A recent announcement from William Peter Hjate, or better known as Super Smash Bros star 'Leffen' has revealed the pro-player is going to take a hiatus from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

If you are unsure of who Leffen is, William Hjate is the best Super Smash Bros. Melee player in the world and took home first place at EVO 2018 Championship for Melee. Leffen has decided to take a break from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as he feels satisfied with his efforts for now and has decided to concentrate his time into streaming Melee.In the Twitter post, Leffen says that the possibility of him entering in a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is not completely out the window but he won't be practicing anymore.

It is not uncommon for professional pro-players of their chosen game to take a break from the game they are playing, only to return after a healthy amount of time away from it. Many pro-players experience a 'burn-out' effect from grinding many hours into the game they play, which is completely understandable when your job is to literally put full-time+ hours into a game. So for now we say goodbye to Leffen in Ultimate, hopefully he makes a return when he feels its the right time to compete in the new game once again.

According to a recent interview with an employee at CD Projekt RED, Cyberpunk 2077 is "pretty different" from the E3 2018 demo we were shown last year.

A disclaimer before we jump into the specific details, CD Projet RED has not changed the fundamental aspects of the game, these aspects would include; first-person RPG, open-world and a narrative-driven experience with multiple-choice missions. Now, what has been changed? According to Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Quest Director of Cyberpunk 2077, there is many things that have not been showcased and there is many things that are still being worked on. "So, there are many stuff that we didn't show yet, there are many things that we are still working on. I would say that the game is pretty different to what we shown last year but there are many details that we are currently working on."

Tomaszkiewicz continues to speak about Cyberpunk 2077 and dives into some of the gameplay experiences players can expect. According to Tomaszkiewicz, there is many ways to play the title in terms of gameplay. He even goes into detail to say that there is a "variety of options depending on how you want to play the title and allows you to enjoy the way you want to play. I think that's how I would describe the title." Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have an official release date yet, but it is being created for next-gen consoles and the PS4, Xbox One and PC. If you are interested in some more description on Cyberpunk 2077, check out this link here.

Fighting game fans who haven't had a chance to jump into Street Fighter V will soon be able to completely free of charge.

Capcom have announced via their Capcom Blog that Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will experience a free trial period for PlayStation and PC gamers. The free trail period will begin on April 23rd and will continue through until May 5th. It will feature 16 playable fighters for players to enjoy as well as four bonus DLC characters. However, these four DLC characters will only be available in certain game modes, such as Ranked, Casual, and Training.

The release date for this free trial is quite a peculiar one, as April 23 is also the release date for the highly anticipated Mortal Kombat 11 by NetherRealm Studios. Perhaps Capcom has pulling a sly move here by trying to keep or distract fighting game fans on Street Fighter V or away from Mortal Kombat 11. For more information about Street Fighter V, check out the official blog post on the Capcom website here.

Can't get enough of God of War? How about diving into how the game was created since there is not going to be DLC for the title. PlayStation and Santa Monica Studios are creating that very thing.

A new announcement has been released onto the official PlayStation Blog and reveals that in celebration of the one year anniversary for God of War there will be a behind-the-scenes documentary released called 'Raising Kratos'. The above video is the trailer for the documentary and is commentated by God of War's Director Cory Barlog.

Barlog runs us through some of the thought processes he was taking when creating the critically-acclaimed title. We see scenes from the motion capture side of the development, as well as voice capture studio work, massive fan support and some of the locations the team decided use in-game. It should be noted that the documentary has been formed together through 400 hours of footage over the three years of game development, meaning that fans can expect a "full-length" documentary. God of War: Raising Kratos will be released onto the official PlayStation YouTube Channel "very soon".

While most of the time you hear about review bombers its mostly 'bad' news, an example of this would be the Metro family of games being attacked after the announcement of Metro Exodus being a Epic Games Store exclusive.

This time round though its the other side of the coin, review bombers have taken to the Assassin's Creed Unity Steam page to show their support and thanks to Ubisoft in wake of the tragic events that have occurred at Notre Dame. If you didn't know, Ubisoft donated 500,000 EURO to the rebuilding efforts planned for Notre Dame, and also made Assassin's Creed Unity completely free until April 25th so players could experience Notre Dame virtually.

In support for Ubisoft's efforts, players have taken to the Assassin's Creed Unity Steam page. Hundreds of players have commented on the game saying that they are more than happy with what Ubisoft have done, and despite what was considered a lack-luster Assassin's Creed title it has given players a reason to give it another shot. If you are interested in checking out Notre Dame virtually, Assassin's Creed Unity is completely free on the Uplay Store until April 25th, a link can be found here.

Following an anxiety-filled dev cycle, Anthem is a mess right now...but Cloud Imperium's Chris Roberts is confident that BioWare could save it.

