Mobile games today are widely diverse and often more ambitious than in the past, not to mention dramatically more polished on average. And gosh, there are just so many of them across iOS and Android. Polygon Essentials is a collection of persistently updated lists of the best of the best games for each platform, from the hardware’s launch to its end of production. Clash RoyalePart MOBA, part collectible card battler and all cartoonish charm, Clash Royale is one of the most gripping competitive g

Hard numbers … but not reallyBungie has published a new page on its website explaining the probabilities and mechanics underlying Bright Engrams. A Bright Engram will contain one loot item, one consumable item — shaders or a transmat effects — and the new Eververse bounty note. Five engrams cost 800 silver, and you can buy 6000 silver for $50. Tess also now has bounties that award Bright Dust, which is a new feature in Forsaken. The Eververse Bounty Notes you get in Bright Engrams now are exchan

Destiny 2: Forsaken was released a little over a week ago, and it’s looking to be a great expansion so far. But for the past ten days, die-hard Destiny players have spent most of their time gearing up for the game’s hardest activity: the raid. Destiny raid streamers will be contending for the honor of the world’s first raid completion, and you can watch them in the special Twitch directory that Bungie has curated. This world’s first race also promises a prize unlike any other, with the first tea

Insomniac’s Spider-Man came out last week, the latest game to feature Marvel’s crime-fighting superhero. Nikolich created a vertical-scrolling game in which Spider-Man swings across buildings, taking out enemies along the way. A vertical game also made sense, because Spider-Man swings across tall buildings.”Spider-Man came out in 1982, and was backed by a television advertising campaign. The Atari video game market meltdown was still more than a year away, and Spider-Man was a commercial success

Fortnite’s next seasonal competition, the Fall Skirmish, begins Sept. 21. But this time around, Fall Skirmish won’t be the only way for Fortnite fans to cash in on their playtime. There will also be Showdown Royale, an in-game tournament that Epic will host in early October. As with the Summer Skirmish, there’s a lot of cash at stake for Fall Skirmish: $10,000,000 over the six-week period. During Fall Skirmish, players will proudly represent themed teams and earn points based on their performanc

Nintendo will launch its for-pay online service for the Nintendo Switch next week, but fans of Fortnite don’t need to worry about another bill; the popular online battle royale game will not require a subscription to the new service. “Beginning September 18, 2018, a Nintendo Switch Online membership is required to participate in co-op and competitive online features for many first- and third-party Nintendo Switch games, including Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, ARMS, and Super Smash Bros. Ultim

Thursday night’s Nintendo Direct gave us a glimpse of New Super Mario Bros. U for Nintendo Switch. Nay, there’s just enough of a difference with Peachette that it appears to be a completely separate identity, more than a simple glamour or mask. Peach’s first appearance was in 1985 in Super Mario Bros. And even though she looked decidedly human-like in Super Mario Bros., a strategy guide published at the time called How to Win at Super Mario Bros. depicted her pre-Bowser kidnapping, where she loo

YouTube’s trust and safety team is removing videos following a Polygon inquiry that belong to a disturbing prank trend centering around men seemingly spiking a woman’s drink with over-the-counter sex stimulants. Many of the videos Polygon came across were also monetized, and amassed hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of views. But it’s not like that, it’s just a popular prank video. There are also videos featuring women buying off-brand, over-the-counter Viagra-like pills, and spiking the

In addition to a hefty dose of self-congratulatory praise, it’s a rare and candid look behind the scenes of perhaps the most controversial Star Wars movie ever. Personally, I think there are great Star Wars movies to be made that don’t need to cost quite so much.”Solo: A Star Wars Story reportedly cost in excess of $250 million, making it the single most expensive Star Wars film ever made. You live and learn.”Kasdan also agrees with us here on the Quality Control podcast that Westworld star Than

Holbrook, tailspinning after one of the least satisfying third-act throwdowns in Predator franchise history doesn’t quite have the pizazz for it. There’s just one burning question left: what was the human-alien hybrid, ripped apart by the Super Predator halfway through the movie, trying to deliver to the Earthlings? The original 1987 movie was a First Blood-adjacent men-on-a-mission movie that subverts the action by running alien interference. Predator duds, plus the stylish-yet-ineffective thro

