Sales From Microsoft's Halo Face Masks Will Help Health Care Workers
Microsoft and gaming apparel brand Meta Threads have joined forces once again to create the official Halo face masks. Profits from the sales of the masks will help out health care workers. The limited edition masks can be purchased for 19.99 with all profits from sales being used to manufacture two more masks which will be donated to masksfordocs.
Masksfordocs is a California based charitable foundation. It's run completely by volunteers that help distribute protective gear and supplies to frontline workers in hospitals, and other medical facilities working during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Halo face masks are part of the #GamersMasks4Masks campaign created by Microsoft and Meta Threads, which has already led to 53,866 masks being donated to healthcare workers from the sales of their Xbox branded masks as well as other designs such as Player Unknown's Battleground. Meta Threads also worked with 343 Industries earlier this year to create a Halo-themed shirt which raised money for Covid-19 relief efforts.
The Halo masks are registered with the FDA, include an adjustable aluminum nose insert and elastic ear loops. The 3-ply polyester masks are washable, reusable, and made in the USA.
Halo Infinite has been delayed until sometime in 2021, but these limited edition masks are available right now. Do your part in stopping the spread of the coronavirus in spartan style and order one today.
The post Sales From Microsoft's Halo Face Masks Will Help Health Care Workers by Laddie Simco appeared first on DualShockers.
Borderlands 3 Teases Fourth Campaign DLC Stars Psycho Krieg
Borderlands 3 will be getting its fourth campaign DLC soon. As teased by a tweet starring Krieg, the playable psycho introduced in Borderlands 2. The short trailer sees Krieg in the lotus position meditating, as various scenes flash in the background. At the end of the cryptic trailer, we learn that the full reveal of the fourth DLC drop will take place on August 25. A specific time for when the reveal will take place was not given.
https://twitter.com/Borderlands/status/1296477094315282435?s=20
Krieg is the fan-favorite psycho turned vault hunter, and the upcoming DLC is possibly a journey into his mind, as previously hinted at by Gearbox. As the fourth campaign DLC drop, this will be the final content of the Borderlands 3 season pass. That does not mean that it is the last DLC the game will see, it just fulfills the season pass. Any further DLC would likely be sold as a standalone drop or a possible second season pass.
This still-unnamed fourth DLC joins Moxxi's Heist, Guns, Love, and Tentacles, and Bounty of Blood. All DLC packs can be purchased as standalone purchases or as part of the season pass. Borderlands 3 released on September 13, 2019 and is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia.
The post Borderlands 3 Teases Fourth Campaign DLC Stars Psycho Krieg by Laddie Simco appeared first on DualShockers.
The Last of Us Part II Easter Egg Discovered After Clearing Grounded, Permadeath
Players of The Last of Us Part II recently managed to find a new easter egg. Two of them even. A recent patch to The Last of Us Part II added two additional difficulties, Grounded and Permadeath. Beating the game on either of these new modes will unlock two new Easter eggs found in the ending credits.
Grounded is a difficulty setting that was first introduced in the Last of Us. It increases the game difficulty by "making enemies deadlier and ammo, upgrade, and crafting materials incredibly scarce." The setting also removes listen mode.
Completing the game on Grounded, which is the most difficult setting, will unlock Joel's interpretation of Pearl Jam's Future Days. The song is heard often throughout the game, but you can only hear it in its entirety post-Grounded credit roll.
If you finish the game on Permadeath, Ellie's version of Through the Valley plays during the credits. Through the Valley, which was written by Shawn James, was used in trailers and ads promoting The Last of Us Part II. Completing the game on any difficulty gives you Ellie and Joel performing Johnny Cash's Wayfaring Stranger.
The Last of Us Part II has been one of the most controversial and memorable games of 2020. In a recent DualShockers feature, several of us included the game in our best of 2020 so far list. The game has already been confirmed to be coming to PS5 and Naughty Dog promised us that multiplayer would be added at a later date.
The post The Last of Us Part II Easter Egg Discovered After Clearing Grounded, Permadeath by Laddie Simco appeared first on DualShockers.
