Monthly Archives: January 2019

Marvel Comics Poised to Fix Spider-Man’s Biggest Mistake From Civil War

Marvel kicked off Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man this week, a new comic series that aims to explore a more grounded side of Spidey's life. But even though this new series isn't striving to be the epic, continuity-driving title Amazing Spider-Man is, it's clear Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will have a significant impact on the larger franchise. And in the process, it might just be able to address a critical mistake Spider-Man made back during the Marvel superhero Civil War.

Warning: the rest of this article contains spoilers for Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1 by writer Tom Taylor and artist Juann Cabal!

This first issue ends with a depressing revelation, as Aunt May struggles and fails to write a letter to her nephew revealing she has cancer. Needless to say, Peter is not going to be happy when he learns this news.

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You Want a Fully Realized DC Universe? Titans Has Got You Covered

It's safe to say Titans was met with a fairly mixed reaction when the first footage of the series debuted in 2018. The shot of Dick Grayson shouting "F*** Batman!" was enough to turn some prospective viewers off right away. And even those onboard for the series might have hesitated at the thought of forking over eight bucks a month for yet another streaming service, especially with Titans the only original series on the DC Universe service at the time of its debut. (That's the only way Americans can get the show, though it is debuting on Netflix internationally as of today.) Not to mention that it gets a little harder all the time to keep up with all the DC Comics shows on the air.

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Alien: Blackout Is Fun AND Microtransaction-Free

On the news that the next video game set in the Alien universe was to be on mobile devices, there was some understandable vocal disappointment. We haven’t had an Alien game since 2014’s (divisive) Alien: Isolation, and that game was good enough to leave fans hungry for more of that idiosyncratic cat-and-mouse tension. The good news is, then, that Alien: Blackout is going all in on delivering that tension; albeit on smaller platforms and on a smaller scale.

Set between Alien: Isolation and 1986’s Aliens – it’s not a direct sequel to Isolation but it does take place some time after it – FoxNext and D3 Go!’s Alien: Blackout sees Amanda Ripley on a broken space station, once again isolated, with a stalking xenomorph on board. A small crew of four with a broken ship stumble across the station, and essentially it’s up to Amanda to keep them and herself alive, from the confines of a security terminal with a limited power supply, across seven levels. She’s also doing it all against an eight-minute timer; once the clock runs out, so does your power. Blackout.

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Kingdom Hearts 3 Update Schedule Revealed, Includes Hidden Endings

The first updates planned after the launch of Kingdom Hearts III have been revealed and they include the game's epilogue and another "secret" video.

Revealed by Kingdom Hearts Twitter, Update 1.01 will arrive when Kingdom Hearts III launches on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 29, 2019, and will include "several data fixes" and the Memory Archive.

The Memory Archive will be added to the game's title menu and will be a "digest of the #KingdomHearts story in the series up to this point."

On Wednesday, January 30, the Epilogue will be added to KHIII and will be able to be viewed after players have completed the main story.

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Check Out the Mortal Kombat 11 Cover Art

Series co-creator Ed Boon has revealed the official cover art for Mortal Kombat 11.

The iconic fighter Scorpion is the lone cover star for the second consecutive Mortal Kombat game, after appearing front and center on the cover of 2015's Mortal Kombat X. Boon revealed the new art, which you can also see below, on Twitter.

Official Mortal Kombat 11 cover art via Ed Boon on Twitter

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Charlie Brooker Says There’s Not a Black Mirror Universe – It’s a Black Mirror Multiverse

Since its third series debuted on Netflix, Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones have seemingly become more and more interested in tying their episodes together, dropping references from one story into another - sometimes multiple others.

Interactive episode Bandersnatch is no different, with dozens of Easter Eggs littered across its many branches. I got the chance to chat to Brooker and Jones this week, and posed a question I’ve heard more and more recently: is there a Black Mirror Universe?

Instead, Brooker broadens that idea out a bit further: “We have a shared Black Mirror multiverse, is now what I'm saying, in which we can do whatever the bloody hell we feel like. It's kind of like the Spider-Man movie that came out recently, the Spider-Verse.”

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Star Trek 4 Reportedly Cancelled

The troubled Star Trek 4 has reportedly been cancelled after its director left to direct a Game of Thrones prequel pilot.

According to Deadline, the in-development follow-up to Star Trek Beyond has apparently been shelved following SJ Clarkson's decision to join HBO's new GoT series.

Back in August, the project was said to be in trouble after Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth refused pay cuts. At the time, Paramount insisted that the project was not on hold, but the additional loss of a director may have been the last straw.

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Is Nintendo Done With Consoles? (We Don’t Think So) – NVC Ep 439

Weeeeeelcooooome to Nintendo Voice Chat Episode 439. Nintendo surprised us with a few cool announcements on Twitter, and then there were some interesting -- and to fans -- potentially alarming comments Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa made in an interview with Japanese business publication Nikkei.

On this week's show, Peer Schneider, Zachary Ryan, Brian Altano, and Casey DeFreitas put the latest Nintendo news in context and ask themselves the question: "Is Nintendo Done With Consoles?"

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Population: One Isn’t Quite ‘Fortnite VR’ But It’s Pretty Convincing

At CES 2019, HTC was showing off a Battle Royale FPS named Population: One by developer Big Box VR. It offers a lot of the same features found in Fortnite and PUBG, but in a wild VR sandbox. I got some hands-on time with it, which is still in beta, and overall I had a blast.

Population: One can be played in both single-player against bots, or multiplayer in teams on either HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or Windows Mixed Reality. The essential design of the game is similar to Fortnite in that you have to eliminate the other teams' players using a variety of weaponry, and as the game goes on the safe area continually shrinks until there's a winner. The Fortnite connection really comes through in the game's building mechanic, which lets you erect walls pretty much anywhere, which you can then climb, run across, or hide behind for cover.

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