HBO's classic gangster drama The Sopranos, widely credited as one of the most influential TV shows of all time, is on the way back. The show ended in 2007, but in recent months there have been reports of a prequel movie being in development. It has now been reported that Thor: The Dark World's Alan Taylor will direct the film.
According to Variety, Taylor will helm the film, which is titled The Many Saints of Newark. The script has been written by Sopranos creator David Chase, alongside Lawrence Konner, who also worked on the show. The site states that the movie is set is in Newark, New Jersey, during the 1960s, at a time when there was a lot of racial tension between African-American and Italian residents. Although no casting news has been announced, the film is expected to feature younger versions of some of the characters from The Sopranos.
Thor: The Dark World and last year's sci-fi flop Terminator: Genysis are Taylor's highest profile credits, but he also has an impressive background in TV. He directed multiple episodes of The Sopranos as well as acclaimed shows such as Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire.
The Sopranos ran for 86 episodes, from 1999 to 2007. The late James Gandolfini starred as mob boss Tony Soprano, a role for which he won three Emmys and a Golden Globe. The show itself was the first cable show ever to be nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, and was crucial in pushing HBO towards original programming.
In time for 4th of July celebrations, Epic Games has released a new emote for Fortnite. As with most of Fortnite's emotes, it's a simple and charming little animation that has your character light up a sparkler, wave it about for a little bit, and then toss it aside.
You can buy the Sparkler emote from the in-game item shop for 200 V-Bucks. Take a look below to see the animation in action, courtesy of the official Fortnite Twitter account.
In related news, Fortnite: Battle Royale has been updated with the Playground LTM (limited-time mode). Although the mode originally launched on June 28, it was taken offline after server issues arose. A week of testing and bug fixing later and Epic has made Playground LTM available again on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile.
Playground is designed to be a "low-pressure environment" similar to a private server. It enables players to explore the map and hang out with up to three friends, free from the risk of being eliminated by other people. It's a good place to check out weapons, practice, and refine strategies.
A Fortnite update (version 4.5) has also added a few new weapons to the Save the World and Battle Royale modes. Perhaps most notable among these is the Drum Gun for the Battle Royale mode, which is described as a "hybrid weapon that combines the stopping power of a rifle with the suppressive ability and fire rate of an SMG." On top of that, there's the Stink Bomb and Stars and Stripes Heroes. You can find out more about all the new Fortnite update and see the full patch notes here.
Fortnite Season 5 is set to start on Thursday, July 12, at 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT / 9 AM BST / 6 PM AET. Players can still finish up Season 4's challenges to level up their Battle Pass and unlock any remaining rewards. If you need help completing the challenges, take a look at our full Season 4 challenge guide.
Twitch Prime continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Each month, Twitch users with Amazon Prime get a bunch of freebies, ranging from games to in-game items for titles. Perhaps the most exciting is free Fortnite gear, such as the Fortnite Twitch Prime Pack #2, which Epic Games has just announced. It includes exclusive free cosmetics and other items for Fortnite players, including the newcomers on Nintendo Switch. Here's what you can still get and how to obtain it.
Twitch Prime subscribers can now grab Fortnite Twitch Prime Pack #2. To claim your pack, link your Epic and Twitch accounts, then click on the crown next to the search bar on Twitch. Here's what you'll receive:
Exclusive Battle Royale Trailblazer Outfit
Exclusive Battle Royale True North Back Bling
Exclusive Battle Royale Tenderizer Pickaxe
Exclusive Battle Royale Freestylin' Emote
Note that, according to Epic's announcement, "While you can only claim your Twitch Prime loot on a single platform (PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 or Xbox One), your content is shared and available to use across PC/console and mobile, as long as you use the same Epic account. Content is not shared between Xbox One and PS4, even if you use the same Epic account."
Now is a good time to hop into Fortnite, thanks to the arrival of Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War. If you'd like some help completing this week's challenges, be sure to check out our guide to Fortnite's challenges for Week 2 of Season 4.
And if you haven't claimed Fortnite Twitch Prime Pack #1, you still can.
In addition to the arrival of the delayed Playground mode, a new content update (version 4.5) is now available for Fortnite on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile. The update introduces a handful of new weapons to both Save the World and Battle Royale modes, including the recently-teased Drum Gun.
Following the rollout of the 4.5 content update, players can now find and wield the Drum Gun in Battle Royale mode. Epic describes the new gun as a "hybrid weapon that combines the stopping power of a rifle with the suppressive ability and fire rate of an SMG." It comes in Uncommon and Rare varieties, uses Medium Ammo, and can be found in chests, Vending Machines, or as floor loot.
