NetEase’s PvPvE sandbox action horror, Once Human, started testing its mobile port back in September, and now we finally have a mobile release window: April 2025. In an end-of-year livestream, NetEase also revealed what new features Meta-Humans can expect when the mobile version drops, including three new scenarios: Code: Purification, Code: Deviation, and Code: Broken. The latter is a 10-day PvP scenario, whilst the first two are PvE. Once Human – Official PVE Gameplay Trailer.Watch on YouTube We’ll also get to experience the all-new Visional Wheel from 16th January, which introduces new wrinkles to gameplay courtesy of new weapons, powers, and rules, as well as making enemies stronger and adversely impacting player sanity. Oh, and there’ll be a holiday event running across Christmas and the new year, too. Once Human is also expected to come to console – complete with cross-platform support – as well. There’s still no date on that, though. Sorry. Interested? Head on over to the official website to pre-register your interest now. Right now, over 26 million Meta-Humans have signed up, unlocking a slew of free gifts including cosmetics, skins, decorative items, and crafting resources. I gave Once Human a modest three out of five stars when I reviewed it for Eurogamer, saying it offers a deeply moreish open world scavenge-em-up, but weak action and generic clutter hold it back. Since launch, however, NetEase has ramped up its premium in-game offerings, including cosmetic loot crates. “Not for one moment did I expect a F2P live service offering to be anything other than an unmitigated slog stuffed with the pitfalls and unforced errors of every other game I started and stopped playing, so wildly over-saturated is this genre. But here I am, late at night again, fashioning myself a Slippery When Wet sign to put beside my water tank.” The developer behind NetEase’s survival free-to-play horror, Once Human, recently said the feedback it’s received about the game’s second season has been “quite demoralising”.
Category: MMORPG
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Pokémon Go Gigantamax Lapras counters, weaknesses and tactics explained
Gigantamax Lapras, the ultimate form of the Transport Pokémon, is here in the world of Pokémon Go.
This is the only Ice-type Gigantamax Pokémon in the franchise, and the third Water-type Gigantamax Pokémon after Blastoise and Inteleon. Like all Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokémon, Gigantamax Lapras can’t be caught in the wild. You must first head to the relevant Power Spot and beat it in a Max Battle.
For the uninitiated, Dynamax Pokémon are like normal Pokémon, but supersized. Gigantamax is a special version of Dynamax where, rather than being comically large, they take on a brand new appearance. In both cases, they’re free to max out in a Max Battle, and revert to their normal form outside of battle.
If you’ve not added these to your collection yet, we strongly recommend reading our Max Battle explainer article first, so you know roughly what to expect.
Below you’ll find Gigantamax Lapras’s counters and weaknesses to help you succeed in Pokémon Go. Once caught, you can use your Gigantamax Lapras in future Max Battles.
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Gigantamax Lapras counters and weaknesses in Pokémon Go
In order to battle a Gigantamax Lapras, you first need to do three things:
- Have 800 Max Particles
- Have IRL friends who play the game
- Find a Power Spot with a Gigantamax Lapras
While the upside to Max Battles not using Raid Passes is that this is obviously a money-saver for the player. The downside is that you need to find people to play with in real life, rather than remoting in. As with previous Gigantamax battles, we strongly recommend travelling to an urban centre for a pre-arranged meet-up. You have little chance of doing this solo or with a small group in a rural area.
Once you have achieved these lofty feats, you can begin the Max Battle and attempt to take down Gigantamax Lapras. Don’t worry if you fail the first time – your Max Particles aren’t taken until you win the battle; as long as you have enough Revives and Potions, you can keep trying until you run out of battery! Below you’ll find the counters and weaknesses for Gigantamax Lapras to help you win the Max Battle:
- Gigantamax Lapras types – Water and Ice-type
- Gigantamax Lapras is weak against – Grass, Electric, Fighting and Rock-type attacks
- Gigantamax Lapras is resistant to – Ice and Water-type attacks
- Gigantamax Lapras top counters – Gigantamax Toxtricity (Spark) and Gigantamax Venusaur (Vine Whip) are your top two attackers, followed by Dynamax Machamp (Counter), Dynamax Toxtricity (Spark), Dynamax Venusaur (Vine Whip), Dynamax Falinks (Counter), Dynamax Dubwool (Counter), Dynamax Rillaboom (Razor Leaf) and Dynamax Greedent (Bullet Seed).
- Number of players to beat Gigantamax Lapras – You’re looking at 10 at the absolute minimum. More would be ideal, up to a maximum of 40. Remember, you will be split into teams of four, so don’t worry if you don’t see everyone in your lobby!
- Tactics – Unlike bog-standard raids, the tactics here are a little more complicated…
- First, be aware that your Fast move governs your D-Max move, so make sure they a Fast move that Gigantamax Lapras is weak against (ideally the one we suggest above).
- Unfortunately, Lapras’s Ice typing provides natural coverage against Grass-type Pokémon. If you’re relying on Gigantamax Venusaur, for example, you’ll want to make the most of Max Guard. As soon as you Gigantamax, spam three Max Guard to protect your Pokémon. When you next Dynamax, you will have a choice: either top those shields up if you need to, hit Gigantamax Lapras with a powerful Max attack.
- If you don’t have Max Guard, make sure you partner with someone who has Max Spirit, and is aware that you will be shields down as it were. A little teamwork goes a long way!
- Rewards for beating Gigantamax Lapras – For taking down a 6* Gigantamax Lapras, you will receive 25,000 Stardust, 25,000 XP, 1 Rare Candy XL, 30 Lapras Candy, 1 Lapras Candy XL and 10 Premier Balls. Don’t forget to crack a Star Piece and a Lucky Egg beforehand if you want to maximise your Max rewards!
