Xbox

Newly Discovered Audio Message In Assassin’s Creed Origins Was Supposed To Be There All Along

A game as popular as October’s Assassin’s Creed Origins is usually wrung free of major surprises by the time it’s been out for four months. That’s why some fans were startled last week to discover that Origins contains a previously unknown, new audio message from the Isu, a mysterious ancient civilization that is part of…

Every Big Game Coming Out In Winter 2018

Winter is here, so it’s a great time to avoid the cold and curl up inside with some video games. Here are the biggest games coming out this winter. December 21 Tiny Metal | Nintendo Switch, PS4, PC Mom Hid My Game | Nintendo Switch Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King | Nintendo Switch December 22…

Final Fantasy XV’s Fascinating Assassin’s Creed Expansion Is About To Vanish

Final Fantasy XV ’s ambitious, enjoyable, unprecedented multi-hour tribute to Assassin’s Creed was only ever meant to be temporary. That’s a shame, because it’s surprisingly good. The game’s Assassin’s Festival was announced last summer and became available from the FFXV’s main menu on August 31. I’d ignored it, because it sounded like a trifle. If…

Here’s February’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

There’s a range of games in February’s Games with Gold, from racing to stealth. As ever, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Games with Gold subscription. February’s Xbox Games with Gold lineup is: Xbox One Shadow Warrior (February 1-28) Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India (February 16-March 15) Xbox 360 (compatible with…

Xbox Game Pass Now Gets New Microsoft Games On Day One

Microsoft’s $9.99 a month Xbox game subscription service just got a bit more attractive. Starting with the March 20 release of Sea of Thieves, all new Microsoft Studios games will be available on the service on launch day. TheXbox Game Passoffers subscribers access to more than 100 games from throughout Xbox history, allowing them to…

Xbox One’s Backward Compatibility Is Fantastic

We often criticize gaming platform makers for their missteps, so let us also praise them when they do something great: Xbox One’s backward compatibility feature is nothing short of perfection. Setting up my Xbox One X over the holiday reminded me that I had been meaning to get around to playing Lost Odyssey, an Xbox…

My Beautiful, Perfect Children Discovered A Way To Fit Three DVDs In One Xbox

Turning the discs over revealed why they weren’t coming out easily. They were stuck together with ... something. I don’t know.

There is still no release date for Assassin’s Creed Origins’ first expansion. It’s just “January,” as Ubisoft reiterated today in a post that also reveals that the publisher is finally going to add Origins’ pricy paid DLC items, released weeks ago, to the rotation of items found in the game’s free Heka Chest lootboxes

Here’s January’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

January’s Xbox Live Games with Gold features a lot of different genres, which could be nice if you’re looking for something new to play after the holidays. As ever, these games are only “free” if you have an Xbox Live Games with Gold subscription. January’s Xbox Live Games with Gold are: Xbox One The Incredible…

The Division’s latest global event changes the rules yet again for Ubisoft’s shooter. In Strike, which runs for five more days, a downed enemy drops an exploding grenade that hurts nearby enemies. A more advanced Strike setting applies similar detonation chain reactions to players who take lots of damage. A fun tweak!

Assassin’s Creed Origins Patch Changes Hideous Blue Box Into Lovely Gold Box

Assassin’s Creed Origins got a horde mode this week, along with a really good improvement to its difficulty system. Who cares! The headline here is that they changed a blue box into a gold one. Origins’ Tuesday patch re-colored the “tools” slot of the game’s inventory page in a move aimed at pleasing one of…

On Xbox, Battlegrounds Is More Of The Janky, Troubled Game I Love

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ is on Xbox today. The console’s more casual feel benefits players who prefer a more strategic, slow-moving pace, but that’s in part because the game’s signature jankiness is significantly jankier here—it’s hard to play ambitiously when everything from switching weapons to jumping off the airplane is just a little more finicky. If you…

The Division’s Free 1.8 Update Is Better Than Its Paid Expansions

After numerous multiplayer-centric patches and expansions, The Division finally got a big improvement for solo players this week. The new update is shockingly large and shockingly good. It seems designed to make every type of Division player happy. Update 1.8 adds two new, enemy-filled zones called West Side Piers to the game’s Manhattan-based map, throws…

Shadow of War‘s New Online Mode Makes It Clear: They Want You To Play This Game Forever

Five of my orcs died in Shadow of War yesterday. I callously dropped them, one by one, into the game’s new online fight pits. They didn’t make it out. Rash Skull Bow, a feral marksman with little skulls for shoulder pads, got killed in 20 seconds after Ghash The Bloated struck him in the stomach…

Deciding to go up against Destiny 2‘s first expansion for some reason, The Division’s huge and excellent-sounding free 1.8 update will be out tomorrow. Check out detailed patch notes (including radical changes to Underground). The game and its DLC will be free this weekend.

The Division’s free, ambitious 1.8 update will hit the game next week, date TBD (likely Tuesday). It will expand the map with a new region that adds twists to the game’s PvE. It will also offer a horde mode called Resistance and a PvP mode called Skirmish. Oh, and it’ll overhaul the rogue system in…

Many Assassin’s Creed Origins Players Aren’t Ready For The Game’s First Post-Release Boss Battles

A couple times over the past few weeks, a giant Egyptian deity has sprung up in Assassin’s Creed Origins for players to fight. In early November, it was Anubis, god of the dead. Around Thanksgiving it was Sobek, the crocodile god. The gods weren’t accessible when the game launched in late October and they each…

New Evidence Suggests Super Meat Boy Speedrunners Cheated

Super Meat Boy’s challenging platforming and hidden secrets have turned it into a popular game for speedrunning. A new method for detecting cheaters now suggests that some famous runs might not be what they appear to be. There are two kinds of Super Meat Boy speedruns: real-time attacks, which show the entire game without interruption,…

I Love This Unrealistic Assassin’s Creed Origins Boat

I play a lot of video games, but I don’t see many great glitches. Say what you will about modern gaming’s abundance of patches, but major glitches are still fairly rare. I fall through the floor of a third-person action game maybe once every two years. I played all of Red Dead Redemption and never…

The L.A. Noire Remaster’s New Dialogue System Isn’t Specific Enough

L.A. Noire’s remaster brings the cult detective story back for another round of sleuthing. A change to the dialog system meant to fix the original game’s flaws makes interrogations more difficult than before. In L.A. Noire, Detective Cole Phelps investigates various crimes before getting swept up in a city-wide conspiracy. A major component of the…