Junker Queen is Overwatch 2’s newest hero, and Blizzard has finally given fans a more details about her abilities ahead of her debut in the game’s second beta.

A frontline tank, Junker Queen is all about getting up close and personal and dealing damage with her battle ax and scattergun shotgun. Melee attacks with the ax, as well as hits with her Carnage ability or ultimate ability, Rampage, will inflict wounds on enemies. Wounds not only deal damage over time to enemies, but heal Junker Queen thanks to her Adrenaline Rush passive ability.

Her ax can be thrown to deal damage from range, and in true God of War fashion, can be recalled with a press of a button. Junker Queen’s Commanding Shout ability will increase both her health and the health of nearby allies while also granting her a 30% movement speed boost. As for her ultimate, Rampage causes Junker Queen to charge forward and inflict wounds on any hit enemies, and comes with the added benefit of preventing affected enemies from being healed.

Having been teased by Blizzard for years, the Mad Max-inspired Junker Queen made her official debut in a new Overwatch cinematic trailer during a recent Overwatch 2 event.

Junker Queen will be playable in the second round of the Overwatch 2 beta, which starts on June 28. Unlike the game’s first beta period, the second Overwatch 2 beta will be playable on consoles. Players will be able to try out the reworks for characters like Orisa, Doomfist, Bastion, and Sombra on several new maps, as well as take new heroes like Junker Queen and Sojourn for a spin.

Blizzard has big plans for Overwatch 2, the PvP portion of which will be free-to-play and will ditch loot boxes in favor of a battle pass progression system and the ability to buy various cosmetics directly. Overwatch 2 launches on October 4, and Blizzard has already released a content roadmap detailing plans to add an additional tank hero, a new map, and new cosmetics within the first two months of the game’s launch.

Overwatch 2’s release will come as Activision Blizzard continues to grapple with multiple ongoing lawsuits and investigations related to an alleged “frat boy” workplace culture.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Linux offers more freedom than other operating systems, but you’ll need a bit of technical know-how to maximize its potential. If you’re interested in learning about the powerful and sleek operating system, consider taking a closer look at this discounted Linux Essentials Bundle, which offers more than 50 hours of instruction for just $40.

One of the beefiest courses in the Linux Essentials Bundle is titled Fundamentals of Unix and Linux System Administration. This 24-hour course will teach you the basics of running a Linux/Unix system, including scripting, packaging, managing system processes, and more. All told, this course alone has 108 lessons–which should keep you busy for quite some time and get you up to speed before checking out the rest of the catalogue.

Here’s a closer look at everything included in the Linux Essentials Bundle:

Fundamentals of Unix and Linux System AdministrationLearn Docker from ScratchLinux Shell Programming for BeginnersLinux for Absolute BeginnersLearn to Code Like a Pro With vi Editor

While Linux has plenty of other uses, the Steam Deck might be the most compelling reason to pick up this new bundle, as Valve’s new handheld is bringing Linux-based computing to a wider audience. Since the system runs on Linux, experts will find plenty of things to tinker with and customize their experience.

This bundle provides lifetime access to all coursework in its catalogue, letting you work through its material at your own speed. And if you ever need a refresher on one of the topics, you’ll be able to skim through your library whenever you like without having to worry about the content disappearing.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Okay, okay, okay. Seriously–this time it’s gonna happen. The Shardbearers of Elden Ring are dead, the Great Runes belong to you, the Erdtree burns, and the way is clear to stand before Queen Marika and become Elden Lord. Now’s the time to return to Leyndell, which you’ll quickly find has changed a bit, thanks to your efforts. But it should be smooth sailing.

After all, who could possibly stand in your way at this point? You’ve killed basically everyone.

You know the drill: all the spoilers beyond this point.

The destruction of the Roundtable Hold

If you haven’t dropped back by, now’s a good time to visit the Roundtable Hold. When you arrive, you’ll find the place on fire, which may be surprising. Most of the people who have ever been here are gone, although a few folks–most notably the blacksmith, Master Hewg, and the Finger-Reader Enia–intend to stick it out until the end.

When you talk to Sir Gideon, he’ll intuit that you’ve burned the Erdtree, with the Roundtable Hold to follow. He’s not too broken up about it, saying that the Roundtable Hold existed to make a Tarnished Elden Lord, and if burning the place down is what that takes, then so be it.

