Syndicated
Gaming News
Fortnite Week 6 Secret Banner Location Guide (Season 8 Discovery Challenge)
We’ve reached Week 6 of Fortnite Season 8, and there’s a new set of challenges to complete across PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile. Clear this week’s missions and you’ll earn Battle Stars, leveling up your Battle Pass and bringing you one step closer to unlocking this season’s secret Legendary skin, Ruin.
As usual, there’s an extra incentive to complete as many challenges as you can besides unlocking the new Season 8 Battle Pass rewards. If you manage to clear all of the objectives from a given week, you’ll in turn complete one of this season’s Discovery challenges, earning you a special loading screen that hides a subtle clue pointing to a free Battle Star–which levels your Battle Pass up by one tier–or a Banner–which can be used as a profile icon–waiting somewhere around the island.
Clear six weeks’ worth of Season 8 challenges and you’ll receive the loading screen pictured below. This one depicts Master Key trying to retrieve one of his keys from a shadowy figure. The key, it turns out, is the clue that’ll lead you to this week’s secret Banner. Look closely at its handle and you’ll see a set of coordinates: E2, E3, F2, F3.
The secret Banner will appear where those four coordinates converge, just west of Lazy Lagoon. We’ve circled the exact location on the map below. Glide to the area at the beginning of a match and you’ll be able to find the Banner beneath a tree. Pick it up then finish the match and it’ll be yours to use as a snazzy new profile icon. If you need more help finding it, you can watch where we go in the video above.
Like other secret Banners and Battle Stars, there are a few caveats to be aware of before setting out to find the item. Most important, this particular Banner won’t appear unless you’ve completed six weeks’ worth of challenges and unlocked the above loading screen; you won’t simply be able to go to the right area and pick it up unless you’ve done all of the necessary steps. Fortunately, we have tips and guides in our Season 8 challenges roundup if you need help completing any of this season’s missions.
Epic recently rolled out Fortnite’s 8.20 content update. This time, the developer introduced a new weapon called the Boom Bow to Battle Royale mode. What makes this particular bow unique is that its arrows are outfitted with shotgun shells, which will explode on contact. Epic also kicked off another Sniper Showdown LTM and made a few other changes to the game, such as buffing peppers. You can find the full patch notes on the official Fortnite website.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-week-6-secret-banner-location-guide-seaso/1100-6466058/
Starlink Is Done With Toys, But A Big Update Is Coming
Toys-to-life as a concept infiltrated the games industry toward the end of the last console generation. Production of the plastic figurines has significantly slowed down since then, with a few heavy-hitters–such as Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions–discontinuing production altogether. Ubisoft’s open-world game, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, is following suit, as the developers have announced that the game won’t get any more toys.
In an update posted to the official Starlink website, the Starlink development team confirmed that physical toys will not continue to roll out. “Despite the immense and continuous support from our players, the sales for Starlink: Battle for Atlas fell below expectations. Consequently, we recently made the decision to not release any additional physical toys for the Spring update and in the future.”
While the news is saddening for fans, the Starlink team isn’t done with with the game altogether, as it’s preparing to release the “biggest update to the game so far.”
“Starlink: Battle for Atlas has been a passion project for us from the start, and we are incredibly proud of the modular Starship technology we have developed, and how well players have responded to it,” it said.
The update the team is referring to was announced during Nintendo’s February Direct. Along with Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Super Mario Maker 2, and Tetris 99 reveals, the rest of the Star Fox team–Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad–will join Fox McCloud in a new series of missions in Starlink on Switch. Each pilot comes with their own special abilities and skill trees and can be used to play any mission available in the game. In addition to the inclusion of the Star Fox team, Starlink will receive more content in this forthcoming update, such as Starship Races, Factions Missions, and more. The update is planned for this April, but no specific release date has been given.
In our Starlink review, we called it “an interesting and enjoyable open-world game,” but lamented that “if you’re interested in the physical models, you’ll have to spend more to get the same experience as the digital version.”
