By Phil Hornshaw on Oct 31, 2018 10:50 pm
Get The Right Tool For The Job
Matching the right weapon to the situation will often save your life in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout mode.
It's tough to be ready for all the scenarios you'll see in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's battle royale mode, Blackout. After all, the total unpredictability of how you might encounter other players is part of the draw of the battle royal genre. Will you catch them out in the open, hiding behind cover as they scope out the area, in perfect position for an easy sniper headshot? Or will you open a door to discover someone camping in a corner, who's been listening for your arrival? Having the right weapon for the task at hand can mean the difference between getting a kill and getting killed in Blackout, but you can only carry so much. You're afforded two weapons slots, plus inventory space for a host of gadgets, grenades, and perks. More often than not, though, Blackout engagements will come down to a combination of skill, luck of the draw, and having a weapon you know and trust in your holster. You can't always have the perfect gun for the job, but you can try to plan for what's likely, adjust based on your own playstyle preferences, and try to be prepared. If you expect to be up close and personal inside structures, close-range weapons such as SMGs and shotguns are super-effective. Likewise, you can get away with some long-range engagements with the right rifles and optics, even if you're not much of a sniper or marksman. But Blackout is full of weapons options, and when you've got time to have your pick, it can be tough to choose which guns to grab and which to leave behind. Here's a smattering of guns we've come to enjoy for different types of scenarios that might help you make some informed choices.
For Close Encounters: Spitfire SMG
The Spitfire is a great SMG to keep handy when you're clearing interiors and fighting at close ranges.
The Spitfire brings death to your enemies in a hail of bullets, especially at close range. Among Blackout's SMGs, it has the highest rate of fire, so it's great for those interior engagements when you might be a bit panicked and spraying ammo through a doorway after unexpectedly encountering a player. Up close in general, the Spitfire is a great choice: its recoil is low and manageable, so it's deadly aiming down the sites or firing from the hip in an emergency. The Spitfire's accuracy suffers quite a bit as range increases, so you don't want to use it in situations where your opponent is too far off, but in those early-game or late-game close encounters, or if you're spending a lot of time indoors, it's a great option--especially if you can slap a suppressor on it.
For Close Encounters: Spitfire SMG
The Spitfire's high rate of fire makes it great for close-quarters battles.
The Spitfire sprays death on your enemies in a hail of bullets, especially at close range. Among Blackout's SMGs, it has the highest rate of fire, so it's great for those interior engagements when you might be a bit panicked and spraying ammo through a doorway after unexpectedly encountering a player. Up close in general, the Spitfire is a great choice: its recoil is low and manageable, so it's deadly aiming down the sites or firing from the hip in an emergency. The Spitfire's accuracy suffers quite a bit as range increases, so you don't want to use it in situations where your opponent is too far off, but in those early-game or late-game close encounters, or if you're spending a lot of time indoors, it's a great option--especially if you can slap a suppressor on it.
For More Close Encounters: SG12 Shotgun
Unload powerful shotgun blasts in a hurry with the SG12.
The shotguns of Blackout can be something of a tough sell. Both the SG12 and MOG 12-gauges fire fairly slowly compared to other guns, and while they do massive damage, they rely on your ability to hit a (definitely moving, possibly flailing) target with most or all of the blast. The thing is, the shotguns are extremely deadly close up. The MOG packs more of a punch, but sacrifices in the areas of both ammo count (it loads four shells at a time) and firing speed (you have to cock it) as compared to the SG12. The upshot of the SG12 is that it packs six shells and is semi-automatic--you can't hold the trigger down to fire it, but you can tap it for a very fast firing rate. That allows you to dump a ton of damage on a player in a short span of time, often killing them before they can even really react, and making up for only half-connecting with your initial salvo. If you know you're likely to face people at very close ranges, the SG12 is a reliable tool for your arsenal.
For All-Around Reliability: ICR-7 Assault Rifle
The ICR is a versatile weapon you can use in a variety of situations.
The ICR-7 is the kind of gun that gets things done. It's not best-in-class for anything in particular, but it's a reliable, low-recoil assault rifle you can use in a ton of situations effectively--if you're going to be stuck with something, it's a good gun to be stuck with. The ICR fires 5.57 bullets, so you shouldn't have trouble keeping it stocked with ammo, and it's a good choice at both close and mid-range. It can also be made extra effective with just about any attachments you find, especially optics or an extended barrel. The ICR probably won't be your favorite gun, but it will be one you can rely on to get you out of a few scrapes.
For Tactical Takedowns: ABR 223 Burst Rifle
The ABR's burst fire means you're at a disadvantage close up, but it's great for those mid-range engagements where aim beats magazine size.
In lots of Blackout situations, playing smart trumps twitch reaction, and for those moments, the ABR 223 is often the superior choice. The rifle fires three-round bursts, rather than the usual stream of bullets from other, more standard assault rifles. That means you less damage from blasting away at enemies, but the gun automatically stops you from spraying ammo all over the place. The added precision of controlled bursts means that in mid-range battles, you're more likely to actually hit what you're aiming at, and the controlled recoil of the burst can help you connect body and headshots. The ABR's burst fire isn't great in scenarios where you're either very close to your enemy or very far away, but in those mid-range engagements and places where you can find good cover, its accuracy and tendency for headshots can make the difference.
For Out-Lasting At Mid-Range: Maddox RFB Assault Rifle
The Maddox's large magazine and high fire rate make it a devastating assault rifle.
Blackout offers a lot of assault rifle options, between fully automatic guns and burst-fire options like the ARB and Swordfish, so the designation of "best assault rifle" really comes down to personal preference. That said, lots of players have chosen the Maddox as their go-to AR, and for good reason. The Maddox is great for the mid-range encounters you're likely to have in most any Blackout match, and it can dish out the punishment: It has both the fastest fire rate of any AR, and a magazine to help you keep the rounds flying. Our experience with the Maddox is that it often is victorious thanks to just having more bullets than the other guy, allowing you to get in a few extra hits when you'd normally have to reload. Throw an extended magazine on there and some range attachments like scopes and an extended barrel, and the Maddox becomes a killing machine.
For Long-Distance Calls: Paladin HB50 Sniper Rifle
If you've got the skills to use it, you won't find a more powerful sniper rifle than the Paladin.
Just about any sniper rifle is better than no sniper rifle in Blackout, especially if you're sneaky and cautious. The Paladin is a favorite because it deals a ton of damage. Two body hits from the Paladin should do the job, and a clean headshot will take another player down in one. Its bolt action means Paladin fires slowly, so it requires some definitive sniper skills, but it compensates with damage and less bullet drop than other rifles, which should make aiming a bit easier. If you can sit tight and catch players unawares, the Paladin will serve you well--especially if you can build your skills so you only need a couple of shots.
For When You've Absolutely, Positively Got To Kill Everybody In The Room: Titan LMG
When you need overwhelming firepower, the Titan is the right choice.
You probably won't come across the Titan super often, but when you do, it can be pretty exciting. The gun is a full-auto monster, kicking out the high damage of an LMG with the class's biggest magazine to go with it. The Titan is a bit unwieldy, but it's great in two scenarios: closer ranges and tight interior encounters where you can just pour punishment on anyone unlucky enough to be there, and suppressing fire at longer ranges. The Titan is reliably powerful and lets you dump a ton of ammo on a target, which makes it a great weapon to carry around with a squad, where other players can pack weapons that might be more effective at longer ranges. When you want to knock out a lot of people fast, accept no substitutes.
For When Something Just Needs To Blow Up: Hellion Salvo Rocket Launcher
It's a rocket launcher, and it's pretty awesome.
Right now, Blackout only has the one rocket launcher. That said, it's a rocket launcher. It turns regular objects into piles of flaming twisted metal. The Helion is specifically designed as an anti-vehicle weapon, and it'll lock onto vehicles like helicopters and trucks if you've got the time to really line up a shot. Trashing a squad's means of getting around is fun, especially while they're inside it. You can also use rockets to flush enemies out of cover, or just give somebody a surprise in the final circle they definitely won't expect. As goes without saying, hit someone with a rocket, or get the explosion close enough to them, and they're done.
By Alessandro Fillari on Oct 31, 2018 05:37 pm
The Wild, Wild West
Red Dead Redemption 2 presents players with what it easily Rockstar's most dynamic open-world adventure to date. Featuring a number of sophisticated systems and countless NPC characters to interact with, there are all sorts of encounters that await you in the game's expansive wild west setting. However, with a game of this scale, there are bound to be features that aren't stated clearly, even during the opening hours that serve as a tutorial of sorts. We've come up with a list of details and tips that Red Dead Redemption 2 keeps somewhat hidden from players, which we found from our time experimenting with the many mechanics at work. Though much of overarching gameplay pillars are explained in the abstract during the game's tutorials and relevant missions, there always seems to be a bit more information that's set aside for later. And more often than not, you're bound to uncover these details when you least expect it. We've got much more info and coverage on Red Dead Redemption 2 in the works. In the meantime, be sure to check out our full Red Dead 2 review on Rockstar's biggest open-world game to date, along with guides on how to make money and the best tips for new players. GameSpot is also currently running a new weekly series called QuickDraw, which highlights the series' impact on gaming, while also showing off just how in-depth Red Dead Redemption 2 gets.
Savor The Story
While the main story in Red Dead Redemption 2 has many exciting and heartfelt moments, we recommend indulging in as much of the side content and activities as you can before tackling the next major event. Over the course of the game, you'll see changes to the gang's camp, and several characters, including Charles, Lenny, and Javier, will have some missions for you to handle. These side-quests show up as white markers on your map--with the main missions showing up as yellow--and can lead to great rewards or interesting encounters for you to take part in. Unfortunately, several of these diversions are only available for a limited time, so make sure to do them as soon as you can. Some of the game's most heartfelt and humorous events can come from these missions, which you'll miss out on if you focus on the story. So take some time away from the main plot and chat with your comrades--you'll be glad you did.
Look To The Skies
When you're exploring the wilderness, you'll likely see smoke trails from campfire at a distance. These serve as an indicator for points of interests in the area, so heading to the source can open up unique encounters with the game's many strangers and traveling vagabonds. Most often the lone individuals you can find are friendly, even giving you supplies and tips on some locations you should keep an eye on, but other encounters can lead to violent stand-offs with rival gangs or disgruntled travellers. Regardless, there will always be something interesting to uncover once you reach a campsite.
