Xenoblade Chronicles has emerged as a somewhat surprisingly successful franchise for Nintendo. The series is a spiritual successor to a spiritual successor (though could also be considered a direct successor depending on how you interpret certain things, but let’s not get into all that). The first game in the series is looking to get a pretty hefty makeover this year with Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. We haven’t gotten word on when it’ll hit shelves officially, but we’re getting signs it could be soon, including ratings.

The rating for the game popped up in South Korea, which you can see here. While ratings don’t necessarily correlate to release dates or time frames, there’s also been some retailer leaks that suggest the game could be coming as early as May. Ratings appearing now point to that being more of a possibly.

Either way, the game is slated to come exclusively to Nintendo Switch at some point this year. It will bring improved visuals as well as new content. We’ll keep you updated for whenever the official release date is revealed.

The Xenoblade series is an interesting one. A spiritual successor to Xenogears and Xenosaga, the game almost never left Japan and only did so after overwhelming fan support. Now the series has become a consistent selling one for Nintendo, and they will revisit that first game with the Definitive Edition, a mix of a remake and a remaster. While the game was slated to come this year, no date has been set. Rumors are popping up that it could be May, and another retailer listing points that way.

A retailer listing from Danish retailer Cool Shop showed May 29th as the release. Now another website is listing that date, a Swedish retailer by the name of spelbutiken.se (as spotted originally by the folks at DualShockers). While it doesn’t mean a lot, and very well could be them just pigging back off the Cool Shop listing. It also happens to be the same date as The Last of Us Part 2, which would be interesting.

The original title came out for the Nintendo Wii and was then ported to the New Nintendo 3DS. This will mark the first time it will be available on modern hardware. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition will be out sometime this year, perhaps May, for Nintendo Switch.

Though Nintendo’s lineup of Switch releases over the next few months is looking a little scant, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is definitely a game that many are excited about. Announced for the Switch last year, the HD remaster currently doesn’t have an official release date- but a retailer listing might have clued us into the same.

As spotted by GameXplain, Danish retailer Cool Shop has a listing up for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, and the page mentions May 29 as the release date. Of course, there’s no telling yet if this is accurate, so take this with a grain of salt, but it is worth noting that retailers often have access to launch date information for game releases, so this very well may be real. Besides, that looks like a pretty likely release date for the game.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is a remaster of the Wii RPG, and it brings about a major visual overhaul to everything from the environments to the characters’ facial models (the latter especially being something that often gets a lot of flak). In addition, the release also includes content that was originally cut from the game in its initial release.

As game streaming becomes more and more prominent, more games are going to be coming to those services. And today that’s exactly what we got with a variety of new games for Sony’s PlayStation Now, from a special RPG, a metroidvania, and an action game.

The list of games was announced via the official PlayStation blog. First up is Persona 5, the vanilla release of the RPG from Atlus in the classic franchise ahead of the enhanced re-release next year. The indie sensation metroidvania Hollow Knight also joins up to introduce the difficult game to more people. Finally, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor in last year’s Middle Earth: Shadow of War based on the popular Lord of the Rings series is the next game to be added to PS Now.

The games are available on the PlayStation Now service starting here in November and will be available at least until February of next year on the service on select devices that are compatible with PS Now.

A brand new update for last year’s Shadow of War is now available to download on all platforms; this update, among other things, addresses a heap and plethora of bugs and glitches that the newest DLC for the game, Blade of Galadriel, added to the game.

These bugs include one that failed to reward players once they completed the DLC quests, one that stalled progression for players upon completion of the Cirith Ungol defense fort mission, and one where loading up the Etten quest would put players in a loop of endless loading screens. There are also a whole host of minor changes and fixes- you can check out the full range of changes introduced by the patch on the game’s official forums.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War launched last year on PS4, Xbox One, and PC; its DLC, Blade of Galadriel, is available now on those same platforms as well. Now that the bugs have been ironed out, it should be good to check out for fans of the game.

