J.K. Rowling has released more intimate details of the relationship between two of the most powerful wizards in the Harry Potter universe – Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, played by Jude Law and Johnny Depp.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Continue at your own peril.
The full-length Distinctly Dumbledore bonus feature on the Blu-ray and DVD release of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, features Rowling divulging on the romantic side between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, as reported by Vanity Fair.
Nintendo is giving Switch owners a chance to try out one of the console’s best games free for a limited time. In an uncharacteristic move, the company is offering a special week-long demo of Splatoon 2, which lets prospective players dive into the colorful shooter and its suite of online modes at no charge.
The Splatoon 2 Special Demo will be available on the Switch Eshop later today, March 18. Much like the full game, you’ll need an internet connection and a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play the demo. If you don’t already have the latter, you’ll receive a code for a free seven-day trial for the service via email after downloading the demo, even if you’ve already tried the previous free NSO trial.
The Special Demo will run from March 19-25. During that time, players will be able to try out Splatoon 2’s signature Turf War mode, which pits two teams of four against each other in a contest to cover the most terrain with your color ink, as well as the game’s various Ranked Battles and the cooperative Salmon Run mode.
If you’re interested in purchasing Splatoon 2 after your time with it, Nintendo of America is offering 20% off of the game in the Eshop until March 28, bringing its price down to $48. Players in Europe will get an even bigger savings; the base game will be 33% off, while the Splatoon 2 and Octo Expansion DLC bundle will be discounted by 25%. You’ll also be able to carry any progress you’ve made during the free trial period over to the full version.
Nintendo Switch Online subscriptions run for US $4 / £3.49 / AU $6 for one month, US $8 / £7 / AU $12 for three months, and US $20 / £18 / AU $30 for one year. Along with online play, the subscription offers a handful of other benefits, including cloud saves for most games and access to a catalog of classic NES titles, including Kid Icarus and StarTropics, which were added to the library earlier this month.
It’s a busy month for deals in the PlayStation Store: The Great Indoors Sale recently launched, offering major discounts on hundreds of games and a huge price cut for PS Plus subscriptions. But there’s another PSN sale that might just have flown under your radar: an EA sale on over 60 PS4 and PS3 games, add-ons, and bundles from some of the publisher’s best series. The sale ends Tuesday, March 26 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET, the same time the PS Plus subscription sale ends.
Another notable deal is Titanfall 2‘s Ultimate edition, which is selling for only $7.49 and includes a huge amount of bonus content. First-person shooter Battlefield V, which released late last year, is marked down to just $30 and features not only several new multiplayer modes but also an episodic single-player campaign. Speaking of multiplayer: break out of prison and journey with your fellow escaped convict in A Way Out, which is discounted at $18. Unravel 2, another local or online co-op experience where you play as adorable yarn creatures, is only $5.
Many of EA’s sports titles are marked down well over 50% this week, including Madden NFL 19, which is only $15; EA Sports UFC 3, which is just over $13; and FIFA 19, which is just under $20. The ultimate editions of Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3 are also on sale for just $6 each on PS3.
In Lovecraftian lore, horrors exist that the mind simply cannot comprehend. While the facade of our world usually keeps us safe from it all, on occasion, supernatural beings pierce through the veil. These Old Gods are creatures humankind was never meant to bear witness to; a reminder of our insignificance in a universe we don’t have the capacity to fully understand.
Those who gaze upon the Old Gods are left broken. They are driven insane as they struggle to reconcile their understanding of how the world should be with the eldritch truths suddenly thrust upon them. In 2018, at a secluded location in England, I felt this same madness creeping into my own mind. I stood before otherworldly creatures that were deeply familiar to me, and yet also entirely alien. I locked eyes with them and my psyche began to fracture; my reality began to distort.
