The post Epic Games Summer Sale discounts Maneater, Control, Assassins Creed Odyssey, and more by up to 85% appeared first on Game News.
]]>The full list of game sales can be found here (opens in new tab), but here are some of the highlights from Epic Games’ big Summer Sale.
Maneater (opens in new tab) just came out a couple of months ago, and it’s already on sale for 25% off its usual list price. For a limited time, you can start your adventure as a vicious, nondiscriminating, and eventually bio-electric bull shark for just $30. Our own Rachel Weber lovingly deemed Maneater a “single-minded machine of delightful destruction.”
Better yet, our 2019 Game of the Year (opens in new tab) is currently half off its normal price. Control (opens in new tab) is a profoundly innovative, mind-bending adventure from Remedy, the minds behind Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. And with this year’s Foundation DLC (opens in new tab) adding a substantial amount of new story to the base game, now’s as good a time as ever to check out one of last year’s best titles.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (opens in new tab) is sitting at one of its lowest prices ever at $19.79, a 75% discount from list price. The sprawling, open-ended RPG set in ancient Greece is a culmination of everything that makes the Assassin’s Creed series great, and it’s the perfect time sink to get lost in while you wait for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (opens in new tab). Likewise, Assassin’s Creed Origins is on sale for just $12, an 80% discount.
Other goodies include Borderlands 3 (opens in new tab) for $30 (50% off), Red Dead Redemption 2 (opens in new tab) for $48 (20% off), and Far Cry 5 (opens in new tab) for $9 (85% off).
Looking for something 100% off to play? Here are the best free games (opens in new tab) we could find.
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]]>The post Men arent cannon-fodder: the addition of low-level female enemies in video games is one of the best patterns in gaming appeared first on Game News.
]]>However perverted this might sound, being able to fight off bloodthirsty women as well as men makes me so god damn happy. Whether these nameless, cookie-cutter foes are being used as meatbag distractions during a boss fight or are the kind that roam across an open world and are all too happy to open fire on you, having a mixture of men and women in their ranks is one step closer to equality between the sexes in video games, and helps to get rid of the damaging notion that women aren’t aggressors. Let me explain why.
Mixed-sex cannon-fodder
It might just sound like an aesthetic choice, a small tweak that you don’t really notice when you’re gaming. But having both men and women attack you slowly but surely erodes the idea that men are the default setting for generic enemies: that they’re nameless cannon fodder, disposable and meant to be killed without a second thought. However, great as it is to have major female NPCs, treating men and women the same when it comes to the lowest level of nameless-NPCs is just as important. This is far from a new trend, though: Skyrim (opens in new tab) has mixed-sex guards and bandits, Far Cry 5 (opens in new tab) has cultists and Highwaymen of both genders, the soldiers patrolling Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (opens in new tab)’s forts and cities are both male and female, and other games like Dishonored 2 (opens in new tab), all the Bioshock (opens in new tab) games, and Left 4 Dead (opens in new tab) have the same gender balance. Most recently Borderlands 3 (opens in new tab) joined the party by giving us female psychos (at last).
Whichever way you look at it, it’s good to prove that like men, women can be dicks and join causes that belong to the baddies, as well as leading those hordes of evil ne’er-do-wells. Pretending otherwise is just putting women on a pedestal, implying that we’re without fault and couldn’t possibly contemplate hurting another living being. But even though most games already include lethal ladies, part of what is holding some titles back (and could have occurred to you too) might be that faint and outdated idea that you shouldn’t hit a girl, no matter what. And you shouldn’t, as a rule, but – and I hope this is so obvious that I don’t have to point it out – nor should you hit boys. But there is one big exception: if they seem thirsty for your blood, gender doesn’t really matter when it comes down to making sure your vital organs actually stay inside your body. It’s like that scene in 22 Jump Street, where Schmidt doesn’t want to hit Mercedes (opens in new tab), or Colossus’ initial reluctance to fight Angel Dust (opens in new tab) in Deadpool (opens in new tab).
