Monthly Archives: June 2015

Nintendo Reveals One of the Nintendo World Championships Games

The Legend of Zelda for the NES will be one of 15 games played during this year’s Nintendo World Championships, Nintendo of America announced via Twitter.

 

Initial qualifying rounds were held across eight different Best Buy locations in the U.S. on May 30, involving the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Dr. Mario. The eight qualifiers along with an additional eight Nintendo-selected competitors will fight it out for the Nintendo World Championship during E3.

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Luke Mitchell Joins Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Series Regular

Actor Luke Mitchell, who plays the Inhuman Lincoln Campbell in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., will join the regular cast for the series in Season 3, Marvel has announced.

With the power to generate and wield electricity as a weapon, Lincoln was first introduced in Season 2 as a member of the group of Inhumans led by Skye’s mother, Jiaying. He went on to play an important role in the events leading up to the season finale.

“Luke proved a valuable addition to our cast in Season 2, and after seeing him light up the screen with his charisma we knew we had to have him back for more,” said Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel TV. “Our writers have come up with big plans for the character of Lincoln in our next season, and we can’t wait for fans to see everything we have in store.”

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The Force Awakens Score References Old Themes

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens will include not just familiar faces, but familiar orchestral themes.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, maestro composer John Williams admitted that parts of the soundtrack for The Force Awakens will have a familiar sound.

"There are some scenes where we do make reference to earlier thematic pieces," said Williams. "We haven’t done it yet, but we’re planning to do it. It’s something that I think will seem very natural and right in the moments for which we’ve chosen to do these kinds of quotes. There aren’t many of them, but there are a few that I think are important and will seem very much a part of the fabric of the piece in a positive and constructive way."

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New ID@Xbox Console Bundle for Xbox One Exclusive to Australia

Xbox Australia has revealed a new ID@Xbox console bundle deal for the Xbox One, which includes five games from independent developers around the world (and in-game content for two other games).

The bundle is available now via the Microsoft Store online in Australia for AUD$499 and contains an Xbox One console, Xbox One controller, 14 day Xbox Live trial, HDMI cable, and download codes for five popular ID@Xbox indie games: #IDARB, Jackbox Party Pack, Threes!, Never Alone, and the Australian developed Hand of Fate from Brisbane-based studio Defiant Development. It also includes in-game content for free-to-play games Warframe and Smite.

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Will Charlize Theron Be Our New Captain Marvel?

The rumor that Angelina Jolie could direct Captain Marvel persists, now joined by whisperings that Charlize Theron will be her star.

According to a source reporting to OK Magazine (via Yahoo), Marvel has been "courting" Jolie for the director's role, who will definitely take the gig if Theron signs on.

The source said: "Marvel has been courting Angie to direct the project and Charlize is a clear fan favourite for the starring role. If Charlize were to get the part, Angie would almost certainly sign on to work with her new pal."

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WB Confirms Eddie Redmayne Will Star in Fantastic Beasts

Warner Bros. confirmed today that Eddie Redmayne will star in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. (He was reportedly in talks for the lead role a few weeks ago.)

According to the official press release, the Theory of Everything star will play Newt Scamander, the magizoologist "who in his travels has encountered and documented a myriad of magical creatures, ultimately leading his penning the Hogwarts School textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." The story takes place in New York roughly 70 years before the start of Harry Potter.

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Square Enix Revealing ‘Secret Title’ at E3

Square Enix is revealing a "secret title" at E3 this year, according to an email party invite. The invite describes the IGN-sponsored event as "an E3 party for a secret title from Square Enix." The image shows the Atlantic Ocean, with various countries across the globe blurred. Check out the invite below (with the party details at the bottom removed by us):

Square-ign

Square Enix is hosting an E3 press conference on June 16 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern. No doubt we'll learn more about the unannounced game then. We know for certain IO Interactive is working on a new Hitman game, and a new IP is certainly possible. When contacted for additional information, a Square Enix representative declined to comment.

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Let’s Talk About How Epic Game of Thrones Was This Week!

It's time for another episode of IGN's Game of Thrones show! Eric Goldman (remember that guy?) is back, and with Roth Cornet on vacation, Joshua Yehl sits down to chat about an absolutely huge episode - maybe the best one ever?

Warning: Beware of full show spoilers!

After giving our overall thoughts on "Hardhome" and the long-awaited conversations between Daenerys and Tyrion and that jaw-dropping battle between the Night's Watch, Wildlings and freaking zombies, we dive into some other specific topics, including Valerian Steel's importance, whether the Night's King is the show's actual main villain and the latest developments for Sansa and Arya. Plus, in our closing section on book spoilers, we talk more about the major sections of this week's episode that were not in the source material and how things may play out differently as a result.

