Square Enix just revealed Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade for PS5, and if you want to get in on the free next-gen upgrade, you can snag the PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake for $30 at Amazon and Walmart. It will upgrade to the 60fps PS5 version for free when it releases on June 10, though you will have to pay extra for the bonus episode that features fan-favourite Yuffie as a playable character. In addition to the improved frame rate and resolution, the PS5 version will also feature a photo mode, new difficulty setting, and quality-of-life improvements. Deal: FF7 Remake $30 (was $60) | Includes free PS5 upgrade See at Amazon While the PS5 version sounds exciting, the last-gen version of Final Fantasy VII Remake is still a great game. It was named one of GameSpot's best games of 2020 and received a rare 10/10 in our Final Fantasy VII Remake review.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A major outage is impacting certain aspects of Xbox Live, preventing users from signing in. That is effectively locking people out of content and the ability to play games online--which is unfortunate timing with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Season 2 having just launched today.Microsoft has already acknowledged the problem, with the Xbox Live status page highlighting an outage to multiple aspects of the service. On Twitter, it also provided an update, saying it's investigating the issue:We are aware that users may not be able to sign-in to Xbox Live at this time. Our teams are currently investigating to fix this issue. We will update here and on https://t.co/PzAdjUFMJj when we have more information to share! — Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) February 25, 2021A subsequent update noted that party chat and the ability to purchase content are also impacted, so there are a variety of Xbox Live-centric services that aren't working correctly. There's no word on exactly when things will get back to normal, although the status page does suggest a fix could be near.Info from Gamespot.com

Housemarque's Returnal is a new roguelike that leans into the developer's pedigree for arcade-style shooters, yet it also has something to say about the effects of being trapped in isolation and in a perpetual cycle. Following an emergency landing on the planet Atropos, the game's protagonist Selene finds herself stranded on a planet filled with ancient ruins and hostile monsters. After meeting her seemingly inevitable end, she re-awakens shortly after the crash, retaining memories of her past attempt at survival. Selene is forced to relive the day again and again until she can uncover why she's trapped in a time loop, and why the strange world seems to have a growing attachment to its new visitor.Ahead of its April 30 launch, I had the chance to view an extended preview of the game in action and also spoke with game director Harry Krueger and narrative director Gregory Louden about Returnal's scope. During the preview, I noticed that Returnal adds a Metroid-style sense of action and exploration to its time-looping roguelike structure. I was surprised to see that the game uses its conceit to showcase Selene's unsettling descent into a mysterious, sentient world that always seems to be two steps ahead of her.Enter The VoidThe roguelike sub-genre has seen a significant surge in recent years, and 2020's Hades was a breakthrough that demonstrated that a meaningful and poignant story with a personable cast of characters can have an impact within a structure that is inherently random. Returnal operates in the same territory as Hades, and with each run, Selene not only expands her powers and knowledge of the planet Atropos, but it in turn reveals more about the protagonist's past, even forcing her to confront visions and constructs that evoke memories of what she left behind before her arrival.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Two new Final Fantasy 7-related games have been revealed: Ever Crisis and The First Soldier, both of which are mobile games. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade took the spotlight during the recent State of Play, showing off new story content starring Yuffie and flexing the free PS5 upgrade features, but these new mobile games seem to be some wild twists to the FF7 universe in their own right.Ever Crisis is a...remake of the original Final Fantasy 7 along with reimaginings of Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus, and Advent Children. It follows the same timeline in a chapter structure, but with an all-new graphical style and visual stylings that bridge the game between the original game and FF7 Remake's flair--a demake of a remake, if you will. It's coming to iOS and Android platforms sometime in 2022.The second mobile game we're presenting today is @FinalFantasy VII Ever Crisis.It's a chapter-structured single player game covering the whole of the FFVII timeline - including the events of the original game and the FFVII compilation titles. pic.twitter.com/jFJVslYks0 — FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (@finalfantasyvii) February 25, 2021The other game coming to the Final Fantasy 7 universe is called The First Soldier. It's a multiplayer battle royale game that fuses third-person shooter elements with some of the action-based combat and RPG elements of FF7 Remake. It's also coming to iOS and Android later this year.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

