Monthly Archives: February 2018
The Best Shade From Deadpool’s Super Bowl Live Tweets
In case you blinked, fell unconscious over the weekend, and missed it, Super Bowl LII took place on Sunday with a bunch of men throwing a knockoff rugby ball about and calling it football. It was thrilling, I'm sure.
If poking fun at the spectacle of expensive ads and movie trailers that are revered almost as much as the sport itself is something you delight in, you're not alone. The Twitter account for the Deadpool movie had some spicy zingers at the ready to bring the burn, and we've rounded up a few of our favourites.
The first tweet to kick off the show was a reminder that Deadpool 2 wouldn't be among the big name movies getting a spot during the Super Bowl:
Iron Man’s Latest Comic Run Was Great for Everyone But Iron Man
In an effort to elevate the comic book version of Iron Man to the atmospheric heights of Robert Downey Jr.’s movie Iron Man, Marvel Comics bet big on the 2015 relaunch of their Invincible Iron Man series. That run is set to end in May, and looking back on everything that writer Brian Michael Bendis and his collaborators brought to the character, I’ve come to the conclusion that this Iron Man run was great… for everyone but Iron Man.
Warning: full spoilers below!
Over the years since the success of the first Iron Man movie in 2008, comic book Tony Stark has been written to be more cocky and quippy and he was put back in his traditional style of armor, all to make him more like the MCU version, but it didn’t quite do the trick. That’s why Marvel pulled out the big guns: their most prolific writer in Bendis and superstar artist David Marquez. And at first, it worked. The series got off to a great start with its MCU-inspired Tony Stark and was at the top of the sales charts. But after a couple story arcs, it all went off the rails.
Sabrina Netflix Series Adds New Cast Member
Netflix's Sabrina the Teenage Witch series has cast Sabrina's best friend.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Vampire Diaries' Jaz Sinclair will star opposite Kiernan Shipka (Sabrina) as Rosalind Walker, the outspoken daughter of Greendale's minister and Sabrina's best friend at Baxter High.
The currently untitled series is based on the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina graphic novel, and will be a darker take on the character. It will follow Sabrina as she begins her dark education as a sorceress while trying to maintain a normal life as a high school student.
Ancestors Legacy Is Like A Medieval Version Of Company Of Heroes
Like the MOBAs they inspired, real-time strategy games have always been one of the most intimidating and least accessible game genres. It’s a big reason why I don’t play them a ton. But if you give me something with a clean, polished look and a more specific focus, I can get behind it. It’s a big reason why Company of Heroes 2 is one of my favorite RTS games despite my general disinterest in historical military settings – an aesthetic that Ancestors Legacy from developer Destructive Creations aims to pillage and plunder until it’s no more.
Ancestors Legacy is the type of game that shamelessly displays its influences on its sleeve. By featuring a tightly focused gameplay loop that aims to highlight small-scale squad tactics over grand strategy that spans continents, matches feel like much more intense and personal affairs. Since this is an RTS you’ll still have to do things like build up a base and manage resources, but by the middle of a match those things are at the back of your mind as you’re setting traps, adjusting formations, and finding the best choke points and flank angles to take down your enemy.
Super Bowl 2018’s Blackout Mystifies Viewers
Super Bowl LII is over, and as the years go by, the event has become a place to showcase million dollar ads alongside brief musical interludes, interspersed with the odd bit of football. So Sunday's blackout during the second quarter was kind of big deal, leaving viewers in the dark as to what had happened. Eventually, an NBC spokesperson provided an explanation - the blackout was due to hardware issues.
"We had a brief equipment failure that we quickly resolved," read the statement. “No game action or commercial time were missed.”
CNN reports that each 30-second spot cost advertisers $5 million, so NBC was quick to curtail speculation that the outage had resulted in missed "commercial time" that would have cost them millions.
The Cloverfield Gimmick: How Netflix Tricked the World
There was a time when, if an ambitious motion picture with a great cast went straight to video, it was considered a very, very, very bad sign. But to hear Netflix tell it, as of last night anyway, it is now a sign of prestige.
Super Bowl LII brought with it the usual assortment of huge Hollywood movie trailers, for upcoming blockbusters like Solo: A Star Wars Story, Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. But there was one trailer that came as a surprise, along with an announcement that nobody expected.
The Cloverfield Paradox, the latest installment in Bad Robot’s lucrative high-concept franchise, was not only coming to Netflix… it was coming to Netflix that night, as a surprise release, not entirely unlike Beyoncé’s Lemonade (but presumably with more sci-fi in it).
This Is Us Couldn’t Resist Killing Jack With One Final Twist
This recap contains spoilers for This Is Us Season 2, episode 14, titled "Super Bowl Sunday."
If you stuck around after the Super Bowl for NBC's much-hyped installment of This Is Us -- either out of morbid curiosity or because you're a legit fan -- you were treated to the surreal spectacle of watching a beloved character die for our "entertainment," using the platform of one of TV's biggest events to amplify the drama.
The episode, aptly titled "Super Bowl Sunday," was a cry-fest, to be sure, because this show is used to wringing our tear ducts dry with surgical precision, but there's no denying that the whole exercise also felt unashamedly manipulative, which is a trap This Is Us often falls into -- especially when it's trying to hide things from the audience to show us how clever it is. For viewers who tuned in for the first time after the big game (if you didn't immediately rush to watch The Cloverfield Paradox), it probably made the regular This Is Us audience seem like complete masochists.
Sony Updates Gold Wireless Headset With PSVR Support
Sony's PlayStation Gold Wireless Stereo Headset released in 2014 for the PS4, as a follow up for 2012's Pulse for the PS3. While it wasn't the best gaming headset on the market, it was comfortable and did the job well enough for the $99 price tag. And at long last, it's getting an update, in the form of the New Gold Wireless Headset.
Detailed on both the US and EU PlayStation blogs, the headset "maintains the great features you loved about the Wireless Stereo Headset 2.0" but has a new design that sees it looking significantly less bulky, while the over-ear cushions have been "refined" for more comfort over longer gaming sessions.
What’s New in Bayonetta 2 For Nintendo Switch?
Bayonetta is back and better than ever on Nintendo Switch. With both the original and sequel launching together later this month on the young hybrid console, the Switch versions of the games don't feature too many noticeable differences from the original — but trust me, that's a good thing.
By far the most significant change for the Switch versions of Bayonetta 1 & 2 is the frame rate - with both games running at a locked 60 fps. Both games still run at a native 720p. However, the upgrade in hardware allows each to reach a much smoother frame rate while playing both docked and undocked. It's a much-welcomed improvement over the Wii U versions, which fluctuated between 30 and 60 fps.
Star Wars: Solo Gets New Posters and Photos
New posters and stills have been released for Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The images, seen below, showcase the cast and some locations for the upcoming film, which will hit theaters May 25 this year.
The film will focus on the early life of Han Solo, before he made a name for himself as captain of the Millennium Falcon. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich as the titular Solo, who meets Lando Calrissian, played by Donald Glover, and Chewbacca, played by Joonas Suotamo, over the course of the film. Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Paul Bettany also star.
For more on Solo, be sure to check IGN's teaser trailer breakdown, as well as the other game and movie spots showcased during last night's Super Bowl game.