The Drum Gun is the only new weapon to arrive in Battle Royale this week, but Save the World players can now get their hands on two new items: the Freedom Herald Pistol and the Stink Bomb--the latter of which made its debut in Battle Royale mode last month. Additionally, to coincide with Independence Day, Stars and Stripes Heroes are now available to purchase from the Event Store for a limited time. You can read more about the new items in the patch notes on Epic's website.
The new content update arrives after last week's 4.5 patch, which also introduced a new weapon to Battle Royale: the Dual Pistols. On top of that, the patch made a number of changes to existing weapons--particularly shotguns--and introduced the Final Fight Teams of 12 limited-time mode, which would eventually be replaced by 50v50.
Season 5 of Fortnite: Battle Royale is right around the corner. Ahead of the new season, players got to witness the Evil Lair's rocket take off and create a mysterious crack in the sky. Since the rocket launch, additional rifts have begun popping up around the island, and they appear to be growing and swallowing up nearby objects. What that means for the future of the game remains to be seen, but players won't have to wait too long to find out, as Season 5 kicks off next week on July 12.
Fortnite: Battle Royale has gained another new mode, as the Playground LTM (limited-time mode) is now live. The mode first launched a few days ago, but was taken offline soon after due to server problems. After an extended week that lasted almost a week, the issues have now been resolved, and the mode is available to play on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile.
Unlike previous limited-time modes, Playground is intended to be a "low-pressure environment" that acts much like a private server. It allows players to explore the map and play around with up to three friends, free from the risk of being eliminated by other people.
Each Playground match lasts for one hour, and the storm circle won't begin closing in on the map until 55 minutes have passed. Friendly fire is enabled, although players will respawn immediately unless eliminated by the storm. There's also much more loot to find.
Meanwhile Fortnite has another content update available now. It adds the Drum Gun for Battle Royale and Stink Bomb for Save the World, as well as special American-themed cosmetics in celebration of the United States' Independence Day, July 4.
Finally, Season 5 of Fortnite is scheduled to begin on Thursday, July 12, at 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT / 9 AM BST / 6 PM AET. In the meantime, players can still complete this season's challenges to level up their Battle Pass and unlock any remaining rewards. If you need help completing the challenges, be sure to check out our full Season 4 challenge guide.
Grand Theft Auto V players in GTA Online have reported receiving in-game messages stating that Grand Theft Auto VI will launch in 2019. Developer Rockstar Games has addressed the rumors, confirming the messages are fake and not from official channels.
GTA Online players reported receiving the message, which reads, "Rockstar Message GTA VI Coming 2019," on Reddit and the GTA Online forum. This inevitably prompted people to ask the Rockstar Support Twitter account about it. The response follows below; it confirms it is indeed a hoax, as suspected.
Although Rockstar hasn't provided any information on how this happened, the Reddit community has speculated that an opportunistic hacker is using mods and a flaw in the Rockstar Social Club's messaging system to send out the message. Perhaps the biggest giveaway is that the pop-up messages are predominantly appearing in the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC versions of the game, where mods are more prevalent.
This is a hoax made with the use of mods, and not an official message or statement from Rockstar Games. *OV
— Rockstar Support (@RockstarSupport) July 2, 2018
Obviously, it'd be incredibly out of character for Rockstar to simply reveal the release date for the next entry in its biggest franchise in such a haphazard way. Rockstar like to be very measured in the way it reveals games, delivering fleeting teases and drip-feeding little details to build up excitement.
On top of that, casually announced GTA VI would steal all the thunder from its next game: Red Dead Redemption 2. As confirmed in July, Red Dead Redemption 2's release date is October 26, 2018. The much-anticipated sequel will be available for PS4 and Xbox One. Rockstar hasn't said whether the game is coming to PC, but one of the programmers working on the game has indicated Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC is in development.
Update: More rifts continue to appear in various areas across Fortnite. Most notably, a second enormous crack is now visible in the sky over the island, while another smaller rift also appears to be forming near Retail Row. We've added screenshots of these to the gallery below. The original story follows.
As teased, players who jumped into Fortnite: Battle Royale this past weekend got to witness a world-changing event: the launch of the Evil Lair's rocket, which resulted in a mysterious rift appearing in the sky over the island. It's unclear just what this strange development means for the future of the game, but it isn't the only consequence of the event, as additional rifts have also begun appearing in various portions of the map.
Following the rocket launch, players have begun noticing what appear to be dimensional tears across the island. The most obvious is the giant crack that appeared in the sky shortly after the rocket took off, but several smaller rifts have also started to pop up in various places around the island in the days since the event--some of which appear to be growing in size.
As you can see in the screenshots below, additional rifts can now be found near Lonely Lodge and Tomato Town. According to PC Gamer, the former was barely visible when it first materialized, but it has since grown and replaced the sign that was once outside of the building, suggesting that the rift is consuming nearby objects as it expands.
