News:: Watch Aaron Rodgers and his surgically-repaired collarbone play Assassin's Creed with Conan

Green Bay's all-time great quarterback Aaron Rodgers is not currently quarterbacking. Two weeks ago, he suffered a broken collarbone after being hit by Minnesota's Anthony Barr. The injury likely ended his season. Green Bay is in something of a tailspin, as its plan was largely built around, you know, having a future Hall of Fame QB on the field and not Brett Hundley.

All of this means Rodgers has a lot of free time on his hands. Part of that was spent recently on Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer show while trying out Assassin's Creed: Origins. No one spent a lot of time worrying about Assassin's Creed, though. (If you're interested in that, we have a review you should probably check out.)

Instead, Conan spends the segment focused on the 13 screws in Rodgers' shoulder, bringing in an anatomical likeness to recreate the injury, and clowning on Green Bay offensive lineman David Bakhtiari. Someone's gotta take the blame for this.

_{[Disclosure: This post was written by a tortured Minnesota fan who is old enough and petty enough to still hate Gary Anderson.]}

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News:: Roundup: the best Wolfenstein II deals for PC and console

Ending October's flurry of Triple-A launch, Bethesda's Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is arriving this Friday on October 27. Join BJ Blazkowicz and take the fights to the Nazi (once again) to take back America. If you enjoyed the previous Wolfenstein: New Order or Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, you'll likely enjoy Wolfenstein II as well from all the previews we've seen thus far. Whether you're a PC or console gamer partaking in the game for release week, we've rounded up all the best deals on Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus that are available as of writing.

For PC gamers, deals range from a small 5% of to a larger 19% off discount at retailers you're probably now well familiar with: digital retailers such as Green Man Gaming, DLGamer, GamersGate, and GamesPlanet are all offering the Steam key at a reduced price as an early purchase incentive. The cheapest price for a digital copy of Wolfenstein II resides at GMG for $48.44 - a discount of 19% off on either the Standard or Digital Deluxe Edition.

Over at console land, choices are a bit more sparse as Amazon and Best Buy are essentially your only retailer of choice for anything that could be classified as a "deal" but it will require you to have Amazon Prime or Best Buy GCU. In terms of paid membership to score a discount, using GCU will make the most sense on the premium Collector's Edition of Wolfenstein II - which runs up to a price tag of $100 (highlight includes a 1/6 scale 12-inch BJ Blazkowicz action figure packaged in a 60s style box).

Wolfenstein II Deals

PC (Steam key)

• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Steam) — $48.44  (list price $60)
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Deluxe Edition (Steam) — $64.59  (list price $80)

Console (PS4/Xbox One)

• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - Prime Required (PS4, Xbox One) — $47.99  (list price $60)
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Collector's Edition - GCU Required (PS4, Xbox One) — $79.99  (list price $100)

Game deals from Dealzon. Sales help support Destructoid.

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News:: Nintendo Download: Super Mario Odyssey

Yep, the Switch is king again this week as it's welcoming Super Mario Odyssey into the arena, on top of Violett, Zombie Gold Rush, Poi: Explorer Edition, Nights of Azure 2, ACA NeoGeo Mutation Nation, Moon Hunters, Time Recoil, Splasher, Piczle Lines DX, King Oddball, Monster Jam: Crush It!, Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers, Monopoly for Switch and a Heroes of the Monkey Tavern demo. Wow, Switch! Killing it with the indie releases.

On 3DS you'll find significantly less stuff, with Worcle Worlds, Halloween Night Archery, Galaxy Blaster Code Red, and Creeping Terror. After months of there being two to three times as many Switch indies over 3DS, it'll be interesting to see how far Nintendo is willing to go in terms of support -- several indie studios have already jumped ship from 3DS to Switch.

Read more...

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News:: Unboxed: What you get in the Xbox One X box

So Destructoid just got its Xbox One X hardware for review (which is coming later), and yep, it's a box.

Inside this unassuming 1TB model is the actual unit (which is roughly the same size as the Xbox One S, just a smidgen smaller), the power cable, HDMI cable, standard controller (with AA batteries), an insert for a nominal amount of Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass time, and an instruction manual. Setup was extremely painless -- I just unhooked the cables on my Xbox One S and re-inserted them, including the external HDD which I had transferred all of my games to. And that's basically all I can talk about for now!

Enjoy a few shots of the Xbox One X compared to the original model and the S, as well as the back of the X. Labyrinth is not included! It just rules, and I recently picked up the UHD disc as well as the coloring book.

Read more...

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News:: Review: Assassin's Creed Origins

I've beaten every mainline Assassin's Creed to date. Crazy, I know.

I used to be able to not have to add that goofy "mainline" qualifier in, but the series has become so bloated with mobile spinoffs that it's impossible to keep up with. You know it, I know it, and even Ubisoft knows it, which is why they opted to skip an entire year to lay low for a while. 2016 marked the first time in a while (2008) where there wasn't a big annual Creed, which is kind of a big deal.

