don’t like that title, but the game itself looks like it could be lovely.
Developer Spritewrench has two projects on the go, the first for next year being the brilliantly named On the Peril of Parrots. It looks to be an intriguing puzzle game, where the trailer’s familiar-looking puzzle type then rather surprised me with the menu option to “Destroy all humans.” But grabbing me further is 2024’s Duppy Detective Tashia, a Caribbean-set detective game in which you’re helping the titular Tashia to find her stolen phone and, well, shadow. It’s based the region’s folklore, where “duppy” is a form of ghost, sometimes a malevolent spirit, and the basis for many an excellent tale.
Another bellowed game name, although this time a word that requires it. This is a tower defence (remember them?) with FPS elements! Goodness me, there was a time in the last decade where I wrote, “a tower defence with XXX elements” so many times, but it was never “FPS.” The trailer is bloody brilliant, and makes the whole thing look spectacularly bonkers, even if I’m most confused about how the genres overlap. We’ll find out in a couple of months!
You could argue I randomly picked this game because it’s called Chicken Journey, and on most other days you’d be right. But after watching the footage, I discovered a pixel platformer that reminded me of when I was a boy, and sprites clung to vines properly. The whole thing looks adorable, with a bunch of puzzle solving and amiable chatting, and really looks like a thing I wish I were playing right now.
For a few years now some car companies have been experimenting with an idea ripped straight out of video games. Someone somewhere figured that hey, if people are willing to pay for a game then spend more money inside the game they already bought, then they might do the same for cars—a far more expensive and lucrative business.
Making headlines this week, though, is an example that’s the most outrageous since Tesla used to lock battery range behind a paywall. Mercedes has announced a digital purchase for its all-electric vehicles called an “Acceleration Increase,” which costs $1,200 a year and when bought, “can improve an EQ vehicle’s acceleration by 0.8 to 1.0 seconds.”
While cars have always featured expensive add-ons—it’s a pillar of the whole business model—those have previously been tangible purchases. If you paid for bigger wheels you got bigger wheels. Parting with a few thousand extra for leather seats got you fancy leather seats.
What’s happening with these car subscription services, though, is far more ominous. You’re not really getting anything. Instead, thanks to advances in the operating systems and communications found in modern cars, what you’re buying is a vehicle with certain features limited or locked off, which can then be then enabled remotely.
It’s the same argument video games went through over a decade ago—and which we have collectively just shrugged at and moved on from—when people found out the DLC they were buying was already on the disc they bought. It’s the same story here; the motors in these Mercedes vehicles could always go that fast, and locking certain elements of their performance away behind a digital paywall is taking the absolute piss.
One common factor among all the very worst of these examples is that they’re limited to expensive, luxury vehicles, targeting rich people who probably don’t give a shit about spending (what’s for them) a few extra bucks a month, when they’ve dropped $100,000 or more on a car. The danger, of course, is that if those rich people start buying this stuff, and it becomes a successful business model, then it won’t be too long before we start seeing it in a Toyota Corolla and…oh. Great.
Callisto Protocol, out next month on consoles and PC, is a horror game that looks and plays a lot like the beloved Dead Space franchise. And like Dead Space, Callisto Protocol will feature some gnarly-looking deaths, both for you when you screw up and bite it, and for your alien foes when you slaughter them. But some of these gruesome and chilling death animations will be locked behind the game’s season pass according to new details spotted on the game’s Steam store page. And that’s kinda dumb and weird.
In the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty plus two, nearly every big and small game released includes some mix of DLC, paid expansions, and season passes. This is just how things work these days. It’s been like this for so long that most of us barely even recognize just how much shit publishers are trying to sell us all beyond the actual game. But then a company sticks death animations behind a paywall and it’s a good reminder of just how silly and greedy the game industry can be some days. Case in point, yeah, apparently some death animations in the upcoming horror game Callisto Protocol are only available to players who buy the season pass.
As spotted by VGC, over on the horror game’s Steam page, you can find updated details about what you get when you buy the various versions of the game and its season pass. And according to the details listed on Steam, 25 different death animations are being sold via two different DLC packs. 13 of these animations are for the main character of Issac Clarke Jacob while the other 12 are additional enemy death animations. The season pass is included with the digital deluxe edition, which costs $80 on PC. (The base game is $60.)
Here’s what the text currently says on the game’s Steam page:
The Season Pass includes:
Outer Way Skin Collection: Bear the armor of the Outer Way, an underground insurgency pitted against the UJC, as you fight to survive the horrors of Callisto.
Contagion Bundle: Discover the ultimate survival horror experience with a new mode, Contagion. With reduced ammo and health drops, a customized difficulty and permadeath – there are no second chances to escape Black Iron Prison or the horrors lurking beneath the surface of Callisto. The Contagion Bundle also includes thirteen new Jacob death animations and the Watchtower Skin Collection.
Riot Bundle: Venture into a previously undiscovered area of Black Iron Prison and battle through waves of brutal enemies. Gather credits to upgrade your weapons, or forge new ones, and survive the onslaught as long as you can in Riot, an all-new mode. The Riot Bundle also includes twelve new enemy death animations and the Engineer Skin Collection.
Story DLC: Dig deeper into the horrifying secrets of The Callisto Protocol.
Now to be clear: The season pass DLC comes with more than just death animations and the game is shipping with its own unknown amount of grisly kills. So it’s not like folks who buy just the base game and skip the DLC will be missing out completely. But it does seem very silly to lock death animations of all things behind a paywall, especially in a horror game that has spent much of its marketing showing off how violent and gory its kills will be in the full game.
Some may not care, or may suggest that it’s just a minor bit of content locked away from folks who only buy the vanilla game. But I can’t help but wonder what happens if this, like DLC and season passes more broadly, becomes the norm moving forward. This isn’t even the first time a publisher has charged players for extra animations. Sega did it earlier this year as part of the release of Sonic Origins.
What happens if this becomes yet one more thing we all put up with? What other “small” parts of the game can be cut from the main release and sold separately? Extra reload animations? Extra idle dialogue? Bonus pieces of scenery to help levels look less boring? Seems silly, but we are literally watching publishers lock animations behind DLC and paywalls. What’s next? I’m scared to find out.
Callisto Protocol is out December 2 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.
Facebook, or as we’re supposed to call them now Meta, announced earlier today that their CICERO artificial intelligence has achieved “human-level performance” in the board game Diplomacy, which is notable for the fact that’s a game built on human interaction, not moves and manoeuvres (like, say, chess).
Here’s a quite frankly distressing trailer:
CICERO: The first AI to play Diplomacy at a human level | Meta AI
If you’ve never played Diplomacy, and so are maybe wondering what the big deal is, it’s a board game first released in the 1950s that is played mostly by people just sitting around a table (or breaking off into rooms) and negotiating stuff. There are no dice or cards affecting play; everything is determined by humans communicating with other humans.