Time to point out the obvious: if some girl is trying to whack your head in with a baseball bat, it’s alright to fight back. For whatever reason, for some fighting women who are pretty ok with fighting you seems to be one of those old weird chivalry rules that hasn’t quite gone away yet. I sincerely hope that if any of us were faced with Mickey and Lou from Far Cry New Dawn (opens in new tab), Doom (opens in new tab)’s Olivia Pierce, Irene Engel from Wolfenstein 2 (opens in new tab), God of War (opens in new tab)’s Valkyries, or Lady Butterfly from Sekiro (opens in new tab): Shadows Die Twice, we’d be ok with shedding some blood in the name of survival.
Monstrous mobs
This goes far beyond just low-level female and male mobs though, and into the depiction of monsters and the monstrous in video games. Although with some creatures it’s almost impossible to tell their gender due to their androgynous appearance – like Devil May Cry 5 (opens in new tab)’s Hell Atenora or Metro Exodus (opens in new tab)’ humanimals – other games seem to incline more towards having a majority of monsters with masculine physical qualities. Take Outlast (opens in new tab) and Outlast 2 (opens in new tab), for example. Even though the second game had horrific female enemies like Val and Marta, the Heretics that you fought near the end of the game are all men, as evidenced by their almost-naked bodies and, ahem, genitalia. Then Outlast only had male enemies, despite there being a female ward at Mount Massive Asylum.
Helwalkers, Trolls, and Draugr in God of War all have male physical characteristics too (broad shoulders, slim hips), plus in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (opens in new tab) Lynels, as just one example, are all evidently buff lion centaur dudes. Depicting most monsters as having typically male qualities is limiting to say the least. Although they look cool as heck in a kind of horrifying way, monsters can and should have female characteristics too, like God of War’s Revenants or Left 4 Dead 2 (opens in new tab)’s Spitter and Witch special infected. By the way, those two examples also prove that women can be monstrous without using their gender as the reason for their monstrosity, which is unfortunately the category that enemies like Marguerite Baker from Resident Evil 7 (opens in new tab) fall into, with her twisted form seemingly relying on a twisted mockery of pregnancy (opens in new tab) to disgust us.
Read more
The best upcoming new games of 2019 (opens in new tab) (and beyond)
And yeah, I know my entire argument can be simplified into ‘let me kill more women in video games, dammit’, but I’m ok with that. You want to support a tyrant? A cult leader? You can, no matter what’s between your legs! Including women among those low-level mobs undermines the idea that women can’t be aggressors, and helps to combat the sexist idea that women can’t be violent. A notion like that harms both genders, and who knows, this could just be a small step towards men being treated as women’s equals in other bits of real life too. Since we’ve started to talk more about equality between the sexes it’s no coincidence that current trends indicate men are feeling more able to open up about being the victims of violence: reports of sexual offences against men having tripled in the last 10 years (opens in new tab), and reports of men being domestically abused have risen (opens in new tab) also. Having a balanced depiction of generic, evil men and women in video games might seem like a trivial point, but it’s small things like this that end up making it easier for all of us to be treated equally.
If you want to know what’s going on this week, here’s our pick of the week’s best TV, movies, and games (May 6-12) (opens in new tab), or look below to see it in video form!
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]]>The post How to craft in Far Cry 5 appeared first on Game News.
]]>Instead of using animal hides to expand your inventory or herbs to make healing kits, you can only craft a few bomb types and homeopathics in Far Cry 5 using various resources that you pick up from Prepper Stashes and other lootable containers in the world. Here’s a list of everything you can craft in the game, and what each item requires to be made.
