2020 is almost here, so we’ve asked GameSpot’s staff to share which games they’re looking forward to most in the new year. New consoles are going to dominate the headlines, but at the end of the day it’s all about the games, and there are a ton of exciting ones to look forward to. When you’re done reading this entry, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub and our Most Anticipated of 2020 hub.

2019 was a big year already for Halo with the release of The Master Chief Collection on PC, but 2020 is shaping up to be the most important year for Halo and Xbox since 2001. The newest entry in the sci-fi shooter series, Halo Infinite, releases in Holiday 2020 as a launch title for Microsoft’s next-gen console Xbox Series X. This is notable for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s the first time since 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved that a Halo title has released at launch with new Xbox hardware. After the Xbox One stumbled at the start against the PS4 back in 2013, Microsoft has a massive opportunity to hit the ground running with Xbox Series X by making Halo Infinite the must-have title that fans have been hoping to see for years now.

While Halo no doubt remains popular and stands today as one of the best-known FPS games ever, the series has lost some ground to its contemporaries. Halo Infinite represents a chance for Microsoft to reclaim Master Chief’s former glory, and I’m excited for it. Microsoft has only so far released a cinematic trailer, so there is little to go on as it relates to official details. What we do know, however, is that Master Chief is not only coming back, but he will be more front and center this time, which is good news after Halo 5’s story moved away from the famed super-soldier.

Microsoft has also teased a new art style for Halo Infinite that is said to be emblematic of the original Halo’s visual flourishes. That’s also exciting to think about. On top of that, Halo Infinite runs on Microsoft’s brand-new Slipspace Engine, which is said to offer and unlock all manner of new gameplay possibilities that could apply to innovations in the campaign and multiplayer spaces. Speaking of multiplayer, head-to-head combat has always been the Halo franchise’s bread and butter, and I am excited to see what Microsoft cooks up. Halo 5’s big innovation was Warzone, the MOBA-style mode that offered the biggest shakeup to the core gameplay formula in many years. The multiplayer world has evolved substantially since 2015’s Halo 5–battle royale, specifically, has impacted how people think about multiplayer shooters–and Microsoft has an opportunity to prove again that Halo can be the trendsetter and trailblazer in FPS games.

The Halo franchise hasn’t had a steady, well-rounded release in a long time. Halo 4’s multiplayer was a let-down, while Halo 5’s story came up short with how it over promised and under delivered. Halo Infinite must introduce meaningful and exciting innovations across campaign and multiplayer, and as always, surprise fans with what they aren’t expecting. Microsoft has given the team at 343 Industries extra time to release Halo Infinite, and I am terribly excited to see the promise of what five years of development will amount to. There will be doubters who say Master Chief is a relic of time gone by, but I say: bet against Master Chief at your peril.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/halo-infinite-eddie-makuchs-most-anticipated-game-/1100-6472283/

Christmas is less than a week away, and as a result, every single games store has launched some kind of winter sale with a plethora of deals for gamers. The Epic Games Store is getting in on the action with its 2019 Holiday Sale, which has dozens of games on sale for up to 75% off, including some of this year’s biggest hits: Borderlands 3, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Control, The Outer Worlds, and more. The sale is live now through January 1 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET.

One of the sale’s highlights, though, is the series of 12 free games that Epic is giving away every day over the next couple of weeks. The first free game available today is Into the Breach. A new free game will be given away every day up until January 1, and each title will only be available for 24 hours. That’s actually 14 days, but we’re guessing Christmas and New Year’s Eve will be the off days. Be sure to check back every day at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET to see what the latest free game is. To claim a game at Epic, you just need a free account.

Aside from the freebies, there are plenty of discounts to be had, and on top of those game deals, you’ll get an extra $10 coupon. To claim it, log into your Epic account, and it’ll be applied immediately at checkout for any eligible game $14.99 or more. You’ll receive a new $10 coupon after every eligible purchase. Pre-orders, DLC, and in-game purchases are excluded from the coupon, and you have to redeem the coupons before April 30. Only one coupon can be used for a single purchase.

