Update: After testing out the netcode and feature set at launch, you can read or full review right here.

Original story: Reviews for Dead or Alive 6 are hitting today, since the embargo is up and the game is out. Before we can deliver our final verdict on it, however, we need to spend some more time with the game on live servers.

A day-one patch is adding a pair of crucial online options, including the ability to have rematches in ranked and search for matches while in training mode. Both of these are important parts of any fighting game's online experience, so we're holding off until we're able to test them thoroughly. One thing that won't be in until later this month, however, are player lobbies, so if you were looking to get a group of your friends together and dive in tonight, that's not going to happen.

However, we've played a considerable amount of time with the game offline, and my main impression right now is that Dead or Alive's fighting is still fun, but there's not lot of exciting changes or additions, and the single-player content is mediocre. Although I've been liking the mission mode and tutorials, if you're looking for a game with an entertaining or meaty story mode, Dead or Alive 6's is neither.

That's it for now, but come back for more detailed thoughts in the final review.

Mobile developer nWay (Power Rangers: Legacy Wars) has released a new trailer for Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, heralding the nefarious designs of Lord Drakkon as well as giving fans a glimpse of the fighting game's combat.

The trailer shows off some of Lord Drakkon's combos, which the developer is saying range from "beginner-friendly" to complex, and he also has an uppercut special attack – a rarity in the game.

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is a digital download-only title ($19.99) coming in April to PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, with a PC release later in 2019.

We've waited a long time for Kingdom Hearts III, so it's only obligatory that we have a Spoiled! to talk specifics. So many questions have been answered, but even more emerged. This is your official spoiler warning before clicking play on our video above.

To dissect it all, news editor Imran Khan and intern Hunter Wolfe sat down with me to dive into everything, from that crazy secret ending to finally finding out the fate of our beloved characters. At long last, we have a conclusion to the Xehanort arc, and we're evaluating how everything played out while also looking at what that means for the future of the franchise. Join us for this the crazy ride and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

The Dead or Alive series has long sat in the middle of the fighting game pack. It’s earned its keep over the years with a mix of sound combat and an idiosyncratic take on the genre, but usually sells itself on sex appeal instead of clever twists or reinvigorating overhauls. Dead or Alive 6 takes steps to encourage more people to dive in, and while it has some interesting ideas, this entry loses more than it gains in the move to modern consoles.

The core of Dead or Alive 6’s fighting keeps things familiar. Pumping out combos is still easier than most fighters, but reversal moves called holds punish repeated attacks and encourage you to think twice about how you approach your opponent. The critical system introduced in Dead or Alive 5 makes it even scarier to be on offense, since your opponent can counter some attacks while on the receiving end of a combo. I like how active the counter system is, even if being countered in the middle of a combo often feels jarring.

A new fatal attack button is meant to ease in new players, but mostly feels superfluous.  Mashing it delivers a difficult-to-escape combo that automatically deliver a super move (albeit with reduced damage) if the accompanying meter is full. But because these attacks are easy to read, and because most characters already have a combo they can deliver just by mashing the punch button, it feels like an unnecessary layer. Break holds, a special move which can counter any kind of attack, are a much smarter addition, as they’re useful for both newcomers who don’t understand holds and veterans who want to avoid a mix-up at a crucial moment.

Lots of smaller, more incremental changes and a well-rounded (if familiar) roster underpin the larger changes, though including only two newcomers, NiCO (a scientist who can deliver some impressive lightning-based attacks) and Diego (a street fighter who relies on powerful, delayed punches) is a bit of a letdown. The tutorial introducing you to all the moves and jargon is fairly extensive, which I appreciated. It can last multiple hours depending on how much you know going in, but if you can internalize confusing terminology like “hi counter strike,” “combo throw,” and “expert hold,” you should have a good idea of what you’re doing in a match once you’re done.

DOA Quest, a new mission-based mode, smartly extends that on-ramp. Each of the quick, 100-plus missions has optional objectives, like pulling off three expert holds in a match, that get you to explore the nuances of combat. If you don’t understand how to complete a particular objective, you can press a button to dive into the tutorial that teaches you how to do it. The recommended tutorial isn’t always the one you’re having issues with, but overall it’s a great way to build off the tutorial that makes learning feel less like work as you unlock costumes and accessories for characters.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

On the other hand, the story mode is a trainwreck even by fighting game standards. It’s broken up into several timelines, with one main timeline and several character-specific ones unlocking as you play. Scenes are wildly disjointed, poorly lip-synced and acted, lack coherence until you’re about halfway through, and are often shorter than the fights they lead into, with loading screens bookending the whole affair. 

It can take some effort to piece it all together, and the rushed, uninteresting story you get out of the ordeal isn’t worth the effort of having to edit it for yourself. Worse yet, it occasionally leans into the series’ penchant for cringe-inducing fan service. If you aren’t invested in the continuing exploits of Dead or Alive’s characters, tournaments, or plotlines already, don’t bother starting now.

The online is also severely limited. Right now the only way to play online is through ranked mode, whether through a dedicated option or by waiting in training mode. You can’t create a lobby, spectate, view leaderboards, or even invite a friend to a match. Lobbies should be patched in later this month, but for a multiplayer game to launch with such a limited infrastructure is enormously disappointing. At least matches are decent, with solid fights interspersed with lagfests you can opt out of by declining a match with a bad connection.

Dead or Alive 6 sports a robust fighting system, but the framework around it doesn’t capitalize on that. While the tutorial and DOA Quest mode do a decent job of getting you up to speed on what makes combat tick, the awful story mode does it no favors, and the barebones online puts a damper on what could have been a second wind for the series.

Score: 6.75

Summary: Dead or Alive 6 sports a robust fighting system, but the framework around it doesn’t capitalize on that.

