Month: October 2019

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Apex Legends is in the midst of Fight or Fright, the first limited-time event for Season 3: Meltdown and the first holiday-themed event the battle royale game has ever had. Like Iron Crown and Voidwalker, Fight or Fright temporarily introduces a new mode for you to play.

The new mode, Shadowfall, is spookily fun, but also quite challenging. In the following gallery, we detail different tips for winning a match–which you’ll have to do to unlock some of Fight or Fright’s Halloween-themed cosmetics. Shadowfall is a solo gametype, forcing you to drop on your own alongside 34 other opponents onto a nightmarish version of Kings Canyon.

Each match is overseen by a death-loving necromancer–likely Apex Legends next playable character, Revenant–who resuscitates all fallen Legends as members of the Shadow Squad. As a shadow, you can no longer open doors, equip weapons or armor, or use your character abilities. But you gain enhanced speed, climbing, and melee damage.

Your endgame goal is dependent on whether you’re still a member of the living or a shadow by a match’s end. If you manage to stay alive until there are only 10 survivors, the game flips the script on you and makes you all allies, tasking you with working together to reach a dropship and escape. However, if you were killed and reborn as a member of the Shadow Squad, you must coordinate with your fellow shadows and kill the survivors before they can get away.

Since you can end up on two different squads, there are two different ways to win a Shadowfall match. We’ll be going into strategies for both squads in the following article.

Legend Squad – Best Characters

To win as a Legend in Shadowfall, you need to outlast and outrun shadows. So when picking a character, you should be looking at the Legends that can best outmaneuver their opponents or keep enemies at bay for long periods of time.

Of the lot, your two best choices are probably Wraith and Pathfinder. When surrounded by murderous shadows, Wraith can easily get out of the sticky situation by using Into the Void. Combining Dimensional Rift and Into the Void also gives Wraith tremendous speed and invulnerability, giving her an edge in that final sprint to the dropship. Pathfinder can’t make himself temporarily invulnerable, but his Grappling Hook and Zipline Gun are both great for navigating the map at a height most other characters can’t reach. Just be careful, the shadows can use your zipline too.

Octane makes a decent pick too. His Stim and Launch Pad are great for escaping shadows, though neither are as effective as Pathfinder’s abilities. A surprisingly good pick for Shadowfall is Mirage, but he requires a bit more strategy than the aforementioned Legends. Bamboozling shadows with Mirage’s Psyche Out can buy you precious seconds. And when it’s time to run for the dropship, use Vanishing Act to go invisible and sneak your way onboard while your teammates continue to fight the shadows.

Of course, any Legend can win in Shadowfall. But Bangalore, Bloodhound, Caustic, and Wattson struggle to be as useful as the characters mentioned above. Lifeline, Crypto, and Gibraltar are perhaps the most useless of all, as none of their abilities will aid you in escaping or effectively combating the shadows.

Legend Squad – Best Drop Spots

Strategies for best drop spots will, of course, change depending on the travel path of the dropship. That said, there are a few strategies you want to keep in mind–especially since you’ll be dropping alone and won’t have a teammate to watch your back until there are only 10 of you left.

The original circle is pretty slow and Kings Canyon is much smaller than World’s Edge, so you can afford to be a little daring and land well outside the advertised safe zone at the start where there’s likely to be far fewer players–especially if you’re Pathfinder, Wraith, or Octane as all three can use their abilities to quickly get inside the ring.

Though you should be aiming for buildings to grab loot, try to avoid the largest of the landmarks where other players are almost always likely to drop. The Cage seems to attract the most players, so avoiding it as a drop spot is probably a good idea unless you’re very confident that you’re skilled enough to win against multiple opponents. Bunker, Water Treatment, and Artillery should also be avoided for similar reasons, though there’s less of a chance of running into large groups of players at these locations in comparison to The Cage.

Remember, you don’t actually need to kill anyone to win, you just need to make sure that you don’t die.