Just then a nice Japanese man handed me a Pokemon goodie bag and thanked me for coming to the set of the Detective Pikachu movie. I politely smiled and nodded while still transfixed on a small furry Pikachu standing a few feet away. I wasn’t ready to see that. As I wrestled with the ramifications of it, a guy with his arm up a Charizard’s neck appeared and began aggressively waving its head around while making faint roaring sounds. Behind him was a shirtless dude jumping up and down shouting “attack.”
I don’t think I’ve been the same since.
For as long as I remember, Pokemon has been a part of my life. I’ve captured hundreds of them, battled dozens of Gym Leaders, and been crowned a Champion numerous times. But my immersion into the Pokemon universe has always been abstracted through the screens of video game handhelds and TVs. On that day, however, I stood at the center of it. More specifically, I was standing in an underground battle arena where some sort of Pokemon fight club was being held. Large WWE-esque displays teased the match-up, while teenagers dressed like trainers from the games–vibrant-colored shorts, baseball caps, backpacks and all–ambled around. Real-word representations of in-game monsters were also scattered around the location. It was weird, but once I managed to reclaim some sense of my grip on reality, it was also exciting.
Detective Pikachu is The Pokemon Company and Legendary Pictures’ first stab at a live-action movie based on the incredibly popular Nintendo franchise. Although much of what audiences will see on screen will be CGI, those involved in its production have leaned heavily on the real world to both inspire the movie and execute on the vision for it, which is why there are so many Pokemon model stand-ins hanging around.
Over the course of the day, I got to immerse myself in a small slice of Detective Pikachu’s world and speak with people key to bringing it to life. Whether the movie lives up to the high bar fans expect it to reach remains to be seen, but I can at the very least say that there was an overwhelming excitement about the whole thing–an enthusiasm for the production and an awareness of how much Pokemon means to millions around the world.
To Be A Master
“We’re all very passionate about Pokemon at Legendary, and I think we’ve been talking about it for five years now, so it’s been in our minds for a long time,” said Ali Mendes, co-producer on the flick. “Detective Pikachu was this new idea from The Pokemon Company, and we were really excited about it because we felt this was a way to celebrate everything inside of Pokemon’s legacy: 20 years of battling and these characters that people have fallen in love with, to sort of celebrate that but also do something a little unexpected, a little bit new, and kind of add a genre twist to it.
“The biggest thing was of course seeing Pikachu in live action, figuring out how these characters are going to come into our world–‘What does a live Pokemon, a realistic, 3D Pokemon look like?’ That was a really exciting challenge for us.”
CGI versions of originally 2D animated characters in live-action movies have become prevalent with films like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Smurfs, and Garfield. And while these films were certainly considerations when Legendary began making Detective Pikachu, Mendes said its goal was to deliver something closer to Fantastic Beasts, a spin-off from the Harry Potter universe. In many ways, the Pokemon and Harry Potter universes are quite similar, both having massive worlds rich with history and character, but also driven by memorable stories. Successfully representing both of these aspects, according to Mendes, is the key to doing justice to Pokemon in the movie.
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Pokémon Detective Pikachu – Official ‘Big’ Teaser
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“These creatures are as photo-real as they can possibly be. We’re working with the best visual effects team in the world. We thought about Fantastic Beasts a lot just in terms of the quality of that animation and how life-like [the creatures] were. But it was interesting; we worked very closely with The Pokemon Company. They’ve been wonderful collaborators through this, and we’ve really let them guide us, because they know their brand better than we ever will, and we want to make sure that we’re giving fans exactly what they want, and they know that better than anyone.
“But when it comes to making a feature film, you really want to be led by story; you need to care about your characters, and you need to care about your story, and Detective Pikachu at its heart had this great story that we felt like, ‘OK, this is a way to connect beyond just what the brand is.’ This is a father-son story. There’s something inside of these characters that we feel is really going to resonate and connect with a large audience, so it was actually the creativity of it that really drove us and made us feel like this could be something really special.”
