As you play Disney Dreamlight Valley, you’ll quickly note that Dream Shards are quite the commodity. These special little shards are used for a variety of purposes, including as part of quests, to craft certain items, and to combine with Night Shards to make Purified Night Shards. Here’s how to get more Dream Shards.
Where to get Dream Shards in Disney Dreamlight Valley
Dream Shards can be obtained in multiple different ways, so you’re guaranteed to come across some naturally as you play. But here are the main ways to get them.
Digging
You can find quite a lot of Dream Shards by seeking out cracked pieces of ground throughout your valley and digging at those spots. You’ll also be able to stock up on Night Shards this way, making it the most efficient method of gaining a good amount of both types quickly.
Feeding Critters
Each time you feed a critter, you run a pretty good chance of getting a Dream Shard to drop. To improve your chances even further, feed them their favorite food. This helps you work towards potentially earning them as a companion, too!
Removing Night Thorns
Every time you remove a Night Thorn in your valley, there’s a decent chance of having a Dream Shard pop out. You’ll have plenty of these to clear out at the beginning of the game, but afterward, ten of them will spawn in a random biome each day. Clear these out daily to keep your valley looking nice and earn some Dream Shards in the process.
For more on Dreamlight Valley, check out our comprehensive guides hub.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
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Keep your Wordle (opens in new tab) win streak going straight through the weekend—today’s Wordle answer is waiting for you on this very page. Like to clear the daily puzzle in your own time? Then take a minute to browse our helpful tips and guides, or use the clue for the February 4 (595) Wordle below to nudge you in the right direction without giving the game away.
I turned up yellow after yellow until… ah, not quite. Luckily I had one last guess available, and that was just enough to see me through to a satisfying victory.
Wordle hint
A Wordle hint for Saturday, February 4
The answer today refers to any room or area lacking light. This can either be because a light source is present but has been switched off or because there was never any light at all. You’ll need to uncover two vowels today.
Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle?
No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playing Wordle well, which is why I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
The solution may contain repeat letters.
There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by midnight. So there’s no reason not to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank.
Today’s Wordle answer
What is the Wordle 595 answer?
Weekends are for winning. The answer to the February 4 (595) Wordle is UNLIT.
Previous answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today’s Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that’s already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
February 3: FLIRT
February 2: SHIRK
February 1: SCOLD
January 31: CROSS
January 30: CRAVE
January 29: FISHY
January 28: FLIRT
January 27: WORRY
January 26: BEEFY
January 25: MAIZE
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it’s up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You’ll want to start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
You’ll want your second go to compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer.
After that it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips (opens in new tab), and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle (opens in new tab), refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures (opens in new tab). Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675499475_Wordle-hint-and-answer-today-Lets-solve-595-February-4.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-04 08:05:442023-02-04 19:47:32Wordle hint and answer today: Let’s solve #595, February 4
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (opens in new tab) may be just a distant, fading dream, but that doesn’t mean we have to live our lives deprived of undead fun. World of Darkness has announced the winners of the 2022 Vampire: The Masquerade game jam (opens in new tab), a competition between 28 games ranging from RPGs to dating sims, and you can play them all for free.
The first Vampire Jam was held by Itch.io (opens in new tab) to celebrate the announcement of Bloodlines 2, which came with much fanfare and excitement. Sadly, that hasn’t worked out quite as well as we’d hoped, but the Vampire Jam has stuck around, and is now an officially sanctioned World of Darkness event.
The most recent Vampire Jam ran from October 30 to December 2, 2002, with three themes (opens in new tab) on the table: Love Among Monsters, Horrors Unbound, and The Hunt and the Hunted.
The winners of the 2022 Vampire Jam get $500 each, and more importantly can release and monetize their games royalty-free until September 2023 through the World of Darkness Unbound program. Developers will also get “release marketing and creative consultation” with the World of Darkness team, and promotion through World of Darkness social media channels.
Now the results are in:
Sunset Chronicles: Sin City Blues – An isometric RPG set in Las Vegas where players begin as a completely fresh vampire, slowly carving a path in the dark world surrounding them.
Rat Rhapsody – A twist on a dating sim theme where you play as a Nosferatu navigating Camarilla court, trying to form alliances to find out the truth behind your lover’s betrayal.
Bitter Nights: Case of the Bleeding Hearts – Classic noir meets Vampire: The Masquerade in this crime story where you play as Malkavian investigator navigating the local politics and alliances to find the truth about the local serial killer.
