Video
5 CommentsLearn about Overwatch's quirks in this myth-busting video
Overwatch officially launched yesterday, and considering the millions of people who tried out the game before release, it's not surprising that players had plenty of questions about how things work in this first-person shooter. Thankfully, the folks at DefendTheHouse are here with the latest installment in their "Myths" series.
What's the difference between Mercy's and Lúcio's healing abilities? Can you get crushed by a frozen Mei? The video definitively answers these questions and many more, so watch it for a leg up before you hop into your next Overwatch match.
Overwatch is available on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. Check out our guide to the game's extensive lore for more details.
News
4 CommentsDestiny's Iron Banner is back right now
Destiny's on-again-off-again multiplayer event, the Iron Banner, is now live with Control as the game type, developer Bungie announced today.
Bungie had put the Iron Banner, as well as the Trials of Osiris, on hold last week after players discovered an exploit that allowed them to generate unlimited ammunition for some of Destiny's most powerful weapons.
"We're pleased to report that our work on that front is done, and [that Lord Saladin] has been granted clearance to set up shop at his usual haunt in the Tower," said Bungie in a blog post.
This week's Iron Banner will run until the next weekly reset, which will occur at 5 a.m ET on Tuesday, May 31. Iron Banner combatants will be able to earn gauntlets (including PlayStation-exclusive ones), chest pieces, sidearms and fusion rifles....
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19
May 25, 2016
Designing Mirror’s Edge: The making of a franchise
Go behind the scenes with DICE on the creation of Mirror’s Edge and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.
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0 Comments7 Days to Die comes to consoles on June 28
7 Days to Die, the survival horror crafting game from The Fun Pimps, will be released June 28 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, publisher Telltale Games announced today.
The Fun Pimps launched 7 Days to Die on Linux, Mac and Windows PC via Steam Early Access in December 2013, while Telltale's publishing arm is bringing the game to consoles. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of 7 Days to Die will include a new mode: split-screen local multiplayer.
7 Days to Die will be released both digitally and at retail in North America on June 28. In Europe, only the digital version will launch on June 28; the game will be available July 1 at retail. It will cost $29.99. PS4 and Xbox One pre-order customers will receive a set of five skins based on characters from Telltale franchises, including Lee...
News
1 CommentHitman's next episode heads for Morocco next week
Hitman's next mission takes place in Africa, a first for the series, Square Enix and developer Io Interactive announced this morning. The episode launches on May 31.
In this episode, Agent 47 is in the ancient Moroccan city of Marrakesh, tracking a rogue general who is plotting a coup, and a private financier holed up in the Swedish embassy. In all of his world travels over the 16-year history of the Hitman franchise, this marks 47's first trip to Africa.
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Hitman Review
According to an Io spokesperson, the new episode will focus on "diversity and contrasts" as 47 scopes out bustling marketplaces and a more minimalist foreign embassy. New tools and weapons are also promised, with which players can plan various paths to successful assassinations.
The...
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Opinion
28 CommentsOverwatch's most interesting trait can be its hardest to get used to
Overwatch is, in broad terms, a hero-based first-person shooter. You pick your hero, you play the round and you attempt to use each character's abilities to their fullest. But Overwatch's most interesting wrinkle is also the hardest to get used to: You can switch characters at any time.
This is part of the reason the game isn't free-to-play, according to Blizzard. "We really made the decision on the business model based on what we thought was right for the gameplay," game director Jeff Kaplan told Polygon at Blizzcon last year. "If you've played a lot of Overwatch, you know that hero-switching [mid-match] is a core part of it — it's a really fun dynamic part. The difference maker between ... Overwatch and other games is the fluidity in the team compositions and matching what the other...
News
36 CommentsThe Division's latest update is kind of a disaster
Tom Clancy's The Division launched its second high-profile update just yesterday, unleashing a plague of game breaking bugs across multiple platforms. Some users are even reporting missing characters.
The big release — called update 1.2 or Conflict — contains new player-versus-player and player-versus-environment content, as well as a second centerpiece raid called Clear Sky. Many users, including Polygon staff, are experiencing persistent issues with stability and matchmaking in multiple game modes.
