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GameSpot •

Shadow Of The Erdtree Turns Elden Ring's Greatest Hero Into A Monster

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the story of Shadow of the Erdtree, so if you haven't finished the expansion or at least made it to the final boss, you might want to do so before reading on.When it comes to the story told in Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree is a bombshell. It focuses on one major character who wasn't actually included in the base game--Miquella, one of the demigod children of the goddess Queen Marika--but whose presence cast a long shadow on events. Of all the demig...
GameSpot •

Haters Be Damned: Elden Ring Summoning Leads To Shadow Of The Erdtree's Best Moment

Igon is the best character in Shadow of the Erdtree. He's the best character in all of Elden Ring, in fact. He might be the best character in any From Software game. And if you're the kind of person who makes "git gud" a cornerstone of your personality, you probably missed out on him.You find Igon at the base of the Jagged Peak, and at first, he's kind of a pathetic figure. He's already injured when you discover him, and from his wailing laments, you learn that he's trying to kill a huge and hor...
GameSpot •

A New Horror Game Corrects Something So Many Others Get Wrong

Putting players in the shoes of an engineer tasked with heading alone into a dark basement to restart an ailing generator is a tried-and-true trope in horror video games. While Still Wakes the Deep has a lot that's very familiar to horror fans, it's what it does with this trope of making you the poor lone sucker who needs to flip all the switches and face all the danger to do it, that sets it apart from a field of horror titles. Other games could learn from what developer The Chinese Room does w
Epic Games •

The Casting of Frank Stone is poised to bring a new audience to the Dead By Daylight world

With The Casting of Frank Stone, developers Behaviour Interactive and Supermassive Games are opening up the world of Behaviour's multiplayer horror game Dead By Daylight with a totally new story. The two development studios are also hoping the story will reach a new audience—one that might be interested in the frightening horror universe of Dead By Daylight but hasn’t yet experienced it.

Dead By Daylight pits a team of four players, the survivors, against a fifth player in the role of a vicious...
GameSpot •

The First Descendant Is A Loot Shooter With A Ton Of Customization

When it launches on July 2, The First Descendant will enter a genre that, lately, has had more failures than successes. High-profile games like Anthem, Redfall, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and Marvel's Avengers all operated in the same space that the upcoming loot shooter is hoping to enter, and all struggled to make lasting positive impressions. Even the king of loot shooters, Destiny 2, has struggled--though developer Bungie just put out an acclaimed expansion, the game might have
GameSpot •

Black Myth: Wukong Is A Speedy Souls-Like Where You Can Transform Into Your Enemies

The versatility of the Souls-like genre is that a lot of its best ideas can be applied to just about any action-RPG and work well, and Black Myth: Wukong is a good example. It carries a lot of the subgenre's conventions, such as bonfire-like checkpoints that respawn enemies in the area around you, a flask for healing that has a finite number of charges and refills when you rest at a checkpoint, and upgrade points you drop when you die and have to find and recover.

The difference with Black Myth
GameSpot •

Black Myth: Wukong: A Fun Action RPG filled with Bosses

Black Myth: Wukong is an upcoming Action RPG, and while Phil found there to be some Souls-ish elements like recovering health similar to having an Estus Flask, or checkpoints akin to bonfires, in general, he found the gameplay to not be in the Souls-vein, with less deliberate combat. Playing as Sun Wukong, aka "The Destined One", means players will be frequently dodge-rolling away from enemy attacks, with a deep combat system. Black Myth: Wukong is currently set to release August 20, 2024 to PC
GameSpot •

Enotria: The Last Song Is A More Dynamic Souls-likes That Gives You Freedom From Character Builds

There are a lot of games out there taking inspiration from and riffing on the formula that From Software popularized with its Souls games, but Enotria: The Last Song is the first one I've encountered that is explicitly angled at opening it up to more people.

I played Enotria at Summer Game Fest's Play Days event, where developer Jyamma Games had a demo that featured a boss rush of three fights from the game, ramping up in difficulty. The first featured a battle with a miniboss, a jester-like gu
GameSpot •

Fear The Spotlight Is A PS1-Style Survival-Horror Game Without The Survival

Fear The Spotlight starts like many good horror stories. A couple of friends--nerdy goody-goody Vivian and her goth pal Amy--sneak into school after-hours to perform a séance. The school has a creepy history, after all, thanks to a fire a few years earlier that claimed the lives of several students. It's a bit morbid and disrespectful to try to contact the spirits of a bunch of kids in the school library, but hey, teenagers are morbid and disrespectful.

I played a short demo of Fear The Spotlig
GameSpot •

Valorant On Controller Could Feel As Good As Mouse And Keyboard

Riot Games faced a big challenge when it started thinking about bringing its hit tactical shooter, Valorant, to console. The essential part was maintaining the same feel that Valorant has on PC so that, regardless of the machine you're playing on, you're getting what Riot considers to be the definitive Valorant experience. Because of the major differences between PC and console inputs--specifically the fact that playing a shooter with a mouse and playing a shooter with a controller require compl
GameSpot •

Destiny 2's Final Shape Brings New Depth To Its Missions And "Defragmented" World

Ten years ago, the story of Destiny started with the Traveler, a god-like entity the size of a small moon, hovering over Earth and dispensing superpowers to humans to use against encroaching alien hordes. In The Final Shape, Destiny 2's next expansion, we're finally primed to find out what's inside that massive robotic orb.