The Dual Destiny Season is here! It begins with the Just My Cup of Tea event, which also sees the arrival of Sinistea and the Dual Destiny quest in Pokémon Go! You can now catch Dynamax Pokémon through Max Battles. First, however, you need to visit Power Spots to collect Max Particles and complete the To the Max! quest. Don’t forget to try out Routes, Gift Exchange and Party Play while you’re hunting down rare Pokémon, fighting in the Go Battle League or competing in PokéStop Showcases.
Gigantamax Lapras CP in Pokémon Go
Unlike with Raids, there is no visible CP on a Max Battle boss. Instead, it just has a giant health bar that gets slightly smaller with each hit. It’s also worth noting that because these battles take place in their own special arena, there is no weather boost available.
Below you’ll find the CP levels for Gigantamax Lapras in Pokémon Go:
- CP range for catching Gigantamax Lapras – 1435 to 1509 CP
- CP for perfect Gigantamax Lapras – 1509 CP
Best Lapras moveset in Pokémon Go
Gigantamax Lapras is currently the only Ice-type Max Pokémon in Pokémon, and only the third Water-type Max Pokémon in Pokémon Go. This means that as far as Max Battles go, you’re almost certainly going to want this as an Ice-type attacker.
That said, if you want to use your fancy new Lapras in Go Battle League, you are welcome to do so. Be aware, however, it won’t be in its Gigantamax form! It’s hardly fair for you to show up with a 78’+ (24m+) behemoth to take down the opponent’s Rattata, is it?
Lapras is ok in Go Battle League – it’s not standout, but it will win you some matches. In Great League, its best moves are Ice Shard (Legacy Fast), Surf (Charged) and Skull Bash (Charged). In Ultra and Master League, you swap Skull Bash for Ice Beam (Legacy Charged). These aren’t incredibly movesets by anyone’s standards, but when you have a Pokémon as bulky as this, even an average moveset can go a long way!
Here are all the Fast and Charged moves Gigantamax Lapras can use in Pokémon Go:
Fast Moves:
- Frost Breath (Ice)
- Water Gun (Water)
Charged Moves:
- Blizzard (Ice)
- Hydro Pump (Water)
- Skull Bash (Normal)
- Surf (Water)
Legacy Fast Moves:
- Ice Shard Breath (Ice)
Legacy Charged Moves:
- Ice Beam (Ice)
- Dragon Pulse (Dragon)
Everything we know about Lapras
The Transport Pokémon, Lapras, is iconic. Dating back to the first generation, this delightful Pokémon won many hearts as one of Gym Leader Misty’s Pokémon during Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal. Since then, we have ridden it across bodies of water in more Pokémon games than we can count.
Lapras appears to be based on the Loch Ness monster, with the beta version of the Gen 1 games referring to this Pokémon as Nessie (anyone watching Dan Da Dan at the moment might have realised that this is also the Japanese for the Loch Ness Monster). It’s possible that Nessie was combined with the folk talk of the fisherman Urashima Taro, who rescued and rode a sea turtle. This might explain the shell on Lapras’s back!
Another interesting piece of trivia is that despite its Water/Ice-typing, some Lapras have psychic powers and can use telepathy to speak with humans. It’s one of the very few Pokémon that do this in the anime/manga, with both Santa’s and Sabrina’s Lapras doing so.
Gigantamax Lapras is clearly on a whole other level. While all Pokémon can Dynamax in Sword and Shield, only specific Pokémon can Dynamax, and Lapras is the only Ice-type Pokémon capable of doing so. As if this wasn’t cool enough, they took the opportunity to redesign the Transport Pokémon asking the question ‘ok, but what if Lapras was also a cruise ship?’
If you want to learn more about Lapras and Gigantamax Lapras, you can read their official Pokédex entries below:
- Lapras: ‘Able to understand human speech and very intelligent, it loves to swim in the sea with people on its back. It ferries people across the sea on its back. It may sing an enchanting cry if it is in a good mood.’
- Gigantamax Lapras: ‘Over 5,000 people can ride on its shell at once. And it’s a very comfortable ride, without the slightest shaking or swaying. It surrounds itself with a huge ring of gathered ice particles. It uses the ring to smash any icebergs that might impede its graceful swimming.’
5000 is a fair amount of people – good job, Lapras. At first brush, it doesn’t look like a comfortable ride, but if that’s what the Dex says, we have to believe it!
It’s also good to know that shiny Lapras is in the game, which means that shiny Gigantamax Lapras is in the game too! As you can see below, Shiny Lapras is a lovely shade of purple!
I need to settle an argument, is shiny Lapras purple or pink?
byu/gunsmokey24 inpokemongo
Thanks to Reddit users gunsmokey24 for the handy preview! And in answer to their question, definitely purple.
Good luck defeating Gigantamax Lapras in Pokémon Go!
Path of Exile 2 early access review-in-progress – coming for Diablo 4’s lunch in style
As much as Path of Exile 1 was lauded for its seemingly bottomless character customisation and its ability to keep voracious action role-playing game players fed, mentally, for months on end, there was no denying it could be a pain to get into. Playing it could feel like giving someone made entirely of elbows a hug. You’d get used to it in time – you’d even come to find the feeling comforting – but there’s no question the series could use an update. Path of Exile 1 is over a decade old; it’s time for something new.
That something – Path of Exile 2 – is finally here, at least in early access, and understandably there’s tremendous excitement for it. A decade of success has turned its predecessor from being a nobody to a title contender. But where there’s increased excitement, there’s also increased expectations, and the sequel will be measured by a different yardstick – a Diablo 4 yardstick, perhaps. Say what you will about Diablo’s merits, but its production values and new player onboarding are second to none. Will Path of Exile 2 compete?