Weight Watchers
When you're living a life as an outlaw--where sleeping in the dirt and getting into intense gunfights are the norm--it can be easy to lose track of Arthur's personal disposition. This becomes apparent when you notice that you're taking more damage than normal. Early on, the game introduces you to the concept of building up your health, stamina, and dead eye cores. However, depending on what Arthur eats, how often he does so, and what sort of physical exercise he gets, his base stats and cores will see some changes. These gains or losses are reflected by three distinct body types; average, underweight, and overweight, all of which have their own unique pros and cons.
When you're of average weight, your health and stamina cores will stay even. However if you find yourself underweight, you'll take slightly more damage, but gain a boost to stamina to compensate. If Arthur eats often and gets less exercise, which includes running, swimming, and getting into fist fights with the local ruffians, he'll become overweight, resulting in less stamina but an increase in damage absorption. Though you can keep track of Arthur's physical status in the Player menu, you can also watch Arthur during his idle animations. Depending on what his weight is, his posture and demeanor will adjust to reflect his current build.
With all that said, Red Dead Redemption 2 is all about letting you build out the protagonist how you see fit. So if you want a skinny or plump character, then you go ahead and make sure Arthur lives his best, most indulgent life.
High Risk, High Rewards
Whether it's from ransacking a homestead or scavenging from dead animals, you'll likely stumble upon some items that the local merchants will refuse to take off your hands. These items can fill up your satchel fast--giving you the impression that they may better placed in the dirt-but they may fetch a high price from a select set of merchants happy enough to buy them from you. To offload these items of dubious origins, you'll need to visit a Fence--essentially a black market dealer who sells and trades some of Red Dead Redemption 2's most valuable items.
In a variety of locations across the map--including Rhodes, Emerald Ranch, and Saint Denis--these merchants can be found in their own shops, tucked away from the popular areas of town. These Fences will also sell support items, throwable weapons, and recipes, and can also craft rare talismans and trinkets from Legendary Animal materials, which offer unique perks to Arthur's main cores. Moreover, there are also Fences that deal primarily in stolen wagons and horses, which also yield a solid cash return. So when you arrive to a new area, make sure you know where to find the local shady dealer.
Do A Barrel Roll
During combat, there may come a time where you need to get out of the line of fire fast. While aiming your weapon, press the action button (Square on PS4, or X on Xbox One) to perform an evasive dodge. Depending on which direction you hold the control stick while pressing, Arthur will dive or roll away from danger. While this can evoke some flashbacks to the Max Payne series' iconic gun battles, the dodge roll is purely an evasive maneuver--so no shooting while diving, unfortunately.
When Horses Attack
Red Dead Redemption 2 is essentially a Wild West Grand Theft Auto, but hijacking a new transport will take a bit more effort than simply pressing a button. The horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 can be very temperamental and get stirred up very easily--especially in the presence of predators in the wilderness. When approaching a new steed, you'll need to calm it down in order to safely get near it. Horses aren't afraid to defend themselves, and if you try approaching a wild mare or someone else's animal from its backside, it won't hesitate in readying a fierce kick to keep you at bay.
Your Guns, Your Style
The members of the Van der Linde gang are all capable gunslingers, and this is especially true of Arthur. With some impressive handling of all sorts of firearms, which includes pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, the main character isn't shy about showing off more of his particular style. While at a weapon shop, you can customize your weapons in a number of ways, including adding new barrels, paint work, wrapping--to decrease degradation--and even place some stylish decals on your firearms. Though some of these customization options won't offer any tactical advantage whatsoever, they can go a long way in helping you define your own take on Arthur and his legend. And if you really want to show off some flair after an intense gunfight, double tap the holster button (L1 on PS4, LB on Xbox One) to put your pistol away in style.
Relive The Glory Days
Much like the original Red Dead Redemption, the prequel features a number of main missions that will show off many exciting and emotional moments. But in Red Dead Redemption 2, you're given the ability to replay these pivotal moments and re-experience the game's most interesting encounters at any time. After the end of each mission, you'll receive a ranking on your performance based on how long it took and whether or not you completed the side objectives. If you feel you can do better, or if you just want to see a badass moment again, you can do redo the mission by going into the Progress sub-menu and selecting the Story option. You'll see your current place in the main plot, along with a listing of previously completed missions from each chapter, which can be replayed at your leisure.
Hunting The Best Game
Though the hunting gameplay in Red Dead Redemption 2 takes many cues from the original, it now requires a far more thoughtful and careful approach. In addition to the 178 animals featuring their own backgrounds and unique methods to take them down in a hunt, the wildlife comes in three different ranks--poor, good, and perfect. While you'll often get the basics from any animals regardless of quality, you'll need to ensure that you're hunting above average prey in order to get the best pelts possible. To see whether the animal you're hunting is worth the effort, make sure to study it at a distance first, which will give you clues on how best to hunt it. After doing so, you'll see a set of stars next to its name on the HUD. If you find yourself on the trail of an animal with only one star, you should look elsewhere in the area for something better.
A More Immersive Experience
If you're itching for a more personal Red Dead Redemption 2, you can adjust the game and its look to offer a more involved experience that will keep you on your toes. Along with the game's first-person view mode, which allows players to experience the entire game in this perspective, you'll also be able to customize aspects of the HUD and gameplay, stripping away most on-screen indicators and tweaking the controls to your liking. With no HUD, you'll have to pay attention to more details in the environment, as well as remember the clues that NPCs give you. Though if you still want to use an aid to get around, Rockstar has a companion app for Red Dead Redemption 2 to offer players additional help.
Takedown The Big Targets With Ease
When hunting, you may find some larger targets that are more difficult to get a bead on. If you're having a difficult time getting a clear shot or keeping your prey from moving, you can always try lassoing it up. Despite this going counter to stalking and hunting prey the old-fashioned way, it's still a surprisingly effective way to get a hold of your target. If you're able to get close enough it, you'll also be to use your hunting knife to give it a quick death, which counts as a clean kill. However, this is only effective on medium to larger sized animals, as smaller game will be able to slip out of the rope easily.
Showing Your True Colors
In Red Dead Redemption 2, every choice you make with Arthur feeds back into the game's overarching Honor system. Depending on the type of character you play, whether as a likeable outlaw or a ruthless gunslinger, you'll witness changes to Arthur's behavior and to the game's presentation. If you're of high honor, not only will you receive some discounts from stores, the tone of your journal entries will be more upbeat, and the style of killcams you'll get will be more in the style of old-school westerns. If you're a particularly decent fellow, and want to make some solid gains on the honor system, take a stroll down the street in a populated area of town and greet the locals. You'll quickly earn some positive vibes from the townsfolk.
However, if you find yourself playing more of a cutthroat, kill-cams will be more violent, your responses to NPCs will be more snide, characters will always be on the lookout for you, and the tone of your journal will be more cynical and off-putting. Each side has its own set of advantages, and it's all up to you in how you want others to view Arthur.
Look After Your Loot
As you're exploring the wilderness on your horse, it's all but inevitable that you'll take a nasty spill. While these brutal wipeouts can often be humorous, they can result in some serious consequences. In addition to causing harm to both Arthur and his mare, you'll also drop all items that placed on the back of your trusty steed--which temporarily holds pelts and small game. This won't be an issue that often, but there may be some cases where you'll crash out on a hill or in a rocky place, which will make it easy to lose track of those precious supplies. This can be especially devastating if you spent a great deal of time hunting animals, only to have lost the pelt and bodies when crashing head-first into a tree. So if you crash your horse, make sure to collect yourself and all your belongings before you ride off.
Taking In The Sights
Red Dead Redemption 2's cinematic camera mode can offer you the chance to view the sweeping vistas of the game's world in a different light. With a dynamic camera, you'll get to see Arthur and his crew ride across the landscape with some breathtaking sights in the backdrop. However, controlling the character during the cinematic mode can be somewhat problematic, thanks to the shifting camera. Thankfully, Rockstar included a subtle feature to make movement much easier in the cinematic mode. By holding down the X/A button in this special camera mode, Arthur and his horse will stick to the trail, automatically turning and making corners when needed. If you have a particular destination set on the map, either for a story mission or a waypoint, the game will guide Arthur to that location as well.
Prime Fishing Time
When taking up the fishing activity, there may be some cases where you won't get many bites. While it's important to make sure you're using the correct bait and lures for the location you're in, and that your fishing technique is correct, another factor to consider is the current time in the day. Depending on when you decide to head out, you'll see a different amount of activity in the lake, pond, or river. To get the best results during a fishing activity, try to stick with early morning and afternoon time in-game. Also, fishing during a rainstorm will increase the activity of the aquatic animals a bit further.
By Tamoor Hussain on Oct 31, 2018 05:29 pm
Red Dead Redemption 2 is out now, and it explains the majority of its gameplay systems that you'll be interacting with across the many hours you can play it. However, since it's so big, some of the information can be doled out over the course of multiple hours. This is a smart decision that means players aren't overwhelmed from the outset, but you may find yourself asking questions that the game isn't ready to answer yet or that you simply missed. Just as you'd expect, the open-world game is overflowing with things you can do, as you can read about in our Red Dead 2 review. Should you choose, you can sink a huge number of hours into exploring the vast American wilderness and enjoying the beautiful environments it presents, hunting animals to provide for your friends and family, or robbing trains to--well, provide for your friends and family in a less wholesome way. To help you hit the ground running we've put together a number of tips that that'll help you get along better earlier in the game. These should serve as a primer to jumping into the world of Red Dead Redemption 2, so we've included a bunch of some of smaller things that, once we realised them, made for smoother play sessions. Alongside those, there's information that the game tells you, but perhaps doesn't stress upon as much as it should. Crucially, this is all spoiler free, so you're in no danger of hearing about that moment where [REDACTED]. For more Red Dead Redemption 2 tips we've got spoiler-free guides on how the morality and honor systems work, the best way to make money, and some information on how weapon customization functions. If you're planning to spend a bunch of time fishing, we've got a guide for that too. Make sure to also watch Quickdraw, our weekly Red Dead Redemption 2 video series. In the first episode we looked at previous Rockstar games that have influenced RDR 2. The second episode, meanwhile, is a story recap of the original Red Dead Redemption.
