Sneak Peak at Wonder Woman’s Cape & Gauntlets
A handful of new images alleging to be Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice concept art have surfaced online, providing an early look at Wonder Woman's cape and gauntlets.
The pictures, which come courtesy of former Latino-Review writer Umberto Gonzalez (aka El Mayimbe), were posted on his Instagram account. Check out Wonder Woman's gauntlets below.
Ubisoft Discusses Assassin’s Creed Unity’s Mistakes
Assassin's Creed Unity wasn't the most well received entry in Ubisoft's flagship series. And in a video released today, the developer discussed how 2014's installment became a learning experience for the team.
In IGN's Assassin's Creed Unity review, we thought the Parisian setting was gorgeous, and acknowledged the plethora of tasks to complete –– but there just wasn't much reason to actually complete them. The protagonist Arno struck us as similarly lacking in character, and in the weeks following Unity's release, the game was plagued with a host of online problems and dilemmas.
Behold a 10K-Piece LEGO Millennium Falcon
A group of enterprising fans has made an incredibly detailed LEGO replica of the iconic Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
The LEGO building group Titans Creations made this 10,000 piece Falcon, complete with multiple scenes from the movies. Inside you can find Luke training with his lightsaber, C-3PO and R2-D2 around the Holochess table, Han and Chewie at the cockpit, and even a cross-section of the various rats-nest wiring that keeps the bucket of bolts running.
/Film reports that the model was made for the Star Wars Day event for Legoland Malaysia on May 4. It measures 110 cm by 85 cm, and it took six builders the span of two months to plan and build it. By comparison, the largest official LEGO version of the Falcon is only around 5,000 pieces, and is smaller by about one-third. That model cost $500 at release, and now usually costs much more for collectors.
Gotham: Morena Baccarin Becoming Series Regular for S2
Actress Morena Baccarin will return and become a series regular during the second season of Gotham.
Portraying Dr. Leslie Thompkins, Baccarin originally joined Gotham on Fox in January. According to TVLine, Baccarin's recurring role deal included a series-regular option for the sophomore season, which has now been exercised.
Hathaway Does “Godzilla Meets Being John Malkovich”
The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar actress Anne Hathaway will star in Colossal, a new film described as "Transformers versus Adaptation and Godzilla meets Being John Malkovich."
Hathaway will play a rather ordinary woman named Gloria, who has lost both her job and fiancé. Here's a more detailed description of the film, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter:
"But when news reports surface that a giant lizard is destroying the city of Tokyo, Gloria gradually comes to realize that she is strangely connected to these far-off events via the power of her mind. In order to prevent further destruction, Gloria needs to determine why her seemingly insignificant existence has such a colossal effect on the fate of the world."
Joker: A Visual History
Joaquin Phoenix may be the third Joker in a live-action movie over the past 11 years, but the fact is there have been a ton of variations on the Joker over the years.
Ever since he first made his way to comic book pages in 1940's Batman #1, Joker has become one of the most iconic villains in history. Even if you've never seen a Batman movie or read a comic, you probably know who Joker is.
It'd take a village to round up EVERY appearance of Joker from over the decades as thousands of artists have given their take on the Clown Prince of Crime, but IGN has assembled 35 of the most noteworthy versions of the character from the classic era to today. From LEGOs to video games to anime and fan films, here is a visual evolution of the Joker:
Geoff Johns Explains Twists on Riddler, Two-Face & Killer Croc
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Batman: Earth One, Vol. 2!
Last week, we talked to writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank about their newly released Batman: Earth One graphic novel, the second volume of their realistic, grounded Batman story. During the interview, we entered spoiler territory when discussing the twists on iconic villains Riddler, Killer Croc, and Two-Face, so we decided to hold that part of the discussion so people could have a chance to read the story.
Project CARS Review
Project CARS doesn’t have any unlockables. You don’t amass a fleet of high-performance vehicles. You don’t buy any new drivetrains or earn prototype engines. You can choose to work your way through a long career of tiered racing events, but even this is optional. You can just as easily start at the highest racing class, with the best cars, facing the toughest competition. Project CARS doesn’t deliver a fantasy of accumulation and progress. What it does deliver is a simulation of racing as tense as it is deep.
This simulation is rolled out across four modes. The Solo Race and Online modes let you build any race you’d like from the set of cars, tracks, motorsport restrictions, realism settings, and weather conditions available. While the range of vehicle types is wide, there are some notable absences: if you’re desperate to drive a Ferrari, Porsche, or Honda, for instance, Project CARS isn’t going to meet that need. But the cars that are available look appropriately lustrous, and learning each vehicle’s intricacies offers a singular pleasure. Holding the reins of a growling Ford Mustang is wildly different from zipping around the track in a little superkart.
Career mode puts you in the role of a driver as he or she moves from one tier to another, signing contracts with new teams, earning new sponsorships, and going after self-chosen goals and achievements. A range of motorsports is available, with the low tiers devoted to karts, the middle tiers offering some open-wheel races and GT events, and the top tiers introducing prototype racing series. It’s worth restating that this is not a mode about collecting new cars, earning money, or installing fancy new parts. Developer Slightly Mad Studios has instead built a career mode that effectively shuttles you from one race to another, with each event asking you to tackle a new challenge custom-built from the game’s building blocks.