So for an AI’s creators to say that it is playing at a “human level” in a game like this is a pretty bold claim! One that Meta backs up by saying that CICERO is actually operating on two different levels, one crunching the progress and status of the game, the other trying to communicate with human levels in a way we would understand and interact with.
Meta have roped in “Diplomacy World Champion” Andrew Goff to support their claims, who says “A lot of human players will soften their approach or they’ll start getting motivated by revenge and CICERO never does that. It just plays the situation as it sees it. So it’s ruthless in executing to its strategy, but it’s not ruthless in a way that annoys or frustrates other players.”
That sounds optimal, but as Goff says, maybe too optimal. Which reflects that while CICERO is playing well enough to keep up with humans, it’s far from perfect. As Meta themselves say in a blog post, CICERO “sometimes generates inconsistent dialogue that can undermine its objectives”, and my own criticism would be that every example they provide of its communication (like the one below) makes it look like a psychopathic office worker terrified that if they don’t end every sentence with !!! you’ll think they’re a terrible person.
Image: Meta
Of course the ultimate goal with this program isn’t to win board games. It’s simply using Diplomacy as a “sandbox” for “advancing human-AI interaction”:
While CICERO is only capable of playing Diplomacy, the technology behind this achievement is relevant to many real world applications. Controlling natural language generation via planning and RL, could, for example, ease communication barriers between humans and AI-powered agents. For instance, today’s AI assistants excel at simple question-answering tasks, like telling you the weather, but what if they could maintain a long-term conversation with the goal of teaching you a new skill? Alternatively, imagine a video game in which the non player characters (NPCs) could plan and converse like people do — understanding your motivations and adapting the conversation accordingly — to help you on your quest of storming the castle.
I may not be a billionaire Facebook executive, but instead of spending all this time and money making AI assistants better, something nobody outside of AI research and company expenditure seems to care about, could we not just…hire humans I can speak to instead?
Scarlet and Violet has had one janky-ass launch. Among the shortcomings are framerates that slow to a crawl, horrendous graphics pop-in, and characters and monsters clipping through each other. Even Pokéballs create some peculiar issues, such as causing the scenery to disappear or making the camera go haywire. The flaws are seemingly endless, impacting gameplay so much that Scarlet and Violet have become the worst-reviewed games in the series. Over on Reddit, buyers have been demanding refunds for their digital purchases since the games’ official launch last Friday, November 18. What’s more, many are claiming success.
“I got a refund from the eshop last night of Violet after feeling the game is not in a state I feel acceptable for a AAA release,” Redditor Hotdog_Daddy posted to r/Pokémon on November 20. “The rep actually told me that given the situation regarding the state of Pokémon S/V she would elevate my case to ensure the refund was approved. It was approved an hour later.”
“Welcome to the refund team,” came one reply. “Honestly, it sucks to have to even do this. But we are actually potentially making some decent backlash. Maybe we will get a decent patch and updates, in which case I’ll buy the game used. Until then, never will [I] buy a new Pokémon game unless it’s actually AAA tier.”
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In another post, user Jaded_Goth garnered thousands of upvotes saying, “Refunded. I will no longer be part of the problem. […] There will be a lot of people that will defend this franchise till the day they die. But could you honestly look at this game and tell me this was their best effort? The FPS and the graphics made me double check if I was accidentally playing this on a toaster. They somehow got away with removing so many great features and quality of life things like showings status animations, decisions with exp share, turning off battle animations I could go on.”
They concluded: “Since I complained about the state of this game I can no longer be part of this problem. Got my money back and am feeling much better.”
In these and a fairfewotherthreads, various Redditors are sharing their own experiences attempting to get refunds from Nintendo. Many claim success, but some say that Nintendo customer support requires some finessing before acquiescing to a refund.
Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for comment but couldn’t independently confirm details of refunds being issued.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is the latest entry in the series, and though it is buggy as hell, the games at least introduce some new monsters to collect. This includes a cute murderous ghost dog, an Apple Jacks-looking mascot, and a yassified peacock. Maybe future patches will make the game around them easier to enjoy. One can hope, right?
In 2022, though, it’s time for some changes. For one, the game is no longer called V-Commandos. Legal wrangling with the owners of the Commandos series of video games has made sure of that. The game, and its expansions, are now known as V-Sabotage.
More importantly, 2022 is also the year the game finally got a much-deserved glow-up. See, for all the joys to be found in playing the game—and I really cannot stress enough how good it is—its presentation was always a little basic, with simple art and tokens that were functional, but also a bit drab, and hard to make out from across the table.
Now, thanks to some upgrade packs, the game has a ton of excellent plastic miniatures representing each character, enemy, and even select pieces of equipment, in exquisite detail. It also has new player cards, featuring new art that gives each of the game’s heroes a stylistic refresh.
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Having finally taken these miniature upgrades for a spin last week, one of my main takeaways is that this doesn’t change how the game plays one bit. What it does do is make a huge improvement to the overall experience, as well as your quality-of-life while taking on a mission. Aside from looking fantastic, having each player and enemy (and alarm, door, machine gun nest, remote-control tank and barrel of poison gas) represented in 3D makes scanning the table and planning strategies much easier. Previously, you’d have to scan the whole thing repeatedly just to remember what was where. It also got easy to miss certain things on bigger missions when everything, from humans to items, was represented by a flat little cardboard token.
Also as anyone who has been around Kickstarter for the last five years will know, plastic miniatures are just more fun to use. Whether it’s because it harks back to our childhoods, or because they’re tangible, scaled, realistic versions of the things we’re supposed to be actually using in the game (or both!), it is usually better to be playing a game with miniatures than without.
The negative consequences of this love for miniatures on game design, production and shipping costs is another story for another time, of course, though some of those impacts can still be felt here; the miniature expansion for the core game costs more than the core game itself, and if you’ve got or want V-Sabotage’s expansions, and then their miniatures as well, then the cost blowout is going to be enormous.
Is that going to be worth it for someone looking at getting into the game now? I don’t know, that depends on how much money you make, how long you’re going to play the game, and all kinds of other factors that are reminding me while I type this as to why our reviews never mention the concept of “value”!
Personally speaking, though, as someone who has played this game countless times with friends over a five-year timeframe—enough times that it’s now one of their favourite games as well–the addition of miniatures has really elevated the whole experience for me. I’m normally pretty dismissive of the current frenzy for plastic minis in board games (see my points above!), but this is a rare case where, having played the game first without them, I can say it’s definitely better with them.
Which sounds…superficial, but then isn’t half the reason people prefer to play board games in 2022 these kind of tactile delights?