Concept: Bring the fighting series to modern consoles while making it a little more palatable to newcomers

Graphics: Character models are detailed, but also look kind of plastic. You can tone down the breast-bouncing if you want, but there’s still some eye-rolling creepiness

Sound: The mix of hard rock and synth quickly fades into the background, though the character select theme will probably get stuck in your head whether you like it or not

Playability: Dead or Alive’s mash-friendly attacks still meld well with its emphasis on exploiting repetition with counterattacks, though learning to construct combos around the critical system is cumbersome

Entertainment: Varied fundamentals and a new mission-based mode that drills into the series’ intricacies almost help offset a disastrous story mode and lack of online options

Replay: Moderate

Click to Purchase

All month long we've been rolling out exclusive features covering Obsidian's upcoming RPG The Outer Worlds and (hopefully) answering your biggest questions about the game. Just in case we missed something, for this special episode of The Game Informer Show we Skyped in the game's co-directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky to answer more than 70 great questions from the community.

You can watch the video above, subscribe and listen to the audio on iTunes or Google Play, listen on SoundCloud, stream it on Spotify, or download the MP3 by clicking here. 

Click on the banner below to enter our complete hub of exclusive features on The Outer Worlds.

Over the years, Sony's commitment to the PlayStation Vita has been a bit of a puzzle, but the company seemed quite okay with their handheld performed in Japan. When production for Vita units ended in the west, Sony kept the lines running in Japan, where the PSP successor still enjoyed some modest success and seemed to at least be making the company money. Those days are over, however, as Vita production has officially ended in the one bulwark it had remaining.

The announcement that shipments were ending soon was sent out to retailers last week, but it has been replaced with a new notice that shipments have ended. Whatever PlayStation Vita units are on the shelves are all that remain of the system's new hardware. The system will likely still get the occasional port, but for the most part, the new notice is as good as an obituary for Sony's beleaguered handheld. 

The PlayStation Vita launched in December 2011 in Japan, so it survived quite a while, especially considering Sony's disinterest in it over the years. This month's PlayStation Plus offerings are the first time that PlayStation Vita offerings have been excluded since they were first added to Sony's monthly free game lineup.

[Source: Gematsu]

Earlier this week, THQ Nordic held an Ask Me Anything on an image board of ill-repute, answering questions from a community that feels rules of any kind are shackles. It was a site that was blacklisted by Google due to reports of child pornography and, within the AMA itself, featured links to drawn underage pornography, homophobic slurs, racial slurs, anti-semitic slurs, and basically any kind of slur you can get your mind around. THQ Nordic’s head of PR, Philipp Brock, happily matched the tone and tenor of the questions being asked with his answers before professing ignorance of what the site was about.

If you take Brock at his word, and there is absolutely no reason to do so, he was the sole arbiter of this AMA and it came from a position of ignorance. Brock apologized for the issue, saying that no one else was involved at THQ Nordic. Despite this, THQ Nordic left the tweets linking directly to a website and specific page with underage depictions of naked minors engaging in sexual activities with adults up for 15 hours. It was not until Microsoft’s general manager of Xbox studios Shannon Loftis called them out over Twitter did they even delete the link.

Bio-Mutant is an upcoming game from THQ Nordic

And then we all forgot. We moved on. We talked about how Halo Infinite is a soft reboot for the series. The community began discussing and dissecting Devil May Cry trailers. Twitter started dubbing over the new female Pokemon trainer with a Scottish accent. It has not even been a week since THQ Nordic came up with this preposterous PR disaster, and then equally preposterously feigned ignorance about their knowledge of the subject, and everyone just sort of let it go to talk about something else.

Over the years that I have been reporting on video game news, I have always observed the ebbs and flows of the news cycle and when you can expect dead times and when news stories come one after another. One of the worst things that can happen to your company is when you have bad news in a slow cycle, because it means you are the story of the day and sometimes even multiple days, but it will eventually become someone else. There will be a new main character of the next news cycle. Mirroring the modern news landscape outside of video games, news within the industry eventually fades into the ether, and is brought up occasionally as a joke on a subreddit or podcast.

Metro Exodus is published by Deep Silver, owned by parent company THQ Nordic

This is what people like Philipp Brock count on. It is what his boss, Reinhard Pollice, counted on when he seemingly participated in the AMA but let Brock take all the blame. It is how THQ Nordic CEO Lars Wingefors likely knew that no one would care if he avoided commenting on the subject. Eventually people will get bored, or tired, and whatever thing that went wrong will be forgotten. The video game industry is poor at self-policing and the news cycle we engage in is complicit in that lack of introspection.

Even if you believe THQ Nordic that they did not know what they were getting into, which I do not for a second, the crime of legitimizing communities like that by celebrating their engagement is something we need to talk about. It should be a discussion that takes place beyond the halls of demo rooms and preview events as quick jokes before real work begins. We need to talk about whether embracing the toxicity shoved into the corner of the room is as simple as money being just as good wherever it comes from. Is it ethically or even morally permissible for a major video game publisher, one with an exclusive deal with child entertainment companies like Nickelodeon, to host discussions on websites where photos of lynchings, of nazi rallies, depictions of children being raped, boards focused on sexualizing toddlers, are held and welcomed? On a video game board with a banner link to art of big-breasted children? Does that seem normal or okay to the rest of the industry?

If your answer is "No," then why aren't we talking about it?

Darksiders III is THQ Nordic's first big game

Over the past week, I have received a number of DMs and emails from developers who work for THQ Nordic or their parent company also named THQ Nordic. They range from embarrassed to shocked at the lack of a proper response. One email relayed a story about a conversation with their Human Resources representative in a non-official capacity over lunch as they discussed the issue. The HR representative remarked that they did not receive any official guidance about it, but that they expect the whole thing to blow over. They’re right, it did, and that should speak poorly of the industry as a whole.

I keep thinking about how Loftis called out THQ Nordic for having the tweet still up for so long after they claimed remorse for it. I cannot pretend to know what she was thinking when she did it, but shaming the company into removing it probably saved their own developers a lot of the embarrassment and disgust they were feeling having to go into work the next day, even if no one could prevent it. When the industry does bad things, the industry needs to call it out – this includes the powerful people who work in it, the media that covers it, and the community. We also need to not let it go. That’s my challenge for all of us, following through however we can.