- Dynamite – 2 Fasteners, 2 Casings, 2 Nitros
- Molotov – 1 Liquor, 1 Fastener
- Remote Explosive – 2 Fasteners, 2 Nitros, 2 Blasting Caps
- The Furious (increase melee damage) – 2 Bliss Oils, 2 Prairie Fire
- The Fast (increase speed) – 2 Bliss Oils, 2 Jimson Weed
- Ultimate Hunter (tags enemies) – 2 Prairie Fire, 2 Mustard, 2 Jimson Weed
- Ultimate Survivor (less damage taken) – 2 Lupine, 4 Prickly Lettuce, 2 Bliss Oil
- Oregano – 1 Oregano
- Liquor – 1 Liquor
All the crafting is done from your weapon wheel, as you scroll to the item you want and hold a button in real time to create one on the go, but you can find all the relevant information in your inventory menu too.
As those last two items on the list show, you can even craft consumable beer and marijuana using Liquor and Oregano if you want, though it’s unclear if there’s any point to crafting these inessential items other than to make your character start hobbling around with inebriated glee. Just don’t consume them while driving round Montana, yeah?
Want to know more about Far Cry 5? We have loads of expert guides available on GamesRadar, including Far Cry 5 tips (opens in new tab) and advice on the best Guns for Hire (opens in new tab) and how to get resistance points quickly (opens in new tab).
The post How to craft in Far Cry 5 appeared first on Game News.
]]>The post Daily NewsRadar: Killer7 lives on, Far Cry 5 mini-movie, Noctis in a Sims llama suit appeared first on Game News.
]]>Let It Die reincarnates cult classic Killer7
Grasshopper Manufacture is mixing its old Killer7 magic with its free-to-play PS4 game Let It Die. We don’t know much about the collaboration just yet, but we can expect it to happen later this spring (and we’d crawl over broken glass for more Harman Smith action).
Far Cry 5’s live-action trailer deserves an HBO series
Live-action trailers don’t always work, but this latest one for Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 is giving us the True Detective, ‘give me a mini-series’ feels. Now to go back into cryosleep until the actual game is out on March 27.
From the people that brought you Conan Exiles’ wangs…
Funcom is publishing a new game, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, and it’ll hopefully receive less genitalia-focused coverage than Conan. A tactical adventure game, it’s being being made by Hitman and Payday developers and will be released later this year for PC.
Want to dress Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis in a Sims llama suit?
If the answer is yes, seek help. If that fails, you can grab a copy of the Final Fantasy 15 Windows Edition on Origin and get Sims special costumes to use in the game. It’ll be included with all purchases of Final Fantasy 15 on Origin until May 1. It goes both ways, too: you’ll also be able to access “Noctis’ signature Prince’s Fatigues” in Sims 4 soon.
Wreck-it Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet trailer is unrealistically porn free
There’s a new trailer for Disney’s upcoming sequel out, and while we can’t wait to spot more game references and hang out with Vanellope, there’s no denying that this movie’s internet looks way nicer than the real one.
Even more news:
Krypton star Cameron Cuffe on playing Superman’s grandfather
The unlikely rebirth of an MMO shooter could give Destiny a run for its money
Overwatch’s new hero has been canon for years, but her support-tank playstyle is all new
March is gonna be good: PlayStation Plus free games get Bloodborne and Ratchet & Clank
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition squeezes $100 worth of DC Comics fighting into a $60 package
Star Wars Rebels just made time travel canon – how will it affect a galaxy far, far away?
Celebrate 40 years of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the new SFX magazine – on sale now!
“Missing a truly menacing bad guy” – Here’s what critics have to say about Jessica Jones season 2
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The post Daily NewsRadar: Killer7 lives on, Far Cry 5 mini-movie, Noctis in a Sims llama suit appeared first on Game News.
]]>The post Far Cry 5 seems to be tangling with bold, contemporary issues, but I’m not sure how seriously it takes them appeared first on Game News.