This whole situation raises questions about what the Roundtable Hold actually is, though, and if you were paying attention in Leyndell the first time, you might have passed through the Fortified Manor, a place that is exactly the layout of the Roundtable, but empty. The fact that the Roundtable is burning down, plus the fact that you can only reach it from Sites of Grace, suggest that the Roundtable is a magical or spectral location specifically linked to the Erdtree itself–it’s not a real place, but a place modeled after the real Fortified Manor location in Leyndell, and exists to help Tarnished and give them a safe haven.

So who made the Roundtable Hold and why does it exist? Clearly, the presence of the Two Fingers suggests that the Greater Will is behind it, but that might not be the whole story. At some point late in the game, you can overhear Hewg lamenting that he’s still trying but unable to create a weapon that can slay a god. Eventually, he’ll upgrade your weapons to the point where they can, apparently, slay a god, and Hewg reveals that he was given that goal from Marika herself. Hewg is, essentially, a part of the Roundtable, chained to the wall. This suggests that it could have been Marika who created the Roundtable for the Tarnished. It’s not the only piece of evidence that suggests there’s more going on with Marika than we yet realize, either.

Though the Roundtable Hold is on fire, nobody seems all that concerned about it, to be honest.

Hewg opts to stay with the Roundtable despite its destruction, and eventually, he forgets who you even are. It’s a strange moment that could play even more into the weird magic apparently at work here. As you approach the end of the game, Hewg’s speech becomes halted and stuttering, as if the destruction of the demigods and the work he’s doing on your weapons is taking a toll on him, like he’s dying alongside the Roundtable Hold. When he forgets who you are, however, he almost seems reset; he no longer stammers or seems tired, and he’s not apparently all that distressed about the burning Roundtable Hold around him. I’m not sure exactly what conclusion we might draw from Hewg’s demeanor in these final moments, but it does seem pointed that as the Roundtable Hold burns, he loses his memories of you–but also seems to improve physically.

The All-Knowing

When you return to Leyndell, you find it ravaged. The burning Erdtree has covered the entire city in ashes–hence the name “Ashen Capital.” You’ve got a date with the Erdtree, and the ash actually makes it a little easier to get back to there, with fewer roadblocks in the way.

As you climb back into the palace and the chambers of Marika and Radagon, however, you run across a familiar face: Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing. As you might have guessed, Gideon has turned on you, and he intends to stop you from reaching the Erdtree.

Gideon’s turn here is an interesting one. Though he’s helped you along all the while, he’s also a Tarnished, and as he told you at the start, he’s been hoping to become Elden Lord himself. If you bring him information about the four missing Shardbearers–Mohg, Melania, Miquella, and Ranni–he’ll reward you for the help. And as we saw back in the Liurnia portion of the game, Gideon can be ruthless, ordering his men to slaughter the Albinaurics, seemingly in hopes of finding his way to the Haligtree.

All of the Tarnished you meet during the course of Elden Ring once saw the Guidance of Grace, like you do, but all of them talk about how they’ve been questing for so long that Grace has disappeared to them. So while Gideon hopes to become Elden Lord, we can infer that he’s lost the Guidance of Grace and therefore struggles to find the Shardbearers himself. What’s more, Gideon is a guy who uses information and obfuscation to get things done. He doesn’t attack the Albinaurics himself; he sends minions to do it, while hiding out in the Roundtable Hold, where he’s essentially invulnerable.

In the palace, you’ll find Sir Gideon waiting for you. Though he wanted to be Elden Lord himself before, now it seems that he just wants to stop you by any means necessary.

So one interpretation of the events of the game is that Gideon has been using you all along. Once you proved that you were potentially a worthy Tarnished and one who can take down the Shardbearers, he started aiming you toward the missing demigods, providing you with information in hopes you’d go kill them. When you killed Ensha after the Abinauric village massacre, you kind of left him without a minion to do his bidding–and Gideon kind of turned you into that minion.

There’s also some suggestion that he’s been keeping an eye on you all along; that is, after all, his whole deal. Whenever you return to Gideon, he talks to you like he already knows where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to, as if he’s been spying to those ends. And when you finally fight him, Gideon employs abilities from all over the Lands Between. Those moves seem to be dictated by where you’ve been and what enemies you’ve defeated and told Gideon about–he’ll use magic from Caria, blood attacks from Mohg, exploding blasphemy attacks from Rykard, the Black Flame of the Godskin Apostles, the Scarlet Aeonia attack of Malenia, and the Triple Rings of Light incantation that Miquella made for Radagon.