Frozen Synapse 2, the sequel to the 2011 cult classic turn-based strategy game Frozen Synapse, finally arrived on Steam this week. Mode 7 has been open about the inspiration for Frozen Synapse 2, which comes from the final game in the original X-COM series, 1997’s X-COM: Apocalypse. Frozen Synapse 2 takes that model and cranks it up to 11. It makes me wonder what the original X-COM: Apocalypse could have become if it had been released in a time where continual, post-launch development was the in

Although many fans had been hoping for an R-rated Venom film, Sony’s official page for the upcoming Venom confirms that the movie is rated PG-13. #Venom is officially rated PG-13. Hearing from studio sources the reason is so that Venom and Spider-Man can face off at some point down the line. And there’s always the possibility of unrated and re-edited digital releases if enough harder-edged content is left on the cutting room floor. Venom will be released on Oct. 5, a couple of months before Sony

Player-made rules and regulations regarding Super Smash Bros. I’m going ahead and making one right now, however, other thoughts be damned:Don’t you dare hurt Isabelle. Even if Isabelle wants to take a turn at trying out the no-good stuff that the Animal Crossing Villager’s been dabbling in since Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, she is a saint deep down. Only another Isabelle can harm another Isabelle, because, sometimes, we must hurt ourselves to learn not to hurt others. (And by the way, Su

So let’s take a look at some of the specific elements of Shadow of the Tomb Raider that feel really good. STEALTHIf you enjoyed the previous two games in this series, you’ll likely have a great time with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes use of both outside views and grand indoor arenas to create a sense of wonder. Shadow of the Tomb Raider mainly takes place in the Peruvian jungle, where a menagerie of creatures can be found. RAPPELLINGScaling tricky cliffs, walls and o

Nintendo is finally rolling out cloud saves for the Switch, which will be included in the upcoming Nintendo Switch Online. The Nintendo Switch Online FAQ implied that cloud data would be lost the moment a Nintendo Switch Online account became inactive. Save data stored via the Save Data Cloud backup is available for as long as you have an active Nintendo Switch Online membership. These items are stored locally on the Nintendo Switch system but cannot be accessed without an active Nintendo Switch

With a creative team coming off Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars, Uncharted, and Justice League, the new animated series The Dragon Prince, now streaming on Netflix, was building hype before prospective viewers even knew what they hyping over. If it maintains its level of quality while continuing to chase its ambitious goals, The Dragon Prince could be a worthy successor to the team’s past projects. From there, The Dragon Prince homes in on little stories while building up the world and con

Unlike a lot of its comic book contemporaries, Spider-Man on PS4 wields the double-edged sword of continuity like a surgeon’s scalpel. In some ways, the game fundamentally depends on continuity, but it mostly throws established Spider-Man ideas out the window entirely — and the game tells a better story than a lot of Spider-Man comics because of it. Spider-Man PS4 knows when not to tell a storyTaking a page from Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man doesn’t spend a single moment of its main plot re

Spider-Man doesn’t murder. Spider-Man murdering would be like Bob Ross yelling: terrible and frightening. When you go check on an enemy that’s stuck to nearby scaffolding, you’ll see them wiggling around. Surely that’s murder, right? Because Spider-Man is DEFINITELY NOT murdering anyone.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr’s Journey will be coming to the Nintendo 3DS on Jan. 19, 2019, with a new chapter featuring Bowser Jr.Nintendo gave the DS re-release’s release date during its September Nintendo Direct, though the new version was originally announced in March. The game will feature Bowser Jr’s Journey, which is an untold story of Bowser’s son. Bowser’s Inside Story, developed by AlphaDream and originally released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS handheld, was unique f

Game Freak, the developer of the mainline Pokémon franchise, is working on a new Nintendo Switch game: Town, out sometime in 2019. Town takes place in a town that looks like any ordinary town — a small town, even a peaceful town. You may think this is a run-of-the-mill RPG … except that there are tons of monsters attacking Town’s town. And these are not the kinds of monsters Game Freak is best known for; they’re not pocket-sized. Not much yet, although this is Game Freak’s first Nintendo conso