Battleborn Review

Crucible Review - A Prime Disappointment

It's easy to recognize Crucible's many design influences. The Amazon-published third-person multiplayer game features hero-style characters with abilities similar to those found in Overwatch. Its one MOBA-centric game mode should feel familiar to you if you've played Smite or the now-defunct Paragon. And even its light progression system echoes the one found in Gearbox's Battleborn. Crucible attempts to remix a lot of existing ideas and cohesively tie them together into something more successful, but as a result, it fails to create an identity for itself.

Crucible takes place on an alien planet primed for off-world mining, which plays host to three game modes on its single map. Heart of the Hive is as close to a MOBA as Crucible gets, with a focus on PvP and PvE play as two teams fight to secure the hearts of dangerous hives. Alpha Hunters is a spin on battle royale, with teams of two skirmishing in short matches. Lastly, Harvester Command combines traits of team deathmatch and classic point control, rewarding players for kills and the number of objectives controlled on the map. In each mode, you have a choice to play as one of 10 characters, each with a handful of unique abilities and unlockable traits.

Heart of the Hive is the main event, pitting two teams of four against one another on a large map filled with AI enemies as you hunt down periodically spawning hives and attempt to capture three of their underlying hearts. Like in most MOBAs, you kill these enemies for XP, levelling up your character to improve your health, damage, and ability effectiveness. But in Crucible, there's no challenge involved in killing these enemies; it's easy enough to tackle a large group of them alone without any risk, dancing around their slow and predictable attack patterns. It reduces the necessary farming of experience to a mindless annoyance, made even more irritating by the fact that it's predominantly how you'll spend most of your time in this mode.

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Battleborn Is Shutting Down And Will Be Completely Unplayable

Borderlands Dev Teases Game With A "3" In The Title, And Yeah, You Know Where This Is Going

Fallout 76 Is Already Discounted Significantly

Bethesda's latest big game, Fallout 76, launched last week, and it's already seeing a major discount. The game is marked down to just $40 USD/£40/$73 AUD on Xbox Live right now, which is 33 percent off its normal pricing for each region. The deal is good through November 27.

Fallout 76 remains at full price in all regions on the PlayStation Store, while the PC edition sold through Bethesda.net also continues to be sold at the standard price. GameStop will have Fallout 76 for only $40 USD for PS4 and Xbox One on Black Friday, with the Tricentennial edition reduced to $60 USD. A PC edition bundled with a Yeti mic will go for $100. You can find out more about how to save money on Fallout 76 on Black Friday in GameSpot's coverage here.

NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella openly wondered on Twitter if Fallout 76 might win the dubious honor of the quickest time to discount after launch. Games like Mass Effect: Andromeda, Battleborn, and Metal Gear Survive were discounted not long after launch, too.

The discount suggests that Fallout 76 is not performing so well commercially, but that's only speculation at this point. It's also notable that the game is being marked down just ahead of Black Friday. Games released so close to Black Friday typically are not discounted.

Bethesda hasn't made any announcements about Fallout 76's commercial performance. By comparison, back in 2015, Bethesda quickly heralded Fallout 4's massive release by announcing the game shipped 12 million copies and drove $750 million in revenue after just one day.

GameSpot's full Fallout 76 review is coming up soon. For now, you can read editor Edmond Tran's Fallout 76 impressions here, an excerpt for which is available below.

"Fallout 76 attempts to pull off some significantly new ideas for the series, but with few exceptions, they notably diminish many aspects of the game," Tran wrote. "Multiplayer is fun, but it's not an ideal way to enjoy questing, and the shooting mechanics aren't strong enough to make combat-heavy activities enjoyable for long periods. Things feel better as a solo experience, but the lack of in-universe characters makes becoming emotionally invested in the world and your goals difficult."

All The PlayStation Now Games (So Far)

Borderlands 3: What We Want At E3 2018

A new Borderlands game has been expected for some time now. The series is among 2K's most successful franchises, and Borderlands 3 has been teased time and again. We know 2K has a new (but as-of-yet unannounced) game for one of its big franchises in the works, although it was recently delayed--rather than releasing by the end of March 2018, it's not due until sometime between April 2018 and March 2019. That suddenly makes it less likely that E3 2018 is where we get a look at Borderlands 3--or whatever the game ends up being called. Nevertheless, here's what we know about the potential project, as well as what we'd hope to see from an E3 reveal.

