James McAvoy Goes Bald for X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Apocalypse director Bryan Singer revealed via social media today that James McAvoy's Professor X has finally lost his hair.
Singer posted this photo to his Instagram account showing McAvoy getting his head shaved accompanied by the caption: "#Xavier reborn (in process)."
No word yet on whether McAvoy's Charles Xavier lost his hair naturally or whether it was the result of some other means. He's had hair for the past two X-Men films.
X-Men: Apocalypse is now filming in Montreal. The 1980s-set movie also stars Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Sophie Turner, The Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Olivia Munn, Evan Peters, Lucas Till, Ben Hardy and Oscar Isaac.
Undateable Renewed; Moving to Weekly Live Episodes
Undateable has been renewed by NBC for Season 3, which is pretty notable for a couple of reasons. First off, this is the first NBC comedy to make it to a third season since Community - which obviously reflects on just how much trouble the network has had in this regard in recent years. And more importantly, when the show returns, it will do so with a season comprised entirely of live episodes.
NBC Renews The Night Shift; Orders Two New Series
Everyone's favorite crazy doctor who rides a motorcycle in a hospital will be back, as NBC has renewed The Night Shift! Okay, okay, none of the doctors on The Night Shift ride their motorcycle inside a hospital, but The Night Shift gave us perhaps the greatest promo photo ever and any chance to use it is a good one. See?
Team Night Shift.
The first season of The Night Shift was a solid success for NBC when it aired in the summer last year, but it faltered a bit when put in the main TV season for Season 2. It remains to be seen where NBC will schedule Season 3.
Minority Report and DC Comics’ Lucifer TV Series Greenlit
FOX have given the greenlight to two big genre series, officially ordering both Minority Report and Lucifer for next season. EW reported the pick up of both series, which occurred Friday night - a very late decision, given FOX are presenting their new lineup Monday at the Upfronts.
Minority Report is based on the Steven Spielberg film of the same name, which starred Tom Cruise. Envisioned as a continuation of that film's storyline, the series -- which counts Spielberg among the executive producers -- picks up ten years, "after the end of Precrime in DC when one of the three Precogs (Stark Sands) struggles to lead a normal human life, but remains haunted by visions the future, when he meets a detective haunted by her past (Meagan Good) who just may help him find a purpose to his gift." Max Borenstein (Godzilla) wrote the pilot.
Samsung and Oculus’ Latest Collaboration Is the Strongest Case for Mobile VR Yet
Less than six months after the release of the Gear VR “Innovator Edition” headset, Samsung and Oculus are iterating on their mobile virtual-reality efforts with the Samsung Gear VR for Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, which went on sale online today. We got a hands-on with it earlier this week, and based on our short time with it, it’s clear that while it’s not a dramatically different piece of hardware, Samsung has been listening closely to consumer feedback.
In terms of design, the Gear VR for S6’s shape has been tweaked some. The back straps have been angled down a bit more, the touch pad has been recessed so you can feel its borders more easily, and the back button moved to a centered position above the touch pad. The focus dial now has a wider range of diopter adjustment as well (all the way to -9). These changes are intended to make it more comfortable and easier to use the headset, but I still noticed the weight of the phone (and its battery) at the front, and I still couldn’t quite get the focus just right for my eyes. The view was clear, but always felt ever so slightly off.
Why the End of the Marvel Universe Wasn’t the Biggest Surprise of Secret Wars
This week’s Secret Wars #1 by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic showed the Marvel multiverse -- aka all of existence -- being destroyed, but believe it or not, that’s not the most surprising thing about it. The most shocking thing is that Marvel decided to make it so their big summer event has three years of convoluted backstory as a barrier to entry.
Granted, you don’t have to read everything that came before in order to buy Secret Wars -- a fact that Marvel is no doubt banking on -- but it does seem strange for such a hyped event to have an extraordinarily high fence around it. I’ve tried to explain the nuances of the lead-in story to several people, but they all got that confused look in their eyes once I started talking about Builders and Mapmakers and World Incursions -- and that’s before I even got to Rabum Alal! That the issue #1 recap page has a whopping 58 characters on it reinforces the idea that there will be a lot going on in Secret Wars.
Kerbal Space Program Review
Two astronauts are dead. And they represent one of my greatest achievements in a video game.
