New Skylanders Lets You Create Your Own Skylanders
2016’s Skylanders game allows players to completely create and customize their own Skylanders, using a robust in-game character creation menu. The premise is adorably inspired by the hundreds of drawings kids have sent to Toys for Bob - the series’ developers - of their own Skylanders designs, and is, fittingly, called ‘Skylanders Imaginators’.
Imaginators seemingly has the same core gameplay as previous installments in the Skylanders series, focusing on simple puzzle solving and light, hack and slash-style combat, but this time, with an in-game character you’ve created all on your own. Your Imaginator Skylanders’ powers, weapons, heads, ears, tails, abilities, catchphrases, fighting styles (and more) are all fully customizable and can be edited and updated at almost any time, through a simple menu that manages to neatly hide just how extensive it is - a nice change from last year's totally underwhelming customization. If you don’t want to delve into fully creating a new character, though, you can fully randomise one, use any of the 300+ character toys from all of the previous Skylanders games, or select from a handful of new ones.
Skylanders Imaginators Announced
Activision has announced a new entry in its Toys-to-Life franchise, Skylanders Imaginators.
Coming October 16 in the US, Skylanders Imaginators will allow you to create your own Skylanders for the first time in an all-new story in the universe, brought to you by the original Skylanders creative team Toys for Bob.
Skylanders Imaginators will support the toys from all previous games, while the eponymous 'Imaginators' - characters you can build from scratch - can be created and transported into the game anytime and anywhere through a new toy type, the 'Creation Crystal'.
'Guest stars' will also be introduced in Skylander Imaginators called "Senseis", which include 20 new characters and 11 former villains. Each Sensei is a master of one of 10 Battle Classes such as Knight, Sorcerer, Brawler, and have the ability to launch Sky Chi – "the ultimate Battle Class super move".
AMD to Release $199 VR-Ready Graphics Card
AMD is looking to release a graphics card capable of handling VR at a price well under the accepted rate.
According to Engadget, the Radeon RX480 will cost $199 and is based on AMD's new Polaris architecture. It is capable of over 5 TFLOPS of computing power, compared to the 6 TFLOPS of Nvidia's recently announced GTX 1070, which costs $380.
There will be 4GB and 8GB versions available, and the RX480 will run 2000MHz GDDR5 memory, much like the GTX 1070.
Overwatch is Getting a Ton of Tweaks
As with any thriving online game, tweaks will always be coming to Overwatch sooner rather than later, but Blizzard's new shooter is planning for a raft of changes already.
The game's official forums are predictably stuffed with comments and suggestions applying to the length and breadth of the 21-character roster, but three characters have been singled out by the designers themselves.
In a post complaining about the power of revolver-toting Offense standout, McCree, Blizzard principal designer Geoff Goodman indicates that changes are coming. Referring to the character's ability to stun and kill many characters with a flashbang-fan the hammer combo, Goodman says:
Why The Rock Won’t be Fighting Al-Qaeda in Doc Savage
IGN recently caught up with Shane Black to discuss new movie The Nice Guys, and while we had him cornered, we asked about Doc Savage, his forthcoming superhero flick that will star Dwayne Johnson as the title character, and most definitely won’t feature ‘The Man of Bronze’ fighting Al-Qaeda in the present day.
“There’s 182 stories in the original cannon, and I must confess I’ve only read 107 of them” he explained. “That’s going to be a blast… Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry are working on the script with me, just seeing those characters that represented my childhood so vividly come to life in a way that I can control is a dream.”
As for whether it will be a period piece, Black is pretty adamant.
New Screenshot Seems to Show Liberty City in GTA 5
A Rockstar artist's portfolio website seems to have revealed an area from GTA IV's Liberty City remade within GTA V's version of the RAGE engine.
Discovered by GTA Forums users Spider-Vice and BlackScout, Adrian Page - who currently works at Rockstar, going by a LinkedIn page - uploaded a series of what appear to be in-engine concepts to the portfolio, of which one appears to be GTA IV's Middle Park location:
PES 2017 Feels Very Similar to the Last Game, and that’s Great
A peek behind the curtain: to preview an established annual sports game is something of a farce. You sit down in a whitewashed room, buoyed only by the gentle waft of supermarket pastry, and play a few scant matches of a game that fans will eventually sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours into. It doesn’t really make sense in the usual “this does this! That does that!” preview format, because a sports game’s quirks and brilliances rarely become clear until you’ve hammered the thing for months.
In the case of PES, there are two options here. I could analyse what I played against each of Konami’s own bullet-pointed new features, buzzword-y shout-outs like “Adaptive AI” (unprovable), or weirdly straightforward stuff like “Goal Keeping” (I’m absolutely positive that was in the last one - yes, I checked, there are several goalkeepers in it).
Person of Interest Creators on Episode 100’s Big Twist
Warning: Full spoilers for the May 31st Person of Interest, “The Day The World Went Away,” below.
The 100th episode of Person of Interest was a hugely eventful one, and ultimately a tragic installment that saw the team losing one of their own - even as the Machine took on a very familiar persona.
I spoke to Person of Interest’s executive producers, Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman, about the death of Root (Amy Acker) in “The Day the World Went Away,” how and why they chose to kill her and how Root lives on, in a way, thanks to the Machine taking on her personality (and voice) for itself.
For more on Person of Interest's 100th episode, check out our review, along with our interview with Amy Acker about what occurred.
Person of Interest Actor on the Huge Change to Their Role
Warning: Full spoilers for the May 31st Person of Interest, “The Day The World Went Away,” below.
The 100th episode of Person of Interest was a huge – and hugely sad – one, as Root (Amy Acker) was killed protecting Finch (Michael Emerson). But with just three episodes left, it was also clear this wasn’t the end for Acker on the series, as the Machine, which Root worked so hard to help, took on her voice and persona, becoming more of a full character than ever before.
I spoke to Acker about this big turn of events, when she found out and what she felt about Root’s fate. We also discussed the incredibly popular Root/Shaw relationship in relation to this twist and what it was like to find herself for the second time, after Angel, finding out she was being killed off on a series, yet would continue on as a god-like entity.
Powers TV Series Finally Available on PSN in Australia & UK
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia has today confirmed the Sony Pictures Television series Powers is available now on PlayStation Network in Australia.
All episodes of the first season, plus the initial three episodes of season 2, hit the PSN today. They can be streamed for no additional cost for PlayStation Plus members. It's also being reported the first three episodes of season 2 are available on the UK PSN (via Videogamer), but the first season is not (absurdly Powers season 1 is only currently available in the UK via Spike TV, and only three episodes have aired at the time of writing.)