Monthly Archives: May 2018
HBO’s Watchmen: Jeremy Irons Will Reportedly Play Ozymandias
Update 11/8: Per /Film, HBO’s upcoming Watchmen series will reportedly see Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons play an older version of Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias.
In addition, HBO has confirmed that Jean Smart, known for her roles in Legion and Fargo, will be joining the cast as an FBI agent investigating a murder.
To find out why having an older actor play Ozymandias makes sense, check out our explainer piece below.
The critically acclaimed comic series Watchmen is making the transition to live-action again. But this time, it's being adapted as an HBO series, with Lost's Damon Lindelof serving as showrunner - on August 17, HBO officially ordered Watchmen to series, to debut at some point in 2019. And while little is known about the series so far, it's clear that the new project will seek to expand on the Watchmen universe rather than retread ground fans have already seen before.
Amazon’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is a Horror Story You Won’t Predict
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an exquisite nightmare of a story, a horrifying mystery without explanation, and the focal point for ceaseless obsession. It has been this terrifying thing for many decades now, and the new Amazon miniseries is only the latest incarnation. This is no mere period piece. This is gothic despair.
The story began, allegedly, as a series of dreams which befell Australian author Joan Lindsay, about a group of young girls on a field trip to Hanging Rock, an ancient volcanic mountain, where they mysteriously vanished. The story continues to tell the story of the people investigating her disappearance, the passionate despair and madness that befalls those who become obsessed with the incident, and the tragedy that befalls the school afterwards. Joan Lindsay made her disturbing story all the more fascinating by suggesting that her novel was based on a true story, an approach that made her writing - and the subsequent film - all the more unsettling.
Every IGN Battlefield Review
As of now, since 2002 IGN has reviewed no fewer than 18 Battlefield games, expansions, and DLC packs. That's a whole lot of fields on which battles have taken place, and now that we know Battlefield V is coming October 19, we're eager to weigh in on number 19.
If you need some help to wait through the five months until then, you can kill the first few minutes of it by scrolling through this list of all our previous Battlefield reviews to see how your favorites (and least favorites) performed with our critics back when they first came out.
Dan Stapleton is IGN's Reviews Editor. You can follow him on Twitter to hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.
Solo: This Oscar-Winning Actor Plays Lady Proxima
Solo: A Star Wars Story features an Oscar-winning actor portraying Lady Proxima.
Warning: Spoilers for Solo follow. Turn back now if you haven't yet watched the movie.
Per the Daily Express, it turns out Linda Hunt voices the long creature, which Han Solo encounters early on in the movie. Lady Proxima resides in water in a dark room as she's vulnerable to sunlight, and is feared by everyone on Corellia.
Linda Hunt in NCIS: Los Angeles.
Detroit: Become Human Review Roundup
Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human is the studio's latest attempt to offer divergent narratives that allow players to control the thrust of their story. So have the Heavy Rain developers gone above and beyond their past efforts to tell satisfying, divergent stories?
Now available for the PlayStation 4, Detroit puts players in control of three androids — Connor, Kara, and Markus — asking them to make choices, occasionally with deadly consequences, while exploring the very different lives of these characters.
In IGN's Detroit review, Lucy O'Brien said Detroit "is a poignantly pulpy interactive sci-fi drama where your choices can impact events to a greater and more satisfying degree than in most games of this type."
Exclusive Concept Art From Solo: A Star Wars Story
We have an exclusive sneak peek for you from The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a new behind-the-scenes book by Phil Szostak (author of The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens) from Abrams Books and Lucasfilm.
Szostak has worked with the Star Wars art departments for nearly a decade. He explores the filmmakers' visions and illuminates their creative process. The book features concept art, costume sketches, storyboards, and blueprints, and provides a deep dive into the development of the worlds, characters, and creatures – both old and new – of Solo. The book also features exclusive interviews with the filmmakers.
These six exclusive images below feature Han, Chewbacca, Corellian crime boss Lady Proxima, and the Millennium Falcon Check 'em out!
Telltale’s Wolf Among Us Season 2 Delayed to 2019
The second season of Telltale's The Wolf Among Us has been delayed to 2019.
Telltale Games revealed the delay, citing "fundamental changes" at the studio. Telltale saw a company-wide restructure late last year that resulted in lay offs of 25 percent of the staff.
Telltale revealed that despite the delay it is "committed to exploring new ways to tell our stories" and will use the extra time to "focus on quality but also to experiment and iterate in order to craft something truly special."
Wizard Of Legend Review: Fast-Paced Action
Roguelike pixel-art games are so common that it almost feels like a cliché. Without a great hook, many of these would-be indie hits wind up lost among ever-filling digital storefronts. However, Wizard of Legend, despite a painfully generic title, manages to distinguish itself from its peers with fast, challenging gameplay. Despite a few missteps, it successfully delivers an engaging and endearing experience.
After a breezy tutorial framed as a series of interactive wizard museum exhibits, you finds yourself whisked away into a new dimension--one with an ever-changing, multi-floor dungeon inhabited by three all-powerful wizards. The challenges you face in this dungeon are called the Chaos Trials, and only wizards of truly exceptional skill have ever conquered them…meaning, of course, that you need to become a wizard of exceptional skill.
