If you've ever played Diablo, you know the name Deckard Cain. The weathered old man generally serves as an adviser, rather than any sort of combatant, yet he's set to become just that in Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.
Yes, Deckard is set to become a playable hero in HotS, and Blizzard seems to have had a lot of fun with his design. He's capable of healing and generally supporting his team, though he's susceptible to being Silenced and doesn't offer much in the way of mobility. His abilities include one that throws a healing potion on the ground for a teammate to collect, another that uses the Horadric Cube to deal damage and slow enemies, and a scroll that roots and damages.
As is often the case, it's the Heroic abilities that are best. Lorenado summons a tornado made of his books that moves in a target direction and pushes back enemies that it touches. Best of all is Stay A While And Listen, which casts a large cone in front of him. Those inside are subjected to a story he tells, which makes them fall asleep.
Deckard launches "soon" on the public test realm and will be released to the full game sometime after that. Blizzard has also announced it plans to release a comic, Rise of the Raven Lord, that will explore Heroes of the Storm lore sometime later in April.
A new poster for Avengers: Infinity War has been released and it's a bit of a treasure hunt. As with most of the posters for the movie, the new image is jam-packed with Marvel Cinematic Universe superheroes, as this is the MCU's biggest movie to date.
This poster, however, comes complete with Easter eggs, care of IMAX. In a tweet, the company writes, "There are 4 hidden IMAX logos somewhere on this poster. Can you find them all?" Given how busy a college of heroes it is, you'd expect finding the hidden IMAX mentions a difficult task. Of course, with the internet all things are possible.
It took almost no time at all for fans to not only track down the hidden IMAX logos, but also find some possible significance in the image. One user even believes the size of the characters in the poster is a hint at who will play the biggest roles in Avengers: Infinity War.
Each section, has a character that's enlarged more than the others. That's most likely signifying their larger roles. Iron Man, Steve Rogers, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Bucky, Star-Lord and Thanos!
This poster is just the latest peek at what MCU movie fans will see when they finally get to see what Thanos (Josh Brolin) has in store for the assembled Marvel Universe in Infinity War. Make sure to check out GameSpot's complete coverage for the upcoming movie, including a guide to the Infinity Stones and the latest tease at where Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is in the film. Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters on April 27.
The acclaimed strategy game Crusader Kings II is currently free on Steam for a limited time. And to be clear, this isn't a "free play weekend" kind of thing. If you download it now, you get to keep and play it forever.
This is a good thing, because Crusader Kings II happens to be terrific. Released in 2012, this colorful game puts you in charge of a European kingdom in the Middle Ages and asks you to expand your power in any way you choose. You can advance your position using war tactics, diplomacy, scheming, or a combination of all three.
From our Crusader Kings II review: "After you choose a starting point somewhere between 1066 and 1337, you play as any head of state from the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire to the king of a tiny territory long since absorbed by a larger nation. Each has its advantages and disadvantages: picking a powerful empire grants you more military and financial resources, but it also saddles you with a collection of barons, dukes, and counts whose ambitions aren't always aligned with your own."
You also have to pay attention to your family members, because this is a multigenerational affair. Once one leader kicks the bucket, you take control of the heir to the throne. With so many things to keep in mind, Crusader Kings II is a complicated game that can take some time to wrap your head around. "But," as our reviewer concludes, "if you allow that fact to scare you off, you'd be doing yourself a grave disservice. Crusader Kings II makes it an absolute delight to rewrite history one small step at a time."
A number of expansions have been released over the years, but they're not included with the free download. You can even find some Game of Thrones mods if you dig around. Regardless, you can't beat getting a good game for free. It's unclear when the deal will end, so grab Crusader Kings II for free on Steam now.
According to THR, the huge price tag is due to the fact that Amazon is required to make five seasons of the show. It is very unusual for a series of this scale and cost to have an upfront commitment of this size, but these were the terms of the deal with the Tolkien Estate and publishers HarperColllins. In addition, Amazon must have the first season in production within two years.
