God of War was already a great-looking game, but a new patch makes it run even smoother on PS5. We took the new update for a spin to see Old Man Kratos looking better than ever.
The free patch replaces the PS4 Pro’s performance vs fidelity setting with one default setting that combines both. Now you can play at 4K checkerboard resolution with 60 FPS. You also still have the option of playing in “Original Performance Experience,” which will run at 4K with 30 FPS.
And since God of War 2018 is one of the games included in the PS Plus Collection, you might already have access to give it a spin yourself. But first, watch us put it through its paces.
This news hammers home an important truth about Black Panther – the franchise has become much bigger than just T’Challa. Let’s take a closer look at why there’s still so much ground left to cover even if T’Challa’s story has come to a premature end.
Even when it seemed Boseman would remain an active part of the MCU post-Avengers: Endgame, many fans assumed it would be only a matter of time until T’Challa’s younger sister Shuri took up the Black Panther mantle. That’s what happened in the comics, specifically in the 2009 Black Panther series. When her brother is severely injured in an attack orchestrated by Doctor Doom, Shuri rises up to fill the void and lead Wakanda in her brother’s place.
Though Shuri’s tenure as Black Panther only lasted a few years, she’s still grown to become as much the face of the franchise as her brother. These days, Shuri has taken on a new, more spiritual role as the leader of the Dora Milaje and the living connection between the kingdom of Wakanda and the Djalia – the afterlife where the dead kings of old gather to mentor the current Black Panther. Whether or not Letitia Wright’s Shuri follows the same arc as the comic book version, it’s clear her story has only just begun in the MCU. There’s no reason Marvel Studios can’t continue to grow the franchise with Shuri as its new center.
Is this a glimpse of the MCU’s future?
Really, the only thing stopping Shuri from stepping into T’Challa’s ugly sandals is Wright’s recent history of social media scandals. We’ll see if that proves to be a deal-breaker for Disney. But fortunately, even Shuri is just the tip of the Wakandan iceberg.
The Dora Milaje as Heroes and Villains
2016’s Captain America: Civil War and 2018’s Black Panther introduced MCU fans to the Dora Milaje, the “Grace Jones-looking” bodyguards who protect the king and the land at all costs. Which raises a compelling question – if T’Challa is gone, where does that leave the women who devoted themselves to his safekeeping?
We already got a taste of this conflict in Avengers: Endgame, where we learned Danai Gurira’s Okoye effectively became the steward of Wakanda after T’Challa and Shuri were blipped away by Thanos. That’s five years of Wakanda existing without a true monarch. Who’s to say everyone wants things to go back to normal post-Endgame? With T’Challa (presumably) being killed off permanently this time, or otherwise taken off the table, will the throne automatically transfer to Shuri, or will a power struggle develop between Shuri and Okoye? And what of T’Challa’s *other* bodyguard force, the Hatut Zeraze? We have yet to even meet them in the MCU.
The Black Panther and the Dora Milaje have a complex relationship that the MCU has only barely begun to explore. As we saw from the romance between T’Challa and Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, not all of the Dora Milaje are willing or able to put their personal desires above their duties. In fact, the comics have established the Dora Milaje as ceremonial brides to T’Challa, basically a way of keeping the peace between the various Wakandan tribes. Nakia herself undergoes a very dark turn and becomes a villain known as Malice, all after T’Challa is tricked into kissing her and “consummating” what’s meant to be an entirely symbolic relationship. The MCU may not follow that exact path, but it’s easy to see the Dora Milaje as a whole and Nakia in particular facing a very difficult road ahead once they lose their king and husband.
The opening of the first Black Panther movie shows us the origins of the Wakandan kingdom, as we learn the nation is made up of five tribes. Four of those tribes have united around the Black Panther and enjoy the prosperity only a mountain full of vibranium could provide. Only the fifth, the Jabari Tribe, have chosen to live apart from the others and worship the White Gorilla rather than the Black Panther.
While these tribes may have been mostly divided before, it’s easy to imagine the loss of T’Challa sparking a new wave of civil unrest. How does a kingdom choose a new monarch when the old one isn’t around to participate in the usual rites? The question may become whether Wakandans still want to exist as a monarchy or evolve into a democracy instead. That question has been at the heart of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther comic in recent years.
The silver lining to losing T’Challa in the MCU is that it opens the door for other leaders from other tribes taking on more prominent roles, either in the sequel movie or the TV series. As it is, Winston Duke’s M’Baku was one of the breakout characters in the first Black Panther movie. Who would complain about seeing more of him, or the other ambitious figureheads who see T’Challa’s fall as an opportunity? Will M’Baku renew his quest for the throne, or will he support someone like Shuri or Okoye?
Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is widely regarded as one of the best villains in the MCU. His bloodthirsty actions are contrasted by his tragic background and clear set of motivations. Though it certainly seemed as though his story came to an end in the first Black Panther movie, that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating about Killmonger’s return in the sequel. Even Jordan himself seems amenable to the idea.
“Being in that world in a character that I loved playing, and working with [writer/director Ryan Coogler] and all that good stuff, it’s family. We created a family over there,” he told People Magazine in January 2021. “So to be able to be in that world again is something that, I think, will always be on the table in some capacity.”
It remains to be seen if Coogler will opt to bring back Killmonger for the sequel. There are certainly plenty of ways to explain that return, what with Wakanda’s advanced technology and close link to the spiritual plane. The comics even offer a novel solution, with the current volume of Black Panther introducing a new Killmonger who rules the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda 2000 years in the future.
Whether or not Killmonger returns has less to do with the how than whether there’s another good story to tell with the character. The first movie established him as a man who dreamed his entire life of living in Wakanda, only to grow into a hardened killer who nearly destroyed the thing he coveted most. What happens if he’s given a second lease on life and a chance to prove himself worthy of his ancestral home? If he is still alive, does that technically give him a better claim to the throne than Shuri? Will we see Killmonger recast as a reluctant hero this time? Anything’s possible, which may be the best argument for making the character one of the driving forces behind the franchise.
Wakanda is an Afrofuturist utopia – a kingdom where advanced science and widespread prosperity make it the world’s greatest and most mysterious superpower. But in the comics, Wakanda is one of several kingdoms ruled by superhuman monarchs. T’Challa is a man whose only true peers are other kings like Doctor Doom, Namor and Black Bolt. We’ve already met the latter character thanks to the critically reviled Marvel’s Inhumans TV show, but the hope for many fans is that both Doom and Namor will begin to take on major roles in the MCU over the next few years. And if that’s the case, there’s plenty of room for them to appear in Black Panther 2 and/or the Wakanda series.
Avengers: Endgame may have already set the stage for a Black Panther vs. Namor conflict. Okoye references strange seismic activity off the coast of Africa, a seemingly random non-sequitur that may well have been foreshadowing the return of Atlantis. And given both his enduring popularity and the fact that a new Fantastic Four project is in the works, it goes without saying Doom will be making his grand MCU debut at some point.
It’s a shame we’ll never get to see these characters interact with Boseman’s T’Challa. But even so, there’s no shortage of gold to be mined from pitting characters like Shuri and Okoye against arrogant kings like Namor and Doom. The MCU could be well on the way to a superhero-flavored Game of Thrones scenario. Who wouldn’t tune into that series?
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
The Super Bowl has historically been a big moment for movie studios, where the biggest movies get 30 seconds of air time in front of the eyes of the entire nation. This year, though, studios are scaling back Super Bowl movie trailers by quite a bit.
News comes via Variety and Deadline, both of which report that the Super Bowl ad lineup will have much less in the way of movie trailers this year compared to previous years. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any trailers, though. Amazon Prime Video is expected to show off Eddie Murphy’s Coming 2 America. According to Deadline, Disney will have two to four trailers, and Universal plans to show M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller Old.
That’s a big drop from last year’s list. The 2020 Super Bowl was host to a bunch of blockbuster trailers, including Fast and Furious film F9, Marvel’s Black Widow, Mulan, James Bond’s No Time To Die, A Quiet Place II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Top Gun: Maverick. and others. Within weeks of the big game, though, much of the country went into various stages of lockdown. Of those films, only Sonic the Hedgehog made it into American theaters, and Mulan went straight to Disney+ to pilot its premium-viewing model.
The rest of those movies (and many more) have seen at least one delay, and some three or more. F9 was set to come out on May 28, 2020, but is now scheduled for May 22, 2021. Vaccines are rolling out, but distribution takes time, and it’s well within the realm of possibility that F9 might see yet another delay before release to reflect how ready people are to get back into theaters. In other words, studios aren’t yet ready to commit to release dates they might not be able to keep.
Even ahead of the Super Bowl, we’re already seeing fewer trailers on television. Variety notes that, when comparing the December 28 to January 3 period last year to this year, the number of 30-second TV ads from studios on top networks decreased by 82% in 2020-2021.
Interestingly, though, it seems like streamers are mostly sitting out, too. Netflix doesn’t appear to have a repeat of its 2018 Cloverfield Paradox micdrop moment planned; Apple TV, Peacock, and Hulu are skipping Super Bowl LV as well. Deadline reports that HBO Max is sitting out, though Variety says the company will take some time to advertise all those formerly theater-only movies coming to Considering the way companies like Disney and WarnerMedia have shifted strategies to emphasize streaming, this seems like the year they’d want to make a big splash, but that’s reportedly not the case.