Following the release of the first two trailers for Detective Pikachu, the internet has buzzed with discussion about how the Pokemon are depicted. Twitter has exploded with GIFs of Mr. Mime getting involved in an imaginary traffic collision, clips of a bartending Ludicolo screaming abruptly, and pictures of Lickitung’s unfurled tongue that are, quite frankly, unnerving. While Legendary has stuck close to the source material when it comes to the design of Pokemon–guided by the The Pokemon Company to ensure they remain faithful–it has had more freedom in depicting the world the movie is set within.
Like the video game it’s loosely based on, Detective Pikachu takes place in Ryme City, where protagonist Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), a former Pokemon trainer and son of detective Harry Goodman, investigates the disappearance of his father. Joining him is an amnesiac Pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds. Tim happens to be the only human who can speak to the Pikachu, who is also caught up in the mystery of Harry Goodman’s disappearance, as well as strange goings-on with other Pokemon in the metropolis.
It’s in Ryme City that the meeting of the real and surreal is at its most striking. Nigel Phelps, production designer on Detective Pikachu, also called Fantastic Beasts to mind when discussing taking the familiar and giving it a strange, otherworldly twist.
“It’s all very focused on being believable, that’s a very important characteristic to the film,” he explained. “So for the most part, we’ll be shooting in and around London … the streets and the exterior stuff is in and around the city of London and Shoreditch. It has to be familiar to everybody. So some amalgam of Vancouver, in terms of the landscape, Manhattan, in terms of the scale of the architecture. So really, if you mash Manhattan with London and Tokyo, that’s kind of the world that we are setting this in.
“We’ve kind of shied away from [using landmarks and architecture from the games]. There are little clues with the street names, and stuff like that, there’s references to the Pokemon universe, without being specific to it. So we’ve shied away from the animation [because] the cartoons and stuff felt much too cartoon-y and unreal, and it was important to everyone making the film that this was a realistic universe.”
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Detective Pikachu – ‘Becoming Pikachu’ Official Trailer
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Naturally, taking strange creatures and attempting to put them in realistic environments throws up numerous challenges, and this is something that has shaped the construction of sets that Pokemon appear in. Take the aforementioned screaming Ludicolo, for example, who is four feet wide, but still needs to fit behind a bar.
“Everything has to get moved down,” Phelps said. “You know, you have to be familiar with, obviously, with the creatures in the scene, because they’re not all six foot tall, eighteen inches wide, they’re all sorts of shapes and sizes.
“We stopped including Pokemon into the [set production visuals] very early on because [they] became distracting. [We were] drawing this great-looking sets, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, but, no, this Pokemon’s ears are too big,’ and no one’s looking at the environments. It became all about what the Pokemon are doing … That became what the illustrations were all about, and not the scenery. We’d still be doing [sets] now otherwise. So that’s gonna be a post-production layer.”
I Choose You
The responsibility of bringing Pokemon to life in a realistic way and integrating them into Ryme City fell upon VFX producer Greg Baxter and his team. And the challenges in doing so were apparent from the very outset, as Baxter found that, although there was an abundance of Pokemon material to look to for inspiration, the stylistic difference of Detective Pikachu meant they couldn’t entirely rely on other Pokemon projects..
“The Pokemon world that has existed before, whether it’s in the games or the traditional anime, has been a very different style of performance,” Baxter said. “And so, even just getting a first image of what it might be has been a long process. To get so many cooks, if you will, to try to weigh in on what it would look like and then performing as a three-dimensional character, walking and flying, and there’s so many of them so the movements are just vast.
“And then, coming out here onto a film set or out into the city and trying to figure out how to film all of that movement when it doesn’t actually exist in front of a camera and when it’s so different–I mean, you’ve got, one-foot- to 20-foot-tall Pokemon and some fly and some slither, some are fast, some are slow, and shot to shot, you may have 12 of those. And you have to accommodate for all of them.
“We’ve done movies before where you have one or two ways to film that, ways to get space for the Pokemon or light for the Pokemon or for the character. [But] in this one, when you have so many in one shot, you have to make sure that the camera is not just capturing the faces in front of them, but also all of the creatures that will be added after the fact. It’s been a circus, but it’s a lot of fun.”
