Pokemon Go Celesteela Raid Guide: Best Counters, Weaknesses, Raid Hours, And More Tips

Celesteela, along with its counterpart Kartana, made a surprise appearance in Pokemon Go Gyms in the Southern Hemisphere for a surprise limited-time appearance in five-star raid battles. This Ultra Beast, released without announcement from Niantic, began appearing on September 13. Its counterpart, Kartana, is appearing in the Northern Hemisphere. This is Celesteela’s first time being available in Pokemon Go, so both veterans and newcomers have the opportunity to add a new entry in their Pokedexes.

Celesteela Raid Schedule

Celesteela is appearing as the sole five-star raid boss in the Southern Hemisphere starting at 10 AM local time on September 13, 2022 and will remain available to challenge in raids until the same time on September 27. Raids do not generally follow a set schedule, and Celesteela raids will appear randomly at Gyms around the world during this time period, but you will receive a notification from the game when a raid is about to begin nearby. Like other Ultra Beasts, Celesteela raids will be preceded by an Ultra Wormhole taking the place of the usual raid egg on top of the Gym.

Your best chance to find a Celesteela raid (or a lot of them) is during the two Raid Hours in which the Launch Pokemon will be featured. Every Wednesday from 6 PM to 7 PM local time, the majority of Gyms host five-star raids for Trainers to work together to take down. The two Raid Hours that will occur while Celesteela is appearing in five-star raids will be September 14 and 21. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll need your free daily Raid Pass or a Premium Battle Pass to join a raid in person, or a Remote Raid Pass to join a raid remotely. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, there won’t be any Kartana raids appearing near you to join in person, so you’ll have no choice but to use a Remote Raid Pass.

Can I Catch a Shiny Celesteela?

Unfortunately, Celesteela’s shiny form has not yet been released. If you’re looking to get a shiny, you’ll have to wait until a future return to raids. Until then, you can at least fill in that rocket-sized hole in your Pokedex.

Celesteela Weaknesses and Counters

Celesteela is a Steel and Flying-type Pokemon. This means only Fire and Electric-type attacks can deal super-effective damage. Some recommended Pokemon include:

Fire: Mega Charizard Y, Reshiram, Chandelure, Moltres, DarmanitanElectric: Mega Manectric, Zekrom, Magnezone, Electivire, Xurkitree

A Mega Tip: A Mega Evolved Pokemon boosts the damage of all Pokemon in the raid by 10%, and the damage of all Pokemon using attacks that share a type with the Mega Evolved Pokemon by 30%. Coordinate those Megas with your raid group for added damage.

Don’t be afraid of the shadows: Shadow Pokemon deal 20% more damage than their non-shadow counterparts, so the shadow versions of any of the suggested Pokemon that have them can help you win.

Celesteela in Pokemon Go

Types to Avoid

Celesteela’s Steel-type attacks like Iron Head and Heavy Slam will deal super-effective damage to Rock, Ice, and Fairy-type Pokemon. It also has access to the Ground-type move Bulldoze to hit back against the Electric and Fire Types that threaten it. Also keep in mind that Celesteela’s Steel and Flying typing means it resists many other types. Celesteela resists Normal, Psychic, Flying, Dragon, Poison, Ground, and Fairy-type attacks, and double resists Grass and Bug attacks. Stay away from these types of Pokemon.

Usefulness

Is Celesteela worth raiding beyond the Pokedex entry? Unfortunately, probably not. In addition to lacking the stats to perform well in raids, it doesn’t have any synergy between fast and charged moves. It lacks a Steel-type fast move and a Flying-type charged move, and few Pokemon take super effective damage from both of those types. On the PvP side, Celesteela cannot be obtained at a low enough CP to compete in Great League and doesn’t have high enough stats to compete in Master League. That leaves Ultra League as its only possible arena. It is viable there, but not particularly great. Air Slash is an average and perfectly usable fast move, and Body Slam is a good, spammy bait option for a charged move, but all of its other charged move options in Bulldoze, Heavy Slam, and Iron Head leave a lot to be desired.

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Star Wars Eclipse Will Feature The “Fundamental” Elements Of A Quantic Dream Game

Star Wars Eclipse developer Quantic Dream has shared new details on how it plans to retain the “fundamental elements” of its game development formula and use them to craft an action-adventure set in the iconic galaxy that’s far (far) away.