For now, check out some of the best PC games on sale in the Epic Games Store right now below, and see the full sale at Epic. We’ve noted with an asterisk which games below are eligible for the coupon.

Best game deals in Epic’s winter sale

• Afterparty — $16 ($20)*
• Alan Wake — $4.49 ($15)
• Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey — $20 ($40)*
• Anno 1800 — $33 ($60)*
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey — $24 ($60)*
• Borderlands 3 — $39 ($60)*
• Control — $40.19 ($60)*
• The Division 2 — $15 ($60)*
• Metro Exodus — $20 ($40)*
• Observation — $12.49 ($25)
• The Outer Worlds — $45 ($60)*
• Rainbow Six Siege — $8 ($20)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 — $48 ($60)*
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order — $49.79 ($60)*
• Surviving Mars — $10.19 ($30)
• Tetris Effect — $30 ($40)*
• Transistor — $4 ($20)
• The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series — $25 ($50)*
• What the Golf — $13 ($20)
• The Witness — $10 ($40)
• World War Z — $14 ($35)

*comes with $10 Epic Store coupon

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/huge-winter-sale-at-epic-12-free-games-up-to-75-of/1100-6472364/

2020 is almost here, so we’ve asked GameSpot’s staff to share which games they’re looking forward to most in the new year. New consoles are going to dominate the headlines, but at the end of the day it’s all about the games, and there are a ton of exciting ones to look forward to. When you’re done reading this entry, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub and our Most Anticipated of 2020 hub.

A lot has changed for me since 2017, a year where I was still navigating a new job in a new city and establishing a foothold in a career I never thought I’d have. It was an intimidating time as I was just getting off of square one, rebuilding my own real life social links, too. And alongside me was Persona 5. I found so much comfort in the daily routine of the game, spending time with characters I grew to love, fighting for a cause that I could believe in with a badass soundtrack all the way through. As soon as the credits rolled, I had that rare feeling of knowing that I played one of my favorite games of all time.

Now imagine if a denser, definitive version of your favorite game–with a reimagined storyline, new characters, and even more flash and flare–was on the horizon? That’s Persona 5 Royal. I’ve been following P5R since it was announced for Japan and leading up to its release earlier this year, and with every bit of information revealed was more hype. Admittedly, I had to lay off at a certain point and retain some element of surprise for when it comes westward in March.

It’s easy to spot this pattern with developer Atlus considering Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 Golden were both definitive versions that followed their base game. P5R is bringing even more to the table, though. The new Phantom Thief, Kasumi Yoshizawa, isn’t just another party member to shake up the dynamic–she’s central to the core plot. Her involvement changes the narrative threads, and affects what transpires in the main protagonist’s life. Kasumi also presents an opportunity to expound on the complexities of the original story, and it seems that the key character Goro Akechi gets further development.

P5R features a whole new Palace centered around Kasumi, an extra place to chill with Kichijoji, which offers a number of new hangout spots, and additional social events and cutscenes with the squad. There’s an extra semester that seems to give the game more room to breathe towards the end–the original wound down rather quickly and on a somewhat stressful note. So, seeing a glimpse of the New Year’s celebration in P5R and the more celebratory tone within, it’s heartwarming to know that there was more to the journey all along.

Kasumi Yoshizawa awakens her persona Cendrillon and fights alongside the Phantom Thieves.

From a gameplay perspective, there’ll be more to explore within existing Palaces and refined combat mechanics to make things less arduous–like Joker’s hookshot to get to new areas or initiate ambushes for battles and additional persona evolutions to name a few. More importantly, P5R contains 20 new songs in the soundtrack, and if you’ve played the original release, you know how important music is–it’s the glue that held the flamboyant style, unapologetic message, and utter confidence all together, but it also set the tone for the story’s calmer, emotional moments.

It might be hard to square all this exciting additional content with the fact that it already took me 120+ hours to play through the original release. If you ask me, more is better–I just want a reason to go back to a place I think of as a kind of home, while discovering new things and learning more about characters I see as friends.