Spoiler, yes, but a quick caveat: this is an early access release so Path of Exile 2 isn’t finished, and Grinding Gear Games has said it will take at least six more months of development to finish it, if not more (these things usually end up taking longer than expected). Nevertheless, this is far from a sketchy early access release. The experience I’ve had, albeit on quiet, press-intended pre-release servers – which have now been wiped as Grinding Gear prepares for the public early access stampede – has been rock solid. There were a couple of inexplicable quits-to-desktop, but they were tiny hiccups in what has otherwise been a smooth and sturdy experience (though we’ll have to wait and see how the public servers fare over the weekend to see if this sentiment holds true).
Those elbows of Path of Exile 1 are broadly gone – or they’re so soft now it’s more like hugging a lumpy duvet than an elbowy… goblin. The game plays much more like you’d expect a modern game to: you move with WASD keys and mouse-around to aim, and there’s full controller support, though it’s still not seamless switching between the two – you still need to quit out to the main menu to alternate. Similarly, the game’s more unusual systems remain, such as the way abilities belong to equipment rather than the character. But they’re much better organised now so it’s clearer how they work and what you’ve got to do. The onboarding is smoother, too, and while I’m sure there’s another onboarding pass to do before the game’s full release, it’s already welcoming enough should you be intrigued to give it a go (we have some Path of Exile 2 tips to help you if you do).
It helps that the game looks very smart now, of course – you can really feel the additional money and time and people Grinding Gear Games has had available while making the sequel. Environments and characters are rich with detail, and the animation is superb. It’s in little touches that you feel it, like freezing someone and seeing spokes of ice form behind them – as if underlining the momentum of the blast, a bit like seeing a wave frozen in extreme weather. Or it’s in moments of well-observed movement, such as when my monk dashes forwards, palm outstretched, to steal living essence from floundering foes – smack! There’s heft behind each blow, crunch and connection, and I love that as a player – the moment to moment feel of Path of Exile 2 is great. Luxurious. Expensive.
It’s this framework that provides the ideal platform for the game’s best stuff – the series’ best stuff – to come through. Path of Exile is known for challenging players – it’s not unlike the Souls series in that regard – and the sequel revels in this. Even in the game’s opening areas, packs of enemies are quick to surround you and take you down if you underestimate them – or if you overestimate yourself. Similarly, bosses are tough and uncompromising. Again, even as soon as the first boss you meet, you’ll be given a tough lesson in dodge-rolling and attack-pattern recognition – a lesson in ‘this is how the game does bosses’. But there’s more to it than just unflinching difficulty: there’s a sense of pleasure in the challenge, both on your side and the developer’s. Enemy composition probes your composition, looking for weaknesses and gaps, and bosses are the game’s centrepieces, chock full of imagination and personality.
One boss ran away from me, which I didn’t expect and it made me laugh. Then when I chased them down, they transformed, we fought, and they ran away again! This time though, they ripped a huge bell from some scenery to mash me with during the third and final phase of the battle – brilliant, unexpected stuff. Another boss housed in a mausoleum unexpectedly summoned the spirit of their lover from a different mausoleum to help them, then when I went to the other mausoleum, the boss there did the same thing in reverse. Connection, story – something to help the encounters stick in the memory rather than drift by in the endless flow of combat.
There’s charm even in the rote enemies who shamble around the in-between parts of the game. I’m currently very fond of a gangly enemy in the graveyard area who lugs around a huge stone plinth, or tombstone, to whack me with. I can feel the effort involved as they drag it across the grassy lawn, churning up the earth. Elsewhere, there are cultists and hags and rabid dogs and spiny burrowing creatures – it’s a varied menagerie you’re confronted with and I like how they all fit with the dark tone of the game. And while I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the story – I’m not ashamed to admit it! – I’ve grown genuinely intrigued by the characters I’ve met in the game. They’re unassuming and gently handled so as not to interrupt you or grandstand you with exposition. Instead, it’s bit by bit – they inch into view, with an elegance and sorrow I really admire, which feels like a strange thing to say. It all speaks to an expertise and confidence I think you can feel pulsing through the experience, even early on.
The depth is still dizzying – you need only tab through the active-ability lists to see how many are available to you. As a monk, I’m not bound only to quarterstaff abilities – I can venture into spells just as easily, or other kinds of weaponry, doubling or tripling (or more) my possibilities. And the passive skill list is as outrageously extravagant as it ever was in the first game; it will make your eyes pop the first time you see it. It’s so large it doesn’t fit onto one screen, even zoomed right out – there must be several hundred passive skills there. For a theorycrafter such as I like to think I am, it’s heaven.
What impresses me more about the approach to abilities in the game is the way Path of Exile 2 wants me to use all of them in overlapping ways. There’s no waste, so to speak, no superfluous thing. I was just adding abilities willy-nilly to begin with, only to realise later they all work, in some small way, together. A palm-strike attack will kill an enemy who is glowing blue, for instance, but it will also steal essence that will power up another ability elsewhere. They’re little things to keep you active, keep you leant forwards, and stop you drifting away – to stop this becoming a kind of Cookie Clicker experience.
This is a long way of saying that initially, I’m very impressed. Path of Exile 2 is flexing its blockbuster chops here, and showing it’s worthy of all the expectation heaped upon it, and capable of confronting the biggest action RPG titans head-on. Of course, there’s much more to unpack here, and much more to see – which I’ll be digging into next week with a more fully-formed early access review. But I already feel confident in saying that if you’ve ever been on the fence about Path of Exile, umming and ahhing about whether to jump in, then your opportunity has come.
A copy of Path of Exile 2 was provided for review by developer Grinding Gear Games.