Despite multiple inquiries, THQ Nordic’s PR has not responded to my questions this week. I expect they are waiting for this whole thing to blow over. I intend to keep following up.

Arc System Works' latest anime-based fighting game, Kill la Kill – IF, joined the ranks of our Hidden Gems of TGS 2018. The game is set to be released in Japan this year but, today, English Publisher PQube revealed plans for a Europe-wide release.

With a campaign penned by Kazuki Nakashima – the head writer of the anime adaptation – and a roster of beloved characters (including the newly announced dual-wield forms of Ryuko and Satsuki), Kill la Kill – IF will provide fans a satisfying dose of bombastic action similar to Arc System Work's previous fighter titles. 

Kill la Kill – IF will be available in Europe and Japan for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC, but a release date has not been set. In the meantime, check out our glowing review on Arc System Works' other popular and highly competitive game: Dragon Ball FighterZ.

We will not have to wait much longer to hear about Jedi Fallen Order, Respawn's upcoming single-player action game set in the Star Wars universe. EA has already announced we'll be seeing the game at next month's Star Wars celebration event, but we did get one little tidbit today about the game: veteran writer Chris Avellone was on the project.

The news came from an off-the-cuff tweet today. A fan asked Avellone what he was working on and, being careful to tiptoe around any non-disclosure agreements, he revealed that he just finished up on Jedi: Fallen Order with Respawn.

I can't say 100% b/c of NDAs, but the ones I can say: I just finished up work with Jedi: The Fallen Order - and beyond that, there's another big bomb dropping in a month! Er, I mean, maybe. Ahem.

— Chris Avellone (@ChrisAvellone) March 1, 2019

The Star Wars game, which was announced at least year's E3, was detailed to take place between the infamous Star Wars prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. Hewing so close to the prequels might be a cause for concern, but with Avellone writing for Fallen Order, it boosts the credibility of the game's writing quite a bit. Those who don't recognize Avellone's name might recognize his work in games like Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas, and tons more.

It is not clear what other project Avellone is referring to when he talks about the "another big bomb dropping in a month," but it should be interesting to see.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order will be revealed for the first time on April 13.

I’m no stranger to playing weird and confusing games, having reviewed everything from house-flipping sims to erotic milking mini-games, and even a few titles that don’t actually exist. Even so, it’s been a long time since a game has left me as bewildered as Anthem. From its core dissonance between gameplay and storytelling to its dreadfully predictable mission structure to some utterly bizarre design choices and a litany of facepalm-worthy bugs, I am continually scratching my head while playing Anthem. The biggest mystery, however, is why I still feel compelled to play it in the first place. Even Marie Kondo would run screaming from the mess that is Anthem. So why am I having fun?

I should start by admitting that I’m not the hugest BioWare fan in the world – the Dragon Age series has never done much for me, and neither do all the hornball romance options that have players humping their way across whatever galaxy or fantasy realm they find themselves in. Call me old-fashioned, but when you’re fending off an intergalactic calamity threatening all life as we know it, there are better uses of your time than trying to figure out if your sex parts are compatible with some equally freaky alien.

That said, I do consider myself a regular-sized BioWare fan – outside of the romance subplots, the developer has served up some superb storytelling. I still look back fondly on my time with Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, and Mass Effect remains one of my favorite RPG series of all-time. Well, Mass Effect remains one of my favorite RPG trilogies of all-time. Playing Andromeda made me want to swan dive into another beam of pure energy, regardless of what color it might be.

The best thing I can say about Andromeda is that it didn’t deter me from the prospect of another sci-fi game from BioWare. It did, however, install some warning klaxons in my brain, which Anthem triggered almost immediately. Sure, Anthem’s spaghetti missiles and snazzy Iron Man suits javelins certainly looked promising, but the problem with Andromeda was that it prioritized mediocre gunplay and open-world busywork over the thoughtfully designed missions and storytelling BioWare is known for. And Anthem… seemed to be doubling down on that decision?

Whatever its problems, Anthem sure is easy on the eyes

I’m happy to report at least one part of that initial impression turned out to be false. Anthem’s gunplay and overall gameplay mechanics aren’t mediocre. Shooting your way through squads of enemies feels great, and every aspect of piloting your javelin – from takeoff to mid-air dodges and double jumps to slamming down on top of foes – is a Tony Stark power fantasy come true. Even when I’m jetting headfirst into a rocky outcrop on the side of a cliff, I feel like a total bad-ass. So, surprise, I actually do know why I’m enjoying Anthem: Blasting the crap out of aliens in a knock-off Iron Man suit is fun. Frankly, it’s the only part of the game that makes sense.

As I’ve outlined a couple times in this column, my gaming time at home follows a familiar ritual. I usually play a new game for a few hours until my wife takes notice and asks a simple, yet dreaded question: “What’s it about?”

In Anthem’s case, her question was a little more pointed than usual. “This game doesn’t look fun. What’s it about?” As best I can tell, my wife’s criteria for judging the quality of video game comes down to some secret ratio of talking to gunfire, and it’s usually surprisingly accurate.

Here is the best Anthem summation I could come up with for my wife: “It takes place on an alien planet, and everyone lives in an old fort despite all of the fancy technology they clearly have. And I guess I’m not even in the actual fort, because this place is like a block long and only a dozen people are here. Anyway, everyone stays in the fort because the rest of the world is filled with deadly creatures, but I go out on missions to help people, because actually they are leaving all the time and getting into trouble. Beyond that? Not much really, just more missions to get better weapons and stuff while fighting aliens.”