Sunset Chronicles: Sin City Blues has obvious appeal as an RPG, and a Nosferatu playing politics has the potential for some very interesting storytelling. My favorite of the bunch, though, has to be Bitter Nights: Case of the Bleeding Hearts: A neo-noir Malkavian PI tale may be the best idea for a game I’ve heard in ages.
(For those not familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade lore, members of the Malkavian clan are uniquely perceptive and insightful, but also completely insane. Playing as a Malkavian in Bloodlines makes for a very interesting and surprisingly distinct experience (opens in new tab), and bringing that sort of gameplay to a series of grim, gritty murder mysteries could be brilliantly deranged.)
But these three aren’t the only games to emerge from the 2022 Vampire Jam: There were 28 entries in all, and some of the runners-up look very interesting in their own right, including The Outsider, Vampire Frenzy: Riding the Wave, Friday Night Speeddate, and Barbedlands—Genepil. Lots to do, in other words—you can see them all at Itch.io’s Vampire: The Masquerade Jam 2022 page (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675473894_Become-a-Malkavian-PI-in-pursuit-of-a-serial-killer.jpg6771200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-04 00:56:112023-02-04 21:08:03Become a Malkavian PI in pursuit of a serial killer in this Vampire Jam 2022 winner
A twitter account that catalogs classic interfaces from the history of web browsing, the Web Design Museum (opens in new tab), shared a screengrab of the Steam homepage circa May, 2005 (opens in new tab). This look back at the early days of Valve’s juggernaut set our minds alight, conjuring memories of Day of Defeat Source, surf maps, and custom Half-Life 1 campaigns. Things have come a long way since those olive drab days.
Steam website in 2005#WebDesignHistory #Steam pic.twitter.com/LU4PWzyGZdFebruary 3, 2023
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A quick trip on the Wayback Machine can serve up versions of the site from any era of its almost 20-year existence (opens in new tab), but I think the Web Design Museum hit a real sweet spot with this ’05 iteration—it’s nowhere near as sparse as our first look (opens in new tab) at the Steam official site in 2002, but we’ve also yet to see the gleaming grey-and-blue terminator of today start to tear out of its olive drab flesh like in this snapshot (opens in new tab) from 2006.
My eye was immediately drawn to the bronze/silver/gold editions of Half-Life 2—at the risk of revealing myself to be a pathetic bronze-tier gamer, I had no idea what these gradations meant at first. Honestly, the $85 gold edition of HL2 seems to have been pretty sick.
According to MobyGames, you got downloads of Half-Life 2, Deathmatch, CS: Source, Half-Life 1 Source, Day of Defeat Source, and a “back catalog” of Valve games—presumably the original GoldSrc Half-Life and its expansions? The pack also included a physical box mailed to you with a strategy guide, posters, and other classic swag bag fare. Beats a digital deluxe edition with a DLC pass, I reckon.
My heart was also filled with yearning and nostalgia on seeing the Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar art book over on the sidebar. I remember absolutely poring over that thing for hours back in middle school, and it offers some tantalizing glimpses of alternate designs for iconic enemies and areas.
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Prima “Eguides” were a real hoot for me to see as well. The single player Counter-Strike campaign and Prima’s attempt at an early pivot to digital content are like looking at the first rungs of abandoned tech trees—I can almost imagine an alternate present where Counter-Strike scooped Call of Duty on its de rigueur cinematic campaigns or where Prima managed to get out ahead and dominate the SEO videogame guide space.
The whole shebang is wrapped up in that wonderfully horrendous dull green color scheme Steam pot-committed to for so many years, and it’s all jammed onto a page so busy you don’t even know where to start. Ok, maybe this isn’t “flawless UX design” but god dammit, it makes me feel something! Perhaps it’s just because I was a sweet little boy who didn’t have to pay rent or taxes back then, but this image really takes me back. At the very least, it shows a smaller, gentler Steam, one free of belligerent transphobic creators (opens in new tab), bizarre wishlist-topper reveal controversies (opens in new tab), or, ahem. Furry Hitler (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675466562_Man-Steams-official-website-has-come-a-long-way-in.jpg6871200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-03 23:20:422023-02-04 19:47:00Man, Steam’s official website has come a long way in 21 years
Whether you’re a Hitman veteran or a more recent convert who just got their start in this World of Assassination, the new roguelite Freelancer mode is gonna force feed you a slice of humble pie and make you feel like a fake gamer. That’s a good thing–this mode is, in essence, the endgame for this rebooted Hitman trilogy. Short of actual new maps, Hitman Freelancer is a great way to tie this experience off because it’s extremely tough in some brand-new ways, and the overall structure is very different from what we’re used to thanks to the new framework.
