There’s nothing new in the way Assassin’s Creed Origins handles weapons and gear. The basicsThere are three kinds of gear you’ll find as you play Assassin’s Creed Origins — bows, melee weapons and shields. When comparing two weapons of similar level, you’ll notice that slow weapons deal more damage per hit and fast weapons deal less. Use a big, heavy weapon to break shields and open up defenses, then switch to something quicker to finish off your enemies. What to do with your old gearYou’ve got

Like a lot of things in Assassin’s Creed Origins, your abilities and skill tree are a lot more complicated than you might expect. You’ll notice, though, that the branches of Assassin’s Creed Origins interweave and double back on themselves. Each one costs between one and three skill points to unlock — three-point skills tend to be more useful or more powerful. Arrow retriever (one point) means you can automatically grab arrows stuck in your shield. There are also a couple of shield-based abiliti

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for Doomsday Clock.] This week, in Doomsday Clock #2, Rorschach met Batman. To that end, Rorschach and Ozymandias have split up, each of them going to talk to the two smartest people on the planet. In our last issue, we learned that Rorschach isn’t the man who appeared in Watchmen, but he still monologues like him. Probably not what all those fans have been imagining for so many years — but maybe that’s exactly the point.

If you look closely enough at one moment of the latest issue of DC Comics’ Doomsday Clock, you’ll catch a reference to DC’s other hit Alan Moore comic, The Killing Joke. Doomsday Clock #2 is full of Easter eggs for the attentive, well-read fan with an iron-clad memory — as you would expect any crossover between the Watchmen and DC Universe written by DC Entertainment’s chief creative officer to be. But the comic’s Killing Joke reference might be the quietest of the lot, done without a single wor

And most importantly, do you know where sailors hang out? Humans have asked these questions for millennia, and in today’s Video Game Theatre, we ask these questions, too. Our actors have been preparing for the past seven months in order to fully inhabit the characters of Shenmue. But do we ever truly find the sailors? Watch the 2017 season finale of Video Game Theatre to find out.

He’s the child of a Jewish mother and a Texan, anti-Semitic father. Everybody I knew was Jewish on both sides, because even in my parents’ generation, a Jewish person not marrying another Jew was nearly blasphemous. A history of suffering“You have no idea what it’s like to suffer like I do,” B.J.’s father tells his mother. Zofia, his mother, blames Rip, his father, for squandering the family’s business, while Rip is furious because he saw B.J. “All matter of scum and sickly minds … doing everyth

In each episode of Quality Control, a Polygon editor talks to a critic after they review a new game, movie or piece of gear and allows them to add a little bit of extra context and insight. What do they wish they had been able to discuss in more depth in their review? For part two of our special episode, co-host Charlie Hall talks with entertainment editor Susana Polo about her review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This isn’t our first time doing a deep dive on the Star Wars movies:Quality Control

And yet, Street Fighter: The Movie managed to set one of the lowest bars imaginable. On this week’s episode of The History of Fun, Chris Plante shares the incredible true story of the creation of this truly awful movie, from the crazy casting decisions to the copious drug use to various sexcapades. Enjoying The History of Fun? New to The History of Fun? Every Monday, Russ Frushtick, Allegra Frank and Chris Plante explore the hidden backstories behind the things we love to do.

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for Doomsday Clock.] This week, in Doomsday Clock #2, Rorschach met Batman. To that end, Rorschach and Ozymandias have split up, each of them going to talk to the two smartest people on the planet. In our last issue, we learned that Rorschach isn’t the man who appeared in Watchmen, but he still monologues like him. Probably not what all those fans have been imagining for so many years — but maybe that’s exactly the point.

