Minecraft users will be able to download a new update this evening and with the update comes the inclusion of Final Fantasy XV skins. The Final Fantasy XV skin pack will be available on both the Nintendo Switch and also the Wii U. Here’s what’s coming in the upcoming due later today:
Added Final Fantasy XV Skin Pack
Fixed a crash that would occur when players looked at a Cauldron while holding a Water Bottle obtained by Fishing
For all of you who told Final Fantasy XV to ease off with the crazy property cross-overs around the time Valve dropped the Half-Life Gordon Freeman Noctis skin for the game, Final Fantasy XV has one message for you: “Can't stop, won't stop.” Final Fantasy XV has yet another franchise crossover up its sleeve, and it's one I'm honestly surprised we didn't see earlier: A crossover with Minecraft.
A brand-new skin pack for Minecraft lets you dress up the game's blocky denizens as a host of Final Fantasy XV characters, from the obvious (Final Fantasy XV's Four Beautiful Boy protagonists) to popular NPCs (Cid, Cindy), to some surprise appearances (Kenny Crow?).
“Put that camera away, Prompto. We're monsters.”
Resetera member “AlexFlame116” posted screenshots of the PlayStation 4 iteration of the skin pack, which arrived with Minecraft's 1.68 update. It's is currently only available in select territories, including Australia's PlayStation Store. Microsoft probably gave the pack to Australia first as a way saying “Sorry y'all have to live alongside taipan snakes.” That's a nice gesture. Don't worry: We probably won't have to wait long before the pack comes to North America.
The Australian price for the Final Fantasy XV skin pack is listed as $4.85 AUD, which is roughly $3.99 USD. That's a standard price for a Minecraft skin pack. If you ever aim to acquire a human skin pack, be prepared to pay a much higher price.
Square-Enix has kept Final Fantasy XV fresh in everyone's minds by adding a steady stream of content to the game. We've had time to write up tons of tips, tricks, and guides for Final Fantasy XV, so be sure to check them out.
Among the nominees for the Strong National Museum of Play’s 2018 World Video Game Hall of Fame, one game stands out: All the other games are at least 15 years old–including Asteroids, Ms. Pac-Man, Half-Life, and King’s Quest–but Minecraft exited beta in 2011, making it the sole nominee born in this decade. The game has also earned a nod twice before–and it’s been snubbed twice before–in the Hall of Fame’s four-year history.
Arguably, the snubs happened for good reason. Past winners include classic games like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong, and some of the more modern winners—like Halo: Combat Evolved and World of Warcraft—have had their legacies tested for well over a decade. By contrast, Minecraft is still in active development by Microsoft, and while it’s prompted countless clones in the present day, we can still only guess at its long-term impact.
Then again, the Minecraft-loving masses could finally impose their will this year through a new Player’s Choice ballot. The top three winners will join 27 other ballots cast by industry experts, giving it a greater chance at earning an induction spot–whether it’s deserved or not.
That’s all well and good, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of Ms. Pac-Man, which should have won a spot even before its male-centered counterpart did.
One year ago, Microsoft announced plans to make a business out of Minecraft content, with a Marketplace program that lets creators sell their own maps, mini-games, and aesthetic tweaks. Now, the company tells me it’s paid $7 million to Minecraft creators since the program launched last June. That’s up from $1 million in payouts as of last September, and it’s enough for several creators to have quit their day jobs to make Minecraft content full-time.
The Marketplace isn’t yet a meaningful business for Microsoft, which paid $2.5 billion to acquire Minecraft developer Mojang in 2013, but the company hopes it eventually will be. To that end, Microsoft plans to ramp up its number of creators–only 45 have received invites so far–and give them better tools. In an interview, Minecraft head Helen Chiang said Microsoft is even looking into scripting APIs that would let developers sell the kinds of powerful mods that only exist on the game’s PC Java versions today.
Still, Microsoft will face some hurdles as Marketplace grows. The company must avoid alienating its existing partners and its already-vibrant community of hobbyist modders, while also making sure the store remains safe for children.
Supersized set pieces, sharp one-liners and surprising deaths abound in the Russo brothers’ utterly confident comic-book movie mash-up
Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.
Not infinity perhaps, but a really, really big finity war. Colossal, cataclysmic, delirious, preposterous – and always surreally entertaining in the now well-established Marvel movie tradition. It’s a gigantic showdown between a force of cosmic wickedness and a chaotically assembled super-team of Marvel superheroes made more complicated by Doctor Strange’s tendency to multiclone himself in moments of battle stress.
There are some very unexpected family relationships that we had no idea about – potentially compromising unity in the face of encroaching evil. There are also some very surprising deaths – of which, of course, the less said the better. There are, moreover, some surprising omissions in the cast list. Or are there?
Avengers: Infinity War is a giant battle for which directors Anthony and Joe Russo have given us touches of JRR Tolkien’s Return of the King and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The film delivers the sugar-rush of spectacle and some very amusing one-liners.
Whatever else it does, this Marvel movie shows its brand identity in the adroit management of tone. One moment it’s tragic, the next, it’s cracking wise. It’s absurd and yet persuades you of its overwhelming seriousness. And there are some amazing Saturday-morning-kids-show moments when you feel like cheering.
Earth is being threatened by a massive malign hunk with a huge ridgey chin called Thanos, played by Josh Brolin. If he can gain ownership of all the talismanic infinity stones and place them in the holes in his custom-built gauntlet then he will have the ultimate power to destroy anything he wishes in the universe. And he has a chilling wish for mass slaughter of half the sentient beings in existence, ostensibly so that the other half will have enough food to eat – but really so they will bow down to him as the tyrant lord.
