A new Minecraft game has made its world premiere at the Xbox Summer Games Fest — one where you'll be able to build structures and command your allies to fight enemies. Xbox Games Studios has showcased a short clip of Minecraft Legends at the event and has also announced that the new action-strategy game is coming sometime in 2023. It was developed in partnership with Blackbird Interactive and will feature an online campaign co-op and a competitive multiplayer mode. Dennis Ries, the game's executive producer, said the studio will announce more information about them later this year.
In Minecraft Legends, you'll need to protect the Overworld, with its rich nature and resources, from an invading army of piglins. You'll have to forge alliances with mobs and lead them into strategic battles against the invading forces. Ries said the "game will have a very exciting campaign that will introduce many surprises for both new and seasoned Minecraft player alike." The studio has only shared a few details about the upcoming game for now, though, and has promised to reveal more about it soon. You can also follow the official Minecraft LegendsTwitter account to keep up with the latest news about the game.
The new Forza Motorsport is due to hit Xbox consoles and PC in spring 2023, and it'll hit Game Pass on day one. This'll be five years after the release of Forza Motorsport 7, the latest game in the series. The new entry isn't called 8 — just Forza Motorsport, thank you very much.
Xbox studio Turn 10 showed off the new title during the big Xbox and Bethesda games showcase, highlighting its many technical improvements and car-reflection effects.
There's also a gameplay video showing off a track at Maple Valley, a classic tree-lined track from the original Motorsport in 2005 that's been reimagined for the new game. Other returning tracks include Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and Laguna Seca Raceway. South Africa's Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit is making its Forza debut in the the new Motorsport.
Forza Motorsport has a dynamic time of day system for every track, alongside its weather system.
"Changes in time of day alter ambient temperatures, which, in turn, impacts the track surface temperatures," creative director Chris Esaki said on Xbox Wire. "These track temperature changes will affect the grip of your car, as does rubbering in and weather."
Activision Blizzard isn't owned by Microsoft just yet, but the publisher still had a presence at Sunday's Xbox and Bethesda showcase. There was a trailer for Overwatch 2, along with some major news. The game will be free-to-play and early access will begin on October 4th (the Overwatch blog calls this the game's launch). There will be at least one more beta before then, with details to be announced at a reveal event on Thursday.
The clip showed a glimpse of a new hero that's been part of the game's lore for years, the Junker Queen. It seems likely that the character will be playable as part of the next beta. They have a shotgun and a Reinhardt-esque melee weapon, and it appears that one of their abilities involves rampaging forward. With the sequel already having one new damage character in Sojourn, it seems likely that Junker Queen is a tank character.
The trailer also included a quick look at a new Zenyatta ability, which allows the omnic to knock back an enemy with a melee attack. Naturally, it invokes the movie 300, since you can kick an opponent into the Ilios well. In addition, there was a glimpse of a mysterious fox that was leading a team into a fight.
Given that Blizzard will move all current Overwatch players to Overwatch 2, the original game will be going free-to-play as well. Those who own the game before June 23rd will receive a founder's pack, with a special icon, two skins (General Doomfist and Jester Sombra) and more goodies. You'll need to log in by December 5th to receive the pack.
It's unclear whether the co-op player-vs-environment side of the sequel will be free too, or how Blizzard plans to monetize everything. Overwatch 2 will herald a shift to a seasonal content format, which suggests there will be a battle pass of some kind. That means there should finally be content updates on a regular cadence.
Should the Microsoft deal go through, Overwatch 2 will more than likely be included in Game Pass. It's worth noting that only the player-vs-player (PvP) side will be available at launch on October 4th. The co-op missions will arrive later.
Three years after "saving" the universe, Squanch Games announced during Sunday's XBox Summer Game Fest that its next mind-bending adventure, High On Life, is coming soon to the XBox, PC and Cloud.
Squanch Games
Ink High On Life, players must dismantle an intergalactic slave trade which exports humans to parts unknown as drugs for aliens. Playing as a humanoid bounty hunter, you'll partner with a sentient firearm (a "gatlien") who will frag your enemies in exchange for freeing (and presumably then firing) his kin. Those guns will both blow your head off and talk your ear off with their running commentaries, not unlike Trover from the last game.
High On Life is slated for release on Xbox, PC and Cloud in October, 2022.