Before, each mission was completely self-contained. Nothing you did in one mission would matter in the next. But in Freelancer, death has consequences: you lose everything you had in your inventory, and half of the money you’ve been earning for jobs. Not to mention you might have to start over from scratch.
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Now Playing: HITMAN Freelancer – Launch Cinematic
But succeeding at Hitman Freelancer is not impossible, and the learning curve isn’t as steep as it may seem at first. So much of it is just about getting a handle on what’s important and what isn’t. That would take hours if you just dive in head first without guidance–a delightful experience, and the way we went about procuring our understanding of this mode, but not everybody has the time.
So if you wanna skip the self-tutorial period, we’ve got eight pieces of advice that you’ll wanna consider as you and Agent 47 go hunting.
Freelancer is hard mode
While this mode does skip one of the most annoying aspects of Master difficulty (bloody kills rendering a disguise unusable), Freelancer is hard mode from the very beginning, and the further you get into it, the harder it gets. You’ll notice early on that guards have eagle eyes and tend to respond to murders in larger numbers than you’re used to. By the third tier of its tiered mission structure there will be a security camera around every corner and you’ll get immediately melted by guards if you hold a letter opener in public.
This isn’t meant to dissuade you from trying the mode. No, this is just our way of telling you that you need to have a healthy respect for what you’re going up against here. While there are still fun and games to be had in Freelancer mode, you’ll need to take everything pretty seriously if you want to get very far.
Remember what actually matters
Hitman Freelancer is full of distractions–bonus objectives to complete, safes to crack, couriers to take out, loot to steal, etc etc. But, ultimately, that stuff doesn’t matter. What does matter is killing your target and not getting killed in return. That’s it!
Having better guns and money to spend is great. But in this mode, where you cannot save or load your game, where if you screw up you might have to start over from the beginning of the entire campaign, your survival matters far more than a safe that’s surrounded by guards who can see through your disguise. While that extra 3,000 merces–the mode’s exclusive currency–might come in handy later if you can pull off the heist, it’s probably not worth the time or risk involved to get it. So don’t be afraid to leave money behind.
You’ll need luck to make it to the end
Quit clowning around and get in there.
There’s something you need to accept up front when you start playing Hitman Freelancer: you will lose campaigns even though you did everything perfectly. Sometimes it’s just bad luck, and sometimes it’s bugs. Sometimes NPCs witness a murder through the floor or ceiling and compromise our disguise. Sometimes you spawn into a level in a hostile area with a guard looking right at you. And with the way alerts spread stupid fast in this mode, that kind of thing is often a death sentence.
Since losing a deep run already feels pretty bad as it is, regardless of whose fault it is, it’s best to accept now that your failures aren’t always your failures. Luck matters.
Silenced guns are your best friend
We’ll admit that we didn’t fully appreciate just how hard we leaned on our default silenced pistol until we no longer had one by default. Because, holy cow, it really does change the equation in your head when you walk into a mission with literally nothing. It’s a good thing at first, as that added complication helps get you acquainted with the extra overall difficulty. But as that difficulty ramps up over the course of a campaign, a silenced weapon is going to help you so much.
There are five ways to get a silenced gun: as a reward for increasing your Freelancer Mastery, as a reward for defeating a Syndicate, by buying one from an arms dealer during a mission, by looting one off a guard who’s carrying one (such as the penthouse guards in Dubai, all of whom have either a silenced SMG or assault rifle), or by looting a silenced pistol from an assassin (they all carry one) during a mission to take out a Syndicate leader. You only get to keep one of each type, though, so there’s no need to take out every guard in Dubai just to collect their guns.
Don’t leave your gadgets at home
While you get to keep your guns for new campaigns as long as you don’t lose them during a mission, you’re guaranteed to lose your gadgets when your campaign ends. So there’s not really any reason to leave that legendary explosive duck at home if you have spare inventory space. Gadgets are use-them-or-lose-them items, so use them already. While your natural instinct will be to save the really rare stuff for when an objective calls for it, the nature of Freelancer mode demands that you stuff your pockets as full as you can with as many different gadgets as you have available when it’s time to head off on a mission.