Warner Bros. has released the very first story expansion for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, its follow up to 2014’s Shadow of Mordor that it launched last year, today. The new story expansion is called Blade of Galadriel, and sees you playing as the elf Eltariel- whom you may be familiar with if you have played Shadow of War (which, if you are reading a news story about its expansion, you almost certainly have).

There’s a brand new trailer for the game’s story expansion available now too, and you can check that out below- bear in mind, however, that it may end up spoiling the story of the main game, so I don’t advise that you watch it until you have finished the main story. Which, yes, I know can be a drag, thanks to the true ending being locked behind the whole defense minigame.

Shadow of War is available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

I may not be happy with how the game treats the lore of Tolkien’s world, or even with its inclusion of lootboxes as a single player game, but at the very least, I can laud Warner Bros. and Monolith on doing justice to everyone who bought Middle-earth: Shadow of War with some exceptional post launch support.

Take update 1.07, which is available to download now for free, for example- the update includes all the general fixes, tweaks, and balancing, but it also includes brand new free content in the form of online fight pits. These pits will let you have your Orcs and Uruk fight against other players’ Orcs and Uruk online for rewards.

On some level, I have to imagine that this is actually a way to induce players to spend money on loot boxes, because a PvP element is the easiest way to get someone to want to take shortcuts to make their thing better than others’. But, without knowing the final implementation of this just yet, I will be charitable, and give Warner Bros. and Monolith the benefit of the doubt on this one. For now.

See the full patch notes for the game below:

Free Content Update and Features (Included in the patch)

• Online Fight Pits: The Online Fight Pits allows players to train up their Orc followers by pitting them against Uruks and Ologs from other gamers’ armies around the world. Through this ultimate fight to the death in the arena, players can earn powerful rewards and upgrades that can be used to improve their army and continue the battle for Mordor.

Additional Fixes

• Improved Fight Pit pacing: Shortened fight timer and increased damage dealt.

Balancing

• Starting a Nemesis Mission will now reset the cooldown for summoning beasts and bodyguards.

General

• Fixed an issue where player gear and buffs were affecting Fight Pit participants.
• Fixed issues where players’ Overlords could disappear from the Army screen after losing a fortress.
• Fixed issues where an Orc who cheated death after a Pit Fight loss could fail to re-enter the Army screen.
• Fixed an issue where loading into an Online Vendetta could result in becoming stuck on a black screen.
• Fixed a long load time issue when selecting “Leave Mission” during an Online Vendetta or Online
• Conquest.
• Fixed issues with incorrect Orc traits being shown in the Online Conquests preview menu.
• Fixed an incorrect error message when replacing a daily challenge.
• Fixed a campaign audio issue when accessing the first Shadow of the Past Mission.

Shadow of War is a new open world game in the style of Ubisoft open world games (because that is the style of open worlds that Warner Bros. favours). And, in true Ubisoft fashion, its game world is littered with collectibles for you to hunt down and gather. In this guide, we help you find them all.

There are three separate types of collectibles in the game:

• Shelob’s Memories. These are memories of the infamous giant spider Shelob. Finding them gets you skill points, as well as lore and backstory.
• Gondorian Artifacts. These are lost Gondorian artifacts, which can be found after can be found after completing The Seeing Stone quest in Minis Ithil. You can recover these artifacts for Skill Points and lore. Getting them all unlocks the Prospector Skill upgrade. You will encounter these in the game’s world.
• Ithildin Doors/Poems. These are doors you will come across in the world, which have poems engraved on them, with missing words. Opening these doors lets you have all the loot inside.

ITHILDIN DOORS

Each region of the game has its own door, and you need to complete the poem on each to be able to gain access to the loot stash inside. Below, you will find all the poems in the game, completed. The bolded words are the missing ones you have to put in.

