Monthly Archives: April 2017
Cars 3: Driven to Win Release Date Revealed
Cars 3: Driven to Win releases June 13, the same day as the upcoming Pixar movie upon which it's based.
Cars 3: Driven to Win picks up after the movie's "final big race," extending the story and taking players "through a high-speed competition." There are over 20 customizable characters from the Cars franchise, as well as "iconic settings" like Radiator Springs and the Florida International Speedway.
Local, split-screen multiplayer is also part of the upcoming game, so players can cooperate or compete "at home together."
Cars 3 is developed by Avalanche Software, the developer behind the Disney Infinity series. When Disney announced it would no longer self-publish games, some members of the studio joined castAR, a "mixed-reality entertainment" studio.
Blizzard Wins Lawsuit Against Cheat Making Company
Blizzard Entertainment has been awarded $8.5 million in damages after winning a copyright infringement case against German company, Bossland.
As reported by Torrent Freak, Blizzard has successfully sued the cheat-making company for distributing cheats and bots for several of their games.
The lawsuit began in July last year and the court has now agreed with Blizzard's claims that Bossland is responsible for causing detriment to the company by creating and distributing hacks designed for their games.
Daily Deals: Mass Effect: Andromeda Competition, Overwatch, EA Access
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IGN have teamed up with SCDKey.com to offer readers a chance to win a Mass Effect: Andromeda (PC) key! This competition will run until Thursday 6th April at 1PM. See Terms and Conditions here.
Overwatch Director Reveals Rejected “Cat in a Jetpack” Hero
Overwatch features a talking scientist gorilla, but apparently another suggested hero design was a step too far - a "cat in a jetpack".
In an entertaining interview with Gamespot, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan spilled the beans on the rejected hero from the game's development:
"We had done a lot of concepting
There was this one hero that was a huge internal debate on the team because we just loved it so much but it didn't make it. It was this jetpack and it had this cat that laid in it, like a cat does.
"Then every once in a while it would paw at the controls. It was a cat in a jetpack. That was one of those moments that helped define Overwatch. We just went, 'Yeah that's probably too far.' But yes. We had a cat hero."
Stories for 14 More Transformers Films Already Written
It seems Transformers: Bumblebee isn't the only spin-off planned in the blockbuster action series - producer-director Michael Bay has said there are 14 more Transformers movie stories already written.
When asked by MTV if he could speak to any other spin-offs in the works, Bay revealed just how much more we could see - and seemingly marked himself as interested in directing at least one more film in the franchise:
"There are 14 stories written, and there's good stuff. I would like to do one of them, though."
Bay's made something of a habit of saying that each Transformers film will be his last - he said the same of the upcoming The Last Knight in February - and it seems he might have reconsidered his decision once again.
Dumbo: Michael Keaton, Tim Burton Could Reunite After 25 Years
Batman himself (or at least a Batman himself), Michael Keaton is in talks to star in Tim Burton's upcoming live-action Dumbo remake.
Variety reports Keaton is up for the main villain role in the film. The story centers around an ostracized baby circus elephant - Dumbo - with Keaton potentially playing the owner of the circus who exploits the elephant and his mother. The character acquires the circus from the ringmaster, played by Danny DeVito, who recently joined the film.
Diablo 3 and the Glorious Return of the Necromancer
“There’s a certain appeal for a lot of people in playing the anti-hero,” says Diablo III Lead VFX Artist Julian Love. “And that’s what the Necromancer represents, the darkest of the classes in that world, but one that is also doing good everywhere they go. There’s a kind of juxtaposition between good and evil, and from there a grey line where the Necromancer lives.” The Necromancer is a Diablo II icon, and now, five years after initial release and three years since the excellent Reaper of Souls expansion, it’s coming to Diablo III.
Why now? Why not. After all, Blizzard is still supporting Diablo III with new content and regular updates. Even so, a new character class is a big deal. It requires not only the creation of a new and deep subset of skill and items, but also game design that plays nicely with everything else already in the game. Years of wonderful, and inventive stuff. The Necromancer actually comes to us from the same creative and experimental side of the Diablo team that also brought us some of the crazier things in the game, like the set bonus that activates a high powered meteor shower spell every eight seconds for each and every type of elemental skill you use.
Opinion: Diversity Isn’t the Problem at Marvel
From a PR standpoint, Marvel didn't have a particularly good weekend. The company held a retailer summit last Friday to discuss their shifting publishing strategy and address concerns about slumping sales. These retailer summits are always interesting because, ostensibly, they are private events where Marvel's reps seem more willing to speak frankly about industry matters. However, ICv2 was there to cover the meetings for the public, which is how we came to hear about the controversial remarks made by Marvel's Senior Vice President David Gabriel.
Essentially Gabriel said that, according to retailers he talked to and sales data, Marvel's push towards diversity was the reason for the sales drop. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity. They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales." Gabriel later elaborated on those comments in an interview with ICv2. There he said, "We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked."
WWE Alum AJ Lee on Her “Crazy” Road to Wrestling
Like many past and present members of the WWE locker room, April “AJ” Mendez Brooks grew up loving wrestling and dreaming of becoming a WWE superstar herself. But for AJ, the possibility of achieving stardom in that world seemed especially unlikely, given her diminutive stature, and that in the post-“Attitude”, pre-“Divas revolution” era, the WWE’s female wrestlers were being given very little storyline time, with only a handful of deviations to the types of women on the roster.
However, not only did Mendez Brooks make it into the WWE, she became a breakout star under her WWE name, AJ Lee – in the process becoming the first woman to both have merchandise made for her or to be put on a WWE Pay-Per-View poster in several years, thank to her popularity. Along the way, she became a three time Divas champion, was included in prominent storylines with the likes of Daniel Bryan, Kane, Dolph Ziggler, and her future real life husband, CM Punk, and was named WWE RAW General Manager, among many other milestones.
Daniel Craig Reportedly Persuaded Back for Bond 25
He may have been far from eager for another go at playing 007 back when he was promoting SPECTRE, but Daniel Craig has reportedly been wooed back for James Bond 25.
New York Post's Page Six gossip column, citing multiple sources, claims Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has "'just about persuaded Daniel Craig to do one more Bond movie.'"
Broccoli also recently produced the off-Broadway production of Othello, which won Craig good notices for his turn as the villainous Iago.