]]>But now we know the truth. That rumour? Right location, wrong era. Far Cry 5 (opens in new tab) is set in modern-day Montana, a vast, sweeping, picturesque landscape presenting perfect fuel for Far Cry’s predilection for combining stunning natural beauty with sprawling, explorative freedom. And it is indeed beautiful. What I’ve seen of Far Cry 5’s in-game landscapes has been downright tantalising, all shimmering, endless blue skies, crystal rivers, and oceans of rolling farmland sweeping out as far as the eye can see. It’s a glorious, verdant setting, with a tone distinct from any of the series’ previous, traditionally more tropical locales, packing a strange, fresh blend of the extra-familiar and the slightly alien. I’m dying to jump into a buggy and hurtle off through the crop fields for an explore.
But it’s not just in the physical make-up of its setting that Far Cry 5 hits a clash between the everyday and the unusual. While the more familiar, closer-to-home location, transposed into a harsh, murderous wilderness, is undoubtedly a potent and exciting scenario – possibly the most promising the series has seen in a while in terms of a meaningful shake-up, and yes, I’m counting tiger-riding cavemen in that equation – it’s the fiction at play in Far Cry 5’s narrative set-up (or rather the lack of fiction), that presents the real eyebrow-raiser.
Meet Far Cry’s 5 antagonists: a thoroughly modern militia
Far Cry 5’s antagonist faction is not – as related to me at length, in deadly serious, sombre tones by series executive producer Dan Hay – the standard-issue bunch of unhinged, video game terrorists, or the oppressive army of an extravagant, comic-book dictator. They’re very real, very well researched, and they exist in the US in notable numbers, right now, says Hay.. What we’re dealing with in Far Cry 5 is a very large, and very well organised, militia of ultra-libertarian, right-wing survivalists.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, then the blunt distillation, as Hay surmises, is ‘faith, freedom, and firearms’. Going past the basic, top-line clichés, these groups (often also termed ‘Preppers’) value personal freedom above all else, are deeply mistrusting of intervention by the traditional governmental machine, and tend to oppose gun control and welfare systems as a matter of course. Hardline, well-armed individualists, traditionally associated with long-term preparation (hence ‘Preppers’) for what they see as the inevitable fall of current American society.
According to Hay, these are smart, well-organised groups with well-honed bullshit detectors, capable of looking after themselves for a good, long time should civilisation collapse. And in a few cases, perhaps even a tad eager to get started.
In Far Cry 5, you play a cop, alone behind the boundary of militia-controlled territory (which in this case takes in many square miles of countryside, and plenty of towns and settlements), cut off from help from the system, trying to build a resistance, and fighting to survive long enough to call for outside help. A sort of inversion of Far Cry 2’s riff on Heart of Darkness, then, the strange land this time being their homeland under unfamiliar control, and the stranger exploring it undertaking a journey not into its centre, but back out into the light.
Overall, it sounds like a much more sober, grounded Far Cry. A more thoughtful, less cartoonish sequel. One that recognises that moving the series away from the abstraction of made-up foreign climes and onto the home turf of its majority audience is a very big deal, and that it needs to make that move count. That it needs to make it matter, by saying something. All signs initially point that way, as Hay recounts his own history of political paranoia, growing up in the ‘80s under the shadow of the Cold War, with a sense that the bottom could drop out of the accepted world order at any moment.
Then came the more comfortable period, when all of that went away – or, at least, drifted from mainstream consciousness – and things chilled out, and everything became sensible again. But after that came 9/11, and the steady rise of isolationism, and a growing divide in western society, and more vocal mistrust of the mainstream political system. Which led to the current, tumultuous climate, which has apparently given Hay that ‘80s feeling again, where he’s not sure whose hands are on the wheel any more. And so, Far Cry 5. It makes total sense. Of course Ubisoft would bring the series to modern-day America now, during its most ‘interesting’ political period in decades. Of course it’s choosing to explore a real-life group who, in many ways, represent an extreme microcosm of where the country is at right now.
