Category: Game

All kinds of new things to do Destiny developer Bungie provided a glimpse of the game’s upcoming spring update in a Twitch livestream today, showing off new content such as a redesigned strike and a tougher Prison of Elders.
The April update will bring Destiny’s Light cap up from 320 to 335, and will introduce new challenges like a Prison of Elders exercise that’s designed for high-level players. The Reef is the base of operations for the April update, and Variks the Loyal, the warden of the Prison of Elders, has been throwing Taken foes into the arena. This mission supports matchmaking, and it is marked as a level 41 challenge with a recommended Light of 260. Plus, Variks will offer Prison of Elders bounties that give you House of Judgment reputation.
Obviously, that’s well below the current Light cap, so Bungie is also adding a new Prison of Elders mode called Challenge of the Elders. It will offer “four months of varying challenges that won’t repeat," said Bungie community manager David "DeeJ" Dague, and will keep track of your progress on scorecards like the Trials of Osiris. The recommended Light for Challenge of the Elders, a level 42 arena, is 320.
The April update will bring an Eververse Trading Company outpost into the Reef, and Variks will be your point of contact for the update’s new quests. He wants you to study the Taken, as he’s tracking a new Taken power that’s rising up in the vacuum created by Oryx’s death. Petra Venj will offer a new quest line of her own, but it will be exclusive to Destiny players on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
Another piece of the April update is the Winter’s Run strike, which has been updated to endgame levels and is now infested with Taken enemies — including a Taken version of the Archon Priest. The update will also include a new strike, Blighted Chalice, featuring a powerful boss named Malok.
Destiny’s April update, which requires ownership of The Taken King, will be released April 12. Bungie will run two more Twitch livestreams over the next two Wednesdays with further details about the version 2.2 patch.

Studio behind 1979 Revolution: Black Friday was co-founded by Rockstar Games veteran 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, a video game taking place during the Iranian Revolution of almost 40 years ago, will launch for Mac and Windows PC on April 5.
The game’s creators, iNK Stories, premiered the trailer above showing 1979’s gameplay, pacing and main characters. iNK says the game will explore the tumult of that year through the crumbling family relationships it triggered, across settings such as Iran’s infamous Evin Prison and inside militant hideouts as Tehran comes under martial law by the soon-to-be-deposed Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Black Friday references an early point in the Iranian Revolution, when soldiers of the Pahlavi government fired on a crowd of demonstrators, with dozens ultimately dead or injured in that clash and others taking place that day. Iran’s Black Friday actually occurred in September 1978; 1979 is when the Shah fled and the government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni took power.
The United States allowing the Shah to enter the country in 1979 is widely seen as a flashpoint for the hostage crisis taking place later that year, when Iranian students backing the revolution stormed the U.S. embassy and took more than 60 Americans hostage for 444 days.
iNK is touting motion-captured acting performances featuring “a talented cast from both television and film, set to a moody original score, and dynamic gameplay."
1979 Revolution originally sought about $400,000 in crowdfunding back in 2013, but fell about 25 percent short of that goal. iNK Stories regrouped with a second crowdfunding campaign to complete the job. iNK Stories was co-founded by Navid Khonsari, a 5-year veteran of Rockstar Games who worked on its Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne and Midnight Club franchises. His other credits include Alan Wake and 2011’s Homefront.

Naruto, Death Note and more Viz Media, the biggest publisher of manga and anime in North America, has teamed up with United Talent Agency (UTA) to start production on a few live-action projects based on its library of series.
Viz’s Chief marketing officer, Brad Woods, said in a press release that Viz will focus on bringing live-action entertainment to both national and international markets. Although Viz hasn’t mentioned which properties its interested in planning to adapt as live-action features, the company is home to a variety of hugely successful manga series, including Naruto, Tokyo Ghoul and One-Punch Man.
“Bringing the rich stories of manga and anime to life in new ways is an exciting opportunity with tremendous potential," Woods said.
Lionsgate is currently working on its own live-action Naruto film, although that appears to be completely independent of Viz Media and UTA’s new agreement. A live-action adaptation of Death Note is also in the works at Warner Bros.
Viz Media first entered the world of live-action entertainment with last year’s Edge of Tomorrow, which starred Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The film was adapted from All You Need is Kill, a manga published by the company.
There’s no word on when production on live-action installments will begin, but Polygon has reached out to Viz Media for more information and will update as the story develops.

