Solo’s Surprising Connection to Star Wars Rebels
Solo: A Star Wars Story spoilers follow.
And for more on Solo, check out the Easter Eggs we found, why the Millennium Falcon may now have a very creepy back story, and the video game reference we really weren't expecting from the film.
Wait… what? But I thought he was dead... Whoa! Was that Darth Maul in Solo?!
John “Totalbiscuit” Bain Dies Age 33
The influential and massively popular YouTube personality and games critic John "Totalbiscuit" Bain has died at age 33.
Bain's wife, Gemma Bain, posted a heartfelt message to Twitter announcing the news.
Bain's passing comes after the announcement that he was retiring on Reddit, citing his growing health problems and confessing to his fans he didn't expect to live much longer.
Apple Rejects Steam Link App
Apple revoked approval of the new Steam Link app just one day after its announcement.
According to a statement released by Valve, "Apple revoked its approval citing business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team."
It's unclear what exactly my have been missed by Apple's review team, nor what those conflicts explicitly would be. Following Apple's decision, however, "Valve appealed, explaining the Steam Link app simply functions as a LAN-based remote desktop similar to numerous remote desktop applications already available on the App Store.
"Ultimately, that appeal was denied leaving the Steam Link app for iOS blocked from release. The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we're clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future," Valve statement concluded.
Epic Games Outlines Future Fortnite Improvements, Including New Playground Mode
Fortnite developer Epic Games has announced some new features it's working on to improve the game.
A post on the official website details the changes which include general improvements to controller play, Limited Time Modes, performance, quality of life, and the replay system.
For players using a controller, you can expect improvements to both Builder Pro and Turbo building after complaints that items wouldn't always place or be accidentally canceled. You'll also be able to turn off aim assist mode while building so your crosshair doesn't move to an enemy mid-construction and custom keybindings are coming in the future.
Changes to Limited Time Modes may see 50v50 or something like it stick around after the mode's popularity. A new mode called Playground LTM is also coming which will feature the standard Battle Royale Map but with extended time and increased resource generation. Treasure and crates will automatically spawn so players can immediately drop in on the loot and friendly fire lets you shoot your squad with immediate respawns.
N64 Classic Rumors, New Switch Bundle, Resident Evil 7, Mario + Rabbids DLC, and more! – NVC Ep. 409
Weeelcooome to episode 409 of our weekly Nintendo show and podcast, Nintendo Voice Chat. This week, the NVC crew shares their thoughts on Resident Evil 7 Cloud Version for Switch, the rumored N64 Classic, Nintendo's dockless Switch bundle for Japan, Mario + Rabbids DLC, and much more!
As always, you can watch NVC here on IGN and on our YouTube channel (subscribe and hit that bell! It gives fairies wings!) or listen to it on your commute in audio format. If you enjoy the show, share it with other Nintendo fans, leave us a comment, and give us a thumbs up or leave us a review! If you prefer audio over video, please subscribe to NVC on iTunes or your podcast service of choice. You can also download and listen to the latest episode of NVC Right Here.
Syfy’s Krypton: What’s in Store for Season 2?
Warning! Full SPOILERS follow for Season 1 of Syfy's Krypton.
Krypton's Season 1 finale, titled "The Phantom Zone," had some fascinating WTF moments (check out my review here), that set up an intriguing second season that can't come soon enough.
Leading man Cameron Cuffe, who plays Superman's grandfather, Seg-El, recently spoke with IGN about that crazy finale and what it could all mean for Season 2.
"We’ve been hinting at it for a long time, that this show is not what you think it is," Cuffe said, adding, "and the finale is the epitome of that. The really cool thing is that it’s an interesting way to end the Season 1 arc, but it also blows the doors open in terms of what we can achieve in the second series."
20 Crazy Unrealistic Things Battlefield Does, and One Realistic One
While we didn’t get to see real gameplay, EA and DICE’s reveal of Battlefield V did shine a light on a lot of details about the upcoming game. It’s coming out October 19, it’s going back to the series’ World War II roots, and it will not have a premium pass, meaning that all major post-release content will be free to everybody.
But along with these facts has come a backlash from a vocal minority around the fact that the trailer and box art focus on a female soldier with a prosthetic arm. The argument is that this detail means that we won’t be getting an “authentic” World War 2 experience from Battlefield V because there were no women in combat in World War 2. We’ll revisit the accuracy of that last assertion in a bit, but before we do, we have to challenge the premise that anyone has ever gotten an “authentic World War 2 experience” from any Battlefield game.
Godzilla 2 Has Been Delayed
Warner Bros. has delayed its Godzilla sequel, King of the Monsters.
Deadline reports the film has been pushed back from March 22, 2019 to May 31, 2019. King of the Monsters is directed by Mike Dougherty and will feature Godzilla battling Mothra, Rodan, and the three-headed King Ghidorah.
The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep received an official release date. The film, which follows a 40-year-old Danny Torrance, will hit theaters on January 24, 2020. Gerald's Game director Mike Flanagan will helm the movie.
Conan Exiles Review: Dull And Dense
For a game that’s based on the world of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Conan Exiles has remarkably little to do with any part of that universe. It’s a big, open-world survival sim that sticks true to its initial hardcore vision to a fault. When you combine the steep learning curve of a deep but confusing crafting system with largely monotonous gameplay and a spectacularly awful UI, Conan Exiles feels like it does everything it can to push back on those curious enough to step into its admittedly intriguing but highly flawed world.