Fit As A Fiddle
Red Dead Redemption 2 gets surprisingly in-depth with information on the health and well being of its main character, Arthur Morgan. And to really make the most of these you should head into the "Player" menu in the pause screen and select "Arthur." You'll be presented with information cards that clue you into the state of your Health, Stamina, and Dead Eye cores, which dictate how quickly each of these attributes regenerates. To guarantee you're operating at peak performance you need to maintain your Cores by eating, resting, and generally keeping Arthur in good shape. You'll also get information on the actual numerical percentage of how much core you have remaining. Temperature and weight impact stats for health and stamina respectively, so if you're layering up in the heat or walking around in the chillier parts of the world as if it's a warm summer's day, you'll see Arthur's health drain faster. Similarly, if your Arthur is thick with two Cs, stamina will take a hit but your health will be boosted slightly. However, if he's on the thinner side, health will be impacted negatively, but your stamina will improve a bit. All outlaws are beautiful in our eyes, but if you have a specific playstyle in mind it's important to watch your weight and manage it to suit you.
Mapped Shortcut
This is a very small quality of life improvement that has a big impact. You'll spend a whole lot of time going into and out of the map in Red Dead Redemption 2. Its world is vast and although there are key locations that you'll travel to, along with waypoints to guide you there, the game also cultivates a wanderlust. Sometimes, this may mean going out into the wild west to hunt, and if you're looking for a specific animals you'll need to head to particular spots. Other times you may just want to trot around to see what strange situations and scenarios present themselves to you. Initially, getting the map up can seem like a two-step process: pressing the start button to bring up the pause menu, then selecting the map option. However, you can expedite this by instead holding the start button down, which will take you straight to the map. This is a common thing in modern open-world games but it isn't explicitly mentioned so it can be an easy to miss detail.
Circle of Life
Hunting is a crucial part of Red Dead Redemption 2. It brings in resources for you and the rest of your gang to survive off, but also lets you build a deeper connection with the world around you through study and observation. When you come across an animal to hunt, don't just go all Yosemite Sam on it. Instead, be more Elmer Fudd and take it slow. Be sure to use the study prompt as you'll get an entry in the "Animals" section of the Compendium that tells you a little more about it. This includes details on how they behave, the best weapons to use to bring them down cleanly (and thus increase their value), and what they can be used for. Early in Red Dead Redemption 2 you're taken out on a hunt and given a runthrough of how it works. It's all fairly simple, but there are two main tricks that help considerably. The first is masking your own scent. Press in the analogue sticks to activate Eagle Eye and you'll see an aura emanating off you--that's your own body funk, don't be ashamed, you're a rough and ready outlaw living off the land and farting into the winds whenever it suits you--this is the good life. You'll need to make sure those wisps of B.O. aren't being carried towards the animal, as they're super judgemental about odors and will bolt. If you're out on a tricky hunt we recommend heading to a vendor first, as they'll usually sell you an item to mask your smell, or you can craft one. Also hit the baths regularly; there's a limit to how much you can smell like sun baked horse poop. The other tip is to attract the attention of an animal locking on to them and then pressing square (on PS4) or X (on Xbox One). This causes the animal to raise its head and leaves it in the perfect position to be brought down cleanly. We recommend trying to use a bow as often as possible when hunting, as it's quieter and better for getting clean kills. Don't forget to give your pelts to Pearson back at the camp, or one of the Trappers that appears. They will hold on to them them for you to come back and use for crafting later.
Hop The Fence
At a certain point in the game you'll complete a mission and meet a Fence. No, we're not talking about a wooden partition typically used to enclose outside areas and made of posts connected by either boards, rails, or wires, we're talking about the criminal variety of Fence. These folk will buy stolen goods from you, which is handy if you've just five-finger discounted a carriage or horses. However, they'll also more than happily take small ticket items off your hands, so if you're the robbing and heisting type, Fences will be your best buddies. However, if you're fresh off committing a crime and have a bounty on you, you'll need to first pay off this off at the Post Office, as Fences won't chat to you otherwise.
Pistols At Dawn
The basics of shooting in Red Dead Redemption 2 are familiar, simple, and intuitive. However, your gun has more uses than filling folks with lead. In fact, it can also be used to get what you want out of a person without killing them. The thundering clap of gunfire has a way of persuading people to be more compliant, so if you take out your gun, hold the aim button, and then press up on the directional pad, Arthur will point his gun into the air. When you fire, you may find people a little more deterred from acting out. While many will usually comply for fear of losing their lives, others may ignore you. You can usually tell whether it's going to work based on the other person's demeanour. The cowardly types tend to stop dead in their tracks, but if you're robbing someone and they have a defiant attitude, you may be out of luck. Nevertheless, it's worth a shot into the sky. For those after a gun-focused tip that's useful in combat, hit the square or X button while aiming to execute a dolphin dive. The game has a cover system to keep you safe when the bullets are flying, but the dive is a handy way of minimizing risk when moving point to point.
Wicky Wicky Wild Wild West
For those who enjoy exploring the nooks and crannies of far-off virtual lands, Red Dead Redemption 2 provides plenty to uncover. One of the most immersive ways to experience it all is to turn off the in-game map and rely on your own sense of direction and navigational skills to get around. If you hold down on the directional pad and opt for turning off the minimap, characters that you ride with will be more forthcoming with directions, which makes for a more natural--and authentic--form of discovery. If you find yourself struggling, however, you can always just tap down again to briefly bring up the map to get your bearings. While you're out and about, keep your eyes peeled for smoke in the sky; where there's smoke, there's usually a (camp)fire, and this more often than not will either lead to a side-mission or a memorable random encounter. Similarly, listen for things happening in your environment, as you may hear someone shouting for help or beckoning you to come over as you pass by. Sometimes it's easier to just use public transport to get where you need to, and to make use of fast travel you can hop on a taxi coach or a train. These are usually only available in towns, but if you upgrade Dutch's quarters in the camp, you can then also purchase a map for Arthur that allows him to return to certain previously visited locations.
Gimmie The Loot, Gimmie The Loot
Money makes the world go round, and you'll need to keep a constant influx of cash to get by. While exploring the world and doing missions, it's common to come upon abandoned camps with lots of items up for picking. Sometimes you'll have to walk up to individual items and snatch them up, but you may also stumble upon a bunch of goodies in close proximity to each other. In these situations, simply hold down the loot button and Arthur will pocket the valuables as smoothly as one of Fagin's boys. One of the most consistent sources of cash and goods is the bodies of your fallen enemies. Naturally, you'll be taking out a whole lot of people, and you should make it a point of stripping them of their valuables while you're at it. As with the previous game, enemies you've killed are marked on the map with a small 'x', so once battles have subsided, ensure you head over to all the corpses and recover your spoils.
Horseplay
As the saying that we just made up this second goes, "A cowboy is only as good as the horse he or she rides in on," so you'll want to spend time strengthening your bond with your noble steed. The easiest way to deepen your bond with your horse is through positive reinforcement. When you're moving at a *checks Google* "two-beat trot," press in the left analogue stick and Arthur will tell his horse how much he values it and how it's the bestest and bravest. From our experience, the cooldown on this is around 14 seconds, so you could min-max wholesome horse compliments to build your bond quicker. As your bond grows, your horse's health and stamina will improve, you'll be able to whistle for it from further away, and it'll come to you even if you're in combat. It'll also cross deeper water and rougher terrain, and if someone tries to steal it, they'll have a much harder time. Other abilities such as rearing, skid turning or stopping, and even dressage also become available. There's also some tricks to riding a horse properly, as well as best practices. If you tap the X or A buttons in time with your horse's gallops you'll reduce the rate at which it uses stamina, which means you can run faster for longer. Make sure to also give it regular breaks and feed it often. As the other saying we just made up goes, "A healthy horse is the wind beneath a gunslinger's feet." When you're riding long distances you also have the option to use the cinematic camera. If you set a waypoint on the map and there's a direct line along a defined route there, then switch to the cinematic camera, your horse will stay true and all you've got to do is hold the run button down.
The Right To Bear Arms
Red Dead Redemption 2 has a diverse range of weaponry available for you to implement in your cowboying ways. For quite a few hours you'll find yourself limited to the basics: six-shooters, rifles, and shotguns--and the more basic versions of them at that. If you're the kind of person who finds themselves frequently staring down the barrel of a gun with another poor soul in your crosshairs, you may be tempted to save up some cash to try and get new, more powerful weapons. If that's what you want to do, go ahead; it's the wild west and you're an outlaw so be the master of your own destiny and all that. However, if you want to save yourself a bit of cash and get your hands on some powerful weaponry, spend time focusing on doing the main story missions. Unsurprisingly, the game is very generous in giving you useful rewards when completing these missions, so if you follow the critical path you'll get showered with new guns, items, and equipment. Resisting the urge to ride out into the wild lands of America with nothing but a gun and your horse to make a name for yourself may be difficult, but stick with the gang for a bit in the early game and it'll be worth your while in the long run.
Wish You Were Here
Finally, here's a quick tip that will keep FOMO at bay. Make sure to do the missions that appear as white icons around your camp. These are usually activities that you undertake alongside other members of the Van der Linde gang, and provide some nice characterization moments. These will disappear after a while, either because they're time sensitive or because narrative advancements wipe them away. If one of these pops up, make sure to prioritize them over the yellow, core missions. Those will always be there, waiting for you.
By Edmond Tran on Oct 31, 2018 05:28 pm
Red Dead Redemption 2 Guide: How To Make Money
As a wise man once said: "cash rules everything around me", and if Arthur Morgan had lived to see 1994, he'd probably agree. As you might expect, the keys to progression in Red Dead Redemption 2 don't lie in stockpiling experience or skill points, but cold hard cash. It's a rich man's world out in the old west, and if you have a good wad of money in your wallet, you can use it to buy better guns and equipment, feed yourself, groom your horse, buy new duds, customize the hell out of everything you own, and give you and your campmates a more comfortable way of living, among other things. But like real life, it ain't easy getting rich. The Van Der Linde gang begin the game in a poor financial position, and for a long time you'll find yourself doing tasks for little to no reward, and feel like you're getting nowhere. But don't fret, there are plenty of avenues to make some bread in Red Dead 2. Here are all the ways we've discovered so far. It's spoiler free, and you don't even have to be a jerk all the time. There are actually some money-related advantages to being a good guy, so you should carefully consider the approach you plan on taking with your version of the character. Diligence is one key aspect to making money, as you'll want to loot corpses, but there's more to it than ensuring you don't leave cash lying around on the ground after a fight. Read on for a full list of ways too make money quickly and easily. Red Dead Redemption 2 is out now for PS4 and Xbox One. If you want know exactly how Rockstar's latest open-world adventure turned out, check out our Red Dead 2 review. For more guides, read our feature offering beginner's tips you should know, as well as our money guide. We've also got articles detailing how long the game is and how gun customization works. But do you have any money making tips? Let us know all about them in the comments below.