When Kansas City Chiefs go head to head with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this Sunday, though, there will still be plenty of ads, and we’ll be covering all the standouts.
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WandaVision on Disney+ is sparking some interesting conspiracy theories all around the internet.
With Episode 4 in the books and Episode 5 right around the corner, we’ve officially hit mid-season in WandaVision, the first ever MCU TV show–and, surprising no one, the show’s core mysteries are only getting more and more complex as more information is revealed.
While fans of the MCU are no stranger to wild speculation and conspiracy theory building, WandaVision has presented us with an unusual challenge. Not only are we getting new clues doled out on a week-to-week basis, leaving plenty of room for red herrings and false starts, we’re also trying to piece together the very first official entry into Phase 4, meaning we’ve got to try and figure out where the pieces we’re putting down might fit in a mostly obscured bigger picture. After all, with all the status quo changes in Avengers: Endgame, it really does feel like anything is possible for Marvel movies going forward.
Of course this is exciting, but it’s also a bit overwhelming–especially if you’re trying your best to figure it out as you go along, rather than waiting for all nine episodes to be available for bingeing. We get it–we’re in the same boat. And that’s exactly why we’ve compiled a list of our favorite working theories for the show, ranging from absolutely bonkers off-the-wall improbabilities to involvement from the actual, literal devil.
It takes all kinds here in Westview.
Let us know your favorite WandaVision theories, no matter how bizarre, in the comments below.
As part of Electronic Arts’ earnings report, the company shared some details on the next Battlefield game. Management said the game will offer “all-out military warfare” and support more players than ever before for the Battlefield series.
The current player cap for Battlefield is 32 v 32, so presumably this new Battlefield game will offer something more. EA also said the new Battlefield game will offer more player agency, but the company did not elaborate on what that means.
What’s more, this new game is tracking ahead of EA’s own internal milestones. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said the new game is scheduled to reach “feature complete” status faster than any other Battlefield game in franchise history.
This new game, whatever is ends up being called, is scheduled to be revealed in Spring 2021 before releasing in Holiday 2021. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said this new Battlefield game will take advantage of the “full power” of the PS5 and Xbox Series X as it attempts to usher in a new era for the Battlefield series.
Here are EA’s full comments on the new Battlefield game:
“We’re looking forward to sharing a lot more about our FY22 plan in the months ahead, including our next Battlefield experience, which will mark a return to all-out military warfare. The game takes full advantage of the power of next-generation platforms to bring massive and immersive battles to life with more players than ever before. Featuring maps with unprecedented scale, the next vision of Battlefield takes all the destruction, player agency, and vehicle and weapon combat that the franchise is known for and elevates it to another level. The team is focused, and the game is ahead of our internal milestones. We will reveal the game in the spring and deliver the defining Battlefield experience for our players in the 2021 holiday season.”
“Porting Apex Legends to its smallest screen yet is a major achievement, and we couldn’t have done it without our partners at Panic Button,” Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier said in a press release. “We’re very proud of what the team has been able to achieve with some smart optimizations for the Switch port to deliver a full-featured Apex Legends experience on the go.”
The Switch version of Apex Legends supports all the existing content and features on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC versions of the game. This includes cross-play support, so Switch owners will be folded into Apex Legends’ overall player pool as opposed to existing separately.
This version of the game will be launching more than a month after the debut of Season 8. To help ensure Switch players aren’t at a disadvantage, those who buy the Battle Pass will earn 30 free levels. Additionally, double XP will be awarded during the first two weeks after the game launches, helping players to continue leveling up more quickly.
Now is the perfect time to jump into Apex Legends, following the battle royale game’s transformative second year. With Fuse’s addition, the roster of playable characters reaches 16, officially doubling the starting number of eight when Apex Legends first launched in February 2019. Plus, Respawn’s commitment to balancing the game and hosting in-game events continues to create enough incentive for players to regularly log in.
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Pokemon Go‘s Lunar New Year event is returning from February 9-14. The event will feature a line of Timed Research tasks revolving around Tauros, as well as increased spawns of red-colored Pokemon and other in-game bonuses.
Throughout the Lunar New Year event, Krabby, Goldeen, Magmar, Magikarp, Tepig, and other red-colored Pokemon will appear in the wild more frequently than usual. Gyarados will also be appearing, and you’ll have a chance to encounter a Shiny red Gyarados.