Of course it's terrible that the two Kerbals--an entire species of little green alien men who feel like an unholy combination of the Minions from Despicable Me and the Irken race from Invader Zim--are dead. I managed to keep them alive through disaster after disaster, spending hours ensuring to their survival in the cold black of space. Test missions were flown; probes collected scientific data; rockets would refuse to leave the ground and would explode or launch and then immediately tip over because the balance was wrong. These two died based on the collective knowledge of a thousand failures. And it was beautiful because they died crashing into the Moon.
Sorry, the Mun.
It doesn't really cover it to say that Kerbal Space Program is a space sim. For one thing, no matter how serious things get, you're still playing in a world of little green cartoons, which the game never really reconciles with its overwhelming physical realism the further along you go. But for all the things that feel brain-bending and sciencey, there's still a mild sense of approachability, like the fact that trying to plot a flight path that puts you in orbit with a different planet is essentially a really touchy and precise game of Bop It. The game surpasses that categorization because of that sense of constant discovery and innovation. Making a mistake never felt like a punishment, as if the game had placed an insurmountable obstacle in front of me and laughed as I flailed wildly at it. It felt like growth. Failure is a teacher here, one that challenges you and doesn't compromise by handing you all the answers. But it is most certainly a teacher that wants nothing more than for you to find enlightenment.
As such, trying to nutshell Kerbal Space Program isn't a matter of straightforward "You win if you get here" goals. As far as I can tell, the game never stops, and an entire solar system waits out there to be explored. What KSP values above all is perseverance. Although all your scientists and pilots are little green men, the game is intrinsically human. You advance simply by being bold enough to try reaching a little higher, making your species' sphere of influence just a little larger with every attempt. If you manage to break the world's speed record, you're ready to try reaching the upper atmosphere and recording how the air is up there. If you get there, then maybe we can put a satellite even further. If the satellite can get up there, maybe an astronaut can. If we can reach space, we can reach our closest planetary neighbor. All that matters is that the experience is never wasted. Whether you transmit the knowledge using an antenna you attached to your spacecraft or you manage to land safely and the data can be recovered manually, Mission Control receives the experience, shown under a blanket stat of "Science" in-game. If the mission crashes and burns horribly, it is worthwhile as long as you recognize why.
Unsurprisingly, most of your time in-game is spent in the spaceport on a constant trial-and-error mode trying to build a craft that can do exactly what's required for the mission at hand. The game isn't going to blow your mind visually or aurally--land, sea, space are all relatively textureless and sparse, even with all the specs cranked up, and the sounds are about the same, with the soundtrack topping out at "playfully quirky" instead of awe-inspiring. All the horsepower has gone into making the fine kinetic details almost terrifyingly intricate. Virtually every aspect of a spaceship's design is accounted for here, with literally hundreds of design options and moving parts to assemble--from fuel tanks and rockets to the heat shields for re-entry and the decoupling devices for boosters. And you’d better take all of it into consideration or sure as you're born, it will crash and burn before you even see the stars. It's daunting, but starting small and adding new tech onto successful structures is where joy is found. The actual crafting process is dirt simple, however, because every part is basically attached to your craft like Legos. There's a slew of fine-tuning tools available for the more meticulous player, but it takes a long time before they become necessary evils.
Kerbal Space Program offers straightforward Easy-to-Hard difficulty settings, but in reality, the real difficulty setting is almost allegorical. The Sandbox mode opens up every available part in the game so you can just fool around and make the most elaborate, insane designs imaginable. The Science mode allows you to earn points for every new milestone achievement; you can spend those points on the Research and Development skill tree, which is where you earn bigger and better parts to use. The Career mode is a full-blown space program experience where money is, in fact, an object and good public opinion, public donations, government contracts, and farmed-out tech are required to before you can even afford to send astronauts on a flight. This is the most "gamey" it gets, with contracts representing clearly defined missions you can perform to get the most out of every flight. It's slow going, but it’s possibly the most satisfying because every new advancement is earned.
Both the Science and Sandbox modes feature pre-made spacecraft you can take out into the final frontier, but while it is a huge relief to not have to put in the clearly elaborate wrench time to build anything this complex, there's something a little hollow about just having these accomplishments tossed at you instead of reaching them yourself. The game almost makes up for this because even with a few extensive tutorials tossed in, getting a ship to the Mun involves a hundred tiny decisions you won't realize you’re making because you don’t have to make them time and time again. The stages of every launch have to be programmed in, sufficient fuel has to be stocked to make it where you're going and back, and ship stability has to be minded (even with the SAS feature, which is there for the express purpose of keeping your ship in balance). The blue navigation ball at the bottom of your screen is your best friend in the world, and ignoring it is a fool's act. Career mode is harder yet infinitely more satisfying when you find success. Even when you forge the most ridiculous-looking rocket, it’s a wonder of engineering as long as it breaches Kerbal's atmosphere and doesn't explode. True human achievement, in life as in this game, works at a snail's pace. It can't be given.
