Month: December 2018

The next big update for Grand Theft Auto Online sounds like an exciting one. The “Arena War” update, as it’s called, will add a competitive mode that sounds very intense.

“Enter Arena War, where ruthless gladiatorial combat meets the bleeding-edge of vehicular modification technology in one spectacular–and highly combustible–competition,” reads a line from Rockstar’s official description.

The event will take place inside the Maze Bank Arena, apparently, and it will see players fighting until the grisly end, apparently. “Sign up and embark on an entirely new career under the stratospheric dome of the Maze Bank Arena, one that involves turning your opponent’s brains into pulp on the steering wheel in the name of entertainment, courtesy of Alan Jerome Productions,” reads another line from the description.

Arena War will add new vehicle types that were custom made for it (check out the teaser image above to get an idea for what to expect), along with seven “explosive” new modes. In the Arena, you’ll earn Arena Points, which you can use to move through the ranks and unlock more “toys,” according to Rockstar.

Arena War arrives in GTA Online for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 11. GTA Online is the multiplayer mode for Grand Theft Auto V.

As it always said it would, Rockstar Games continues to support GTA Online even though the studio’s newest game, Red Dead Redemption 2, is out. The western also has a multiplayer mode, Red Dead Online, but it is still in the early, beta stages of its lifecycle.

Movie giant Disney had another massive year in 2018. With multiple weeks left to go in the year, Disney movies have collectively made more than $7 billion worldwide. Disney hit the milestone on December 9, according to Variety. This is just the second time ever that any movie studio has reached $7 billion in a year. The first studio to do it? You guessed it, Disney set the record with $7.6 billion in 2016.

The movie industry’s top movies of the year came from Disney. Avengers: Infinity War ($2 billion) was the No. 1 movie of 2018 based on box office performance, with Black Panther ($1.35 billion) following in second place. Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($1.3 billion) was No. 3, with Disney’s The Incredibles 2 ($1.24 billion) at No. 4

Another 2018 Disney movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, made $622 million worldwide to land at Number 6 for the year. The Star Wars spinoff, Solo: A Star Wars Story, currently sits at the No. 18 position with $392 million. Some of Disney’s other 2018 movies included Ralph Breaks the Internet (No. 31 / $258 million), Christopher Robin (No. 36 / $197.4 million), The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (No. 41 / $151 million), and A Wrinkle in Time (No. 44 / $132 million). These numbers come from Box Office Mojo.

Disney’s movies made the most from international markets, where they collectively pulled in $4.07 billion, with $2.95 billion coming from the domestic market.

Disney has one more very big movie coming up this year, Mary Poppins Returns starring Emily Blunt. The film is due out just before Christmas, and it is tracking to make $65 million in the US for its opening.

Disney looks set to have another big year in 2019. Some of the studio’s announced movies for next year include remakes/reboots of The Lion King, Dumbo, and Aladdin, as well as Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2, to name a few. Star Wars: Episode IX is due out in December 2019. Disney also owns Marvel, and some of the biggest releases from Marvel in 2019 include Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. So yes, we expect Disney to again do very well in 2019 at the box office.

Celebrate The Holidays With New Emotes

The Dawning is Destiny 2’s holiday-themed in-game event, bringing a winter wonderland to the Tower. It kicks off on December 11, adding a whole bunch of new cosmetic items to the Eververse store and a brand new kind of Bright Engram–the Winterdrift Engram–from which you can earn new cosmetics.

The coolest thing on offer in this year’s Dawning, though, are multiplayer emotes. These are emotes that go a step beyond the usual dances, waves, and other goofy expressions players can do, to allow you to team up with friends for your emotes. They include fist bumps, chest bumps, and high fives. There’s also a hockey themed emote, Protecting Teammates, that has you throwing down your stick and gloves to get ready to brawl somebody guilty of some unsportsmanlike conduct.