Since Gideon’s attacks are apparently based on the information you give him, we can surmise that he’s basically following along behind you, gathering info and power as you clear out the tough-to-kill demigods on his behalf. Gideon lets you plow through the difficult battles without endangering himself to increase his own strength. So when he fights you in the palace of Leyndell, you might guess that he’s just trying to kill you to claim your Great Runes and become Elden Lord himself. It’s something we might have already seen him do, when Ensha attacked you, if you don’t buy his explanation that Ensha was acting on his own.

Gideon’s dialogue adds another dimension to this interpretation, however, as does the lore on the gear you claim when you defeat him. Gideon says that he believes Marika wants the Tarnished to struggle forever, without ever actually claiming the title of Elden Lord. When you finally kill him, he says he doesn’t believe that any Tarnished can kill a god. It seems like, at some point–possibly even during the course of the game–Gideon learned something about Marika that changed his mind about whether becoming Elden Lord was even a good idea at all.

Gideon seems to have been shadowing you throughout your journey, and now uses magic from all the locations you’ve been and the Shardbearers you defeated.

“Knowledge begins with the recognition of one’s ignorance,” the lore on Gideon’s armor reads. “The realization that the search for knowledge is unending. But when Gideon glimpsed into the will of Queen Marika, he shuddered in fear. At the end that should not be.”

That makes it sound like Gideon stands opposed to you to prevent anyone from becoming Elden Lord, because it would lead to “the end that should not be.” We don’t know exactly what Gideon found out about Marika, but whatever it was, it scared him. And while his goals might have been selfish before, and while he might have been using you for information and power throughout the game, in the end, it seems like Gideon tries to stop you because he knows too much, and he’s afraid of what will happen if you’re successful. Gideon wants the world to stay the same, potentially because he believes that the world will change for the worse if you’re successful. What or why that is, though, we don’t really know.

Rather than just telling you what you might need to know, however, Gideon tries to kill you, and you wallop him just like everybody else. With the All-Knowing out of the way, you’re again on your way to the Erdtree. But one more Tarnished stands in your way: the first Tarnished.

Godfrey, First Elden Lord

At the entrance to the Erdtree, where you fought and defeated Morgott, you meet his father, Godfrey. This isn’t a projection created to keep people away, this is the real deal–the first Elden Lord. Finding Godfrey here, we can guess that he’s hoping to become Elden Lord again, but you’ve interrupted him on his way to claim what was once his. But why is Godfrey here?

Godfrey was the first Tarnished, sent out of the Lands Between with his warriors. Now he’s back to reclaim what’s his.

Godfrey’s history is inexorably tied to yours, in fact. Marika made Godfrey the first Elden Lord, presumably to use his incredible prowess in battle to win her wars and consolidate her power in the Lands Between. But before he was Godfrey, the first Elden Lord was known by another name: Hoarah Loux. A leader of a fierce band of warriors, Hoarah Loux was possibly the greatest fighter to ever live, which made him an excellent asset for Marika to claim as her own.

Hoarah Loux, however, was a little too uncouth and a little too bloodthirsty to rule as Elden Lord. He had to rein in his constant bloodlust, and so to do that, he “took the beast regent Serosh onto his back.” We don’t know a lot about Serosh, a huge armored lion, except that he was “king of beasts,” and when you face Godfrey, Serosh has a sort of ghostly look, as if he might be a Spirit Ash. Serosh’s whole deal was to reel in Godfrey’s power so that he could serve as king as well as a warlord, and the lion became an icon of Godfrey throughout the Lands Between.

Even with Serosh on his back, chilling him out a bit, Godfrey was incredibly good at war. He led Marika’s campaign through the Lands Between and, apparently, was never truly defeated. Godfrey beat the giants, and after Radagon successfully united the Golden Order and the Carian royal family, Godfrey went south to Limgrave and took on an enemy called the Storm Lord by himself. Defeating the Storm Lord allowed him to take Stormveil Castle, and Godfrey eventually moved all the way down to the Weeping Peninsula, capturing Castle Morne.

At that point, Godfrey ran out of adversaries, and it seems like the Greater Will abandoned him–Godfrey lost the Grace he’d been given, and Marika sent him out of the Lands Between, which we can hear about from dialogue delivered by Melina at Marika’s churches throughout the course of the journey through the Lands Between. Godfrey and the warriors of his armies became the Tarnished, and as we see in the opening cutscene at the start of the game, they were sent out to the rest of the world “to live and die.”

