Ugh, I know. I’m sorry. It’s us again. Once again, it’s the weekend, which means an all-new Up At Noon, IGN’s nonsense horse-apples comedy variety show for grown-up children and dogs dressed up in people costumes. You can see the last two episodes here and here.
If you’ve never seen an episode before, give it a shot! Our goal was to create a live-action Saturday morning cartoon. I like to think that we failed, but in the same fortuitous way that the inventors of Champagne, Silly Putty, or Goat Simulator also failed.
Mega Man is one of gaming’s most recognizable mascots, yet the Blue Bomber seems often underutilized when compared to other Capcom franchises like Street Fighter and Monster Hunter. As we detailed in our feature focusing on Capcom’s continued success in recent years, the company has made a number of surprising decisions when it came to its slate of games, which included a canceled western reboot for Mega Man. Along with that, there was another planned Mega Man game that sought to shake up the traditional formula and take advantage of the budding surge of titles that took advantage of user-generated content. Spearheaded by the then head of global business Keiji Inafune, Mega Man Universe would allow players to explore an infinite number of “Megafied” worlds created by players and developers alike.
Essentially, Mega Man Universe was a Mega Man game by way of Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, which at the time was one of the early pioneers of utilizing user-generated content. On a structural level, Universe seemed in line with the classic Mega Man games from the NES era. To go with the focus on exploring user-created levels and worlds, players could also customize their own version of the blue bomber–even allowing you to play as the crude incarnation from the Mega Man 2 North American box art. Furthermore, other characters from Capcom’s library, including Street Fighter’s Ryu and Ghost and Goblins’ Arthur, were also playable–letting you control drastically different characters within the framework of a Mega Man game. In addition to pulling upon Mega Man’s entire library games, it would also bring other Capcom properties into the mix.
It was a peculiar type of crossover to be sure, but there was something really engaging about what sort of content could be made from the game. However, what made the prospect of Mega Man Universe difficult to grasp at the time, however, was that its reveal left a very poor impression on its intended audience. At the time of the announcement, Universe was only four months into production, which producer Akiko Ito clarified in a 2010 interview with Joystiq. In the following year, not long after Keiji Inafune’s departure from Capcom, Mega Man Universe would be unceremoniously canceled. Eventually, fans of the Blue Bomber would get a more traditional game in the form of Mega Man 11 in 2018, which was generally well-received. Still, the concept of a continually expanding Mega Man game has great potential, especially considering how creative the fanbase is. With Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker series proving that the concept can work, it makes you wonder if Mega Man Universe would have fared better under different circumstances.
Warning: Full spoilers for Avengers: Endgame follow…
Losing half of the world’s population, including wildlife and other elements that would be absolutely crucial to ecosystems and the environment as a whole, is a catastrophe for sure. No one would argue this. Except for possibly Thanos, but even he’d have to admit that, despite new opportunities for progress, it’d all be a super bummer. Sacrifice galore.
After our remaining heroes in Avengers: Endgame learn the Infinity Stones are gone, and that there’s no way (discovered yet) to bring back everyone who’s been erased, the story jumps us five years into the forlorn future where the world is still in a stark and uncomfortable grieving period.
One of the most interesting periods in the story of Star Wars is the 19 years between the end of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and the beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope. That’s the section of time when Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa grew up on their respective planets, while the Empire consolidated its power and built the Death Star. The spookiest and most interesting story from that period, though, is the one about how Darth Vader scoured the galaxy after the formation of the Empire, hunting down and exterminating the last of the Jedi.
We haven’t seen much of what Darth Vader was up to in the years after he turned to the Dark Side. There’s a comic series about him that covers a part of that era, but there are still a lot of gaps about what happened to various Jedi in the Dark Times before what’s depicted in the original movie trilogy. But we’ll soon get a closer look at that period, thanks to one story directly related to Vader’s campaign to eliminate his former friends and comrades: Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.
Not a lot is known about Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars game, but the first trailer gives the gist of things. It follows a Jedi Padawan named Cal Kestis, who managed to escape Order 66–the order from the Emperor to his clone soldiers to execute the Jedi–and is now living in hiding. Cal uses his Force powers one day to save someone after an accident, and that exposes him; it looks like the rest of the game is about Cal becoming a fugitive as the Empire tries to hunt him down.
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Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order — Official Story Reveal Trailer
Borderlands 3’s New Mechanics Are Exactly What We Want | Hands-On Impressions
Undoubtedly, Jedi Fallen Order will expand on the greater Star Wars story while focusing on the coolness of the moment-to-moment power of being a Jedi Knight. Surely, Cal will send storm troopers flying, lock lightsabers (or maybe vibroblades) with the Empire’s spooky Force-wielders, and maybe move some impossibly huge stuff with his mind.