The detail is fantastic considering…there are a LOT of miniatures in the box
A group of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II players have been breaking the game’s movement system and their latest creation is something they’re calling the “G Walk.” The trick looks very frustrating to play against, leading to some controversy among the game’s community over the new exploit.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II was released last month across nearly all platforms and quickly became one of the biggest games of the year. And just this month, the game’s highly anticipated Warzone 2.0 spin-off mode launched to similar praise and player hype. Sure, the campaign seems bad and filled with some terrible moments—like a section where players point their rifle at an unarmed person to “deescalate” the situation—but the online portion of this year’s edition of the annual Activision shooter seems to be a hit with fans. And one group of players is using Modern Warfare II’s movement controls to create impressive, scary, and very fast techniques to up the competitive ante.
As spotted by Jake Lucky on Twitter, Modern Warfare II clan “Euphoria” are breaking the game right now. Their latest creation, which they’re calling “G Walking,” turns the normally human soldiers in Call of Duty into wild, speedy goblins that hop and crawl around maps like kids who have had way too much sugar on Halloween night. As you might expect, moving around this fast at such a weird posture makes it challenging for other players to land a shot on these out-of-control monsters. (As of now, the group has yet to share publicly how to pull off this new move.)
And just as quickly as the goblins themselves, players have begun responding to the videos of Euphoria members G Walking. Some find it funny, others find it scary. But many are annoyed by what Euphoria is doing, claiming that it ruins matches and makes it harder for casual players to just hop on for a few hours and play. Members of Euphoria have mostly laughed at the complaints–and in their defense, they are just using controls and mechanics that exist in the game to do this wild shit. If anything, developers Infinity Ward need to patch these exploits out of the game if the studio doesn’t want this to become the new meta.
I personally remember playing the original MW2 back in 2009 and running around doing the annoying Javelin suicide glitch that would kill everyone around you when you died. It was very annoying and was quickly patched out of the game. And before all that nonsense, I remember getting into weird spots on Crash in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 using janky-level geometry and tricky jumps. If anything, stuff like G Walking and the groups’ other movement exploit— Superman Hopping— is just tradition at this point.
Have you ever played Broforce? Or even heard of it? You’d be forgiven for answering “no” to both those questions because, as I flip tragically backwards through my desktop calendar, I can see that the game came out eight years ago.
I absolutely loved it back then, not just for its “you can’t sue us these are technically different” roster of characters (all drawn from popular action movies and TV shows, mostly from the 80s, ranging from Die Hard to Rambo to The Terminator to Aliens) but for its gleefully explosive platforming, which played like Metal Slug if the level designers had chugged five beers before going to work and thought blowing up half the levels was the best idea ever (it is).
When evil threatens the world, the world calls on Broforce – an under-funded, over-powered paramilitary organization dealing exclusively in excessive force. Brace your loins with up to four players to run ‘n gun as dozens of different bros and eliminate the opposing terrorist forces that threaten our way of life. Unleash scores of unique weapons and set off incredible chain reactions of fire, napalm, and limbs in the name of freedom.
When I say blowing up levels, I mean it. Look at this 2014 trailer, in which I think even the blood explodes:
Bamboo for better skin. 1.5 times smoother than traditional cotton pillowcases, Silvi’s bamboo pillowcases have a sateen finish—and work like a silk pillowcase would.
But no! Now, when we need them the most, the Bros are back. Publishers Devolver Digital dropped this trailer over the weekend, teasing Broforce Forever, an update for the game that’s coming in “Early 2023″.
Broforce Forever | Teaser Trailer | Coming Early 2023
Actual details are sadly thin on the ground, with Devovler simply saying Broforce Forever will be “the Biggest Update to Broforce Yet”, and will feature “new Bros, new missions” and, most importantly of all, “new freedoms”.
Jason David Frank, an actor and martial artist best known for his recurring role as the Green (and later White) Ranger in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, has died. He was 49.
Frank’s manager Justine Hunt said in a statement:
Please respect the privacy of his family and friends during this horrible time as we come to terms with the loss of such a wonderful human being. He loved his family, friends and fans very much. He will truly be missed.
Hunt did not disclose the date of Frank’s passing. His former co-star Walter E Jones, who played the original Black Ranger, said on Instagram, “Can’t believe it…. RIP Jason David Frank🙏🏾. My heart is sad to have lost another member of our special family.” His “another member” line is referencing the death of the Yellow Ranger, Thuy Trang, who died in 2001 in a car accident.
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Frank’s role as Tommy Oliver, aka the Green Ranger, was originally due to only run for 14 episodes in the original series. He proved so popular, however, that he would later return as White Ranger, then again multiple times throughout the next two decades, appearing most recently in the 2018 Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel series and making a cameo in the ill-fated 2017 Hollywood adaptation.
He also reprised his roles as Green, White and Black Dino Ranger for a number of Power Rangers video games, from the original 1995 movie game for the SNES and Genesis, to 2019’s Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid.
In addition to his work on Power Rangers, Frank—who divorced from his second wife earlier this year—was also a skilled martial artist, who was capable in everything from Taekwondo to Judo to Aikido to Muay Thai. While this helped land him his role on Power Rangers, it also led to a short career as a mixed martial arts fighter, where he won a number of fights in 2010.
Photo: Goldin / The Pokémon Company / Kotaku / Eric Espada (Getty Images)
Playing in the NFL is tough and many players leave because of career-ending injuries or bad seasons. But after seven years in the league, Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez has retired mid-season for a different reason: He’s making enough money selling Pokémon cards—recently selling a very rare card for nearly $700,000—and doesn’t need the income he gets from playing anymore.
Las Vegas Raiders player Blake Martinez shocked many fans when he announced last week that he was retiring from the NFL at the relatively young age of 28. He was first drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 2016. Following four years with Green Bay, he joined the New York Giants in 2020 before suffering a torn ACL in 2021. He was released shortly after, and joined the Las Vegas Raiders where he seemed to be doing well this season. In his last game before his retirement, he racked up 11 tackles. However, selling Pokémon cards appears to be Martinez’s true passion—not to mention a pretty good source of income for him—and he’s focusing more on that now.
As reported by Dexerto, two weeks before announcing his retirement mid-season, the NFL pro sold an extremely rare and valuable Pokémon Illustrator card for a hefty sum. Last month, the card was graded a 9.5 “Gem Mint” quality rating, making it one of the best examples of this coveted card. On October 29 the card—which Martinez nicknamed “The Swirllustrator” because of two small swirl marks in the card’s artwork—was sold via Goldin auctions for a whopping $672,000.
Yes, this is the same type of rare card that Logan Paul paid over $5 million for earlier this year and wore around his neck during Wrestlemania in April, although his was graded a 10, or perfect quality.
Still, this is a big sale, and hardly Martinez’s first time buying and selling Pokémon cards. The former NFL player is a big fan of the cards and has been collecting them for years, though in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, his love for collecting and selling was reignited. He opens old and new card packs on his Instagram and shares his finds online frequently. In fact, Martinez claims to have found the rare “Swirllustrator” during one of these pack openings. The pro player also has a collectible card business, buying and selling rare cards online.