The opening cinematic of Elden Ring is a reminder that all the Tarnished are dead. That’s…weird, and makes the Lands Between seem like some kind of spectral “other” place, like the afterlife or limbo.

Godfrey and his warriors began the Long March out of the Lands Between, perhaps even fighting their way out; we’re told by Miriel, the Pastor of Vows, that they weren’t just exiled, they were hounded. And once the Long March was over, Godfrey gave up his crown to become a simple warrior once more. Like all the Tarnished, he lived his life–and eventually died. In fact, the opening cutscene shows a whole range of important Tarnished, from Hoarah Loux to Gideon Ofnir, dead or in graves.

After dying in the world outside the Lands Between, however, and after the Shattering, Godfrey and the other Tarnished were called back to the Lands Between, and back to life, receiving Grace once more. The dialogue Melina delivers in the Churches of Marika suggests this was Marika’s plan all along: she sent the Tarnished away, and she wanted them to later return, promising they’d also reclaim their Grace.

So when you meet Godfrey, it seems like that’s his plan: The first Tarnished is back to reclaim his Elden Lord status, but he has to go through you to get it. As you fight him, he embraces his true power and bloodlust, casting off Sarosh once and for all and embracing his original identity as Hoarah Loux. Still, you’ve wrecked everyone you’ve faced, including Gideon Ofnir and all of Godfrey’s children. Eventually, you take down the dad, too. He even kind of congratulates you, because to Hoarah Loux, a crown should be earned through strength.

The path to the Erdtree is, finally, clear. As you head inside, you’ll finally stand before Marika. We have a lot to discuss about her, still, though–it’s time for the thrilling conclusion of Elden Ring. Uh, in Part 12. Sorry.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

At the end of June, Studio MDHR will no longer be haunted.

That’s when the studio is finally releasing its Cuphead downloadable content expansion, Delicious Last Course. First announced in 2018, the DLC started as a series of ideas that didn’t make it into the original game; things like homages to games and classic cartoons, or inspirations such as the ghostly Cuphead character known as the Legendary Chalice. As studio director and executive producer Maja Moldenhauer explained, they were ideas the developers just couldn’t let go–even if it would eventually take five years to realize them.

“There was nothing actually on the cutting room floor [when Cuphead was completed],” Moldenhauer said of the DLC, in an interview with GameSpot at Summer Game Fest. “When we did the core game, every piece of paper [used for animation] made it in. It was things that were in the backs of our minds [that made up the DLC], like homages to the cartoons that we loved or the moves that we loved, whether it was like an abominable snowman or a cowgirl or something like that, we were like, ‘We would love a boss like that.'”

“It was all in our heads and haunting us,” she said. “I don’t think we would have been able to close this chapter without getting them out. The ideas were just too good to pass up and move on.”

We got to spend some time trying out those ideas during Summer Game Fest, where Studio MDHR had one of the DLC’s boss fights available to play, using Ms. Chalice, the living version of Legendary Chalice’s ghost and Delicious Last Course’s new character. Playing as Ms. Chalice feels very different from original characters Cuphead and Mugman, though.

Where the original characters have only one jump, but can get more air by using a parry ability on certain kinds of projectiles, Ms. Chalice comes with a double-jump from the, uh, jump. Her parry ability is a horizontal dash, which is perhaps more reliable than the jump parry, but doesn’t offer her any additional motion as a reward for its execution.

Moldenhauer said that Ms. Chalice was an element the team had wanted to do more with in the core game–and in a very real way, Studio MDHR realized that ambition, thanks to the fact that you can replay all of Cuphead with Ms. Chalice. With the new mechanics, though, the idea wasn’t to create a character who was easier to use than Cuphead and Mugman, Moldenhauer said.

“What we were doing was just trying to make it complementary,” she explained. “So if somebody doesn’t have a good fast-twitch double-jump to time parries, they have this parry dash. Vice versa, though, for me, I like playing with Ms. Chalice, but that’s one component that I don’t like. I don’t like the after-effect when you dash parry and what happens with her–I’m not great with it. So I would prefer to play a parry-heavy level with Cuphead.”

In practice, playing with Ms. Chalice requires something of a rewiring regarding the way you think about a Cuphead boss fight. Ms. Chalice’s double-jump makes her a bit easier to use in terms of dodging big enemy attacks that required careful timing with Cuphead and Mugman. Parrying, however, is a huge part of a Cuphead fight: It not only allows you to instantly disable an enemy attack, clearing room on the screen that you sometimes need, but it also helps you charge up special abilities and EX attacks that allow you to deal massive damage to enemies. Where nailing a parry with Cuphead traditionally was enough to put you out of harm’s way for a moment, thanks to the way the jump parry propels you into the air, Ms. Chalice’s parry functions as if you absorbed the attack altogether. That can often leave you out in the open and means you might ignore more parry opportunities or find them more dangerous than you would have with Cuphead or Mugman.