Legend Squad – Best Weapons

Many of the best guns for normal Apex Legends play are not as good for Shadowfall. Normally, dealing out tremendous amounts of damage is the best way to win. However, given that shadows in Shadowfall can run significantly faster than you, jump much higher than you, and can kill you in one or two melee attacks, doing damage as fast as possible if far more important than dealing large amounts over time–especially since shadows only have 30 health so it’s not like you need to deal a ton of damage.

So, for example, the EVA-8 shotgun is a better choice than the Peacekeeper. Though the Peacekeeper with a Precision Choke attachment is one of the best damage dealing options in Apex Legends, the EVA-8 has a far faster fire rate. The R-301 and Flatline are the better assault rifle options, Spitfire is the best choice among the LMGs, and G7 Scout should be your go-to sniper rifle–remember that energy weapons like the Havoc assault rifle, Devotion LMG, and Charge Rifle sniper rifle require a wind-up before firing.

If you manage to find one, grab an R-99 submachine gun. Though not that strong, the R-99 possesses the fastest fire rate of any gun in the game. It’s not that good without an extended magazine and stacks of light ammo though, so looking for submachine gun attachments and a bigger backpack should be your first priority if you go for an R-99.

Shadow Squad – Best Drop Spots

If you’re aiming to win as the Shadow Squad, your best bet is to just drop immediately and fall off the edge of the map. Ending your life will instantly revive you as a member of the Shadow Squad and see you falling back onto Kings Canyon before most players have had a chance to touch down and start looting. Just look for any lingering jump jet trails and angle yourself towards them–chances are you’ll be right on another player’s heels before they can even equip a weapon.

You want to recruit more shadows to your side as quickly as possible. Though the second phase will traditionally always start with 25 shadows and 10 Legends no matter how you get to those numbers, getting to that phase as quickly as possible prevents the survivors from being able to grow too strong and outfit themselves.

If you get killed as a shadow, you should use respawning as a chance to get the drop on survivors. When killed, the person who offed you will be marked on your map. If they’re still outdoors, go and pounce on them from above (in my experience, players haven’t kept eyes upward while playing Shadowfall). If they manage to get indoors, it will be a bit trickier as they can use closed doors to buy themselves a few seconds, so maybe peel off and land somewhere else. You’ll also be alerted to locations where both survivors or shadows have died. In either case, there’s a chance a living Legend is still around. Just drop nearby and go hunting.

Shadow Squad – Best Ambush Techniques

When a shadow is in a Legends’ presence, the Legend hears strange music that alerts them to the approaching threat. Given your meager health on the Shadow Squad, it’s in your best interest to act fast before a Legend has a chance to react. The aforementioned pounce from the sky while dropping is one of the best ways, but that’s impossible to do if the person you’re hunting is indoors. Thankfully, you have more than speed at your disposal–you also have fear.

Survivors will regularly post up in buildings to give themselves an added sense of protection. Your job as a shadow is to make that building feel like a cage. Dart around the building and scurry across the roof to make the survivor’s in-game music fluctuate and fill their headset with the patter of your feet. Slash at all the doors as you pass them–it creates a loud, jump-scare like sound and if you’re fast enough to break enough doors in a row it makes it sound like more than one shadow is invading the building.

And then just keep doing this. Either the survivor will panic and flee, making them much easier to kill or they’ll try and fight and the gunfire will attract more shadows. In some cases (usually when you’re dealing with a Wattson or Caustic) the Legend will hold their ground and keep quiet, secure in defenses they’ve set up for themselves. In those cases, just wait. Eventually, the dropship will appear and force the Legend to abandon their hole to go and escape. Patience is an effective tactic. Use the pressure of your presence to force the survivor to make a mistake.

HBO’s newest show, Watchmen, is off to a good start, it seems. The network announced that the series premiere drew 1.5 million viewers across all of its channels on Sunday.

This represented the strongest start for a new HBO show since Westworld’s premiere back in 2016, according to numbers crunched by Variety.

By comparison, HBO’s Game of Thrones had 17.4 million viewers for its Season 8 premiere back in April. That show was one of the most popular in TV history, so comparisons against are difficult. A closer comparison might be Succession, which picked up 1.2 million viewers for its Season 2 premiere.