The game opens as you regain consciousness in the scorching desert, completely naked and vulnerable. As an exile, you are trapped in a doomed and cursed land with nothing but the faint memory of being cut down from your crucifix by Conan, the giant hunk of man-meat himself. From there, you’re free to wander off into the wild yonder. The exiled lands are massive, made up of different environmental biomes that can be explored freely from the outset. Spectacular-looking sandstorms can roll in out of nowhere, forcing you to seek shelter lest they consume you. You can climb anything from mountains and trees to walls and buildings, provided you have the stamina. This adds an extra dimension to exploration, with the added payoff of some lovely views of Conan's varied world.
You start out small, picking up rocks and sticks and crafting simple tools. Almost everything you find can be broken down one way or another, and while it's neat to watch rocks chip apart and trees topple over as you hack into them, the humdrum motion of harvesting never feels rewarding. Eventually you’ll need to build shelter and a bed, which becomes your new spawn point. Given the game’s brutal loss of items and resources after death, doing this sooner rather than later can save you some real heartache.
Shelter can mean anything from a small stone shack all the way to a giant castle, complete with reinforced walls, towers, and even a trebuchet. Building is block-based and relatively free form, allowing for hugely elaborate base designs that can be some fun to build, provided you take the time to gather the raw materials to build everything you need. That's all well and good, except for the part where you aren’t shown how to do any of it. It’s all up to you to simply figure out or dive head first into a wiki to have anything explained in detail.
If you aren’t motivated by curiosity, Conan Exiles' single-player mode will feel empty and largely aimless. It's more like a practice mode, with only a handful of NPC outposts and structures to find. When you do, most of them are hostile, and the few that aren’t only offer minimal interaction. Multiplayer changes this up for the better in a few ways, mainly through the addition of other human players.
More importantly, though, multiplayer gives you more purpose and clearer goals to achieve. This includes defending your base from other players as well as The Purge, an army of NPCs that might attack and destroy your base as you gain XP--there's also an option to activate The Purge within the single-player mode. You can also join Clans, which will allow you to build collectively, either on or near clanmates' already-laid foundations. For times when you do have to leave home behind, you can create Thralls--human NPCs with specialised abilities you can knockout, bind, and drag back to base to enslave--to help protect it, and they do a decent enough job.
Character progression in both single and multiplayer takes place in the Journey, a series of tasks grouped into chapters that, when completed, grant you attribute points to spend on any one of seven main ability slots. You also gain knowledge points to unlock new crafting recipes, of which there are a lot. The number of things you can craft is staggering; weapons, armor, survival items, and even religious altars to help to deify the gods of the world and earn their favour.
Once you start crafting more complex items, you get better acquainted with one of the game's worst aspects: its UI. There’s nothing intuitive about it, and like the rest of the game, there’s very little explanation given as to how it works. On top of that, it's overly complicated, requiring you to place the resources along with any fuel required into the crafting bench first, select what you want to build from the menu, and then hit the play button to actually craft it. There’s also almost no difference between the console and PC UI, so it's an absolute nightmare to do any kind of inventory management with a controller. And like in most survival sims, it’s what you inevitably spend a significant amount time doing, making it a constant source of frustration.
When you get tired of chipping away at trees and rocks, which you will, you can chip away at creatures or other humans instead. There are all manner of things in the exiled lands for you to kill or be killed by, from animals and beasts to monstrous boss creatures like a giant black spider and a huge, spiked Dragon. But despite the sizeable enemy variety and the large array of weapons you can smith--from daggers to axes and giant mallets--combat is just plain bad. Both light and heavy attacks feel unwieldy thanks to sluggish animations, and weapon strikes lack any impact, resulting in dull and monotonous fights.
Conan Exiles is one of the most unsatisfying games I’ve ever played.
To top it off, Conan Exiles just feels really unpolished. The bodies of harvested enemies simply disappear into thin air, and large areas of the world can pop in and out of view at any time, clipping your character through the ground then respawning you somewhere else on the map. When the night starts to come, the moon’s light casts upwards from the ground, creating an bottomlit effect that looks atrocious. It’s also not in the most stable condition, with a number of crashes affecting gameplay randomly on both PC and Xbox.
Ultimately, Conan Exiles is one of the most unsatisfying games I’ve ever played. Its crafting and resource systems may be dense enough that the ultra-patient could find something to enjoy here, but anyone else would likely walk away with their hands thrown up in defeat. The mind-numbing tedium of harvesting resources, woefully boring combat, and a slew of bugs left me feeling completely underwhelmed and unimpressed when it was all said and done.
Logan Director to Helm Boba Fett Star Wars Movie
James Mangold, the writer and director of Logan, reportedly is set to pull double duty on a standalone Star Wars movie focused around bounty hunter Boba Fett.
THR reports Mangold will write and direct the film, which would follow in line with the "A Star Wars Story" standalone features Lucasfilm has released alongside the main, episodic Star Wars films. No story details about the solo film have been revealed yet, however.
IGN has reached out to Lucasfilm for comment and will update this story should they respond.
A Boba Fett Star Wars movie from Fantastic Four director Josh Trank was reportedly in the works and allegedly supposed to follow Rogue One as the next Star Wars anthology film. Trank reportedly left the project in 2015, though plans for it had apparently progressed far enough that reports suggested a Boba Fett movie announcement was canceled "at the last minute" in 2015.