Ms. Chalice has a couple other features specific to the character that can give you a leg up, b ut require tradeoffs. In order to access Ms. Chalice, you have to equip a specific Charm, one of the special items you can earn in Cuphead that give your character useful benefits. The Charm you get in the DLC swaps Cuphead or Mugman’s place with Ms. Chalice–she becomes alive while one of them becomes a ghost. So using Ms. Chalice costs you that charm slot when you’re playing. In addition to Ms. Chalice’s other gameplay tweaks, though, the upshot is that, while Cuphead and Mugman have three hit points, Ms. Chalice has four, making using her a little more forgiving.

She also has a dodge roll ability that’s unique among the characters, giving you a brief window of invincibility when you use it. The move can be very useful in the right circumstances to avoid damage in a pinch, but it’s also highly dependent on the situation. In tight fights without a lot of maneuverability or requiring precise placement of your character, like the boss fight we played, the dodge roll wasn’t that useful. Like all of Ms. Chalice’s abilities, it’ll be suited to some battles in the game and not others.

Our hands-on session gave us a chance to fight a boss called Mortimer Freeze in the level Snow Cult Scuffle, which GameSpot previously saw as part of a hands-off preview for Delicious Last Course. The wizard Mortimer starts out floating around the boss arena, harrying you with deadly tarot cards and living water droplets that march after you like soldiers. Damage him enough and he transforms into a giant abominable snowman, who also transforms into an icebox, dispensing angry popsicles at you like flying monkeys, and bombarding you with mortars in the form of exploding ice cubes. Finally, you climb up above the arena to stand on some rotating platforms, where you fight Mortimer in the form of a giant, magical snowflake. The snowflake form spits snowcones at you and likes to pop out its own eye, which flies around, blasting lightning across the battlefield. It’s actually a bit gross.

Like Cuphead’s other battles, Mortimer Freeze is no pushover–there are three total phases you have to fight through, each with its own set of mechanics. Staying alive in the fight is often a matter of careful positioning, like when the snowman summons icy swords from the ground beneath your feet, or when its ice cubes hit the ground and shatter into smaller cubes that arc overhead. Playing with Ms. Chalice took some getting used to and feels significantly different from the base game’s characters. She excels in some areas, like leaping over the snowman as it transforms into a giant snowball and barrels toward you, but isn’t necessarily perfectly suited to the fight thanks to her dodge parry. Playing with the character suggests that you might want to swap back and forth between Ms. Chalice and the original characters depending on the battle–although playing with her through the entire core game will definitely offer a new challenge.

Moldenhauer said that creating that new challenge with Ms. Chalice was also the toughest part of developing Delicious Last Course.

“It was easier developing her with the new bosses coming out because we hadn’t defined what the gameplay looks like yet, versus retroactively having her fit and work with the existing bosses, because we didn’t want to touch them. These are all the same, and she had to work with them, as well,” Moldenhauer said. “That definitely was one of those most challenging components of all of this. Defining and coming up with different concepts and different bosses and boss fights and stuff like that, that comes very naturally because there are so many gameplay homages we want to play into, or reference art that we’re looking at.”

There are some new references influencing what you’ll see in Delicious Last Course, as well, although Moldenhauer said the team made sure that the DLC doesn’t look drastically different from the base game, even though it’s taking cues from a few new sources. Influences are still coming from the animation of the 1930s, although Moldenhauer said Studio MDHR drew from works that came in the later part of the decade, such as Fantasia, as well as the cartoons that inspired the base game. Because the two parts were so closely linked from their inception, they’re still very visually similar to one another.

With Delicious Last Course closing the book on this chapter of Cuphead, Studio MDHR may well be looking to the future–but Moldenhauer wouldn’t let slip much about what the developers are thinking of doing next.

“There’s no shortage of ideas in our heads. We’re full of cracky, quirky things that we want to eventually get to,” she said. “We love 2D animation, we love pencil to paper and what magic that brings in a digital age, so you can definitely expect that out of us. We’re very open to different genres of gameplay. This was the first one out of the gate, and we’ll have to see where it goes.”

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News