We still don't know exactly when Titans will return for Season 3 on HBO Max. However, the TV series adaptation of the DC Comics title of the same name has a lot on tap for its characters--and a slew of new superhero and supervillain costumes to put to use.Previously, we've gotten new costumes for both Kory Anders/Starfire (Anna Diop) and Jason Todd's (Curran Walters) new alter ego, Red Hood. Now, HBO Max has revealed the first look at Blackfire in her super suit. The character, played by Damaris Lewis, was first introduced at the end of Season 2 as Kory's sister. She came to Earth to hunt down her sister and return her to their homeworld of Tamaran.The new costume was created by costume designer Laura Jean Shannon, and Lewis is the first person to portray the Blackfire character in a live-action TV show or movie.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade comes to PS5 on June 10, and if you want to snag the game ahead of launch, so you're ready to jump in as soon as it releases, there are a number of ways to do so. The PS4 version comes with a free next-gen upgrade, though you won't get the bonus episode that stars the ninja, Yuffie--that will cost extra for those that upgrade. Deal: FF7 Remake $30 (was $60) | Includes free PS5 upgrade See at Amazon If you don't already own Final Fantasy VII Remake on PS4, then you can snag it right now for $30 at Amazon or Walmart. That'll get you the 60fps PS5 version that features improved textures and a higher resolution when it releases in June. However, if you want to hold off and wait for the PS5 version, there are two different editions to choose from.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Despite being released in 2016, Overwatch remains an incredibly popular multiplayer experience, with a healthy community of players returning day after day for online skirmishes. Naturally, longtime players are eager to play the next entry in the franchise, which was originally announced in 2019. Many fans expected 2021 would be the year a new chapter in the Overwatch saga would unfold, but that is not the case.The community became crestfallen in the immediate aftermath of this news. However, at BlizzCon 2021, the Overwatch 2 team showed off more of the game than we'd ever seen, and the scope of the effort became more apparent. As well as making drastic changes to the player-versus-player experience, Blizzard is creating a large-scale player-versus-environment suite complete with story missions and over a hundred repeatable missions that can be played with friends, and will allow characters to be developed in an RPG-like fashion. It looks to be much bigger than most imagined.Following the reveal, we spoke to game director Jeff Kaplan about what the team showed at BlizzCon, balancing their vision with the demands of the community, the challenge of keeping the first Overwatch fresh, and its narrative ambitions for Overwatch 2.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

343 Industries has released an interview-focused blog post for Halo Infinite, which looks at Zeta Halo, the open-world setting of the upcoming game. Halo Infinite campaign art lead Justin Dinges said that one of the largest challenges of creating the space was honoring the nostalgic feel of Halo, while creating something that feels brand-new."With Halo Infinite, we wanted to take this new adventure back to its roots and create a visually pleasing experience that doesn't overwhelm with unnecessary complexity where readability and clear artistic composition prevail," Dinges said. "This is our artistic interpretation of a beautiful world to exist within--rather than something that is purely grounded in photo realism. Both goals have been a true challenge to balance, especially against the expectations of what it means to be a 'next-gen' title."Part of honoring the appeal of Halo's roots comes from Zeta Halo's layout. As an open world, Zeta Halo invokes the same sensation of Halo: Combat Evolved's opening hours when you could approach problems in different ways depending on what weapons you have, vehicles you're driving, or pathways you uncover.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Hulu is working with the team behind 2017's I, Tonya to examine the life of another infamous sports figure. This time, the team is taking on the baddest boxer to ever step into the ring, and the only one to get an iconic NES game, Mike Tyson, in Hulu's Iron Mike.Iron Mike will be an eight-episode limited series that Hulu says will explore "the wild, tragic and controversial life and career behind one of the most polarizing figures in sports culture--heavyweight champion Mike Tyson."Tyson himself is not involved with the show and is, in fact, not happy about the announcement. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Tyson had no kind words for the production.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Did you know Netflix's Bridgerton is a popular show? If not, you may have been living on another planet for the last few months. Nielsen released its latest streaming ratings this week, for the week of January 25 to January 31, and guess who's on top?Indeed, Bridgerton is once again the single most popular streaming program, though it finally dipped below one billion minutes streamed. Fate: The Winx Saga, a live-action adaptation of the Nickelodeon Winx Club series, comes in second. The math here can be deceptive; people streamed 936 million minutes of Bridgerton, and 918 million minutes of Fate: The Winx Saga. The thing to remember is that Bridgerton has been out for two full months, having released on December 25, 2020. Netflix's dump-and-binge method of show releases often means that shows come and go quickly, but Bridgerton is staying strong. Bridgerton viewers between January 4 and January 10 streamed 1.6 billion minutes of the show. For comparison, Cobra Kai, which is still ranked third, dropped from 2.1 billion minutes for the week of January 4 to 568 million for the week of January 25. That's still nothing to sneeze at, but it demonstrates how well Bridgerton is doing.Netflix makes up all of the top ten streams but for one. Marvel Studios' WandaVision on Disney+ ranked in at #5. But again, those numbers don't tell the whole story. WandaVision only had four episodes out at the time (we didn't even know yet who it had been All Along!), and Disney is releasing the show week by week rather than all at once. Disney+ is growing quickly, but also has far fewer subscribers when compared to Netflix. That all goes to suggest that a huge portion of Disney Plus's 94 million subscribers are tuning in week to week to get the numbers up as high as they are with so few episodes and a traditional weekly release schedule.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Bravely series has always excelled at evoking the feeling of playing classic Final Fantasy-style RPGs, while sanding off some of the rough edges that may make those classic games less approachable to modern audiences. Bravely Default II, confusingly enough the third game in the franchise, maintains much of its predecessors' retro charm--but it actually removes some of the quality-of-life features that made the first two such breezy nostalgic throwbacks. Instead of simply reminding you of the satisfaction of playing a classic RPG, Bravely Default II demands that you relive the entire experience, faults and all.For the uninitiated, Bravely Default gets its namesake from its innovative risk-reward combat system. Along with your typical health and magic meters, you have Brave Points (BP). And rather than a standard Defend command, you can choose to Default, which both defends and banks BP for later use. You can spend up to four actions using Brave command, but if you don't have enough BP banked you go into debt and skip future turns undefended.This has always been key to Bravely Default's battle system, and it remains essentially untouched here. The approach is a little less novel the third time around, but it still creates a unique wrinkle of strategic RPG battle planning. Do you go into debt to unleash a flurry of attacks or do some emergency healing? Do you bank first and take the damage for a few turns? Bravely veterans will fall right back into the habit, but nothing about it feels too complex that it should give newcomers trouble. And newcomers will be able to jump in here because, like Final Fantasy, Bravely Default II's story is disconnected from any continuity. Four strangers come together as the selfless Heroes of Light to stave off certain doom--you know the drill.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Developer Housemarque has dropped a brand-new trailer for the PlayStation 5-exclusive third-person shooter Returnal, which gives us a brief look at gameplay and narrative setup. This trailer comes a day before PlayStation's imminent State of Play livestream, which goes live on February 25 at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET.In the trailer below we see ASTRA scout Selene traverse several biomes while a voiceover from her log details what she is experiencing and seeing. While it is unknown how many biomes the full game has, the Returnal trailer indicates there are at least six to explore, with three of them hidden. Selene bounces from the Overgrown Ruins to the Derelict Citadel to the Crimson Wastes, trying to piece together why things have changed or have gone missing.Housemarque detailed Returnal's roguelite action earlier this year, digging deep to explain many of the game's systems. The game will reflect Housemarque's bullet-hell experience--think Nex Machina and Resogun--with each run resetting the player's loadout. However, there are permanent upgrades players can unlock to add a personal touch to the available weapons.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The next Spider-Man movie will be titled Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film stars Tom Holland as Peter Parker once more, and it hits theaters on December 17, 2021.The announcement of the movie's title follows a series of fake titles that stars Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon tweeted yesterday. The real name was revealed in a video that shows Holland leaving the office of director Jon Watts, and being told by Zendaya and Batalon that he spoils too much about the Spider-Man films. The camera then moves to a whiteboard, where the actual name is written. Check it out below:#SpiderManNoWayHome only in movie theaters this Christmas. pic.twitter.com/8C4e15Lw2k — Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) February 24, 2021Plot details Spider-Man: No Way Home are currently under wraps, but there are rumors that it might involve the multiverse concept, with former Spider-Man actors Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire returning to their previous roles. Charlie Cox, who starred as Daredevil on the Marvel Netflix show, was also seen on set, and Zendaya seemingly confirmed that Alfred Molina, who played Doctor Octopus in 2002's Spider-Man 2, is also part of the cast.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