Be prepared for some messed up spawn locations
Random spawn points add a fascinating new wrinkle to Hitman levels.
One of the quirks of Freelancer mode is you cannot start any mission with a disguise, and the game will randomly pick your spawn point. So, for example, in Marrakesh you might be spawned into the back of the military base, where you’ll be trespassing and every NPC is armed. Or in the Hokkaido morgue right behind two morticians who will scream for help if they see you, as pictured above. Most of the maps have spawn points like that, and Colorado pretty much only has that. It’s just something you’ll have to accept and learn to deal with, which honestly isn’t usually mega-difficult so long as you’re ready to go as soon as you load in and keep your cool.
Leader suspects will have only the traits listed, no more and no fewer
When you’re on the hunt for a Syndicate leader, Diana will give you a list of traits for the correct target: four physical characteristics, and three behavioral ones. The correct target will display exactly the characteristics listed, and only the characteristics listed. So, of course, if the target is supposed to have a tattoo but the suspect you’re looking at does not, then that suspect isn’t the target. But the inverse is also true: if the suspect has a tattoo but the target description doesn’t mention a tattoo, then that suspect isn’t the target. A suspect having an extra trait is just as disqualifying as them not having a stated one would be.
Napoleon Blownapartes
Sometimes you’ll get really unlucky and have a target who just hangs out in a busy crowd with no real openings for taking them out without causing a whole scene that will quickly get you killed. And in those cases I like to use the Napoleon Blownaparte gadget. This thing, which you cannot take home with you, is a very common, but also very special, item in the new Freelancer chests that are scattered around each level.
This thing is actually two gadgets in one. It’s a noisemaker at first, drawing the attention of anybody who’s near it. And then it’s a remote explosive. But since it looks like a toy, you generally can toss it on the ground wherever you want without getting in trouble, then slip out of the room before blowing it up. It’s messy, but it’s also relatively safe compared with most assassination methods in crowded areas. It’s also expedient if you’ve been in a level for a while and just want to move on.
Just be sure you toss it near your target rather than at them–beaning somebody in the face is still a crime!
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
Discord, the de facto standard voice chat software for PC gamers, is finally coming to PlayStation 5 consoles (opens in new tab). The software is available now to PS5 beta participants, and will roll out to all PS5 owners later this year.
PlayStation integration actually began more than a year ago, when Discord added an option that enabled PlayStation users to link their accounts (opens in new tab), so their PS4 and PS5 game activity could be displayed in their Discord profiles. This is the natural next step.
Users invited into the beta will have to link their PlayStation Network and Discord accounts—even if you’ve already done this previously, you’ll have to do it again in order to grant the required new permissions. Once that’s done, hop into Discord: On mobile you’ll then want to look for a new “Join on PlayStation” button, while on PC you should see a new button that “looks sort of like a phone and game controller next to each other.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a terrible description. Luckily, we have a picture, to which I have added a bright yellow circle so you can’t miss it:
(Image credit: Discord)
Mash that button and you’ll be asked where you want to transfer your voice chat to. Select PlayStation, and you’re done. All the usual Discord voice chat controls will be at your fingertips.
We said last year when PlayStation account integration came to Discord that even though it didn’t impact PC gamers directly, it was a real quality of life improvement for anyone who games on multiple platforms—which these days is most of us. With cross-platform play becoming increasingly common, cross-platform chat only makes sense, and even if you’re not all playing the same game at the same time, it’s nice to be able to keep up with your online friends no matter what system they’re playing on.
A date for the full rollout of Discord voice chat on PlayStation 5 hasn’t been announced, but assuming nothing goes seriously sideways I would imagine it will happen fairly soon. If you’re in the beta and run into trouble, you can get detailed instructions and troubleshooting help from the Discord support site (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675588238_Discord-voice-chat-is-coming-to-PlayStation-5.jpg6861200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-03 23:04:072023-02-03 23:04:07Discord voice chat is coming to PlayStation 5
Just about every week brings something new to Destiny 2, whether it’s story beats, new activities, or interesting new combinations of elements that let players devastate each other in the Crucible. Iron Banter is our weekly look at what’s going on in the world of Destiny and a rundown of what’s drawing our attention across the solar system.