Yoshi’s N64 adventure makes a comeback Yoshi’s Story arrives on the eShop tomorrow as the latest addition to Wii U’s Virtual Console library. The Nintendo 64 game will cost $9.99 and, like other Virtual Console titles, will offer offscreen play.
Nintendo first launched the game in Japan back in 1997; it arrived stateside in spring 1998. The side-scrolling platformer, which had a unique storybook art style, serves as a sequel to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island for Super Nintendo. Players choose from a selection of Yoshi in the quest to take down Baby Bowser.
Until last year’s Yoshi’s Woolly World on Wii U, Yoshi’s Story remained the latest home console release for Mario’s trusty dinosaur companion. Wii owners got to replay the game when it launch on that console’s eShop in 2007, 10 years after it first launched.

You won’t be seeing DoA, PapaSmithy and MonteCristo at MSI League of Legends shoutcasters Erik “DoA" Lonnquist, Christopher "PapaSmithy" Smith and Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles will not work the upcoming Mid-Season Invitational in Shanghai due to low freelance rates offered by Riot Games, the three announced in a joint statement today.
The casters said that after reviewing freelance casting rates across esports, they determined that Riot’s initial offer was "approximately 40% to 70% of the rate received by talent for major events." The individuals also rejected a second offer from Riot because, they said, it was still "far below industry standard for 2016."
The group added:
Since we are freelancers and not Riot employees, we rely on these contracts for our income and feel that we would damage our careers in the long term by accepting below-market rates. Furthermore, by agreeing to a significantly lower wage we fear that we may contribute to the regression of standards for freelance casters in the industry as a whole.
DoA, PapaSmithy and MonteCristo regularly cast Korean League of Legends matches, as well as many international events. MonteCristo is also the co-owner of North American organization Renegades.
A Riot Games representative declined comment to Polygon.

Amazon has found its blue hero Amazon has found the face of its new Tick series in Guardians of the Galaxy star Peter Serafinowicz, according to Deadline.
Serafinowicz, who played Denarian Saal in James Gunn’s superhero film and who voiced Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I, will play the blue, antennae-sporting superhero in the streaming service’s remake. The actor also voiced Mild-Mannered Pate in Dark Souls II. It was previously announced that Griffin Newman would be joining the show as Arthur, the Tick’s right-hand man and sidekick. Valorie Curry is also joining the series as Arthur’s sister, Dot.
Based on Ben Edlund’s comic book series from 1986, The Tick follows the titular superhero after he loses his memory and winds up in the blue uniform. In 1994, Fox ordered an animated series based on the character, and in 2001, produced a live-action series. That, however, only ran for nine episodes before it was pulled from air.
The Tick has been in development since 2014, but there’s no estimated release window at this time.

Blizzard gives players a new reason to keep playing Overwatch Blizzard released a substantial update for the ongoing Overwatch closed beta this week that adds a host of new character skins, new achievements and a new map based on the historic U.S. highway Route 66. The developer also introduced a new gameplay option called Weekly Brawls, which is are inspired by another Blizzard game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.
Weekly Brawls, inspired by Hearthstone’s Tavern Brawls, are rotating game types that feature “a set of unique (and sometimes crazy) rules" from Overwatch’s Custom Game system.
Here’s how Blizzard describes it:

In one Weekly Brawl, you’ll only be able to play Soldier: 76, while in another Weekly Brawl, a random hero will be selected for you each time you respawn. Other Weekly Brawls will restrict you to Support heroes only, or Tank heroes only, or Defense heroes only…

Blizzard calls the new gameplay option "a work in progress and something we consider more of an experiment for now." Currently, Blizzard is rotating the new game type out on a daily basis, so it can test the feature. One of the earliest Weekly Brawls is called "Super Shimada Bros.," which features faster cooldowns for abilities and slower cooldowns for ultimates, and limits players to just two hero choices: Genji and Hanzo.
Overwatch’s latest update also adds a dozen new legendary skins for certain characters. Here’s a look at what’s new.

