If you've been diving deep into the Nordic realms within God of War this weekend, you might have noticed that the game's text is a little hard to read. The team at Sony Santa Monica has been working to fix those issues, and today's update should improve the legibility.
While it doesn't include the forthcoming Photo Mode, today's patch adds in an equally important text size slider. On Twitter, the team replied to a complaint about the title's small text, stating the update "focuses on text for map, goals, codex and the resources tab of the UI menus." The slider can be found in the accessibility menu now, seen below.
Although the new slider does increase the size of text, it doesn't seem to be a significant change. On some TVs text in God of War remains difficult to read unless you're quite close to the display. It's unclear whether Sony Santa Monica intends to address text display further.
The patch also includes other bug fixes and improvements, though the patch notes don't detail what those are. The team has been making adjustments to the game based on community feedback, so it's likely that we'll see yet another patch in the next few days.
In our God of War review, critic Peter Brown awarded it a 9/10, saying it's a "spectacular action game with epic set pieces, big-budget production values, and hard-hitting combat." Our review roundup showed a definite consistent tone among critics, who almost universally agreed that a refocus on building character paid off in a big way for this half-sequel, half-reboot.
With an increase of beautiful games come more and more beautiful screenshots. Sony Santa Monica has confirmed God of War will have its own photo mode to catch every god-slaying moment in action.
God of War's photo mode hasn't exactly been a secret. The title's director Corey Barlog told Daily Star back in March that is was something the team was looking at doing. A tweet on Thursday gave us a sneak peek of the mode with Kratos cheesing next to a seagull. Sony Santa Monica confirmed the mode soon after, giving us a first look at the mode via livestream.
While we're not sure when the mode will come to the game, we do know it won't just be about capturing the heat of the battle. The mode will include options to manipulate Kratos' and Arteus' faces--so even the angriest of fellows can take a moment to be the prime Dad of War.
Fortnite's v3.5.2 update is now available for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and mobile, and it introduces a handful of new content to both Battle Royale and Save the World modes. On top of a new limited-time playlist, Epic has thrown in another incentive to play the game this weekend: double XP. [Update: It's the last day of Fortnite's double XP weekend, giving players only a few more hours to take advantage of the below bonuses when playing Battle Royale and Save the World modes.]
From now until Sunday, April 22, all Fortnite players will earn twice the normal amount of XP when playing Battle Royale mode. Save the World fans also have an enticing reason to play this weekend, as Epic is offering free Into the Storm llamas. Players will receive a llama each day they log in this weekend, with four to collect in total.
The double XP weekend coincides with return of the 50v50 game type. Epic had originally planned to hold the limited-time mode last week, following the release of the 3.5 update; however, it was postponed due to ongoing account issues, which came after the game experienced a significant bout of downtime.
50v50 v2 is a "new and improved" version of Fortnite's first limited-time mode. As its name suggests, it pits two teams of 50 players against each other in a fight for survival. Each team has 10 minutes to loot the map at the start of a round, during which time the storm closes in on an already-visible circle. Supply drops will also fall every two minutes in batches of three to six, but they will only land within the final storm circle.
In addition to the new limited-time mode, update 3.5.2 introduces another new weapon to Battle Royale: the Light Machine Gun. This gun can be found as floor loot and in Treasure Chests or Vending Machines, and it has a fast fire rate and a 100 round magazine. The update also addresses an assortment of bugs and adds a new weapon to Save the World. You can find the patch notes here.
The cult favorite tactical RPG Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is receiving an HD makeover on PS4 and Nintendo Switch. To commemorate the game's 15th anniversary, NIS America is releasing Disgaea 1 Complete, a remake of the classic PS2 title slated to arrive in the West this fall.
Disgaea 1 Complete features the same story and gameplay as the original PS2 version, albeit with the improved visuals from the series' most recent installment, Disgaea 5. The remake also boasts an Etna Mode, which NIS says features "extra characters not found in the original release." You can see some screenshots of Disgaea 1 Complete below.
In addition to the standard release, NIS America is offering a special Rosen Queen's Finest Edition of Disgaea 1 Complete. The latter is only available in limited quantities through the company's online store and retails for $100. Along with a copy of the game, the special edition comes with assortment of bonus items, including a soundtrack, hardcover art book, pin set, Prinny cube plush, posters, and more, all of which is housed in a collector's box shaped like a Prinny's pouch.
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was the first installment in the Disgaea series. It originally released on PS2 in 2003 and would subsequently be ported to PSP, DS, and PC. It follows the story of Laharl, the prince of the Netherworld, who bands together with an army of unlikely allies to reclaim his throne.
GameSpot award the original game an 8.1/10 in our Disgaea: Hour of Darkness review. "'Really something' is maybe the right way to describe Disgaea overall," critic Greg Kasavin wrote. "It's a game that's unorthodox above all else, and filled with plenty of cheeky humor, some likable characters, a number of intriguing gameplay elements, and many, many hours of turn-based combat."
Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon players now have a chance to add another free pair of Legendaries to their teams. Beginning this weekend, The Pokemon Company is giving away Entei and Raikou as part of its ongoing Year of Legendary Pokemon celebration, but they'll only be available for a very limited time.
To claim the Legendaries, fans in the US will need to travel to a specific retailer and pick up a download code for the Pokemon. This time, the free code will be available at the electronics section of participating Target stores across the country from April 22-29. Players in Europe, meanwhile, can download the Legendaries via an online Mystery Gift from the games' main menu until April 25.
The code is redeemable in any seventh generation Pokemon title, although the Legendary you receive depends on which game you're playing. Those with Sun or Ultra Sun will get the Fire-type Entei, while Moon and Ultra Moon players will receive the Electric-type Raikou.
If you redeem the code in either of the Ultra games, the Pokemon will come equipped with a rare Gold Bottle Cap, which can be exchanged to max out a Pokemon's IVs in Hyper Training. The Legendaries also know different moves depending on the version. You can see their movesets in each game below.
Pokemon Ultra Sun
Entei -- Level 100
Sacred Fire
Stone Edge
Iron Head
Flame Charge
Pokemon Sun
Entei -- Level 60
Stomp
Bite
Swagger
Lava Plume
Pokemon Ultra Moon
Raikou -- Level 100
Thunderbolt
Volt Switch
Extrasensory
Calm Mind
Pokemon Moon
Raikou -- Level 60
Reflect
Crunch
Thunder Fang
Discharge
To redeem the download code, first select Mystery Gift from the games' main menu, then choose the option to receive your gift via a code/password. Input the code you picked up and your Legendary Pokemon will be downloaded. You will then have to retrieve it from the deliveryman, who will be waiting inside any of the games' Pokemon Centers. You'll need to have an empty slot in your party to claim the Legendary.
May is coming, and Microsoft has let slip the Games with Gold offerings for the month a bit early this time. As always, next month will bring four new games free for Xbox Live Gold members--two on Xbox One and two on Xbox 360. The first will be coming on Tuesday, May 1.
First on Xbox One, you can ring in America's past-time with Super Mega Baseball 2. That will be free throughout the entire month. Then, starting on May 16, Xbox One will also receive Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, the last game in the series helmed by creator Hideo Kojima.
The first half of May will also deliver Streets of Rage as part of the Sega Vintage collection. In the second half, it will be swapped out for Vanquish, the fast-action sliding cover shooter. Both of these can be claimed on Xbox One, where they're playable through backwards compatibility.
Make sure you pick up April's offerings before they get rotated out as well. Those include The Witness, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, and Dead Space 2. Check out the schedule of May's releases below.
May 2018 Games With Gold
Xbox One
Super Mega Baseball 2 (May 1-31)
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain (May 16-June 15)
If the direction and timeline of the DC and X-Men superhero universes often seem contradictory and confusing, they have nothing on the big horror franchises. With the rights passed between studios and producers and the interests of horror fans constantly shifting, there is often little continuity or consistency between sequels, especially for those franchises that have been running for decades.
The Halloween series is perhaps the worst example, not least because the movie that kicked it off was so good. John Carpenter's 1978 original might not have technically been the first slasher movie--that honour arguably belongs to Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) or possibly Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971)--but it was the film that made this subgenre a serious commercial force and inspired dozens of copycat movies over the following years. Inevitably there was a 1981 sequel, which, while not a patch on that tense, stylish first movie, was at least written by Carpenter and saw Jamie Lee Curtis return as Laurie Strode (now revealed to be the sister of the franchise's masked killer, Michael Myers, aka The Shape).
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1983) was a standalone movie that had nothing to do with the saga of The Shape. Carpenter considered that story done, so his plan was to launch an anthology movie series that would revolve around the holiday itself. But Halloween III's financial failure led to 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers; from this point on Carpenter's only involvement was an executive producer credit, cashing the checks but having no creative influence.
Halloween 5 followed in 1989 and part 6 in 1995. But by this point, even the most devoted fans were losing interested in this once great slice of iconic horror. Michael was no longer the terrifying presence of the first two movies and the films' increasingly modest box office returns showed how little fans were starting to care.
So hopes weren't high for Halloween H20, which was released 20 years ago this summer. At one stage, Carpenter was set to make a return to the series, at the request of Jamie Lee Curtis, who had herself agreed to return for a new movie. Ultimately Carpenter walked away, with producer Moustapha Akkad--whose estate owns the rights to the series--reportedly unwilling to pay Carpenter the $10 million that he asked for. So Steve Miner was hired instead; while Miner is hardly one of the great horror directors of the era, he was also far from a novice, with hits such as House and Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3 under his belt.
Against the odds, not only was H20 good, it was the best Halloween movie since the first one. So what went right? For a start, writers Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg basically ignored every movie since Halloween II. Of course, Curtis's return made this essential since Halloween 4 establishes that Laurie Strode is dead. But more importantly, it allowed the filmmakers to wipe the slate clean and bury parts 4-6 in the video graveyard; they essentially said this is the third Michael Myers movie.