Persona 4 Golden Fashion Collection is a Great Blend of the Title's Retro Aesthetic
Insert Coin, who's already released an excellent line of Persona 5 themed clothing, has debuted a new collection featuring merchandise from Persona 4 Golden. And this collection — made up of Yasogami High themed hoodies, jackets, and shirts — is just as stunning and high quality, which you can see in the gallery below. If you're interested, check out the fashion line for yourself through the official Insert Coin site here:
Atlus and Sega have been considering porting their library over to the PC platform for a while, but thanks to the success of Persona 4: Golden earlier this year, it seems as though the publisher is poised for a renewed interest in PC. "Going forward, we intend to aggressively promote the porting of previously launched titles to Steam and other new platforms," Sega said in an accompanying statement with the financial results. "Under such direction, we would like to take multi-platform rollout in account and prepare the PC version and others from the start."
Just last month, Atlus West announced that the PC port of the popular JRPG title hit the 500,000 player mark. To commemorate the occasion, series character designer Shigenori Soejima drew an adorable sketch of some of the main character.
As a heavily expanded and refined release of the original game, Persona 4 Golden considered one of the most acclaimed JRPGs of the past decade. But unfortunately despite its critical praise the game, which launched back in 2012, was essentially trapped on the poorly-received and ill fated PS Vita. This had the effect of limiting the potential audience. And for the longest time, Golden stayed there, even though the Vita was increasingly fading out of the picture as the years went by and fans were consistently vocal in wanting to see a port or remaster of the game — and other Atlus favorites — on other platforms.
During the PC Gaming Show earlier this year, eight years after its initial launch, Golden was announced and released for the PC the same day via Steam, finally freeing it up from the Vita. This also offered a small but encouraging hope that Atlus is becoming more open to porting its existing titles to PC. If you're interested in reading a more opinionated take on Persona 4 Golden's PC iteration, be sure to also check out our review of the port.
The post Persona 4 Golden Fashion Collection is a Great Blend of the Title's Retro Aesthetic by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
Fall Guys Fallen Beans are Now a Playable DnD Race Thanks to Efforts of Action Fiction Founder
It's no secret that Fall Guys is an insanely popular game right now, and the buzz surrounding it doesn't seem likely to die anytime soon. In fact there are still tons of fan-made projects being created even now, such as the new Talk Guys virtual talk show from Gary Whitta (creator of the Animal Talking virtual talk show).
Recently the creator of the Dungeons & Dragons parody board game Monsters of Murka and founder of Action Fiction made the Fall Guys characters into an actual playable race, complete with their own DnD 5e profile page mockup:
In celebration of @FallGuysGame reaching 1M followers (and in the hopes that @timthetatman can pull a crown today), I bring you:
Fallen Beans: Bringing the Fall Guys characters into 5e #dnd as a playable race.#fallguys #ttrpg #rpg #dungeonsanddragons pic.twitter.com/wjRWTenwaT
— Jaron R. M. Johnson – Murka
Flavor City (@JaronRMJohnson) August 19, 2020
If you need a larger version of the documents, those are posted below. And you can check out Action Fiction's patreon for the full document as well:
Since release, Fall Guys has been a smashing success gaining major traction across Twitter and streaming platforms as well as being Devolver Digitals' biggest launch to date. There's even an ongoing campaign to delete the Yellow Team if a specific tweet gets 1m retweets and recently Fall Guys gave Twitch streamer Dr. Lupo a new outfit for statistically being the best player in the game.
In the latest patch, PS4 players will be able to purchase the Valve skins that were previously available only on PC in the store. Other fixes include: for Fall Mountain the maximum player count is now 15, the time for Team Tail Tag and Royale Fumble has been shortened to one minute and thirty seconds, and arguably most important, team games will no longer pop up back to back. Mediatonic explained that these changes were based on community feedback and wanted to ensure players that they are always listening. Hopefully, these changes will make getting that wretched five wins in a row trophy a little more manageable.
If you're interested in a detailed retelling of the origins of Fall Guys as well as how the game was pitched and reached its current level of success, check out this extensive thread for Jeff Tanton, Creative Director at Mediatonic.
The post Fall Guys Fallen Beans are Now a Playable DnD Race Thanks to Efforts of Action Fiction Founder by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
PS5 Projected to Lose to Nintendo Switch this Holiday Season
The 2020 holiday season is hardly around the corner and it's hard to contain our excitement about the release of the upcoming PS5. However, the highly-coveted PlayStation 5 (and the Xbox Series X) may yet fail to beat a tried-and-true gaming staple come autumn.
Japanese blog Esuteru has transcribed a document from the research division of Ace Securities Co., an asset management firm which apparently has a few toes dipped into the games industry, featuring an analyst's opinion that the Nintendo Switch will vastly outperform against the new PS5.