According to Baxter, the decision to render Pokemon as realistically as possible suited the vision director Rob Letterman had for the movie, which, like every other aspect of production, reinforced the theme of having the fantastical amidst the familiar.
“Rob Letterman’s vision for the movie is to ground it in reality, even though Ryme City is kind of a made-up city. It’s supposed to feel present-day and feel like all these creatures that you’ve seen mostly in very bright colors and anime style are sitting in the room with you. And so Pokemon to Pokemon, they have different textures–some are furry, some are kind of leathery or snakey or whatever. But for every creature, we took real-world animals and drew from that. You take the skin of a snake, the eyes of a different kind of character, we put all these pieces together to form what that Pokemon would look like.
“We would send that back and forth to The Pokemon Company, so that they would understand where we’re going with it and it wouldn’t be a big shock when it landed. But really, that’s how all of them have come together. Each one, even though they’re a creature that doesn’t exist in our world, all of the elements of what makes them up in this movie are drawn from animals that do exist in our world.”
My first exposure to Detective Pikachu’s vision of Pokemon in the real word wasn’t being eased into it through brief glimpses of concept art, or even the short trailers that first debuted long after my visit to set. Instead I was thrown into the midst of it all, shown pieces of a bigger picture, and left to let my imagination try and figure out how it all fits together. Having watched the trailers, the sight of realistic Pokemon is no less strange today. However, being able to take a step back and get a wider view of the world in which they exist certainly makes it less jarring. Like many other fans, I have been charmed by the Pokemon featured in the trailer and warmed to the idea of a live-action movie. If the rest of the film is able to sustain the sense of wonder those trailers inspire, this could be an entirely new Pokemon universe to get obsessed with.
The first poster for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has been released. The latest movie from the revered director of Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained arrives in July, and as the title suggests, is a sprawling LA-set drama that stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
The poster itself isn’t exactly the most striking one released for a Tarantino movie, but it does have a suitably retro look. It shows DiCaprio as fading Western star Rick Dalton and Pitt as his stunt-double and pal Cliff Booth. They are shown posing in front of a car and the Hollywood Hills… and that’s basically it. The good news is that the first trailer is set to arrive very soon, but in the meantime here’s the poster:
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hits theaters on July 26 and features probably the most ridiculously star-studded cast of the year (outside of Avengers Endgame of course). As well as DiCaprio and Pitt, it stars Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, the actress who was murdered by the Manson family in 1969 and in Tarantino’s movie lives next door to Dalton and Booth. There’s also roles for Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, James Marsden, Scoot McNairy, Damian Lewis, Emile Hirsch, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Lena Dunham, plus Luke Perry, who shot a role before his death earlier this month.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino explained the origins of the movie. “I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old,” he said. “I’m very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio and Pitt as Rick and Cliff.”
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Tarantino’s ninth movie as director. In 2016 he said that he would quit directing after his tenth movie, but it remains to be the seen if this is still the case. There were also rumors last year that he was working a new Star Trek movie, but with the future that entire franchise on the big screen uncertain, there has been no further news about this.
Spring is just around the corner, and Niantic is celebrating the start of the season with a special event in Pokemon Go. Beginning tomorrow, March 19, the developer is holding an equinox event in the hit mobile game, which will feature increased Grass-type Pokemon spawns, new Field Research tasks, and more.
During the equinox event, Grass Pokemon such as Oddish, Exeggcute, Shroomish, and Sunkern will appear in the wild more frequently than normal. On top of that, the rare Rock/Psychic-types Lunatone and Solrock–each of which is typically exclusive to certain parts of the world–will swap regions for the duration of the event.
In addition to the increased Pokemon spawns, Niantic is doling out a special set of limited-time Field Research tasks centered around Grass Pokemon during the event. Grass Pokemon will also appear as Raid Bosses, and two moves–Acid Spray and Leaf Tornado–are being added to the game permanently.