Ranged against him, of course, are the good guys who come together not in a single phalanx but a constellation of improvised groupings, in which the alpha males have a tendency to bicker. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is nettled by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his supercilious air of intellectual superiority – and vice versa. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) shows up and annoys the hell out of them both with his milliennial’s flair for pop culture references.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) finds himself having to do a ride-along with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is intimidated by Thor’s godlike machismo and finds himself trying to do the basso profundo voice.
Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) are tormented by the glowing stone in Vision’s blue head, and they’re agonised by the thought that self-destruction is the only way to keep it out of Thanos’s huge mitts. Their own situation brings them into contact with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) – who prefers his non-super name now, not Captain America, and also the always frowning Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), together with the frankly traumatised Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo).
Scenes and situations whoosh by like a bizarre and bizarrely exciting dream. A sudden trip to Wakanda, with its secret world of remedial hi-tech surgery, seems entirely plausible. T’Challa, or Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) greets the visitors with his habitual Shakespearean bearing and princely calm.
Inevitably, there is a little confusion. Groups of superheroes clash and each thinks the other is on Thanos’s side. “What master do you serve?” shouts one, awkwardly. “You mean – like Jesus?” comes the exasperated reply. No. Thor is the only god around here and even he isn’t guaranteed a result. It’s all in the cosmic balance.
In theory, all these superheroes crammed into one movie should trigger the law of diminishing returns and the Traveling Wilbury effect. And yet somehow in its pure uproariousness, it works. It’s just a supremely watchable film, utterly confident in its self-created malleable mythology. And confident also in the note of apocalyptic darkness.
I know it’s silly. And yet I can’t help looking forward to the next supersized episode of mayhem.
It is tempting to wonder quite how the bigwigs at Disney must have reacted when the ending of Avengers: Infinity War was first revealed to them. “So let me get this straight,” they might have said, visions of billions of dollars in lost merchandise revenue whirling in front of their eyes. “You’re going to kill off half of all the superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the only guy – Doctor Strange – capable of bringing them back?”
In terms of far-out creative decisions, this one is right up there with Luke Skywalker’s declaration in Star Wars: The Last Jedi that he wanted nothing to do with laser sword-wielding space monks. Except that this time, we have to wait a whole year – until the sequel to Infinity War – to see if there’s any way of reversing it.
At least there were clues, hidden in the architecture of the Russo Brothers’ epic narrative, as to how we might get our MCU back. Here’s your chance to give a verdict on the movie’s key talking points, and perhaps offer up your own theories as to how Marvel are going to get out of this one.
The body count
Wow. Spider-Man gone, Star Lord gone, Black Panther gone. Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, Teenage Groot. The list goes on, and that’s just the superheroes who were destroyed with a click of Thanos’ fingers in that astonishing final scene on Wakanda as the mad Titan made good on his promise to destroy half of all life in the galaxy. We also lost Loki and Gamora earlier in the film.
Is Thanos finally a villain worthy of the name? Photograph: LMK
The competing superclans
Would you agree that the Russos did a decent job of uniting the MCU’s myriad tribes? There was something a little off about Chris Hemsworth’s Thor during those early scenes with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but generally the worlds knitted together well. The Wakanda scenes seemed to me to be the most tonally on point, perhaps because Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther had presented it as such a well-rounded vision earlier this year.
Old favourites such as Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner played their part in helping to iron out the kinks between competing super clans. Is Scarlett Johansson still getting $20m (£14.3m) to appear in these movies? If so, you might have thought Marvel would give the criminally underused Black Widow a few more lines.
Thanos
It was in those early scenes on board the ruined Asgardian ship that Gamora’s evil stepdad was established as a fully rounded CGI supervillain rather than the second-rate baddies we’ve seen so many times before in comic-book flicks. There in the shadows Josh Brolin’s intergalactic despot emerged for the first time as a living, breathing character capable of sharing the stage with high-calibre actors. It’s testament to Marvel’s work here that we already want to see more of him in part two.
Doctor Strange’s vision of the future
Surely herein lies our best hope of a reversal of those deaths. Strange reveals to Tony Stark at one point that he has travelled forward in time to scope out millions of possible futures, and that only one of these scenarios sees Thanos defeated. If the sorcerer supreme knows his mystic onions, we have to assume his decision to exchange the Time Stone for Iron Man’s life is based on his belief that Stark will play a vital part in ridding the galaxy of the oversized space meanie. But perhaps you have different theory?
A Strange death
The biggest issue here is that Benedict Cumberbatch’s reality-warping wizard is among those flicked into the void by Thanos. If we are to assume that the Time Stone is the only vehicle by which our favourite superheroes might be brought back from the dead, Strange would appear to be the most likely candidate to pull off the feat. We don’t yet know if Benedict Wong’s Wong made it, or whether he has the powers to wield the stone. Moreover, there’s the small matter of all six infinity stones remaining in Thanos’s possession.
In Infinity War’s only post-credit scene, moments before his death the former SHIELD supremo sends what appears to be a message to Brie Larson’s as-yet-unseen superhero. We know we’re going to meet Carol Danvers in next year’s Captain Marvel origins story. But where has she been, and why didn’t Fury call on her during the events of Age of Ultron?
Marvel Studios supremo Kevin Feige has said that Danvers may be the most powerful superhero yet seen in the MCU. Might she be capable of defeating Thanos and wielding the Time Stone to bring back all those lost heroes? This, of course, would have the effect of sending Captain Marvel back to wherever she came from, as Fury would never have sent that signal. Would we only get the superheroes back who died as Thanos clicked his fingers, or might Gamora and Loki also breathe again?
And that’s not the only mystery that will have to remain veiled in secrecy until part two rolls around. Can anyone out there explain what the Red Skull was doing on the planet of the Soul Stone?