Loot Every Corpse
Have you played a video game in the past five years? Then this should be a no-brainer: loot everybody you see. You'll find ammo and consumable items which are always helpful, but you'll also often find a small amount of cash and valuable items which you can later sell. The act of looting is a bit more labored in Red Dead Redemption 2, but don't worry--after huge battles, Arthur will get the chance to comb the battlefield for spare change, and here's a tip--keep holding down the loot button and Arthur will automatically move on to a nearby body as soon as he's done. Also be sure to loot interior locations with cabinets and drawers (you can use Arthur's hunting sense with L3 + R3 to highlight lootable items), as well as the saddlebags of any remaining horses.
Rob People And Stores
If you have no hesitations about being a badder-than-average cowboy, you can easily rob people on the street at gunpoint and ask them to hand over whatever they have. You can do the same to shopkeepers and get access to the cash register and any illicit business they may or may not be hiding in the building. Just be aware that these kinds of situations don't always go down well, depending on who you deal with--you need to be prepared for the consequences if a job goes south.
Rob Trains
If robbing a lot of people in a short amount of time is something that appeals to you, then keep an eye out for any trains that might be nearby. There's some effort involved in actually getting on there and dispatching any guards, but after that, you basically have whole carriages full of people just handing things over. Just make sure to cover your face and know when to peace out.
Rob Stagecoaches
Stagecoaches can also be pretty profitable, and they're a little easier to get under control. There are a number of ways to get one to stop with either by using your moxie or your muscle and once you've got things under control you can break into the lockbox at the rear of the carriage by either using a lockpick or just shooting the lock. Later in the game, you'll get access to characters who can give you hot tips on where to intercept particularly lucrative stagecoaches.
Fence Your Looted Valuables
Alright, so you know all those rings, jewelry bags, buckles, gems, and pocket watches you've picked up? That stuff is no good to you, so sell it! Well, maybe keep just one pocket watch. You can either donate these items via the donation box to have it go straight to the gang's communal funds, or you can find a fence later in the game (there aren't any near the starting towns) to have that money go straight into your pocket.
Fence Stagecoaches and Horses
As you progress through the story, Arthur and friends will meet characters who will take any stolen stagecoaches or horses you've come into possession of and give you a bit of cash for them. This is a bit of a drag, since you have to physically bring them back and the take isn't amazing, but worth considering if it's only a short detour. You can still sell horses at regular stables, but you won't get as much from them. You can also break in wild horses and sell them to a stable--you'll also get more for it depending on your bond with it.
Hunt Animals, Then Sell Them.
When you're living on the road and off the land, hunting and fishing is a part of life. Animals have a number of uses--you can skin them and use their pelts in crafting, cook their meat for sustenance, and donate their carcasses and meat to Pearson back at camp to keep the camps food supplies up. But if your own supplies are well-stocked, you can also sell all animals and fishes to the butchers you find in towns. The selling price is based on the hunt quality, and the return is not great, but if you're already on your way into town a quick stop to hunt a boar is a good way to make few bucks for your next meal.
Hunt Down Bounties
Alright, time to be a goody-goody. Optional wanted bounties will occasionally pop up during the game--you'll typically find posters in a town's Sherrif's office. You'll get a reasonable amount of money for hunting down these criminals and bringing them in, and it's usually worth doing them to get those extra little bits of storytelling.
Upgrade Dutch's Tent In Camp
One of the first upgrades you can request for your camp is to improve Dutch's tent. This will supposedly encourage gang members to be more proactive in contributing to camp funds, but honestly, the difference is almost negligible.
Always Help Venom And Bear Trap Victims
Red Dead Redemption 2 is full of little encounters to discover while exploring the open world. One of these encounters involves snakes, and the other involves bear traps. If you ever stumble across someone like this asking for help, do something! They won't give you anything immediately, but some time later, you'll run into them hanging out in front of a store. They'll recognize you, and offer to let you buy almost any one item from the store they're at and put it on their tab. This could mean anything from a free gun to a new hat, and potentially save you a couple hundred dollars.
Help People For Information
Help people in other types of random encounters, and they'll often give you tips on where to find more avenues for money, like homesteads ripe for robbery. So yeah, it pays not to be a jerk sometimes. Well, until you need to be a jerk and rob someone's house. But they're mostly bad people, honest.
Play Some Minigames
I'm no good at poker. But if you are, then it can be a pleasant way to earn a bit of easy cash. Red Dead Redemption features games like poker, blackjack, dominos, and five-finger fillet, all of which can be played for money.
Do Missions
By far the most lucrative way to make money in Red Dead Redemption 2 is to just play the game--do the story missions, do the side missions, do the stranger quests. Some of them will only get you a small cash reward, some of them won't reward you at all, sure. But some of them will involve the activities mentioned, like stagecoach holdups and home robberies, and are more lucrative. Some of the major story missions will see you walking away with thousands of dollars. On top of that, missions will occasionally give you new guns and items, saving you a bit of money if you can just hold out a little longer before buying that sweet bolt-action rifle. So if you're low on cash, don't get too down in the dumps--there are a lot of avenues to make money no matter what kinds of activities you enjoy doing in Red Dead Redemption 2, so just follow your heart, and the rewards will come.
By Matt Espineli on Oct 31, 2018 03:55 am
Terrors of the Season
Halloween fast approaches, which means you're likely in the mood to play some spooky games. Luckily for you, there are a wealth of horror games to play that are well worth your time. The genre had humble beginnings in the late '80s, with a wave of fantastic games coming out in the three subsequent decades. And thanks to the rise of indie games, there are more horror games out now than ever before. To help you discover some of the most terrifying horror experiences available, we've compiled 13 games that we find to be the most frightening. Genre classics like Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil Remake, and Dead Space are represented here, but you'll also find more surprising choices interspersed throughout. Regardless of their notoriety, the games we highlight are all ones we that left us with lasting memories. There's a lot of horror-related media out right now that isn't just games. The latest entry of the cult favorite horror film franchise Halloween just released, and it's quite good, so be sure to read our review. There are also some pretty cool Easter eggs in the film that are likely to please hardcore fans. In other news, the second season of Castlevania premiered recently on Netflix, and we've got a Season 2 review. Which horror games do you think are the scariest? Shout out your favorites in the comments below.
Silent Hill 2
A lot has been said about Silent Hill 2, so I'll spare you any overt critical analysis I have on this much beloved survival-horror sequel and instead share with you why this game still rocks. The premise alone should be enough to captivate you. As the widowed James Sutherland, you travel to the foggy town of Silent Hill in search of your dead wife, who has somehow managed to send you a letter. As a middle schooler (yes, I played this game in 8th grade), Silent Hill 2's story was like nothing else I had encountered. There were no action heroes, explosions, or convoluted government conspiracies. Just a crippling sense of dread, an eerie atmosphere, and intriguing characters that kept my hands glued to my PS2 controller. Silent Hill 2 expertly handles its myriad horrors, pulling you in with disturbing creatures, clever puzzles, and haunting sound design. I can't help but be in awe of how well it stands up whenever I revisit the game every few years. Its Historical Society area remains one of its crowning achievements and one of horror gaming's most expertly designed environments, brilliantly handling tense foreboding with unexpected pathways and puzzles. There are some slow moments interspersed between its most terrifying ones, but they're never enough to detract from the chilling horror and thought-provoking storytelling on display. If you haven't played Silent Hill 2, you're in for quite a spooky adventure. It's one of the genre greats for a reason, and it only continues to stand the test of time. -- Matt Espineli
Outlast
Red Barrels' Outlast has always stood out to me for how the game presents its world. Mount Massive Asylum is blanketed in absolute darkness, so the only way to see where you're going most of the time is by using the night vision function on protagonist Miles Upshur's video camera. Because I'm terrified of the dark, I use the camera all the time, and this transforms everything I see into a murky green where faraway environmental details aren't clear and enemies' eyes shine with a ghoulish glow. Also, this mechanic forces me to explore--batteries need to be found to keep the night vision function on the camera working--and Outlast's chilling soundtrack make those unscripted moments of searching very tense. Looking for batteries isn't even the scariest part of Outlast, though. It's the inhuman Variants that create most of the game's scares. Desperately running through an insane asylum while cannibalistic twins, a scissor-wielding mad scientist, and a seemingly unkillable monster chase after Upshur is terrifying. The worst of these Variants, Eddie Gluskin, appears in Outlast's Whistleblower expansion. Gluskin, aka The Groom, is a deranged serial killer who mutilates his male victims' genitalia in order to create the "perfect wife." Watching what he does--in first-person I might add--to the DLC's protagonist, Waylon Park, haunted me for days, and is still nauseating to even think about. -- Jordan Ramee
Dead Space
Three years after Resident Evil 4 squeezed new scares from one of gaming's best horror series, Visceral Games might have perfected the third-person survival horror formula with Dead Space. Players control engineer Isaac Clarke as he and a rescue team land on a city-sized spaceship to find out why it's not responding to communications. They quickly discover the reason is that the ship has been overrun by monsters that used to be its crew, which are nearly impossible to kill unless players use various sci-fi mining tools to hack off the creatures' limbs. Dead Space is a perfect confluence of modern sensibility and old-school survival horror, pairing fantastic graphics and gameplay, specifically its limb-cutting mechanics, with slightly uncooperative controls and the desperate hunt for items to keep Isaac healthy. The game uses everything at its disposal to scare you. Its industrial setting pairs with sound design that makes you constantly feel like you're not alone, and every surface is covered in air vents perfect for delivering popcorn-tossing moments as lethal mutated creatures come squirming out, straight at your face. Visceral tops it off with a spooky story that combines Alien, Children of the Corn, and Evil Dead. -- Phil Hornshaw
Devil Daggers
Devil Daggers may not be a traditional horror game by any means, but that makes it no less scary every time I play it. It throws you into a dark arena and tasks you with eliminating waves of flying skulls, disgusting, multi-legged beasts, and other demonic monstrosities. There is no winning in Devil Daggers; death is inevitable, whether that comes after 10 seconds or 100 (if you're good). It's minimal in terms of visuals and sound; there's no music to accompany the onslaught of enemies. Instead, enemies produce terrifying but distinct noises. This serves to assist you by letting you know where enemies are, but it also creates an inescapable sense of dread as these horrifying monsters box you in. I find it hard not to jump out of my seat when I turn and see that I'm face to face with a flying horned monster. It's unusual that a game designed around high score runs is scary, and the threat of failure is undoubtedly part of what makes Devil Daggers so tense. But it's the combination of this tension with the haunting imagery and sounds that create a legitimately terrifying experience. -- Chris Pereira
Slender: The Arrival