New Line Cinema, who produced Peter Jackson's hugely successful Lord of the Rings movies, do do not own any of the TV rights to Tolkien's work, so the show could technically stand apart from the films. However, New Line were included in the talks, and THR reveals that Jackson has already started "a dialogue" with Amazon, and that the studio "may use material from the films." Another intriguing aspect of the deal is that it also includes the rights to make "a potential spinoff," indicating that, if successful, we'll be watching a lot of Tolkien on our screens for many years to come.
Jackson's first Lord of the Rings trilogy collectively made more than $2.9 billion, with the final instalment, 2003's The Return of the King, making more than $1 billion alone. It won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Jackson followed this with three Hobbit films, which also made $2.9 billion worldwide.
We finally know that Insomniac's new Spider-Man game for PlayStation 4 is coming out in September. But that's not all we learned about the anticipated Sony exclusive this week.
Game Informer asked creative director Bryan Intihar 114 rapid-fire questions, and among the things he revealed is that there are no microtransactions and that the game is locked at 30 FPS on PS4 and PS4 Pro. Additionally, he confirmed that Mary Jane is a playable character.
The game will look and run a little better on PS4 Pro
But it's locked at 30 FPS on both systems
Mary Jane is a playable character, and she will "surprise a lot of people." At this point in the story, she knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
The game's open world is "several times" bigger than that of Insomniac's last big game, Sunset Overdrive.
Will there be microtransactions? "Hell no."
Will we see Uncle Ben's death? "Hell no."
DLC is planned for after launch.
There is a crafting system.
You can take selfies with civilians and high-five them.
In other news, Insomniac has announced premium versions of Spider-Man, along with some DLC. The $150 Collector's Edition comes with a statue, artbook, and in-game content. Check out GameSpot's further coverage here to see all the available versions.
Ubisoft has announced plans to combat toxicity in the Rainbow Six Siege community. The ambitious plan has already identified some key changes coming relatively soon, but the announcement notes it will be focusing on this problem over the span of years. The ultimate goal is to track and manage negative behavior while also implementing features to encourage positive behavior.
For starters, Ubisoft says it is already tracking its chat for racial and homophobic slurs, with different tiers of bans based on severity: 2 days, 7 days, 15 days, or permanent. These aren't necessarily a progressive system, though. A particularly egregious player could go straight to the perma-ban without having earned the others as warnings first.
In the near future, the team plans to implement better methods of detecting team-killing. The details are scant, since the company doesn't want to reveal too much about the current shortcomings of the current kill detection system, but that change is planned for Season 2 of Year 3, likely placing it sometime this summer.
Further out, Ubisoft plans to let you mute text chat, voice, both, or neither on a per-player basis. It is also working on a chat filtering tool that will automatically censor offensive words and provide a notification that they had crossed a line. It will be tracking the players who trip the censor excessively. Both of those changes are planned for Season 3.
"These short-term changes will begin to address toxicity, but we do not plan to stop there," the announcement read. "We are serious about tackling the issues surrounding the potential for negative player experience, and we will share any further changes with you prior to their implementation."
The years-long commitment reaffirms that Ubisoft is looking at Siege as a live game. After a rocky start, it has developed into a huge mainstay with a devoted following. Like any game with a large community, though, it's bound to attract some troublemakers. Overwatch similarly announced new measures recently. If you'd like to hear a more good-natured and friendly type of arguing about it, check out our new debate series Versus. In the debut episode we pit Siege against Overwatch for multiplayer shooter supremacy.
A new set of Fortnite challenges means a new batch of optional objectives to complete in Battle Royale, provided you own the Battle Pass. Week 7 challenges include two in particular that will require either some legwork on your part or a guide to specific locations--which is where we come in.
The first of these trickier challenges asks you to follow the treasure map found in Retail Row, something that is labeled as a "Hard" objective (meaning you get 10 Battle Stars for completing it). This works identically to other treasure map challenges: You hunt down a map randomly located in the stated area, and it directs you to another location on the map, where you have to collect an item. However, if you know where to go, you can skip the treasure map altogether and go directly to the treasure location.
For Week 7, that means going to the Wailing Woods. If you look at the map, you'll see a part of it that is less densely populated with trees, which is home to a hedge maze. Navigate to the southwestern corner, and you'll find the treasure hidden in a dead end. Walk up and activate it (by holding the same button or key you'd use to open a chest), and the challenge is complete.