The final mode is the Driver Network, which offers you the chance to compete against other players in an asynchronous time trial challenge. Everyone takes to the same track in the same car and tries to set the top time. At first, this mode was incredibly frustrating. The best players all had times that were much faster than mine, and I couldn’t quite work out why. In trying to figure that out, I realized what differentiates Project CARS from its competitors: it opens up all the options from the beginning, gives you as much time as you need, and then asks you to drive, tinker, and repeat until you understand a race, not until you win it but until you understand it.
During the first few of hours of play, I didn’t “get” this part of Project CARS. I’d slam on the gas down the straightaways, ease into the turns, and follow the racing line, and when my tires lost their grip and my car went spinning off toward the barricades, I’d pause the game and hit restart. Playing like this, Project CARS felt like any other realistic racing game from the past decade but a whole lot prettier (and without any of the familiar progression hooks). But then I committed to playing without restarting, and the whole experience transformed. Suddenly, I was spending time in the practice sessions before a race, learning the ins and outs of the turns, and trying to figure out how to tinker with my car’s settings to adjust to the particularities of the track. And I found myself running a few more laps during the pre-race qualification because every little advantage meant that much more.
Committing to the game this way brought its priorities into focus. I’d thought that the time-of-day and weather systems were superficial showcases. I assumed that the god-rays piercing through the trees and the sheets of rain in the night just existed to look pretty. But a sudden downpour halfway through a 30-minute race takes on a whole new character when you’ve spent the previous 45 minutes tuning your car and deciphering a track’s turns. What was once a little inconvenience was now a catastrophe that needed to be managed. I started paying attention to the little weather forecast at the top of the screen before a race: “Cloudy... Hmm… Hmmmmmm.”
Project CARS doesn’t deliver a fantasy of accumulation and progress. What it does deliver is a simulation of racing as tense as it is deep.
So why were the folks who topped the rankings so much better than me? Not only because they were better drivers, but because they understood how to tune their cars to better fit the race’s track and conditions. There are dozens of characteristics for you to learn about, adjust, and test out: change how open your radiator is, modify your gear timing, increase or reduce tire pressure, and even manage your fuel load. Each of these has some effect on your driving, and if you really hope to compete, you can’t take a “one size fits all” approach. You need to learn what all of these options mean.
Unfortunately, unless you already know the ins-and-outs of car tuning, this means that you’ll need to seek help outside the game. The bottom of the tuning screen says that you can “...troubleshoot issues by asking your engineer,” but there’s not actually a way to do that in the game. Short descriptions of the tuning options give you a broad idea, but for the specifics, you’ll need to turn to fan-made guides and tutorial videos. This is a problem for Project CARS because it makes approaching the game on its own terms that much harder. Even this one hurdle had me retreating to the way I played before: no tuning, no learning, just brute force and quick restarts.
It didn’t help that the AI racers in the Career and Solo modes were so inconsistent. With the default difficulty setting, the other drivers varied between smartly aggressive and totally passive. Why should I spend an hour learning how to master the line at the Sonoma Raceway if I can win by a margin of 12 seconds even when I don’t put in time studying the track? Couple this with a nasty bug that would randomly switch me from first to last place, and the whole experience went from meditative to monotonous. (I hit that bug four times in 15 hours of play, but even that is too many).
The multiplayer modes sidestep the problem of the unpredictable AI, and it’s in Online competition that Project CARS shines brightest (which makes it a shame that the North American multiplayer community is as small as it is.) Online, it all comes together: it’s the last lap, and you’re fighting for space against a group of 10 other real-life players. You pull ahead, and suddenly you’re neck and neck for first place going into the final straightaway. You notice it before your rival does: his car just isn’t keeping up with yours. After the race is over and everyone is congratulating everyone else on a good race, your rival says something like, “Man, I don’t know what happened there. It was like my car just gave out on me.” And you can’t be sure, but you think that you know it’s because of how much fuel was left in the tank. You’d tested that during the practice session, and that work paid off.
That’s Project CARS at its best. No experience points. No parts to buy. No cars to add to your collection. The audacious decision to offer everything up front informs the rest of Project CARS’s design, making it distinct (and sometimes frustrating). Other games in the genre work like Skinner boxes, offering rewards according to a special schedule designed to keep you hooked. These games offer the fantasy of plodding, constant accumulation or low-stakes (if high-speed) action. Project CARS offers a different fantasy, one that’s a little less attractive and a bit harder to enjoy: the fantasy of learning how to do something difficult.
Prey 2 Developer Working on New Game for Shinra
Prey 2 developer Human Head Studios is developing a new game with Square Enix's cloud gaming company, Shinra Technologies.
While details on the project are scarce at this time, Human Head co-founder and creative director Ted Halsted noted the team's passion for multiplayer, and said he believes working with Shinra will help bring the studio's vision for its next game to life. More information on the project will be revealed next month at E3.
Human Head is the third developer to partner with Shinra. Republique developer Camouflaj and Blacklight: Retribution developer Hardsuit Labs previously announced partnerships with the cloud gaming company. Each of their games will also be shown at this year's E3.
App Store Update: May 12
Every day hundreds of new apps make their debut on the App Store, and hundreds more are updated or reduced in price. We have sifted through the noise and highlighted those select few that might be worth your attention.
Note: The prices and deals compiled below are accurate at the time we published this story, but all are subject to change.
Alphadia Genesis 2 – ($4.99 Launch Sale, Normally to be $9.99)
Now here's something new and unexpected! Kemco and Kotobuki Solutions deliver new JRPGs into the App Store every few weeks, but I believe this is the first time they've ever done a direct sequel to one of their past releases. If you played the first Alphadia Genesis, take a look!