It's refreshing that Ubisoft was able to exercise restraint, because Assassin's Creed Origins benefits from eschewing the puppy mill style of game production.

Read more...

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News:: Former Xbox Live policy VP Stephen 'StepTo' Toulouse passed away

Stephen "StepTo" Toulouse, a tech vet, humorist and author well known for his role in managing Xbox Live over the years and appearances on Major Nelson Radio, has passed away. His brother Jeff Toulouse tweeted that "It is with heavy hearts that we announce the loss of our brother, Stephen Toulouse, @Stepto, this morning." A Microsoft employee for nearly 18 years, Stephen served as director of Xbox Live policy and enforcement until early 2012 and helped shape the company's response to issues online communities are still dealing with.

Reddit adjusted its policies to deal with material that "encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence" while dumping the /Nazi board earlier this week, and Twitter has only lately decided to strengthen similar policies. In 2010 Toulouse explained to an Xbox Live gamer why a swastika was already a bannable offense there, saying "If you think the swastika symbol should be re-evaluated by societies all over the Earth, I think that's great. Your Xbox Live profile or in game logo, which doesn't have the context to explain your goal, is not the right place to do that."

Software engineer Brianna Wu tweeted about Toulouse that "I can think of no better way to honor @stepto than for him to be remembered as one of the first, hardest fighting activists on harassment."

Source: Stepto.com

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News:: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 Ti battles AMD's latest video cards

NVIDIA has largely been sitting pretty since the GeForce 10-series arrived and gave it a comfortable performance lead in the graphics realm, but things have changed: AMD's Vega cards are at least fast enough that you might consider them instead. Needless to say, NVIDIA isn't about to let that situation stand. It's launching the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, a $449 upper mid-range card that could outperform the $399 Vega 56 and undercut the $499 Vega 64 on price. For all intents and purposes, it's very nearly as powerful as a GTX 1080: you have the same core clock speed as the pricier board, and only slight hits to the CUDA core count (2,432 vs. 2,560), texture units (152 vs. 160) and boost clock (1,683MHz vs. 1,733MHz). About the only major difference is that you're still limited to 'just' GDDR5 memory instead of the speedier GDDR5X on the 1080.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: NVIDIA (1), (2)

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News:: PSVR, one year later

PlayStation VR hit the market with a bang in October 2016. It debuted at $400, without the PlayStation Camera or motion controllers. By February, Sony had sold 915,000 headsets -- far surpassing the combined number of HTC Vive and Oculus Rift units estimated to be out in the wild. Sony Interactive Entertainment head Andrew House went on a press tour to brag about the numbers, telling The New York Times the PSVR sales were on track to outpace the company's internal goal of 1 million in the first six months. That would have been mid-April.

"The company will almost certainly surpass that forecast," The New York Times wrote.

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News:: AMD stuffs Radeon Vega graphics into its Ryzen Mobile chips

It's been a revival year for AMD. Its Ryzen chips thrust it back into the desktop arena -- so much so that it practically forced Intel to dramatically ramp up the capabilities of its upcoming eighth generation Core CPUs. And with its RX Vega video cards, AMD finally had a way to compete against NVIDIA's latest batch of GPUs. Now, the company is setting its sights on laptops with its upcoming Ryzen Mobile chips. And, as you might expect, they'll feature integrated Vega graphics. AMD's goal? To power ultrathin laptops that can still play a few rounds of Overwatch.

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News:: 'Super Mario Odyssey' is everything it needs to be and more

"A return to form." "A reinvention." There are lots of clichés we fall back on when describing a fresh game in a long-running series. The truth is, Nintendo has constantly reinvented the idea of a 3D Mario game, relentlessly pushing the franchise forward with each release. Super Mario Odyssey is just one more step in the right direction, another evolution of a perfect formula.

The setup in Odyssey is as familiar as ever: Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach, so you need to collect an arbitrary item (Power Moons rather than Stars this time) and chase him down to save the day. This time around, Bowser is going from kingdom to kingdom collecting items -- a ring, a gown and so on -- for a wedding ceremony. It's a coherent enough narrative, but the joy of Mario has never been in its story.

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News:: 'Bury Me, My Love' brings a Syrian refugee's tale to your phone

After creating a big buzz within the indie gaming community, interactive dialogue-driven game Bury Me, My Love launches today on iOS and Android. Based on real life stories, the game tells the tale of Nour and her husband Majid, both caught up in the violent and dangerous Syrian conflict. Nour has decided to flee their war-torn country while Majid stays behind to care for elderly relatives. With only a smartphone to communicate with her husband, she begins her perilous journey, telling Majid a Syrian farewell saying: "Bury me, my love" (which means, in essence, "don't die before me").

Source: Bury me, my Love

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News:: The Morning After: Thursday, October 26th 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

It's the end of the road for Kinect, and Google's testing an update for Android that Pixel 2 owners will be very interested in.

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