It remains to be seen whether or not more rifts will develop as we approach Season 5 of Fortnite, which is slated to kick off next week, but they'll undoubtedly play a major role in setting the stage for the new season. Epic heralded the arrival of Season 4 in a similar manner. In the weeks leading up to the season, a mysterious comet appeared in the sky over the map. The comet would eventually crash into the island at the start of the season, altering the landscape in the process and introducing new elements like Hop Rocks to the game.
Season 5 of Fortnite is scheduled to begin on Thursday, July 12, at 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT / 9 AM BST / 6 PM AET. In the meantime, players can still complete this season's challenges to level up their Battle Pass and unlock any remaining rewards. If you need help completing the challenges, be sure to check out our full Season 4 challenge guide.
New challenges are now available in Epic Games' Fortnite: Battle Royale, including one that involves a treasure map in Haunted Hills. Season 4 has nearly concluded, but you still have time to take on challenges if you own the Battle Pass. Week 9 challenges are live across all platforms, providing a slate of seven more objectives for you to complete if you own the Season 4 Battle Pass on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, or mobile. Here's where to find the aforementioned treasure and how to complete all the other challenges now available.
Week 9's trickiest challenge tasks you to follow the treasure map found in Haunted Hills. Provided you want to do things by the book, you'll first head to Haunted Hills to get a look at the map, which is pictured below. The map can be found in one of two locations: in a small building just south of the church, or underneath the larger building on the western side. Either way, here's what you'll see:
If you know the island's map well, you may recognize this as showing the silhouettes of Junk Junction's... junk. Fortunately, that area is located just north of Haunted Hills. Either make your way there next or drop in at the start of the match, and head toward a stack of cars near the northern wall, as directed by the X on the treasure map. Get to the top of the pile and you'll see the treasure waiting to be picked up. Grab it just as you would open a chest and the challenge is complete.
Epic considers this to be a Hard-tier challenge, which is good news for you--doing it will net you a total of 10 Battle Stars. That helps to rank up your Battle Pass and get your hands on Fortnite's Season 4 skins and rewards. With Season 5 set to begin in early July, you'll want to squeeze what you can get out of the current Battle Pass as the rocket threatens to strike.
You can check out a complete list of Week 9 challenges below. These are, for the most part, quite straightforward, tasking you with eliminating opponents with shotguns, elimination opponents in Anarchy Acres, using a shopping cart (luckily, these have been re-enabled), searching chest in Moisty Mire, and dealing explosive weapon damage. One that might give you some difficulty is visiting the center of named locations in a single match. These are marked by large blue beacons, and you'll know you've reached the center when you see a new flag in the center of the area change to your banner.Your best bet to complete this may be to simply stay outside the storm circle and avoid other players as much as possible.
Fortnite Week 9 Challenges
Deal damage with Explosive Weapons to opponents (500) -- 5 Battle Stars
Search Chests in Moisty Mire (7) -- 5 Battle Stars
Use a Shopping Cart -- 5 Battle Stars
Visit the center of Named Locations in a Single Match (4) -- 5 Battle Stars
Hard: Follow the treasure map found in Haunted Hills -- 10 Battle Stars
Epic Games has revealed when Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 5 will start. In a post on the game's Reddit page, the company confirmed Season 5 will begin on July 12 at 1 AM PDT / 4 AM EDT / 9 AM BST / 6 PM AET. To help people unlock remaining Battle Pass rewards for Season 4, Epic is awarding double XP for matches from June 29 until July 2. [Update: Double XP might have ended, but the next step of the rocket saga has occurred, as it launched into the air and caused cracks to appear in the sky.]
Ahead of the new season, Epic has released a new mode for Fortnite. Introduced as part of the latest update, the Playground LTM is essentially a private server for players to experiment on. It's designed for players to jump in and hone new strategies or sharpen building skills. Since access is invite only, you can do these things without being ruthlessly gunned down by enemy combatants.
The latest Fortnite update also adds Dual Pistols, map markers, part four of the Blockbuster Event, the Builder Pro controller layout, and more. You can read the full Fortnite v4.5 patch notes here for a breakdown of everything new. Week 9 challenges are also now available.
Fortnite continues to be incredibly popular, and the impact of its success is now being seen through how much physical copies of the game are selling. Since disc-based versions of Fortnite are no longer available, prices of it on Ebay have skyrocketed to the $100-200 range, with a few listings going as high as $450.
The game recently launched on Nintendo Switch and has already established a strong community. This is in part helped by the fact that it supports cross-play with Xbox One, PC, and iOS. Like the other versions of Fortnite, it is only available digitally.
Seems like Hollywood directors are really feeling the 80's nostalgia lately. Childs Play is getting a reboot so Chucky can return to haunt our nightmares.