It actually all sounds like another great Star Wars game about a Jedi and Darth Vader’s campaign to destroy them, which took place during the same period in Star Wars lore and greatly expanded on its story: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Though it was released 11 years ago, Lucasarts’ title is available on PC and through backward compatibility on Xbox One and Xbox One X. It remains one of the better realizations of Star Wars as a video game concept–and it told one of the Expanded Universe’s best tales, in terms of bridging the gap between the prequel films and the original trilogy, and in fleshing out the enigmatic Darth Vader.
The Force Unleashed provides a look at what Darth Vader could have been like as a father.
The Force Unleashed dealt with Vader’s campaign against the surviving Jedi, but from a different viewpoint: that of Vader’s secret apprentice, codenamed Starkiller. The game fleshes out an idea that comes up in The Empire Strikes Back, and which got strengthened in Revenge of the Sith: Vader actually hates Emperor Palpatine for what Vader has become. His falling to the Dark Side and siding with Palpatine cost him Padme and all his friends, plus his legs and the ability to breathe properly. Vader is a true believer in the Empire’s fascism as a means to peace, but he also wants to kill and overthrow the Emperor, as is the Sith way. Vader has secretly been training Starkiller to aid him with that goal.
Most of the game is just about getting more and more cool powers for Starkiller, who can pick up and throw people, zap them with Force lightning, throw his lightsaber and impale them on it, and a lot more. You defeat huge enemies like AT-ST walkers and rancors, slashing them apart with your lightsaber or using the Force to hurl huge objects at them at ridiculous speeds. Overall, no game has quite gotten at the phenomenal power we all like to imagine the Jedi wield (even if it’s a bit over the top) like The Force Unleashed has.
But it’s the story in The Force Unleashed that really shines. It does a lot to develop Vader, and to a lesser degree, Palpatine, with some great twists. We see Vader at his most intensely evil as he wields power in his abusive relationship with Starkiller, and the game provides a look at what Vader could have been like as a father. That’s something the movies only ever showed briefly at the end of Return of the Jedi, and then only in the moment of Vader’s redemption. Though he’s an adoptive father to Starkiller, Vader is also, basically, his slave master.
The battle between the Emperor and Vader doesn’t go as planned, though, when the Emperor finds out about Starkiller. Vader kills his apprentice to show his loyalty, but it’s a fakeout–Starkiller is secretly saved, and Vader gives him a new mission to gather up the Emperor’s strongest enemies and create an insurrection. The plan is to distract the Emperor with a rebellion (!) so Vader and Starkiller can surprise him and take him down.
In true Star Wars fashion, though, the conflict between good and evil in the formerly evil Starkiller starts to rage, thanks largely to the friends he’s made along the way. While Starkiller is struggling with whether to stay true to Vader or to his new allies, he finally gathers all the rebels together in one place, and The Force Unleashed pulls the rug out again. It turns out, Vader was never trying to use Starkiller to take down the Emperor. This was actually all an elaborate plan created by Palpatine himself, to use Starkiller to gather up all the dissidents into one place, so the Emperor could destroy them with a single blow.
Yup, in a paranoid, overly complex bid to destroy all his enemies, the Emperor accidentally creates the Rebel Alliance. The Force Unleashed recontextualizes the entire Star Wars original trilogy in a way that expands on the character of Palpatine as established in the prequel movies, mirroring the Emperor’s rise to power in the prequels with a move that results in his downfall. It takes Luke Skywalker’s line to Palpatine from Return of the Jedi–“Your overconfidence is your weakness”–and turns it into the game’s big twist. Meanwhile, it expands on Vader and Palpatine’s relationship, hinting at its turmoil while staying true to both characters. And it gets at just how evil Darth Vader really could be.
The Force Unleashed had its problems–its age definitely shows, it’s not particularly intuitive thanks to weaknesses with systems like locking onto enemies, and a lot of the story hinges on a love story between Starkiller and his pilot, Juno Eclipse, which does not get nearly enough development–but as a Star Wars video game, it tread a lot of new, interesting ground back in 2007. It’s a bummer that a supremely cool explanation for how the Rebel Alliance came to be is no longer a part of the official Star Wars story, but Jedi Fallen Order has the same chance to expand on what we know about the Star Wars films in the same interesting way. We can see more of the galaxy, learn more about what it means to be a Jedi (or not), and most importantly, send more stormtroopers flying into the vacuum of space, using more Force powers. Here’s hoping Respawn draws some inspiration from one of Star Wars’ best gaming outings.
Welcome to Daily Win, our way of giving back to the IGN community. To thank our awesome audience, we’re giving away a new game each day to one lucky winner. Be sure to check IGN.com every day to enter in each new giveaway.