What we’ve been playing – sequel prep, nostalgic horror, and birds
30th November
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we cram ahead of what could be one of this year’s biggest sequel releases, we draw attention to an excellent nostalgia-drenched horror game, and, um, birds – lots of birds.
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
Path of Exile, PC
I’ve been doing a bit of Path of Exile swatting ahead of the imminent early access arrival of the sequel, Path of Exile 2, and it’s striking how old the first game feels. I don’t say that to throw any kind of shade: POE1 has done tremendous things in the action RPG genre, and it was a small project that grew and grew – it didn’t arrive with the fanfare or production values POE2 does. But playing it after playing something like Diablo 4, which has extraordinary production values of its own, definitely highlights how much time has passed. POE1 is so awkward by comparison.
You can’t, for instance, seamlessly swap between mouse and keyboard controls and a controller, which I think you can do in almost any game now as standard. You have to quit to the main menu and then specify the control method you want to use instead. You can’t independently move a character around with WASD keys while you use the mouse to click and attack, either, which feels really restrictive and weird. And look, I get it, these are elbowy bits that fade into insignificance as you embrace the eccentricities dozens of hours in, but they still contribute to a feeling of how timely a sequel now is.
It’s a fascinating prospect, POE2, it’s got everything going for it – a developer in red-hot form and with resources, and with enormous good will from its playerbase. And it’s got interesting ideas like having POE1 and POE2 live side by side and share a cosmetics store, so one doesn’t override or cannibalise the other. Will this mean POE2 will feel more secure in being different, or will it still be beholden in design to POE1?
Perhaps more importantly, will a newer Path of Exile game do a better job of onboarding a 2024 audience than Path of Exile 1 currently does? It has to, right – how can it not? And if it does, what will that mean for the millions of Diablo 4 players kicking around looking for something new to do? POE has been chomping at Diablo’s heels for years now, will POE2 be the moment it gobbles it up?
-Bertie
Tormenture, PC
I love nostalgia. If I could, I’d grind nostalgia into a fine powder and snort it from the top of my ZX Spectrum +3’s disk drive. Unfortunately, nostalgia lacks a physical form so I can’t actually do that. Instead I consume my nostalgia like normal people do, by reading things like Retro Gamer or watching episodes of Bad Influence on YouTube.
Or. Orrr… I’ll get my fix by playing games like Tormenture, a sadly underappreciated gem from Spanish developers Croxel Studios, that combines retro gaming memories and 80s nostalgia and then mixes them with a modern and excitingly fresh take on the horror genre.
Simply put, Tormenture is a game within a game. When you load it up, you’re met with gameplay that’s a direct homage to Adventure on the Atari 2600 – a yellow castle, a small square to control, and little to no clue as to how to proceed. This is all covered by a lovely layer of simulated CRT scanlines because, after you work out the first few puzzles you’re confronted with, the camera pulls out of the TV to reveal you’re actually playing (in first-person) as a child sat crossed legged on the floor, in a small 80’s bedroom.
That room is full of nostalgia, too. There’s a Speak and Spell, a Guess Who, a tape player, and all of these things play into the game in surprisingly creepy ways. To say more about the events that unfold would risk spoiling the game for you but, vibe-wise, think Stranger Things meets Zelda, with a delightful dose of Tunic-style “oh shit! I get it now!” discovery sprinkled liberally on top.
What I really like about Tormenture is how its puzzles, and their solutions, keep on surprising throughout the six hours or so it takes to finish it. It’s genuinely unsettling at times, too, using the dual-layers of game-within-a-game and game-outside-a-game to create an atmosphere that captures perfectly the feeling of being up past your bedtime and playing a terrifying horror in full knowledge your parents could walk in at any time and give you a bollocking – although in the world of Tormenture, your parents would be the last of your worries…
Tormenture is on sale on Steam right now too, by the way – 25 percent off until December the 4th – so if you’re a fan of horror and nostalgia, go treat yourself, because this looks like it might otherwise slip under the radar.
-Ian ‘jorts’ Higton
30 Birds, PC
I’ve been playing lots of short indie games this week, but my favourite has hands down been the gorgeous 30 Birds. Steeped in Persian culture and mythology, it’s a window into a world we don’t often get to see very much in games these days (Prince of Persia aside, of course), but more than that, it’s just so bloomin’ gorgeous to look at, too. Set on a world of actual paper lanterns where characters curl and peel round the edges of each panel, every scene is sumptuously realised, and there are splashes of colour absolutely everywhere. It’s one of the most evocative worlds I’ve had the pleasure to be in all year, and the plot of the game is equally charming as well.
After the godlike phoenix Simurgh gets captured by a man known only as The Scientist, this gentle mystery adventure sees a young detective called Zig become embroiled on a quest to find the 30 birds of the game’s title so they can prepare a ritual to bring Simurgh back to safety. It’s a wonderfully freeform kind of story, letting you loose to visit its four main lantern districts however you see fit. There are some light puzzles to engage in before you can win over the bird in question once you find them, but most of these little mini-episodes are just brilliantly daft and idiosyncratic in their own right. They’re not so much puzzles as strange little interludes that add just a bit more texture to the world’s wider canvas.
It’s a real little treat of a game, and at just five or so hours, it’s also something you can easily polish off in a weekend and say, ‘Cor (or should that be ‘Caw’?), that was really quite lovely, wasn’t it?’ So I implore you go and play 30 Birds. I promise you won’t regret it.
–Katharine
Brighter Shores feels an awful lot like RuneScape, but its promising start is still missing some key ingredients
I never want to discover exactly how much of my life has been spent grinding for experience points. Even discounting all the hours spent training Pokémon, it’s still going to be an uncomfortably large number thanks to my 18-year investment in RuneScape. Technically, I could find out at least how much time, down to the minute, I’ve spent in Gielinor by talking to an NPC called Hans. I don’t talk to Hans. I’ve long accepted that RuneScape is more of a life choice rather than a video game.
