Gears 5 players who have been sharpening their hive-busting skills since the game launched have a new challenge coming their way that sounds like it’ll be quite the experience. Coming to the game is a new Escape Challenge Hive called “The Hunters,” and it’s full of Sires, an enemy with the potential to throw a wrench in even the best of plans for approaching these hives. Other available hives will change with the release of The Hunters.
The Coalition announced the release of the new Escape challenge in its latest “What’s Up” post where it educated players on what’s coming to the game this week and onwards. The big sell for this week’s Gears 5 content drop is Batista coming to the game – unlocking him is easy – but the new hive will be welcome news for anyone who’s already mastered the innerworkings of the other maps.
Players will have to enter this Escape hive to get a feel for it just like the others, but know that the Sires are waiting for you.
“If Sires scare you, you’ll need a strong stomach for this one,” the post said. “This week’s new Escape Challenge Hive is The Hunters, featuring Sires that will spawn unpredictably and hunt you down from every angle.”
For those who have only stuck to the Versus mode and haven’t dabbled in the campaign or other multiplayer experiences long enough to encounter the Sires, they’re massive pains to go up against if you’re not careful. After a brief battlecry that alerts you to their attack, they pounce towards a player. If they successfully make contact, they apprehend the player and start carrying them off away from the others. You can mash a button to give yourself some time, but if you don’t have a teammate near you to blast them away, they’ll just rip your head right off and that’ll be that. If you’ve ever played Left 4 Dead 2, it’s a lot like playing against a full-grown version of a Jockey.
You’ll encounter those creatures in other maps and game modes as well, but you’ll find plenty of them in The Hunters. This new hive is also part of Gears 5’s planned releases that bring new types of maps and cosmetics each week among other content.
Those interested in Obsidian Entertainment’s new project called The Outer Worlds have caught glimpses of the game through teasers, trailers, and some hands-on impressions ahead of its October release date. Some new gameplay that’s emerged from Tokyo Game Show gives us a more candid look at a user’s experience with the title as they take on enemies, explore branching dialogue options, and more. The new footage appears to show off early parts of the game and consists of nearly 20 minutes of gameplay.
There’s a lot of talking in The Outer Worlds as made evident by the gameplay, but that sort of thing is expected given the RPG world that the game is housed in where players’ actions and choices are remembered. When you’re not chatting it up with your companions and NPCs worth talking to, you can go around shooting at enemies or lopping off limbs and parts of robots with your melee weapons. The subtitles and dialogue options are in Japanese, but the English voiceovers give viewers ideas of what’s going on.
This gameplay capitalizes on the Fallout vibes people have already gotten from the game which makes sense seeing how it’s Obsidian that’s creating The Outer Worlds. Characters, combat, and the environment are all reminiscent of that sort of experience, so if that’s the type of RPG that you’re into, The Outer Worlds seems like it’ll be a welcome part of your collection.
Until the game releases in October, we can expect to see more gameplay like this and trailers like this one here. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the game and are now interested, you can find out more on it below courtesy of the game’s site.
“Lost in transit while on a colonist ship bound for the furthest edge of the galaxy, you awake decades later than you expected only to find yourself in the midst of a deep conspiracy threatening to destroy the Halcyon colony,” a set-up for the game reads. “As you explore the furthest reaches of space and encounter a host of factions all vying for power, who you decide to become will determine the fate of everyone in Halcyon. In the corporate equation for the colony, you are the unplanned variable.”
The Outer Worlds releases for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms on October 25th. A Nintendo Switch version is in development and does not yet have a release date.
Minecraft’s annual celebration of all things blocky and worth building is coming up soon when Minecon Live kicks off on September 28th. During that event, players who are there and those who are watching from home will be able to have their say on a player-driven update that’ll affect the game’s biomes. One biome is being updated, the Minecraft team announced, and it’ll be up to players to decide which one it’ll be.
A post on the Minecraft site set the stage for Minecon Live and introduce players to this year’s vote for the biome updates. The three biomes that’ll be eligible for votes during the Minecraft event are the Swamp, Mountains, and Badlands biomes. Each of them will be updated at some point, but players get to decide which one will be updated first.
It hasn’t been announced yet how players will vote for their preferred biome, but we know from the announcement that you’ll have to tune into the actual event on September 28th at 12 p.m. ET to cast your vote. Minecraft has run votes in the past, sometimes through Twitter, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to follow them there in preparation for the event.