I was playing a legendary PsiOp mission on the EDZ with GameSpot’s own Jean-Luc Seipke earlier this week, and I spent a good deal of time just blankly staring at DIM (the third-party Destiny Item Manager) trying to figure out what would give me the easiest time. We were planning on going into the activity without a third guardian, and since the activity isn’t matchmade, it can get pretty dicey. That being said, it’s not that I had difficulty deciding what I wanted in my overall loadout, but the Power weapon slot was bothering me. Legendary seasonal activities aren’t necessarily hard, but they can be challenging if you don’t go into them with a somewhat decent kit. Unfortunately, Destiny has suffered at times when it stifles creativity–where the meta basically amounts to, “use this weapon, or you’re stupid.”
In this case, it’s Heavy linear fusion rifles. They have dominated the PvE space for what feels like an eternity now, especially with the introduction of the burst-fire versions such as Stormchaser or Fire and Forget. Countless beefy yellow bar enemies, raid bosses, and other baddies have been on the receiving end of these overpowered weapons. If you were lucky enough to have one with damage-boosting perks, a Veist Stinger Origin trait, Enhanced craftable mods, or an Adept Big Ones perk (hello, Reed’s Regret), it was a no-brainer. You used a linear (and Arbalest) if you were serious, and if you didn’t…well, let’s just say your clanmates probably had the higher DPS numbers.
Ok, I might actually miss you a little bit.
This isn’t a foreign concept to me, and I get the need to min-max your stats and build; some of my friends get the majority of their joy from doing this. The higher the damage numbers, the happier they are, which is fine. For me, though, that’s not where the fun lies. Instead, the best eras in Destiny are when you have more weapons in the sandbox being viable. When you can bring a machine gun or a grenade launcher to the fight and still be very effective, you’re deciding your loadout not on what gives you the higher number but on what feels more fun.
On Wednesday, Bungie dropped a sandbox tuning preview for Season 20, and it had me grinning from ear to ear because we are moving towards exactly that. The main takeaway is that Linears are getting a significant 15% damage decrease against all Champions, minibosses, and bosses. Yeah. Woof. This does not affect Sleeper Simulant or Queenbreakers, and I’m going to jump in front of this bus now and plead, please do not just resort to Sleeper and try something different.
Honestly, the Legendary linear changes are the biggest thing to note, but that’s not to say there weren’t other compelling changes made to Power weapons. Machine guns and Heavy grenade launchers were also buffed, with machine guns getting a blanket 10% increase to base damage. Meanwhile, grenade launchers have been fairly lackluster since the bonkers season in which Anarchy reigned supreme thanks to a busted seasonal artifact. In Season 20 they’re being buffed to be more viable (except for the Exotic Parasite, which is already quite powerful). Improved projectile collision (you’ll miss less), a larger blast radius by about a meter, and damage buffs of 40% to minions and 20% to Champions, minibosses, bosses, and vehicles all are tantalizing reasons to use these weapons a bit more day to day.
But if we’re talking pure DPS on a stationary boss, then yeah, even with the buffs, you’ll probably be ill-advised to go waltzing in with a grenade launcher. And of course, immediately after the sandbox changes were revealed, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and everything in between concluded that we’re probably going back to an Izanagi-dominated DPS meta. Other folks still feel Arbalest will be a beast, but I’m gonna dig my heels in a little bit. We’re in a rare moment in the Destiny content cycle where there’s an opportunity for discovery whenever the sandbox undergoes certain changes. Whether we’re able to actually make interesting builds that defy the looming Izanagi meta is up for debate. Truth is, no amount of creativity can stand against the allure of maximizing damage, especially with the new Lightfall raid just around the corner.
Watch–as soon as the changes go live, we’re gonna get the community doing what they do best: push the damage barrier to its limit. But personally? I hope the next video I click on Twitter isn’t just a static Izanagi reload but something a bit more creative and outside the box. The thrill of buildcrafting is finding something that works that isn’t just a copy/paste of every streamer or YouTuber out there, at least for me, and I strongly encourage you to experiment as much as possible.
The sandbox changes come at a great time because we also got to see a sliver of the incoming Lightfall Exotic weapons and armor, and they really do look exciting as hell. Most of the armor shown is synergistic with Strand, the new subclass exclusive to Lightfall. Titan’s Abeyant Leap and Warlock’s Swarmers were more ability based with Strand, but the Hunter’s Cyrtarachne’s Facade has some great PvP precision weapon benefits. Once a hunter grapples using Strand, they’re given extra body armor, increasing their flinch resistance, so you’ll want to get your snipers ready for that.