The Pokemon Go equinox event kicks off at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET and runs until the same time on Tuesday, March 26. You can read more details about it on the official Pokemon Go website.
In addition to the equinox event, Niantic is holding this month’s Pokemon Go Community Day this Saturday, March 23. That event will also feature a Grass-type Pokemon: Treecko, one of the three starters from Ruby and Sapphire.
I don’t know why I’m in Washington DC; some lady just told me to be here. But there are civilians in distress, armed gangs roaming the streets, and me, my pals, and the second amendment are apparently the only ones who can actually do anything about it. I have no idea what, if anything, is going on with the bigwigs I met in the White House. But so long as I’m helping folks, sending relatively bad people to bed, walking the pretty streets, and picking up a new pair of gloves every so often, I’m very happy to hang around.
In the world of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, the USA has been ravaged by a virus and society has crumbled. While those who remain try to survive by banding together in groups of various dispositions, the Strategic Homeland Division activates highly specialized sleeper agents to try and restore order. It’s a setting ripe in potential, perhaps to tell a ripping techno-thriller story that scrutinizes the structures of our modern society and government, or perhaps to make a video game that leverages the chaos that occurs when multiple idealistic groups clash in a vie for power in a lawless city. The Division 2 only does one of these things.
It’s not the story. Throughout the entirety of The Division 2’s main campaign, never did the game spend a satisfactory amount of time on any semblance of an overarching plot, or the predicaments of its supposedly important figures. There are no character arcs, only abrupt setups and consequences. Narrative devices, like audio logs found in the world, add nothing of consequence. Even the game’s biggest macguffins–the President of the United States and his briefcase containing a cure for the virus–have a minimal amount of absolutely forgettable screen time. The opportunity to use The Division 2 to create meaningful fiction is wasted.
Instead, The Division 2 focuses its narrative chops into worldbuilding. The city, a ravaged Washington DC, initially feels a little homogenous in the way most Western cities do. But after some time, the personality of the different districts–the buildings, the landmarks, the natural spaces, and the ways they’ve been repurposed or affected by the cataclysm–begins to shine through. It’s this strength of environment which lays a very strong foundation for The Division 2 as a video game, creating an engrossing, believable, and contiguous open world.
Moving from your safehouse to the open world and your next mission area is almost entirely seamless. It’s something that was also true of the original Division, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the simple act of going from place to place in The Division 2 is one of the game’s more rewarding aspects. One road may lead to a skirmish with a rival patrol or an optional activity, another might simply give you another stirring scene of urban decay in the morning sun. An obscured shortcut through an apartment block might turn up some useful items in an abandoned home, which you might decide to donate to the makeshift settlements where civilians have attempted to rebuild their lives.
Visiting those settlements–initially as hovels, before they gradually grow and become more charming, vibrant places thanks to your efforts in the world–becomes a strong motivator in the absence of a plot to chase. Outside main missions, which are dedicated to the weakening of rival factions and achieving indiscriminate objectives, the game’s “Projects” are one of the most lucrative means of earning experience to better your character. Projects ask you to donate resources you find out in the world and participate in side activities, encouraging you to spend more time in the world, see new areas, fight new battles, search for new equipment to use, and find enjoyment in that. The Division 2 is, after all, a game devoted to providing you with a continuous stream of gripping conflicts, valuable rewards, and a perpetual sense of progress and satisfaction from doing these things. It does those things very well.
You spend a lot of time hunkered behind cover, popping out to fire at any enemy dumb enough to expose themselves. With the large amount of weapon variety available, this familiar facet of combat is solid in itself. Add to that the ability to equip two special abilities from a possible eight–which include tools such as riot shields, drones, and from what I can gather, robot bees of some sort–and combat gets pretty interesting. But the vector that really keeps The Division 2’s combat lively for upwards of 30 hours is the behavior and diversity of its enemy types.