And for once, I feel like my utter confusion isn’t my fault! Not only is Anthem full of nonsensical sci-fi hogwash – “The Monitor is a cypher who wants the Cenotaph to control the Anthem of Creation!” – the multiplayer nature of the game makes the storyline a jumbled mess unless you and your friends play all the missions together in the exact same order. Reiner had a head-start on me when we played together, and it made the narrative about as intelligible as the plot of Memento would be to the guy IN MEMENTO.

The bigger the dude, the badder you know he's going to be

In one of the rare missions that actually contains a mid-quest cutscene, Reiner and I got double-crossed by a certain NPC character. After we finished up, Reiner got the rest of the story payoff in a post-mission scene, but I was simply returned to the fort – only to get roped into an inane conversation with the same character as he tried to guess my birthday. A few days later, I fought and killed the main bad guy with Reiner. An hour after that while playing solo, they actually introduced who the hell that character was.

Simply put, Anthem’s narrative format is completely broken, and even if you and your friends are perfectly synced up, being forced to go back to the fort for every story beat and to initiate the next mission is a total pain. It’s a bit like trying to bake a cake, only the recipe is in your neighbor’s kitchen.

And it turns out that cake BioWare is baking isn’t that good to begin with – having the majority of your story dumped on you by a few NPCs standing around a glorified microtransaction bazaar is the antithesis of “show, don’t tell.” The dialogue “choices” feel like a vestigial tail for BioWare at this point. Do I say that my last mission went “pretty well” or “great!” Who cares?! Does any of it matter? How far we have fallen from Commander Shepard making the snap decision to shoot a traitor or sacrifice an entire species – instead you can be friendly or kind-of standoffish to the lady who sells you crafting materials. Yay?

Are these enemies bugs? Or cosplaying as bugs? You be the judge...

Oh hey, there are some bug guys, so let’s talk about Anthem’s enemies for a bit. Several hours into the game it dawned on me that I didn’t really know who I was shooting or why I was shooting them – other than the fact some joker in my earpiece was telling me to. Sure, there are a bunch of appropriately alien-looking creatures that you run into, and they don’t require much explanation. “It’s like a pterodactyl, only it shoots fireballs – that certainly sounds like an alien to me!”

More often than not, however, I found myself shooting what just seemed to be other humans. Who are they? And why do some of them look like they’re doing bad cosplay of an obscure enemy from Star Trek: The Original Series?

Turns out those bug-looking enemies up there are Scars, and they’re actually alien insects that take on the characteristics of the dominant lifeform of…whatever planet Anthem takes place on. Does the world even have a name? Cause it seems like the first step of creating a new sci-fi world is to name the actual world…

Anyway, for some reason Scars copy humans, even though Titans are clearly far superior and any human that leaves the fort is immediately incapacitated by the first living organism they come across and in desperate need of your assistance. But even after deciding to mimic humans, Scars decide to don big campy bug masks anyway? How does that even make sense?

Other enemy factions actually are human – some are outlaws, another is a mercenary group – but it’s not clear exactly what they want or where they come from, because all they ever do is pop up in endless waves to try and stymie whatever your current objective is. There are also Elementals, which are strange, ethereal creatures that somehow still drop human ammo when you kill them. This dissonance is especially noticeable when–

And now is a good time to derail everything to talk about loading, since loading derails everything in the game ALL THE TIME. I seriously cannot believe how many loads there are in Anthem. If I stood up and did jumping jacks every time loading screen popped up, I could do an actual Ironman after a week of playing Anthem.

The longest loading times are when you actually start a mission, and can last more than a minute on an Xbox One X (a moment of silence for those playing on a base PS4/Xbox – or several minutes of silence, as the case may be). I am not exaggerating when I say that after starting one co-op mission, Reiner went off-mic to make a sandwich and still got back before the mission started. Granted, that anecdote probably says more about Reiner’s incredibly efficient sandwich-making skills, but it still ain’t a great sign for the game either.

If it was only the initial world load, I could live with it – everyone needs a pee break now and then, after all – but it’s so much worse than that. Once you’re in the “open” world, BioWare puts you on a tight leash. If you stray too far from your next waypoint, the game smacks you with an “Outside Mission Boundary!” warning that counts down to a mandatory warp to the objective – and another loading screen.

Umbilical cords offer more slack than Anthem’s invisible mission tether. I can’t count the number of times when my next waypoint has been “RIGHT THERE!”, and my fellow rocket jockeys are right by my side as we’re all counted down to load screen oblivion by Anthem’s anal-retentive virtual director. “No, that’s your mark, just literally stand on that ‘x’ on the floor, okay?”

The mission boundary message is also situated in a way that it blocks the heat meter for your rocket pack, so I also can’t count the number of times that I’ve been closing in on the mission area only to crash and burn because my suit has overheated – at which point I have to sit through another lengthy load time just to relocate 20 yards closer to where I was already heading…

How's the heat level on my boosters doing? Oh that's right, I CAN'T SEE IT BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPID WARNING MESSAGE

Hey, hey, guess what happens when you die? If your answer is “another load time,” you’re only half right. You will indeed face another lengthy loading screen when you respawn. However, chances are good that they’ll load you back at the last mission area, which instantly triggers the warning countdown with LITERALLY NO HOPE of you getting back into the current mission zone before it reaches zero – instigating a second load. Who thought this was okay?!?!?!

If you’re thinking this all sounds pretty bad, allow me to slap you with an informercial-worthy “But wait, there’s more!” You know how usually in games if you want to switch your weapon, you simply pull up the inventory menu and move things around? In Anthem, you can only change your loadout in the forge back at the fort, and it requires its own load apart from loading into the fort. This is despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, it’s just a damn menu!

This positively befuddling structure led to me sitting through eight load screens in a single mission. EIGHT! Don’t believe me? Allow me to count them.

First, Reiner and I started a mission – load one. We flew to the first location and fought a few waves of pesky Scars, but I died during the battle. Rather than wait for my preoccupied teammates to revive me, I respawned – load two. However, the game respawned me back at the starting area and I failed to make it back to the battleground in time because, as cool as my javelin is, it can’t move at the speed of light – load three.