Gorgoroth

They stalk and Lurk, then lash out so furious
Yet our Bulwark is proof against their rage
Our hard-ringed, hand-forged armor Impervious
To predations from the Powers of darkness
No matter how Vicious or how vile
To assail the Bright Lord is to falter and Fail.

Minas Morgul

In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie
We bear our banners aloft, boots like Drums
Our Cadence quick, our countenance dire.
For who in this dark, dream-haunted Land dares
Resist the righteous flame of Wrath
And Doom themselves to despair and death?

Nurnen

Let our foes fortify with Iron and stone
Let them summon scabrous Serpents, feral beasts
It will Avail them nought. Across the ages none
Have an army that wields such weapons, such Woe
Such doom against the dark-benighted Hordes who dare
Claim dominion over a Mordor soon bright.

Cirith Ungol

When the sun Rises, the shadows must retreat
Fleeing in fear from the Fires of dawn
The Night never knew that its end was fleet
As a Bright Lord bears Beacons of flame.
The sun rises, yes — but from the West it Shines
Marching e’er Eastward, e”er eternal, e’er bright.

Seregost

Fair Mordor Slumbers, entangled in night
A vipers’ Nest of sorrow and strife
Poisoned by pernicious betrayal and blight
Trapped in the grasp of gelid corpse-hands
Yet behold! The Bright Lord Comes as a wildfire
Burning only what is Base, that all else may thrive.

SHELOB’S MEMORIES

Getting Shelob’s Memories gets you skill points and backstory for the game. It’s highly recommended that you try getting them all!

Minas Ithil

1. The first memory is in the northern part of the map. You can find it with the Haedir.
2. The next memory is in the colosseum.
3. The third memory is near the southwestern Haedir tower.

Cirith Ungol

1. You can get this one by the eastern tower. The memory is going to be up on a cliff.
2. This one is by the southern tower. If you climb the tower, you can see it glowing by the water. =
3. In the southeast, go to the mine, and find the platforms that overlook it. You will find the memory near the structure’s back wall- but it will be guarded by enemies.

Monolith Productions’ Middle-Earth: Shadow of War has found itself at the center of a rather serious microtransaction controversy. But besides that, there is a very good game to be found in Shadow of War. The game’s fantastic Nemesis system is back and is better than ever. Given that Shadow of War is a current gen exclusive compared to Shadow of War, Monolith have been able to deliver a bigger and denser world than its predecessor.

The game’s engine has also undergone minor changes in the form of lighting tweaks, a better physical based renderer and better facial animations than Shadow of Mordor. It’s by no means a system pusher, though the PC version looks incredibly sharp compared to its console counterparts.

So, let’s get the elephant out of the room. The PC version is the best place to play Shadow of War on. The developer recommends pretty modest PC hardware requirements in the form of AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz or Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz on the CPU front, AMD RX 480, 4 GB or RX580, 4GB or NVIDIA GTX 970 4, GB or GTX1060, 6GB on the GPU side and 12GB of memory. There a ton of graphical options to play with. These include the likes of ambient occlusion, depth of field, tessellation, texture quality, texture filtering along with support for dynamic resolution. Our test build is similar to the one we used in our Forza Motosport 7 analysis. This includes NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti, 16GB of GDDR4 memory and a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU. Suffice to say, this is overkill for Ultra settings at 1080p resolution but we looking to avoid any sort of bottlenecks so this build work perfectly for this test. And as expected, the game runs almost flawlessly and close to 100fps according to the in-game benchmark tester.

But how does Shadow of War run on consoles? To begin with Shadow of War, just like Shadow of Mordor provides two graphical settings for PS4 Pro owners. One that favors resolution and the other one is the quality mode. In resolution mode, we see the game employing a dynamic resolution with pixel counts ranging from 1300 to a full 1440p resolution (although there may be instances where the game renders in higher resolution). However, this doesn’t seem to be a checkerboard solution as we were unable to find any checkerboard artefacts.  We came across a few performance drops here and there with the frame rate dipping below 30fps at times. In quality mode, however, we observed improved visual effects such as higher level of detail, better object geometry, higher quality tessellation and most importantly a stable 30fps. This is obviously accompanied by a drop in resolution. Overall, the PS4 Pro version in resolution mode sits somewhere between high and ultra settings compared to the PC build at 1080p.