“I think with each new title we try to innovate, we try to explore new ground,” CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere said to IGN Japan. “With Star Wars Eclipse we’re certainly going to keep the fundamental elements of a Quantic Dream game; very strong story, very strong characters, multiple playable characters, and of course, giving the players the possibility to change, through their actions and decisions, how the story unfolds.”

Where Quantic Dream wants to change up its formula from the story-heavy approach seen in games such as Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human, is in the action department. The studio wants to infuse action elements into Star Wars Eclipse, which will be set during the High Republic era of Star Wars continuity.

“Where the formula is changing, we said very clearly we are doing an action-adventure, so the action elements are also going to be very important,” said de Fondaumiere.

Star Wars: Eclipse is just one of several Star Wars games on the horizon. Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment is busy working on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, a Star Wars strategy game, and an untitled first-person shooter, while Ubisoft has a “new story-driven open-world” Star Wars title in development. Skydance New Media is also producing a Star Wars game that it describes as a “cinematic action-adventure” that has an original story.

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Where Is Xur Today? (September 16-20) – Destiny 2 Exotic Items And Xur Location Guide

Xur returns this weekend in Destiny 2 with a new batch of weapons and armor–perfect to help you take advantage of the week’s amped-up reputation gains in Vanguard Strikes and Nightfalls. Here’s where you can find Xur and what Exotics he’s offering.

Xur is present every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Friday (until Daylight Saving brings that forward by an hour in November). Bungie doesn’t mark Xur’s location on the in-game map, so it can be easy to miss him if you’re not aware he exists. But he only comes to specific locations, of which now there are only three: the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ.

Alongside changes in his location, Xur’s inventory also rotates weekly. That means it’s worth visiting him each time to check out his new weapons and rolls on Exotic and Legendary armor. You can visit him any time between his arrival Friday and the weekly reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET the following Tuesday when Xur departs the Solar System.

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Like A Dragon: Ishin Was Considered To Be An Impossible Port For Years By RGG

For many years, Like a Dragon: Ishin has been the one Yakuza game that western fans have been unable to get their hands on unless they were willing to import a copy or learn another language so that they could navigate the PlayStation storefront of Japan. A Japan-exclusive released on PS3 and PS4 in 2013, Like a Dragon: Ishin finally makes its way to the West next year and is being rebuilt entirely in Unreal Engine 4.

Set in 1860s Kyo–a fictionalized version of Kyoto–Ishin’s focus on the fall of the Samurai during a turbulent part of Japan’s history was originally considered to be “impossible” to localize by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama. According to Yokoyama, this was largely due to anachronistic challenges.

“When we were first working on Ishin, we thought this game was impossible to localize,” Yokoyama explained. “There was no way that the overseas team and the Asian team would be able to localize it. I don’t think half the people would really understand what’s going on. It’s hard for Japanese people to understand, it’s probably even harder for people overseas.”

According to Yokoyama, concepts, philosophies, and unique language quirks of that historical time period proved to be extremely challenging for the localization teams, but the staff rose to the occasion for the Ishin remake. Several historical words and terms used in Ishin have lost their context in the modern Japanese language, but the game will have a special system in place that will explain their meaning to western audiences.

Japanese players won’t have such a system in place to prevent any language confusion, and Yokoyama added that the western version of Ishin might actually turn out to be the better edition of the game. Beyond the Ishin remake, Yakuza fans have plenty to look forward to in 2023 and 2024. Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name arrives on PC and console in 2023, and Like a Dragon 8 is scheduled to launch in 2024.

RGG Studio bills the next mainline adventure as “the largest [Yakuza] game to date” and will release it on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One. Just don’t expect a Switch port of any Yakuza game anytime soon, due to the series being “too underground” for that family-friendly system according to Yokohama.

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Big Acquisitions Can Squash Creativity, Titanfall And Battlefield Executive Vince Zampella Says

2022 has been a year full of major acquisitions in the video game space, and Electronic Arts executive Vince Zampella has now shared his thoughts on big buyouts and what they could mean.

Speaking to Barron’s, Zampella acknowledged that mergers and acquisitions in 2022 has been a “big trend,” and one that he sees both positives and negatives from. Big deals can help studios execute on projects they couldn’t have otherwise, but Zampella also warned about creativity falling by the wayside.

“There are benefits to it. There are probably negatives to it. I think we need to be careful that we’re not squashing creativity. Mega-franchises are great because you can do all these big things. You can do things you can never do as an independent developer. So there’s great opportunities,” he said. “But what are we leaving behind in that? We have to be careful we are always innovating and looking for the next thing–not just focused on the things that are right in front of us.”