In addition to the wild Pokemon spawns, Pokemon that are based on animals associated with Lunar New Year–such as Ekans, Rattata, Torchic, Ponyta, and others–will be hatching from 5 km eggs throughout the event. You’ll also have a chance to encounter the following Pokemon in Raid Battles:
One-star Raids: Meditite, Carvanha, Duskull, Skorupi, and Darumaka
Three-star Raids: Miltank, Octillery, Blaziken, Camerupt, and Absol
Those aren’t the only Raid bosses that will be available during the Lunar New Year event. The Legendary Eon Pokemon Latios and Latias will also return to five-star Raids from February 9-20, while Mega Ampharos, Mega Pidgeot, and the debuting Mega Gyarados will be featured in Mega Raids during the same timeframe.
Finally, Niantic will offer a variety of in-game bonuses throughout the Lunar New Year event. Gifts you receive from friends will contain more Poke Balls than usual, and you’re more likely to become Lucky Friends with other players. On top of that, Pokemon you receive in trades are more likely to become Lucky. To take advantage of that bonus, Niantic is increasing trading distance to 40 km for the event.
The Monster Hunter movie will be heading for a home-video release on digital on February 16 according to a tweet from the film’s official Twitter account, with the Blu-ray release to follow on March 2. These releases will reportedly include “deleted scenes, a featurette on the cast and characters, a featurette on the weaponry in the film, and a featurette detailing the journey from video game to the big screen.”
The movie was one of the handful of movies whose release date was actually moved up in 2020, which now means fans will have an even shorter wait to finally own the film later this month. We weren’t blown away by the film, but video game movies are consistently polarizing even among fans who are interested in such things. What was always clear–and nobody can argue against–is that director Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat in 1995) set out to make audiences feel like they were in the game.
That much comes across in the film’s official synopsis: “Behind our world, there is another: a world of dangerous and powerful monsters that rule their domain with deadly ferocity. When an unexpected sandstorm transports Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her unit (T.I. Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta) to a new world, the soldiers are shocked to discover that this hostile and unknown environment is home to enormous and terrifying monsters immune to their firepower.” The trio are joined by a mysterious hunter (Tony Jaa), who band together to fight for and save each other’s worlds.
The next exciting thing to look forward to in the Monster Hunter world is the upcoming Monster Hunter Rise Nintendo Switch game, which is expected to launch on March 26.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping down from his role as the chief executive of the mega-corporation. He announced that he will transition to a new role as executive chair on the Board of Directors. Andy Jassy, the former CEO of Amazon Web Services and a 23-year-plus veteran, will take over as CEO of Amazon going forward.
“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” Bezos said.
Bezos also reflected on his life and career in his email to staffers, which was also published online.
“This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the internet?’ Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while,” Bezos said. “Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.”
Bezos said that it was invention that was Amazon’s root of success.
“We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” he said. “If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.”
Bezos said it is difficult and consuming to be the CEO of Amazon, and his role as chief executive limited what he was able to do outside of that. In his new role on the board, Bezos said he will remain “engaged” in Amazon’s major initiatives, but he won’t be as busy with day-to-day items. With that extra time, Bezos said he will focus more on his charitable campaigns, along with his other properties such as The Washington Post and his rocket company, Blue Origin.
“I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” he said. “Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to. We have things in the pipeline that will continue to astonish. We serve individuals and enterprises, and we’ve pioneered two complete industries and a whole new class of devices. We are leaders in areas as varied as machine learning and logistics, and if an Amazonian’s idea requires yet another new institutional skill, we’re flexible enough and patient enough to learn it.”
Activision has begun banning Call of Duty Warzone cheaters in what’s reportedly one of the biggest waves of bans ever for the game.
This time, the company banned more than 60,000 cheaters in the latest drop of its banhammer, according to Vice, which learned of this wave of bans from three sources familiar with Activision. This is the third large wave of bans since the game’s launch last year. Over 50,000 players were banned in the first wave last April and an additional 20,000 last September.
This ban comes just a day after popular Warzone streamer, Vikkstar123, announced that he would no longer play the game, as noted by Vice. He echoed sentiments found throughout the Warzone streaming community at the moment that the game is in the worst state it’s ever been in due to hackers and cheaters.
Sources close to Vice said this ban wave targeted cheaters using EngineOwning as all EngineOwning account holders using the software to cheat in the game have been “wiped out.” On EngineOwning’s site, the cheat developers say they are working to update the cheat, according to Vice.
Meanwhile, the EngineOwning Discord channel is full of account owners upset that their accounts have been banned by Activision.
This ban wave came somewhat out of nowhere considering that Activision previously warned of incoming ban waves before actually dropping the hammer in past instances. Activision laid out at that time what software they consider worthy of a ban and it included “aimbots, wallhacks, trainers, stats hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, hex editors or any software used to deliberately modify game data or memory.”