In the original Child's Play franchise from the 1980s, a family is plagued by a doll that's possessed by a serial killer. MGM is being very hush-hush about the plot details, but Collider reports that it will follow a group of kids squaring off with a new age version of Chucky that's more technologically advanced. The film will be produced by David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith, who also produced It.
Whether it will be a true horror film or more of a jokey version in the vein of the later films in the original franchise is unclear. It begins production in September in Vancouver and it will be directed by Lars Klevberg who also directed the horror movie Polaroid. Tyler Burton Smith will write the script; he wrote Kung Fury 2 as well as the video game Quantum Break.
There's no release date for the Child's Play movie yet, but according to The Hollywood Reporter , MGM is eager to get started.
Tom Cruise finally found someone to take the highway to the danger zone with him. Top Gun: Maverick, a follow-up to the original 1986 film, is already in production and now the team behind the film has found the young actor who will play the young protege of Cruise's character, Maverick.
According to Variety, Miles Teller (Fantastic Four) has won the coveted role of Goose's son. In case you don't remember Top Gun--go rewatch it, already--Goose, played by Anthony Edwards, was Maverick's co-pilot, though he died during the events of the film. With Teller playing the child of Goose, it can only be assumed his wife (Meg Ryan) was pregnant in the film.
Teller wasn't the only actor up for the role. Variety reports that among those who tested with Cruise were Glen Powell (Scream Queens) and Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Apocalypse). As for who else is in the cast, it was previously revealed that Val Kilmer would be returning to reprise his role as Maverick's arch-nemesis, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky.
Top Gun: Maverick is directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously collaborated with Cruise on the 2013 movie Oblivion. The director has also previously revived another 1980s property when he directed 2010's Tron: Legacy.
This particular sequel has been in development for years, with the original film's director Tony Scott looking to return behind-the-camera. Following his death in 2012, it was revealed that the other parties involved were still interested in making the film, with Kosinski's involvement being announced in 2017.
Following its apparent leak on the Australian Microsoft Store, Sega has confirmed pricing and release details for the upcoming Shenmue I & II collection. The combo pack will launch for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam on August 21, and it'll retail for the budget price of US $30 / £25 / AU $49.95.
First announced during the Sega Fes fan event earlier this year, the Shenmue I & II collection combines both Dreamcast classics together in one package. The games come with a handful of improvements, although they aren't true HD remakes or remasters. Among the new features players can enjoy are modern and classic control schemes, an updated user interface, scalable screen resolution, and both English and Japanese voiceovers.
Shenmue was created by famed game designer Yu Suzuki, who directed a number of Sega's arcade hits, including Out Run and Virtua Fighter. The first title originally launched for Dreamcast in 1999. At the time of its release, it had the distinction of being the most expensive video game ever created. Its sequel, Shenmue II, arrived in 2001, although it would only be released on Dreamcast in Europe and Japan. The game would be subsequently ported to the original Xbox the following year.
Both games cast players in the role Ryo Hazuki, a young martial artist on a quest to avenge his father's death and ultimately uncover the secret behind a mysterious relic known as the Dragon Mirror. The titles were renowned for their impressive open world, deep battle system, and variety of minigames. You can learn more about each in GameSpot's original Shenmue review and Shenmue II review.
A third installment in the series, Shenmue III, was announced during Sony's E3 2015 press conference. The game is currently in development for PS4 and PC, and like its predecessors, it is being directed by series creator Yu Suzuki. Shenmue III was originally slated to launch this year, but was delayed into 2019 in order to further refine the game. Publisher Deep Silver recently revealed that Shenmue III will require a whopping 100 GB of storage space on PC.
The Purge movies have always been about the 1% versus the 99, the privileged against the underprivileged--the rich trying to exterminate the poor by pitting them against one another while sitting safe in fortified ivory towers. In the previous three movies, that theme served as the core, beneath a veneer of fantastically stylized violence, with gangs of roving murderers draping their cars with Christmas lights and donning exaggerated masks over preppy school uniforms. In The First Purge, that thin surface of fantasy is gone, leaving only a crude, gratuitous, vaguely exploitative movie about the government openly and mercilessly exterminating poor people.
Like The Purge: Anarchy, the second in the series, The First Purge wants to suggest that, with scattered exceptions, normal people aren't inherently violent enough to Purge. They need a push, and that shove comes from the New Founding Fathers of America, the government that, in this movie, just recently emerged as the third option in America's two party system and seized power from Republicans and Democrats alike. The First Purge explains how the NFFA was able to pull it off: Much like the politicians in power today, they exploited people's fear. The movie spends an opening montage citing a grab bag of real world social unrest, from the Black Lives Matter movement to a housing crisis worse than 2008's.
