Pokemon Go‘s Extraordinary Raid Week event may be coming to an end, but Niantic is giving players another incentive to participate in Raid Battles. Over the next few weeks, the developer is bringing three Legendary Pokemon back to the game, beginning with the Psychic-type Cresselia.

From now until June 18, the Lunar Pokemon will appear around the world again in five-star Raids. Not only is this a good opportunity to capture one if you missed it the first time it was available last December, you’ll also have a chance of encountering its Shiny form. Cresselia is a pure Psychic-type, so you’ll want to bring along Dark, Bug, and Ghost Pokemon like Tyranitar, Scizor, and Giratina to battle it.

Following Cresselia’s departure, the Legendary Water Pokemon Kyogre will return to five-star Raids from June 18 to June 27. After that, you’ll have another chance to capture its counterpart, Groudon, which will appear from June 27 to July 10. As is the case with Cresselia, you’ll also have a chance of encountering Shiny versions of Kyogre and Groudon when they return to Raids. You can read more details on the Pokemon Go website.

Beyond the returning Legendaries, Pokemon Go players have the game’s next Community Day to look forward to soon. Next month’s event will take place on Saturday, June 8, and the featured Pokemon this time will be Slakoth. If you manage to evolve one into its final form, Slaking, by the end of the Community Day, it’ll learn an event-exclusive move. As an added bonus, Pokemon Eggs will hatch at a quarter of their normal distance during the Community Day.

In other Pokemon Go news, Niantic recently rolled out a new wave of Gen 4 Pokemon. Gible, Hippopotas, Cherubi, and several other Pokemon originally from the Diamond and Pearl versions can now be found in the mobile game. The developer has also added several new types of Lure Modules that let you evolve Eevee into Glaceon and Leafeon.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pokemon-go-legendary-cresselia-available-again-for/1100-6467186/

Activision appears to be preparing to reveal the next Call of Duty, as it has changed its social media accounts to reflect the impending announcement. The franchise says it is “going dark” and has changed its logo icon on its official Twitter account.

That all seems to suggest an announcement is imminent, likely sometime before or during E3 2019. Activision usually announces its annual Call of Duty installments before E3. Though Activision doesn’t hold its own press conference for the event, a Call of Duty trailer is often featured at the press briefings for Microsoft, Sony, or both. This year Sony is bowing out of E3, but Microsoft could still show it off.

Rumor has it that the next Call of Duty will be a reboot of Modern Warfare, dropping the numbers and simply calling itself Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. This would be the fourth Modern Warfare game, following up on last year’s Black Ops 4.

Black Ops 4 dropped the longstanding tradition of story campaign modes in Call of Duty games, instead focusing on its competitive multiplayer, Zombies, and new Blackout modes. This year’s installment will bring back the campaign–which would make sense for rebooting a story-focused series like Modern Warfare–and we know that it’s already playable.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/call-of-duty-announcement-imminent-as-social-media/1100-6467188/

One of the most fun aspects of Super Mario Maker is seeing how the game reimagines certain enemies and items in styles they never originally appeared in, such as seeing airship levels in Super Mario Bros. or Hammer Bros. in Super Mario World. That holds just as true for Super Mario Maker 2, which introduces a new assortment of original and classic items to the toolset, including Super Mario 3‘s angry sun. Naturally, we just had to see how the iconic enemy looked in other Mario styles, and we were a little horrified by the result.

We recently had a chance to go hands-on with Super Mario Maker 2 at a demo event in New York, where we got to tinker around with the game’s course builder. We chose Super Mario World as the style for our level, and of course, the first enemy we placed in it was the angry sun, which behaves just as you remember, tormenting you persistently as you play through the stage. You can take a look at our creation in the video above.

While the angry sun looks as you’d expect it to in the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World styles, the enemy takes on a different appearance in the New Super Mario Bros. U style. As you can see in the screenshot below, the sun’s angry grimace becomes a dead-eyed stare, which somehow makes it even more unsettling as it attempts to singe you.

The angry sun is only one of a myriad of new customization options available in Super Mario Maker 2. Nintendo gave us a closer look at a handful of other new enemies and items during this month’s Mario Maker 2 Direct. And unlike the original Super Mario Maker, you won’t need to wait to unlock them; almost all of the game’s tools will be available from the start, so you’ll be able to jump in and play around with them right away. The game also features a story mode and online multiplayer, the latter of which is a first for a Super Mario platformer.

Super Mario Maker 2 launches for Switch on June 28. The game requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription in order to play and share levels online. An individual 12-month membership typically costs $20, but Nintendo is bundling a year’s subscription with a copy of Super Mario Maker 2 for $70, which amounts to a $10 savings. You can read more details about the bundle in our Super Mario Maker 2 pre-order guide.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/marios-angry-sun-looks-weirder-than-ever-in-mario-/1100-6467161/

Much of the allure of the original Super Mario Maker stemmed from the seemingly endless possibilities it afforded, even if that didn’t turn out to be quite true. Robust as that game’s course editor may have been, it didn’t allow players to create certain basic Mario elements, such as sloped terrain, and some of the series’ most iconic enemies were notably missing from its toolbox. Even so, the title proved to be a critical and commercial success, and for its Switch follow-up, Super Mario Maker 2, Nintendo has taken the foundation laid down by the original and embellished it in nearly every conceivable way.