Curtis's presence is H20's other great advantage. The intervening entries did have the presence of the great Donald Pleasance as Dr. Loomis, but his role became increasingly small and more redundant as the films continued, and by 1998 the actor was sadly no longer with us. Bringing Curtis back not only gave the movie continuity with the earlier, better films, it also helped H20 stand apart from the other horror movies of the era.
This was the decade of Scream of course--Wes Craven's smart, self-aware, scary slasher was a massive hit in 1996, and like Halloween 20 years earlier, it inspired a wave of similar movies and their sequels. From I Know What you Did Last Summer to Urban Legend and Cherry Falls, these films were marked by young casts, pop-culture references, and a self-referential quality that was missing in previous decades. H20 ticks many of these boxes, which isn't surprising, given Scream creator Kevin Williamson wrote the movie's initial treatment and reportedly came back for some uncredited rewrites. The cast is packed with upcoming young stars (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams), plus rapper LL Cool J, and Janet Leigh, star of Hitchcock's Psycho and Curtis's real-life mom.
Curtis brought a sense of dramatic weight to the film. Having faked her death to stop Michael tracking her down, Laurie now lives with the terrible memory of the events of the first movie when she was 17. Her own son John (Hartnett) is himself turning 17 on--you guessed it!--October 31, and inevitably Michael returns for a family reunion. But the Laurie of 1998 is very different to the teenage babysitter of two decades earlier. Taking her lead from the likes of Terminator's Sarah Connor and Alien's Ripley, Curtis delivers one of the decade's most kickass heroines. With John and his friends in danger from her crazed brother, Laurie races to save them and faces Michael down in a brutal one-on-one. And in a nod to the fact that by 1998 no one is surprised when a slasher movie villains sits up at the end after being seemingly killed, in the final sequence, Laurie steals the ambulance in which Michael's "body" lies. As she knew, Michael ain't dead; it takes being run over, thrown off a cliff, and beheaded to finally lay him to rest.
And that probably should have been that. A fun, exciting horror sequel that closed the door on a classic franchise; time to move on to great some new movies. But while Halloween H20's considerable box office success was well deserved, it also meant that there was no way that the film's producers--Miramax by this stage--were going to let it lie. So the cycle began again. A truly terrible "sequel" followed in 2002 in the, er, shape of Halloween: Resurrection, directed by Halloween II's director Rick Rosenthal. It not only brought Michael back from the dead via a twist so idiotic I can't even bring myself to type it, it also killed Laurie off in the opening scenes.
While Resurrection remains the lowest point of the franchise, the subsequent attempt to reboot the entire series wasn't much more successful. Musician-turned-director Rob Zombie was handed this task; he upped the gore quota and gave Michael an unnecessary backstory, and while both Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009) have their moments of brutal intensity, even at their best they are a pale imitation of everything Carpenter did so well in the first place. With mediocre box office returns and seemingly nowhere for the series to go, Halloween II was the last movie in the series to date, leaving the longest gap between movies in its history. It seemed that all the hard work that H20 did in restoring some of the original's glory was in vain.
Which brings us to Halloween, the third movie to carry this title, which is set for release this October and is directed by acclaimed indie filmmaker David Gordon Green. In what feels like an uncanny mirroring of 1998, Curtis is returning to play Laurie Strode, for a movie which, again, ignores most of the movies in between. This time Carpenter IS involved, both creatively as a hands-on story advisor and in contributing the movie's score. While little is known about the plot specifics, we know that this Halloween is a direct sequel to the first movie, so it's very possible that Michael isn't even Laurie's brother in this one.
Will it do what Halloween H20 did, 20 years ago? It certainly seems to be in good hands, from Carpenter and Curtis to producers Blumhouse, who are on a serious roll with the recent successes of Get Out, Split, and the Purge movies. And while Green and co-writer Danny McBride are known more for comedy and drama than horror, they certainly seem to understand what made the original so good. Here's hoping it's a happy, scary Halloween this year.
Valve has purchased Campo Santo, the acclaimed developer of Firewatch. In a blog post on the studio's website, Campo Santo said it will continue production on its current project, In the Valley of Gods, but with the benefit of having the likeminded people at Valve working alongside them.
"In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn't happen every day). In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. It quickly became an obvious match," it explained.
"We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we'd all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes."
The move is interesting as Valve has had somewhat of a reduced presence in game development and publishing, focusing instead on the business of operating Steam as a digital delivery platform, alongside maintaining titles such as DoTA 2. However, more recently the company has made clear its intentions to return to development and publishing, with Gabe Newell saying Valve is "going to start shipping games again." The first of these new titles is Artifact, a Dota 2-themed card game. However, Newell said the studio has additional games in development.
In GameSpot's Firewatch review, critic Scott Butterworth said its "world is captivating, its design is clever, and its characters are among the most well-written in gaming."
He continued: "Though it might sound counterintuitive, the plot is in many ways secondary to the relationship you build between Henry and Delilah, and that portion of the game is truly inspired. I've already returned to Firewatch for a calming walk in the woods; I imagine I'll go back again soon to visit with Henry and Delilah."
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