It's apparently pretty weird in there.

We've gotten a few brief glimpses into the Pale Heart of the Traveler, the new location where the final showdown between the heroes o
GameSpot •

Destiny 2: The Final Shape's Prismatic Subclass Avoids The Mistakes Of Strand In Lightfall

When players jump into the story campaign for Destiny 2's next expansion, The Final Shape, they'll pretty quickly unlock one of the biggest new parts of the game: Prismatic. The new subclass is necessary to complete The Final Shape's story, just like Strand was when it was introduced in Destiny 2's last expansion, Lightfall.

But unlike how Lightfall handled its new player abilities, Bungie says you'll get Prismatic early in The Final Shape, and you'll have access to it for the duration--it won'
GameSpot •

Slapstick Comedy Movie Hundreds Of Beavers Is As Much Video Game Let's Play As Bugs Bunny Cartoon

More and more video games are seeing adaptations into movies, but Hundreds of Beavers might be the most video game-like movie I've ever seen.

That's not necessarily apparent from first blush, especially because Hundreds of Beavers' other influences are so clear and stark. Following the story of a 19th-century fur trapper as he faces off against various woodland creatures in a wintery Wisconsin, it's a black-and-white, mostly dialogue-free throwback to silent-era comedies, full of the kind of sl
Epic Games •

In 33 Immortals, Dante’s depiction of Lucifer makes for a massive, challenging first boss

In multiplayer roguelike 33 Immortals, 33 players band together to fight their way through an afterlife inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and eventually challenge God to win their freedom from eternal damnation. Like its source material, 33 Immortals is broken down into three worlds—Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise—each divided into environments inspired by different sections of Alighieri’s seminal work. To escape Dante’s Inferno, though, players will first have to face its most powerf
GameSpot •

How Pacific Drive Pulls Off Being Unnervingly Spooky And Relaxingly Chill All At Once

I'm not very far into the Olympic Exclusion Zone in a run of Pacific Drive when the rain picks up. A T-shaped intersection looms just ahead, and as I make a right turn, the headlights play over the wreckage of a truck at the base of a hill, surrounded by trees. I bring the station wagon to a stop but leave it running and hop out, hustling over to the rusting hulk. Trucks are great finds, almost always full of junk I can use to upgrade my car or the garage that acts as my base of operations, and
GameSpot •

How The Intricate, Secret-Packed Destiny 2 Collector's Editions Are Made

Lots of games are released with collector's editions, but few are as involved as those that accompany Destiny 2 expansions. The universe of Bungie's shooter MMO is incredibly dense and has seen reams of lore and tons of secrets come and go over its 10-year history. With its collector's editions, Bungie translates a lot of the experience of uncovering Destiny's story and unlocking its secrets into physical objects. A Destiny 2 collector's edition doesn't just come with a statue of some real-world
GameSpot •

Destiny 2's The Final Shape Collector's Edition Is A 10-Year Nostalgia Trip That Might Turn Tragic

The collector's edition for The Final Shape, the next Destiny 2 expansion and the last in its current "Light and Darkness Saga" story arc, is more a celebration of the last 10 years of Destiny 2 than it is the upcoming new content. With the story reaching its conclusion, the collector's edition is a fond look back that's especially rewarding if you're steeped in Destiny 2's lore.

Recently, though, Bungie has started to release details about Into the Light, an upcoming content drop meant to fill
GameSpot •

Why Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Ending Doesn't Really Matter

Note: This article contains major spoilers for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. We recommend you finish Rebirth before reading further.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a haunted game. It's nearly impossible to have any awareness of the popular culture surrounding video games and not already know the twist waiting for you in the Forgotten Capital: Aerith Gainsborough dies. And it's impossible to play any amount of Rebirth without wondering if that moment i
GameSpot •

Video Game Industry Layoffs Are Worse Than Ever. How Did We Get Here?

On February 27, Sony announced it would lay off 900 people across its worldwide games business, affecting several games studios. Among them were Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games, both of which had just released big, noteworthy titles--Marvel's Spider-Man 2 launched in October to audience and critical acclaim, while The Last of Us Part II Remastered dropped in January with an updated version that included new content. The Sony layoffs constituted some 8% of the people working in its games division
GameSpot •

In Dune: Awakening, You'll Fight To Survive Sandworms, Political Machinations, And Other Players

In the story Dune, Arrakis is the most dangerous planet in the universe. It’s a vast desert world where the scorching sun’s intense heat is a major hazard. Water is nearly impossible to find, and dehydration will claim an unprotected person in a matter of hours. More frightening, though, are the sandworms--enormous, carnivorous creatures that move beneath the ground and hunt by detecting vibrations. The sandworms hear you when you walk in the open deserts of Arrakis, and they always come.

To ca
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Iron Banter Column

A weekly column covering all aspects of Destiny 2, published at GameSpot.

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