Once you have your spacecraft, the real struggle begins. And your opponent is gravity.
Gravity keeps your craft from lifting off when you've loaded it down with too much rocket fuel. It tilts your ship as it takes off if the thrust is even a tiny angle off-kilter. You fight it in the upper atmosphere as you try to put spacecraft in orbit instead of watching them fall helplessly back to the ground. You will charge against it as you try to create a new orbital path to get to a new planet, and all the tutorials do is teach you the basic principles. They don't tell you what parts you need to make these things any easier in practice (in case you haven't figured it out, the tutorials are kinda useless).
You advance simply by being bold enough to try reaching a little higher, making your species' sphere of influence just a little larger with every attempt.
But this is simply nature in action. Unlike, say, Surgeon Simulator or one of the new breed of indie titles with sloppy, inebriate physics, KSP's natural laws feel like a natural part of the universe’s uncaring nature instead of the developer’s attempt to stymie progress. It's up to you to use the tech at your disposal to break nature's shackles and crack the science necessary. This is often an arduous, aggravating process, where hours slip away as you try to find the one flaw in an insanely elaborate series of maneuvers that’s causing your missions to fail. The tiny moments when something clicks into place and one more of those chains breaks are the most breathtaking and gratifying of all. Once again, there's still even further you can go.
Kerbal Space Program was a beta release for years before this, its "final" version. Funny enough, even after all that time, bugs are still scattered throughout, such as ships that are no longer visible, orbital paths turning twitchy and changing randomly even as your ship follows the one you set, and button presses not registering as you float out of your ship . But these are small compared to what feels like the mass achievements of thousands of minds bringing their expertise to the table through the hundreds of tweaks done over the years to the clearly passionate, lovingly crafted mods, which are easily accessible and promoted in-game. Even NASA's gotten in on it with a few of their own hypothetical scenarios pre-loaded in the game from the get-go. On the micro and macro levels, Kerbal Space Program's greatest magic trick is giving the player a feeling of togetherness, that we all have the same curiosity required to transcend our limitations and that regardless of how Herculean the stakes, the constant idea is always "it can be done."
You will fail at this game. It will demoralize you and it will stress you out, but, more often than not, it will soothe, quiet, and inspire you. Innovative muscles will be stretched here that aren't stretched very often by games, and more complex moments require a sort of zen beyond being simply twitch-ready for a surprise attack. Even failure imparts a lesson. No matter how big or small the achievement, anything else that can be done is limited only by your imagination. Even with its cartoonish humor and quirks, Kerbal Space Program has an almost sacred respect for the tiny miracles involved in space travel, and even at its most difficult, it deserves that respect in return.
Destiny: Will House of Wolves Disappoint?
This week the group is back. Join Destin Legarie, Jose Otero and Fran Mirabella as they talk about House of Wolves and ask some tough questions. Listen or watch to find out what they think
Please let us know what you think of the show in the comments or email us at the address below. Android users, Feedburner is the way you can get the show in audio form. Also you can join our Facebook Group here! Good Luck!
Several George Lucas’ Ideas, Characters Jettisoned for Star Wars: The Force Awakens
George Lucas might not be involved with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but that doesn't mean the original Star Wars creator hadn't previously sketched out some ideas for the sequels.
According to Vanity Fair (via The Atlantic), Lucas already had a vision for episode VII, VIII, IX by the time he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. The plans had even gone far enough that the director approached Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill about being involved in the project. But Disney and executive producer Kathleen Kennedy scrapped most of Lucas's ideas once they acquired the franchise.
SHIELD’s Adrianne Palicki On Mockingbird’s MCU Role
We've got another exclusive "It's All Connected" video for you from Marvel. This time Marvel TV boss Jeph Loeb sits with Adrianne Palicki to talk about Agent Bobbi Morse's layered, duplicitous role in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Season 2. And specifically how the events in Captain America: The Winter Solider informed the introduction of her character.
Check it out below!
IGN will be releasing a new "It's All Connected" video for the next few days, showcasing Loeb and S.H.I.E.L.D. stars chatting about how the ABC series plays into the larger Marvel picture.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.