It’s thanks to this life choice (and a genuine love of the game, too) that I’m so excited about Brighter Shores, another MMORPG that’s currently in early access. Why? Well, its developer Fen Research was founded by Andrew Gower, who also co-created RuneScape with his two brothers. At a passing glance, Brighter Shores looks awfully similar to RuneScape. It has a high fantasy setting, a lot of the game is focused on grinding for XP, and even the graphics have an RS3 touch to them. So I was curious to see exactly how reminiscent this new MMO was.
The first thing that caught my attention was the portrayal of its world – and I’m not talking about the graphics. Rather than having an open landscape for you to traverse, the world of Brighter Shores is divided into a series of main locations, which are then constructed out of a collection of individual spaces, be it a town square, thief-infested alleyway or forest meadow. You travel through them one-by-one, and while this may sound restrictive, it actually feels like you’re exploring vignettes of this world, and filling in the map piece by piece, room by room. There’s always an element of mystery when you reach a new location, as it’s impossible to say what size the next area will be, or what it could hold. Will it be a collection of useful resources or a bloodthirsty creature?
Luckily, the map keeps track of both these possibilities as you’re able to record any enemy and resource, including their required level, every time you enter a new vignette through the power of ‘Discover’. This can become a little tedious after a while, especially when you’re ‘Discovering’ the same tree for the third time. But it pays off in usefulness, as even this kind of basic information is listed alongside where each enemy or resource sits within the menu for its dedicated Profession (Brighter Shores’ term for skills) – and that includes the ability to pull that location up on your map. Combined, it ensures you never get lost in the woods trying to remember where you saw those leeks for the pie recipe you just unlocked. Instead, it can be an XP grind all the way down.
Brighter Shores’ locations are also tightly intertwined with its main storyline, which opens with you becoming a guard in the town of Hopeport. The main plot is told through a series of episodes, with each one taking place in a specific location. You also need to complete an episode before you can venture further into the world, meaning you can’t, for example, visit Hopeforest before you’ve completed Hopeport’s episode. Having played through the first two episodes so far, I can’t say I’ve been wholly won over by the story of Brighter Shores so far. It’s very much the standard fantasy affair of ‘Someone’s doing something with magic they shouldn’t be touching.’ I’m still very much in the opening act, though, so I’m hopeful there will be juicier elements waiting around the corner in future updates.
What’s more interesting (and maybe also slightly flawed about Brighter Shores) is how the locations affect your Professions, which is the real meat of the game, after all. These are also tied to specific locations, so if you fancy going fishing, for example, you must be in Hopeport since that’s currently the only place where this Profession can be conducted. I get that this was probably designed to encourage players to train up the new Professions they get when starting a new episode, but I found it steals some of the world’s grandeur. Instead of seeking out new training spots across the globe, you’re simply rotating between the same areas over and over again. Just unlocked a new eel breed? Well, it’s time to visit Eel Street Bridge again. (Yes, that is its name. Hopeport citizens say it like it is.)
Thankfully, some Professions do add more breadth to the world – while they may be tied to certain episodes, the resources required to get the most out of them don’t always follow the same rule. The Alchemist Profession, for example, can only be trained in one specific Hopeport shop, but certain ingredients can only be found in Hopeforest so, if you want to make those potions, you need to venture further afield and train an additional Profession to acquire them. Likewise with the Woodcutter, which provides the resources you need to train as a Carpenter. This interconnectivity prevents each skill from feeling like a standalone activity. If you’re training one, then you’re most likely going to end up training another. It’s an act which doesn’t quite fix the absence of feeling like you’ve embarked on a grand quest, but it does lay the foundations for what’s (hopefully) to come, and that’s a good achievement for an early access MMO to fulfil.
Of course, take one look at the Professions themselves, and anyone who’s played an inch of RuneScape is going to get déjà vu at first. Several traditional skills are here, but they’ve just been renamed – Chef (Cooking), Fisher (Fishing), Woodcutter (Woodcutting), Alchemist (Herblore), Miner (Mining) and Leatherwork (Crafting). Really, we’re just missing Firemaking and then we’d have the complete set. Mechanically, these Professions are quite similar to their RuneScape counterparts, too, though there is one notable exception in the form of Alchemist, which I’ve found to be a vast improvement over RuneScape’s fiddly Herblore skill thanks to the way it streamlines a lot of that skill’s busywork and general item management.
That’s not to say that every Profession in Brighter Shores is simply a reworked RuneScape skill. There are new creations here, too. Forager and Gatherer may literally be the same Profession wearing a different hat, but they’re fundamental to progressing other Professions, especially if you don’t want to spend your in-game money on resources. The Detective Profession, meanwhile, challenges you to fight crime on the mean streets of Crenopolis by raiding crime dens and protecting merchant stalls (though it does also require a Brighter Shores membership in order to unlock it at the moment).
What truly differentiates Brighter Shores from RuneScape in the Professions department, though, is how each episode and, therefore location, has its own combat skills where you always begin at level one. It’s a decision that may sound strange on the surface, but in practice ensures combat is always challenging whenever you begin a new episode, as it’s impossible to enter over-levelled. Just because you’re a Level 30 Guard in Hopeport doesn’t mean your prowess will transfer over to the Scout combat Profession in Hopeforest, for example. If you truly want to become a dangerous combatant there, you’ll need to start defeating as many enemies as you can once again. It certainly keeps things lively, though the need to gather a whole new set of equipment and weapons in the process (as your current equipment will always be weaker outside of their dedicated episodes) means I’ve also been drowning in weapons and armour so far. Instead, I have to resort to the ‘Auto-Equip’ function in my equipment / weapons bank, which you can thankfully access anywhere, simply to avoid wasting any more goblin-killing-time.