One of the PvE systems, called High Value Targets, relies on a new currency called Intel. But when some players turn in their hard-won Intel, HVT missions refuse to unlock. When they do unlock, named bosses often fail to materialize, leaving players empty-handed. The only solution seems...
News
45 CommentsBattleborn cuts price and rolls out a new character as Overwatch launches
Battleborn introduced a new character and cut its price by $20, perhaps not coincidentally on the same day rival Overwatch launched.
Both are colorful first-person shooters with several distinctive characters; Battleborn is the one that launched three weeks before Overwatch. The latest member of Battleborn's roster is Alani, described as a "water-bending warrior monk." Her introductory video is below.
The character is available for everyone who played in the PlayStation 4 open beta or bought Battleborn's season pass or digital deluxe edition.
As for that, every version of Battleborn has been trimmed by $20 from now through Saturday. That means the digital deluxe version, which includes all the future downloadable content, costs $54.99 and the standard version is $39.99. The deal is...
News
22 CommentsMirror's Edge Catalyst has a launch trailer, and it's boring in a great way
The launch trailer for EA's upcoming Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a bit on the boring side, but I don't think that's a problem.
Mirror's Edge has such a distinct visual language and color palette that it's impossible to mistake the game for anything else. That's already a nice advantage over the majority of first-person titles, which often seem to bleed together. There's also the pleasant sensation that the trailer is showing me everything I wanted to see — those lovely colors and the convincing sense of speed and height — and completely avoids the one thing I feared to see: Faith holding a gun.
I wonder if people who haven't played the original game feel differently about the trailer, but I found it reassuring more than I found it exciting. It's a game I want to play, not watch. The...
News
25 CommentsXbox Games With Gold for June offers The Crew, Goat Simulator and more
Next month will be the three-year anniversary of Microsoft's Games With Gold program, and the company is marking the occasion by offering a total of four games to Xbox One owners (with an assist from Xbox 360 backward compatibility).
The Xbox One version of Coffee Stain Studios' Goat Simulator will be free all month long, while Ivory Tower's open-world racing game, The Crew, will go free June 16 and will remain so through July 15.
Xbox One owners will also be able to pick up two free Xbox 360 games in June and play them via backward compatibility. Team Meat's challenging platformer Super Meat Boy will be free for the first half of the month, while Firaxis Games' celebrated strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown will replace it from June 16-30. Of course, both titles will also be free on...
News
16 CommentsVampyr's protagonist definitely has a thirst for blood in first screens
Focus Home Interactive has debuted the first in-game look at the star of Vampyr, the upcoming role-playing game from Dontnod Entertainment. In a trio of screens, Dr. Jonathan Reid is shown to have a mighty bloodlust.
Focus Home explained the dilemma at the heart of Vampyr in a blog post: "Players take control of Dr. Jonathan Reid, a newly formed vampire who is torn between the Hippocratic Oath he swore as a doctor, and the bloodthirsty need to kill due to the monster within," the publisher wrote. As Reid, however, players will decide on whom Reid will feed, not whether to give into his killer impulses at all.
First detailed back in December, the game's focus is on making tough decisions on how to sate your vampiric tendencies and watching the consequences play out. The choice-based...
News
14 CommentsRocket League update delivers cross-platform play to Xbox One
Cross-platform comes to Xbox One today in the latest title update to Rocket League. Gamers in the RC-cars-meets-soccer game will be able to play matches against PC users starting this evening.
The update comes to users at 6 pm ET. It will be reflected in the options menu, where there is a toggle to enable or disable matchmaking with cross-platform competitors.
Cross-platform play does not mean the Playstation 4 — yet. In March, Xbox announced it was opening Xbox One to cross-platform play, with "other consoles" included. However, implementing or including this feature will be entirely up to game developers.
PlayStation 4's Rocket League gamers have been able to play against PC users since its launch last July. It launched on Xbox One in February.
News
9 CommentsOverwatch's first big update will bring back Competitive Play mode
Blizzard Entertainment is currently at work on Overwatch's Competitive Play mode, which it hopes to bring back in the game's first major update. In a developer Q&A on Facebook today, seen above, director Jeff Kaplan explained that reworking the mode, which recently went back into development after time in a closed beta, is the team's current focus.