The Dawning hasn’t started just yet, but its engrams and items have come to Destiny 2 a bit early. Below, we’ve compiled all the armor, ships, emotes, and ghost shells you’ll be able to earn during the rest of December.

It’s finally happened. After months of teases and images, Batwoman has officially joined the Arrow-verse. In the second part of the “Elseworlds” crossover, The Flash (Grant Gustin), Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) ventured to Gotham City for the first time and met the city’s Caped Crusader.

This Gotham is one that no longer has a Batman to keep them safe. Instead, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) suits up as Batwoman in an attempt to save what she can of a dead city. While, for now, this will be contained to the second piece of the three-part “Elseworlds” event only, a Batwoman TV show is being developed for The CW that would pick up where “Elseworlds” leaves off.

Before they could bring Batwoman to life, though, the writers and producers of the Arrow-verse had to figure out who she was. What’s more, they have to create the world she lived in and decide how it would compare to the likes of Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl.

For Caroline Dries, who’s responsible for the story of “Elseworlds Part 2” and is developing the Batwoman series, the goal was to give away enough to make you wonder about what comes next. “We all as a group knew who the character was when we were breaking the story so our goal was trying to create a set-up story-wise where we could meet her kind of be intrigued by her, introduce Gotham a little bit, you know, plant a little visual things that are curious and then have people wondering what is this world she’s part of,” she said during a Q&A with press.

That planning gives viewers some hints about what to expect, should Batwoman go to series. This Gotham is dead and rotting, with even Bruce Wayne leaving town–for reasons that haven’t been revealed at this point. However, Kate Kane has no intentions of following suit and is instead renovating the old Wayne tower to be the home of her real estate business–which is pulled from the comics. Likewise, a number of potential villains were teased in the trip Gotham City, including Penguin, The Riddler, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, and Nora Fries.

This was all done with an eye toward expanding the universe in a spin-off. “We created it with a bigger story in mind for sure,” Dries explained.

Just as important as teasing what Batwoman and Gotham City could become, though, was grounding it in the Arrow-verse. This version of Gotham is very different from anything else seen on Arrow, The Flash, or Supergirl. This is a city without hope, that wasn’t saved by its vigilante the way Oliver has done countless times with Star City.

Instead of using Gotham City as the tread to keep it rooted in the Arrow-verse, it’s Batwoman herself that is the link. “It was important for us I think to humanize Kate in a way that made her relatable to the other characters in the Arrow-verse, even though we’re creating an enigmatic character we wanted sort of an in to her and in our minds Kara obviously has this cousin who’s, you know, she’s started in his shadow and her story was getting out of his shadow and that’s exactly Kate’s story,” Dries said.

That’s why the moment at the end of the episode when Supergirl and Batwoman admit they know each other’s secret identities was included. “It just felt like the right moment, the right movie,” she explained.

So what happens next? Now, we wait. The CW hasn’t actually ordered Batwoman to series, though it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. As for when it’ll premiere, the best bet is in Fall 2019, allowing Batwoman to once again play a role in the annual Arrow-verse crossover. In the meantime, there’s still one more piece of “Elseworlds” to watch Tuesday, December 11, at 8 PM PT on The CW.

It’s difficult to talk about Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom without discussing Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap and its 2017 remake, because despite being produced by an entirely different development team, this game is, in fact, an official successor in the Wonder Boy series. But even though its history might be confusing, Monster Boy is a fantastic adventure in its own right, one that distinctly builds upon the best parts of Wonder Boy and adds some welcome modern conveniences for good measure.

You play as Jin, a blue-haired young man who must stop his drunk uncle Nabu from inflicting curses upon the kingdom’s inhabitants and transforming them into animals. Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t really expand beyond that initial premise. With the exception of some moments of levity provided by the cast of interesting supporting characters, the story is uninspired and concludes on a final act that feels shoehorned. But where Monster Boy’s narrative lacks in imagination, it more than makes up for it with its well-honed character transformation mechanic.

