The Roundup: Destiny 2, Palmer Luckey Resigns, Dark Souls 3 Final DLC, WoW 7.2, Switch Woes, Mad Catz Goes Bankrupt, and April Fool’s


Goodbye, Circle family. This will be my last Roundup because I am quitting: I got an offer to pursue my dream as a guinea pig farmer.
Dan Stemkoski (the StarCraft caster better known as Artosis) and I will be going into business together and taking the guinea pig industry by storm. The truth is, we hate videogames. We just did it for the money. Dealing with the nerds and their toys was just a necessary stepping stone to greatness.

April Fool’s! Haha, I always like to do it all week long so no one can be really sure if I’m joking or not. Of course I’m not going to become a guinea pig farmer.

I much prefer walking lobsters.

And with that, the Roundup!

Michael Andronico reports that Destiny 2 is officially confirmed and what we know so far. Pre-ordering will gain you early access into the Destiny 2 beta launching this summer and the game is offering a variety of editions ranging from the vanilla $60 to the monster $250 Collector’s Edition. And, most relevant to console-less folks like myself, Destiny 2 is coming to PC! Read Mike’s full report here.

Heather Alexandra reviewed The Ringed City, the latest and final DLC for Dark Souls 3. In a series famed for its complex combat and challenging boss fights, The Ringed City is thus far the series’ magnum opus of boss encounters. However, Heather’s review contains spoilers, so beware! Read Heather’s full review here.

Jeff Bakalar and Russ Frushtick discussed Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey leaving Facebook and the U.S. Congress repeal on ISP privacy. Listen to their latest episode of The 404 Show (joined by Vinny Caravella of Giant Bomb) here.

Christopher Byrd says that cool kids play Persona 5, a JRPG series about the Jungian concepts of personas and enantiodromia. Jung believed that individuals project carefully crafted images of themselves to be accepted by society while hiding beliefs and intentions considered too deviant to be practiced openly. Later in life, an individual could either be completely consumed by societal expectations or break through after a painful dialectic between self and other. And of course, because it’s a JRPG, these concepts are explored through lithe, ethereally beautiful high school students and waifu bait. It’s a neat game that successfully gamifies some pretty highbrow concepts. Read Chris’ full review here.

Anthony Agnello tells the long, sad story of how his Nintendo Switch got bricked and he lost 50+ hours of progress in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As a lifetime Nintendo fan (32 years!), Anthony was understandably pissed off. Nintendo is famously known for being conservative, which is a reputation that is notorious or praiseworthy, depending on who you ask. However, not adopting cloud saves (which Anthony points out was a feature that’s been available since 2011 on the PS3) is unacceptable in 2017. And the terrible customer service didn’t help matters. Read Anthony’s full report here.

And now for news outside of the Circle. . .

For Honor players are frustrated about a lot of things about the game, concerns which they feel are being ignored by the dev team, so they’re organizing a worldwide boycott. On April 3, players are planning to keep the game’s servers empty because of problems ranging from matchmaking, latency, microtransactions, and game balance. In response, Ubisoft hosted a dev team Q&A on Twitch to address the community’s concerns. Read more about it here.

Mad Catz is dead, but its legacy of pushing out some of the weirdest controllers I’ve ever seen lives on. These were the budget controllers I was always stuck playing on when I went over to someone’s house, disdainfully referred to as “little brother controllers.” Or maybe affectionately, now. It’s funny how we always remember the dead more fondly than when they were living. Look at some of the truly bizarre designs (including a modular mouse — how did this even get past the concept phase?) here.

Patch 7.2 for World of Warcraft: Legion is out and it’s a monster, literally the biggest patch in the franchise’s entire history. It introduces a new zone, a new raid tier, new questlines, new world quests, new skills, new storyline, and new class-specific mounts (with additional quests to go along with them). Yeah, bro. Check out Polygon’s roundtable with the developers here.

After years of rumors, Blizzard finally confirmed the existence of StarCraft Remastered. The classic RTS has been spruced up with 4K graphics, Blizzard App integration (R.I.P. Battle.net), 1080p cinematics, new audio, and even new comic-book style cutscenes. The much lauded balance and mechanics of StarCraft: Brood War, however, will remain meticulously preserved. StarCraft Remastered will be released free of charge in Summer 2017. Read more about it here.

While I expect April Fool’s to enter full swing on the day of, some developers have already gotten a head start. The really confusing thing is that sometimes, these crazy announcements are real. Everybody thought Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was a joke because the trailer premiered on April 1. But it turned out to be real and by far the greatest game in the Far Cry franchise, yes, THE GREATEST I TELL YOU. See which game announcements so far are fact or fiction here.

 

And that does it for this week’s Roundup! Happy April Fool’s! Be nice to guinea pigs.

 

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