That time you spend in cover? The Division 2 doesn’t want you to just stay there. You can go down very quickly if you’re out in the open, but the game has a dozen ways to alway keep you taking those risks and finding better firing positions–aggressive melee units, remote control cars equipped with sawblades, even the regular assault units regularly attempt to outflank you. Those special abilities? You absolutely need to use them to their full potential to survive some encounters, whether by throwing out the seeker mines or the automated turret to keep enemies at bay while you focus on a priority target, or perhaps utilizing the chemical launcher to start a fire and create a zone of denial.
The effort needed to take out an adversary is relatively reasonable for a shooter that prioritizes the RPG nature of its combat model, but some of the tougher enemies have additional, visible layers of protection which you need to focus on breaking if you want to land critical hits. On the flip side, some enemies have additional, obtuse weak points which can work to your advantage, but only if you can hit them. The fuel tank on the back of a flamethrower unit might be feasible, but when you start running into the terrifying robotic quadruped in post-campaign activities, whose tiny weak point only reveals itself seconds before it fires its devastating railgun, you have to assess whether you can afford to take on that challenge among all the other things pressuring you. The Division 2 throws a lot of hurdles at you, but also gives you the means to quickly counter and resolve them. Whether you can juggle that many balls at once is what keeps combat tense and exciting.
What’s also exciting is the treasure at the end of these gauntlets. These Washington locations, refashioned into memorable combat arenas, are often rewarding in their own right (a fight in a planetarium is an early standout). But improving your equipment is the vital, tangible part that keeps you feeling like you’re making progress. You receive new gear in generous amounts, some dropped by an enemy or looted from a container found in the world, others rewarded for completing a mission, and the next dose always feels in reach. The weapon variety forces you to consider something completely different to take advantage of a power boost, and the armor variety provides an impressive number of different cosmetic looks. The Division 2 incorporates a microtransaction and loot box system for its inconsequential clothing options, though these can be found in the world and earned of your own accord, too.
Like combat, gear remains intriguing throughout Division 2 not just because of the abstract desire to have bigger numbers attached to your person and progress further through the game’s challenges, but also through a raft of “talents.” These add unique perks that complement particular skills or styles of play, like doing extra damage within a certain range, when enemies are burning, or your armor is depleted. The brands of armor also have a part to play, whereby equipping a number of pieces from a single manufacturer provide additional advantages. These bonuses become particularly attractive to obsess over in the endgame, when the world is retaken by a tougher, more merciless enemy faction called Black Tusk, and you need to ensure your ability to fight them is the best it can be.
For the hundreds of pieces you will inevitably want to discard, the ability to sell or dismantle them for parts to either purchase or craft pieces you want gives value to everything you pick up. Or you might retain them in order to move their talents to better gear of the same type, And, as a wonderful convenience, The Division 2 implements numerous features to inspect, mark, dismantle, or equip things you find so quickly and elegantly–sometimes without ever having to enter a menu–that it improves the whole experience of being in its world.
The same can be said of the game’s multiplayer integration, which allows you to easily group up and progress with friends (the game will scale any underpowered players to match the most powerful). Alternatively, you can join a clan, which opens up a variety of weekly challenges, granting valuable rewards, and which features integrated game-wide group communication options. Even if you’re only interested in playing alone (which is more challenging, but entirely feasible), the ability to matchmake with other players at any time, whether that be in the open world, before you start a mission, or when you’re at a final boss, is a very welcome feature.
And when you beat that final boss of the game’s final mission (though, such is the Division 2’s lack of plot framing, I honestly couldn’t tell you his name to save my life) and you think you’ve finally run out of treasure to keep luring you through more fights, the metaphorical table gets flipped. Flipped hard. The Washington DC you spent so long liberating from rival factions becomes completely retaken by the aforementioned Black Tusk. You unlock three unique class specializations, each with their own skill trees to work at unlocking. Your focus on growing two-digit numbers on your character (your level) moves to three-digit numbers (the quality of your gear). Even after finishing the campaign, the game still feels enormous.