“I have chosen to step away from this career at this time to focus on my family and future passions,” explained Martinez in his retirement post on Instagram. It appears his “passion” is using the wealth he made in the NFL to buy and sell rare Pokémon cards. And honestly, I’m happy for the guy. He’s far less likely to suffer a terrible concussion while buying rare Pikachu cards online.
Call of Duty’s battle royale mode, Warzone, is back. Whether you’re a battle royale vet or not, there are a number of things that make this mode unique, even compared to CoD’s last go at the genre. Here are a good chunk of tips to keep yourself and your crew alive out there in Al Mazrah, the latest CoD battle royale map.
You don’t need to buy Modern Warfare II
Warzone 2.0 is a free to play game. That said, by design or by extension of poor design, the UI in this game often makes you think you need to buy the full Modern Warfare II for a cool $70. I’m here to tell you that you don’t, and here’s how to navigate this clusterfuck of a menu system to get it to stop badgering you for three twenties and a ten.
There are (basically) four ways to play
If you’re like me and have typically avoided battle royales because they’re a bit too one-note and sweaty, rest assured that Warzone 2.0 offers a few different ways to play. The different modes certainly help mix things up a bit to keep it all fresh.
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To start, there are standard Battle Royale Solos. I’m sure you know the drill with that one: It’s every soldier for themselves; ya gotta scavenge, survive, kill, rinse, and repeat.
Team modes, such as Duos, Quads, and Third-Person Trios (we’ll talk about “Unhinged” in just a sec) change up the BR experience from a lonely lethal trip to hell to one where players cover each other’s backs, plotting a course to victory.
Unhinged BR Trios, however, is arguably a different game unto itself. Using “Assimilation,” you can recruit enemies into your squad. This is somewhat available in the other modes with squads, but in duos and quads you can only ever fill your squad up to its starting max. In Unhinged mode, you can combine squads into a max of a six-person crew.
The pace and tone of the game is dramatically different because of this. In other squad modes, two teams spotting each other will devolve into a gunfight pretty quickly. Not here! Not only will you possibly hold your fire at first sight of an enemy to sus out whether they’re willing to join up and take on everyone else, but the hilarity of putting together a six-person crew to roll through buildings and towns is a very different and welcome spin on the old BR formula. Queue evil laughs. Here’s everything you need to know about teaming up with your foes.
That brings us to our fourth mode, the DMZ. Still in beta, I think it’s safe to say the rules are really yet to be written for this mode. But it’s pretty neat and you should check it out. The premise is quite simple: four squads of three players head out into Al Mazrah to loot, survive, and exfiltrate with the goods they found. It reminds me of a more streamlined, less punishing version of Escape From Tarkov. But don’t let your guard down, AI can be pretty tough, and other players pose a serious challenge. It can be a slightly less stressful mode than the full battle royale, however.
Not pictured: Me saying very unlady-like things.Gif: Activision / Kotaku
Headshots aren’t guaranteed one-hit kills (and the TTK can be quite high)
This one’s a double-edged sword. While I’m disappointed that the TTK of Warzone 2.0 feels a little higher than MWII’s full multiplayer, it also means you’re less likely to die (if you’ve got your wits about you, that is.)
Knowing that headshots aren’t guaranteed kills and that fully plated enemies will take several well-placed shots will change up how you move across the map. You’ll want to set up more aggressive ambush opportunities when you can. And unless you’re a crackshot with a great sniper rifle, it might be best to use that scope for reconnaissance first and combat second.
This may vary depending on your play style though. If you’re new, however, it’s something important to keep in mind.
Safe-cracking contracts are great to start out with
Open up that tac-map and you’ll see a ton of icons and other cool challenges to accomplish. The green walkie-talkie-lookin’ icons are contracts, and there are a few different ones.
In my experience, touching down near a safe-cracking contract (indicated by a safe dial icon on the green walkie talkie) and grabbing that as your first real objective in Warzone is a safer and more reliable way to earn loot and cash early on in the game.
Safe-cracking contracts ask you to bust open three nearby safes (with fucking bombs!). Not only will these safes spit out a bunch of loot, but clearing all three gives you a nice injection of cash you can use to buy a primary weapon from a Buy Station, or hang onto it to buy back fallen comrades. They’re also much safer (no pun intended) ways to start the match off. You’re not asked to hunt down anyone, or defend an area. Provided that you’re watching the circle closing in on you, you also have a generous amount of time to complete them. Splitting up (when it’s safe) will wrap the contract up even faster.
Cracking safes is the first item on my agenda every time I touch down.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Grab three-plate armor vests (and a larger backpack) as soon as you can
Remember the high TTK I warned you about? A three-plate armor vest will go a long long way to ensuring you’re not picked off unexpectedly. It’s one of the first things you should keep your eyes peeled for. They will appear randomly in loot caches, duffel bags, and other places where loot can be scored. Definitely stow an extra one in your backpack for your friends if you’re in a squad mode.
On that note, another key item to look out for is a larger backpack. Like the three-plate armor vests, these will be found randomly, but they will allow you to carry more stuff. Which, in a game mode that prioritizes survival and scavenging, can make a substantial difference in staying alive out there.
Pings in general can be a little hard to miss in this game. The color coding helps though.Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Call out teammate colors
If you’re in a squad, you’ll notice a different color assigned to each person in the lower left portion of the HUD. This is very handy if you have a teammate with a name you’re not sure how to pronounce (or perhaps don’t want to.) Saying “hey Green, let’s push up to the Buy Station. Blue fall back and cover us,” is quick, and it will match with the ping color each party member is using since it’s themed in the same way.
Call out POIs instead of pinging before jumping out of the plane
Warzone’s map and HUD can get very busy. And in the initial plane phase, friendly pings can be hard to spot, making coordinated drops tricky. Once you’re out of the plane, however, your pings will be themed to your specific color, which is a lot easier to spot.
I’ve found that calling out a specific region for your team to focus on before jumping and then pinging a specific location within that area to be a far more effective strat. It makes it clear to your team where you’d like to go, but it also makes changing course based on other enemy placement much easier.
Always be closing…the damn doors!Gif: Activision / Kotaku
Were you raised in a barn? Close the damn door behind you (and stop smashing windows!)
I get it. As a former disaffected, closeted trans youth, I reveled in smashing glass, arson, and property damage. It’s fun! But it’s also a great way to let someone know you’re camping out in a building in Warzone 2.0. Be respectful of the vast amount of empty buildings you and your squad mates are smashing through. And close doors behind you!
Try to avoid breaking glass when possible. Nothing says “SOMEONE’S IN HERE” like a shattered window. Same with open doors. As Sam Fisher said in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: “I’ve seen more men killed in doorways than any other place combined.” An open door is the perfect place to get murdered in; and leaving it open just signals to every enemy: “oh hey, I’ve been through here” or “I’m in here.” Maybe you want to invite disaster like that, but I like staying alive to at least reach the top 10 in the match. If you do too, be a dear and shut the fucking door.