I'll admit to being the perfect mark for Slender: The Eight Pages when it was released for free in 2012. The tiny, minimalist Unity experiment by developer Mark Hadley capitalized on peak Slender Man interest, expounding on the Internet-born folklore creature that was already doing a phenomenal job of absolutely creeping me out. Hadley's little game was a tightly made little nightmare: you're exploring a small, darkened park from a first-person perspective, and you're being hunted by a supernatural creature that you can't even look at without dying. Players try to gather eight pages from around a park, which detail some other poor victim's descent into madness, while the thing keeps appearing in front of you, ever closer. It was a perfect storm of jump scares, ambient dread, and a spooky creation of the zeitgeist at the height of its power. Slender: The Arrival expanded the game with multiple levels, a full story and prettier graphics to fully realize Hadley's original concept. It didn't change the core principle of being hunted, with nothing to help you except fleeing in desperate terror, and hoping that looking away from what stalks you might be enough to save you a few moments more. -- Phil Hornshaw
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
To play Resident Evil 7 is to willingly put yourself in an inhospitable environment. The decrepit mansion where the game begins is filthy, with peeling, yellowed wallpaper, broken drywall, and garbage littering the scarred wooden floor. Wind blows through the cracks in drafts, emitting a low, constant howl. The kitchen, scattered with moldy food and unidentifiable skeletal remains, is unspeakable. You can almost smell the rot. This is not a place you want to be--and that's before you meet the family that lives there. There's the dad, who stalks after you even after you've killed him numerous times. Mom doesn't bat an eye when he severs junior's hand at the dinner table. Somehow even worse is grandma, a catatonic woman in a wheelchair who can appear and vanish any time and anywhere when you're not looking. The game improves on the best aspects of the series, while throwing out everything that had grown stale in recent installments. Playing Resident Evil 7 is a thrilling, crazy, scary-as-hell experience. And if you think it's terrifying on a TV screen, you gotta try it in VR. -- Chris Reed
Condemned: Criminal Origins
The Xbox 360 had a generally strong launch lineup, despite lacking a killer app like Halo. There was a Majora's Mask-lite in Kameo: Elements of Power; sports games like Amped 3 and Madden, and for those who passed on the heavily flawed, but creative Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2 was there to satisfy action fans when WWII shooters were in their prime. With other titles with mass appeal like Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or Gun, who had time for a psychological horror game? That juxtaposition between Condemned: Criminal Origins and the rest of the launch lineup was perfectly clear in the music of the title screen. Half Se7en, half Shutter Island, you played as detective Ethan Thomas, who has to track down a serial killer to prove his innocence after his partner is murdered. Along the way, you're attacked by rattled-up drug addicts and hallucinations of demons who strategically flee, hide behind corners, and fight back in the game's surprisingly effective first-person melee combat. What made Condemned such a memorable horror experience was the feeling of being alone in the grittiest, most desolate parts of town, with intimate combat against people who hated you. You could hear them seething around corners, flanking you in the darkness, and that was all before the game throws demonic hallucinations at you. Sprinkle in a memorable final boss, a couple of solid jump-scares, one of the best uses of Xbox achievements in requiring you to forgo using guns, and a level set in a mall with walking mannequins that culminated in one of my favorite video game moments, and you've got a horror classic. Not bad for a launch-title. -- Nick Sherman
Doki Doki Literature Club
Don't judge a visual novel by its cover. Doki Doki Literature Club looks like a simple anime-inspired visual novel packed with tropes; you have a love triangle (or quadrilateral?), the tsundere, the shy one, and the childhood friend as a potential love interest all thrown into a high school club. While the game is front-loaded with your typical story progression, it's expected that you make it past a certain point where things really pick up. Take note of the content warning presented up front as Doki Doki Literature Club uses sensitive subjects and graphic visuals throughout its narrative. It'll subvert expectations in clever and terrifying ways that can be either subtle and in-your-face. Since this is a PC game, it has the unique ability to be meta; breaking the fourth wall is used to great effect and a few secrets get tucked away within the game's text files. There are a few moments that allow the player to impact progression, such as dialogue options or choosing which of the club members to interact with at certain moments. But that's all in service of building you up for when the game reveals its true nature. Even the wonderfully catchy soundtrack gets twisted to create an unsettling atmosphere. It's hard to communicate exactly why Doki Doki Literature Club is one of the most horrifying games because it relies heavily on specific story beats and meta-narrative events, and we wouldn't want to spoil the things that make it so special. You'll just have to experience it for yourself. -- Michael Higham
P.T.
First revealed during Gamescom 2014, we struggled to make sense of the peculiar game known as P.T.. Presented as an indie horror game coming from an obscure developer, it stealth-launched onto the Playstation Store with little fanfare. But in the hours after its release, fans began to piece together what this horror title truly was. Coming from Hideo Kojima and a dream team of horror talent including the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Junji Ito, P.T. was actually a teaser for Silent Hills, the next planned entry in Konami's revered horror series. The short demo made a lasting impression on those who dared to experience its simple, yet incredibly effective scares--myself included. While the concept is simple--only asking you to make it to the end of the hallway and through a door--the execution was anything but, often presenting players some mind-bending puzzles and terrifying obstacles to overcome. Like many, I grossly underestimated just how overwhelmingly tense and off-putting P.T. can be. What it offered was a hellish descent into madness and dread, featuring fourth wall breaking scares, gore, and the relentless stalking from a ghostly figure known as Lisa. After its completion, I felt that I had a greater appreciation for what horror games are capable of, and P.T. showed immense potential. Unfortunately, we would never see it fully realized in a game. Silent Hills would eventually be cancelled after Kojima's very public departure from Konami, and all we're left with is a demo for game that will never exist, which adds a posthumous allure to P.T. While the game's failure to launch is tragic, the sheer craft that P.T. showed in its short sampling is something that's still powerful to this day. But as it stands, the playable teaser is an eerie reminder of what could have been, which is ironically summed up with the demo's ending. As the main character--played by Norman Reedus--finally makes his way out of the strange house into the streets of a deserted town, he then wanders off into the fog, disappearing from sight soon after. -- Alessandro Fillari
Alien: Isolation
2014's Alien: Isolation was a bit of tough sell as a horror game. After spending many years as disposable cannon fodder in other Alien games, most notably in Aliens VS Predator and Aliens: Colonial Marines, the Xenomorph was elevated to boss status in Creative Assembly's survival horror FPS. Serving as a sequel to the original film, it moved away from the shooting galleries and action-horror from previous games, and honed its focus on dread, anxiety, and fearing the lone alien creature that stalks the halls of Sevastopol Station. As a deep admirer of the original Alien, more so than the sequel Aliens, I longed for the day where we could get a game more influenced by the first film--with its quiet moments of dread and low-fi sci-fi aesthetic in full swing. What I appreciated most about Alien: Isolation was that it not only respected the original film, but it also fully understood what it made it so scary. As you're desperately scavenging for supplies throughout the corridors, those brief moments of calm would almost inevitably lead to situations where you'll come face to face with the Alien, who is all-powerful and cunning in its approach to slay any human that comes across its path. For more of my thoughts on Alien Isolation, check out my retrospective feature discussing why the game is still an unmatched horror experience. -- Alessandro Fillari
Resident Evil Remake
When Resident Evil first hit the Playstation back in 1996, it revolutionized video game horror, and created a new sub-genre in the process--survival horror. Its GameCube remake in2002, and subsequent remaster for the PS4, XBox One, and PC, utilized improved graphics and lighting to greatly enhance the haunting atmosphere of the first game. You have the option to play as one of two STARS members (elite police officers), who have come to a mansion investigating a number of strange murders. Unbeknownst to them, this mansion is home to a number of illegal experiments operated by the Umbrella Corporation, leading to zombified humans and creatures attacking the STARS. The entire game takes place from fixed camera angles, and you never know what's on the other side of the door, or around each corner, meaning you're just moments away from walking into a scare. You're given limited ammo and even a limited number of opportunities to save your progress, and this formula works perfectly in tandem with the foreboding atmosphere. In one particular moment, I hadn't saved in hours and was running through a room I'd revisited multiple times in the past with 0 health left--when suddenly zombie dogs decided to jump through the windows scaring the crap out of me. A room I thought was safe had betrayed me at the worst time. This moment alone is easily one of the most impactful scares I've ever had playing a game, and cements Resident Evil as a mastercraft in horror video games. -- Dave Klein
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Eternal Darkness took the concept of Survival Horror--already well-established by games like Resident Evil, Clock Tower, and Silent Hill--and added a brand new element designed exclusively to screw with the player: the sanity meter. Alexandra Roivas returns to her family's estate after discovering her grandfather has been murdered. The police have found nothing, so she decides to look for herself, and finds a secret room with a book… the "Tome of Eternal Darkness." The game then takes place in multiple timelines and locations, with players choosing who they want to follow as characters battle with, or are corrupted by, ancient artifacts and the Eternal Darkness. This allows the game to utilize a vast array of settings for its horrors, as well having every character affected by a sanity meter, which slowly drains if players are spotted by enemies. Sanity effects range from statue heads following you, to weird noises and strange camera angles. In one particular instance, I went to save my game, only to find the game telling me it was deleting my save. I jumped off of my couch, ran over to my GameCube to turn off the game, only to realize the game was screwing with me, and my save wasn't being deleted. You win that round, Eternal Darkness… you win that round. -- Dave Klein
Five Nights At Freddy's
In the years since the release of the first game, the Five Nights At Freddy's series has gone from popular YouTube let's play game to massive phenomenon. As gaming's Friday The 13th, the horror series manages to get another sequel, even when people are just experiencing the previous game. While the franchise has spiraled out in a big way, the original game still manages to turn a mundane job into nerve wracking nightmare scenario. As the late-night security guard for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, your job is to make sure no one breaks into the place, and to ensure that the walking animatronic puppets don't murder anyone--namely you. That second part is important. With no means of self-defense, your only hope is to survive until early morning by blocking doors and obstructing the paths of the roaming animatronics puppets, who desperately seek any humans after hours. My expectations for the game were low, mostly due to how played-out it seemed in the months after its release. However, once I got to play it for myself, I was surprised at how quickly it ramped up in intensity, despite its ridiculous premise. Even though it manages to revel in jump-scares, almost comically so, the tension and moments leading up to those genuinely chilling encounters make for some rather memorable frights. Just when you think you're safe and only minutes away from sunrise, Freddy Fazbear waltzes into your safe room and gets the jump on you. I'll never forget the moment that this game, which I grossly underestimated, got the best of me. -- Alessandro Fillari
By Phil Hornshaw on Oct 31, 2018 03:44 am
When You Play the Game of Thrones, You Win or You Die
Reigns: Game of Thrones is tightly tied in with the show going into Season 8, but it's not canon.
