Another spooky season is upon us, and that means Fortnitemares 2022 is, too. Whether you’ve been around for previous Fortnitemares or you’re experiencing Fortnite‘s yearly Halloween event for the first time, you can be sure there will be plenty of holiday-themed skins, challenges, items, and more. Read on for everything we know about Fortnitemares 2022.

When is Fortnitemares 2022?

Fortnitemares 2022 begins on October 18 and is expected to last until at least October 31, if not a bit longer. Previous Fortnitemares events have lasted into November, so that’s entirely possible this time around, too.

Map changes, items, and challenges

You can expect some map changes and event-specific items to make an appearance during Fortnitemares 2022, though Epic hasn’t confirmed specifics yet. We should know more when a trailer drops any day now.

We can be all but certain we’ll see some sort of new monstrous enemy type, like last year’s Cube Monsters make their yearly appearance to wreak havoc across the island. It’s likely that we’ll once again see some POIs change up to match the Halloween theme–in fact, we’ve already seen one, as Shifty Shafts morphed into the haunted house-like Grim Gables. Don’t be surprised if candy makes a return, too, which is usually available outside of houses for you to find and eat, granting buffs to health, movement speed, and more. Lastly, we’re all but guaranteed a handful of Halloween challenges to complete for XP–or possibly even event-specific cosmetics.

New skins

Halloween-themed skins will be rampant during Fortnitemares 2022, so you should expect to see the return of some from previous years alongside a selection of brand new skins.

While Epic hasn’t announced the full slate of new skins coming this year, we got an early look at at least two of them (seen below) late last month.

With so many horror franchises making splashes lately, there are endless possibilities for crossovers, but the most rumored is another crossover with The Walking Dead. Previous years have included beloved characters like Rick, Daryl, and Michonne, so there’s a decent chance we’ll see some fresh skins from the popular zombie show in this year’s selection. Some folks even expect to see everyone’s favorite bat-wielding badass Negan make an appearance, but only time will tell.

We’ll be sure to update this post as we learn more leading up to the event. Happy hauntings, loopers!

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Elden Ring might be the frontrunner for game of the year 2022, but the past few months have been rather quiet ones for From Software. Now, a new patch that rebalances Elden Ring’s PvP has added hidden references to new maps, as well as laying the groundwork for a wider PvP reshuffle that fans have been asking for.

Patch 1.07 is almost exclusively multiplayer-focused. The biggest change is the addition of separate damage scaling for PvP battles, which is by far the biggest change that the game’s community has lobbied for in the months since its release.

Most PvPers contend that the damage values on many of Elden Ring’s popular weapons and Ashes of War are inflated, which leads to short battles where a single mistake means life or death. Besides this, the patch makes several sweeping changes to multiplayer, including a general nerf to all Ashes of War, as well as many adjustments specific to certain weapons. For example, the dreaded Colossal Sword crouch-poke has been tuned down substantially, which should hopefully help the long-term viability of the game.

According to prolific Souls hacker Lance McDonald, this patch also adds references to maps that aren’t in the game yet on a raw code level. It also adds some code that appears to be related to ray-tracing options that don’t exist yet in the options menu, either. This would seem to indicate that fresh single-player content for the game is coming at some point soon, though you probably shouldn’t hold your breath. There is no timetable for Elden Ring DLC at this point, though considering that the game has sold almost 17 million copies in six months, it seems like an inevitability.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Gotham Knights launches on October 21, and if you’re planning to play it on PC, the good news is that you won’t need cutting-edge WayneTech to get the game running at a respectable level of visual fidelity. Developer Warner Bros. Montreal has revealed the minimum system requirements for the open-world adventure, and if your PC can handle any modern games without making too many concessions in the options menu, you should be good to go.

A PC equipped with a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (or a Radeon RX 590, 8 GB of RAM), 8 GB of RAM, and a solid CPU from the last couple of years will be able to get the game running at 60 Frames-per-second at a 1080p resolution and with low graphical settings enabled.

Gotham Knights minimum PC system requirements

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bitCPU: Intel Core i5-9600K or Ryzen 5 3600RAM: 8 GBGPU: GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or Radeon RX 590Storage: 45 GB

Warner Bros. Montreal hasn’t listed its recommended PC requirements for a more intensive rendering of Gotham City with all the visual bells and whistles, but if you are looking to see what your new 40-series Nvidia GPU can do, the game looks like it’ll be a stunner on that front. Users with high-end gaming rigs can expect a 4K resolution, ray tracing, and ultra-high framerate options when Gotham Knights runs at max settings on PC.

With launch day being just a week away, the marketing machine for Gotham Knights has kicked into overdrive with new cinematic and gameplay trailers of the superhero romp in action. “Gotham Knights did a great job of setting up a central mystery as quickly as possible,” Tamoor Hussain wrote in his Gotham Knights preview. “The central narrative thread of Gotham Knights involves the heirs to Batman’s crusade trying to pick up where their mentor left off, understand what he was trying to prevent, and, at the same time, solve the mystery of his death.”