The AI isn’t fucking around
Warzone 2.0’s enemy AI (active in strongholds in battle royales, and large in number in DMZ) will kill you dead if you aren’t careful. This is no shooting gallery; while they may not have the tactics and response of a real player, they are more than capable of downing you.
Keep in mind that in the DMZ they are your primary antagonists. In battle royale modes, they’re defending Strongholds that give you access to a Black Site key and your loadout. They’re meant to be a challenge and their damage output is no joke. It’s not a bad idea to treat them as equal of a threat as a real player.
Start out with smaller supply runs in DMZ (also, don’t sleep on this mode)
Time will tell how popular DMZ gets with the CoD world, but there’s no denying that it’s an interesting mode that takes advantage of the very large map of Al Mazrah. Every time you die in this mode, though, you’ll lose everything you’re carrying; and if you die too often, you’ll be forced to enter without any weapons once you’ve lost them all.
For this reason, it’s a great idea to start out small in the DMZ. Aim to stock up on weapons and and other useful equipment. Nuclear Waste Material contracts are a solid way to spend your time and earn some cash to exfil with. Grab one or two of those, pick up some weapons from fallen enemies, and exfil early to stock up. You can always go back to take on the more challenging elements of this hybrid PVE/PVP mode when you’re better equipped.
Prioritize reconnaissance equipment
Warzone 2.0 will give you plenty of fun toys to kill your enemies with, but knowing where your opposition is before they’ve spotted you is essential to staying alive. Plan to stock up on a lot of Recon Drones, Tactical Cameras, and UAVs. These can be purchased at a Buy Station or found randomly out on the map. The Heartbeat Sensor is also great for getting a sense of who’s around.
Intelligence is just as important as lethality.
Turn your mini map rotation off
I expect opinions to diverge wildly on this one, but hear me out. In Warzone 2.0 you can choose to have your mini map rotate with you or stay fixed. I’m here to tell you to lock it down and set it to “Off” under “Mini Map Rotation.” You can find this setting in the “Interface” options. Why? It makes team callouts far easier—especially when you’re spectating.
Yes, Warzone 2.0 has, like MWII, a very handy compass with specific directional numbers for you to find your way and shout precise locations out to teammates. But by locking your map, the top of the map is true north. That means you can call out “Buy Station west,” “ammo supply North” as it naturally lays on the map.
In the same settings, you can also choose to have the map display as a square or circle.
Turning off rotation might not be for everyone, but at least give it a solid try.
Playing close to the circle is a viable strategy, but watch your six!
That’s what they say in the militaries, right? “Watch your six?” Code, it seems, for watching your back, it’s sound wisdom in a battle royale, especially if you’re hugging the closing circle’s edge. And, honestly, you totally should play that way when you can. That said, you’re likely not the only player to be doing that, so, ya know, keep your head on a swivel for enemies who are moving further into the map as well.
Playing close to the circle gives you something to time your movements to. It also means that when you’re closing into the final few moments in the game, you’ll have eyes on what’s going on in the center. Again, other people will likely be playing this strat too, so don’t let anyone sneak up on ya.
Claymores and proximity mines are a girl’s best friend
Take it from someone who’s clocked countless hours in Rainbow Six: Siege. The more noise an enemy can make when nearing your camping spot, the sooner you’ll know when and where they are. Set up claymores and proximity mines near a door (I hope you closed it behind you…) or by a window, just out of sight so the asshole who smashes a perfectly good window has a nice explosive surprise.
Explosives like these can easily kill someone sneaking up on your campsite. But in the event the enemy still lives, nothing says SOMEONE’S HERE like an explosion.
Resist the urge to hunt other players. Survival is the name of the game
I know, I know. Your KD is so big and so important. Guys tell me that all the time. But look, while I’m not going to tell you to not go out and kill people in a battle royale, the truth is you can win this game mode by prioritizing your life more than you prioritize your trigger finger. If you focus on gathering supplies and finding smart opportunities to jump the opposition, you’ll survive much, much longer.
Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Always Be Pinging
Every shooter has a damn ping system these days (thanks, Apex Legends. No, really, thanks!). Warzone’s, like others, has the option to point and ping, highlighting where you want to go or your enemy if you ping them (and the distance is quite generous on this too). Pinging is as simple as hitting the middle mouse button (or alt) on mouse and keyboard, or up on a d-pad.
If you hold the ping button, however, you’ll get a set of different contexts. Choose these as seem necessary. This same menu also lets you invite or request to join enemy squads.
Use your infinite parachute to clear ground fast
If you jump off something with enough elevation, you can deploy your chute. This is a great way to bail out of some bullshit or get some more distance from the circle. That said, you can’t use your weapon when gliding, so use this with caution. The speed can really work to your advantage if you plan your movements right.
Also, if you’re trying to flee a bad situation and want to get to a neighboring building quickly, you can shoot out a window and parachute in there if you’re accurate and quick. But remember, you should only be breaking glass in case of an emergency.
You can ping from the map too!Screenshot: Activision / Kotaku
Plan your movements several steps ahead
This is likely good BR advice in general, but try to avoid aimlessly wandering around the map. Have a plan. Open your tac-map with caps lock (or M) on keyboard and select on controller. Take note of what locations and objectives are nearby. Knowing where you intend to go is key to keeping your attention sharp, and you can always bail on the plan if shit hits the fan.
Keep proximity chat on!
I’m a woman with a sometimes boomy voice. Gaming spaces are hardly a place I’d like to be heard. But, hey, proximity chat in this game is a damn gem. Having it on will let you hear folks before you see them (Yeah, I hear you talking about your dinner plans. That restaurant you’re going to sucks, btw). It’s also an opportunity to toy with their heads. It can also be really fucking hilarious. I mean, just look at this bullshit!
Maybe there’s a god after all!
Stay in the air for a bit. It will give you time for…extracurricular activities
Not every fast-paced shooter gives you enough time for a toke or two (or a shot!) Take the time to get high while you’re high. Let the other squares down there kill each other so you can drop down in a wonderfully happy mood to just take their shit.
And on that note…
Just hide until the end and find a cheap way to kill the last person
God is dead. Do what you want.
Look. If I wanted a real competition, I’d play a sportsball. I’m certainly not looking to be competent in anything (and by the end of a match I’m far too high anyway).
I’m playing to avoid the gulag, not get kills. High kill counts are for losers and try-hards. If that upsets you, you can cry about it as I fly away in the chopper in the closing scene.
Be cheap. Revel in trash. Take pride in being a slacker; life’s too short to play things straight.
The mad lads at GameFreak have done it again. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet push the series’ overall Pokédex into four figures, and the special 1,000th Pokémon turns out to be a gold coin surfing freak with a fanny pack called Gholdengo. Is it going to sell me crypto? Is it made of crypto?? I can’t wait to find out.