The standout Exotic weapon reveal for me, though, especially in light of the sandbox changes, is Deterministic Chaos. The Heavy Void machine gun ties itself deep into Void 3.0’s best perks: weaken and volatile. Just hold the trigger, and every fourth bullet turns into a heavy projectile that weakens targets on impact, letting them take crit damage. On top of that, every fourth heavy projectile (so every 16th round) will make targets volatile on impact. That…sounds amazing. Of course, if it takes eons to get to that 16th round, it renders my excitement moot. However, all I can think about are boss encounters that require sustained damage and the fact that you now have a Void 3.0-friendly weapon that weakens targets without you needing to use up a subclass fragment, and maybe…maybe we won’t need to bring a Divinity to every boss fight?
This small sampling of new Exotics serves as a gentle reminder Destiny has created a kingdom of making our guardians powerful through a varied arsenal and imagination. The sandbox changes have been consistent in one thing: tipping the balance in letting different weapons a chance in the spotlight. The changes Bungie listed this time feel no different, and personally, I’m thrilled that the biggest losers of the bunch are the legendary linears. Death to them all! They had their time, they dominated easily, and over half a year of a linear fusion rifle meta was enough for me to have my fill. Seeing the new Exotics, and scouring my vault to brush the dust off some different ol’ reliable weapons for once is something I’m going to celebrate.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
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The Antonov An-225 “Mriya,” built in 1985, was the world’s biggest plane before it was destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Antonov was a Soviet company, you see, but it’s based in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and when Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, Antonov went with it.
After being mothballed for several years, Mriya was brought back into service in 2001, and flew massive transport missions around the world, carrying cargoes that no other plane could manage. Its final mission took place in February 2022, when it carried nearly 90 tons of Covid-19 test kits from China to Denmark.
On February 24, Russia launched its attack on Ukraine; the Antonov Airport in Hostomel was one of the early targets of Russian forces, and while Ukrainian forces were able to recapture the airport quickly, the Mriya—the only one of its kind—had already been destroyed.
It was a big loss for aircraft enthusiasts around the world. This wasn’t just a big plane, it was the big plane. The biggest of them all. An absolute unit, as my UK friends would say. If this was an American plane, it’d be described in football fields. It needed two solid miles of runway to get off the ground.
Pictures really can’t do it justice, but just look at this goddamn thing:
(Image credit: Anadolu Agency (Getty Images))
It should be physically impossible for a behemoth like this to move, much less fly, and yet fly it did.
So it’s happy news that the big bird will soon be coming back—digitally—in Microsoft Flight Simulator. The An-225 has previously been flyable in Flight Sim through third-party mods, but this version will arise from an official licensing deal between Microsoft, Antonov, and sim developer IniBuilds (opens in new tab). An-225 captain Dmytro Antonov (opens in new tab) is also involved in the creation of the plane, to ensure maximum possible accuracy.
“We said a year ago that it was very upsetting when the plane was destroyed,” Microsoft Flight Simulator chief Jorg Neumann said during a developer stream reveal. “I remember saying, we’re going to remake this in the digital space. But we need help, right? We didn’t have much insight, there was no reference, you couldn’t go scan it, those types of things. So in all of our efforts to work through everything with Antonov, they’ve been really, really helpful.”
Antonov confirmed the Flight Simulator deal on Twitter:
The An-225 Mriya—”Dream” in English—will launch in Microsoft Flight Simulator on February 27, the one-year anniversary of the plane’s destruction. IniBuilds said the plane will cost $20, with all proceeds going to Antonov/Ukraine. I’ve reached out to Microsoft for more clarity on that, and will update if I receive a reply.
The real Mriya is coming back, too. Antonov announced plans to rebuild the An-225 (opens in new tab) in November 2022.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675591885_The-worlds-biggest-plane-destroyed-in-Ukraine-will-fly-again.jpg6741200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-03 22:05:492023-02-03 22:05:49The world’s biggest plane, destroyed in Ukraine, will fly again in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Fortune’s Run (opens in new tab) is shaping up to be something special: a retro FPS blending immersive sim depth with pure boomer shooter speed, some of the best swordplay I’ve seen in a game, and a gloriously grungy ’90s sci-fi setting. But those aren’t the only lost arts Team Fortune is reviving: the two-person team just unveiled an absolutely sick new website (opens in new tab).