One of the biggest jaw-dropping moments from the Disney+ series WandaVision was the inclusion of Evan Peters as Wanda's brother Pietro. That's because Peters played the character in the X-Men movies, but not his lone MCU appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige explained it was an early addition to the show.During the TCA winter press tour, Feige was asked about the discussion of deciding to include Peters or Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as both actors played Quicksilver in different superhero universes. "There are discussions on everything," Feige said. "That's one of the fun things about developing these things are blue skying it in a room. It's my favorite part of the process. It's always the very very beginning, when we're figuring out what something could be and at the very very end, when we're finally we're finding it and then putting it out into the world. So there were all all sorts of discussions, but I believe it, we ended up going with what you saw relatively relatively early on in the development process. And just another way that certain people were were messing around with Wanda."There were rumors in mid-2020 that Peters had been cast, but nothing was confirmed. Prior to his appearance as Pietro in WandaVision, Peters appeared as Quicksilver in three X-Men films: Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix. Taylor-Johnson's first and only appearance as the speedy hero was in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where he was shot and killed.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

New DLC is now available for Minecraft Dungeons in the form of the Flames of the Nether expansion, while a free update is available for everyone.The Flames of the Nether DLC, which costs $6 USD, takes players inside the Nether. It includes six missions that feature new artifacts, weapons, and gear. The DLC also includes a new Baby Ghast pet and two additional skins. Overall, Mojang is calling the Flames of the Nether DLC the "most ambitious" content for Minecraft Dungeons thus far. Check out the launch trailer below.In addition to the paid DLC, Mojang is launching what it also calls the "most ambitious free update" to Minecraft Dungeons to date. The update adds a new feature called Ancient Hunts, which are procedurally generated end-game missions.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com