Bones Renewed for Season 11
FOX has given the greenlight to Bones for Season 11, renewing the show nearly last minute, as we go into Upfronts next week and all of the broadcast networks announce their new schedules for the 2015-2016 season. Bones' return was considered a near-lock, with the only major holdup involving the need to sign stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz to new contracts for the series.
While those deals have been made, there will be a change behind-the-scenes, as longtime showrunner Stephen Nathan has decided to leave the series. Bones executive producer Jonathan Collier and co-executive producer Michael Peterson will take his place next season, reports EW.
App Store Update: May 8
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.
Doodle Tanks – ($1.99)
The creators of Doodle God, Doodle Devil and Doodle Kingdom and back with even more doodlin', this time tasking you with the creation of tanks.
Star Wars Battlefront Ditches Ironsight Aiming
Fans who were expecting Star Wars: Battlefront to reboot the popular shooter series with all the trappings of its modern cousins might be in for a surprise, as DICE Executive Producer Patrick Bach has revealed the game won't include some familiar features like aiming down sights, squads, and classes.
"There are no ironsights in Star Wars, on the ordinary blasters," Bach said in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine. "You have scopes on some rifles, but there are no ironsights." This means players will be firing from the hip like real Stormtroopers unless they have a scoped weapon. It's easy enough to remember games before ironsight aiming, but these days it's hard to imagine an online shooter without squads.
iCEnhancer Graphics Mod Coming to GTA 5
If you played Grand Theft Auto 4 on PC, you probably remember the wonders that the iCEnhancer graphics mod did for the look and feel of Liberty City a few years ago.
Now, Grand Theft Auto 5 is getting its own version of the iCEnhancer mod, as you can see on its official Facebook page.
Two pre-alpha videos of the mod in progress, plus a Facebook post, detail some early effects, including improved water reflection, color changes, and reduced fog.
FIFA 15 Joins the EA Access Vault
FIFA 15 has been added to the EA Access Vault, joining EA's other 2014 sports games Madden NFL 15, NHL 15, NBA Live 15, and EA Sports UFC.
Subscribers now have access to eleven games in total, including Battlefield 4, Need for Speed Rivals, Peggle 2, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, Madden NFL 25, FIFA 14, and the five games listed above.
EA Access can be purchased for $5 USD/month or $30 USD/year. The service offers subscribers access to every game in the Vault on Xbox One, as well as exclusive game demos and discounts on EA games through the Xbox Store.
For more on EA's latest soccer sim, check out IGN's FIFA 15 review, which called it "one of the most impressively comprehensive sport simulations around."
Tom Hardy Planning a DC Comics… Something
After dropping out of DC Comics' upcoming Suicide Squad film due to a scheduling conflict, Tom Hardy (who previously played DC's Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) has revealed he's working on a different project within the DC Universe.
It's not entirely clear what the project is, or which DC property the project is based on. Hardy himself was rather vague while recently discussing the project with with Screen Crush. Here's what the actor had to say:
"It contains elements of all kinds of stuff. From Ocean's Eleven, to Batman, you can get all the wrappers out and it would be a big, really cool, technicolor Pulp Fiction. It's a psychological f***fest, it's absolutely awesome. It's as if you would take
Sim City Creator Wants Your Life to be a Graphic Novel
Sim City creator Will Wright has released Thred, a platform for iOS which is a blend of Facebook and Snapchat.
The app is described as a toolkit to share ideas: Take a picture, apply stickers, borders, or captions, and create a virtual moment. Speaking with Polygon, Wright compares these moments with creating a graphic novel, albeit one where the pages are someone’s life.
"My initial conception was to take the data we have about you and start turning your life it into a graphic novel," says Wright. "How do we take these different sources of data about you and turn it into a visual story or visual record?"
The concept, in a nutshell, is to create a platform more personal, more specific to the user’s life.
Rosario Dawson Returns for Daredevil: Season 2
Rosario Dawson will officially be returning to Hell's Kitchen for Daredevil's second season, Marvel announced today.
Dawson will reprise her role as Claire Temple, Matt Murdock's love interest/personal nurse. The actress' new deal will also allow her to appear in any of Marvel's other upcoming Netflix series. In the comics, Claire Temple was originally a love interest of Luke Cage's, though the MCU version has been changed and merged with another Marvel character, Night Nurse, who helped treat wounded superheroes.
Tomorrowland: Check Out These 2 Mondo Posters
We have two pieces of exclusive Mondo artwork for you today from the upcoming Disney sci-fi adventure film Tomorrowland, starring George Clooney and directed by The Incredibles' Brad Bird.
Both posters below are by artist Kevin Tong; click on the images for higher-res versions:
Artist: Kevin Tong; Size: 24" x 36"; Edition of 375
Dark Souls 2 Weapon-Breaking Bug Finally Fixed
Of all the horrors skulking around Dark Souls II and the newly released console edition, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, the worst, most hideous might have been the bug that devastated weapon durability. Fortunately, From Software has finally, officially slain that particular issue.
The patch addressing this bug, announced late last month, applies to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam for DirectX 9 and 11 users affected. Specifically, the patch notes state:
"Fixed issue whereby weapon durability was decreased drastically when used on enemy corpses, friendly characters, etc. (Especially apparent for users running the game at 60 fps as the durability decrease rate was linked to the frame rate)."