If you're running out of things to fly in Flight Simulator, Microsoft has got you covered. You'll be able to fly Halo's Pelican ship today, thanks to a free add-on. And on November 22nd, the game will also add support for gliders, helicopters and other unique ship designs. It's surprising to see Flight Simulator give you views above Earth with the Pelican, and it makes us wonder if we'll ever see other high-flying options. (We're crossing our fingers for the Space Shuttle.)
At today's Xbox showcase, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill has revealed that the company is making its titles available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers — with all champions and other bonuses included. Members will be able to play League of Legends on PC with all 160 champions unlocked and get first-day access to future champions. They can also play League of Legends: Wild Rift on mobile with all 80 champions. Plus, similar to LoL on PC, they'll get first-day access to any future champion Riot releases.
Game Pass members who play Valorant will get all 18 agents, as well, and be among the first ones to be able to use future agents as they become available. For the strategy card game Legends of Runeterra, subscribers will get the Foundations Set, or the first cards released for the game, at no cost. Finally, a Game Pass membership will unlock a rotation of Tier One Little Legend avatars for Teamfight Tactics on PC and mobile.
In addition to game specific bonuses, players will release extra experience across select titles. It also sounds like Riot has more in store for Xbox players, because Merrill wrote in the company's announcement that it'll "share more about the partnership and how members can access the Game Pass content" in the coming months.
In addition to the Switch and PC, Hollow Knight: Silksong will be headed to Xbox Game Pass when it launches, Microsoft announced during its showcase event today. And no, we still don't have a release date for Team Cherry's long-anticipated sequel (our last preview was from 2019!). There was one availability crumb, though: Xbox corporate vice president Sarah Bond noted that every game at the showcase would be playable within the next 12 months. That's far from a confirmation, especially for a game with such a lengthy development cycle, but it gives us a bit of hope that we can get hacking and slashing soon.
E3 might not be happening this year, but Summer Game Fest kicked off on Thursday and today is arguably its biggest event: the Xbox and Bethesda games showcase.
The stream starts at 1pm ET, and should feature a bunch of new Xbox exclusives from Microsoft's many, many internal studios. We already got some news on the company's cloud gaming TV app early this week, and today we're hoping to hear more about Starfield and Redfall — two Bethesda games that have been delayed into 2023. It'd be nice to get some more news on Elder Scrolls VI, which was announced almost exactly four years ago.
Away from Bethesda, Microsoft has a bunch of exclusives we're waiting to hear more on. There's the next-generation Forza, the new Fable and that gorgeous looking Hellblade sequel all on the way, and plenty more beyond that. Given it's Xbox, there's a 99-percent chance we'll hear something about Halo as well. The stream is available on Twitch and YouTube, or you can watch it in the embed below.
The Apple TV 4K has never been cheaper on Amazon. The 32GB version of the device is now available for $130, or $49 less than its retail price of $179. The 64GB is at $150, also $50 lower than retail. That's the lowest price we've ever seen for Apple's premium streaming boxes.
Devindra Hardawar gave the 2021 Apple TV 4K a score of 90 in our review, noting its revamped Siri remote with more physical controls as a top selling point. We found its directional pad easier to use for making fine-tuned selections compared to the prior remote's touchpad. You can even use the pad as an iPod-style touch wheel to scrub backwards and forwards in a video. Siri interprets voice commands well if you don't feel like giving your fingers a workout.
While there are many less expensive streaming devices on the market, we think Apple TV 4K is the best premium option around. It has support for Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and spatial audio, and it runs on an A12 Bionic chip (which is also used to power the third-gen iPad Air and iPhone XS). You can use AirPlay to share video, photos and more from your other Apple devices to your TV. There's the option to see a live feed of HomeKit-enabled cameras and to control smart home devices through Apple TV 4K, and, if you have the relevant subscription, an ever-growing library of games available through Apple Arcade.
Of course, the main reason most folks will pick up an Apple TV 4K is so they can watch shows and movies. The device supports a plethora of streaming services, including Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN, Disney+, Sling TV, Hulu and Twitch.
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Despite Russia being the world's third largest oil producer and exporter (at least until its invasion of Ukraine), its people have traditionally relied on the nation's monumental expanses of loggable forests for their cooking fuel needs. Access to an essentially inexhaustible firewood supply has deeply influenced Russian culture, governing how food is prepared, which impacts the form factor the home's oven and hearth takes, which in turn shapes the both home itself and domestic dynamics around it.