Over the course of the game, Jin unlocks an arsenal of equipment and gains five animal transformations–pig, snake, frog, lion, and dragon–each of whom has their own unique abilities. Jin’s human, frog, lion, and dragon forms are also able to equip a variety of weapons, shields, and armor, all of which can be upgraded. Equipping items unlocks new abilities–one type of boots allow you to walk on clouds, while another allows you to double jump, for instance. Quickly swapping between all these different forms to take advantage of their strengths adds a continually enjoyable layer of thought to the platforming experience, and its strengths are regularly showcased by Monster Boy’s excellent puzzle design.

You’re eased into each new animal form and piece of equipment with some basic obstacles and enemies before being set loose to explore the titular Cursed Kingdom. Puzzles scattered throughout require some thought; on several occasions, you’ll be forced to combine the use of several different powers and abilities in creative ways in order to progress forward or reach a treasure. It might be juggling two different animal forms, using particular equipment abilities, or taking advantage of environmental items, and when you eventually figure out how to get there, it always feels rewarding. Puzzles become increasingly complex, the variety of enemies becomes tougher, and the platforming sections feature additional obstacles that require more precise timing as you progress, but the growing challenges are balanced out well by a forgiving number of checkpoints, which help you keep motivated to give things another try.

While the game is primarily linear, the Cursed Kingdom itself is enormous and features several different secret-filled areas (discovering everything will likely blow out your playtime to roughly 15-20 hours), and the variety of puzzles and charming locations that you find in far corners of the world are themselves an attractive incentive to reach. The experience is doubly rewarding when you unearth new paths while revisiting a previously-discovered area armed with a bigger arsenal of animal forms and skills, and Monster Boy even implements a teleportation mechanic to alleviate frustrations of excessive backtracking.

Monster Boy also boasts a brilliant visual and audio presentation that makes the Wonder Boy aesthetic shine, featuring a meticulously detailed hand-drawn art style. Each character is beautifully realized with their own delightful animation–little details, like the pig’s sheepish look as he farts after eating a power-up plant or the frog eyeballing some flies as part of his idle animation, adds volumes to Jin’s characterization and the game’s charm. Every area of the Cursed Kingdom is also visually distinct and beautifully animated, and a couple of superb anime-style sequences that bookend the game help give it a slick, cohesive feel. The game’s strong soundtrack helps round out the package and features both original pieces influenced by Wonder Boy’s soundtrack, combined with new, rock-influenced arrangements of Wonder Boy’s most memorable tunes, making it a great collection of music both new and old.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom not only pays faithful homage to Wonder Boy, particularly The Dragon’s Trap, but by refining the solid foundations of its spiritual predecessors with modern affordances, it becomes a rich platforming adventure in its own right. With a well-realized world filled to the brim with secrets and excellent platforming mechanics that always keeps things interesting, the Cursed Kingdom is a place you will want to discover every corner of.

Tom DeLonge, one of the founding members of Blink 182 who left the band in 2015, is doing very different things these days. He recently launched a new UFO research company, To The Stars Academy, and one part of the company is a storytelling division. One of the first projects to come of it is a TV show based on DeLonge’s graphic novel, Strange Times.

The show has been picked up by American TV network TBS, according to Variety. He told the site that To The Stars aims to create entertainment franchises that amount to a “science fiction Disney,” which certainly sounds like a bold prediction.

“We hope to create something that could be described as sort of a ‘science fiction Disney,’ where our entertainment franchises are worlds that are inspired and informed by our own next-generation science division.”

The graphic novel Strange Times focuses on five kids, and they were inspired by the “degenerate skateboarders” that DeLonge grew up with.

“The story is also set in that same town. Charlie, the main character, is a bit of myself. A boy searching for answers, trying to find a way out of suburbia, but laughing with his ridiculous, irreverent friends along the way,” DeLonge said.

You can read the full interview here at Variety. In addition to his work with To The Stars, DeLonge is working on new music for his other band, Angels & Airwaves.