Now, it's time for an "experiment" that Marisa Tomei's Dr. Updale, a scientist working with the NFFA, promises will give the American people the outlet they need for all their hate, anger, and aggression. There's an unintentionally silly scene late in the movie when Updale, seeing the actual results of her "experiment," utters dramatically, "What have I done?" It's unclear what results she was expecting from this whole thing.
The movie centers on a handful of characters on New York's Staten Island, the isolated site of this first, experimental Purge. (Through their public representative Arlo Sabian (Patch Darragh), the government issues some hazy explanation about the island's demographics being representative of the country as a whole, but behind closed doors the NFFA readily admit they just want to kill poor people.)
Dmitri (Y'lan Noel) is a drug kingpin who wants to keep his neighborhood safe while protecting his product and his business. Nya (Lex Scott Davis) is his ex-girlfriend, a conscientious protestor who opposes the experiment. Her little brother, Isaiah (Joivan Wade), was supposed to get off the island, but secretly stayed behind to get revenge on Skeletor (Rotimi Paul), a violent drug addict who attacked and humiliated him. These characters and those surrounding them--every single person the movie follows during the experiment--are non-white, while almost everyone actually causing violence during the Purge is white.
Early on, there are isolated scenes of NFFA officials interviewing Staten Islanders about their pent up rage, then offering them monetary compensation for remaining on the island and actively participating. The government implants them with tracking devices and issues them high tech contact lenses that will record the night's events so the results can be broadcast to the world. Glowing red, green, or blue in the darkness, these contacts are one of the movie's only creative aesthetic liberties, although they often verge on looking silly.
But when the would-be Purgers throw block parties instead of tearing one another apart, the NFFA sends in militaristic bands of mercenaries dressed in the regalia of the KKK, white supremacist biker gangs, and masked, Nazi-like soldiers. At times, The First Purge is hard to watch, and not in the fun way that horror movies are supposed to make you hide behind splayed fingers. Whatever thin veil of subtlety this series ever possessed is gone from this movie, murdered by flocks of heavily armed drones the New Founding Fathers of America sent to make sure the citizens of Staten Island "participated" in the experiment.
The First Purge doesn't hesitate to mirror real world events, and never to its benefit. At one point, off screen (thankfully), a group of white mercenaries disguised as a biker gang guns down dozens of black, hispanic, and Asian people huddling for safety in a church--something that more or less happened in real life just three years ago. Later, white soldiers rampage through a towering housing project, systematically, inhumanly slaughtering the hundreds of non-white people inside, room by room and floor by floor. There were points in The First Purge I could have been watching last year's Detroit, a movie about the real life terror inflicted on black people by white cops during Detroit's 1967 12th Street Riot. That's not imagery you want to evoke lightly, yet The First Purge uses it readily, in between scenes of cackling homeless ladies setting traps in alleyways and Dmitri's gang members eagerly arming themselves to the teeth.
When Nya gets her foot caught in a trap and attackers burst from a grate nearby, hands scrabble furiously at her crotch. Running away, she yells behind her, "P***y grabbing motherf***er!" Somehow, despite being completely out of character, that line is predictable, too. It's the exact kind of low-hanging fruit this movie hungrily plucks, scene after scene.
There's nothing fun or thrilling about watching white people dressed up as real world hate groups efficiently murdering innocent victims. The Purge series' veneer of fantasy is gone. It's too on the nose, and it knows it. That The First Purge is a prequel means the people we see suffering in it are doomed to at least another 25 years of annual violence and oppression, a fact you'll be acutely aware of as the dawn breaks on the first experiment, the few survivors limp down the street, and the tastelessly summoned Kendrick Lamar song "Alright" ("Alls my life I had to fight…") thumps into life over your theater's speakers.
2016's The Purge: Election Year ended on a hopeful note. That movie tried to mirror the real world too, but the real life politics it mimicked turned out much differently than the film's. In 2018, we could have used a movie where, for once, the good guys won. The fact that series creator James DeMonaco, who's written all four entries and directed the three before this, chose to give us a prequel instead is empirical evidence that he may be out of good ideas.
A new month is now officially underway, and with it comes another batch of free titles for PlayStation Plus subscribers. As per usual, July's PS Plus lineup consists of six games divided up across PS4, PS3, and Vita, all of which are available to download at no charge through the end of the month.
Headlining PS4's selection of freebies is Heavy Rain, the narrative-driven game from Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream. Heavy Rain originally launched for PS3 back in 2010 and was re-released on Sony's current-gen console in 2016. Joining it is Absolver, a unique and flexible third-person adventure/fighting game in which players can fully customize their fighting style.
On the PS3 side, Plus subscribers can now download the classic 3D platformer Rayman 3 HD, as well as Extreme Exorcism, a retro-style platformer in which players hunt their own ghosts. Extreme Exorcism is available in place of Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess, which was initially announced to be one of this month's free PS Plus titles. The game is also playable on PS4 via Cross-Buy.