More time-consuming is the challenge that wants you to search the Hidden Gnome in different named locations. You'll have to search a total of seven of these gnomes, though you thankfully don't have to do all of this in a single match. There are far more than seven gnomes on the map, so you don't necessarily have to head to specific locations to do this. Anywhere you see a name on the map--Retail Row, Loot Lake, Tilted Towers, et al--you'll find a gnome hiding inside of a building.
As with the treasure, you'll have to hold a button or key (again, the same as opening a chest) to "search" a gnome once you find one. In some cases, such as the one in Junk Junction, you may need to destroy some of the surrounding objects in order to easily access it. Others can be searched without physically seeing it, as is the case with one hiding in a bathroom stall in Greasy Grove. We've assembled the map below and verified it with locations discovered by Reddit user thesquatingdog to help you identify the locations where you can find a gnome.
Check out our complete guide for the remainder of Week 7's challenges. They primarily deal with doing things in specific locations or getting access to the right types of weapons (shotguns and suppressed weapons, in the case of this week). It's also not too late to go back and complete those from previous weeks; Battle Pass owners have the remainder of April to finish all of Season 3's Fortnite: Battle Royale challenges. Earn the Battle Stars for completing challenges, and you'll more quickly level up the Battle Pass and earn its various rewards.
In addition to the campaign and regular online modes, Far Cry 5 features an impressive map editor for the Arcade mode. It lets you create your own maps and game types for other players to try out, but not every map is created equal. To help you out, we've put together nine tips for designing a great map; you can also check out the video version for visual inspiration.
Yes, it can be a pain to carve out terrain, and yes, you can still make a flat map interesting. However, when was the last time you took a walk outside? Nature isn't flat. Just adding some elevation can make a world of difference. Make rolling hills, dig valleys, mold rivers. And don't forget to use the smooth tool to even out those rough edges. The idea is to give your map some verticality so it's interesting to play and explore.
Don't Make It Too Big
It's tempting to make a huge map, but they present their own set of challenges. After all, the bigger the map, the longer it's going to take to fill it up with interesting things to do. However, if you have time to make a big map, you're going to need to consider your budget, as you can only fit so many assets into the map before running out of memory space. For example, you can cover empty map with loads of trees, but that'll quickly exhaust your budget. In order to learn the skills required to create better maps, we recommend starting small with your map and slowly growing outward.
Add Textures
One thing that separates the top-rated maps from the rest is that they have textures. It's super easy to add textures, and they make a world of difference. You can even change the default texture to whatever you want within seconds. Just click on the grid texture, hit change, and pick whatever you want.
Stick To A Theme
For your first few maps, it's a good idea to decide on a theme before you begin. For example, if you're making a snowy map, don't add palm trees. It sounds obvious, but keeping to a theme can help guide your design.
Don't Make Your Map Unnecessarily Difficult
Difficulty is good! No one wants a cakewalk of a map (unless they're trying to grind for XP), but spawning in, say, a tiny pit filled with Yetis or heavy enemies isn't fun either. Instead, try to ramp up difficulty as the player progresses through your map. Also, don't cram your map with 80+ enemies and ask the player to kill everyone. There are exceptions, but for the most part, be reasonable with the challenges you set forth for players.
Don't Make The Enemies Dumb
While it's not the most intuitive set of tools, you do have some flexibility with enemy AI. You can give them things to do, areas to defend, and places to go. This is something that can wait until the end, but if you are trying to make a map that tells a story and feels alive, it's definitely an important step.
Adjust The Environment
The environment tools are how you set the mood of your map. You can adjust time of day, wind force, fog, the backdrop, and post FX. Seriously, this is what brings your maps to life. With the environment tools, you can turn a simple collection of trees into a dark, eerie forest.
Don't Forget Boundaries
This is typically one of the last things to do when making a map. Once you've figured out the size of your map, use the map limits tool. This will give your players a death countdown if they get a little too adventurous.
For PC: Learn The Hotkeys
Knowing the hotkeys on PC can help speed up the map-making process significantly. We've listed them below.
Far Cry 5 offers quite a bit to do in its open world, but its Arcade mode arguably offers even more to keep you occupied. The map editor is quite robust and gives you a ton of tools to create both cooperative and competitive multiplayer maps and modes. However, making a map is the easy part. Making a good map is more difficult and will take a lot of practice.