I know what you’re thinking: “Website? How cool could it be? Besides grandpa, everyone advertises their games in portrait mode on TikTok dueted with ASMR footage of someone slicing up a bar of soap (opens in new tab).” It may not represent today’s best marketing practices, but I love the way this page harkens back to an era of absurdly wordy magazine ads, like this original Half-Life spread (opens in new tab) that appeared in PC Gamer in the ’90s.
Fortune’s Run’s site presents an interactable 3D magazine with a backdrop of the game’s demo level, Club V’heni. You can click or use a phone’s touchscreen to flip the pages, with your perspective of the mag adjusting with mouse movement or—and this is particularly dope—your phone’s gyroscope. Inside are classic gaming mag-style bullet point descriptions of Fortune’s Run, a wall of gameplay .gifs arranged like a print panel of screenshots, and on the back you’ll find a riff on the infamous John Romero Daikatana ad. No sir, I believe I will not “suck it down.”
Remember when websites were fun, and all looked different from one another? When the internet was a vast, exciting place with all sorts of nooks and crannies to get lost in? Fortune’s Run’s new site also brings back memories of the Halo 3 “Believe (opens in new tab)” ad campaign, a series of shorts and promos centering on a fictional museum of the Human-Covenant War, decades after the events of the games.
I remember begging my dad to install a special version of Microsoft’s Silverlight media player so we could click through the Believe website’s explorable diorama (opens in new tab) of a human-Covenant battle. Now that was an ad campaign, dopey schlock and all.
I’m excited about Fortune’s Run—you should check out its demo and wishlist on Steam (opens in new tab) if you haven’t—and this site really gels with that experience. Like the game itself, the site’s a throwback, but a creative, surprising one, reshaping your memories and nostalgia into something that feels entirely new. You can also check out my write-up of Fortune’s Run’s free demo level (opens in new tab), Trouble at Club V’heni, from last year’s Realms Deep digital event.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675595570_This-upcoming-FPS-has-a-website-thats-a-sick-throwback.jpg6941200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-03 21:14:532023-02-03 21:14:53This upcoming FPS has a website that’s a sick throwback to ’90s game ads
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything this week, the developers of Wild Hearts stated that they already have plans for post-launch updates, and they’ll all be free.
“All post launch contents will be free, including new Kemono and more! We don’t have any plans to feature MTX,” they answered in one of the AMA’s most-asked questions.
“Kemono” are the jumbo-sized monsters of Wild Hearts, which you’ll be hunting and trapping in an action game that obviously owes a lot to Capcom’s Monster Hunter. The monetization also seems to be following Capcom’s lead: with the recent Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, Capcom added free monsters and quests for many months, without ever charging for specific battles. If anything, though, Wild Hearts sounds more generous: there are more than 200 bits of cosmetic DLC for Monster Hunter Rise, while Wild Hearts’ devs, Koei Tecmo, say they have no plans to offer microtransactions. Then again, it’s a lot easier to sell little bits of DLC in a series that already has millions of players and is known for being ludicrously replayable.
“No plans” doesn’t mean future DLC couldn’t happen, of course, and I think it’s likely that we see a paid expansion for Wild Hearts if it’s a hit, like last year’s Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.
Here are a few other details from the Wild Hearts AMA:
The Steam Deck will not be supported at launch (though it’s ambiguous of this simply means it won’t be Verified, or won’t work at all)
There will be more than 20 monsters at launch, with more planned for post-release
You can play solo, offline, and pause mid-hunt
Difficulty scales dynamically with number of players (so if someone joins or leaves mid-battle, the difficulty will change)
Multiplayer is peer-to-peer and isn’t region locked
Monsters can fight each other, though it’s “a rare occurrence”
As in Monster Hunter, monsters have breakable body parts
There are eight weapon types
There are two difficulty tiers of monsters past the end of the campaign: “Volatile Kemono” and another one the devs are keeping secret
No capturing monsters
Elemental statuses like fire, ice and poison (I guess poison is an element?) are part of combat
EA Play and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can play a 10 hour trial beginning February 13
Wild Hearts is out on February 17—check back before launch for our review.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675459193_EAs-Monster-Hunter-like-has-no-plans-for-microtransactions-all-post-launch.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-03 20:59:212023-02-04 17:31:22EA’s Monster Hunter-like has no plans for microtransactions, all post-launch content will be free
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