August 2019 – Page 28

Get Two Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $2

Good news, Xbox One owners: right now Microsoft is offering a two-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for for just $2. But before you go throwing cash at the screen, you’ll want to consider banking up to three years of Xbox Live Gold in your account first. That’s because, the moment you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, all your pre-paid months of Gold get converted to Game Pass Ultimate. And since Ultimate costs a lot more than Gold, you can save you a heap of money this way (while getting access to many excellent games at no additional cost).

First, check your Microsoft account page to see when your Gold and/or regular Game Pass subscriptions expire. Then add however many months of Gold you want (up to three years).

New Tool Reunites Long Lost World of Warcraft Friends in Classic

Much has changed since World of Warcraft debuted in 2004: Azeroth’s map has quadrupled in size; Deathwing twisted the landscape in Cataclysm; Arthas perished in Wrath of the Lich King; and Illidan has been introduced, killed, resurrected, and exiled again. But for players that have stuck it out for all 14 years, there is no better measurement of the passage of time than the memories of all the people you used to know. 2004 was pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, and pre-Discord, which meant that a whole generation of internet friendships lived and died on World of Warcraft. We would only learn later how fraught that was, that those connections could be severed completely. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Ask any Warcraft veteran: We’ve all lost people. If only we had the foresight to ask for their full names during those endless Dire Maul runs. You know, just in case the unthinkable happened.

Daily Deals: Play Gears 5 Early for Just $2, Save 17% on Control Ahead of Release

Welcome to IGN’s Daily Deals, your source for the best deals on the stuff you actually want to buy. You can also follow us at Twitter @igndeals.

The air is beginning to cool, children have already started school in many places, and there’s a solemness to the air as the care-free days of summer transition to the cooler, shorter days of fall. Hopefully these deals will help stave off any ennui you might currently be trapped beneath. If not, you can take some solace in the fact you’re saving money or preordering something to enjoy at a future time. Things are looking up already!

Here’s a quick look at today’s best deals and preorder opportunities. Scroll down the page to get a better look at today’s best deals.

66 Images from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s New Trailer

Disney has released a new look at Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that has whipped fans into a frenzy over the reveal, seemingly, of Dark Side Rey.

Like with all the new Star Wars movies, there’s a lot more than initially meets the eye hidden in these trailers — and a lot of truly gorgeous cinematography. With that in mind, we captured a number of screengrabs from the new trailer for you to peruse through below at your own enjoyment. Maybe you’ll notice something you didn’t catch the first (second, or fifth) trailer viewing. Check it out below:

Then, if that just made you want to rewatch the Rise of Skywalker D23 Footage all over again, we’ve got you covered. You can watch the newly released video below:

Control Review

I wish Remedy could make even more games, because Control reminded me of this studio’s knack for crafting engrossing, oddball worlds with an incredible sense of place. Control is perhaps Remedy’s weirdest yet, with the talking upside pyramid who’s also your boss being about the sixth-strangest part. But thanks to sharp writing, a set of awesome and varied psychic combat abilities, and an impressively thought-out world, it was easy to wrap my head around what made this adventure tick.

Infiltrating the Federal Bureau of Control as Jesse Faden and her blue wavy spirit buddy, I found myself fascinated. The Bureau’s headquarters seem like a drab, nondescript office building at first, and Jesse’s search for answers to events in her past were equally mundane. But Control quickly reveals what lies behind those concrete walls: within the first chapter I became both the janitor’s assistant and the new acting director of the Bureau.

Astral Chain Review

PlatinumGames has a reputation for making action games that are both incredibly stylish and delightfully weird. Its latest, the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain, wholeheartedly embraces this tradition and pushes each aspect to the max. This is Platinum at its finest – its innovative combat system cleverly manages to make controlling two characters at once feel intuitive and deeply rewarding. Equally as impressive, the non-combat sequences charmingly bring this peculiar world and the characters who inhabit it to life.