Competitive Play mode wasn't available in the recent open beta, and won't be offered upon Overwatch's full launch tomorrow. Instead, Kaplan teased that Blizzard hoped to reintroduce it into the game within the next month.
Must Read
Overwatch: How Blizzard turned its biggest failure into its next great hope
"I don't want to promise an exact date," Kaplan said. "My rough commitment — or not commitment — would be...
Opinion
67 CommentsHow Blizzard turned me into a salesperson for Overwatch
Let me be clear about something up front: I don't really care if you buy Overwatch. This story isn't about using my influence to try to get a large number of people to purchase the game. I love that you're here, but in terms of your decision to buy or not buy Overwatch? I don't give a shit.
My friends are another story.
I, like many people, assumed that Overwatch would be a free-to-play game. I play with the same core group of five or six people on most nights, and getting them to try games when there is no money to risk is pretty easy. They'll try anything once, even if time being at a premium means that one of us has to step up to champion the game to get people interested. If that doesn't happen? The evening is spent with Diablo 3, or maybe Rocket League. Heroes of the Storm is...
News
2 CommentsPac-Man 256 chasing down console, Steam release next month
Pac-Man 256 is launching on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One next month, according to Bandai Namco Entertainment's European branch. Planned for a June 21 release, the port of the mobile game will add local co-op multiplayer, as seen in the trailer up top.
In the console and Steam versions, up to four players can race around the endless maze together as they outrun both ghosts and that game-breaking bug. The game will also add social sharing features and additional themes, and costs $4.99 at launch, according to the publisher.
Created by Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale and 3 Sprockets, Pac-Man 256 found success after its release on iOS and Android last year. The game is based on the infamous 256th level of the original Pac-Man arcade game, which players are prevented from...
News
4 CommentsHuge mod seeks to bring Seattle to the world of Fallout 4
An 18-member team is at work on an ambitious mod introducing a completely new region to the Fallout world through Fallout 4, though it is "several years away" from completion.
Fallout Cascadia, set in post-apocalyptic Seattle, aspires to offer a map roughly the size of Fallout 3, but with more quests and locations than the Far Harbor DLC just launched. The modders will release it for free.
Work on Fallout Cascadia began six months ago, but with the Creation Kit currently in open beta on PC, work has intensified and the team wants to get word out.
However, the team says "the expected release is several years away." That's far enough out that there is no way to tell if it will work on consoles. The team does plan to share the mod through Bethesda.net, which would make it available to...
Video
35 CommentsOverwatch's newest video brings you Soldier: 76 — but not Sombra
Overwatch's last of four animated shorts reacquaints us with Soldier 76. This is either a spoiler or a time-saver: It doesn't bring you "Sombra," a rumored character that many fans of the new shooter had anticipated.
On Thursday a NeoGAF user put together an impressive string of clues that seemed to point toward a new character reveal. However, Overwatch's official channel today put out the Soldier: 76 flick, calling it "our fourth and final animated short for this season." So Sombra may have to wait until another time.
Anyway, Soldier: 76 is pure chaotic-goodness, the gold-hearted, grizzled vet who will never abandon his mission. His origin trailer debuted in July (it's below) and positions him as a pivotal figure in the Overwatch story: commander of the good guys, distrusted or...
Roster File
10 CommentsWrecked by the big boys 15 years ago, veterans return to NASCAR video games
About a decade ago, Tom Dusenberry was in the pits of a New England speedway, getting set for a Saturday in the minor leagues of late-model stock car racing when he overheard two drivers talking about a third, a newcomer who needed to get himself in line. The rookie, who had just come up to their division, didn't know what the hell he was doing, and was going to get himself put into the wall.
The rookie was Dusenberry's son, Matt. Tom Dusenberry, who founded and sold Hasbro's first video games operation and made a couple NASCAR titles with it, was bankrolling his son's nascent racing career. "I'm sitting there, saying, 'You're gonna kill my kid,'" Tom recalled. "And you're going to cost me $10,000. Can you teach him another lesson?"
Nope.
Stock car racing projects a genial, Southern...
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