Zampella isn’t the only gaming executive who discussed big buyouts lately. Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann believes that every business, including video games, will eventually become a monopoly.

Zampella founded Respawn Entertainment after getting fired from Infinity Ward. He has intimate knowledge of a buyout, as Respawn was acquired by Electronic Arts after releasing Titanfall.

Some of 2022’s biggest buyouts so far in the gaming space have included Take-Two snapping up Zynga for $12.7 billion and Sony buying Bungie for $3.6 billion. Microsoft is trying to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, but the deal has yet to be approved globally.

The executive now heads up the Battlefield team at EA, and he had some candid thoughts on what went wrong with Battlefield 2042. He told Barron’s that DICE “strayed a little too far from what Battlefield is.” Some of the studio’s ideas, like increasing the player count to 128 in a match, was “maybe ambitious.”

“The way they were set up and the way they executed just didn’t allow them to find the best thing possible,” Zampella said.

EA has a number of Battlefield projects currently in the works, and upper management on the series has undergone a significant shakeup.

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WoW’s Iconic Wrathgate Cinematic Sounds Like It Was Made With Duct Tape And Glue

World of Warcraft players will soon get to re-experience the MMORPG’s first in-game cinematic with the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, but knowing what all went into the creation of the iconic scene at the Wrathgate might make it even more epic in retrospect.

The Wrathgate was a huge moment in WoW’s story, as the combined forces of the Horde and the Alliance battled the Lich King’s armies in order to confront Arthas, only for all three factions to be decimated by a deadly chemical weapon unleashed by the Forsaken. It served as players’ first face-to-face confrontation with the Lich King, and the events of the Wrathgate led to the death of Varok Saurfang’s son and a disfigured Bolvar Fordragon eventually taking Arthas’ place at the end of the expansion.

As detailed by WoW’s lead cinematic narrative designer Terran Gregory in a new making-of video, despite the scene’s importance, the MMO’s first in-game cinematic might as well have been held together with duct tape and glue. Blizzard is well-known for its impressive pre-rendered cutscenes, but when it came to using WoW’s actual in-game engine to craft a cinematic moment, there was little in the way of actual tools to accomplish the feat back in 2011.

That meant Blizzard had to get creative. They repurposed a camera add-on built for esports commentary into an in-game cinematic camera tool. Employees, including Gregory himself, were recruited to provide voices for various characters, and Blizzard employees even had to stand in as NPCs, as some of the custom-made characters built for the cinematic didn’t have the ability to move in ways that were needed. The iconic charge of the Horde up the steps of the Wrathgate was actually accomplished by having a group of 40 Blizzard employees synchronize a charge in-game while performing the charge emote. According to Gregory, around 90% of the animations seen in the cutscene were ones that already existed in-game.

The Wrathgate scene concludes with the dragons of the Red Dragonflight cleansing the battlefield with their flames. Bringing that moment to life required some creative use of the game’s (at the time) new vehicle technology. By making the various pillars of fire pilotable vehicles and then attaching them to dragon character models, Blizzard could essentially drive around the scene as they saw fit, making it appear as if dragons were soaring around the Wrathgate spewing flames when in actuality they were just a big fire-shaped car with a dragon as a passenger.

The rest, as they say, is history, a history players will soon be able to relive when Wrath of the Lich King Classic arrives on September 26. Though Wrath of the Lich King Classic is largely a faithful recreation of the game as it was back in 2008, Blizzard is making changes to the classic MMO, even as it struggles to address the influx of new players causing massive server queues on the game’s most heavily populated realms.

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Call Of Duty Next Biggest Announcements

The Call of Duty Next event is still ongoing with a live gam,eplay playtest, but the news portion of the event appears to be over–and it delivered quite a few announcements. We learned more about Modern Warfare II and its beta that begins tomorrow and got the first confirmed details about Warzone 2.0 and Warzone Mobile. You can check out all of our coverage through the links below.

CoD: Warzone 2.0 Releases In November With New Map Al Mazrah, Mechanics, And DMZ Mode

Here is everything announced for Warzone 2.0 at Call of Duty Next, including a map reveal and new mechanics.

Call Of Duty: Warzone Mobile Showcased With New Trailer

The mobile version of Call of Duty: Warzone will feature some familiar locations for players already familiar with Warzone, as well as cross-progression with the console and PC versions of Warzone.

