There are a lot of reasons to be looking forward to 2020, and you can now add the return of the World’s Worst Superhero Duo to the list. That’s right, in a few short months, Quantum & Woody will be back wreaking havoc on the Valiant Universe in a new series from writer Chris Hastings (The Unbelievable Gwenpool) and artist Ryan Browne (Curse Words).

Hastings and Browne’s artistic sensibilities are certainly in tune with the off-beat vibe of Quantum & Woody. Hastings’ series The Adventures of Dr. McNinja was a blend of deep, character driven adventure and utter insanity while Browne seems to continually pump out some of the strangest, most unsettling comics around, like his own God Hates Astronauts and the explosive Image Comics’ series Curse Words.

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Update 3:

It’s the penultimate week for Borderlands 3’s 10th Anniversary Celebration. Not only will Gearbox be dropping the limited-time Bloody Harvest Halloween event later this week, but there will also be the “Mayhem on Twitch” event to celebrate the fourth week in Gearbox’s five-week celebration.

During this event, any player who enables Mayhem Mode will have an increased drop rate for Anointed Gear, along with extra XP for defeating enemies, and reduced values for various Mayhem Mode penalty modifiers.

Mayhem Mode is unlocked by finishing the main story for Borderlands 3, so these rewards will be locked to you if you haven’t finished the main campaign yet.

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The long-awaited sequel to Kerbal Space Program was the surprise announcement at Gamescom 2019! If you don’t know what Kerbal Space Program is, well… it’s part astrophysics simulator, part aerospace engineering crash course – with a heavy emphasis on the crash – and part trial-and-error rocket science that all boils down to you trying to build a space vessel that can shuttle these lil’ green cuties called Kerbals into space before bringing them home safely.

Now that Kerbal Space Program 2 has crested over the proverbial horizon, creative director at Star Theory, Nate Simpson, shared with us some of the secrets, hints, and teases baked into this cinematic announcement trailer, to give you a better idea of what to expect in the sequel. You can watch us unpack everything Simpson shared with us in the video at the top of the page!

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New York City Comic Con 2019 kicks off this Thursday, October 3, and the announcements and reveals are already ramping up.

Hasbro has a new set of Transformers to show off by way of the Transformers Generations: War for Cybertron Earthrise figures. Check out Optimus Prime and more in the slideshow below:

Each figure comes with "a piece of the Transformers Universe Map," and collecting the figures allows you to complete the map in its entirety.

The line-up reveal only has Autobots at the moment, so it's probably a safe bet we'll see some new Decepticons joining the next chapter of the Transformers saga.

Transformers Generations: War for Cybertron Earthrise figures can be preordered beginning October 3 at 5 pm ET directly from Hasbro Pulse. While you visit the Hasbro Pulse website, you can also put in a preorder for the massive Transformers Unicron figure, which is close to meeting its crowd-funding goal and will enter into production if it reaches 8,000 backers.

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New artwork for the upcoming My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising movie has been released online, teasing a major team-up of U.A.'s Class 1-A as they face the threat of fresh-faced villains.

The key visual shared by Funimation places the young heroes of the hit manga series in the spotlight, with Katsuki Bakugo and Izuku "Deku" Midoriya at the forefront of the image, suggesting they will join forces to battle against their newest enemy, Nine, who looms above them at the top of the one-sheet.

According to the official character profiles on the My Hero Academia: The Movie Heroes: Rising website, Nine is set to unite with another mysterious villain known as Slice, who has the quirk to manipulate her long red locks into multiple forms, including several weapons such as swords and knives.

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I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down to play Mario and Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but whatever those expectations were, this fun-spirited, doesn't-take-itself-too-seriously collection of mini-games exceeded them. And it's out soon – November 5.

Mario and Sonic is chock-full of Olympic-themed events, from the swimming high-dive to the 100-meter dash to judo and, of course, track and field. Some of them are even retro-themed so that they look like 8-bit NES sports games. One such event, for instance, was the aforementioned high dive. You have to do a series of button sequences, timed well, in order to land a great dive and a subsequent high score. A more modern attempt at that might involve thumbsticks and motion controls, but the refreshingly retro approach just makes it simple, goofy, button-based fun (case in point: check out the video below of Bowser twirling off the diving board). To be clear, however, there are plenty of events with modern visuals and more modern control methods; as an NES kid, though, I couldn't help but be won over by the 8-bit stuff. Take a look at the gameplay videos below for some looks at various events.