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Hatred Review

Hatred is perfect fodder for “What other people think I do/What my parents think I do” memes--memes that would include tiny boxes for “What the media thinks Hatred is,” “What 14-year-olds think Hatred is,” “What the developers think Hatred is,” and so forth. But there's really only one box that matters, and that would be the one in the lower right: “What Hatred actually is.”

Here's what Hatred actually is: An isometric semi-open street-level shooter in which you kill designated numbers of progressively tougher adversaries before advancing to the next area. You have three main weapons--which you aim with an analog stick on your gamepad--as well as grenades, and the ability to duck. The basics are not terribly dissimilar from the first top-down iterations of Grand Theft Auto; Hatred is, ostensibly at least, an engine for quick, unthinking bursts of multidirectional fire, as opposed to, say, Hotline Miami’s trial-and-error kinetic problem solving. You can drive various vehicles, but they control like lead; fortunately, driving is optional, save for one stage near the end in which you control a SWAT van.

Something-something da police.

Hatred's stark, Sin City aesthetic is irreproachable, and the number of destructible objects is astonishing. In too many other respects, however, there is precious little to say about Hatred: the action is simple, levels lack painfully in variation and escalation of arms, and frequent linearity only exacerbates the tedium. You simply wander through suburban neighborhoods and other mundane locales, mowing down whomever might happen to stand between you and your assigned kill count. There is no thrilling five-star moment in which whirring helicopters or SEAL Team Six members show up; the game’s idea of variety is to introduce armored enemies who don't die after being shot just once. Hatred has you firing almost endlessly at the same six or seven types of victims for a few hours, and then it ends. Aesthetics aside, it is thoroughly unspectacular, and any primal enjoyment you may be having wears off by the third stage.

And so you have it. Hatred is a boring ‘80s-style arcade game with excellent visuals. There are dozens of better, cheaper games that do what Hatred does, which leaves one real reason why anyone might want to play it: Your primary targets are innocent, predominantly unarmed, uncharacterized civilians who run, scream, cry, beg for mercy, and endure brutal executions in order for you--the Antagonist--to remain alive. Unlike in Grand Theft Auto V or Saints Row, there's not even the flimsiest effort to provide a barrier of unreality. Bystanders are not simple victims of collateral damage: You are explicitly told to kill, “cleanse,” and “execute” the innocent. Problematically, Hatred isn’t fun to play. Its attempted power fantasy comes not from the exhilaration of superhumanity, but from the slaughter in and of itself, and unlike listening to a Slayer album or watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, this is not a passive experience. Best of luck to anyone who can answer the question of why Hatred is meant to be, in the developer's own words, “pure gaming pleasure.”

Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. I'm hunting...everything.

Yet there's an irony to Hatred. It might almost be a game worth clutching pearls over if the Antagonist never opened his mouth. But he does. Often. And while he exhibits a detached malevolence with his early one-liners, as you progress, there's a pronounced air of Metalocalyptic silliness, as the Antagonist grumbles about tasting the blood of innocent and proclaims everything as “stinking," “worthless,” or “pathetic,” with the same whining conviction of children who don’t want to eat their vegetables. He growls about how the only thing he hates more than politics is politicians, expressing his rage with all the murderous intent of a petulant Oscar The Grouch. The goofiness climaxes in the game's final moments: the acting reaches for Tommy Wiseau-level arch camp, to the point where it seems impossible to imagine that developer Destructive Creations meant for its shrug-worthy Dethgame to truly matter. Hatred isn't going to make mass murderers of anyone, but it still wants to be every mass murderer's favorite game. The shift in tone from horrifying psychopathy to mustache-twirling supervillainy feels like an intentional joke by the developers, an attempt to make Hatred a new generation’s Postal or Hong Kong 97--and it might have been funny if the rest of the game's particulars weren't a semi-monthly real-life tragedy.

But there’s an even greater irony at work here, in that having brutally killed thousands of innocents, survived police retaliation, and laid waste to everything good in the world, even while the Antagonist devours scenery behind the mic, you feel nothing. Hatred is too repetitive to be exciting, too dumb to be frightening, too basic for you to feel accomplished at its end, too dour to be violently cathartic, too self-serious to engender ironic amusement, and yet still too childish to matter. It will be given more credit than it’s worth--all a game like this can do is provide meager table scraps to a ravenous desire already deeply embedded in pre-existing monsters, and that's not a problem that treating Hatred as Videodrome made (new) flesh will cure. The fact that the final product fails even to be worth a primal psychotic scream of victory against society at large for the people it might encourage means it laughably fails even at being dangerous.

Meaning, essentially, it's a nothing of a game.