For a full list of changes, additions and balance update, check out Blizzard’s beta patch notes for Overwatch’s March 22 update.
Overwatch is coming to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One May 24. The game’s open beta kicks off May 3.

It’s available March 29, just in time for the Stanley Cup Playoffs NHL 16, the current edition of EA Sports’ ice hockey simulation, is the next title to go in the EA Access vault of games. It will join the lineup on March 29, about two weeks before the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs get underway.
Of the 16 titles in EA Access, eight so far are EA Sports titles. NHL 16 will make it nine-of-17; its predecessor NHL 15 also is on the list. EA Access added Madden NFL 16 to the vault on Feb 2, one week before Super Bowl L.
EA Access is a premium subscription available only to Xbox One subscribers. It costs $24.99 annually, or $4.99 month-to-month. A companion service, Origin Access, launched in January and has 17 titles in its library. The latest, 2014’s Titanfall, was added to Origin Access yesterday.

When the things that scare us the most also bring us closer together In my early twenties, I was plagued for weeks by the same dream about my teeth falling out. Each night they would wiggle lose and drop out of my horrified head. Each morning I would awake with a tiny jump before I realized every single tooth was still tightly in place.
It was a harmless dream. Even the panic didn’t last more than a few seconds. But that long-lost feeling was familiar to me as I played through Figment, an isometric adventure game that mixes fears with a stylish dreamworld.
Figment is the latest from  Denmark-based developer Bedtime Digital Games. The game, due out in 2017, is a work-in-progress for PC, PlayStation and Xbox systems. Speaking to Polygon, cofounder and game designer Jonas Byrresen explained that the game takes place inside the subconscious mind of a character players will never truly meet. This mysterious person has endured a trauma, and it’s up to players to figure out exactly what that incident was.
“When you go through a trauma … something fills up your head" said Byrresen. "In this case it’s a lot of fear and doubt.
"Plague represents our fear of everything filthy."
"Trauma is something that can take many shapes, but it’s also something a lot of people encounter during their lives. It represents an internal struggle that a lot of people will have. It represents something very basic and human."
Players adventure through this colorful world as Dusty — a character whose dour demeanor is offset by his Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-meets-Adventure-Time appearance. Figment’s fear and doubt manifest as comical, singing villains, which Dusty must confront and triumph over. During our demo, we ran into Plague, whose sick singing puns were accompanied by noxious gas and snot-hurling sidekicks. It’s a super gross, super silly take on a very basic human fear.
"Plague represents our fear of everything filthy, essentially, but also our fear of our own mortality because of disease and getting old," Byrresen said.
"It’s basically something we worked with from the start, this idea that we as humans just share some basic fears. It’s so deeply ingrained in us. There’s some nightmares we all have had."

It’s a concept that Figment nails in many ways. The first time I encountered teeth in the game — floating platforms and bridges for me to run across — I thought nothing of it. But as I crossed, they sometimes cracked and crumbled into nothingness. I was reminded of my own nightmares with a cringe.
Confronting these fears and nightmares, however, is central to Figment. Byrresen defines Dusty as the mind’s avatar for courage. Not just the heroic kind, either, but the kind needed to tackle every day life. The game’s villains will often run from you when they’re feeling threatened, but the only real way to victory is confrontation.
" are cowards, so they keep running away," Byrresen said. "Each world is about finding a way to corner them, and then finally having a chance for defeating them.
"You need to face your fears. That’s the way you overcome them."