Let’s transform a biome! On Sept 28, vote during MINECON Live and choose between Swamp, Mountains, or Badlands to decide which Minecraft biome we will update next! Learn more about what we have in store, and how you can vote:
Minecraft players also won’t be expected to go into the votes without knowing anything about how the biomes will look once the decision has been made. In the weeks leading up to the event, videos will be shared by the Minecraft team to offer previews of the updated versions of these biomes. New mobs, features, and mechanics were some of what was promised in the video above, and those videos should start rolling out soon to show off the biomes.0COMMENTS
In the past, Minecraft has added more content to the game based on players’ votes. The best example of this is the Minecon event from 2017 which was then called Minecon Earth where players were able to choose what mob would be added to the game next. The community chose something which was then called “Mob B” and is now known as the “Phantom” in Minecraft. The undead mob flies around the night skies and gets spooked by cats. Speaking of cats in Minecraft, another contest held in 2018 added one player’s cat to the game.
Minecraft’s live event will take place on September 28th, so look for the biome videos ahead of that date to prepare for your vote.
The big picture: Part of Microsoft’s success with Minecraft is the fact that Minecraft is going after gamers on multiple fronts including consoles, PC and mobile. There’s even a heavy focus in the education sector. But it hasn’t been all sunshine and unicorns. Last month, for example, Mojang canceled its long-promised Minecraft graphical overhaul because it was too technically demanding.
Microsoft’s decision to purchase Minecraft for $2.5 billion five years ago stunned the tech and gaming communities alike. Many saw the acquisition as little more than a puzzling decision from newly minted CEO Satya Nadella but it quickly became apparent that the Redmond-based company was on to something.
While titles like Fortnite and other battle royale entries have dominated gaming headlines in recent years, Minecraft’s slow and steady approach is certainly winning the race. The game passed Tetris as the best-selling game ever earlier this year and according to studio head Helen Chiang, Minecraft now has over 112 million active players each month.
As Business Insider highlights, that’s a jump of more than 20 million users since Microsoft last supplied player numbers in October 2018. That level of growth is incredibly impressive, especially for a game that’s been available for more than 10 years now.
At the end of the day, people keep coming back to Minecraft and that’s great news for Microsoft. “It may not always be the one that’s in the forefront, because there are a lot of great games that continue to come out, but it’s one that they love to return to,” said Chiang.
It’s been pretty clear to anyone paying attention that Minecraft has been seeing a resurgence lately, but now we actually can quantify that to some degree.
This week, Microsoft has told Business Insider that Minecraft has rocketed to 112 million monthly players, a 20 million increase over the last time they reported those figures in October 2018. This is a game that is now a decade old, and more relevant than ever.
Other than “it’s good and people like it” there are any number of explanations for the recent explosion of Minecraft. There was a new update around the ten year anniversary that added a lot of new content. 100 million subscriber YouTuber PewDiePie is credited with bringing back the game in the “influencer” scene, with his channel practically devoted to nothing but Minecraft the last few months. And then there’s the slow fade of Fortnite as players transition out of that megahit and back into other games, Minecraft among them.
Minecraft’s rise is even more impressive considering that on most platforms, it isn’t actually free, unlike Fortnite. Though some may credit Microsoft putting it in the Xbox Game Pass as a move that has boosted its playercount further.Today In: Innovation
Fortnite seems to know that Minecraft is pulling away players, which is why we have seen the birth of Creative Mode in that game and continued devotion to building it out. But Minecraft remains the original, and should only keep capitalizing on its popularity with future releases like Minecraft Dungeons, which combines the original with Diablo-like dungeons and looting.
All in all, the refrain I keep hearing from Minecraft players is that’s a game people like to return to after a while away, and in this case, I think there’s kind of a snowball effect where so many people returned to it together, it felt like old friend groups could all rejoin the game at once and have as much fun playing now as they may have 3-8 years ago.
Microsoft’s $2.5 billion purchase of Minecraft felt kind of odd at the time, but they now own one of the most played games in the world. I am willing to bet that 112 million monthly players is more than Fortnite has right now, and possibly only is competing with mobile titles at that scale. It’s deeply impressive.
Expect Minecraft to live forever, and to continue to be relevant with upcoming releases like Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Earth, the AR play that will take aim at Pokémon GO next.