Defeating the group of Scars eventually led us to a dungeon, which we entered – load four. There we fought another group of Scars, before being giving the coordinates to one final location. We left the dungeon – load five – and had one more showdown against some enemies. We then waited for the end-of-mission stats to show up – load six (yep, even the stats need a load!). I chose to warp directly to the forge to equip my new weapons – load seven – then had to exit back out to the fort to ready up for the next mission, for a whopping total of EIGHT LOADS – ah ah ah!

I honestly have no idea how a game could end up with so many load times. My current working theory is that the Frostbite engine is as structurally sound as the Edith Finch house. That or someone at BioWare just has a really weird loading-screen fetish.

Ultimately, however, all the loading screens in the world wouldn’t matter if the mission design is good, so here are some complaints about that.

Get used to objectives like "Defeat Scar Ambush" and "Eliminate Threat" and "Defend The McGuffin"

Allow me to describe every damn mission in Anthem: You fly a few minutes to place that some chatty quest-giver has sent you to. You fight enemies there for a few minutes. You do a thing – usually flipping a switch or putting a broken technobobble back together. You fly to a second place, fight more waves of enemies for a few minutes, then do the thing again. You fly to a third place, sometimes a dungeon, then fight more guys and usually a boss.

That is Anthem’s mission design, without fail, and about the only thing that changes is the dialogue being said by a voice actor who is desperate to convince you that this mission is somehow different from all the previous ones. That and the initial sci-fi McGuffin you’re hunting for changes.

One mission, I was looking for a character’s diary. Several other missions I was looking for journals, which is just another word for diary. I have also chased down “lost research,” “historical documents,” and “salvage” – which is really just mission-designer speak for “Good lord, I have to come up with another synonym for 'crap'?”

Not to mention the fact that apparently everyone in Anthem’s world is constantly drawing maps to where they’re headed next and leaving them behind just in case something bad happens. At this point I’m so used to it that I’ve started doing it myself in real life.

Hey, you never know when you might stumble into an enemy ambush in the bathroom

Many other times the McGuffin is helping a group of sentinels – NPC soldiers who, despite having their own javelins, would still be overwhelmed by a pile of rocks. Theoretically, these sentinels fight alongside you in battle, but it only takes about five seconds of combat to realize why you are constantly investigating distress calls from them. During one mission, Reiner and I had to rescue a bunch of sentinels from primitive cages that they couldn’t break out of even though every character in Anthem’s universe has an unlimited supply of rockets strapped to them at all times. When we opened the doors, the sentinels didn’t even walk out – they just continued standing there, motionless. It really feels good to know you’re making a difference!

My favorite mission tasked Reiner and I with breaking up an auction for illegal weapons. By that point, I had already played enough Anthem to know our objective sounded dubious.

First, we flew to a location, which turned out not to be the auction, but did coincidentally involve fighting waves of enemies for a few minutes. Afterward, we found a map(!), which was supposed to lead us to the real auction site. When we got there, however, it turned out to be an ambush – requiring us to fight more waves of enemies for a few more minutes. That led us to the actual auction site, during which waves of “bidders” for the non-existent weapons showed up and we had to fight them as well.

This location happened to be the same area we fought waves of enemies in during the previous mission as well – the only difference was the quest-giver constantly talking about the auction over our headsets in order to sell the charade. “Oh look, the next group of bidders have arrived at the auction!” Oh really, BioWare? How about the pack of damned Ice Wolves that just showed up? Are the Ice Wolves bidding on the weapons too?!

You can't have an EA game without microtransactions!

Another mission set Reiner and I on the hunt for an Auspex. It was one of the few quest items that didn’t just sound like a stack of papers left behind by some forgetful egghead, so I was intrigued. Suffice it to say, after flying to and fighting enemies in three locations, I still didn’t know what the hell an Auspex was, but I was determined to find out. I googled “Auspex,” but the only entries that came up were full of people complaining that the quest-line was broken.

Reiner eventually got an explanation during another post-mission cutscene that I wasn’t privy to, because again, the disjointed narrative delivery during multiplayer sessions is INSANE. Anyway, apparently the Auspex is a magical sci-fi device that lets its user see the future – but only a minute into the future. A lot of good that does me. I already know what I’ll be doing one minute in the future – I’ll still be waiting for the next damn mission to load!

I haven’t run into any straight-up broken quests like others have been complaining about, but I have encountered plenty of bugs – and I’m not talking about the cosplaying Scars. Toward the end of one particularly grueling mission where respawns were disabled, our whole squad magically lost the ability to revive one another; all we could do was dance around our kneeling comrades while waiting for the missing revive prompt to pop up. In another battle, Reiner revived me, but the U.I. message remained – which also happens to be friggin’ huge. Try flying around and shooting a squad of enemies with this message plastered across your screen:

It ain't the javelin that's malfunctioning in this screen...

One time, the subtitle for a random line of dialogue stayed on the screen for an entire mission. Oftentimes, enemy health bars won’t show up, so you don’t know how much or even if you’re doing damage to them. The first time I unlocked a new javelin, the game crashed back to the Xbox dashboard, which I took as a sign I should stop playing for the evening.

During one mission, Reiner’s audio cut out completely, a bug he noted so matter-of-factly that I’m guessing it’s happened more than once. At the end of another particularly long mission, my game crashed to the title screen, robbing me of all the loot I collected during it. I can overlook a lot of problems, but when you rob me of a half-hour mission’s worth of loot, YOU’VE CROSSED A LINE. Apparently that line is a bit fuzzy though, because I’m still playing Anthem, and still – for some incomprehensible reason – enjoying it.