Starlink: Battle for Atlas is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/starlink-is-done-with-toys-but-a-big-update-is-com/1100-6466059/
Her Story Creator’s Next Game Tackles Intimacy In The Digital Age
Following 2015’s sleeper-hit Her Story, creator Sam Barlow initially wasn’t keen on making a similar game right after. However, as the framework for his follow-up took shape, the writer/director found his past’s game approach to storytelling as a compelling hook for his new tale. In Telling Lies, you’ll investigate the lives of four strangers over a period of two years; each of them has their own secrets and personal trauma. By witnessing brief glimpses of their lives from private videos, you’ll uncover the larger story that connects them all together.
We spent some time talking with the game’s writer and director during GDC 2019, where he gave us the rundown on what to expect with his return to the interactive video drama. In essence, Telling Lies takes Her Story’s foundation of an interactive drama and expands its scope. Featuring a larger cast of characters, portrayed by film and TV actors such as Logan Marshall-Green, Kerry Bishé, Alexandra Shipp, and Angela Sarafyan, it puts more of a focus on the private moments that individuals have alone with their devices, and how relationships are affected when filtered through a personal phone or webcam.
With an air of voyeurism similar to films like Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the overarching story unfolds on a modern desktop with access to an NSA database. Playing heavily to the modern paranoia surrounding increased surveillance, this conceit allows you to search through hours of recorded footage taken from phones, computers, and dashboard cameras, revealing plenty of personal and raw moments. According to Barlow, when the larger story begins to form, you’ll come to understand why you’re examining these characters in the first place.
Similar to Her Story, Telling Lies will have you comb through footage looking for the key information that fills in the blanks of a fractured timeline. Moving away from Her Story’s ’90s-era tech, the player interface in Telling Lies–another desktop–is more modern, allowing for greater flexibility in how you can interpret and piece together the story. By searching keywords, you’ll be able to find clips that include the use of that word. Engaging the clip will start you at the point where the keyword is spoken by the person of interest. From here, you’ll be able to play the video for its duration, even if you landed on the last word spoken in the clip, or scrub it back to see what came before–possibly unearthing a new clue.
Barlow explained that Telling Lies not only examines intimacy in the modern age but also plays with the concept of context and what you bring with your perspective. In Her Story, it became apparent over the course of the game that figuring out the crime that Hannah was suspected of wasn’t necessarily the true goal. Rather, it was more of a character study and an exercise in fostering empathy for her, faults and all. According to Barlow, Telling Lies is about “exploring the larger story through the negative space,” an idea that stuck with him during the making and ensuing reception of Her Story.
“It’s kind of doubling down on the sense of narrative I had with Her Story,” Barlow said. “People would play that game and one of the big positives they came away with was they felt like they had an intimate experience when spending that time with that character, listening to her talk, and it felt like they had a connection and empathized with her in a way. Despite it being essentially a computer interface, it all felt quite organic and human in a way. You get to explore [the story] through these more character-driven and intimate moments, which is a very different texture to most video games.”
Some clips will show various characters during some mundane moments, without anything of consequence happening. However, another video might show a pivotal, and likely serious, event, which can give previous clips new meaning. Discovering the context of many of these clips can add new layers to the key characters, which can affect your perception of their relationships with others. Though it all seems to be in a similar vein as Her Story, and Barlow said that Telling Lies hits something more social than its predecessor could.
“I think it’s an interesting question when you make something that is as different and weird as Her Story,” said Barlow. “I deliberately did not immediately want to make a sequel with Her Story, and I gave myself some distance from it. Once I came back to it and I was like, ‘What was interesting to me about that game that I think I could do more with? What direction can I take it in?'”
One of the more remarkable things about Her Story was the way it used its detective conceit as a means to examine its key character. Thanks to its non-linear approach, you could unearth details about the lead at your own pace. Barlow seems to be aware of what made the original work, reinforcing the flow of the narrative and the sense of distance from a story that’s long since past. However, the new focus on a larger cast can make for a more intriguing plot, which may play out in its most raw and intimate forms.
Telling Lies is set for release sometime in 2019 and will be published by Annapurna Interactive.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/her-story-creators-next-game-tackles-intimacy-in-t/1100-6466060/