I first learned about the Gholdengo from IGN, who noted the coin entity’s striking resemblance to a General Mills cereal mascot but was otherwise effusive in its praise. Gholdengo, it turns out, is the evolved form of Gimmighoul, a Dungeons & Dragons-style mimic chest revealed by Nintendo earlier in the month. How that evolution takes place is the real magic. YouTuber nickcucc described it as, “Probably one of the most tedious yet rad evolutions you’ll ever experience in your entire life.”
When you defeat a Gimmighoul it drops gold coins. Once you’ve picked up 1,000, your Gimmighoul will evolve into Gholdengo on its next level up. “Its body seems to be made up of 1,000 coins,” reads the Pokédex entry. “This Pokémon gets along well with others and is quick to make friends with anybody.”
I’m sure it is quick to make friends. One moment you’re feeding Gholdengo a Bocadillo de Jamón, the next it’s talking your ear off about how you can yield farm Dengo Coin at 16 percent and you should buy the dip on that FTX token that just blew up. Web 3.0 ain’t going to make itself. Now be a good Pokémon trainer and ditch those TMs for some NFTs.
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To the extent that Gholdengo looks like a walking Ponzi scheme, it’s a lowkey testament to the series’ own unflagging durability through the decades. Pokémon is too big to fail. Scarlet and Violet’s performance issues can’t stop it from being the most pre-ordered game in franchise history. So what if the series’ 1,000th creature looks like it just got back from making DeFi TikToks at Burning Man?
At the end of the day, good or bad, millions of people, myself included, will do whatever it takes to get another shot at catching these adorable abominations and run them through a spreadsheet calculus so obtuse it would make even your H&R Block accountant weep. Even if the Pokémon in question is a literal keychain, ice cream cone, or in this case, Gholdengo. I’m going to catch so many of these goddamn things, and we’re going to hold our diamond hands until the seas rise and swallow us whole.
One of Europe’s biggest fighting game tournaments, the Ultimate Fighting Arena (UFA), wrapped up on November 13. The three-day event in France was populated by big-name competitors like Goichi “GO1″ Kishida and Victor “Punk” Woodley, but it was teenage mad lad EndingWalker who ended up making waves by not just taking first in Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, but rushing offstage immediately after. It looked hilariously disrespectful, but EndingWalker said he was just “overwhelmed” by it all.
EndingWalker is a fresh face to the competitive fighting game scene, having only been competing since around January 2021. In the nearly two years since he hit the circuit, EndingWalker has participated in copious online Street Fighter V tournaments, typically placing in the top 10—if not outright winningas the relatively unpopular character Ed, a B-to-C-tier fighter known for his hit-and-run combat style. The UFA Street Fighter V tourney, only his second “offline” event, is his latest and most prominent win to date. Having pummeled folks like Punk and five-time Capcom Cup qualifier Amjad “AngryBird” Alshalabi, he’s clearly a dangerous new competitor.
Fighting game news site EventHubs reported EndingWalker won every single match set he played in, losing only one round to Dhalsim main Nathan “Mister Crimson” Massol. After tearing through the competition, Walker found himself facing Chun-Li player and Street Fighter coach Valentin “Valmaster” Petit.
Major footsies ensued, with each competitor gauging the other’s combat style before going in. EndingWalker gave Valmaster very little room to breathe, constantly stunning him and punishing his whiffed moves. It was brutal to watch. But what was most devastating about the match-up was the way he exited after winning the tourney.
Capcom
My dude straight-up said, “I’m out,” and just…Walker-ed off the stage, casually bypassing his first-place trophy. The crowd went wild for the victory, sure, but what sent me were the commentators, who couldn’t believe what they just saw.
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“Stay on the stage, young man,” one of the commentators yelled. “He just walked off,” the other said before concluding that the mad lad was “amazing.”
Walker eventually did return to the UFA stage to claim his trophy, later tweeting that he was “a bit overwhelmed in the end, which is why I left kinda quickly after winning.” He thanked everyone for the congratulations, said he had “a great time,” and mentioned this tournament was his second-ever offline event. The kid’s got a bright future in the FGC if he keeps this up.
Ever since Arceus made the world in its image, Pokémon fans have had to grapple with a huge choice for every mainline game: which version to get. That quandary will remain in place for the latest games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, with many more unique features than usual, some even pertaining to the distant past or the far-flung future. We’re breaking down every difference between the two, to help you know which version to pick up.
Every generation of Nintendo’s monster-hunting RPGs splits up some of its roster of Pokémon, with a handful showing up in one game while remaining absent from the counterpart (and vice versa). This strategy makes a certain degree of sense, if somewhat cynically. Making some Pokémon available in one version but not the other certainly drives some to buy two copies of essentially the same game. Or, less cynically, it forces players to actually engage with each other and trade. But in Scarlet & Violet, there are many other core differences that might influence your decision, including whether you want things prehistorically themed, or perhaps decorated by the distant future.
The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet Legendary Exclusive
Koraidon (“ride-on,” geddit?) will be the motorcycle-inspired dragon beast that comes with Scarlet. Like it’s partner Poké Miraidon, it’s described as having “powers that far surpass those of other Pokémon,” but Nintendo has deliberately kept much about them both a mystery.
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Koraidon is, as you might imagine, a mostly red monster, sporting what unquestionably look like a pair of wheels. Wheels it…doesn’t use. Instead, Koraidon gallops on its legs, which raises so many evolutionary questions. It has a feathery appearance, a bit like a prehistoric bird. Rideable, this Legendary can also fly and swim, making it quite the means of transport as you explore Scarlet’s open world.
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Violet Legendary Exclusive
Miraidon is Violet’s far more futuristic Legendary, and as you’d expect, it’s predominantly purple. Like Koraidon, it can take three different forms (formes?), using Drive Mode, Aquatic Mode, and Glide Mode. It too has a vehicular style, also sporting (albeit more subtle) vestigial wheels. Seeming like the lovechild of Pokémon and a Transformer, it has a metallic sheen, and a pixel display for eyes.
Quite where either Legendary will appear in the game is unclear, given we’ll now be able to tackle the game’s gyms in any order—perhaps they’ll simply trigger once you’ve done whichever proves to be your eighth. Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll be introduced earlier to make movement around the large game easier.
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet Pokémon Exclusives
Larvitar, a rock-ground-type lizard creature who first debuted in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
Pupitar, the second-stage evolution of Larvitar. It floats for some reason. Though Pupitar hasn’t been officially confirmed, we’re including it since it evolves from a confirmed Pokémon. (One caveat though: In Pokémon Sword and Shield, Slowpoke, who has been part of the series since the days of Red and Blue, could not evolve unless you picked up the expansions.)
Tyrannitar, the final stage of Larvitar’s evolution chain. Unlike the prior two evolutions, Tyrannitar drops the ground-type affiliation and is rock-dark-type.
Stonjourner, a rock-type from Pokémon Sword and Shield who, I guess, is supposed to be a play on the famous Stonehenge monument in England.