Ultimately, it is a testament to the core gameplay – the flying, the shooting, the bright and bombastic explosions showering every colorful battlefield – that Anthem is still a pretty fun time in spite of all its problems. I’m guessing BioWare isn’t content with “pretty fun,” and that it will continue working to transform Anthem into a great game. The potential is certainly there – all they have to do is fix all the bugs, consolidate and decrease the excessive amount of load times, figure out a better way to deliver story in a multiplayer setting, completely revamp its approach to mission design, rebalance loot drops, come up with some actual end-game content that doesn’t just involve endlessly re-running the same missions on harder difficulty levels, and stave off the crushing pressure from EA to regress the entire experience into an exploitative mess of microtransactions. Easy, right?

All joking aside, I do hope BioWare can sand off at least some of Anthem’s rough edges, and I’m genuinely interested in seeing where the live-service approach takes the game next. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Destiny, which seems like the more apt comparison. It took Bungie a long time to fix the substantial problems Destiny launched with, but it eventually figured it out and made fans happy. Then they pissed everyone off again by making all the same mistakes with the sequel, but we can tackle that when Anthem 2 comes out.

Capcom is gearing up for the launch of Devil May Cry 5, the fifth installment of a series that started way back in 2001. Even if you kept up on every single Devil May Cry game, it's been nearly two decades and different creators, so keeping track of the whole thing might not be easy. That's even assuming you've played all the games, including the maligned Devil May Cry 2, as everything is free game for references in the latest title.

Thankfully, Capcom has released a "Story So Far" trailer for DMC5. You can remind yourself a bit about the story so far, after Capcom's insane and wrong retcon that Devil May Cry 4 takes place after Devil May Cry 2, but that's fine. I'm not bitter. Not bitter at all.

Surprise! The trailer actually just straight up ignores Devil May Cry 2, which is pretty funny on its own.

Devil May Cry 5 releases on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on March 8.

Everything is not awesome in the game adaptation of The Lego Movie 2. Emmet may be as happy as ever, but his smile contradicts the true state of things. The world around him has transformed into a wasteland of bricks and sand, and the gameplay that previously put his misfit group of heroes on grand adventures has similarly fallen apart and is a ghost of its former self.

For this sequel, developer TT Games moved away from the tried-and-true Lego formula that players have come to expect from its movie-based experiences. You won’t be collecting gold bricks, hunting down minikits, changing characters for puzzles, or even assembling piles of bricks that you stumble upon. Instead, TT Games created an experience similar to the freeform Lego Worlds game, with players completing small tasks for characters scattered across various open-world environments. While I applaud the decision to try something different, the change fails to capture the spirit of the film, and more importantly, it just isn’t that much fun. The experience is shallow and repetitive with the sole sliver of interest revolving around collecting building pieces for your own customizable world.

The game begins in the post-apocalyptic version of Bricksburg, which is a fitting space for a tutorial that fails to deliver much hope. The first thing you learn is that destroying Lego-made objects produces two kinds of currency: the studs of old, and something new called bricks. If you smash something that is red and blue in color, you receive a handful of bricks of the same shades.

Bricks are needed to assemble various objects, both for the buildings you want to add to your home world, and various tools needed for objectives. This is a fine idea that illuminates the building aspect of Legos, but isn’t put to good use. If a character asks you to build something, you just go into a menu, select that object, determine where to place it, and that’s it. They cheer you on for your deed and you move to the next character. If one of these people requires electricity to power a device, you just need to build a generator. It’s a surprisingly simple activity that serves as the game’s biggest task and it gets old quickly. I grew bored of the core story missions in the first world.

Most missions can be completed within seconds, and if you don’t need to build something, you may just be asked to beat up three enemies, point a wand at an object to change its color, or track down a specific item that is usually right around the corner or over a hill. I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again without much payoff. When any task is completed, the player earns a purple brick. Gather enough of those, and you can reach a new planet and progress the story.

Each world is themed after locations from the film, but given how quickly you bounce from one task to the next, there isn’t much room for storytelling, and you don’t see much of it. In most cases, Wyldstyle narrates what happened in the film as the camera pans across a random shot in the world. The ending of the game completely ignores the final act of the film; Wyldstyle just tells you what happens instead.

The main worlds conclude with impressive boss battles against Lego creations as tall as skyscrapers. Each of these battles tasks the player to find different ways to trick their attacker into harming itself – such as a hungry chameleon eating a fake fruit instead of a real one. When the beast is tricked, an awesome platforming sequence unfolds along its body. The sense of verticality and scale delivered in these fights is impressive, and ends up being the most ambitious part of the game.

As uninteresting as your objectives are, moving from one destination to the next encourages you to explore the open world for valuable treasure chests. Each chest delivers a haul of studs, bricks, and a loot crate or two. Yes, you read that correctly: a chest holds a crate. When the crate is opened at a shop, you earn new weapons to wield, buildings for your world, and characters to play as (although you never really need to swap anyone out since everyone can do everything). Given how bountiful chests are, I was practically swimming in stuff, and grew hooked on the collecting aspect of the game.

The first Lego Movie Videogame did a fantastic job of recreating the worlds and moments from the film, even if the gameplay relied on a 14-year-old formula. The need to switch between Batman, Unikitty, and a wide selection of characters for different tasks was fun. The Lego Movie 2 Videogame rarely pushes the player to do anything other than go into their building menu to select one object, and ends up being a shockingly bland experience in a series that has been mostly consistent in doing fun things with different properties.

Score: 6

Summary: The game adaptation struggles to find a pulse and ends up being a repetitive bore.

Concept: A departure from the tried-and-true Lego mold that delivers neither excitement nor an experience true to the film

Graphics: The characters are animated nicely, but most of the worlds are plain. Some are even crudely surrounded by giant walls

Sound: Several of the film’s catchy songs are joined by performers who do a great job impersonating the actors that didn’t lend their voices to the game

Playability: The objectives are repetitive and require little effort from the player. The result is a game that feels soulless, especially when compared to the other Lego options out there

Entertainment: Building a world is fun, but the quest you have to complete to get the materials you need is as dull as they come

Replay: Moderately High

Click to Purchase

File this under one of those "This looks like something, hopefully it is!" categories, but there might be something new coming to the Dragon Ball universe in the near future. 

