The story of NBA 2K19’s MyCareer, the series’ long-running single-player career mode, is about an arrogant athlete who needs to learn some humility. Visual Concepts is aiming to give players more things to do in NBA 2K19, in an effort to reduce the frustrating roadblocks to making progress in MyCareer. (Although this segment of the story is set in Shanghai, NBA 2K19 does not feature the real-world Chinese Basketball Association or any of its teams.) (Yes, that’s a real G League team, and a few o

Henry Cavill is jumping from one piece of beloved genre entertainment to the next, trading in Superman’s cape to play the Witcher’s Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s live-action series. Geralt of Rivia has a long history of appearing in various books and comics, but he’s perhaps best known through CD Projekt Red’s Witcher series. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was considered one of 2015’s best games. Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s The Defenders, Umbrella Academy) will oversee The Wit

Over the weekend, a new trailer for Netflix’s upcoming animated series The Dragon Prince dropped, revealing more details of the overarching plot. We learn that there’s been a long conflict between the Human Kingdoms and Xaida, the land of the moonshadow elves — a conflict that’s not simple enough to resolve with a single peace treaty. But young Prince Ezran reveals to her that the egg is still intact. There’s also glimpses of other characters previously teased by the show’s active Twitter accoun

We’ve launched a new reviews program called Polygon Recommends! You can read more about the project in this letter to our readers. Long story short, we’re getting rid of review scores. The games that we believe all of our readers should watch or play now will receive a Polygon Recommends badge. To help clarify what gets a badge, we’ve decided to retroactively award Polygon Recommends to games we’ve reviewed in 2018 that would have received the badge at the time of publish:Spider-ManDead CellsRoc

What follows is a living list of the Nintendo Switch games we recommend everyone play or watch, in reverse-chronological order. 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. Get it here: Nintendo eShopFortniteThere is no platform under the sun that’s safe from Fortnite’s wrath, but few are a better fit than the Nintendo Switch. Get it here: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop | Ninte

Zen Studios’ Pinball FX3 is the new home for classic pinball tables from Bally and Williams. Previously those pinball tables were part of Farsight Studios’ The Pinball Arcade, which lost the rights to license earlier this year. The first Bally/Williams tables coming to Pinball FX3 are Fish Tales, Junk Yard, Medieval Madness and The Getaway: High Speed 2, all of which will be released sometime in 2018. Those tables are available to play now in public beta form in Pinball FX3 on Steam. Pricing for

Scrapping review scores, while a big change on its surface, is just a small piece of our plan. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials . Our reviews program was built expertly around the formal games review model, scores and all. In the coming months, the Polygon Recommends badge and the Polygon Essentials curation program will expand to cover other facets of our site beyond video games. But for today, we begin the process of havi

Life Is Strange 2 takes us back to the general universe of the series, despite leaving behind the characters of the first game. An upcoming book from publisher Titan Books brings back Chloe, Max and the town of Arcadia Bay to give us time to return to the original game’s world. Life Is Strange — Welcome to Blackwell Academy is something of a “student guide,” according to Titan Books, and focuses on the boarding school where much of the first game takes place. Be mindful that his isn’t going to b

This new in-game Battle Royale event, called High Stakes, will feature a heist theme and introduce a few new additions. High Stakes will also include a brand new game mode much like the popular Thanos event. The Getaway game modeFortnite’s newest game mode is all about safe cracking and high stakes heists. The ChallengesEpic revealed that the High Stakes event would have a few challenges associated with it. Release DateFortnite’s High Stakes event starts Wednesday, Sept. 5.