(Note: This post is full of spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7 and Reigns: Game of Thrones, so read on at your own risk.) The newly released Reigns: Game of Thrones mobile game is in an interesting position. Ahead of the final season of HBO's hit show, based on author George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, it toes a precarious line by bringing players into the story as it stands at the end of Season 7, without spoiling anything of the upcoming final season. Reigns' developer, Nerial, in partnership with HBO, handles that proposition by turning Reigns: Game of Thrones' entire experience into a hypothetical exercise. The entire game is about working out potential conclusions to the Long Night, the super-long winter in which the White Walkers will try to take over the world, by seeing how various rulers might successfully repel the undead invasion. Reigns: Game of Thrones isn't canon, but it definitely has a strong handle on the state of the story. When last we left Westeros in Game of Thrones in Season 7, Cersei Lannister sat the Iron Throne, while Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, and Tyrion Lannister were all hoping to convince her to join an alliance against the White Walkers. Cersei seemed poised to stab everyone in the back--and then the Night King brought down the Wall. Where the story goes from here is anybody's guess, but fans have been guessing a lot. There are fan theories that dig deep into Westerosi lore, both from the TV show and the books, to try to anticipate how the story will unfold when the war with the White Walkers begins in earnest. What's interesting about Reigns is that it's fully aware of all these possibilities, and the game is basically a series of fan theories playing themselves out through the choices you make as you play. Can Daenerys's dragons repel the White Walkers? Will Arya complete her list? Is Tyrion destined to be a dragon rider? Is Jaime the brother from Cersei's prophecy, destined to kill her? What's interesting about Reigns is that it's so fully aware of all the show's plot threads, it feels like it might contain some real hints about what might actually happen. They're largely hypothetical, of course, but the story ideas in the game are right in line with where the show seems to be headed. A few of the plot elements in Reigns even hit on things the show hasn't mentioned, but that have appeared in the novels, raising the question of whether the game might be teasing where Season 8 is headed. Here are a few of the interesting elements that show up in Reigns that could be very important to the final season of Game of Thrones.
1. The Identity of Azor Ahai
There's a huge amount of speculation among fans as to who will turn out to the the Prince That Was Promised.
The Red Witch Melisandre is at the center of Reigns: Game of Thrones, as she searches for the prophesied Prince Who Was Promised, the legendary Azor Ahai. In the faith of the Lord of Light, Azor Ahai was a hero who fought back the darkness using Lightbringer, a flaming sword created from stabbing it into the heart of his beloved. Melisandre thinks Azor Ahai will be reborn as a hero in the current Westeros, who will lead the battle against the White Walkers--she previously thought that person was Stannis Baratheon, until his death. The show has also thrown some wrenches into the prophecy, noting that the Valyrian word for "Prince" could also mean "Princess." What's more, fans of the books also theorize that the prophecy could be a mistranslation, because the words for "lord" and "light" are almost identical to the words for "gold" and "hand." Jaime Lannister, of course, sports a gold hand, which suggests the ambiguity in the language in the books was intentional. Reigns goes with that idea, too; if you play as Jaime Lannister on the Iron Throne, the people of Westeros will come to believe you're Azor Ahai. Varys plays up the idea, providing Jaime with a gold hand attached to a glowing sword, and Jaime leads the united kingdom against the White Walkers, to victory. While Reigns has a different solution for every character, it's interesting that the ending that specifically mentions Azor Ahai and Lightbringer is the one for Jaime. At the very least, HBO and Nerial seem to have provided a little more credence to the idea that Jaime really could be the Prince Who Was Promised.
2. The Dragon Riders
The cryptic message "the dragon has three heads" is often taken to mean that three characters we know will ride Daenerys' dragons.
Another prophecy-style bit of information that's been kicking around the books and show is "the dragon has three heads," a portent going back all the way to the second book, A Clash of Kings, and Daenerys' visit to the House of the Undying. In the books, Daenerys has a vision of her brother Rhaegar and his son, Aegon. In the vision, Rhaegar says that Aegon is the Prince Who Was Promised--we now know that baby was Jon Snow--and then adds, "There must be one more. The dragon has three heads." That part didn't make it into the show, but the idea of the three dragon riders has been floating around the show for quite a while anyway. Things have changed in Season 7, though, with the Night King killing the third dragon, Viserion, and turning him into a wight. The show still needs a rider for Daenerys's other dragon, Rhaegal, though, and Reigns has a suggestion for that possibility. When working through the game as Daenerys, players can get tasked with choosing a rider for Rhaegal. Significantly, Jon Snow isn't on the docket because he's missing beyond the Wall. The remaining candidates are Tyrion, Jaime Lannister, Gendry, and Sansa Stark. While the show might default Rhaegal to be ridden by Jon, since he's also a Targaryen, fans have theorized about who that third rider could have been, and Reigns is playing into those fan theories. Of the choices, Rhaegal rejects Tyrion, Gendry doesn't go for it, and Jaime freaks out and tries to kill the dragon. The right choice for Rhaegal's rider is Sansa. It might be a moot point since there are two Targaryens and only two dragons remaining in the show, but then again, Sansa turning out to be the other dragon rider would be a fascinating twist for the show.
3. The Horn of Winter
The Horn of Winter wasn't just a weapon against the Wall--it also is supposed to summon giants, but it hasn't been mentioned in the show.
Probably the biggest question mark when it comes to things left out of the show in adapting the books for TV is the Horn of Winter, a mythical, magical object that supposedly had the power to bring down the Wall. Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, was searching for the horn to use it as a bargaining chip to get the wildlings through the Wall and away from the White Walkers, but in the books, Tormund told Jon Snow that Mance never found it. The horn hasn't even been mentioned in the show--although it may have been glimpsed at least once--and since the Night King destroyed the Wall with the undead Viserion, the horn wasn't necessary. The Horn of Winter isn't just for destroying the Wall, though. In the books, it also has the power to raise giants from the earth that could stop the White Walkers, which would make it very useful in the final battle during the Long Night. While the show hasn't mentioned the Horn of Winter, it does come up in Reigns, as one of the means of defeating the White Walkers. When playing the scenario in which Gendry, Robert Baratheon's bastard, sits the Iron Throne, the horn is discovered in Qarth by Arya Stark. She brings it back to Westeros, where Gendry can use it to beat the White Walkers. The horn summons metal giants from the earth that manage to destroy the White Walkers. While it seems very unlikely that Season 8 will see Gendry leading, uh, anybody, the fact that the Horn of Winter shows up in the game at all seems significant.
4. Uniting the Seven Kingdoms
Putting aside old rivalries is the only way anyone's going to survive the Long Winter, but that means dealing with Cersei.
The big drama of Seasons 7 and 8 is the continuing hostilities between Cersei Lannister in King's Landing and, more or less, the rest of Westeros, who are much more concerned with the looming White Walker threat. Just about everyone is convinced that only a united Westeros could survive the Long Night, but of course, Cersei doesn't really care. Reigns poses one interesting, and plausible-sounding, way in which the hatchet could be buried between the Lannisters and the Starks for the good of the realm, though: Sansa marries Jaime. That story idea requires Cersei being removed from power, of course, and most of the storylines in Reigns start with the idea that Cersei has been deposed and some other person has taken the Iron Throne--already a big leap from the show. But Sansa becoming such a practical leader that she makes that alliance, and Jaime becoming honorable enough to go along with it, rings true for the arcs of both characters. It might be a later development in the show, perhaps popping up after Cersei has finally been dealt with, but it seems like a solution to the show's animosities in line with the way Martin's story has been unfolding.
5. The "Fire" Part of "A Song of Ice and Fire"
Wildfire has come up enough in the show that it seems like a keystone in the fight against the White Walkers.
More than once, wildfire has been a major part of the story in Game of Thrones, which doesn't seem like an accident. Fire is the only way to dispose of the wights in the Night King's army, after all, and dragon fire is the current plan for stopping them from wiping out Westeros. The Pyromancers of King's Landing would be pretty useful in the fight against the undead, one assumes, and Reigns has the same idea. In Tyrion's story in the game, players can commission the Pyromancers to create a whole bunch of wildfire to use against the White Walkers. What's interesting is how Tyrion uses the wildfire to defeat the undead. He plants all the kingdom's wildfire under the God's Eye, the largest inland lake in Westeros, and then lures the White Walkers there for a final battle. When the walkers are in place, Tyrion has the wildfire detonated, destroying the entire army. While there are way more moving pieces in the show, the idea that wildfire would have come up in two major moments in the show--the Battle of the Blackwater and the destruction of the Sept of Baelor--but not against the White Walkers doesn't make a ton of sense. The God's Eye plot line definitely have the feel of a Tyrion plot that could actually make its way into the show, even if it doesn't singlehandedly end the war.
6. Arya the Faceless Queen
Arya Stark's list is getting is shorter, but Cersei Lannister's name still waits to be crossed off.