Combat itself is your standard point-and-click affair, with the ability to switch between three equipped weapons mid-fight (two melee, one ranged typically). Ostensibly this is to make it slightly more interactive, but I still spent most of my battles sitting back while watching my avatar hit foes with a truncheon until they died. Instead, the main thing Brighter Shores uses to try liven up its combat is its Faction system. There are three to choose from – Cryoknight, Guardian and Hammermage – and you must pick one, with that choice being permanent (handy, then, that there are three character slots, so you can have one character per Faction if you so choose). Essentially, though, this is the ‘RuneScape combat triangle in disguise’, and on the whole, it never felt like my choice of Guardian was ever that meaningful. This Faction is meant to be focused around range combat, but there I was, bashing enemies to death with a heavy piece of wood. Hopefully, the Factions will develop alongside future updates, especially when its planned PvP comes along with its 1.0 release.
Right now, I’m longing for something a little more in-depth, though Brighter Shores’ Knowledge Points do go some way to adding some welcome complexity to its current system. These are unlocked when you reach Level 20 in a Profession for the first time, and from that point onwards, any time you earn any XP, you’ll also gain progress towards your next Knowledge Point. These can then be exchanged for money, more XP in any skill you’re Level 20 or above in, or the option to unlock a passive training method if you’re at the right level. The latter are incredibly useful, as they allow you to earn XP when logged out of Brighter Shores. Now I can hear you saying, ‘Lottie, how is it good that this MMO has an option where you can get away with not playing?’ Let me explain.
Firstly, many of the passive training methods require a specific item before you can use them, which can either be purchased or earned by using a Profession. How many of these items you have in your inventory determines how long the passive training will last while you’re logged off; fishing, for example, requires bait with each bucket equalling roughly an hour of training. This gives the system a nice balance, since you need the coin or the required Profession level, often quite high, to get the item for free. And let’s not forget about your inventory limit either. Thanks to this, you can’t just log off for two weeks and return to find yourself a Level 100 Fisher.
Secondly, the moment you hit Level 20, the amount of XP required to reach Level 21 rises considerably compared to the ones before it. To be exact, you need 3,462 XP to go from Level 19 to 20 in any Profession, but 17,818 XP to go from Level 20 to 21. Yes, that’s an increase of over 9,000. Since the maximum level for any Profession is 500, you can imagine what the required XP starts to look like in those upper tiers. For this reason, passive training methods are perfect for casual players who still want to enjoy Brighter Shores, but lack the proper time to dedicate to it. Maybe they want to enjoy the side quests, which offer good rewards but have high level requirements, or maybe they’re married to another MMO… (it could happen to anyone). Either way, passive training is a brilliant addition in my books. It feels very fair in its current form, as you still have to put in the work before you can fully utilise it.
That said, as much as I’ve been enjoying Brighter Shores, my wider feelings on it are more conflicted. It’s had a promising start in early access – a great accomplishment for a small development team – but its RuneScape roots break through the soil a little too strongly at times. Effort has certainly been made to fix some of the issues RuneScape continues to have, but some solutions only cause more problems. Having separate banks for each of your resources, for example, is a great idea on paper, but unless you’ve completed a certain side quest, you’ll have to visit their individual locations scattered across the maps to access them. The high XP requirements for the later levels also means you either need to make sure you’ve set up a passive training method every time you log out or are prepared to invest an awful lot of time into it. For me, it’s the storylines that push much of my XP grind, and in that area Brighter Shores is a little lacking right now. Whereas RuneScape is an active life choice, I fear Brighter Shores will only ever be a very casual video game for me.
Pokémon Go Mega Ampharos counters, weaknesses and moveset explained
Mega Ampharos, the Mega Evolved form of the Light Pokémon, is far from exciting in the world of Pokémon Go.
Despite being one of only two Mega Electric Pokémon in the game, it is notably weaker of the two. When you consider that the other, Mega Manectric, isn’t even best-in-class for Electric types? And Dragons? It is easily the worst Mega Dragon.
So, Mega Ampharos takes the crown as the worst Electric-type and Dragon-type Mega Pokémon in the game. That’s… unfortunate. Mega Ampharos is definitely one of those Pokémon you’re going to register to the Pokedex and then forget about.
Like all Mega Evolutions, Mega Ampharos can’t be caught directly and isn’t always available in Pokémon Go. Instead, you need to keep defeating it in Mega Raids until you’ve collected enough Mega Energy for its temporary evolution.
Below you’ll find Mega Ampharos’s counters and weaknesses to help you succeed in Pokémon Go – just remember you need to have a Ampharos in your Pokémon storage to perform its Mega Evolution.
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Mega Ampharos counters and weaknesses in Pokémon Go
The fastest way to collect Mega Ampharos Energy is to defeat one in a Mega Raid. Below you’ll find the counters and weaknesses for Mega Ampharos to help you achieve this:
- Mega Ampharos types – Electric and Dragon-type
- Mega Ampharos is weak against – Dragon, Fairy, Ground and Ice-type attacks
- Mega Ampharos is resistant to – Fire, Flying, Grass, Steel and Water-type attacks
- Mega Ampharos is super resistant to – Electric-type attacks
- Mega Ampharos Mega counters – Mega Rayquaza is always going to be king when Dragon is a weakness. Primal Groudon follows, along with Mega Garchomp and Mega Salamence.
- Mega Ampharos non-Mega counters – Speaking of Dragons, Origin Forme Dialga and Origin Forme Palkia are huge here. After this, we’re looking at Therian (sky cat) Landorus, Garchomp, Haxorus and Rayquaza.
