Good Dinosaur, Creed Strong But Can’t Topple Mockingjay
Katniss Everdeen's last stand staved off strong competition from Pixar Animation and the return of Rocky Balboa this weekend.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 remained the No. 1 movie at the North American box office over Thanksgiving weekend, grossing an estimated $75.8 million for the Wednesday-Sunday holiday frame, $51.6 million of that from the three-day weekend alone.
Mockingjay, Part 2's domestic total stands at $198.3 million for a worldwide total of $440.7 million.
Pixar Animation's long-delayed The Good Dinosaur debuted in second place just below expectations with an estimated $39.2 million for the three-day weekend and a total of $55.6 million since opening Wednesday.
PlayStation Wins Black Friday, According to Marketing Study
Sony's gaming platform was the preferred console during Black Friday, according to a marketing study conducted by InfoScout.
The study, which tracked the purchases of over 250,000 receipts captured on mobile devices during Thanksgiving night and into Black Friday, reports that Millennial consumers (those between the ages of 18 to 35) preferred PlayStation to Xbox and Nintendo.
According to InfoScout's research via Polygon, Black Friday resulted in an 8 percent spike for interest in PlayStation among Millennials, and it came at the cost of a significant portion of Xbox's consumer mindshare. Meanwhile, middle-aged consumers were slightly more partial to Xbox; though, interest in PlayStation did see a 3 percent spike during the holiday shopping weekend.
GoT’s The Mountain Breaks His Own World Record
Game of Thrones star Hafthor Bjornsson has set a new world record, surpassing his own previous keg-tossing high.
According to Giants Live, the actor who plays Ser Gregor Clegane (aka "The Mountain") on the popular HBO series was able to toss a 33-pound keg over 23 feet in the air.
"It was easy!" Bjornsson said of the feat. "I could have broken the roof. It was amazing to do this in front of the great crowd. Bring on Europe's Strongest Man."
That's not the only record the Game of Thrones actor has managed to shatter this year, having tossed a 56-pound kettlebell over 19 feet in the air with a single arm at the Arnold Sports Festival back in March. If that weren't enough, Bjornsson also broke a 1000-year-old weightlifting record the month prior.
Portal Items Coming to Rocket League
Officially-licensed Portal items are coming to Rocket League on PC and PS4 next month.
Nine new items have been added, developer Psyonix has announced. Conversion, Propulsion, and Repulsion gels have all been converted to rocket trails. The Aperture Laboratories logo, a cake sticker, companion cube, personality core, and PotatOS have all been made into antennas. Cake is also making an appearance as a topper.
The items will be available for free, starting December 1.
Portal isn't the only famous IP to get Rocket League items, Back to the Future DLC was released back in October. Since then, a slew of DLC has come to the sports game, including free mutators, which added settings like low gravity, time warp, and the ability to change the ball size.
Force Awakens Writer: ‘Star Wars Is Its Own Genre’
According to Star Wars: The Force Awakens writer Lawrence Kasdan, Lucasfilm's beloved film franchise can't be categorized as either sci-fi or fantasy.
"Star Wars is its own genre," Kasdan told Wired in a recent interview. "It's not really science fiction. It's really something on its own, fantasy and myth and science fiction and Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa all mixed up together.... It can be anything you want it to be."
In addition to co-writing the screenplay for The Force Awakens, Kasdan also penned The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He's also co-writer on the upcoming Han Solo standalone movie that will explore the wise-cracking smuggler's younger days.
BvS: Dawn of Justice Gets 2 New Companion Books
New Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice images have surfaced online by way of two new Scholastic companion books tied to the upcoming DC Comics film.
The first, spotted by Batman-News, can be found on the cover of an original companion novel, titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – Cross Fire, which tells a tie-in story set before the events of the movie. See it below, courtesy of Amazon.
6 Mobile Games with Incredible Touch Controls
Touch controls can be terrible. They are more often than they're not, really, which has made plenty of console-bred gamers gun-shy about taking the plunge into playing on platforms that lack the buttons their fingers have grown so accustomed to pressing. There are some mobile games that soar thanks to their mastery of this seemingly crippling restriction, though – games with touch controls so solid you forget you're holding a device at all, and it seems impossible to imagine the games played any other way.
We've selected half a dozen stellar examples for your consideration. These are 6 Mobile Games with Incredible Touch Controls.
- See it in Apple's App Store for $4.99
Destiny: The Taken King Adds ‘Harder’ Mode
Bungie is introducing an even "harder" mode to Destiny: The Taken King's King's Fall raid. Though the company has yet to release much of the details, it did post a preview on its official blog.
Lead raid designer Gavin Irby announced the game's newest feature—challenge modes. In challenge mode, a King's Fall boss will issue players a weekly challenge. You can take on the challenges in both normal and hard modes, and, as Irby notes, rewards will match the chosen difficulty level.
Players can't just go in with any strategy, however. Bungie reminds us that "each boss's challenge requires that you defeat them in a very specific manner." We'll find out what the means when the challenges are released.
Walking Dead: What We Want from the Midseason Finale
AMC's The Walking Dead may have hit a few snags during the first half of its Season 6 run, though with the show's annual midseason finale - the last new episode until February - comes the opportunity for a "reset." Usually through mass bloodshed. Yes, the series hasn't met a problem yet that it couldn't fix with a copious amounts of corpses and a change of setting.
But should that happen here? Do we need half the cast to die? Do we want to see Alexandria fall into ruin? Sunday's upcoming fall finale, "Start to Finish," wasn't released early to the press so when it comes to that ferocious herd of walkers set to invade town, your guess is as good as ours. But here's what we'd like to see happen. Here are a few points and items we'd like to see get addressed before the show hibernates for winter.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 Gets New 7.8 GB Patch
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 has received a new 7.8 GB patch on PlayStation 4 that adds new levels, character campaigns, and a few gameplay tweaks.
The two new levels included in the 1.03 patch are titled Underground and Wild West, while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tyler the Creator are the two new character campaigns. Although no bug fixes are specifically mentioned, the notes do include adjustments to gameplay and character textures.
Check out a full list of the patch notes below, provided by Eurogamer:
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