Rare Replay’s 10,000 Gamerscore Includes 360 Achievements
When announcing the 30-game compilation Rare Replay onstage during Microsoft's E3 presentation, developer Rare announced up to 10,000 achievement points were up for grabs in the collection.
However, achievement hunters may need to take note of one minor detail before jumping in. Speaking with Rare Gamer, Rare's Jason Thomas clarified that the games in the Rare Replay collection are linked to the Xbox 360 releases of Rare classics, meaning that any points one might have earned in the Rare games previously available on the Xbox 360 cannot be re-earned and are instead counted toward the overall achievement score in Rare Replay.
Update on Tatum’s Gambit/Ghostbusters
Classic Gambit fans will be thrilled to learn that Channing Tatum has reportedly been practicing card tricks for the role of Remy Lebeau in his upcoming X-Men spin-off film.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Tatum's writing-producing partner, Reid Carolin, revealed the 21 Jump Street star's very practical preparation for Gambit: "Last night, we were with my friend who I went to college with - this guy David Kwong, who is an incredible magician - and he was teaching Chan how to throw cards and do sleight of hand."
Carolin went on to praise Joshua Zetumer's script for Gambit (which is based on a treatment by co-creator and X-Men comics legend Chris Claremont), saying, "The script is really good...To be honest, I don’t watch big movies for pleasure a lot, but this script convinced me that we should be making this movie."
Nolan North May Have Outed The Last of Us 2
Voice actor Nolan North casually dropped word of a Last of Us sequel during a recent Q&A panel.
"For now, last one," North said on the video, when asked if he has any upcoming projects with Naughty Dog aside from Uncharted 4. "I know they're doing a Last of Us 2 but my character in Last of Us kind of had an untimely demise."
It is possible that North is mistaken. His answer was in the context of explaining why he doesn't have any other Naughty Dog projects lined up, so whatever scuttlebutt he's heard wouldn't have been inside information from a cast member. However, he's well known and connected enough to give his word some credibility.
First Wave of Steam Machine Pre-Orders Snapped Up
Valve's first wave of pre-orders for its upcoming crop of hardware has sold out. The special deal, which allows North American gamers who pre-ordered to get their hands on dedicated Steam equipment on October 16, is no more.
If you missed out on the special pre-order deal, you'll have to wait almost a full month to cop an Alienware Steam Machine, Steam Link or Steam Controller on November 10.
Valve announced at the beginning of the month that certain retailers would be taking pre-orders for Steam hardware under the early-release deal, and it didn't take long for those pre-order slots to evaporate.
JGL’s Sandman Moves to New Line
Beginning with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Sandman movie, Warner Bros. is reportedly moving several in-development Vertigo adaptations to its sister studio, New Line.
According to The Wrap, New Line will produce Sandman and "several other" future film adaptations from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, which is differentiated by its mature (and usually critically-acclaimed) content. Sandman is the only Vertigo film project in the works at New Line, while Preacher is currently being produced by Sony TV for AMC.
As for Guillermo del Toro's long-gestating Dark Universe movie, the project is reportedly still in in the hands of Warner Bros., along with the character John Constantine, who could pop up in future DC movies at any time (especially after the cancellation of Constantine on NBC).
Brian K. Vaughan’s New Canada vs. US Comic Hits This Week
We all want the best of the best, so let us point out the hottest comics and collectibles released each week. We spotlight our favorite comics that we know are money-well-spent, new books that look cool, and any toys we can't wait to play with.
Check out our picks, then take to the comments to let us know what looks good to you!
By writer Brian K. Vaughan & artist Steve Skroce | Image Comics
Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure Review
The Dr. Mario series' has always provided great puzzling action despite its no-frills design. Conceived during the 8-bit years, when Tetris had recently exploded on the scene, Dr. Mario stood out for its peculiarities. In the first proper 3DS installment in the series, Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure, the formula is tweaked ever so slightly, providing you with something new to try even if you spent far too many hours playing the original version on the NES or the bite-sized chunks that appeared more recently in the NES Remix series.
Despite the adjustments, the core design remains intact. You still move colored pills as they fall into the play area, flipping them around in an effort to line up four or more pill segments and viruses of the same color. Find success, and maladies and medicine disappear, leaving you with more room to maneuver. You win when all the nasty bugs are gone, or you lose if the rising wall reaches the top of the screen.
The "Miracle Cure" part of the game refers to special new power-ups that now appear by default. These drop periodically once you fill up a meter that rests alongside the play area. There are four types. One variety looks like a bomb and vaporizes anything within range once it lands. Another is V-shaped. If you match it with several pills or viruses of the same color, everything on the screen that matches that hue will vanish. A circular capsule with a “C” engraved on it wipes out all its brethren but leaves the viruses in play. Finally, arrow formations eliminate all objects in a horizontal row, a vertical column, or a cross pattern.
Nowhere are the miraculous power-ups featured more prominently than in the game's new mode, Miracle Cure Laboratory. It presents 50 puzzles that ease players into the game's design, and you can use the tutorial option if you need more assistance. The available stages are quite fun, particularly because some of them force you to play in ways you otherwise might not try. A few of the challenges are genuinely puzzling, relying on more than just twitch reflexes as you get rid of virus clusters. For example, you might need to stack pills in a column so they reach the same elevation as a series of vertical arrows and then drop a horizontal arrow in place so it eliminates and activates those other arrows. It's a shame there aren't more puzzles available, though. Even a middling Dr. Mario player probably won't require more than 3 or 4 hours to conquer them all, which just doesn't feel like enough when every other mode borrows so heavily from past house calls.