Today we’re giving away a digital copy of Fade to Silence for Xbox One. To enter into this sweepstake, fill out the form below. You must be at least 18 years old and a legal U.S. resident to enter. Today’s sweepstake will end at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Entries entered after this time will not be considered.
Sometimes having a hit TV show isn’t enough. Even though some series run for years, with dozens of seasons and hundreds of episodes, TV executives know that for every ratings smash there are’ many more shows that disappoint and are quickly cancelled. With a constant demand for new, popular content, the spin-off show is an obvious way to instantly transfer the popularity of a series to another without having to build a new audience from the ground up.
That’s the theory anyway. There are obviously some extremely successful examples of TV spin-offs–Frasier, Better Call Saul, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Angel are all great shows in their own right, and every bit as good as the parent shows they were originally derived from. But these are the exceptions.
The majority of TV spin-offs ultimately never achieve the popularity of the original shows, proving just how hard it is to create a hit. One common basis for a spin-off is to take a character who has previously been part of an ensemble cast, and craft a new show around them. While this can work (as Frasier and Better Call Saul proved), there has to be a compelling change of situation or story. Simply doing the same thing again but without the chemistry of that previous ensemble is not enough and audiences rapidly tune out.
Other spin-offs repeat a popular formula or concept, but with a slight variation or new characters. This obviously worked well for crime procedural shows such as CSI and Law & Order, but even those huge TV properties ultimately came to an end, with final spin-offs that audiences had little interest in. So here’s a look at some of the TV spin-offs that no one remembers…
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Happy Star Wars Day! It’s the one day a year where everyone around the world talks about their love of one of the biggest franchises in the history of entertainment. Actually, most of us talk about Star Wars every single day, so nothing has changed. However, an announcement from Lego has revealed some very cool new buildable and programmable droids, which launch globally on September 1.
Lego Star Wars Boost Droid Commanders allow users to build a droid and program code in order for the toy to complete tasks, like plotting a course, decoding messages, fighting, and more. Based on the characters from the Star Wars Universe, there will be three different droids to build in this set: R2-D2, Gonk Droid, and Mouse Droid, which you can see below.
The set may be pricey, coming in at $200, but all the droids are included. It contains 1,177 pieces, which is enough to build all three. R2-D2 and Gonk both measure at 7″ tall, while Mouse comes in at 5″.
The droids connect via Bluetooth to the free Lego Boost Star Wars app, which will be available on iOS, Android, and Fire Smart devices. Within the app, you can solve the 40+ missions and learn to code in a drag-and-drop environment, creating your own commands and actions for your droids.
If you are looking for more from the world of Star Wars on this special day, check out the best Star Wars Day deals, which includes discounts on Star Wars-related clothing, toys, movies, video games, and more. Additionally, GameSpot spoke with Stig Asmussen about the upcoming game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, where spoke up the setting and creation of Purge Troopers.
Despite its departure from the novel, the film adaptation of World War Z was compelling because of its terrifyingly fast and uncharacteristically cooperative zombies. Seeing hundreds and thousands of undead bodies crawling over one another to create haunting swarms or towering pillars helped make the staple fictional enemy feel fresh, and it’s the exact energy that gives its loose video game adaptation the same strong foundation. When it’s all about gunning down thousands of enemies with a couple of friends, World War Z is at its most entertaining.
Simplicity is at the heart of World War Z. Each of its 11 stages are filled to the brim with undead enemies for you and up to three friends to mow your way through, using an assortment of firearms, special weapons, and explosives. There’s not much else to each of these missions that make them more complicated, which works for World War Z in its initial hours. The straightforward nature of gameplay makes it incredibly easy to jump into a match and immediately understand how to contribute. Pointing a gun at enemies and pulling the trigger rewards you with satisfyingly gruesome kills that thin the horde, allowing you to push further to the next objective. Optional lower difficulties for each stage let you get by without much synchronized play, letting you get to grips with World War Z’s multiple classes.
Unlike Left 4 Dead, which is clearly an inspiration for the cooperative gameplay, World War Z gives you the flexibility to choose which roles you fulfill in a team. Although you’re able to equip any weapon you find, classes determine what you start with and what unique abilities you bring to each match. The Exterminator, for example, excels at lobbing Molotovs into gathering waves of undead enemies and has an upgrade tree that increases damage done to enemies that are on fire. The Medic can heal teammates without a first aid kit, and Gunslinger can distribute ammunition for use across all weapons. Classes can be tweaked slightly with unlockable traits (which you purchase with in-game currency earned from playing matches), though you can only equip a handful at a time.