Call Of Duty: Warzone Mobile Is A Separate Game, Not A Port

We spoke with Activision about how cross-progression will work in Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Trailer For MP And Warzone 2.0 Shows New Ways To Fight

Check out the full reveal trailer for Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer and Warzone 2.0.

Everything Announced For The Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 MP Beta

Here is everything you can get hands-on with in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer beta.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Is Adding Third-Person Mode To Multiplayer

Third-person multiplayer was previously featured in 2009’s Modern Warfare 2.

PlayStation-Exclusive Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2.0 Content Revealed

Activision’s exclusivity partnership with Sony continues with MW2 and Warzone 2.0.

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PlayStation-Exclusive Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2.0 Content Revealed

As part of the Call of Duty Next event today, Activision announced some PlayStation-exclusive content for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0.

PlayStation players are getting an exclusive Operator, Hiro “Oni” Watanabe. PlayStation players also get a high-level weapon blueprint. You can check out the new character and weapon in the video below.

The fine print in the Oni announcement trailer shows that the DLC will be exclusive to PlayStation until October 27, 2023.

Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard and the Call of Duty franchise, but the deal isn’t done yet, and existing deals between Activision and Sony will continue. Sony pays Activision to put PlayStation-exclusive content into Call of Duty games to help make existing PlayStation players happy and convince people to buy the game on PlayStation.

Modern Warfare 2 launches on October 28, but the multiplayer beta starts September 16 on PlayStation before coming to other platforms later on. Warzone 2.0, meanwhile, is set to be released this year with an extraction-based mode, DMZ, coming to the game as well at launch on November 16.

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RGG Studio Once Considered Turning Yakuza 0’s Hostess Club Minigame Into A Standalone Game

Yakuza 0 is often regarded as the gold standard for the series, primarily due to the game’s mix of dramatic storytelling, hard-hitting action, and a surprising shift from beat-’em-up gameplay to a deep cabaret club management simulator. Between a deadly mystery over a patch of land in Kamurocho and a war with the Japanese underworld, players are able to take a detour into the Sotenbori district and run their own hostess club.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio once considered turning that mode into a standalone game, but as studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama explained, the Hostess minigame turned out to be boring to play without a central character or story to tie it to.

“That idea has floated around for quite a while and we’ve discussed it within the team,” Yokohama said during a Tokyo Game Show interview. “Do we want to make a minigame or something like that? And the conclusion that we’ve reached is that the Hostess minigame works really well as a part of a device with a Like A Dragon game.”

Minigames have been a core component in the Yakuza franchise and its spin-offs for decades. Each new game in the series expands on these diversions between main missions, and you’re able to jump into classic Sega arcades, real estate development with a chicken CEO, and karaoke amongst many other activities.

As for the activities that you can expect in Like A Dragon 8, RGG Studio isn’t ready to reveal which minigames will make the cut before the game arrives in 2024 on PC and console. Next year will also see the release of Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and a remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin.

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Ken, Blanka, Dhalsim, and E. Honda Returning In Street Fighter 6

Capcom has confirmed a foursome of classic Street Fighter characters will be returning in Street Fighter 6, dialing the confirmed playable character count to 11.

Ken, Dhalsim, E. Honda, and Blanka all featured during the Capcom TGS 2022 Online Program, giving players a first look at all of their abilities. The four will retain most of their moves from previous iterations, while adding a few new tricks to their arsenals.

Gallery

Dhalsim was the first character shown, with the video showing off his stretchy limbs and fire-based projectiles. One particular move showed him conjuring a massive fireball with his hands and then launching it at his opponent on an arc, making it an unpredictable new move.

Next up was E. Honda and his slap-happy sumo style. Many of E. Honda’s trademark moves will return, including his flying headbutt, bear hug throw, and the Hundred-Hand Slap that has been his specialty since Street Fighter 2.

The Brazilian man-beast Blanka came up next, rolling across the screen and zapping opponents with his dormant electricity. Blanka has a new skill involving the Blanka-chan doll, which he can deploy and electrify for big damage.

The final featured fighter was Ken, who once again faced off against his rival Ryu. Ken’s new abilities include an expanded Jinrai Kick with multiple options and a new fiery attack called the Dragonlash Kick.

All four fighters will be included when Street Fighter 6 launches on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC in 2023. Ken, meanwhile, will be one of the eight playable fighters during the Street Fighter 6 closed beta test, which begins October 7.

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