Happy New Year 2021 – Mystery Gift Celebrate Pikachu December 31, 2020

The Pokémon Company has sent Pikachu into space and to celebrate the new year 2021, they’re giving away an exclusive Pikachu that knows the move Celebrate for all Sword and Shield players worldwide.

No code is needed to get the Pikachu. If you want it, just go to the Mystery Gift menu and select the option to obtain a gift from the internet.

Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are out now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

Marvel’s Avengers – Interview with Hawkeye’s Voice Actress December 28, 2020

The first new playable character for Marvel’s Avengers was released earlier this month. Kate Bishop, better known as Hawkeye, now has her own playable campaign. To celebrate the update, Marvel posted an interview with Kate’s voice actress, Ashly Burch. We get to learn what inspired her about the character and what we can expect from the game’s new content. Enjoy.

Marvel’s Avengers is out now for PC, Stadia, Xbox One and PS4.

Square Enix Releases Holiday Music Playlist on Spotify December 23, 2020

Square Enix has left us a nice present this Holiday Season. I’m someone who prefers non-traditional Christmas music for ambiance as I celebrate the holiday (Paul and Storm, Jonathan Coulton), so I was very happy to discover Square Enix has released a playlist with some of their best Holiday-Themed music and you can stream it right now for free on Spotify. You might recognize the music offered comes from the Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Bravely Default games.

You can listen to their playlist and even stream it on your Spotify compatible smart device of choice right here.

Cyberpunk 2077 1.05 Patch Notes December 21, 2020

Cyberpunk 2077’s developers have finally released the game’s 1.05 patch on Google Stadia, meaning this patch is now up on every one of the game’s platforms. Let’s take a look at what was included with it.

Quests

• Jackie will no longer disappear in The Pickup or The Heist.
• Fixed an issue preventing players from landing the helicopter in Love like Fire.
• Fixed an issue with Takemura not calling in Play it Safe.
• It’s no longer possible to trigger the same dialogue twice in Big in Japan.
• Fixed an issue with Delamain appearing upside down at the end of Don’t Lose Your Mind.
• Saul now correctly reaches the van in Riders on the Storm.
• Fast travelling before the encounter with Tyger Claws no longer breaks progression in I Fought the Law.
• Fixed an issue blocking progress in Ghost Town if an autosave made upon Raffen Shiv’s arrival was loaded.
• Fixed an issue with not receiving new calls or messages if Happy Together failed as a result of combat.
• Elizabeth Peralez stops being excessively insistent with her calls after her job offer is refused.
• The scene with Misty and Jackie now starts properly after leaving Viktor’s clinic.
• Wakako’s dialogues no longer get blocked after finishing Search and Destroy.
• Walking away from Stefan in Sweet Dreams shouldn’t prevent other characters from calling you anymore.
• Brick’s detonator should now be properly interactable for players to disarm. Or set off. Your call.
• Elevator doors should now correctly open in The Heist.
• Saul now correctly gets out of cars in Riders on the Storm.
• Fixed an issue with not receiving new calls or messages after running too far away from Frank in War Pigs.
• Jackie now correctly leaves the factory after the combat is finished in The Pickup. 
• Fixed an issue with Militech reinforcements not spawning if driving through the gate too fast in Forward to Death.
• Skipping time while in the club in Violence no longer results in issues with progression.
• Fixed issues with starting Gig: Getting Warmer…
• Fixed an issue with not receiving new calls or messages after Pyramid Song has been abandoned midway.
• Fixed an issue whereby Delamain core could be already broken when player enters the Core room in Don’t Lose Your Mind.
• Fixed issues with Delamain not appearing or doing nothing outside the Afterlife in The Heist.
• Fixed an issue with objective getting stuck on “Talk to Viktor” in The Ripperdoc.
• Fixed an issue whereby it was impossible to talk to the bouncer in front of Lizzie’s in The Information.
• Added description for Don’t Lose Your Mind in the Journal.
• Fixed an issue preventing player from saving, using fast travels, and talking to other NPCs after reloading a save with an active call with Frank in War Pigs.
• Fixed an issue with Panam not calling about any other matter until I’ll Fly Away is completed.
• Fixed an issue with Dum Dum following V after The Pickup is finished.

Gameplay

• Improved the reaction times of NPCs taking cover.
• Corrected the number of shots needed to kill civilians from a distance while in combat.