Finally, Vita owners can download the acclaimed adventure game Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma and the action game Space Overlords for free this month. Like Extreme Exorcism, the latter also supports Cross-Buy with PS4, getting you four possible freebies on that platform in July.
All of the aforementioned games will remain free to download for PS Plus members until next month, when they'll return to their regular prices. You can see the full list of July's free PS Plus games below. Subscribers also still have a few more days to grab another game at no charge, Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Activision's first-person shooter will remain free for PS Plus members through July 11.
Dragon Ball Super is the newest Dragon Ball anime series, starting in 2015 and ending earlier this year. It follows Goku and his friends after the defeat of Majin Buu, and while things start off peacefully, they don't stay that way for long. Now, thanks to a big deal from Microsoft, you're able to download the explosive first season of the series for free, and if you're hooked, you can buy the following three seasons at a big discount.
In a listing spotted by Wario64, the Microsoft Store is giving away the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball Super for free (its regular price is $27). You can also buy Seasons 2-4 for $13 each (a big markdown from their regular price, also $27 each). You can watch the episodes on an Xbox One, or get them on your PC, Hololens, or mobile device. The deal won't be around for long; Microsoft says the prices will expire on July 10.
Dragon Ball Super is the first Dragon Ball anime with an original story in 18 years. It's the official sequel to Z, with Toriyama involved in production, and its early episodes cover the events of the films Battle of the Gods and Resurrection F. Thanks to a partnership between Crunchyroll and Funimation, the English sub is widely available. If you aren't interested in buying this version from the Microsoft Store, check out these other ways to watch below:
And if you're in the mood to watch even more Dragon Ball, from the beginning to Z and beyond, check out GameSpot's guide on how to watch all Dragon Ball series.
A collection of Shenmue I & II is heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on August 21. This collection contains the original Shenmue, which launched on the Dreamcast in 1999, as well as the 2001 sequel, which came out on both Dreamcast and the original Xbox. The suggested retail price for the collection is $30.
While these aren't true HD remakes or remasters of the games, they do come with some advantages over the originals beyond being playable on modern hardware. You'll be able to choose between classic or modern controls, they have scalable screen resolution, and for the first time in the US, you can play with Japanese audio.
If you want to re-play these games--or see why so many fans contributed over $6 million to Shenmue III's ickstarter--you might be looking to pre-order the collection. Here's everything you need to know to pre-order Shenmue I & II.
No Pre-Order Bonus
Sorry, no pre-order bonuses here. All you'll get for pre-ordering Shenmue I & II is a copy of the game when it comes out on August 21. But physical copies do come with a double-sided poster, so that's something.
Where to Pre-Order Shenmue I & II
Below, you'll find links to the major retailers currently offering Shenmue I & II pre-orders. As you can see, Amazon Prime members can get the best deal on the game. If you're not a Prime member, you can save 10% by pre-ordering the game from the PlayStation Store or Steam. Just note that digital copies don't come with the poster.
Amazon -- $30 ($24 with Amazon Prime) -- PS4 | Xbox One
It's a good time to stop by the local GameStop or head to the website, because between now and July 15 the retailer is running its annual summer sale. This year you can find lots of good deals on games, consoles, and accessories for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The main difference between this sale and GameStop's regular weekly sale is quantity. A lot more games are on sale now than usual, even if the sale prices are about the same as you'd find any other week. At any rate, let's dive in and see what kind of money we can save during this year's GameStop summer sale.
On the hardware side, if you buy a 1TB Xbox One console, you'll get a $50 GameStop gift card for free. The green and gray Xbox One wireless controller is available for 20% off, bringing it down to $52. PS4 owners can grab a gold or magma red DualShock 4 controller for $55, saving $10 in the process.
All in all, there's a lot of deals during GameStop's summer sale, so you're sure to find something worth playing, no matter which platform you prefer. We have more of our picks below, but you can find the full sale here.
With Pokemon Go's next Community Day coming up soon, developer Niantic has shared new details about the event. The featured Pokemon during Juy's Community Day will be the classic starter Squirtle, and now we've learned that some players will be able to find a special version of the Pokemon if they complete research quests--and you should be excited if the words Squirtle Squad mean anything to you.
Niantic revealed on Twitter that players who complete Field Research tasks during the Community Day will have a chance of encountering a Squirtle wearing sunglasses--a reference to the Squirtle Squad from the Pokemon anime series. It's unclear whether or not players will need to complete specific quests in order to find a sunglasses-wearing Squirtle, but a new set of Field Research tasks that focus primarily on Pokemon from the Kanto region were recently added to the game.