Note that the document is written entirely in Japanese, so unless you can read and navigate through several pages of kanji characters, you'll probably want a good translator to help you read it in more detail. Here's the English-translated excerpt as it appears in the Esuteru blog post.
According to the analyst, there are several reasons why the Nintendo Switch is slated to outperform a next-gen console as hyped as the PS5.
The analyst reports that Nintendo increases profits at a rate of roughly 10% year-over-year, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, it's actually seen a profit boost of 48%.
In addition to that, the Nintendo Switch has been notably difficult to track down on retail and digital storefronts worldwide. As production resumes course, the analyst posits, demand will remain heightened as Switch consoles begin petering back into stores across the globe before and during the 2020 holiday season.
It's important to note here that the Nintendo Switch retails at an MSRP of $299.99, whereas its more handheld-friendly counterpart, the Switch Lite, retails at $199.99. Both devices can be carried around and played anywhere, and the Nintendo Switch library itself now carries a vast variety of console-quality games, some of which even offer crossplay features that allow them to team up with or against players on PlayStation and Xbox consoles and/or PC.
These prices may be considerably lower than the PS5, which is rumored to release at a base MSRP of $499.99 or higher.
The PlayStation 5 does not yet have a formal release date or MSRP, however, it's not unfair to project a November release date at this point on. Here's what we know so far.
The post PS5 Projected to Lose to Nintendo Switch this Holiday Season by Gabriel Moss appeared first on DualShockers.
Final Fantasy IX's Moguri Mod Drops Latest Version, Graphical Upgrades are Even More Stunning Now
Last year we covered a fan community mod for the PC version of Final Fantasy IX, which seeks to create a true remastered version of the much beloved title while still preserving the integrity of the artistic design. The trailer for the latest version, update 8.2, shows off even more improvements and fixes made to the visuals, framerate, music, and more:
Moguri Mod, according to the official website, "is a total revamping of the PC port of Final Fantasy IX through Deep Learning techniques." This mod's most drastic changes are in the background arts that are now more detailed, cleaner, and have a higher resolution. Moguri Mod also includes a custom implementation of Memoria Mod, which offers more customization and options than the original PC port.
If you're into remastered music, several artists and Materia Collective have come together to create the EIDOLON: Music From Final Fantasy IX tribute album. You can check that out here.
Square Enix announced earlier this month that Final Fantasy VII Remake has shipped over 5 million copies worldwide, digitally and physically. The game is also now the highest selling digital game Square Enix ever developed on a PlayStation platform. April 2020's NPD data shows that Final Fantasy VII Remake beat out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and as of that date was already the most successful entry in the long-running franchise in terms of units sold and dollar sales in a launch month.
The director of Remake Tetsuya Nomura was the one to propose the original Final Fantasy VII's most shocking moment. As previously revealed, Final Fantasy VII Remake has many new elements to it and Scenarist Kazushige Nojima even explains how he rewrote Cloud for the remake. We also translated comments from Nojima about how Final Fantasy VII influenced Final Fantasy VIII. In an interview posted through Square Enix, Co-Director Naoki Hamaguchi and Producer Yoshinori Kitase talk about their reasoning behind making some bold changes for the remake of such a beloved game — namely why Sephiroth was introduced so early in the game.
We also translated the short film made to promote the remake. Square Enix, meanwhile, is currently working on the second and possibly last episode. Square Enix released a trailer revealing the theme song of the game called Hollow, along with with many iconic moments and returning faces from the original PS1 classic. If you're interested in how the remake plays, check out both of our previews from E3 2018, as well as my own in-depth preview of four chapters of the game. Our Features Editor also wrote about how the remake won him over as a non-Final Fantasy fan.
Final Fantasy VII Remake finally released on April 10th after a one month delay and you can purchase the game from Amazon here. Check out our extremely comprehensive review of the title here. I wrote a pretty comprehensive beginner's guide for players just starting out (including some handy Materia and weapon builds for Tifa) but you can also check out this incredibly intricate and damaging combo to see why proper character builds matter in Remake.
The post Final Fantasy IX's Moguri Mod Drops Latest Version, Graphical Upgrades are Even More Stunning Now by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's King Shark Voiced By WWE Wrestler Samoa Joe
Yesterday was an exciting day for comic book fans, as the online DC FanDome convention debuted quite a few exciting announcements such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Batman: Gotham Knights. Today fans will have even more to be excited about — especially wrestling fans, thanks to a single tweet posted earlier today:
That Shark tho… #KTJL https://t.co/NAxHJiFOVw
— Samoa Joe (@SamoaJoe) August 23, 2020
WWE wrestling Samoa Joe revealed that he will be voicing King Shark through this simple yet playful status update quote retweeting the official trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. From what we heard so far, he does a phenomenal job voicing the bruiser and bringing a nice level of sophistication to the role.