In her latest book, The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food, prolific author and prominent food scholar Darra Goldstein turns her gaze onto a resourceful people who have overcome their climate, repeated famines, hunger, and political repression to establish a culture and cuisine of their own. If you are what you eat, Goldstein aptly illustrates what it means to be Russian.
Russia is not a quick-cooking culture. The nature of traditional Russian cuisine was in large part determined by the design of the masonry stoves that had come into use by 1600. These massive structures for both cooking and heating could measure up to two hundred cubic feet, occupying a good quarter of the living space in one-room peasant cottages. They were built of bricks or stone rubble covered with a thick layer of whitewashed clay. (For heating, wealthy families also had so-called Dutch stoves faced with beautiful tiles—even utilitarian objects provided an opportunity to display their prosperity and aesthetic taste.) Unfortunately, far too many peasant cottages fell into the category of “black,” meaning their stoves had no chimneys, and much of the smoke lingered in the air, to detrimental effect. More affluent peasants lived in “white” cottages in which the smoke was vented through a chimney.
Unlike other countries where fuel was scarce, resulting in the adoption of quick cooking methods, Russia boasted extensive forests and thus plentiful firewood. The thick walls of the stove retained heat very well, and many of Russia’s most typical dishes result from this property. When the stove was newly fired and very hot, with embers still glowing at the back of the hearth, cooks placed breads, pies, and even blini in the oven to bake. It took two to three hours to bring a cold oven up to temperature. Experienced cooks inserted a piece of paper to determine when the oven was ready for baking, based on how quickly the paper browned and burned. So central was bread to Russian life that oven temperatures were often described in relation to bread baking: “before bread, after bread, and at full blast” (vol’nyi dukh). As the heat began to diminish, other dishes took their turns: grain porridges that baked to a creamy consistency, followed by soups, stews, and vegetables, which were cooked slowly in bulbous earthenware or cast-iron pots. When the oven temperature had fallen to barely warm, it was just right for culturing dairy products and drying mushrooms and berries. During the winter, the stove was fired once or twice a day, and in summertime, only as needed for baking.
At the rear of the masonry surrounding the traditional Russian stove, high above the floor, is a ledge. This lezhanka (from the verb “to lie”) was the warmest spot in the peasant cottage. There, the elderly or infirm could find comfort, and children could laze like the beloved folk figure Emelia the Fool. Most stoves also provide recesses for storing food, kitchen equipment, and wood, as well as niches for drying mittens and herbs. The oven cavity itself is massive, large enough for uses well beyond cooking. The stove could become a makeshift banya when planks were set up along the hot interior walls of the oven, and this cleansing ritual endured well into the twentieth century. It usually took place on a bread baking day, when the oven was already heated, and was considered especially beneficial when steam from the hot water released the aroma of medicinal herbs. Some Russians took a “bread bath,” believed to have healing powers, by using diluted kvass instead of water to create the steam. In some regions of Russia women crawled into the oven to give birth, since it was the most hygienic place in the cottage. Beyond such practical uses, the stove played a highly symbolic role in Russian life, demarcating the traditional female and male spheres, with the cooking area to the left of the hearth and the icon-dominated “beautiful corner” to its right. And not surprisingly, given its importance in providing sustenance, heat, and health, the stove was believed to hold magical powers beyond the alchemy of transforming dough into bread. Mothers would sometimes place sick infants on bread peels and ritually insert them three times into the oven in hopes of curing them.
The masonry stove prevailed in Russian households both rich and poor until the eighteenth century, when Western-style ranges and the new equipment they required gradually came into use. Many Russian stoves were modified to include stovetop burners in addition to the oven, and in some households a cooktop range superseded the stove entirely. Saucepans and griddles largely replaced the customary earthenware and cast-iron pots perfect for slow cooking in the Russian stove. Cooktops also affected the way ingredients were prepared. In kitchens that could afford meat, large joints for roasting or braising gave way to butchered cuts like steaks, filets, and chops that could be prepared à la minute, often in more elaborate, if less natively Russian, recipes.
The Russian stove released deep, mellow flavors through slow cooking even as its low heat enabled culturing and dehydration, which produce intensified flavors that also characterize Russian cuisine.