HBO’s Watchmen is based on the DC graphic novel from Dave Gibbons. The show is set in a world where superheroes and villains are outlawed but they still exist and are fighting.

GameSpot’s review of Watchmen Episode 1 remarked that the show is off to a very promising start.

“The pilot is steeped in that sensibility. Sure, superheroes play a major role, and yes, there’s no shortage of commentary about the complicated interplay between vigilantism and heroism, but at its heart, Episode 1 feels like the start of something truly special for fans of science fiction television,” reviewer Meg Downey wrote.

For more on Watchmen, check out the stories below.

The fried chicken restaurant Los Pollos Hermanos is one of the most famous fictional eateries out there, and now it’s expanding to a new place: virtual reality.

The restaurant made famous on Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul will become a virtual store through Uber Eats beginning October 24, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sony Pictures, the makers of Breaking Bad, have announced a partnership with the “enlightened kitchen” creator Family Style Inc. to create a virtual version of Los Pollos Hermanos that will live inside Uber Eats as part of a three-year deal beginning this week.

The in-app restaurant is modeled after the one on the show run by Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Its menu will include Pollos tenders, Fring Fries, and the ABQ Hot Chicken Sandwich. This sandwich comes with a slathering of “Slaw Goodman.”

Los Pollos Hermanos from Uber Eats will only be available in Los Angeles at the start, though it will expand to San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Chicago later. Once a week each month for six months, Uber Eats will offer free delivery.

There is no real world physical Los Pollos Hermanos location, only a virtual one.

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said he’s been thinking for a long time about how to bring Los Pollos Hermanos to life. “Little did I realize this could be accomplished without building an actual brick-and-mortar restaurant. Yay, technology! Smart phones actually are good for something!” he said.

Gilligan added that he is pleased that the cooks got the menu right. “Their chicken sandwich is big and crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside, and it rests on one of the better brioche buns I’ve come across,” he said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time Los Pollos Hermanos the restaurant has crossed over into real life. In 2017, to promote the new season of Better Call Saul, pop-up locations of the restaurant came to New York City and Sydney, Australia with free chicken on offer for anyone who came by. Esposito himself even stopped by to meet with fans.

Los Pollos Hermanos is Spanish for “The Chicken Brothers.”

The launch of the Los Pollos Hermanos virtual store in Uber Eats comes not long after the launch of Netflix’s popular Breaking Bad movie, El Camino. Millions of people watched over its first weekend, making it a huge hit.

Horror in the 1970s was marked by darker movies, as independent filmmakers such as George Romero, Tobe Hooper, and Wes Craven combined scares and gore with social themes, and serious blockbusters such as The Exorcist and The Omen played to huge mainstream audiences. As a result, there wasn’t much space for the old-fashioned monster movie, which had long existed more in the crowd-pleasing side of the genre.

Luckily, in the 1980s, fun returned to horror. Of course, there were plenty of darker movies too, and many of the most popular in the first half of the decade were formulaic slasher movies. But this was also the decade of the horror comedy–not to mention neon, MTV, and hair metal–and many of ’80s key horror filmmakers embraced a lighter approach to their scary movies. They also brought the movie monster back big time.

Prosthetic and animatronic special effects were at their peak in the ’80s, leading to some hugely impressive creature creations. CGI was not yet at a stage where it could be used for monsters, especially on a lower budget, and the superstar make-up effects artists of the day were given the freedom to wildly indulge their imaginations. Amongst fans, the likes of Rick Baker, Stan Winston, Tom Savini, and Rob Bottin are as famous and revered as any directors, and their creature work in the ’80s is some of the best ever put on film.

Sadly, this is an era of monster movie that is unlikely to return. Even a show like Stranger Things, which homages ’80s horror in so many ways, uses extravagant CG for its creatures. The special effects superstars of today are more likely to be found sitting behind computer screens than getting elbow-deep in fake blood and plastic fangs. So with Halloween approaching, let’s look back at the best movie monsters from the 1980s…