Watching Arya become a Faceless assassin and take out the people on her kill list has been one of the most fun and deadliest arcs in Game of Thrones. There's one name that looms larger than all the others on Arya's list, and it's still there: Cersei Lannister. Reigns has an idea for how their conflict could play out that would be an interesting twist on what we've seen in the show. When players take on the role of Arya, they start by sneaking into the Red Keep and assassinating Cersei, before claiming her face. Arya then impersonates Cersei for the rest of the game, leading Westeros and uniting with Jon, Sansa, and Daenerys in the battle against the White Walkers. Arya specifically makes the whole ruse work by revealing her true identity to her siblings and allies, creating a pact that allows them to unite the warring houses without anyone actually knowing what's up. That's probably a big leap--even Melisandre comments that the idea Arya could pretend to be Cersei basically for years and not get caught is pretty far-fetched--but allowing Arya to assassinate and impersonate Cersei would be a fun and bloody way for her to get her revenge, wrap up the war, and get Westeros on track to fight the army of the dead.
7. The Secrets of Valyrian Steel
Valyrian steel is one of the few things that can kill White Walkers, but there's only so much of it in Westeros.
Game of Thrones has made it pretty clear that Samwell Tarly's brain is going to be essential to stopping the White Walkers. Reigns has a suggestion for what it is Sam is going to discover, and how his contribution to the war effort plays out. When playing Reigns as Jon, you can discover some information about how Valyrian steel is forged. Valyrian steel is a very big deal--it's a special metal that's supposedly imbued with magic that can kill White Walkers. It's also super rare, and very few people in the world know how to make it. When players learn something about Valyrian steel, it causes Sam to remember some things he read in a book (as usual). Sam discovers the real secret to forging Valyrian steel, and that information allows Jon to outfit the armies of Westeros with weapons for killing White Walkers. With Valyrian steel weapons, the armies of the dead fall before the living. It's not the most glamorous or dramatic of secrets for Sam to discover, but that makes it feel even more possible.
8. What About Jon Snow?
There's surprisingly little about Jon in Reigns: Game of Thrones, which might be telling.
One major character who's story is pretty thin in Reigns is Jon Snow. In the last few seasons of the show, we've learned his true Targaryen parentage and seen him come back from the dead. Jon Snow has had the most success so far in fighting White Walkers, and he seems like the most likely candidate to be Azor Ahai. The other details in Reigns feel like they could be hinting at possible story elements in the future of Game of Thrones; in the case of Jon, it's the lack of details that seems significant. If Game of Thrones has more planned for Jon in Season 8, it would make sense for Reigns to actually hold back a lot of that information, and keep Jon's story a bit more sparse. That would help the show keep potential spoilers away from viewers. Where other ideas, like Tyrion's wildfire plan or Jaime bearing Lightbringer, could be hints at the direction of the show that might or might not be true, anything specific about Jon would probably wind up being right in line with the show's actual plot points. Reigns is keeping away from fan theories and speculation about Jon in order to avoid actually accidentally confirming anything. Or, of course, all of this idle speculation could be just that, and Reigns could be a very clever but ultimately inconsequential addition to the Game of Thrones story that's nothing like Season 8. The game is so in line with the details of the show that that seems unlikely, though. We're stuck waiting until 2019 to find out for sure.
By Chris E. Hayner on Oct 31, 2018 01:25 am
It's spooky movie season, which means different things to different people. Some love their psychological horror films, while others love a good zombie apocalypse. Still, there are also more than a few fans of the slasher sub-genre that somehow keep those movies successful, even decades after the end of the supposed boom. What makes a good slasher movie, though? Of course, you can always point to the final girl, like Halloween's Laurie Strode, as a big selling point. The idea that, for the most part, someone survives whatever is trying to kill them. Beyond those figures, though, it's the killers that make slasher movies interesting. As the years have rolled on, it's the killers, themselves, that have become pop culture icons, for better or worse. While we all love Nancy Thompson from A Nightmare on Elm Street, it's Freddy Krueger that people dress up as. Likewise, while a new Halloween movie wouldn't have happened without Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie, it's impossible to imagine her going toe-to-toe with anyone other than Michael Myers. With that in mind, we've revisited arguably too many slasher movies to figure out who the best big screen killers of all time are. Once we had the best 12 figured out, we simply ranked then on how awesome they are. Because let's be honest, the mark of a great slasher killer is how memorable they remain even years after they've left theaters. If this somehow isn't enough horror goodness for you, make sure to check out our rankings of the Friday the 13th, Halloween, and George Romero zombie franchises.
12. Billy Chapman
First appearance: Silent Night, Deadly Night Billy Chapman deserves more credit than he's given as a slasher killer. Silent Night, Deadly Night is a movie that is largely forgotten by modern audiences, but this film about a many who has a psychotic breakdown and takes to killing on Christmas Eve while dressed as Santa Claus is a classic. While the movie spawned a franchise--there are 4 sequels and a remake--it's Billy that made Silent Night, Deadly Night such a weird and fun thing to watch.
11. Pinhead
First appearance: Hellraiser The thing about the Hellraiser franchise is it's mostly bad. Pinhead, the central evil in most of the films, though, is very memorable. I mean, he's a ghostly white figure with needles sticking out of his head. How do you forget that? It's thanks to Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites--the name of his species--that so many disturbing kills were pulled off throughout the series, though the movies only get worse as time goes on.
10. Death
First appearance: Final Destination This is a peculiar one. You can't actually see this killer, but it's perhaps the most deadly. In Final Destination, a group of teens manages to avoid dying in a horrible accident when one of them has a vision of it unfolding. However, after avoiding their fates, Death must now take them out. That premise was repeated throughout five films, and there's something fun about each one of them. Death, as it turns out, can be very creative when it wants to.
9. Norman Bates
First appearance: Psycho It was Norman Bates that uttered the line, "We all go a little mad sometimes." While Psycho arrived long before even Halloween, this 1960 horror movie can easily be classified as a slasher. Norman, in many ways, set the stage for what slasher killers would become. He's a man who has fallen over the edge of sanity and given into the urge to kill. Of course, for him, he thinks it's his mother doing the dirty deeds. As we all know, though, she's dead and he's wearing a wig.
8. Jigsaw
First appearance: Saw Somehow, there have been 8 Saw movies, dropping unsuspecting victims into the worst escape rooms of all time. Behind just about all of them is the Jigsaw Killer, otherwise known as John Kramer. What makes Jigsaw so good--and hard to watch--is how inventive he is. Instead of outright murdering people, he essentially challenges them to complete gruesome obstacle courses that kill them in over-the-top ways. Seriously, what mind thought up the reverse bear trap? Sadly, though, the Saw movies are less about Jigsaw than the gore he inflicts. The franchise helped a resurgence of "torture porn" films that are far more focused on blood and guts than developing any character.
7. Chucky
First appearance: Child's Play If you were a child of the '80s and had a My Buddy or Kid Sister doll, Child's Play was pretty much the scariest thing you could imagine. Chucky, the Good Guy doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, has no problem slashing down everything in his way. For seven movies, Chucky raised all kinds of hell while making jokes. Honestly, if anything takes away from the mystique of Chucky, it's all the jokes. The sillier you get, the less scary you are.
6. Mrs. Voorhees
First appearance: Friday the 13th Sure, Jason is the more important name in slasher history, but he's nothing without his mother. While Jason didn't get his hockey mask until Friday the 13th: Part 3, he didn't even appear, as an adult, in the first film. Instead, it's revealed after several bodies have dropped that it's actually Pamela Voorhees that's murdering campers, in a twisted quest for vengeance after blaming camp counselors for her son's death. Pamela launched the Friday the 13th franchise and left an impressive trail of bodies in her wake.
5. Ghostface
First appearance: Scream The slasher franchise was dead and buried, but just like the killers that haunted so many dreams, the genre was resurrected by Scream. Ghostface, a mantle worn by multiple people throughout the four Scream films, became the new face of slasher movies. With meta references at the ready, Ghostface patterned itself after a wide range of classic villains and kickstarted a resurgence of slasher movies. Unfortunately, titles like I Know What You Did Last Summer weren't quite as good as A Nightmare on Elm Street.
4. Leatherface
First appearance: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre What made Leatherface so scary in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that the film opened with the idea that it was based on a true story. Of course, that's not exactly true, but the idea of a cannibal killer in Texas--or even an entire family of cannibals--was downright terrifying. Arm that killer with a loud chainsaw and a mask made out of the skin of victims, and you have something special.
3. Jason Voorhees
First appearance: Friday the 13th When slasher killers are parodied, it's usually Jason that serves as the template. While he appeared briefly in the first film, it wasn't until the sequel when he became an iconic slasher. He's a giant and menacing force wearing a mask, wielding a machete, and stalking horny teenagers at a summer camp. When you think of slasher movies, that's probably the image that first comes to mind. Of course, with 12 movies to his credit, that's not surprising. And while they've varied in quality--never forget that Jason went to space--this killer has the most films under his belt. Now if he'd just move on from the death of his mom.
2. Freddy Krueger
First appearance: A Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy is a nightmare come true, which is what makes him so scary. Over 9 films--if you include Freddy vs. Jason and the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot--Freddy and his glove of knives have been haunting the dreams of kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s. The idea of a child killer who now haunts the nightmares of kids, hunting and killing them, is bone chilling. That said, there was some silliness as the Nightmare franchise went on. Freddy killing a kid using the NES Power Glove is great comedy, though not necessarily scary.
1. Michael Myers
First appearance: Halloween It's hard to argue against Michael Myers as the best slasher killer of all time. After all, he's the one that launched the genre craze. And while it's been argued for years who deserved the honors between him, Freddy, and Jason, the answer is simple. Michael, as introduced in the first movie and again in the 2018 film, is evil and chaos incarnate. His killing is random and doesn't really serve an ulterior motive. Yes, that was muddled in the films that followed. Thankfully, though, that piece of the Myers legacy has been retconned. Instead of a killer seeking some sort of vengeance, Michael is just demented and evil and there's nothing scarier than that.