- Number of players to beat Mega Ampharos – You’re looking at three Trainers with fully optimal 40 counters at the bare minimum. Aim for seven and you should be fine.
- Tactics – The tactics here are pretty simple. Bring your biggest Dragons and use them to bonk Mega Ampharos on its big fluffy head!
Mega Ampharos CP in Pokémon Go
Below you’ll find the CP levels for battling for Mega Ampharos and, if defeated, catching an Ampharos after the fight in Pokémon Go:
- Mega Ampharos Raid CP – 43,282 CP
- CP range for catching Ampharos – 1554 to 1630 CP
- Weather (Rainy) when being caught – 1943 to 2037 CP
The Max Out Season is here and includes a new global event, Wild Area. Currently, the Simply Groundbreaking event is running. You can now catch Dynamax Pokémon through Max Battles. First, however, you need to visit Power Spots to collect Max Particles and complete the To the Max! quest. Don’t forget to try out Routes, Gift Exchange and Party Play while you’re hunting down rare Pokémon, fighting in the Go Battle League or competing in PokéStop Showcases.
Best Mega Ampharos moveset in Pokémon Go
Mega Ampharos is pretty awful, ranking as both the worst Mega Electric and Mega Dragon-type attacker in Pokémon Go. Unfortunately, Ampharos is pretty awful in Go Battle League, too. Unless you’re a new player and don’t have an army of better Pokémon, you can consider this Dex filler.
That said, if you do plan on using Mega Ampharos, you’ll need to know its best moveset in Pokémon Go. Mega Ampharos ideally runs Volt Swich (Fast) and Brutal Swing (Charged). This a spammy moveset, which is great. Brutal Swing is incredibly powerful and Volt Switch is a decent move.
As mentioned, Ampharos isn’t worth running in Go Battle League, so you really shouldn’t spend resources on unlocking a second Charged move. If you feel you absolutely must, you’re looking at the Electric-type move Zap Cannon for raids, or the Grass-type move Trailblaze for PVP.
Here are all the Fast and Charged moves Mega Ampharos can use in Pokémon Go:
Fast Moves:
- Charge Beam (Electric)
- Volt Switch (Electric)
Charged Moves:
- Brutal Swing (Dark)
- Focus Blast (Fighting)
- Power Gem (Rock)
- Thunder (Electric)
- Thunder Punch (Electric)
- Trailblaze (Grass)
- Volt Switch (Electric)
Legacy Charged Moves:
- Dragon Pulse (Dragon)
Everything we know about Ampharos
The Light Pokémon, Ampharos, is the final evolution of Mareep – the answer to the question: ‘What if you take the static out of your wooly jumper and made it a Pokémon?’
The Wool Pokémon, Mareep, is clearly based on a sheep. Its etymology is subject to debate, with some claiming origins in the nursery rhyme ‘Mary had a little lamb’, while others note that Mareep is in anagram of ampere (a unit of electrical current and an amp if you bother writing out the whole word).
Mareep evolves into Flaaffy – a Pokémon so hard to spell that the anime frequently got it wrong (it missed one of the ‘f’s). It’s the only pink Electric type that isn’t shiny. It also acts as the middle evolution – it stands up on its hind legs and has started the shearing process.
Finally, we have Ampharos, the fully sheared Pokémon… There’s not a great deal to say here, other than that it is clearly the living embodiment of a lighthouse. Also, the Mega Evolved version of this Pokémon is thought to be based on a Chinese dragon, with its gems and flowing locks, which is pretty cool.
If you want to learn more about the Ampharos family, you can read their official Pokédex entries below:
- Mareep: ‘If static electricity builds in its body, its fleece doubles in volume. Touching it will shock you. Its fleece grows continually. In the summer, the fleece is fully shed, but it grows back in a week.’
- Flaaffy: ‘As a result of storing too much electricity, it developed patches where even downy wool won’t grow. Because of its rubbery, electricity-resistant skin, it can store lots of electricity in its fur.’
- Ampharos: ‘The bright light on its tail can be seen far away. It has been treasured since ancient times as a beacon. When it gets dark, the light from its bright, shiny tail can be seen from far away on the ocean’s surface.’
- Mega Ampharos: ‘Excess energy from Mega Evolution stimulates its genes, and the wool it had lost grows in again. Massive amounts of energy intensely stimulated Ampharos’s cells, apparently awakening its long-sleeping dragon’s blood.’
It’s also good to know that shiny Mareep is in the game, which means that shiny Mega Ampharos is in the game too! As you can see below, Shiny Mareep is pink!
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Weirdly, shiny Flaaffy seems to have been ignored by the shiny department at Pokémon HQ, which obviously should have made it yellow, since the rest of the family nicks its colouring. Ampharos, meanwhile simply does like Mareep and turns a pinkish purple colour. As for the Mega, it simply copies Ampharos’s notes.
I present to you, my shiny level one mega ampharos.
byu/sandpaperblues inpokemongo
Thanks to Reddit users Chrales and sandpaperblues for the handy previews!
Good luck defeating Mega Ampharos in Pokémon Go!
I love World of Warcraft, but I wish Blizzard would stop looking backwards
How is it that the most exciting thing about Warcraft in 2024 is old Warcraft games from the mid 90s? I can’t have been the only one watching the Warcraft Direct broadcast this week hoping for a glimpse of the future, and of something new – to hear what director Chris Metzen has been doing since he returned to think about the future of Warcraft a year ago. Instead, all we got was remastered versions of Warcraft 1 and 2, and Classic servers for World of Warcraft Classic – Classic Classic – and a tease for player housing in WoW. That was as good as it got: player housing, which, admittedly, is exciting, but it’s still a niche development for a 20-year-old game. How many people, besides WoW players, are excited to hear about WoW expansions in 2024? They have become as predictable as winter.