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October is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for comic and movie fans, it means a celebration of pop culture in New York City by way of New York City Comic Con. This year's NYCC kicks off Thursday, October 3 and runs through Sunday, October 6.

Toy makers take advantage of these events to introduce new figures and sets, as well as offer exclusive merchandise you either need to be in attendance to buy, or hope to find on an online auction site after the event is closed. Toy maker NECA is offering two different NYCC-exclusives this year: Batman vs. Alien and Green Lantern vs. Predator.

Check out the gallery below to see these NECA NYCC 2019 exclusives:

The Batman and Green Lantern figures are amazing on their own. Batman's cape is real fabric, with a quality allowing it to move and flow in a way appropriate to the figure's scale. The included Batarang is extremely pointy and solid, and there's an extra hand included for Batarang-holding action.

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams has confirmed a popular fan theory about Kylo Ren's repaired mask referencing the Japanese art of Kintsugi, also known as Kintsukuroi.

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, the Episode IX filmmaker discussed Ren's decision to wear his fractured headwear in the final instalment of the Skywalker saga, having previously smashed the black helmet during a furious rage in The Last Jedi.

"Having him be masked, but also fractured, is a very intentional thing," Abrams said, as per an excerpt on Reddit. "Like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them, and how the breaks in a way define the beauty of the piece as much as the original itself. As fractured as Ren is, the mask becomes a visual representation of that. There's something about this that tells his history. His mask doesn't ultimately hide him and his behaviour is revealed."

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Modder DooMFOREVER7z has combined Minecraft's peaceful aesthetic with Doom's hardcore combat in a "Brutal Minecraft" total conversion mod for Doom 2.

In the most unlikely combination since fries and ice cream, players can kill Minecraft zombies and monsters using 25 weapons - including everything from pistols to rifles - in Doom's traditionally graphic, blood splattery ways.

As reported by dsogaming.com, the mod - now in beta version 2.0 - consists of nine maps in total, ranging from House, Cave, and Crypt, to Mansion, Hell Dungeon, and Bridge of Souls. Each location uses sprites and textures to capture Minecraft's blocky aesthetic and layers it over Doom 2's gameplay.

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To venture around the globe on the whim of a wager is an exciting premise, but it is truly the stories you uncover along the way, rather than the end goal that make 80 Days a delight to play. It's a narrative adventure where you take the role of Passepartout, the devoted French manservant of one Phileas Fogg--the character who famously circumnavigated the globe in 80 days in the classic Jules Verne novel descriptively titled Around The World in 80 Days. Verne named the character after the real-world adventurer Wiliam Perry Fogg, however, as we come to learn in this reimagining perhaps his servant should have been the one to inherit the famous name.

There is no dallying as you are informed through lines of text that your master has taken on quite the wager and you are to travel the globe. Immediately you are introduced to most of the central mechanics. You're instructed to pack your bags, giving you a look at the item management system which presents itself in a grid-based format, fitting things into as many suitcases as you can currently afford to carry. Then stretches of paths are presented to you with lines that extend across a globe, though the first one is the brief journey from your starting point in London to the first stop in Paris. It's in France where you are given your first introduction to story and its branching choices--you can choose to explore or tend to your master, but the main goal is to try to uncover more routes to continue your journey. What makes the game interesting are the adventures and stories you'll find along the way.

You quickly discover the great Phileas Fogg, while not necessarily a bad man, is a financier rather than an adventurer. The choices are all yours, and Fogg is more something to manage in the background. Keeping him happy and safe is a metric, and while you might come to care for him, it's clear very early on that this is your adventure, not his.

In the early game, you are eased into the process of selecting and embarking on routes and taught the benefits of items, such as being able to haggle for an earlier departure time thanks to your dapper dress. The icons are all clear and intuitive and I never felt lost for what to do thanks to this simple introduction, but I did notice that some of the game's later intricacies were left for me to figure out on my own. It was ultimately rewarding, though did make me wonder about previous missed opportunities.

Despite conveying most of its information in plain text, 80 Days uses its words to paint a vivid picture of a bustling steampunk world where art and fashion mix with wild technologies. Everything is written from the perspective of Passepartout's diary explaining the events, and sometimes he'll even make reference to writing those very words. You can choose how the story unfolds or alter his perspective on some things, but his character still holds firm throughout. It's a delicate mix of maintaining a sense of ownership and agency while not working with a blank slate, and the game ultimately balances the two sides well. The further and more broadly you travel, the more you can learn about this world, the politics, the wars, the technology, and perhaps most importantly, the people through his memoirs.