What We Know So Far

Borderlands 3 has not yet been announced, but series creator Gearbox has not been shy about suggesting it's in the works. Gearbox's last entry was 2012's Borderlands 2; that was followed by 2K Australia's Pre-Sequel and Telltale's Tales From Borderlands. Back in 2015, Gearbox began openly recruiting for a new Borderlands, with studio head Randy Pitchford calling it "the big one." Publisher 2K soon after clarified that this was being designed "specifically for next-gen consoles," which is what PS4 and Xbox One were still referred to as at the time.

There was little word for the next year, but in 2016, Pitchford reaffirmed, "Obviously, there is going to be another Borderlands." He also added that it wouldn't necessarily be called Borderlands 3. Subsequently, he said whatever it's called, it's unlikely to be released on Nintendo Switch--although it's not impossible the platform sees some kind of Borderlands title one day.

In 2017, the studio showed off some new technology it was working on to demonstrate "what a future game from Gearbox might look like." The tech demo strongly resembled the art style of Borderlands, and a character's face was deliberately obscured, presumably to avoid spoiling something. Pitchford again said, "If you're a customer that's looking forward to a future Borderlands game, we're working on it. We'll get you soon."

2K itself has been generally tight-lipped about the new game, although it has repeatedly said "a highly anticipated new title from one of 2K's biggest franchises" is due out during the current financial year, meaning by the end of March 2019. Pitchford later said something even more on the nose, stating that 90% of Gearbox is "working on the thing I think most of you guys want us to be working on."

What's Confirmed For E3?

At this point, there's no word that the new Borderlands will be unveiled at E3. 2K doesn't traditionally have its own press conference to announce such a project, but it could easily show up during Microsoft or Sony's respective showcases. An E3 reveal for 2K's "highly anticipated new title" made E3 seem like a decent bet for a reveal until it was delayed. Recently, Pitchford and Gearbox have tried to deny the game will be at E3, but that could all be in an attempt to set us up for some surprise--the specific use of the name Borderlands 3 may have been meant to throw us off.

What We Hope To See At E3

It's been a long wait since Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel, so any reveal would hopefully show what's taken Gearbox this many years to come up with. Assuming that classes are still in place, we'd like to see some new ones along with returning favorites, like the Gunzerker and Siren. But most importantly, we're hoping for a large number and wide variety--four just doesn't seem like enough. For a series that offers up so many weapon choices, expanded character customization options would also be welcome.

That's not to say the weapons themselves should stay as-is. Borderlands is known for offering a huge arsenal of weapons, but a more diverse array of weapon types, including the melee weapons Gearbox dabbled with in Battleborn, would be great.

That diversity could also extend to the locations you visit. As noted above, Pitchford talked about technology that "allows the scene to simulate in real time as time of day changes or conceivably we have different physics, if we, for example, were to explore different planets. There might be different physics, and the sun and the moons might be in different positions than we're used to on Pandora." That wasn't a promise of what Borderlands 3 will offer, but that's precisely what we'd hope to see. Don't just settle for different-looking areas of the same planet.

Whatever planet we're on, vehicles could be of much greater use. Those allowing your entire party (not just two people) to ride inside would be a start, but we'd also like for vehicles to serve a real role in combat, rather than just a means of transportation.

And while an E3 reveal might not show us everything, there's one thing we don't want to see: a heavy reliance on meme-centric humor. You can be funny without leaning on that quite so much.

Every Ready Player One Easter Egg And Reference We Could Remember

We get that reference.

Ready Player One spoilers here!

Ready Player One is a blast to watch, and a large part of that is the endless flood of references and Easter eggs with which the movie assaults your every sense. These span movies, TV, books, video games, and music, from the 1970s up through the 1990s--and to the present day, which goes beyond what even the original book referenced.

The movie just hit theaters, so it will be a while before we can get it at home and start poring over every frame. But in the meantime, we sent as many GameSpot staffers as we could spare to the theater and asked them to note down every reference, Easter egg, and in-joke we could spot in Ready Player One.

Here are the results. This won't be comprehensive, but we tried our best. Oh, and for your benefit, we're skipping most of the really obvious ones, like Gundam, The Shining, and the Iron Giant. You're welcome.

When you're done here, don't forget to read our Ready Player One review, find out why it's a great movie, check out our analysis of the ending, and read our interviews with the cast and the creators.