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

While Overwatch 2 has had a rough launch thanks to numerous technical issues, there’s a lot to love about the new take on the classic shooter. One of the details fans have been enjoying are the huge number of new voice lines, many designed only to trigger in very specific situations.

In a Twitter thread, Overwatch 2 senior narrative designer Justin Groot explained that the writers aimed for increased reactivity in its dialogue, with characters reacting to specific events, including certain team comps or situational moments. While the original Overwatch already had a lot of custom dialogue, including specialized lines for taking out or interacting certain characters, the dialogue in the sequel gets a lot more specific.

“We’ve done a ton of work on the backend to detect rare situations, and to centralize & prioritize our VO system so that we can play the coolest possible line at any given moment,” Groot explains. The goal, as he puts it, is to “make the heroes feel more alive, so that they celebrate your greatest accomplishments along with you, and continue to surprise you game after game.”

Much of the special dialogue uncovered so far involves specific team comps, such as in the video above where Junker Queen in an all-female team starts the match with, “alright ladies, let’s teach these boys a lesson.”

Others pointed out by fans include a voice line where Mercy, if placed on a team where the other characters all have self-heals, will remark on how easy the match will be as everyone can heal themselves. Reinhardt will also make a comment on a team full of melee weapon users, asking if one of them should have a gun.

Some lines will also trigger based on what move has been used, or where a kill takes place, with players pointing out unique dialogue that is triggered if a kill takes place while a character is airborne, for example.

Lead narrative designer Gavin Jurgen-Fyhrie also chimed in on the conversation, expanding on what different types of dialogue players could expect to encounter in Overwatch 2. As well as the reactive lines mentioned above, all characters have been given expanded voice lines for kills, abilities and regular play. The writers have also added 1800 lines of inter-character dialogue, a little of which is featured in the video above in a conversation between Sombra and Moira.

It’s clear players will be discovering new, niche voice lines in Overwatch 2 for a while yet, with the game only just in its second week of launch.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

Overwatch 2 has revitalized the hero shooter bringing a ton of new players to the game. While some will be enticed by new heroes and the new game mode Push, new and returning players will want to try out some of the older heroes as well. That includes Mercy, a support character. Mercy is a great character for new players to learn the game and easily one of the best healers in the game. Here’s how to maximize your healing as Mercy.

Mercy overview

Mercy is a support hero who is focused almost entirely on healing. While healing is the main focus for all support heroes, Mercy provides one of the highest amounts of healing, with the trade-off being that she deals very little damage. Armed with a healing staff that can connect to an ally to provide them with healing or with a damage boost, depending on which one you want at the moment. You can swap between healing and damage instantly. Mercy also has the ability to fly towards her allies and she can even revive one person using her ability.

Mercy abilities

Caduceus Staff: Attach to a teammate a provide a stream of healing or a damage boost.

Caduceus Blaster: Fire a small automatic pistol.

Guardian Angel: Fly towards an ally. Jumping during flight launches you forward, crouching launches you upward.

Resurrect: Revive a dead teammate.

Angelic Descent: Fall slowly.

Valkyrie ultimate: Gain the ability to fly and enhance all other abilities.

If you want to deal damage, don’t pick Mercy

Just because Mercy has a gun doesn’t mean you should be using it outside of emergencies.

While Mercy is strapped with an automatic pistol, that should only be pulled out in-case of emergency or if the rest of your team is dead. In pretty much every other circumstance, your time is better used healing or boosting a teammate, which is your role as a support hero. There are other support heroes that can deal damage, although they don’t heal as much as Mercy does. It might seem a little odd to not shoot in a first-person-shooter, but Mercy’s purpose is keeping the rest of the team alive.

Sharing is caring

Anyone who has played Overwatch 2 has probably seen what is commonly referred to as a “Pocket Mercy.” This refers to a Mercy that sticks with a single teammate, always providing them with healing or damage boosts. While this can be productive in the case of a Pharah and Mercy combination, most of the time your services should be provided to everyone on the team. The best way to make sure you are constantly providing healing to heroes who need it is to constantly be moving between teammates, healing whoever actually needs it. If you’re going to focus on pocketing a teammate temporarily, a good time to do this iw when a teammate is using an ultimate ability.

The Valkyrie ultimate drastically increases healing

Using Mercy’s ultimate ability allows her to fly and increases the output of her abilities. One of the ways it does that is by allowing your healing and damage tethers to branch out to other teammates nearby. This can be used to make a big push on an objective, or to hold out against some enemy ultimates. Some Mercy players like using the ultimate as an opportunity to pull out the pistol, since during the ultimate it has a much faster rate of fire. While you will likely get a kill or two doing this, your time is still better spent healing your team.

More Mercy tips

The revive is on a 20 second cooldown and takes a few seconds for the animation to complete, so you need to make sure you are in the clear before attempting it.The resurrection is best used on your tank or DPS, but if only your other healer goes down in a fight, you might as well bring them back.Damage boosting is most effective when with a friendly ultimate ability, making it do even more damage.Use Mercy’s flying abilities to keep moving around as much as possible. Being a healer puts a target on your back, especially if you play Mercy.If you focus on healing teammates, you can easily out heal the enemy supports, giving your team a big advantage.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News