With enough determination and effort, BioWare's big ambitious new IP Anthem could make a big No Man's Sky-style comeback story. That's according to Chris Roberts, who said in a recent Newsweek interview that BioWare and EA shouldn't give up on their vision. They could turn things around and salvage the sinking ship, the same way Hello Games saved No Man's Sky and Square Enix pulled Final Fantasy XIV from the rubble. It'll just take time and lots of iteration.

"I would say the same [thing with No Man's Sky can happen] for Anthem. I've played it, so I know there's plenty of nice stuff in there, stuff that works, and then there's some stuff that doesn't work. It's like what we're doing on Star Citizen. It's just iteration," Roberts said. "I hope EA and BioWare don't give up on it, that they get their heads down, roll out and improve things to make it work. Destiny was an ongoing process. That's kind of how these games are."

RAGE 2 may not be a monetized online service game, but it still aims to capture engagement by creating long cycles of play with tons of stuff to do. As some Ubisoft games prove, this could actually be a bad thing.

When I saw this RAGE 2 gameplay stream from Twitch user CohhCarnage, I immediately thought: "Hey, this looks like a Ubisoft game." A lot of my hype died on the vine right there. Instead of the chaotic, in-your-face explosive action RAGE 2's trailers showed, I was met with a very lifeless-looking open world filled with exploration, vehicles thrown in to make foot travel less montonous, and oodles and oodles of stuff to collect. There's objectives telling you to uncover chests, do X to get Y, and a massive array of abilities to unlock by collecting in-game materials. Throw in tons of enemies on a huge map and we have all the trimmings for a singleplayer grind-fest.

I think this is exactly what Bethesda wants...but it doesn't exactly fit with the publisher's current live focus. The game is clearly designed to be repeatedly played over and over again and grinded to eternity. Everything looks like it'll be stretched way too thin, though, to make the experiences really count. What's weird is that RAGE 2 is missing the most important engagement hook: online play. Every bit of gameplay reminded me how much more fun the experience would be with another player, especially during the hulking boss fights.

Kojima has a big idea for streaming, and we could see an ambitious interactive game-style film of show from the illustrious creator's imagination.

Hideo Kojima loves movies. In fact, he might like movies more than he likes games, despite making some of the best ones in the industry. Kojima's games like Metal Gear Solid are littered with references to classic films, from 80s action movies like Escape from New York to Akira Kurosawa's works, and the mastermind is constantly raving about new movies on his social media. His games are undoubtedly cinematic in scope--his latest, Death Stranding, is like a bizarre sci-fi horror film with a star-studded cast. I've long thought Kojima always wanted to be a film director, but chose games because these experiences can be more intimate, profound and engaging.

But what if Kojima didn't have to pick? Armed with the versatility of streaming, he may not have to. A recent interview with Nikkei caught my attention. In it, Hideo Kojima talked about how streaming will unify everything. Kojima said it was his dream to see a platform combine gaming and movie-watching into one singular experience, and the boundaries that separate these experiences will fade away. In short, gaming and film will merge together.

Mortal Kombat 11 is out in the wild, and early copy holders say it's an immensely grindy, frustrating experience that requires frequently online syncing.

Reports say Mortal Kombat 11 is more of the same live service-style grind found in Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat X, complete with microtransaction time savers and an intensely complex, layered system of unlocks. The grinding is facilitated through Mortal Kombat 11's tower system, which is designed to do one thing: keep gamers playing for as long as possible. Mortal Kombat 11's Towers of Time mechanic, which sees players tackling repeatable fights and challenges to unlock randomized rewards, is much more expansive this time around. From where I sit, MK11 is a dizzying array of RPG-style augments, unlockables, and other content put in to pad out the drops so gamers play more to get the stuff they actually want. RNG is the tool used to frustrate players and keep them actively in the online-driven mode so they eventually spend cash on microtransactions.

We recently predicted MK11 would have cosmetic microtransactions, but the game's premium currency, Time Crystals, may have many uses. Gamers may be able to buy unlockables like brutalities, intros/outros, augments, and other cosmetic gear that can be unlocked in the tower mode. In pure live game form, gamers will likely be able to spend extra cash to unlock things directly--or pay for the chance to unlock them.

Console gaming has proven to be immensely lucrative for big players like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Activision, cementing the platform well into the industry's future.

Cloud game streaming may be on the horizon, but consoles aren't going anywhere. Consoles act as a conduit for money-making services, subscriptions, game sales, and engagement strategies, all of which can be carefully cordoned off and fragmented to serve the whims of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. A recent report from Newzoo underlines these points with the most powerful metric of all: money.

According to Newzoo's 2018 market report on the top 25 biggest public earners in gaming, consoles made quite a bit of cash in the year. Out of the huge $107.3 billion earned by the top 25 games titans in 2018, consoles accounted for 38% of revenues of the top 25 earners, or about $40.7 billion. Predictably enough, platform-holders like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft made the most from console gaming (and rightly so given they all have their own consoles with strong digital ecosystems).