Ironically, all the Warcraft Direct did was remind me how exciting Warcraft used to be, which I know is partly the point of a 30th anniversary broadcast, but isn’t it also about setting up what’s next? We used to hang on Blizzard’s every word, eager to see what it had been making for us. Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 – the latter rewrote the rules of the RTS. Then of course there was World of Warcraft, which really did seem to captivate the world. But how long has it been since it can claim to have done that? It’s telling that the most exciting thing to happen to WoW in recent years was the launch of Classic, five years ago. The future seems to have become about reliving the glory of the past.
It’s not just Warcraft that’s tiring. Look across Blizzard more broadly and ask, “When was the last time it gave us something new?”, as in actually new, not Warcraft Rumble new. Diablo 4, as much as I enjoyed it, wasn’t much of a surprise. Do we really have to go back to Overwatch in 2015 to find the answer?
What a renaissance moment for Blizzard productivity that was. Finally, as if freed from a kind of perfectionist paralysis, not one but two experimental and unfinished games were released: HearthStone and Overwatch. Both were enormous, company-changing successes, and they seemed to usher in a new age, one of creative transparency, as well as a willingness to try things and, perhaps, fail. Where did that go? HearthStone, as we were repeatedly reminded during the Warcraft Direct, is now 10 years old, and Overwatch is unironically having a Classic moment of its own, reinstating 6v6 play in a call-back to the game’s original launch. Where is the new?
Look, I know none of this exists in a vacuum and that Blizzard has had more on its plate than creative concerns in recent years. It was embroiled in allegations of workplace misconduct for years, and trapped in web of will-they, won’t-they Microsoft acquisition complications for just as long. Then, it was rocked by layoffs. Clearly, life at the studio hasn’t been easy, and I have every admiration for the people who’ve stuck it out and are the new face of Blizzard, and who’ve turned out games like Diablo 4 and the World of Warcraft expansions we see now. Evidently a lot of really important structural work at the company has been done. The Blizzard we’re presented with in showcases now seems more diverse, and the dialogue between game teams and their audiences feels more natural and open than ever before. Detailed road-maps lay out the path ahead, blogs detail upcoming features in depth, and videos document changes and design philosophies in ways Blizzard never used to do. There’s also experimentation and risk being taken on existing projects. Vital progress has been made.
But when is Blizzard going to excite us with something new again? It’s as though, in being tossed around a bit, the company lost some of its nerve. In clinging to former glories in the way it does, it comes across as shackled by them, because no matter how exciting a World of Warcraft expansion gets – or a trilogy of them, as we’re getting now – it’s never going to make the game as exciting as it once was, in that moment when it first arrived, when it was new. Reliving it over and over again in Classic isn’t the same thing. It’s true of Hearthstone and of Overwatch too – there’s no escaping the diminishing returns; there’s only so much excitement one game idea can naturally give.
Perhaps this is the curse of extraordinary live game success, an eternal clinging to a previous high and reluctance to do anything that might upset the audience and recurring paycheck. But for how long is that sustainable? When you’re pulled in several directions by several games, where do you find the time and creative space to do something new? Moreover, where do you find the desire and the appetite to take the risk?
What’s doubly worrying is that Blizzard does seem to have been trying. That “brand new survival game” set in a “whole new universe”, codenamed Odyssey, sounds like it was exactly the kind of ‘new’ I’m talking about. But it was canned – canned after six years of development amidst Microsoft-mandated layoffs earlier this year. It’s as though the suits came in, saw the risks involved, and only the risks, and thought better of it. Better to have a nice stable income from tried and tested brands instead. A rumoured StarCraft shooter led by former FarCry boss Dan Hay doesn’t sound anywhere near as interesting by comparison; it’s an idea Blizzard has been toying with for decades – remember StarCraft Ghost?
It’s a shame. Blizzard has produced some of the games I remember most fondly of any that I’ve played, and I’ve no doubt there’s the talent there to make more of them – to give us experiences we haven’t even conceived of yet. But does it want to? That’s the question. In looking to the past, it’s in danger of living in it and being hemmed in by its own success. I don’t want Blizzard to become a Greatest Hits band; I want to hear something new.
Square Enix fans can expect its games to “release simultaneously on each platform more and more”
Square Enix is looking to boost the availability and accessibility of its games by ensuring future releases are “released simultaneously” on different platforms. Talking to 4Gamer, Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida revealed Square Enix was looking to shift away from platform exclusivity, revealing that fans can expect “Square Enix titles will be released simultaneously on each platform more and more”. FINAL FANTASY XIV Patch 7.1 – Crossroads.Watch on YouTube “Of course, we want you to play it a lot on other platforms as well,” he said, talking about the upcoming release of. Fantasian Neo Dimension. “This time, we will also release the Xbox Series X|S version at the same time. “In the future, Square Enix titles will be released simultaneously on each platform more and more, but since this is close to the first release, we would like Xbox users to play it as well.” Yoshida also teased that he would like a re-release of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics, and “joked around with Hironobu Sakaguchi about the possibility of a new Parasite Eve game”. ICYMI, Final Fantasy 14’s Crossroads patch – the first major update for the MMO following the release of Dawntrail – has a confirmed release date: Tuesday, 12th November. This update will add a number of new bits and pieces, including the Yuweyawata Field Station dungeon, Chaotic Alliance Raids, and more role quests. “Players who have completed all Dawntrail role quests or all Wachumeqimeqi quests will be able to enjoy a finale to wrap-up their respective stories,” the Final Fantasy team explained.