On the base PS4 and Xbox One front, we have the usual gap between the two. The PS4 runs at a native 1080p resolution and the Xbox One runs at what looks like dynamic resolution (but we mostly found it to run at around 900p). Performance for the most part is pretty stable and we didn’t witness any frame rate drops in our tests. The PS4 version also benefits from better quality shadows, slightly better texture filtering and motion blur at times. But other than these differences, the core assets remain 1:1 on both the PS4 and Xbox One.

So, there we have it. Shadow of War runs best on PCs should you have the hardware, followed by the PS4 Pro which is then followed by the PS4 and Xbox One. Pretty obvious and straight forward, right? The Xbox One version is a tad disappointing, especially when one compares it directly to other versions. But overall, Shadow of War is a fine performer and one of those games that you need to play if you are a fan of the original.

Fortresses. Ah. These are giant outposts that you storm and take on in the game. But these are really hard to actually capture- your army needs to scale the walls, claim each victory point while fighting off the orcs that try to intercept you, make your way to the Overlord’s room, and defeat them while they have a swarm of backup orcs trying to intercept you, before you can take one for yourself.

You could realistically just try doing this all by yourself- which would be freakishly difficult and unrewarding. Don’t do that. It’s almost impossible. Instead, let’s talk about the smart way to do things.

• Fortresses are gigantic castles and outposts. Each Fortress has a defense level- if this level is higher than your assault level, don’t bother taking it on yet and come back when you are better prepared. If it is equal to or lower than (recommended) your assault level, read on.
• Take out the Warchiefs. These Warhiefs are key Orc military members who stand on the ramparts, and they are extremely strong. Taking them out will make your job infinitely easier. To do this, you need to recruit Captains to your army and have them infiltrate a Warchief’s squad. In the heat of battle, they will betray the Warchief and kill him. There, your job is so much easier now.
• Don’t be afraid of losing Captains. Because you will- in the fighting or via betrayal, you will lose members of your army, that is just how things are. Accept it and move on.
• Don’t fight more than you have to. Once you have claimed a victory point, don’t stay there to fight off orcs- run to the next one. Remember, your aim is to capture all of them- you’ll be doing a lot of fighting anyway, so don’t waste time adding to it.
• Beat the Warlord. Now this will be difficult. The Warlord is a hard boss battle, and no matter what you do, this battle will test you. Be patient, don’t get too greedy, and fight this carefully- because once you defeat the Warlord, this fortress is yours.

Okay, now you have a Fortress. So what do you do next?

• Now you have to defend the fortress. When you claim a fortress, you assign captains as Warchiefs and Warlords, and they will defend it for you. This is great, right? Not right. See, the problem is, these guys don’t level up with you- so chances are that at some point in the future, you are attacked, and you’re straddled with underpowered orcs, unable to take the threat on. This is where keeping your defenses shored up comes in.
• Get siege upgrades for your fortresses. These require you to spend Miriam, but doing so will let you have more Warchiefs on the ramparts- always helpful.
• Replace your army regularly. You can either spend Miriam to buy new followers, spend real money to buy new followers, or recruit new followers and rotate them into the fortress.
• Utilize the Pit Fight Missions. This is important, because it helps level your Orcs up. It also gets you gear and Miriam. Remember, that the Orcs have a level cap equal to yours- and also that this process can and will take a lot of time.
• Keep swapping your Warchiefs and Warlords out. Either with new ones, or by demoting them so that they can be trained via pit missions to get more powerful (before you promote them back again).