The latest from London-based Batman: Arkham Knight developer Rocksteady Studios, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League brings fan favorites like Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang directly to players' fingertips for the first major video game production in the series.
While unfortunately for longtime DC video game fans, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League may not be the Batman: Arkham Knight sequel that many have been waiting for. But still, even as a unique property, I'm excited to see Suicide Squad finally make its way into the gaming space and in such a fun and comicbook accurate capacity. You can watch the debut teaser trailer below in case you missed it the first time.
During the same event DC also premiered the first trailer for the upcoming Batman: Gotham Knights title, which has been teased for quite some time. The trailer reveals that Bruce Wayne, or Batman as we truly know him as, has been caught in an explosion and died. A special message for the Bat Family confirms this, as well as the destruction of the Bat Cave. He also instructs them that Gotham will need them more than ever to watch over it and its citizens.
After that we see Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin as they suit up and demonstrate their unique abilities and skills in combat. In the final moments we see more of the Court of Owls plotline that was previously teased.
The post Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's King Shark Voiced By WWE Wrestler Samoa Joe by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
Halo Infinite Holiday 2021 Release Window Leak From Amazon Debunked
The biggest question on Xbox fans' minds since the Halo: Infinite recent delay following its lukewarm reception at Microsoft's Xbox Game Showcase is "When can we play it?". Naturally, just like everything else on our minds, like "What is Nintendo doing this year?" or "How much will a PS5 cost?" the internet, specifically Amazon (among other retailers) likes to accidentally spread misinformation.
This all started when Amazon's official Xbox Series X page included an ad for Halo: Infinite that said that the title was coming in Holiday 2021. After the Amazon page was pointed out by Twitter user Wario64, Tom Warren at The Verge followed up on the supposed leak by saying that it was a mistake on Amazon's side.
this is an Amazon listing mistake https://t.co/7xer2dDeJA
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) August 21, 2020
Since the Tweet went out, the Amazon page has been updated to say that Master Chief's next outing is scheduled to release in 2021, rather than a specific time frame within 2021. That's about all the information that Microsoft and 343 Industries had already put out there, so it seems fairly reliable all things considered.
Calling out fake leaks and unreliable listings aren't anything new for Warren. In fact, he's currently one of the leading Xbox insiders who's correctly shared and predicted many announcements during this summer's slate of announcements. Most recently, he even supposedly leaked a spec sheet for Microsoft's worst-kept secret; the Xbox Series S. Not only the Xbox Series S has been hinted at and talked about by insiders, but recently leaked controllers are also described as compatible with the Series S.
While Amazon and Tom Warren are both relatively reliable sources for this sort of information, we've seen time and time again that nothing — and I mean nothing — is set in stone until Microsoft or 343 makes an announcement.
The post Halo Infinite Holiday 2021 Release Window Leak From Amazon Debunked by Charlie Wacholz appeared first on DualShockers.
For some reason, Ubisoft has changed how purchasers of some of their collecter editions will play the game they purchased. The publisher has announced some changes that are coming to those who pre-ordered the Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 6, or Watch Dogs: Legion Collector's Editions.
Those who pre-ordered on Xbox consoles will now receive a digital key that they can redeem rather than a physical disk. Those who pre-ordered on PlayStation will be able to choose between a digital code or a physical disk. It was not stated if this would only be for these three upcoming games or if this would be for every Ubisoft Collector's Edition moving forward.
Ubisoft did not state why such changes were made and the decision is quite puzzling. As of late, I have got back into buying physical editions of games so they can look neat on my bookshelf and I have some physical object I can look that signifies my growing collection of games. On top of that, I know that there are many people out there who refuse to buy a digital copy. I am willing to bet that Ubisoft just lost out on plenty of Collector Edition buyers on Xbox because of this decision.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set to release on November 17 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Far Cry 6 is set to release on February 18 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Watch Dogs: Legion is set to release on October 29 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
The post Upcoming Ubisoft Collector's Editions Will be Digital on Xbox While PlayStation Will Be Able to Choose Physical or Digital by Grant Huff appeared first on DualShockers.