Something legendary is coming... pic.twitter.com/S1InFLdEM0

— Toei Animation (@ToeiAnimation) March 1, 2019

Toei Animation, the studio behind Dragon Ball is teasing "something legendary" is coming with a picture of the three-star ball. This could mean any number of things. "Legendary" is usually used in Dragon Ball nomenclature to refer to Broly, the legendary super saiyan. Considering he just had a movie centering around him, perhaps Toei is announcing another one? Another possibility is that they're revealing more Dragon Ball Super, as the manga has already started back up, so the anime might come back fairly quickly, too. It is fairly likely that any return would incorporate Broly into it somehow.

It is curious that the tweet uses the three-star ball, as the one-star ball is traditionally used in Dragon Ball logos and the four-star ball is mostly commonly associated with Goku. It might be referring to the third Super movie, which was Broly, or maybe it has no significant meaning. With such a vague tease, it's hard to say.

I'd like them to announce that Dragon Ball Super is resuming, but we'll have to see what the tease means.

March has finally arrived! Games like Metro Exodus and Anthem are still dominating our free time but this weekend we're all making space for other fun-filled endeavors. We'll be watching movies and playing board games, but what will you be doing this weekend?

Nathan Anstadt (@NathanAnstadt) – The siren song of Final Fantasy Tactics still calls to me. Otherwise I’m making steady progress in Metro 2033, which is proving to be a pretty good time. Then I’ll be playing as much Trials Rising as possible.

Hunter Wolfe (@Hunter_Wolfe) – For intern movie night, Jay selected Princess Mononoke, so I’m excited to watch that. I’ve been at the end of Metro Exodus for, like, three days now, so it’s time to finish that up. I’ll need a palette cleanser afterward, so there’s probably some Marie Kondo on my agenda.

Joe Juba (@Joejuba) – After looking forward to Anthem for months, I’ve only had a few hours to play it in the week since its official release. That’s going to change this weekend, when I can fully dive into to BioWare’s shooter to see if this is finally the game-as-service that can keep me hooked for the long term. And if it’s not, I’ll just sit quietly dreaming of Dragon Age 4.

Brian Shea (@BrianPShea) – I have a lot planned outside of gaming this weekend, most notably watching UFC 235, but when I am holding a controller, I’ll be playing Far Cry New Dawn and Overwatch. Maybe I’ll continue my slow progress through Resident Evil 2. Oh, and Marvel Strike Force because I’m addicted.

Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard) – Got some dinner plans and some Anthem plans and some going swimming with Reiner plans. It should be a good, but quiet one this weekend. I will also probably watch Into the Spider-Verse a fifth time. That’s a good movie.

Imran Khan (@imranzomg) – This weekend, I’m going to try and play some Dead or Alive 6 online, but the lack of a way to play with friends is a real bummer that might limit my time with it. I started playing Hyrule Warriors again, but this time on the Switch, and it really cements that it might be my favorite Warriors game, so I expect some more time with that. Beyond that, I ended up working a six-day week, so I’m going to probably rest a whole lot this weekend.

Leo Vader (@leovader) – I got this little control peripheral for Premiere called the Shuttle Pro, I've been trying to get comfortable with that because I've heard it speeds up editing. It definitely at least makes it more fun so far, it's got a fun wheel to spin around that makes me feel like a DJ. On the gaming front, more Siege and I guess more Far Cry New Dawn if a friend wants to play co-op but I sure feel like I've played enough of that after only a few hours. The secret second skill tree that has superhero skills has got me curious though. My friend keeps double jumping around me. This is not a joke. I should probably see what that's about. HAGS!

Jeff Cork– It looks like Minnesota is going to get more snow, so I'll be forced to spend the weekend inside. Rats. I'll be splitting my time between Overwatch, Far Cry New Dawn, and the new ToeJam & Earl game. Don't sleep on that last one -- it's super fun!

Ben Hanson (@yozetty) – This weekend I’ll be playing more board games, because I have a sick obsession with Betrayal at this point. Other than that, I might keep playing Ape Out which is surprisingly cool. Then there’s always Anthem sitting there… taunting me to get past those stupid forts… Have a good weekend!

Javy Gwaltney– I’m going to be finishing up my hockey journey with NHL 19 and continuing my Hitchcock marathon with North By Northwest!

The Getaway was an impressive GTA competitor when it released in 2003. It used revolutionary-at-the-time motion capture technology to tell a cinematic crime tale and featured a fairly faithful recreation of London. In 2005, a sequel subtitled Black Monday released and it was . . . okay. It failed to deliver on the unrealized potential of the first game, but it is still impressive in many ways.

Join Andrew Reiner, Benjamin Reeves, Ben Hanson (!?), and Kyle Hilliard as we examine the shortcomings of Team Soho's game, but also marvel at the undeniably impressive elements.

I also would like to use this platform to say that I was right about this game's connections to L.A. Noire. L.A. Noire's developer, Team Bondi, was founded by The Getaway's director, Brendan McNamara (no relation to Andy McNamara), and the studio employed many former Team Soho developers. Black Monday's director, Naresh Hirani, was a producer on L.A. Noire. So, just keep that in mind while Reiner, Reeves, and Hanson all make fun of me.

In a recent recruitment page update released by Nintendo and translated by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, Nintendo shared some demographics for employees on the Japanese side of Nintendo. This doesn't include, say, Nintendo Software Technologies in Redmond, any of Nintendo of America, Retro Game Studios, etc. Still, it's an interesting look into who makes up Nintendo.

Not sure if new info but noticed this after the update on the Nintendo (NCL) recruitment page. Stats for Japan only-

No of Employees - 2,271
Avg age - 38.6
Avg length of employment - 13.5 yrs
Avg work day - 7hrs, 45mins
Avg annual salary - $80,000https://t.co/e0qKxJzqAKpic.twitter.com/Z0LTFEQ6I4

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 1, 2019

The average length of employment being 13.5 years is absolutely astonishing from a western perspective, and it's slightly ahead of Japan's national average. It's also nice to see that Nintendo's average work day is under eight hours rather than the crunch-centric idea of working far above it.