The game's title doesn't make it obvious, but Mario isn't the only physician on the scene. Luigi also returns for an encore performance, following his 2013 starring turn in Dr. Luigi on Wii U. The lankier brother throws pills that are stuck together in L-shaped formations. Dealing with them requires a different sort of planning because the combos that are a good idea when Mario hands out doses are now practically required. If you can’t think a few steps ahead, you're in for a bit of trouble. It's fun for a few rounds, but also exasperating compared to Mario's more conventional treatment, because a run of unhelpful pills turns into a disaster twice as quickly.
Outside the Miracle Cure Laboratory mode waits the Custom Clinic, which you can configure as you see fit. Here, you can choose between Mario and Luigi, depending on which pill formations sound the most interesting at the time. Then you can either compete against an AI opponent or a wall of viruses that slowly rises as you place pieces. If you go with the former option, things can get frustrating if you don’t play quickly. When the AI makes a lot of matches in short order, you must deal with handicaps. Blocks suddenly might refuse to turn, or pressing left on the d-pad might make a block move in the opposite direction. Such effects only last a short while, but they make things difficult in a way that extra debris does not. That's not necessarily an improvement, but at least it's different.
If you're looking to enjoy an experience that precisely matches the old NES game, you're out of luck. The Custom Clinic is as close as you'll get, but there are some differences. You no longer have the option to start with only a few pills and then advance from stage to stage, which at one time was standard in a number of Nintendo's puzzle games. If that's how you want to play, you're better off turning to Dr. Mario on the Virtual Console.
Much like Luigi and his wonky capsules, the Virus Buster mode appeared previously in Dr. Luigi. In this mode, the player holds the 3DS sideways and uses a stylus to manipulate pills instead of the d-pad and face buttons. The action's pace slows substantially here, and it needed to. Flipping and dropping pills with a stylus doesn't feel nearly as intuitive because it's easy to accidentally flip a pill when you intended to drag and drop it. That kind of mistake can ruin your whole game if you aren't allowed at least a split-second to recover. The slower pace also allows multiple pills to eventually start dropping at once. You can move them around in any order you like or even grab falling debris to set up combos on the fly. It's an interesting switch from the norm, and things get fairly frantic on the higher settings, though Virus Buster doesn't lend itself to lengthy sessions in the way that classic Dr. Mario modes do.
Multiplayer modes make up for most of the ancillary modes' shortcomings, at least, and could go a long way toward keeping Miracle Cure in heavy rotation if you have interested friends. You can play locally with a buddy (Download Play is offered in the event he or she hasn't purchased the game and doesn't mind you choosing the rules that govern play), or you can battle on the Nintendo Network. In either case, you have your choice of doctor, and Miracle Cures can be disabled if you prefer, though the lack of stage progression keeps this option from allowing a proper replica of the original Dr. Mario. When you play online, rankings are tracked for each different setup, which should keep things competitive if enough people play. Currently, though, the online scene is rather barren.
Considering how long Dr. Mario has been around, the modifications here serve as a pleasant surprise and manage to inject a fresh element into a puzzling experience that is by now a bit long in the tooth. Even without the new content, Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure is a worthwhile addition to the serious puzzle fan's gaming library. It just doesn't offer enough that's new compared to Dr. Luigi to warrant a glowing recommendation if you already invested in that other recent release.
Destiny: Why Bungie’s MMO Shooter Is So Successful
With interest in Bungie's online first-person shooter still on the rise, Destiny's momentum is more comparable to an MMO than your usual shooter. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg attributes this ongoing success to the strong cadence of carefully curated add-on content -- which is consciously different than that of Call of Duty -- that actively improves Destiny.
"A game like this requires a steady stream of content to keep people engaged and that’s core to this idea," Hirshberg told IGN at E3 2015. "That's what's been successful in keeping people engaged so far. We’ve had the right cadence to keep the game fresh and provide new challenges and new rewards. So that’s definitely the strategy."
Donald Trump Fired by NBC
NBC announced today it is "ending its business relationship" with Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump due to derogatory statements made by the 2016 presidential candidate.
According to a statement released by the NBC, Trump will no longer be involved with The Apprentice, and the network will no longer air the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants. Celebrity Apprentice, however, will move forward without Trump, since the reality show is licensed from producer Mark Burnett’s United Artists Media Group. You can read the statement in its entirety below:
"At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values. Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump. To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBC and Trump, will no longer air on NBC. In addition, as Mr. Trump has already indicated, he will not be participating in “The Apprentice” on NBC. “Celebrity Apprentice” is licensed from Mark Burnett’s United Artists Media Group and that relationship will continue."
Penny Dreadful’s Season 2 Finale is This Week’s TV Highlight
Despite this being one of the lighter debut weeks of the summertime TV season, it's quite horrific. Meaning, one would think we were in the middle of October the way primetime's filling up with horror monsters and madmen.
Our TV pick for this week is Penny Dreadful's Season 2 finale, "And They Were Enemies," which will pick things up right were we left off this past Sunday - with our heroes trapped within the dark confines of Evelyn's Poole's haunted mansion while Dorian Gray and Lily Frankenstein delve further into their newfound bloody, demented coupling. She gets turned on by eviscerating men and he - well- he can take an evisceration.