In addition to the sunglasses-wearing Squirtle, players will likely have a chance of finding a Shiny Squirtle during this week's event, as every previous Community Day has introduced Shiny versions of its featured Pokemon. On top of that, any Wartortle that evolves into Blastoise before the Community Day ends will learn the powerful Water-type attack Hydro Cannon.
Once again, rather than being hosted at a specific location, this month's Community Day runs for a three-hour window of time, which kicks off at different times depending on what part of the world you live in. You can find the Community Day schedule for each region below:
North America
11 AM - 2 PM PT
2 PM - 5 PM ET
Europe and Africa
10 AM - 1 PM BST
Asia-Pacific
12 PM - 3 PM JST
Finally, players who participate in this month's Community Day will be able to take advantage of other in-game bonuses. For the duration of the event, Eggs will hatch at a quarter of the distance they typically require. Any Lure Modules that are activated during the event will also last for three hours, as opposed to their usual 30-minute limit.
Mega Man 11 is fast approaching, with only two of the eight Robot Masters revealed so far. Now we can make that three, because Capcom has just taken the wraps off another on its official blog. Blast Man is a theatrical showman who occupies an abandoned theme park that he's revised after his own "Blast Man Adventure."
As you may expect from the name, Blast Man lobs bombs, then hits his Power Gear to create super-bombs with bigger explosions. Your reward for beating him is the Chain Blast, a sticky bomb that can take out enemies by itself or get chained with other Chain Blast bombs for multiple detonations. Using the Power Gear makes the explosions huge.
The announcement also revealed a new game mode, Balloon Attack. It's similar to a Time Attack mode, but rather than enemies the stages are littered with colorful balloons. You'll need to burst blue balloons and avoid popping red balloons to keep your run through the stages going.
Blast Man joins Fuse Man and Block Man as the three known Robot Master bosses so far. For more on Mega Man 11 and modernizing a classic franchise, check out our interview with producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya and director Koji Oda. Mega Man 11 is coming to PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on October 2.
Good news for deal hunters: Sony is running a massive Mid-Year Sale on the PlayStation Store, with discounts on over 800 items between now and July 17. That's a seriously big sale, significantly larger than most weekly PlayStation Store sales. So if you're looking to save money on digital PS4, PS3, PS Vita, and PSVR games, now's the time to do it. And if you're a PS Plus member, you get a bonus 10% off. Let's take a look at some of the biggest and best games that are on sale right now.
To kick things off, you can grab last year's Egypt-set Assassin's Creed Origins for $36 ($30 with PS Plus). For the same price, you can get Diablo III: Eternal Collection, which comes with all the expansions that acclaimed dungeon crawler has gotten since release. Or you can kick it in the apocalypse with Fallout 4 for $18 ($15).
If you're looking for games that cost less than lunch, you can find plenty of them during the sale as well. The Zelda-like game Darksiders: Warmastered Edition is down to $6 ($2). The side-scrolling shooter Sine Mora EX is the same price. And if you haven't saved (or killed) a group of teenagers in Until Dawn yet, you can add it to your collection for $6 ($5).
Those are some of our picks for the best games in the PlayStation Store's Mid-Year Sale. You can find more below, or you can scroll through the whole big sale here.
There's a recurring source of tension in Ant-Man and the Wasp thanks to Scott Lang's sentence of two years under house arrest for his actions in Captain America: Civil War. No matter how many zany adventures Paul Rudd's character has in this sequel, he has to periodically race back to his San Francisco apartment and re-don his ankle bracelet whenever hapless FBI agent Jimmy Woo (the funny Randall Park) decides to check in on him. It's a fun bit, and it harks back to an earlier age in the MCU, when a Marvel hero's biggest concern could be staying out of trouble with the law.
We've yet to see what a post-Infinity War world looks like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Regardless of how it eventually gets undone, what effect will Thanos's finger snap have in the short term? How will the tone shift in Avengers 4? Those questions are irrelevant in Ant-Man and the Wasp, which quickly places itself before the events of Infinity War. That may be a knock against it for those hoping for some answers, but this movie's tone is much lighter as a result, perfectly in line with the original Ant-Man's.
The first Ant-Man introduced Scott Lang (Rudd) along with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Ant-Man and the Wasp directly picks up their story following Scott's involvement in Civil War: Scott's two years of house arrest are almost up, but Hope drags him back into a life of illegal heroism in a plot to save her mother, Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne, from the "quantum realm" in which she's been stranded for 30 years.
How can Janet be alive down there after all this time? How could Hank and Hope possibly find her? This movie is brimming with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about things like "entanglement" and "quantum tunnels." It gets a little exhausting, but the movie is self aware about its own ridiculousness; at one point, Scott asks Hank and his colleague Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) whether they just stick the word "quantum" in front of everything to make it sound more scientific. Good question, Scott!
