Exclusive Mary and the Witch’s Flower Merch Coming to Comic-Con
Mondo will have new merchandise from the anime feature film Mary and the Witch's Flower available for sale exclusively at next week's San Diego Comic-Con.
Mary and the Witch's Flower, the debut film from Studio Ponoc, is receiving new posters, vinyl soundtracks and a T-shirt made by Mondo. Though some of the variants of the merchandise will be exclusive to SDCC, regular versions will be made available concurrently on Mondo's website.
Items available exclusively at the Mondo booth (booth #435) during SDCC include a special 18"x24" screen print poster of the film, a special version of the film's soundtrack with glow-in-the-dark vinyl discs, and an exclusive T-shirt featuring Tib the cat.
Halo-Meets-Portal Shooter Gets New Name, Still Looks Awesome
The arena FPS previously called Wormhole Wars has a new name, a new look, and the same great concept that made it so exciting before. Now called Splitgate: Arena Warfare, developer 1047 Games has a simple but rather brilliant vision: take a Halo 2 and 3-style PvP shooter and give every player a portal gun. It’s an idea that was so fun, so skillful, and so natural-feeling when I played, I immediately wondered why nobody had tried it before.
Splitgate requires you to basically rewire your brain from how you’re used to thinking in a traditional FPS. Instead of attacking enemies head-on, the bread and butter move of Splitgate is actually to shoot a portal behind your target and then ambush them. It makes every duel completely unlike other shooters, even with its clear Halo inspiration.
Fortnite: Season 5 Skins and Items Leaked
Season 5 of Fortnite kicked off this week, bringing vehicles, and a new desert biome with it to the Fortnite map. Update V5.0 rolled out yesterday but has already been datamined, revealing alleged new items, skins, and emotes that will drop during the course of the season. There are 13 skins, nine pickaxes, eight back blings, three contrails, seven gliders, and nine emotes that dataminers have discovered.
Twitter user @SiloxLeaks shared the details of the items, some of which are part of the Battlepass and some of which have yet to be released.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters New Images Provide First Look at Atomic Breath
It looks like Godzilla will be unleashing one of his most powerful attacks in the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Per EW, a new image from the sequel has been released and it provides a decent look at Godzilla's blue atomic breath. Check out the striking image below.
Godzilla: King of Monsters, via EW
Destiny 2 Getting a New PvP Mode
Destiny 2 is getting a new competitive PvP mode as part of its upcoming Forsaken DLC.
According to the latest issue of Game Informer, the new mode is named Breakthrough, a Crucible mode challenges players to capture points on the map.
Breakthrough has two different phases. In the first phase, two teams of four race to capture a single point called the Breaker. In the second phase, the team that captured the Breaker will go on the attack to capture the other team's Vault, a new point on the map. Naturally, the team that does not capture the Breaker is tasked with defending their Vault from the attacking team in this second phase.
The mode has multiple rounds, with the team that either successfully captures or successfully defends each round's Vault being awarded a point. It's not clear at this time how many rounds each match will have.
Darksiders 3 Hands-On: What We Learned After Playing 2 Hours
Seeing little embers drift across the screen, with a slowly building, slightly gothic orchestral track and the bold, angular logo for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lingering in the background, is one of the most unexpectedly welcoming things I’ve seen in a while. And just above the words ‘Press Any Key’, right in the front and center of the screen: Darksiders III.
The long-awaited sequel went dark after the reveal trailer was posted in May 2017, but just a couple of weeks ago, I was able to play almost two hours of the latest build at the Gunfire Games studio in Austin, Texas. It has evolved significantly since the first time I played it, but it’s still, at its core, a post-apocalyptic, hack’n’slash, puzzle-filled adventure set in a world full of angels, demons, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Honestly, I think I’m mostly comforted by the fact that Gunfire – a team comprised largely of the original Vigil Games group that made the first two games – seems to have done a remarkable job of modernising the series without departing from the core pillars of the franchise at all. One of the designers told me, “It’s a video game. I know that sounds odd, but that’s one of my favourite things about it. We went through this process of, what are some of the tropes that you get rid of, what are some of the tropes that you keep? We sanded it down, and here we are.” That completely made sense to me.
Two Blockbuster Stores to Close, Leaving Only One in Existence
Blockbuster Video, the former Goliath in the home-video rental industry, is officially closing two of its remaining three stores in existence.
As reported by Deadline, the closing stores in question are in Alaska, one in Anchorage and one in Fairbanks, and they will be shutting down their retail business on Monday, July 16. They will then reopen the next day through the end of August solely to sell off their remaining inventory.
This leaves a solitary Blockbuster location in Bend, Oregon to wave that yellow and blue banner for as long as it can.
Dead Space 4 Would Have Had a Female Protagonist, Open World Design
EA's Dead Space series might be gone, but it's not forgotten - not even the game that didn't make it.
Though the franchise was effectively shuttered after its third installment in 2013, Ben Wanat, creative director of Dead Space, opened up to Eurogamer this week about what a Dead Space 4 would have looked like, and how it would have played. In a wide-ranging interview Wanat discussed changes to zero gravity combat, the linear style of play, and the main character.
"The notion was you were trying to survive day to day against infested ships, searching for a glimmer of life, scavenging supplies to keep your own little ship going, trying to find survivors," Wanat said, before explaining what sounds like open world areas of exploration.
We Happy Few’s Flawed Characters Are Its Mysterious Heart
Like many, the last time I put my hands on We Happy Few was when it was released in early access all those years ago. Back then I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Its weirdly wonderful retrofuturistic setting and mandatory drug consumption for the citizens therein creates an evocative space to explore, but outside that exploration, what is it?
It was apparent after first showing that many expected a traditional narrative, characters, and story to flesh out the world and tie it all together, so developer Compulsion Games set to make that a reality. And after spending an hour playing through chunks of story ahead of We Happy Few’s August 10 release, that effort is paying off.
As a refresher I replayed the opening of Arthur – the bumbling reluctant hero who works at the Wellington Well’s propaganda ministry – as he decides enough is enough and tosses his required dose of the psychedelic drug Joy. Much of the experience was the same, but what struck me this time was the polish and detail put into this section since the last time I’d seen it. The time spent retooling and refining We Happy Few certainly shows.
Update: Splatoon 2 Leaderboard Hacker Banned By Nintendo Indefinitely
Update 07/16/2018: PleaseAddAntiCheat, the anonymous player that hacked Splatoon 2's leaderboards to ask for an anti-cheat solution, has seemingly been banned from online play indefinitely.
Posting on Reddit, the user posted the notice from Nintendo regarding their ban, and wrote: "Looks like it took them a while to get to all of my accounts. But can confirm my console is now 2124-4027
."
The initial leaderboard hack has also now been removed. IGN has contacted Nintendo for comment.
For those who don't know Splatoon 2 has a cheating problem, they can currently find out at the top of the leaderboards.