If you look closely enough at one moment of the latest issue of DC Comics’ Doomsday Clock, you’ll catch a reference to DC’s other hit Alan Moore comic, The Killing Joke. Doomsday Clock #2 is full of Easter eggs for the attentive, well-read fan with an iron-clad memory — as you would expect any crossover between the Watchmen and DC Universe written by DC Entertainment’s chief creative officer to be. But the comic’s Killing Joke reference might be the quietest of the lot, done without a single wor

Pokémon Go’s dynamic, real-world weather feature will no longer prevent players from experiencing in-game effects during what the game classifies as “extreme conditions,” as of its latest update. While that may sound like a disregard for safety, it’s a relief for players who found Pokémon Go too sensitive about what was unsafe weather or not. The notification is a good idea in theory; it ostensibly prevents players from trying to catch ice-type Pokémon in severe snowstorms or fire-type Pokémon d

Sony is kicking off 2018 in style as far as PlayStation Plus is concerned, offering a terrific lineup of free games for subscribers that includes Telltale’s Batman adventure game and the latest Deus Ex title. The other PS4 game for January is Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the well-received 2016 sequel to 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. January will also offer a bonus game to Plus subscribers: Starblood Arena, an arena combat title from SIE San Diego Studio and White Moon Studios.

Sony is kicking off 2018 in style as far as PlayStation Plus is concerned, offering a terrific lineup of free games for subscribers that includes Telltale’s Batman adventure game and the latest Deus Ex title. The other PS4 game for January is Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the well-received 2016 sequel to 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. January will also offer a bonus game to Plus subscribers: Starblood Arena, an arena combat title from SIE San Diego Studio and White Moon Studios.

Some of the eldritch horrors designed for Bloodborne didn’t make it into the final game. Thanks to some recent advancements in Bloodborne hacking — and the game’s procedurally-generated Chalice Dungeons — players can now fight previously unseen monsters, including two bosses left on the cutting room floor. Those two bosses are clearly unfinished; the animation and effects aren’t up to snuff with the other bosses in the game, naturally. And walking around the hacked Chalice Dungeons themselves pr

Some of the eldritch horrors designed for Bloodborne didn’t make it into the final game. Thanks to some recent advancements in Bloodborne hacking — and the game’s procedurally-generated Chalice Dungeons — players can now fight previously unseen monsters, including two bosses left on the cutting room floor. Those two bosses are clearly unfinished; the animation and effects aren’t up to snuff with the other bosses in the game, naturally. And walking around the hacked Chalice Dungeons themselves pr

Music of the Spheres, the original soundtrack to Destiny that, despite the collaboration of Paul McCartney, was shelved and never released by Activision, made its way online over the weekend. The soundtrack is currently available on Soundcloud (where it may be downloaded) and YouTube (below). His case mentioned that Activision had replaced the music that he, Salvatori and McCartney had created with another soundtrack that the publisher had commissioned. Destiny’s official original soundtrack, av

Music of the Spheres, the original soundtrack to Destiny that, despite the collaboration of Paul McCartney, was shelved and never released by Activision, made its way online over the weekend. The soundtrack is currently available on Soundcloud (where it may be downloaded) and YouTube (below). His case mentioned that Activision had replaced the music that he, Salvatori and McCartney had created with another soundtrack that the publisher had commissioned. Destiny’s official original soundtrack, av

The latest update to the project’s online multiplayer game, the so-called “persistent universe,” represents the largest addition of new content in several years. The Star Citizen persistent universe (PU) is an online multiplayer game that includes space combat as well as first-person shooting. In this way, Star Citizen will leap-frog its closest competitor, Elite: Dangerous. The Star Citizen project began with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. It’s important to note that this Alpha Patch 3.0.0 is

The latest update to the project’s online multiplayer game, the so-called “persistent universe,” represents the largest addition of new content in several years. The Star Citizen persistent universe (PU) is an online multiplayer game that includes space combat as well as first-person shooting. In this way, Star Citizen will leap-frog its closest competitor, Elite: Dangerous. The Star Citizen project began with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. It’s important to note that this Alpha Patch 3.0.0 is

Nintendo Switch’s hidden copy of Golf, a Nintendo Entertainment system game from 1984, appears to be gone from the console as of its latest firmware update. Members of the Switch’s datamining community found that Nintendo appears to have wiped Golf’s source code from the game, removing what many thought to be a loving tribute to its programmer, former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata. “Switch update 4.0.0 stubs ‘flog’ — all code to launch it removed, and flog executable overwritten with (signed) garbag