The classes are fun to experiment with, and as you start taking on harder versions of each stage, they become more crucial to your success. At higher difficulties enemies are more ferocious and deadly, while you have fewer chances to revive downed teammates before they die. Friendly fire also becomes more unforgiving, making the frenetic nature of firefights a lot more challenging to deal with. These combine to better encourage well-balanced team configurations that capitalize on both healing and offensive abilities in order to survive, highlighting the usefulness of each class ability better than lower difficulties.
Playing as your favorite class unlocks perks for said class faster, and the same applies to the weapons you pick up. Kills accumulated with each weapon levels them up, giving you new attachments to purchase that increase damage, handling, reload speeds, and more. Weapons are separated into ascending tiers, with tiers increasing as you progress through a stage. Although you’ll start with a Tier 1 pump-action shotgun, for example, you can just as easily find a magazine-loaded and automatic version before the climactic final battle of each story chapter. This gives you a reason to slow down and poke around each of World War Z’s maps, as well as hunt down valuable explosives that give you entry into weapon-laden safe rooms. Picking up a new and improved weapon has an immediate and tangible effect on your ability to cut down increasingly large hordes, which makes finding the perfect one rewarding.
Stage-specific objectives are less exciting, though, only serving to push you from one combat encounter to the next without much strategy. Most of them just pad each mission with uninteresting interactions with switches or terminals just to group everyone up again before the next big zombie encounter. They’re boring and rarely offer any opportunities for synchronized team play. Only a handful of scenarios attempt to add some variety into the mix, and even fewer succeed. One standout encounter tasked me and my team to venture into a multi-level room filled with toxic gases, forcing us to hunt for keycards that could be used to interact with terminals and bring the gas level down. This one scenario makes you wish there were more like it spread throughout the multiple story chapters, and it’s frustrating that it isn’t the case.
The combat set-pieces these objectives funnel you towards are more regularly engaging. World War Z replicates the signature dread of its film adaptation by inundating you with hundreds of enemies at a time. These “swarms” are fantastically exciting to strategize around. You’ll get the chance to place up some defenses before the swarm invades, setting up automated gun turrets or electrified fences to aggressively attack chokepoints or establish new ones to slow down their movement. The sheer scale of these battles is impressive. It’s haunting to watch zombies cascading off the sides of buildings or collecting to scale tall fences, all with the single mind to come and tear you and your team apart. Breaking down these swarms is both challenging and satisfying, giving you a sense of accomplishment when the tide subsides and enemy numbers thin to a slow trickle.
Each swarm is fun to battle against, but their predictability and placement in each stage quickly diminishes their effect on the action. World War Z’s stages don’t change outside of difficulty scaling. Sneaky Lurker enemies who can jump and pin you down will appear in the exact same areas of each map every time; a large and dangerous Bull will charge at you during the same set-piece battles that trigger in the same places during each chapter, while enemy-attracting Screamers will pool together foes at choreographed stages during each level. The predictable placement of these special enemies makes return trips to story chapters less exciting due to their predictability, which diminishes their appeal.
Breaking down these swarms is both challenging and satisfying… but their predictability and placement in each stage quickly diminishes their effect on the action.
This swarm mechanic permeates World War Z’s limited PvP modes too, turning simple team deathmatches or king-of-the-hill skirmishes into fights not only against other players, but also dynamic pockets of undead enemies. This is the only surprising spin on PvP, considering that the loose shooting buckles under the weight of the precise requirements of more serious competitive play. It’s nice to have something outside of the limited chapters in PvE, but it has a severely limited appeal without any competitive-focused progression or exemplary modes to make your time invested feel worth it.
It doesn’t take long for the 11 chapters to feel tiresome, especially when World War Z struggles to remain stable and keep you in games. I had the game hard crash and boot me back to the PS4 dashboard on numerous occasions, during anything from intense firefights to simply joining an online game. The frame rate was also wildly unstable, especially when being rushed by hundreds of foes on screen. It’s not surprising that it happens, but it still negatively impacts the fluidity of each encounter. The four locations that house each of the chapters are delightfully varied and immediately recognizable (the two chapters in the cherry blossom petal-littered streets of Tokyo were particularly beautiful), but they can sometimes also fall prey to flat and boring textures that struggle to enrapture you with the desolate apocalypse around you.
World War Z has many rough edges that are easy to spot, exacerbated by limited content that makes repeated playthroughs less interesting with each run. But it’s also a cooperative shooter that has the space for those dynamic and ridiculous player stories to emerge in. The rush of taking down a swarm with friends is core to what makes World War Z’s action work so well, and it rewards you well for the time spent on the classes and weapons you like. It could benefit from having more to go around, but if there’s a future for World War Z and its chaotic cooperative action, this is a good foundation to build it on.