As Nintendo's older employees start looking to pass things on to younger developers, recruitments like this are meant to pick up college graduates that are looking for a major place to make their stamp on the game industry. It's certainly a pretty compelling argument.

You'd think that by early March the snow would be showing signs of abating, but not this year. But neither are competitive tournaments, so it's a give-and-take. Anyway, on to the events!

No more Swiss rounds - we're in the playoffs of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive IEM tournament now. Four teams remain to see which will reign supreme in Katowice and walk away with the $500,000 prize. (Stream / Schedule)

Well, the Shanghai Dragons finally won a game, so I can't jab 'em for not having won a game anymore. But that doesn't mean you should stop watching; we've officially entered underdog territory, right? Right? (Stream / Schedule)

The Hearthstone Winter Championships are upon us, which means more card-slinging action and big plays are likely to follow, too. (Stream / Schedule)

The League of Legends NA LCS continues, which means more matches today and tomorrow. (Stream / Schedule)

The National PUBG League, or NPL (which is reaching AIM-esque levels of abbreviations within abbreviations) is going strong this weekend, with four matches of methodical (or spicy?) action going on today. (Stream / Schedule)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's North American Open tournament sees its second round of online finals today, starting at 2pm central. The winners of this event qualify for the third round of online matches to compete for a shot at entering the main event at PAX East later this month. There is also a similar event going with Splatoon 2, starting at 11am central. (Stream)

That's it for this weekend! Let us know if we missed an event, or if there's a scene you'd like us to cover, in the comments below.

Game Freak is a studio most people immediately associate with Pokémon, but it also quietly releases other games from time to time. From the complex Pocket Card Jockey to the charming Tembo the Badass Elephant, Game Freak is prone to surprise when it isn’t churning out another Pokémon sequel. Its most recent 2D platformer, Giga Wrecker, has been in Steam for about a year, and we checked out its soon-to-be-released console version, Giga Wrecker Alt. In our hands on with the game, we got to see what’s changing and what’s staying the same.

Giga Wrecker is a 2D, puzzle-platformer and its main hook is destruction. You play as Reika Rekkeiji who, after an attempt on her life, is put back together with robot parts by the enigmatic Doctor Kozuki; the two of them working together toward their own goals. Reika is grateful for Kozuki’s assistance but is more interested in escaping, whereas the doctor’s goals are much more personal. The game has a sharp, anime-inspired art style, and occasionally their character portraits pop up for some brief conversations. While quite reminiscent of Mega Man and Dr. Light, their regular chatter gives additional context to the relationship.

The game’s levels are broken up into discrete puzzle rooms spread out over a large, interconnected map. These challenges revolve around smashing rocks that block your path to create a route to your objective. At the start, you are presented with a large “T”-shaped stone that requires you to knock out the bit at the bottom, so the top half falls and creates a bridge; it’s then just a matter of hopping your way up to reach the next room. The mechanics are easy to grasp early on, but the solutions quickly became more complex and difficult to puzzle out. Hopefully, once we’re able to spend more time with the full game, we’ll get a better sense for how the world responds to interaction, but it was often tough to see where to begin and how to get the required result without a lot of trial and error.

Giga Wrecker also features some light combat and platforming; because the combat is entirely melee-focused, it feels a bit like the 2D Castlevania series, but with jumps that are slightly floatier. You have a melee attack that you can aim up, down, left, and right, and after you smash platforms or enemies, you can collect the debris and assemble it into bigger and bigger wrecking balls that you can use to wreck the place. You’ll also eventually earn upgrades that allow you to use that ball in different ways, from creating a sword to make clean cuts through rocks or forming a cube to help you access out-of-reach areas.

This updated Alt. version of the game has plenty of new content and features. There are over 20 new levels, in addition to a hard mode and helpful assists in the form of your robot buddy, Dölma. The assists were crucial; you’ll get an image that shows you what the puzzle should look like at the end to help you piece together how to get started on tougher areas. Dölma came in very handy in a few spots, so I’m glad for his introduction.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

Giga Wrecker Alt. sets up an interesting gameplay mechanic that we’re hopeful will come together in the final version. There may be some kinks in Giga Wrecker’s puzzle design, but it has some time before it hits PS4, Switch, and Xbox One in Spring of this year. The PC version will not be gaining any of the Alt. content at this time, but is already available on Steam. 

As one of the most beloved RTS series of all time, Command & Conquer has had a rough time lately. With a canceled free-to-play version and a not-so-warmly received mobile game, fans were happy to finally learn that EA is at least in the process of remastering the original game. On this week's episode of The Game Informer Show podcast (which you can subscribe to right here) we interviewed the co-founder of Westwood studios Louis Castle about the creation of the entire series, the viability of making an RTS in the modern gaming landscape, and the evolution of his entire career. Watch the video interview above and let us now what you think in the comments below!

As one of the recently-announced starters for Pokémon Sword and Shield, Sobble is already garnering a large group of adoring fans. It looks like one of those fans is RJ Palmer, a concept artist working on the Detective Pikachu film. Palmer's taken his skill at creating realistic renderings of Pokémon and applied it to the tiny water-lizard.

You can find the full rendering on Palmer's DeviantArt page. The rendering looks fairly accurate to both Sobble and, well, actual lizards. I'm a little bothered by its enormous eyes, though; I know lizards tend to have fairly large, bulging eyes relative to their heads, but something about the mix of that structure and the more human-looking eyes is a bit weird. It looks like it knows my darkest secret, and I'm not comfortable with that.

To see more of Palmer's Pokémon-related work, check out his renditions of Ninetails and Vaporeon, Mewtwo, Tyrantrum, and more on his Instagram.

[Source: Deviant Art via Nintendolife]