Luckily, the GameSpot team has identified some common pitfalls and mistakes that can contribute to a custom scenario or arena less than enjoyable. In the video above, we outline seven things that you should avoid doing while building the next great Far Cry map.
Ultimately, success in Arcade comes from a combination of being varied while also keeping the map to a manageable scale. You have be patient and determined to put in the work necessary to sufficiently terraform so that the map has interesting terrain. But you also want to keep the dimensions fairly low, as it's easy to get overwhelmed by larger maps. We discuss these tips and more in the video.
If you're interested in learning about which guns to place on your custom map, be sure to check out our ranking of the 9 best weapons in Far Cry 5. Further, if you're just starting out with Arcade, you can watch our beginner's guide to the map editor here. Finally, players have already made some impressive (and not-so-impressive) creations in Arcade, and we've rounded up a bunch of them here.
Hearthstone's next expansion is inching ever closer. Blizzard announced today that The Witchwood will launch next Thursday, April 12. It will add another 135 cards to the game, as well as mark the start of the Year of the Raven. The annual change will cycle some older sets out of Standard play to make room for this year's expansions.
The company is still slowly revealing the full set, but that will all come to a head on Monday, April 9, at 11 AM PT. That's when Blizzard will host a live stream with game director Ben Brode and Hearthstone streamer Sean "Day9" Plott to show off the remaining cards. That will also likely mark your last chance to pre-order the Witchwood bundle, which grants 70 packs for $50. After the expansion launches, of course, packs will be available at their regular price.
If you're looking to score some free cards and packs, though, Blizzard has arranged a few methods. You can take part in daily quests now, as all of them are granting randomized card packs as rewards in addition to the regular gold rewards. You can also log-in to Hearthstone anytime between the Witchwood launch and July 10 to claim three free packs and one class legendary card.
Witchwood will introduce one new Hero Card, the Shaman Hagatha, as a central character. A new single-player mode, called Monster Hunt, will follow shortly after launch. If you want to get inside the design philosophy of Hearthstone, check out what the devs told us recently about making everything feel overpowered.
While there are still many months before Halloween rolls around, it's never too early to get excited about it, right? Universal Studios has announced the first maze in the works for 2018's Halloween Horror Nights celebration, and it's a big one.
For the first time ever, Stranger Things will get its own haunted maze at the annual haunt. The Netflix series will have mazes at three Universal Studios parks--Hollywood, Orlando, and Singapore--that will take guests to locations from the series like the Hawkins National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Byers home, and, of course, the Upside Down.
A press release says visitors will experience an "oozing a shower of floating orb-like spores" in the Upside Down, which sounds wonderful and gross all at the same time. Naturally, the Demogorgon will also play a role in the maze, as it stalks fans during their journey.
To bring Stranger Things to life, the Horror Nights team is collaborating with creators the Duffer brothers, as well as producer Shaun Levy and Netflix. Given the impressive treatment the attraction has given to properties like Ash vs. Evil Dead, Saw, The Shining, and The Purge in recent years, this particular maze should be a sight to see.
Halloween Horror Nights will kick off in Hollywood and Orlando on September 14, with Singapore's event launching on September 28. If you've somehow missed Stranger Things thus far, you have plenty of time to catch up before visiting the Upside Down yourself.
One day before Wrestlemania 34, NXT Takeover: New Orleans will feature a six-way ladder match to determine the very first NXT North American Champion. The new title will become the fourth active championship in NXT--fifth if you include the WWE United Kingdom Championship.
Now, thanks to a tweet from Triple H, the championship belt has been revealed. In the accompanying video, he says, "There is a saying that there can only be one first ever." The only question is who that first ever will be. Competing in the match are Richochet, Killian Dain, Lars Sullivan, Velveteen Dream, EC3, and Adam Cole. Those six names being loaded into a single match should tell you a lot about how packed with talent the NXT roster is at the moment.
Does the show need a North American Championship, though? Honestly, it depends on how the title is treated on NXT programming. With a single one-hour show airing weekly, five titles might seem like overkill. However, the NXT Championship is mostly defended on Takeover specials, while the UK title is not exclusive to the brand.