Visual

• Fixed an issue with Delamain’s image displayed on top of the current caller during phone calls.
• V’s mouth doesn’t stay open after entering the space lock in Where is My Mind.
• Fixed some UI overlap issues.
• V appears more modest in the inventory preview after the half year montage 😉
• NPCs are faster to appear in the quest area during Stadium Love.
• Added some warmth to HDR.
• Fixed T-posing NPCs in Suspected Organized Crime Activity: Just Say No and Gig: Hot Merchandise.
• Fixed an issue whereby after a braindance it was possible to be stuck in 3rd person view with no head.
• Silencer icons are no longer displayed with no image in the inventory.

UI

• Fixed an issue with weapon crosshair persisting on screen.
• The inventory menu no longer closes immediately after opening it for the first time after leaving a car.
• Fixed an issue whereby upon accessing a fast travel terminal the button shown on the top right corner prompting to open the quest journal would not work.

Performance & Stability

• Multiple stability improvements, including crash fixes.

Miscellaneous

• Offscreen explosions make noise now.

PC-specific

• [AMD SMT] Optimized default core/thread utilization for 4-core and 6-core AMD Ryzen(tm) processors. 8-core, 12-core and 16-core processors remain unchanged and behaving as intended. This change was implemented in cooperation with AMD and based on tests on both sides indicating that performance improvement occurs only on CPUs with 6 cores and less.
• Fixed an issue with the way Raw Input is collected.
• Removed the use of AVX instruction set thus fixing crashes occurring at the end of the Prologue on processors not supporting AVX.
• Removed debug console to prevent functions that could lead to crashes or blocked quests. This doesn’t mean we don’t want to support the modding community. Stay tuned for more info on that.
• Ray traced reflections should no longer seem too bright in comparison to the environment.
• Fixed an issue with Steam Overlay crash on game shutdown.
• Removed the memory_pool_budgets.csv file. which was not connected with the final version of the game and had no influence on it (it was a leftover file used during the development to estimate memory usage. It had no effect on how much memory was actually allocated). Perceived performance increase after editing the file may have been related to restarting the game.

Console-specific

• Improved image sharpness with Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain on.
• Settings should no longer reset to default after several game session restarts.
• Fixed visual issues occurring during the transition between The Heist and Love Like Fire.
• Corrected the look of several vehicles.
• [Xbox] Entering combat while Synaptic Accelerator is active no longer ends in player health bar not being displayed.
• [Xbox] Game no longer becomes unresponsive when signing out from a profile when the controller disconnection message is visible.
• Telemetry consent request will appear once more due to an earlier issue with settings reset.
• Fixed an issue whereby it was possible to fall down the elevator shaft in Megabuilding H8 in Automatic Love.

Cyberpunk 2077 is out now for PC, Stadia, Xbox One and PS4. It is natively compatible with the Xbox Series X/S and backwards compatible with the PS5.

Ubisoft Holiday Giveaway Dec 19-20 2020 December 19, 2020

This weekend only, Ubisoft is bundling together all the extra content they had given away for the Holidays, including two PC games. You’ll need a Ubisoft account to redeem the content but that is free to obtain.

If you’re interested in adding some free stuff to your Ubi Account, you can check out this website.

Nintendo Direct – Super Nintendo World December 18, 2020

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Miyamoto.

Is it dusty in here?

Super Nintendo World opens at Universal Studios Japan February 2021.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Now Running Natively on Xbox Series X/S December 18, 2020

Halo: The Master Chief Collection had a rocky start when it first released on the Xbox One console back in 2014. Over time, more games were added to the collection as DLC, and eventually the entire collection would receive an incredible PC release. Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach and Halo 4 are currently offered in the bundle. That includes five of the greatest games of all time (and Halo 4). Now, I’m happy to announce Microsoft just remastered the collection to run natively on the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles. Here’s the trailer:

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is out now for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Control PS5 Gameplay Teaser December 18, 2020

Remedy promised that their latest game, Control, would be brought to the next generation consoles with native support when they became available. Today, we’ve gotten our first actual gameplay footage of the game running natively on the PS5 console. Just look at the glorious Ray-Tracing.

Control is out now for PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch. It is coming as a digital purchase for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S February 2021 and a retail purchase March 2021.

Bravely Default II Final Demo Released December 17, 2020

Square Enix and Nintendo have just released the newest (and final) demo for the highly anticipated RPG, Bravely Default II. You can download it on your Nintendo Switch right now off the Nintendo eShop. My Nintendo members who download the demo before the game’s release in February will get free Platinum points added to their account.

Bravely Default II is coming February 2021 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.