The Dreaming City, a location we only got a brief look at, is easily the most beautiful space Bungie has ever created. But like the Tangled Shore, the Dreaming City is already in trouble by the time we get there. Instead of giving up on Destiny 2 and reverting wholly to the original game, Bungie has made Forsaken an amalgamation of the two. Forsaken feels like the transformative expansion for Destiny 2 that The Taken King was for Destiny. But Forsaken has the potential to surpass our bout with O

Times have changed, and along with them both my tastes and expectations from modern loot game design. Now, I don’t believe that MMOs need the same pace of their more “pure” loot counterparts. There are even late-game raids, something missing from even the most boss-focused loot games. It’ll need the constant gratification from pure loot games, the set pieces from more traditional MMOs, and strong moment-to-moment gameplay. And with some of the leaps in loot game design, I feel confident that a d

In retrospect, the thought that Adventure Time might have had an actual, definitive ending feels silly. There are slightly higher stakes than normal, but Adventure Time had done a “fate of the world” type plot before. There’s just no way he could carry the weight of the entire show’s history, and “Come Along With Me” doesn’t ask him to. The show without Finn and Jake would definitely be different, but it would still recognizably be Adventure Time. Instead, it’s more helpful to think if Finn and

Cartoons have experienced something of a renaissance over the last decade, which many attribute to one special series: Adventure Time. Adam Muto, executive producer: If [Adventure Time] ended after season five, it would have had a very different ending. Adventure Time has gone to dark places before, but this ending feels like a happy one. Seeing everyone’s lives from their birth to their death like an appendix, I don’t think that’s the story. “Why are cartoon characters simple?” Well, why do ’20

My first experience with the original Windjammers was on a ferry in Scotland. There have been some games that try to play like Windjammers, but Windjammers is unique.”DotEmu always had big ambitions for the Windjammers license. “But we really wanted to do Windjammers 2.”In order to deliver a sequel fans would accept, DotEmu wanted to understand how Windjammers worked under the hood. Kevin Delbrayelle served as lead programmer on the Windjammers port and is reprising that role on the sequel. The

Lizardcube is handling art for Streets of Rage 4, which already pops off the screen (much like Wonder Boy). GuardCrush has built a proprietary engine for beat-em-ups, which has rapidly accelerated Streets of Rage 4’s development. The sound effects in the demo build are placeholders, ripped right from the original Streets of Rage games and GuardCrush’s Streets of Fury. In Streets of Rage 4, players have a chance to earn some of that health back. “It’s a balance.”While it’s only an early look (Dot

But with The Golf Club 2019, the urge simply is not there. The Golf Club 2019 is, like the two games before it, an acquired taste, meaning no offense to those who have acquired it. To set up a shot in The Golf Club 2019 is to be given a point on a map with no idea how to reach it. And The Golf Club 2019 is a game that needs a lot of trial and error. At least out there, the game shows you a shot arc that apparently is such an extravagance out in the real game.

Beyond Blue is an educational game that’s set to deliver a marine biology learning experience. Beyond Blue continues Never Alone’s strong narrative focus, putting players in control of marine biologist Marai, who is investigating the South China Sea. Beyond Blue takes place 15 years in the future, but Zimmerman says real scientific evidence is central to the game. E-Line has made a point to get out of the player’s way, allowing them to enjoy the scenery and watch the animals swim by. You’ll be a

Since it was first announced, Destiny 2: Forsaken’s Gambit mode has been on my radar, but far down on the list of activities I wanted to play. If you’re unfamiliar with Gambit, it’s a PvEvP mode where two teams of four drop into identical arenas and fight enemy combatants. Instead, playing Gambit feels like playing something more complicated, deep and competitive. In fact, in an interview we had with Bungie, current Gambit lead Robbie Stevens compared it to playing League of Legends. “It was lik

Below, find the book’s entry on the city Rubacava from Double Fine’s adventure game Grim Fandango Remastered. An extravagant, cheerful yet forlorn city where heartbroken lovers await their soulmates, and the ancient dead dance wildly through countless nights. Rubacava, not being a theologically detailed location, didn’t always exist, but is far older than anyone remembers. It is in the harbour district though, in the oldest part of town, where the vibrancy of unlife truly explodes. Just as the h

Another World pushed action game design in a cinematic direction that continues to inform the medium more than a quarter-century later. Fast-paced, exploratory, third-person action games with 3D graphics didn’t really exist in 1995. Naturally, only a fighting game would serve as a suitable vessel for Shaq’s grand ambitions. It made for a perfect pairing with meticulous action games in which players worked their way through carefully designed action set pieces. The underground success of Shut Up