The one downside to the stylish yet simplistic presentation was that finding my place on the in-game map was sometimes quite tricky. When you are looking to travel, you are presented with your location on a globe and every path you've unlocked from that point. However, it was easy to get turned around or not be sure which direction I needed to head next. This was in part because the seas and the lands are a similar color, and in less familiar parts of the world, I wouldn't be sure what I was looking at until I zoomed out and got my bearings. Locations tended to bleed together, and it's difficult to get a real hold of where you are in the world if you're not familiar with the names of the particular cities you happen to be visiting.

It also took away slightly from the brilliance of the different cities, as many felt like a completely unknown quantity until entered and then were easily forgotten in the blur of travel. The game's most memorable cities, however, feel like lovingly crafted interpretations with a mix of true-to-life inspiration and often fantastical elements. I often found myself eager to move on to new places I was familiar with in the real world just to discover what kind of take this universe had on them. I experienced the wonders of the vibrant and technologically advanced Haiti, the secret self-dependent city at the North Pole, and ventured into the depths of the walking city of Agra.

The methods of transportation can be equally stunning. Due to the largely text-based nature of 80 Days you only get silhouettes of these conveyances, but these paired with Passepartout's notes are enough to open the mind to wonder. Sometimes travel was fairly standard, by ship or train. Others I'd find myself riding a giant mechanical elephant powered by some sort of inscribed crystal or the aforementioned city itself. I found myself approaching most things with a sense of awe.

You can alter the mindset of Passepartout's character to some extent as well, be it a somewhat stoic Frenchman who looks down at his nose at all other cultures or a man filled with romance and fascination. I chose the latter, and choosing to follow my heart often presented me with more choices to further my journey through additional sojurns, so having an adventurous spirit tended to pay off.

Frequently you are presented with these side adventures in which you can choose to divert your travels to help others or merely have a brief affair during a long airship ride. These aren't all good for you and your master, but they don't tend to be too punishing either. Once, I was captured by some sort of bandit tribe, but thankfully the woman in charge seemed to take a liking to Fogg's gentlemanly charms and set us free. Another time I was on an expedition to the North Pole where we were met with sabotage. For days we were stuck in the blistering snow as I tried to keep my master alive. The music, usually cheerfully adventurous, if repetitive, turned off to make way for the bleak sound of whirling icy winds. It seemed we would die there. Thankfully, in my suitcase was a bottle of gin which helped get us a few extra days of life before we were rescued and managed to complete our travels. In retrospect however, I'm not convinced that we would have plain died without it--just opened up another path that ensured our miraculous survival.

Thanks to the lack of true danger, you're encouraged to explore these side missions at every opportunity. That feeling of safety meant I was happier to take risks and less worried when risks decided to take me. It evokes that sense of adventure that comes with a film where you're fairly sure all the characters will be fine, even if they do incredibly reckless things. It also tended to be during travel where the most interesting stories would occur. You may still need to seek some of them out, as there's always the choice to merely stay in your room while traveling by mass transit (though you can still potentially be abducted by bandits or affected by serious accidents) but the multiple days of journeying also allow for longer, more intricate branching trails. There's no chance of wasting time while you wait for your vehicle to reach the next city, so tackling these side stories while traveling alleviates the tough choice of diverting to explore versus trying to hit your 80-day mark back to London.

Thankfully, though, even that doesn't matter too much. In my first few playthroughs I felt pressured to try to return in good time and easily made it back at around the 60-day mark. Thanks to the wonders of the strange transportation in 80 Days, there isn't much challenge in achieving this primary goal though racing against the slow-moving clock isn’t what I found most enjoyable anyway--it was the stories and little goals I’d set myself to uncover new adventures. I’ll never forget my one night of magic with the enchanting emerald-eyed former slave, Octave, where amidst the romance I learned about his decision to return to his father who was also his former slaver, to work once again for the family that indentured him. Nor the days I spent in transport trying to keep two atrociously flirtatious women from corrupting my master in their competition for his affections to often slapstick comedic effect.

80 Days can also be relatively short, depending on how you play. I found most playthroughs to be around three hours; however, it's alluring to replay and take different paths, discover new cities or modes of travel, so it's almost best to think of 80 Days as a run-based game.

What is certain is that no matter your objective or playtime, you'll have an adventure worth writing home about. It's the stories you' uncover that makes 80 Days a joy to play. There's a constant sense of wonder in visiting these glorious cities and meeting interesting characters, and I'm eager to jump back in and see what kind of trouble I can get Passepartout into. Phileas Fogg is just going to have to damn well like it.