Armarouge, a fire/psychic-type, brand new for Gen 9, with the appearance of a knight.
Koraidon, Scarlet’s legendary Pokémon and cover model.
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Violet Pokémon Exclusives
Bagon, a dragon-type Pokémon who debuted in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire
Shelgon, the second-stage evolution of Bagon. The same logic that applies to Larvitar’s evolution chain applies to Bagon’s, too.
Salamence, a dragon-flying type Pokémon and the final stage of Bagon’s evolution chain. Some people (guilty as charged) are convinced Salamence is the coolest Pokémon of all time, ever.
Eiscue, an ice-type penguin Pokémon with a giant ice cube for a face.
Ceruledge, not a relation of Honege, but a brand-new bipedal Pokémon with dual types, fire and ghost. With blades for arms, it’s a terrifying futuristic counterpart to Scarlet’s more Medieval Armarouge.
Miraidon, Violet’s legendary Pokémon and cover model.
For Scarlet players, you’ll be guided through your times in Paldea by Professor Sada. Given the Spanish influences on Paldea, it’s no coincidence that the Spanish for “past” is “pasada”—in other translations, her name varies between other words for “past” and “ancient,” while the Japanese original is Olim, the Latin for “once upon a time.”
Sada, like her partner Professor, Turo, is involved in researching Terastal Pokémon, and the phenomena of Terastallisation. She also appears to be dressed like a scientist from The Flintstones.
Pokémon Violet Professor Exclusive
Meanwhile, Violet players will be accompanied by ol’ smoothy-chops, Professor Turo. Again, the Spanish for “future” is “futuro,” and his name in the Japanese version is Futu, seemingly derived from the Latin for “future”, “futūrum.”
While Sada is dressed in cavewoman clothing, Turo is garbed in a space-age bodysuit beneath his lab coat. He too is studying the crystalline nature of Terastal Pokémon. Hmmmm, might time travel also come into this story in some way?
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Outfit Exclusives
As you set out in the world of Pokémon Scarlet or Violet, you’ll discover that your own character’s clothing is determined by the version you bought. If you get Scarlet, you’ll be dressed in orange, but if you picked up Violet you’ll be decked out in purple. Both are uniforms for the school you’ll attend.
You can change your outfits in the game, however, once you find a shop to buy new clothes from.
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet School Exclusives
Even the school you’ll attend is determined by the version you buy. Your school, where you’re taught about Pokémon, is in the largest town of Paldea, Mesagoza. However, if you get Scarlet it will have a different name, emblem and color-scheme than if you got Violet.
In Scarlet,the school is called the Naranja Academy, with an orange emblem featuring a spoked orange shape on its shield. (Naranja is, of course, Spanish for Orange.)
In Violet, you’ll instead go to the Uva Academy, where the emblem is purple, featuring some grandly displayed grapes. (And yes, Uva is Grape in Spanish.)
Funnily enough, both academies are run by the same person—Clavell—but he’ll be in orange or purple depending on the version.
And why orange and not red? Well, it’s Nintendo.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are set to reimagine other long-standing aspects of the series. Set in a region called Paldea, inspired by the IRL Iberian Peninsula, these games are fully open-world for the first time in series history. There’s four-player co-op. Gyms are back, with one leader in particular leaving many fans sexually confused. And in lieu of debatably silly features like “Mega Evolution,” some Pokémon are capable of a thing called—this is a very real word, by the way—“terastallizing,” which means they cover themselves in crystals and can change their type on the fly.
Updated: 11/18/2022, 11:15 a.m. ET: Well, Scarlet and Violet are now upon us. If you’re venturing out into the Paldea region, we wish you happy hunting. If you’re still on the fence about which version to buy or whether you even want to take the plunge into the latest Pokémon adventure, you should know that, although the gameplay fundamentals seem more than sound, Nintendo’s five-year-old hybrid console sure seems to be struggling with the game on a technical level.
Over the past 24 hours a number of people in Japan—including a Square Enix employee—have been arrested on insider trading charges related to a Dragon Quest game announcement. Legendary Sega designer Yuji Naka is reportedly among them.
The scandal centers around a studio called Aiming, which in 2020 was announced as the developer of a new Dragon Quest game, called Tact. Last night, it was first alleged that 38-year-old Square Enix employee Taisuke Sazaki, who has worked on Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games, knew of the deal before it was publicly announced, and along with a friend purchased a ton of shares in Aiming, hoping to profit when their share price (presumably) went up.
Naka, 57, who is credited as one of the main creators of Sonic the Hedgehog and who has also worked on everything from NiGHTS Into Dreams to Phantasy Star, has since been arrested on similar charges. According to this FNN report, Naka is accused of also knowing about the Aiming deal before it was public news, and taking the opportunity to purchase 10,000 shares in the company.
While most famous for his work with Sega, Naka had most recently teamed up with Square Enix on the ill-fated 3D platformer Balan Wonderland. He parted ways with the company in April 2021; these allegations stem from 2020, when he was still working with the publisher.
Naka was arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, which is continuing its investigation. Naka is alleged to have purchased 10,000 shares, worth ¥2.8 million, or around USD$20,000. (Sazaki, meanwhile, is accused of buying ¥26.4 million worth, or around USD$188,000.) Authorities have yet to disclose whether any of the three men arrested so far still owned those shares, or whether they had been sold off for profit prior to the investigation.
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I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. I skipped 18 weeks of Genshin Impact banners to ensure that I could get Nahida, but farming materials for her is so unpleasant. This isn’t just a problem for fans of the tragic goddess. Sumeru is just the worst area for collecting any kind of material. Things are so dire that I’ve left my new characters to sit on the backburner. Why play Candace or Collei when I could simply slaughter everything with my pre-built Ayaka or Xiao?
In Genshin Impact, you can’t simply max characters by using them in battle a ton. Every 10 to 20 levels, you have to unlock the ability to increase their levels further by offering them certain materials. Some of these are easily obtained through daily quests or battles, but the most time-consuming materials can only be found in the overworld. If you don’t unlock these levels, then your characters won’t get their best passive abilities either. To ensure that your characters are the best they can be, exploration is inevitable.
This isn’t a problem in the Mondstadt region, where special leveling ingredients can be found in designated sub-areas. Inazuma is a little stingier, but it’s still generous enough that you can more or less stay in one area to farm all of your necessities. Sumeru, though? Sumeru is hell. I once loved exploring the forested regions, which allowed me to zip back and forth across all directions. That was before I had to start collecting Rukkhadevata Mushrooms for Collei. There are only a few places where they’re clumped together. If you really need the mushrooms, you’ll have to find each one individually in various areas. Don’t even talk to me about Kalotpala Lotuses. You must grab them off towering cliffs, and they’re so easy to miss if you’re not looking at them at precisely the right angle.