Your wizard character has animpressive moveset, with a basic melee spell, a dash/dodge spell, and two powerful techniques with cooldowns mapped to each of the controller's face buttons. While a lot of roguelike games focus on smart usage of the random resources you find on any given run, Wizard of Legend's emphasis is more on skill-based action gameplay. By using your spells and movement skillfully, you can create powerful combos, stunlocking enemies with a flurry of melee attacks, ranged magic, and dashes. The fast, fluid movement of your character and timing-based combos make Wizard of Legend feel like classic action-RPGs of yore--a welcome change from the generally slower rhythm of similar procedurally-generated games.
Finding and learning new arcana magic inside and outside of the dungeons can also affect your gameplay; you might have acquired a really cool and powerful spell, but it's practically worthless if you don't learn to use it well in tandem with your other skills. The process of experimenting with the magical combinations you acquire--and augmenting their effectiveness with various artifacts--allows you to personalize your wizard's playstyle to suit your strengths. Just don't get too attached to the spells and items you find inside the dungeons--most of those won't be coming home with you after death.
As you make your way through the Chaos Trials, you'll encounter a variety of obstacles, enemies, places of interest, and treasures scattered throughout the catacombs. Defeating enemies and collecting treasure chests yields gold and gems; gold can be used to buy goods and services within the dungeon, while gems stay with you even if you're defeated and allow you to buy new spells, clothes, and artifacts in the shopping area before a new run. Only the goods purchased outside of the dungeon are permanent--with a few rare and valuable exceptions--making hunting for and collecting gems an important part of exploration. That doesn't make gold worthless, however, as you can use it to purchase temporary upgrades, health restoration, and additional, powerful spells. Yes, you'll lose all the stuff you bought with gold if you perish, but these skills and items can help make a run last a lot longer, which means more potential permanent loot in the long term. It never feels like a serious setback when a run goes bad; you just buy a few goodies, practice your new arcana, and jump back into the game.
It's plenty of fun, but there are a few annoyances. The environments are dull and lack visual variety, and in some cases it's hard to discern what things are due to the colors used and a lack of detail. The dialogue, sparse as it is, also feels like it's trying just a bit too hard, particularly when it goes for lousy puns. It's also an unforgiving game for newcomers, as enemies are relentless straight from the get-go, making the learning curve steep. But no matter how good you are, sometimes you'll just get a really terrible, unescapable battle in a room filled with hazards and projectile-slingers that feels like it's there simply to ruin your run. While the randomness in Wizard of Legend feels like less of a run-killing factor than in other games of this sort, when its RNG decides it doesn't like you, you'll know it.
With a buddy, however, things get easier. You can play local co-op with a friend, with the both of you sharing a common pool of permanent items and arcana picked up from all your runs up to that point. Having two players makes the more difficult enemy encounters and combo challenges feel less overwhelming, and a generous revival system that involves picking up energy from defeated enemies lets a fallen player hop back into the action fairly easily. However, one major fault is that both players must occupy the same quadrant of the screen, which makes for restricted movement in certain situations--like when one player is working to get in for melee strikes while the other is trying to zip around to set up ranged skills. Giving the camera the ability to zoom out during these situations would have been nice. (Also, as of this writing, you can only play local co-op on the Switch using the Joy-Cons, so forget about using that Pro Controller when your friend's over.)
Overall, though, there's a lot to love about Wizard of Legend. While it does have some issues, the cycle of exploration, discovery, failing, learning, and exploring again will keep your determination to conquer the Chaos Trials high. Wizard of Legend might not look like much on the surface, but there's some good magic underneath.
Fortnite Players Want the Heavy Shotgun Buffed or Vaulted
The Heavy Shotgun in Fortnite sits at the highest tier of shotguns, but players want the rare item buffed or removed entirely.
When it was first introduced two months ago, the Heavy Shotgun brought fear to Fortnite fans who were already suffering at the hands of the incredibly powerful Pump Shotgun and the double pumping effect, in which an enemy uses two different shotguns in quick succession. Learning that an even more powerful shotgun in the epic and legendary varieties was coming to Fortnite was a head-scratcher, but it wasn't long before players were leaving behind the Heavy Shotgun in favor of something more common.
Ultimately, the Heavy Shotgun didn't make quite the splash fans thought it would and now players want change. Community posts on Reddit and the official Fortnite Forums are consistently discussing what should happen to this rare item.
Cyberpunk 2077: Why Now is the Time to Finally Show it Off
It's that time of year again: E3 2018 is just on the horizon. From June 9-14, we'll be covering the biggest games and hardware announcements of 2018 and beyond. While you can check out our continually-updated Games of E3 List, we're now going to start diving deeper. Every day leading up to the show, we'll be highlight the stuff we want to see and play at E3 2018. Today's game: CYBERPUNK 2077.
When Did We Last See Cyberpunk 2077?
After being announced in May 2012, CD Projekt went mostly quiet on the project for years. But just recently, talk of the game bubbled back up, with the company's president hinting that we'll finally get to see the game in action at this year's E3.