More challenging, remixed versions of campaign missions and open-world challenges featuring Black Tusk become available. The idea might sound trite, but in practice, these “Invaded” missions often leverage the new enemy types to create terrifying new combat scenarios that maintain the steady ramp-up of challenges, and they give you a fantastic reason to revisit the more memorable combat arenas with a purpose. However, there’s still a lot I haven’t seen. I’ve yet to dabble in the three Dark Zones, reward-rich areas where players can potentially find themselves up against other, malicious agents as well as the usual enemies. I’m also yet to participate in Conflict, The Division 2’s take on traditional team-based competitive multiplayer modes.
But after spending 30 hours completing the campaign and beginning to dabble in the endgame, I’m still enamored with The Division 2. The range of enemy types continues to keep combat encounters challenging, the equipment I earn and pick up continues to feel different and valuable. The ravaged environments continue to intrigue, and sometimes they’re so stunning I find myself needing to take a screenshot before I move on. There is still so much to see in The Division 2, but I want to take the time to see it. I have absolutely no clue why I’m here or what anyone’s motivations are, and I wish I had a narrative purpose to my endless hunger for progression. But I’m glad to be here right now.
Note: This review-in-progress will be finalized once substantial time has been spent in The Division 2’s endgame content, including Dark Zones and Conflicts.
Captain Marvel continues to be the No. 1 movie at the box office. According to box office figures from EW, the superhero film pulled in $69.3 million in the US and Canada this past weekend, keeping the film at the top of the box office charts. The $69.3 million, which is down 55 percent from its opening-weekend haul, now represents the 18th highest second-weekend in the history of movies.
There is a lot of space between Captain Marvel and the competition, as the animated film Wonder Park landed in the No. 2 position with $16 million. The No. 3 movie this past weekend was Five Feet Apart, which made $13.2 million.
Captain Marvel has now made $266.2 million in the US and Canada. Internationally, the film opened in Japan this weekend and made $5.6 million, which was good for No. 1 in Japan, and the highest opening for a standalone MCU character movie ever in the country.
The movie made a further $119.7 million from other international markets this weekend, boosting the movie’s global results to $760.2 million after just two weeks.
The Nintendo 64 classic is coming to Nintendo’s newest console, and it looks much prettier on modern hardware (it’s already out on Xbox One). New coat of paint aside, you’ll still take control of the titular warrior Turok and battle dinosaurs that have ripped through the fabric of time. Crazy weapons like the Plasma Pulse Rifle and Atomic Fusion Cannon await.
Fate/Extella Link — March 19
Available on: PS4, Vita, PC, Switch
This sequel picks up right where Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star left off. You’ll still be battling through hordes of evil soldiers, but you’ll do so with 16 new playable servants. You can get to know them in the flying castle that serves as your base of operations, and you can deal out massive damage in battles by teaming up for Chain Phantasm attacks.
American Ninja Warrior Challenge — March 19
Available on: PS4, Xbox One, Switch
This is the first video game adaptation of the hit TV show, featuring all the same obstacles and even the same commentators. You can customize your own warrior and take on classic challenges like the Jumping Spider and Warped Wall. This action game sports local multiplayer too.
Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon Every Buddy — March 20
Available on: PS4, Switch
Navigating a dungeon isn’t anything new for the Final Fantasy series, but the way you do it in Every Buddy is quite different. Obstacles and enemies only act when you take an action, whether that’s moving, attacking, or using an item. This quasi-turned-based style exploration opens up the door for all sorts of strategies.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — March 22
Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC
From Software brought us Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but Sekiro is something different. For one, everyone will play the same shinobi, who can grapple around the world with a special mechanical arm and actually revive after being killed. Sekiro also has no multiplayer, which means you’ll be taking on tough bosses all by your lonesome.
Further Reading:
March still has even more games on the horizon. Next week, New Releases will take another look at Yoshi’s Crafted World, plus some hot re-releases like Assassin’s Creed 3 on current consoles and Final Fantasy 7 on Switch.