The setup is a fairly typical one: after Earth became uninhabitable due to alien pollution, humanity migrated to the Ark, a futuristic metropolis filled with neon lights and, surprise(!), an alien invasion problem of its own.You know, the usual. You play as one of the two Howard twins – male or female – who is a part of an anti-alien task force that fights using robot allies called Legions. That’s where the eponymous Astral Chain comes in – it’s the tether between you and your Legion and lets you see the aliens, which are called Chimeras.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Review

When our distant ape ancestors got together and decided one day, roughly 10 million years ago, that they should evolve into humans, did they have an instruction manual that told them which two things to rub together to get there? No! They had to put pretty much everything they encountered into their mouths, one at a time, to figure out which was tasty and which was deadly poison. There was a lot of hard work, repetition, and death that turned out to be completely unnecessary in hindsight. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey does its very best to recreate much of that maddening blindness and futility and some of the associated sense of discovery in a beautiful prehistoric world, becoming an apt metaphor in the process.

Turtle Beach Battle Buds Review

Before the Nintendo Switch and its unique servicing of both the home console and portable markets, products marketed specifically for mobile gaming were somewhat uncommon. Now, though, there’s a whole slew of gaming earbuds with “try it with the Switch” plastered on the box. Unlike other Switch accessories, these earbuds tend to be affordable. Turtle Beach has thrown its hat into the Switch audio ring with its $29.95 Battle Buds (See them on Amazon). Are the Battle Buds any good, or is this another case of a peripheral manufacturing prioritizing a profitable trend before solid product quality?

New Rise of Skywalker Footage: Is Dark Side Rey Coming?

The latest Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker footage from Disney’s D23 event has been released online, featuring Dark Side Rey’s red double bladed lightsaber and more!

Watch it below:

In fact, let’s just replay that scene a few more times for good measure to figure out WTF is going on:

There’s been a ton of Star Wars news the past few days thanks to D23. You can watch highlights from the Star Wars panel here. Or check out the new poster for Rise of Skywalker below:

The Simpsons Creator Says Apu Won’t Be Written Off The Show

Will Apu be written off The Simpsons? No. At least not anytime soon. That’s according to series creator Matt Groening, who said at the D23 Expo this weekend that Apu will stay on the show.

“Yes. We love Apu. We’re proud of Apu,” Groening said, as reported by Variety.

Much of the debate around The Simpsons and Apu specifically has come from Hari Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary, The Problem With Apu. The movie explores Apu as a character and focuses on him as a stereotype. Series producer Al Jean explained previous (via Variety) that he watched this documentary and spoke with The Simpsons writers about it.

He said he takes the matter “very seriously.” Some people are offended by Apu and others aren’t, so that makes it a “difficult choice” to make about the future of Apu on The Simpsons, Jean said. “I don’t want to offend people but we also want to be funny. We don’t want to be totally politically correct,” he said. “That has never been us. It’s given us a lot of thought.”

Apu voice actor Hank Azaria has said he’s willing to step down from voicing him in light of the blowback.

Going back to Groening, addressing the Apu situation in 2018, he said, “People love to pretend they’re offended.” He commented again later, saying people today have an “outrage of the week” and then move on to being upset about something else.

“I think particularly right now, people feel so aggrieved and crazed and powerless that they’re picking the wrong battles,” he said.

Castlevania showrunner Adi Shankar told IndieWire in 2018 that he heard from multiple sources that The Simpsons would eliminate Apu going forward. However, Al Jean responded on Twitter to say Shankar isn’t a spokesperson for the show.

Adi Shankar is not a producer on the Simpsons. I wish him the very best but he does not speak for our show.

— Al Jean (@AlJean) October 28, 2018

The Simpsons Season 30 wrapped up in May this year; Seasons 31 and 32 are currently on the way, bringing the show up to 713 episodes.

In other news, The Simpsons producers have said Disney–which now owns the property–has been receptive to having talks about a Simpsons Movie sequel or spin-off series.