If positioned as a title regularly defended on NXT's weekly TV shows, it could provide a great boost for the series. Beyond that, with so much talent in NXT at this point, it gives another prize for the growing roster to go after.
The inaugural NXT North American Champion will be determined at NXT Takeover: New Orleans on April 7, the day before Wrestlemania 34. It will air live on the WWE Network.
As she's strong with the Force, maybe her parents were Jedi--perhaps even Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) himself. In the end, though, they were nothing. "Filthy junk traders," as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) put it. For director Rian Johnson, this was the only possible answer. "We're not here to give Rey an easy time; we're here to put her on the hard path so that she has to," he previously explained. "Because that's the path of a hero."
However, it seems there was another plan at one point. After directing The Force Awakens, Abrams had his own ideas about Rey's parentage and how it would play out in the Star Wars universe. Simon Pegg, who appeared in the film in a minor role of Jakku junk trader Unkar Plutt, claims as much on an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
"Well, I know what JJ kind of intended, or at least what was sort of being chucked around. I think that's kind of been undone slightly by [The Last Jedi]," the actor says. "There was some talk about, you know, a kind of relevant lineage for her. But I honestly don't know, and I don't know if anybody knows. We shall see."
Given that Abrams could retcon Rey's parents when he returns to direct Episode IX, it will be interesting to see if his vision for that particular story ever comes to the forefront. Don't expect to find out any time soon, though. There's still almost two years before Star Wars: Episode IX arrives in theaters on December 20, 2019. Then, get ready for a new trilogy of movies in the franchise from Johnson.
Even though it seems like the in-fighting between the cast of the Fast & Furious franchise had come to an end, the situation could be more troubling than fans realize. Is it possible the next movie, Fast & Furious 9, will be missing Dwayne Johnson? Say it isn't so!
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson admits he may not appear in the franchise's ninth installment. "I'm not quite sure," he says. "Right now I'm concentrating on making the spin-off as good as it can be." That spin-off, which was previously announced, will see his Luke Hobbs team with Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) on their own adventure, without Dom (Vin Diesel) and the rest of the family.
So why has Johnson considered sitting out the next movie? It sounds as if his rift with Diesel may be deeper than some believed. After the wrestler-turned-actor ranted on social media about one of his Fate of the Furious co-stars, many assumed it was Diesel. That was only compounded when the film released and the two actors didn't share much screen time. "That is correct," Johnson says. "We were not in any scenes together."
However, he maintains that the two of them came to an understanding during production. "Vin and I had a few discussions, including an important face-to-face in my trailer. And what I came to realize is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating," he says. "It took me some time, but I'm grateful for that clarity. Whether we work together again or not."
While it remains to be seen what Johnson's future in the Fast and Furious movies is, here's hoping Luke Hobbs will ride again after the upcoming spin-off--which is scheduled to hit theaters on July 26, 2019. Regardless, there will be plenty of chances to see the actor on the big screen. Both Rampage and Skyscraper will arrive this year and he's going to star in a movie based on Disneyland's Jungle Cruise attraction.
Best Buy is running a pair of sales on 4K Ultra HD Blu-Rays. One of them gets you two select movies for $30, and the other gets you three select movies for $50. To take advantage of the deals, visit the links above, check the "add to offer" boxes next to the movies you want, and click the "Add to Cart" button at the bottom of the page. The discounted prices will appear during checkout.
What kind of movies are we talking? They're mostly blockbusters that are dripping with special effects--the kinds of movies that really shine on a 4K display. In the "two for $30" category, you can choose from films like Alien: Covenant, The Martian, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and X-Men: Apocalypse. If movies based on video games are more your style, you can go for Assassin's Creed and the 2015 version of Hitman.
The "three for $50" offer contains movies that originally retail for higher prices, like Wonder Woman, It, Kong: Skull Island, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Best Picture nominee Dunkirk. For DC comic fans, you can select movies like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Watchmen, and Suicide Squad. And if you want to explore some gritty classics in 4K, you can go for Blade Runner: The Final Cut or Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.
Even if you're not interested in enough movies to take advantage of the offers, each movie is on sale for $20. That gives you a savings of between a $3 and $15, depending on the movie. Here are those links again.
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