Month: August 2020

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New Releases highlights some of the top games releasing each week, and this episode has two games you can grab for free. Hyper Scape, Ubisoft’s take on the battle royale trend, is totally free to play, while A Total War Saga: Troy will be free at lunch. This week you can also jump into Metamorphosis, EA Sports UFC 4, and Risk of Rain 2 as it leaves early access.

Hyper Scape — August 11

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Ubisoft is mixing up the battle royale formula with Hyper Scape, most notably when it comes to looting. When you pick up the same weapon multiple times, you’ll upgrade it with things like an improved fire rate and extended magazine. You’ll also loot special powers, called Hacks. You don’t have to defeat every other play to win either: hold onto the special crown at the end of the match long enough, and you’ll win.

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Risk of Rain 2 — August 11

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch

Risk of Rain 2 might be taking the roguelike survival game into the third dimension, but it still requires you to collect resources and fight monsters if you hope to escape its alien planet. Luckily, you can play it solo or with friends in co-op. It’s leaving early access this week, at which point it will have a slight price increase.

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Metamorphosis — August 12

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch

This is definitely the most Kafkaesque game that’s appeared on New Release because you literally control a person trapped inside the body of a bug. You’ll have to use your newfound bug abilities to solve puzzles, save your friend, and return to normal.

A Total War Saga: Troy — August 13

Available on: PC

The Total War series is known for its grand strategy and deep combat tactics, and this entry sprinkles in some Greek flavor with its Trojan War setting–a conflict you can “rewrite” depending on your wins and losses. It’s coming exclusively to the Epic Games Store initially, and it’ll be free for its first 48 hours on the market.

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EA Sports UFC 4 — August 14

Available on: PS4, Xbox One

UFC 4 doesn’t have Joe Rogan or Ultimate Team, but there are still a bunch of improvements to this year’s game. Clinches, takedowns, and ground work have all been retooled. You can also jump into Blitz Battles online, taking on opponents back to back in a fast-paced tournament.

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There’s still a lot of August to go, and the month has more anticipated games on the horizon. Next week, we’ll take a look at two games making their comeback: Microsoft Flight Simulator and Battletoads.

Technology giant Microsoft recently confirmed that it was speaking with TikTok about a potential purchase of the viral app’s operations in the US and other countries, and this led to a significant surge in the company’s stock price and total value.

Business Insider noticed that Microsoft’s stock price rose by more than 5 percent following the news, and this works out to an increase of around $77 billion to Microsoft’s total market value. The company is now worth more than $1.6 trillion.

Microsoft plans to complete its acquisition discussions with TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, by September 15. Social media platform Twitter is also reportedly interested in purchasing TikTok’s US operations. Apple, Google, and Facebook have also supposedly expressed some level of interest in buying TikTok. For what it’s worth, Facebook’s Instagram app just added a new feature called “Reels” that borrows the basic idea of TikTok.

CNBC reported that Microsoft might end up paying between $10 billion and $30 billion to acquire TikTok’s US operations, depending on how the deal shakes out and how much of the company Microsoft might take on. That would make it one of Microsoft’s biggest acquisition in its history based on purchase price. For comparison, Microsoft paid $26.2 billion to buy LinkedIn, while the company forked out $8.5 billion to buy Skype, and $2.5 billion to buy Minecraft and developer Mojang.

US President Donald Trump has called out TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, which is based in China. The president has suggested he may try to ban TikTok in the US unless an American company buys its US operations by September 15.

Microsoft shut down streaming site Mixer last month as it continues to focus on its enterprise-related businesses. It’s unclear how or if a TikTok acquisition might factor into the Xbox business as the Xbox Series X‘s release approaches. It could be as simple as Xbox ads appearing in the app or deeper integration for sharing videos, but at this point, it’s merely guesswork.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Tenet has, by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic, become the most important movie of 2020–and whether Christopher Nolan’s new film can succeed at the international box office when its rollout begins on August 26 will likely be an indicator of whether or not other studio films will see cinema releases this year. Now, in a new interview with The Irish Times, many of the film’s stars and its producer have opened up about the challenges of the shoot.

Emma Thomas, who produces Christopher Nolan’s movies (and is also his wife), told The Irish Times that Tenet is their most ambitious film yet, even though the temptation is always there to go smaller rather than bigger. “With every movie, we have the same conversation,” she says. “Are we going to do a small one this time? In a world where studios have become more and more risk averse, we’ve just been lucky that every movie we’ve done has worked. So we keep on capitalizing on the last movie.”

Thomas also says that while previous Nolan films often have one scene that they know will be tricky (citing the hospital explosion from The Dark Knight), Tenet has several. “With Tenet it felt like every time we would do one of those big things, you relax for five minutes and then you look at the set schedule for next week and then there’s another one,” she said.

Robert Pattinson–who stars in the movie and gives some of the all-time best Hollywood interviews–recalls how difficult some of the action scenes were to film, referencing a specific driving sequence they filmed early on. “I’m s***ting myself as I’m whipping between cars at 80 miles an hour and Chris is behaving like this is completely normal,” he says.

Pattinson says that he’s generally paired with John David Washington, the film’s main protagonist, and since the actor is an ex-NFL player he’s in extremely good shape. “The maximum workout I do most of the time is a casual stroll,” Pattinson says. “John David can run all day long. It was good that I ended up being pretty fit. But definitely, at the beginning, there were days I just could not walk afterwards.”

He also revealed that Washington had to explain elements of the plot to him. “Right up until the last week of the shoot, I was talking to John David and asking him some pretty fundamental questions about who my character was. And John David was like: ‘Wait, you don’t know this?’ But it’s complicated! You’re not just being fed the story.”

Kenneth Branagh, meanwhile, plays the film’s villain, who he says is “darker than anything (he’s) ever played.” According to Branagh, Nolan told him to make the character “unremittingly evil.” He also says that there were two scenes he filmed where he wasn’t really sure what was going on–the first time that’s happened in his career.

Tenet will have a limited US release on September 3 in select markets, if all goes as planned.

New reports from Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter have shined a light on the future of the Star Trek movie series, and this includes a project originally set to be directed by Quentin Tarantino that still could happen.

The new movie boss at Paramount, Emma Watts, is said to be “re-assessing” the company’s entire movie slate, and this includes the Star Trek series. There are three Star Trek projects currently in the works at different stages of production, including the sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, another film from Fargo’s Noah Hawley, and the Tarantino movie.

Hawley’s movie is supposedly being put on the back burner, and this could be due to its story. THR says the plot is related to a virus that wipes out a huge part of the universe, and Paramount may not want to pursue this story in the current climate.

The Star Trek Beyond sequel seeks to reunite the cast of the reboot series from JJ Abrams, including Chris Hemsworth, John Cho, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, and Zoe Saldana. The actor who played Chekov, Anton Yelchin, died in a 2016 accident.

Director S.J. Clarkson was at one point attached to direct this new film, but she dropped out to work on a Game of Thrones spinoff. Among the reasons why this project has stalled, the report said, is due to the high price tag given the big-name actors who would appear in it.

The Star Trek movie originally set to be directed by Tarantino, meanwhile, is written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), and it reportedly draws inspiration from the 1968 Star Trek Season 2 episode, “A Piece of the Action,” with a story that takes place in a 1930s gangster setting. Tarantino will no longer direct this movie, should it happen, but Deadline said the project is “still viable.”

Tarantino previously told Deadline that, while he wouldn’t direct this new Star Trek film, he stands behind the plot of it and said he would provide notes.

“I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it. It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut,” he said.

The Star Trek series is owned by GameSpot’s parent company, ViacomCBS.