Far Cry 5 – trailer, release date, villainous cult-leaders, and everything you need to know
And while, as I say, my eyebrow is immediately raised, my response is not to the choice itself, but rather the question of how it will be handled. Because of course games have the right to tackle any tricky, socio-political subject matter they like. And contrary to many a knee-jerk reaction, action games can be just as well-equipped to do that as any. Look at last year’s Mafia 3. For all of its structural issues, that game does a hell of a good job relating a brutally affecting – and relentlessly uncompromising – depiction of race in the ‘60s South. It’s well-written, brilliantly performed, and does some very smart things in terms of using its open-world game systems to compound the issues of inequality at play.
And I’m glad that Ubisoft doesn’t initially look to be taking the easy way out. There are obviously a great deal of complex, troubling, and distinctly contemporary issues at play in the subject matter the company has chosen, which demand a smart, thoughtful treatment. Why should games get the cheap luxury of using foreigners as broad-strokes bad guys, while never having to face up to the nuance of home-grown problems? Hell, that frequent propensity to use the quick-fix, generic evil of the ‘other’ is even more reason to knuckle down and face some hard questions when dealing with indigenous, home-turf antagonists. Far Cry 5 sounds to be tackling some bold issues, but the bravery required to tackle them could well, I think, lead to a seriously invigorating step up for the series, and perhaps for AAA action games in general. But to achieve that is going to require bravery, and a fair amount of finesse along the way. I’m slightly uneasy, but hopeful.
Then the gameplay trailer starts. The gameplay trailer starts and I’m greeted with goofy, knockabout, Far Cry silliness as standard, and frankly, one of the most jarring tonal juxtapositions I’ve seen in a long time. Chainguns strapped to cropdusters. Pitchforks thrown merrily in generic-looking rednecks’ faces. NPC booze vendors with homemade armouries stashed behind the bar, and cool, Good Boy helper-dogs who’ll dutifully run up and collect guns from dead bodies for you. Far Cry 5 doesn’t look terribly sober at all. It looks like a staggering, hollering drunk of a Far Cry, in fact. A really fun one, don’t get me wrong. One I really want to party with. But I’m left confounded as to the point of any of the big, heavy, well-thought-out, serious stuff mentioned earlier.
Are Ubisoft caught between a desire to be bold and the crushing economics of AAA game development?
Is Far Cry 5’s premise pure opportunism? A simple surface allusion to the world’s biggest controversies in order to build a hot-potato narrative around the latest entry in a series whose level of hype has – let’s face it – been cooling off slightly for its last two sequels? I really hope not. That would be a tad distasteful, and potentially dangerous too, and would rather fly in the face of the nuanced, open discussion Hay frames the presentation with. So perhaps we’re just looking at a standard-issue disconnect between narrative and gameplay. Not every game manages to have its action make sense in terms of its story, after all, and it’s particularly tricky to change tone when you have the baggage of several games’ worth of well-liked systems to deal with. Just look at Grand Theft Auto 4’s messy combination of aspiring redemption tale and endless, unquestioning spree-killing.
Listening to Hay’s later conversation with fellow GR+ writer Lucas, I’m still hopeful that Far Cry 5 will stare headlong into the face of its antagonists, but I’m not entirely sure it will ask too many of the big questions while doing so. Hay describes a game that will open by establishing the nature of its overarching threat, and the powerful, charismatic figures in play, before setting the player loose to explore and interact with its world in any way they want. He describes a great care for authenticity of location and characterisation, but also states that Far Cry 5 is ultimately entertainment, and will twist things to its own ends. And I can’t help noticing how often Ubisoft’s official press materials use the word “cult” instead of “militia”.
And perhaps most tellingly, when asked about the hulking thematic elephant of race (racism certainly isn’t inherent to these groups, but there is a pro-Christian tendency, and sometimes notable sympathy from neo-Nazi movements), and how it will play into Far Cry 5’s narrative drive, he explains that this time – for the first time – Far Cry will provide character creation tools, allowing the player to customise several variables, including skin-tone.