We recently had a chance to attend a Super Mario Maker 2 demo event, where we were able to go hands-on with the game and sample some of the new features Nintendo has introduced. Like its predecessor, the centerpiece of Super Mario Maker 2 is the course editor, which features a wealth of tools with which to build your own Mario levels. Along with the full suite of course parts from the original game, Super Mario Maker 2 offers a variety of new customization options, from new course themes and stage hazards to a greater array of enemies and items. All of the features so conspicuously missing from the first title are present and accounted for here, along with a plethora of other tools you may not have even thought of but which now seem indispensable, such as the ability to customize the trajectory of autoscrolling levels.

One of the most profound new features in Super Mario Maker 2 is the option to impose clear conditions–goals that players must meet before they can complete the level. These can run the gamut from collecting a certain number of coins to more specific objectives, such as defeating a particular enemy or reaching the flagpole without taking damage. The game offers a staggering number of clear conditions to choose from, opening up a whole new dimension of design possibilities; you can, for instance, build a course that must be cleared without jumping, completely upending the traditional rules of the series.

As in the original Super Mario Maker, you can design your stages in the style of several different Mario games: the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros. U, and the newly added Super Mario 3D World. The latter boasts its own unique assortment of enemies and tools that makes it distinct from the other game styles, and switching to it from one of the other options while in the course editor will cause the entire level to reset. Between all of the different themes, items, and clear conditions, there’s a mind-reeling array of customization options at your disposal in Super Mario Maker 2, but the process of building stages is remarkably intuitive, thanks to the ease with which you can lay down course parts and immediately test out your creation.

As with the first game, you can edit your stages using either a controller or the Switch’s touch screen. However, whereas the Wii U GamePad’s built-in display allowed you to use the latter method whether you played on the television or in Off-TV mode, you can only use the Switch’s touch screen when playing the console undocked. If you play the game on a television, you’ll have no choice but to build levels using Joy-Cons or a Switch Pro controller, neither of which feels well-suited. Placing terrain and objects with the control stick is much more cumbersome than doing so by tapping on the touch screen, so if you’re interested in Super Mario Maker 2, you’ll want to pick up a Switch-compatible stylus to have the best experience.

Fortunately, Nintendo has implemented a handful of quality-of-life improvements to the course editor that somewhat help mitigate the control issues. This time around, you no longer need to shake enemies or combine them with certain items in order to change their forms; you can simply tap on them and select their different permutations from the menu. As fun as it was to manually discover all of the possible item and enemy combinations in the first game, this change helps streamline the building process. Moreover, tools are now grouped into categories that you navigate using radial menus. The top toolbar is also automatically populated with the tools you most frequently use, and you can pin specific parts to the bar for easy access.

Beyond all of the new toys in the course editor, another significant addition in Super Mario Maker 2 is Story mode, which boasts more than 100 pre-made levels fashioned by Nintendo’s designers. Unlike a traditional Mario platformer, Story mode doesn’t whisk you through eight themed worlds on a quest to rescue Princess Peach; rather, it tasks you with rebuilding the princess’s castle, which involves amassing coins by taking on “jobs” from bulletin boards and other characters. Each of these jobs comes in the form of a different level, and completing them rewards you with the coinage necessary to fund the reconstruction process. It’s not a proper Mario adventure, but it does offer a more structured way to experience the game’s pre-made levels than the original Mario Maker did, and the courses we’ve sampled are as clever as you’d expect from Nintendo.

Rounding out the new features is multiplayer. Whereas the original Super Mario Maker was a decidedly solitary experience (unless you passed the controller around to others gathered in the same room), Super Mario Maker 2 gives you the option not only to build courses with a nearby player, but to play any of the game’s stages in Co-Op or Versus modes, either locally or online. As in New Super Mario Bros. U, up to four players can tackle a course simultaneously, which quickly devolves into a chaotic fight for survival as each person vies to avoid stage hazards and accidentally–or intentionally–knocks each other into pits and enemies. That you can play any stage in multiplayer adds yet another dimension to the experience, making Super Mario Maker 2 as much a party game as it is a level editor.

How well the multiplayer experience holds up online remains to be seen, but between all of the new features and tools Nintendo has introduced, Super Mario Maker 2 certainly has the potential to be, if not quite endless, then certainly one of the most compelling time sinks in the Switch’s library. The game launches on June 28, and as with other online-enabled titles for the console, you’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to take advantage of its online features. However, Nintendo is offering a bundle that includes a 12-month membership with a copy of the game for $70, saving you $10 over the regular cost of an individual 12-month subscription. You can read more details about the bundle in our Super Mario Maker 2 pre-order guide.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/super-mario-maker-2-feels-like-it-can-last-forever/1100-6467183/