By Alessandro Fillari on Oct 31, 2018 12:42 am
Welcome To West Virginia
Compared to the previous entries in the series, Fallout 76 is a very different kind of game. It's the series' first online game, with a far more in-depth focus on survival and crafting. This new approach on the familiar post-apocalyptic RPG's mechanics will take some time getting used to--and players will be doing that together in a shared world. In the beta for Fallout 76 on Xbox One--with PC and PS4 soon to get its first test--those who've pre-ordered will get an early chance to dive into Bethesda's experimental take on the Fallout experience, with all of their progress carried over into the final game. In this feature, we've come up with several tips and a short list of things to do during your first few hours exploring the ruins of West Virginia. As the earliest game in the Fallout timeline, set only 25 years after the bombs fell, the inhabitants of Vault 76 will explore a world that's still in disarray after the nuclear apocalypse. Though the setting of West Virginia was largely spared from the bombs, radiation and chaos have seeped into the valley, irreparably altering wildlife, and unearthing creatures that many thought to be legend. The first of Fallout 76's betas is now behind us, but Bethesda has already announced when the next tests will take place. Expect plenty more between now and the full game's release date on November 14. We recently went hands-on with Fallout 76, and came away with a number of interesting observations. While the main hook is the focus on surviving a violent, irradiated world full of other players online, the familiar aspects of the Fallout experience are alive and well in 76--there are even some surprises for the eagle-eyed fans to uncover. With that, here's a quick survival guide to help you overcome the odds. For more info on Fallout 76, be sure to check out footage from the first 50 minutes of the game, and along with our chat with Pete Hines about the current state of the game, and what lies ahead.
Explore The Vault
Instead of being rushed out the Vault door like in other Fallout games, with hostile Vault-tec security or irradiated radroaches nipping at your heels, you're afforded the chance to calmly prepare yourself for the expedition on the surface. After creating your character and taking a quick photo of yourself for you nametag, you'll grab your new pip-boy and get to explore the vault at your leisure--and even interact with other players starting out as well.
Once you leave your room, be sure to examine every point of interest on your way up to the entrance. These stops will get you stocked up with new items and supplies, which includes a starting set of Perk Cards, purified water, and the all important C.A.M.P device--allowing you to build structures in the outside world. Around the Vault, you'll find various holotapes that tell you more about the residents of the bunker, which includes the vault Overseer who's gone missing. Once you're ready, make your way towards the exit of the Vault. Though rest assured, if at any time you want to return, the Vault's door will always be open to you--even allowing for fast travel at no cost.
Stick With The Beginning Story Missions
Once outside, you'll start the early missions of the main story. In an interesting approach that's different from past Fallout games, many of the tutorial segments take place in the open world. In a more trial-by-fire approach, you'll gradually learn more about the many systems at work while collecting a set of new weapons and supplies. Despite being given some basic survival items from the bunker, you're still an unprepared Vault Dweller in a new world, and you'll need to get new supplies fast in order to survive. Though you may have the urge to get started on your adventure and explore on your own, it's really in your best interest to take on the early missions in the main quest. Right outside the Vault door is a Mr. Gusty robot, who will let you know where to go next in your quest to find the Overseer. Within the first 10 minutes of stepping outside, you'll acquire new weapons, armor, and get used to the more nuanced mechanics in Fallout 76. This will go a long way in helping you get your feet wet in the open world, and you'll still come across many side events and opportunities to take on.
Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Building your character up from scratch is one of the hallmarks of the Fallout series, and 76 is no different. However, the early hours of Fallout 76 are not as generous as other games in the series, and it'll take time to gradually build up to the more familiar archetypes of previous games. But before you reach that point, you'll need to understand that you'll often have to work with what you have at your disposal--even if it's mostly scraps of items and word-down weapons that have seen better days. It's important for you to get out of your comfort zone and try out new methods and solutions for survival that you wouldn't normally take on in other games.
Rethink What Makes You SPECIAL
Given the more survivalist nature of Fallout 76, you'll have to be constantly on your toes and adapt to any situation that comes you way. The systems at work in-game allows for more flexibility, letting you refocus your character's strengths at anytime. Once you start leveling up, you'll be able to allocate SPECIAL points and gain new Perk Cards for your character. While all the SPECIAL points you invest are set in stone, the new perks you can set on your deck can be swapped out at any time. As you increase in power from leveling up and acquiring new gear, you'll be able to flesh out your character in more interesting ways. Players that often favor firearms and explosives may find themselves in a position where they'll have to double down on melee weapons and hacking, and many of the perks you find will offer up some interesting buffs to make builds that were made on the fly seem worthwhile.
Group Up
Just outside of Vault 76, you'll encounter other players who have also started their journey. While you're totally free to explore on your own and take on whatever challenges that come from being a lone wanderer in West Virginia, there are many benefits to exploring in a group. When in a group, you and your squad can communicate with each other through voice-chat--though only in short-range--which will allow you to coordinate quests and how you'll clear our some of the more challenging locations housing Scorched, Ghouls, and Super Mutants. Though this is totally doable on your own, getting a group can lessen the hassle and spare some precious resources that you would end up spending on your own.
Grouping up in a Fallout game is still a new concept, so it's better to get a feel for it sooner rather than later. To team up with others, walk over to another player and invite them into a party. If they accept the invite, you'll partner up instantly. Up to four people can work together, with each member getting their own share of the loot. However, if you want to splinter off from the group and do your own thing, you're free to do so. If you've put a lot of distance between you and your group and want to return to them, you can open up the map and fast travel to a party member, allowing you to great distances without much hassle.
Always Be Collecting
Scavenging for junk items and gear is a normal part of your journey in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. While the cheap desk fans, baseballs, and plastic cups may not seem so valuable, breaking them down to basic materials can lead to crafting new weapons, armor, and support items. The screws from a desk fan for instance can be used to craft higher-end weapon and armor upgrades your paltry starting weapons, which will help even the odds when things get tough. Moreover, items can be gathered from the game world itself, including downed tree logs, which offer wood. However, it's important not to get too greedy when exploring and junking all these items. With the deeper survival mechanics in place, every item you have in your inventory has a set weight. And with all those items added up, you'll likely find yourself overencumbered at the worst possible time. If you can't find a workbench to scrap items, you can always stay on the lookout for stash boxes, which are often located in residential areas, red rocket stations, or can be built with the C.A.M.P.. Despite this being an online game, you're not racing against others to scavenge the nearby ruins for junk. Every player will get their own haul of items, and you're never left empty handed after seeing another squad of vault dwellers rummage through a place.
Get Crafting and Stay Healthy
While there are plenty of supplies and new weapons to find in the field, these tools won't be in that great of a condition and you're much better off not leaving things to chance. The gear you create and modify with your own hands with the resources are what make the difference between surviving a shootout with Mole Miners or finding yourself face-first in the dirt.
Once you have those materials, it's best to start investing them into better items and supplies. Along with the weapon and armor workbenches, you'll need to utilize the cooking and chem stations to craft food, clean water, and healing items in order to stay healthy. While you certainly able to eat whatever stale food or use worn down weapons and armor, it all has to be done with caution. Poor weapons will breakdown fast, and dirty water and rotten food can lead to diseases and sickness for your characters--including the particularly nasty case of Radworms.
Take In The Sights
Starting out in the Western portion of the map, set in the Appalachian region, you're in a prime spot to branch out into the other parts of the West Virginian wilderness. Your map is one of the most valuable resources you have, which highlights many of the major attractions in the area--akin to an amusement park guide. But in between those major points of interests, there are many different areas that house valuable loot, interesting story details, and some usual monsters to fight. Moreover, you'll often find events and side-missions while exploring, which can open up some interesting diversions. While the entire map is free to explore at the beginning, it would be best not to branch out too far into other regions. Here are some interesting locations that you can explore in the early hours of Fallout 76, all located in reasonable distance from the Vault - Top of the World Ski Lodge: Located in the center of the map on top of a mountain, making it one of the highest spots in game. Resembling an old-school, gimmicky resort, this ski-lodge now houses bloatflies and Super Mutants. When exploring this site, you'll also be able to find one of the game's more unusual melee weapons known as the Ski Sword. - The Greenbrier Resort: Found just south of the ski lodge, this resort is an extremely ritzy location that feels more like a time capsule than a ruin. With an army of Protectrons maintaining the grounds and keeping nasty foes out, the resort is in surprisingly good condition having survived more than twenty years of no activity. While exploring the inside, you will find mobs feral ghouls, all of whom have kept their attachment to the posh lifestyle of their past lives. - Horizon's Rest: Located just west of the Top of the World ski lodge, this ruined plane has been converted into a multi-level living quarters for survivors. However, the owners have since abandoned it, leaving behind an armory filled with weapons, ammo, and armor for anyone who's able to find the clues to unlock it.
Challenge Another Player
Once you reach level 5, Fallout 76's player vs player gameplay will open up. Despite every character coming from the same Vault, where they shared safety and comfort from the outside elements, all previous friendships formed in the bunker are tossed by the wayside. While you're not committed to taking part in PVP, you may come across a relentless player who's got their eye on you. When another person attacks you, they will only deal chip damage to your character--a small fraction of their actual attack power. However, it does add up over time, and they can kill you if you've lost enough health--or if they just happen to catch you after a nasty scrape with some monsters. If this happens, you have several options at your disposal; you can fast-travel away from them, block them, or even try to engage them in a fight. The later option can go a number of different ways, especially if you're up against a stronger player, but it lead to interesting results--the winner takes any junk items that their opponent had upon their defeat. Since this is a first for the series, you may want to try out player combat as early as you can to get a feel for it. While you can usually avoid PVP, there may come a situation where dueling could work out for you, especially if they're an underleveled annoyance. However, it's usually in your best interest to keep fights clean. If you ambush others and take them out with chip damage--with the other player not fighting back--you'll be marked as a murderer and left with a large target on your back for others to see.
Take Your Time
To put it bluntly, Fallout 76 features the largest map of the series--there is no way you'll experience many of the game's more defining events during the early hours. With so much ground to cover, it's a good thing to take your time and soak up all the details during the beginning of your journey. While many players will be eager to dive into the questline dealing with the nukes, which Bethesda have been teasing since the game's reveal, this is an event that will take several hours to work up to. Moreover, many of these quests will require high-end gear, such as power armor and high end, as it puts you face to face with some of the game's most dangerous monsters, including 76's new elite foe known as the Scorchbeast. Once you've amassed an arsenal of weapons, supplies, and strengthened your character to a point where you can handle many of the tougher challenges, you'll be able to venture out into West Virginia's more notorious areas, which includes the Savage Divide and The Mire. But you're better off taking things slow, and enjoying yourself until that time comes.
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