Here’s the thing about “escapism” in video games, though. I don’t necessarily want a game that solely makes me forget about the things that plague my world. Rather, I want to go somewhere that reflects my own world but with the power to exact change for the better, dismantling the abusive authority figures and structures that keep us down. Since finishing Persona 5, it’s something I think about every day. I can’t be a Phantom Thief, but I can be more diligent in enacting change around me. It’s a game that helped me establish a sense of place and empowered me to branch out back in 2017, and I look forward to renewing that feeling in 2020.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/persona-5-royal-michael-highams-most-anticipated-g/1100-6472357/

In our exclusive talk with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, we learned a great deal about just how powerful the next-gen Xbox Series X will be: a GPU eight-times faster than the base Xbox One and twice that of the Xbox One X, a CPU said to be four times more capable, and an ultra-fast NVMe solid-state drive. Well, aside from the SSD which is virtually silent, you might be wondering about how the Series X will handle all that power while staying cool and quiet.

In general terms, Spencer described the console’s cooling system, saying, “What the team did, and you [see] it through the top grate, is we went with one central fan in the design.” He continued, “What this design does, with the size of the fan that we built around, is it lets us match how quiet the Xbox One X is with all that power inside of the box.”

It’s not as simple as deciding on a type of cooling system and running with it, of course, as Spencer explained, “There’s always this tension between design, acoustics, cooling, and the function of the console, and we were not going to compromise on function. I’m just incredibly impressed with the design that they [came up with].”

Spencer went on to describe how he’s been using a Series X at home and that its acoustic profile helps it keep a low profile even for people who have seen it in action. He claimed, “If I don’t point it out, it just sits there and plays video games the way I want it to and I never hear it, just like how I don’t hear my [Xbox One] X.”

The Series X sports a natural, PC tower-like design, which was accounted for in its cooling system, but also the fact that you can set it horizontally or vertically. Microsoft wouldn’t get into the specifics of dimensions and hard technical details of the cooling system, but Spencer asserts that the single fan is “able to spin at a low enough rate that it is whisper-quiet.” He also said that the Series X has “no secondary fans, probably just passive coil” to keep temperatures in check.

When you take a look at the Series X itself, you see that the single central fan gets a bit fancy. “We did do a nod with our Xbox; it has a green tint and it’s a concave design so as you come up [to it].” Considering that one of the goals with the Series X is to sort of unify the Xbox brand and ecosystem, we suppose it seeps into all aspects of its design. Spencer goes into a bit more detail as to what that means in our story about why the console was named Series X. And for all the details we gathered in our exclusive coverage, be sure to read our in-depth feature on the Xbox Series X.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-series-x-will-stay-as-quiet-as-xbox-one-x-say/1100-6472337/

Socks are the classic bad holiday gift, but what if they were also prohibitively expensive? Enter the Puma Active Gaming Footwear sock, an absurd example of capitalism run amok that you can wear on your feet. Next time you ask “where we droppin’ boys?” your feet could be swaddled in luxury.

That luxury costs about £80 through the Puma store, or about $100 USD–though they aren’t available to purchase in the USA, where we appreciate our rugged foot freedom. These monuments to excess promise a “knitted upper” for comfort and breathability, a “low rubber outsole for grip,” and a custom fit. All of these features suggest Puma believes video gaming involves a lot of athletic foot movement, so we’re not entirely sure what they think gaming actually is.

Pictured: A sock.

But wait, there’s more! It also features three “modes,” by which they mean features. Sock features. Those include a medial wrap-up grip (“SEEK mode”), lateral wrap-up support (“ATTACK mode”), and heel wrap-up stability (“CRUISE and DEFENSE mode”). So basically, these are just different weaves to support different foot parts.

If you happen to live in the UK or Australia, you can order the socks now with free express shipping. And if you do, and then you rocket to the top-tier of Fortnite competitive play and win millions of dollars, make sure to thank your socks in the acceptance speech to teach us a lesson.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/behold-the-100-active-gaming-sock-from-puma/1100-6472361/