It feels like every single plant is like that. You have to explore every inch of the map to farm what the new characters need, meaning it takes longer to get to a point where I feel comfortable using them for regular play. I don’t mind exploration! I love it! But not when it’s directly tied to character progression.
The desert region was much more trying on my patience. Everything is 50 miles apart, including fast travel points. And unlike most open world games, you don’t get a horse or other method of quicker traversal. So you’re stuck running across a very boring looking desert until you find a cactus with the coveted Henna Berry, which is necessary to promote Candace. Oh, the things I do for a hot spear girl who could probably bench press me.
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I’ve never had to use a farming map for Genshin before. I started using them now that I was trying to raise my characters in earnest, which isn’t fun when I’m trying to collect materials naturally. The developers clearly wanted me to leg it. They’ve likely learned from all the players who overused fast travel and never actually went sightseeing, but I just want the option to farm efficiently on the days that I’m busy. Instead, my progress is gated by how frequently I want to explore.
One day I’ll have the patience to max out Nahida. For now, I’m just praying that the upcoming sword character Alhaitham doesn’t use any more of those damn cliff lotuses.
I sure as shit did not! But since 2009 she has been posting photos online as TommyBoy, to a website cataloguing photos of abandoned spaces in locations as diverse as Japan, Alaska, Bali and Mexico. The site’s bio simply says
Hi! I’m Japansese urban explorer ‘Tommy’. I enjoy urban exploration all over the world.
But today publisher Read-Only Memory announced that TommyBoy was actually Nakamura, and did so because they’ve decided to release a book together, collecting some of her favourite photos in print for the first time ever. That book is called Project UrbEx, and it looks gorgeous.
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Described as “a thrilling photographic adventure around an offbeat selection of the world’s abandoned buildings, captured by one of the videogame industry’s most beloved creatives”, it’s 256 pages of photos and diary excerpts by Nakamura, and is available in a number of different formats.
Famed videogame creator Ikumi Nakamura became widely known after she gave a speech about a “spooooky” game, Ghostwire: Tokyo, at the prestigious E3 conference. Her talent, infectious personality and strong sense of wonder for the world – “I think I haven’t changed much since I was a kid” – has attracted a global cult following. What many fans don’t know, however, is that Nakamura has a secret alter ego in the form of ‘TommyBoy’ – a fearless urban explorer.
For years Nakamura has been traversing the planet to go to under-the-radar abandoned buildings, from the Igloo Hotel in Alaska, a magnificent dome structure housing an intricate carousel-like wooden framework, to a mysterious liquor factory in Mexico with a giant replica bottle on its roof and the disused Blue Horizon Boxing Ring, where Rocky (1976) was filmed. Working in the gaming industry for nearly two decades, Nakamura has dreamt up many imagined worlds, but it’s these forgotten corners of the real world that truly fire her creative vision. Her photographic eye evokes the survival-horror feel of her own dystopian videogames.
With Google Maps at our fingertips, it can often feel impossible to get lost or discover anything novel, but through her daring escapades Nakamura taps into a lost spirit of true adventure. Hers is an enthusiastic brand of tour guiding, taking the reader to eye-opening spaces and atmospheres through exceptional photography and transporting – and sometimes amusing – stories.
Her pictures, gathered here in print for the first time, reveal that, from Japan and the United States, from Belgium to Taiwan, and from Spain to Bali, our planet is teeming with human-made structures lying derelict and undisturbed, waiting to be discovered by intrepid explorers.
This left arm of mine? Yeah, it’s indestructible.Screenshot: Blizzard
Overwatch 2 continues to incur issue after issue, with the latest problem leaving the icy damage dealer Mei totally unplayable due to a “critical issue” with her Ice Wall ability. Well, Blizzard may also want to investigate the hero shooter’s newest support character, Kiriko, as it appears she can block headshot damage by simply [checks notes] staring up at the sky.
Kiriko is a kunai-wielding ninja healer who leaked at the beginning of September. Previously locked behind Overwatch 2‘s battle pass, Blizzard has since opted to give the kunoichi away for free following some rather uproarious criticism of the developer’s initial decision. Though she’s a pretty squishy hero, with only 200 health points, she can deal some solid damage and has a kit perfectly suited to buffing her teammates. In other words, she isn’t as passive a healer as, say, Baptiste or Mercy, but you probably don’t want her charging the enemy frontline like Brigitte or Zenyatta either. However, that might change considering an exploit discovered by Twitch streamer Flats.
A partner of the Overwatch League’s Florida Mayhem, Flats tweeted a video on November 15 of Kiriko blocking headshot damage with her arm by looking up at the sun. Flats shot at an opposing Kiriko a few times with Widowmaker, only for the bullets to merely graze the ninja’s seemingly indestructible arm, allowing her to immediately heal back up. Flats eventually murked Kiriko with a single headshot, but only after positioning himself at just the right angle, saying you “have to get behind” Kiriko to “shoot the back of her head.” Who knew that staring up at the sky could save you from death?
What’s appears to be happening here is that, when she looks up, Kiriko’s arm gets in the way of her dome’s hitbox, impacting the damage she takes from headshots. In response to Flat’s tweet, one Twitter user noted that Mercy was able to do the same thing, but only when casting her Resurrect ultimate ability, which sees her raise her arm in the air to revive a dead teammate.
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Kotaku has reached out to Blizzard and Flats for comment.
The current British government, now onto its third Prime Minister since 2019 and rocked by a combination of scandals and gross, malicious incompetence, is facing an uphill battle to simply avoid complete destruction at the next general election, let alone win it. What better time, then, for one of its most important ministries to launch a Discord channel and connect with the youth!
As The Guardian report, though, the decision by the UK Treasury was immediately met with a “torrent of abuse”, despite launching as a read-only channel, meaning that users could join and read things left by its admin, but could not type anything themselves.
If the folks responsible for setting that up thought that would guarantee them some degree of protection from a public who are one more election cycle of austerity away from wheeling out guillotines, though, they were dead wrong: the channel forgot about emoji reactions, and so soon every post on the channel looked like this:
Over the course of the day other popular emoji have included the clown, the middle finger and the flags of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Mysteriously, a few hours after launching (and getting bullied into the sea and back), its welcome channel (which has been saying “hi!” to account names ranging from Jeremy Corbyn to Jeffrey Epstein) disappeared and users saw their eggplant emoji vanish, suggesting that His Majesty’s Treasury were panicking and trying to engage in a little bit of emergency moderation.
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Their explanation for this, though, was:
Due to the rapid growth of today’s channel which has seen over 7,000 members join, a technical difficulty has led to reactions being paused. We are working with Discord to get reactions turned back on.
I’m happy to report that at time of posting the ability to add reactions has been restored, so if you’d like to go and leave some feedback of your own, you can do so via the link here (though sadly the admin seems to have deleted one of the emoji letters needed to complete the word “cunt” from every post, leaving everyone one character short of their preferred term for this shambles of a government).