Ant-Man and the Wasp introduces a couple of new villains in the forms of Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, who stalks the heroes in hopes of stealing their secret lab, and Walton Goggins' Sonny Burch, a black market merchant who decides he wants the quantum tech for himself. Goggins is his typical hilariously sleazy self, while John-Kamen's more overtly dramatic performance fits her character.
But most important is the Wasp herself, Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne, who completely owns this movie. Hope proves--unsurprisingly--to be a much more capable Ant-Man than Ant-Man himself, with confidence and skill that are thrilling to watch. It makes the entire plot of the first movie--that Hank had to enlist the deadbeat Scott in the first place instead of just trusting his daughter to do the job--seem even more ludicrous in retrospect. Hopefully Lilly decides to stick around the MCU for a while, as her presence would be much appreciated in future installments.
Like the first Ant-Man, this movie has great fight choreography that sees both heroes frequently changing from normal to small to massive and back again in creative ways. Some of the most fun sequences are car chases where one or more vehicles are constantly shrinking down to Hot Wheels size and back to normal, throwing off pursuers and causing general zany chaos.
There's an added dash of humor from the fact that Scott's suit for much of the movie is malfunctioning, leaving him unable to control when he changes size. That leads to an especially funny sequence where Scott is running around his daughter's middle school at about 3 feet tall, trying to remain undetected. Cassie herself is still played by the ridiculously charismatic Abby Ryder Fortson, who gives Paul Rudd tit-for-tat in every scene they're in together.
Michael Peña's Luis returns with a vengeance too, with his voice-overed montage gag from the first--in which he tells a story while the characters he's describing act it out--is funnier than ever. This time around he gets injected with a sort of truth serum, causing his rapid fire rambling to span topics ranging from Scott's psychiatric health to his family's love of Morrissey. He's more actively involved in the story, as well, which is pure wish fulfillment for viewers who loved his character in the first movie.
Like the original Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp is primarily a palette cleanser in the MCU as a whole (the first movie was sandwiched in between the dense Age of Ultron and the dour Civil War). Ant-Man and the Wasp is hilarious, fun, silly, self aware, and creative. Filled with pseudo-science gobbledigook, crazy action, and multiple villains all vying for screen time, it's one of the most comic-booky MCU movies yet. The fates of all our favorite heroes after Avengers: Infinity War may still be up in the air, but in the meantime, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a welcome distraction.
The Good
The Bad
Lighthearted and funny
Pseudo-science mumbo jumbo gets ridiculous
Evangeline Lilly phenomenal as the Wasp
No answers for Infinity War fans
Multiple fun new villains
Creative shrinking-and-growing action
Self aware about its sillier aspects
Much-needed palette cleanser following Infinity War
It's hard to argue that the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline can be a troubling one. Whether it's the small inconsistencies--when, exactly, is Spider-Man: Homecoming set--or the order or the films relative to their place in the timeline, there's always quite a bit to sift through. Warning: Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow.
That's no different for the MCU's next release, Ant-Man and the Wasp. Though it's releasing after the game-changing events of Avengers: Infinity War, the new Marvel film is actually set before Thanos went on his finger-snapping rampage. In fact, Ant-Man and the Wasp serves as more of a sequel to Captain America: Civil War than just about anything else in the franchise.
So why slot a sequel to Civil War after the release of Infinity War? A big piece of the puzzle is it serves as a sort of palette cleanser for Marvel fans who watched so many of their favorite superheroes get turned to dust by Thanos. "I love that we come off of this cataclysmic event in Infinity War, and then have a self-contained, fun, clever, action-packed, emotional ride," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige tells GameSpot.
For Peyton Reed, who directed Ant-Man and the Wasp, the movie's place in the timeline is similar to the first Ant-Man--which he also directed. "Us coming out after Infinity War absolutely mirrors the first movie coming out right after Age of Ultron," he says. "And it's, I'm sure, by design from Marvel, you know, and really kind of showcases their willingness to embrace wildly different tones in movies. But for me, I think it's great because we don't have any of the story burden of servicing, you know, Infinity Stones and stuff like that. We can just tell the story which, in the movie has really high stakes, but they're intensely personal stakes."
The idea of embracing different tones is one that's important to Feige and the team at Marvel Studios, as evidenced by the three MCU films released in 2018. "One of the big reasons we wanted to make this movie, and one of the big reasons we wanted the movie released in this order: Black Panther, Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, to show how different the tones can be, and that I've always said I always want to expand the definition not just of what a 'comic book' or 'superhero movie' could be, but now what a Marvel Studios movie could be, or what [the] MCU could be," he explains.
As Marvel looks to the future or what a movie in the MCU can be, Ant-Man and the Wasp hits theaters on July 6. For more on Ant-Man and the Wasp, don't forget to check out our review of the film, as well as Feige's thoughts on evolving the superhero franchise in the future.
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