While an increased sense of character ownership is always welcome in games that encourage the player to play their own way, I can’t help pondering that by putting the protagonist’s ethnic identity in the hands of the player, Ubisoft might be taking the soft option, letting the player engage or side-step such matters by their own choice, and thereby allowing itself the same side-step. Certainly, if the lead character’s background is malleable, that seems to preclude the possibility of a strongly focused narrative with specific perspective, leaving such explorations solely within the player’s individual interpretive canon.
Compare the budget, scale, and team size of a Far Cry game to something like Jordan Peele’s brilliant, racially and politically driven horror-cum-thriller-cum-satire Get Out
Of course it’s still, on the whole, harder for AAA games to make such statements. Compare the budget, scale, and team size of a Far Cry game to something like Jordan Peele’s brilliant, racially and politically driven horror-cum-thriller-cum-satire Get Out. In relative terms, movies are cheaper to make and don’t need to reach such a wide audience to break even, whereas games are often beholden to their costs, and might be less inclined to risk alienating a large section of the audience by making a bold statement.
A movie can be made quicker, leaner, and cheaper, and still feel like a polished, accomplished, complete prestige piece, where a big game has more difficult budgetary and sales concerns – as well as the issue of potential conceptual dilution by way of Ubisoft’s thunderous, international staff counts – before we even get near the possibility of nervy execs reluctant to rock the boat. But at the same time, ‘hard’ is not ‘impossible’, and perception is always the toughest part of any challenge. These things rapidly get easier when people start actually doing them. That’s how any medium progresses. Push a boundary, and it will eventually move. Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series has juxtaposed bold societal messages with slapstick comedy and OTT action for decades – juggling accessible gameplay, costs and market demands – even if his ‘success’ led (indirectly or otherwise) to the search for a new employer.
Will Far Cry 5 be a good game in its own right? So far it looks like it has every chance of being. But I can’t help hoping it’s more than that. It has no obligation to be, of course, but there’s the potential to create something beyond a fun, sandbox shooter here. With its choice of subject matter, Ubisoft has opened the door to potentially richer, more thoughtful territory – territory with a path already paved by one or two other recent, big-name games. For now, I’m just going to have to cross my fingers that it has the courage to walk that path all the way to the end.
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]]>The post Say hello to Far Cry 5s Pastor Jerome, Nick and Mary appeared first on Game News.
]]>This new game is set in Montana and features a cult, known as Eden’s Gate, as the bad guys. With a fully customisable player character this time it leaves the job of story telling and personality to the people you meet in the game. Currently that’s Pastor Jerome, Mary and Nick. You’ll be able to work for them, get help and supplies, and fight along side them.
Let’s say hi:
Paster Jerome
Jerome is a priest that’s lost his church to the Eden’s Gate, after its promises lured his congregation away. As you can see, he’s taken it… well, grabbing a bulletproof vest, stuffing a gun in his bible, and taking the word of the Lord to the cult.
Mary
Mary’s a local bar owner that, if the newspaper that appears here is true, lost her father to the cult, and nearly her bar. Rather than bow down, however, she’s fighting for her business and seems to be a dab hand with molotov cocktails.
Nick
Meet the plane guy. Nick is a local pilot with a baby on the way, and he’s fighting back against the cult for his child’s future. And while his father flew for the army, but he’s flying for you. That’s his sea plane you can see in the main trailer, and he’s the one strapping mini guns on it. Not only will you be able to get planes to fly from him, you can also call him in for air support.
If you want more then check out the new Far Cry 5 trailer (with a breakdown if you want more info) and a really in-depth look at what we’ve seen of the game.
The post Say hello to Far Cry 5s Pastor Jerome, Nick and Mary appeared first on Game News.
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