Pokemon cards aren’t just a hot commodity sought after by collectors; they’re also handheld artistic masterpieces. If you ever thought that you could contribute to that collection of fine pocket monster art, then now’s your time to show Pokemon’s creators what you’re capable of.
The Pokemon Company International and Creatures Inc. have announced the Pokemon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest 2022, which will be open to applicants in the US for the first time. As part of Pokemon’s 25th-anniversary celebrations, fans have been encouraged to capture “the daily life of Pokemon” as part of the contest theme, with an emphasis on Bulbasaur, Charizard, Pikachu, Arcanine, Galarian Rapidash, Scizor, Greninja, or Cramorant as their chosen subject.
We’ve entered, but we don’t exactly think we’ll be chosen for the finals.
Please don’t turn this into an NFT.
“With this contest, Trainers will have the unique opportunity of having their Pokemon art be viewed all over the world,” said Barry Sams, vice president of the Pokemon TCG at The Pokémon Company International. “I continue to be in awe of the passion, creativity, and diversity of the Pokemon community, and expanding the Pokemon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest to the US will offer exciting new perspectives of the Pokemon we know and love.”
The grand prize for the contest is $5,000, and more importantly, their submission will be immortalized as a promo card. Entries will be accepted beginning on October 13, 2021, through January 31, 2022, with winners announced in Summer 2022.
In more celebratory Pokemon news, a new music album featuring songs by Katy Perry, Lil Yachty, J Balvin, and Cyn, and Post Malone’s cover of the Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Only Wanna Be With You,” which was used during the PS25 Music virtual concert in February.
The poster for Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley has been released. The dark period thriller stars Bradley Cooper and Cate Blancett and it hits theaters on December 17.
The poster is a close-up of Cooper, wearing a suit and hat appropriate to the movie’s 1940s setting, while behind him are several provocative posters for various carnival attractions. The ominous tagline simply reads, “Man or Beast.” Check it out below:
The poster arrives ahead of the Nightmare Alley trailer, which is expected later this week. The movie is based on the classic 1946 novel of the same title by William Lindsay Gresham, and the movie’s official synopsis reads, “An ambitious young carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist who is even more dangerous than he is.” The novel was previously adapted into a movie back in 1947.
Nightmare Alley has an impressive supporting cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn. This is Del Toro’s first movie as a director since 2017’s The Shape of Water, which won the Oscar for Best Picture the following year.
In related news, it was recently announced that Del Toro’s long-in-development Netflix anthology horror show has a new title. The series will be named Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. The filmmaker is also making a new stop-motion adaptation of Pinnochio for Netflix, with a voice-cast cast that includes Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson.
As we cross the halfway point of What If’s first season, the show’s strengths and weaknesses are coming into clearer focus. Inventive action choreographed in ways that would be tough for live-action to pull off? Easy. Reliably strong voice acting? Absolutely not. Worthwhile reinterpretations of established canon? Well, as is the nature of an anthology show, that we take on a week-by-week basis. Episode 6 sees Michael B. Jordan return to his excellent Killmonger role, giving him the chance to further his cause in a totally new way. While the episode leaves intact Killmonger’s motivations and so doesn’t deepen our understanding of him, it does broaden what we know about him in ways that make him an even more impressive foe, even in the context of 2018’s Black Panther.
Episode 6 starts at the very beginning of the MCU: Tony Stark’s (Mick Wingert) kidnapping at the hands of the Ten Rings. Well, near kidnapping. Killmonger’s (Michael B. Jordan) rescue of Stark was a solid starting point for the episode, rooted in MCU history, as we know the mercenary was in Afghanistan around the same time Stark was there showing off the Jericho missile. Especially after last week’s nonsensical quantum zombies, watching Killmonger’s tactical expertise be employed out of combat and in the more nuanced world of corporate espionage – where he’s no less effective – felt like a great use of the character. His exploitation of a Tony Stark who hasn’t benefited from lessons learned in captivity feels especially insidious, not only because Stark’s tech is the perfect resource for Killmonger to mine, but because we can feel Killmonger pushing Stark away from his heroic destiny.
The chance to spend more time with fan-favorite MCU characters who may not have appeared in 6 or 7 movies is one of What If’s biggest draws. Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is nothing if not a fan favorite. Jordan brings all the confidence and intellect of his live-action portrayal of the character to his animated counterpart, slyly manipulating Stark Industries and the US Government into fabricating an army of combat drones of his own design (Gundam-inspired, in a nice nod to Jordan’s love of anime.) Sure, there’s not a lot of subtlety in the American-made drones’ “Liberator” moniker, but at least their function in the story dovetails with Killmonger’s long-held belief that the oppressed people of the world should be armed against their oppressors with weaponry advanced enough to even the playing field. Killmonger stands as a top-tier MCU villain and tragic figure in his own right because we understand that he’s a product of the system he’s fighting against – making Rhodey’s (Don Cheadle) suggestion that he work within that system feel appropriately tone deaf – so despite his twisted morality, it’s not hard to sympathize with him. It was the right call not to alter Killmonger’s motives or goals, which are sacrosanct to what makes him work, but learning more about his MIT doctoral thesis (Doctor Killmonger??) and his ability in Machiavellian maneuvering retroactively makes live-action Killmonger – and T’Challa’s victory over him – all the more impressive. It calls to mind a similar strength that Star Wars’ Rogue One had, which fleshes out the destruction of the Death Star in a way that actually makes A New Hope even more thrilling upon subsequent viewings.
Killmonger’s carefully orchestrated frame job of Wakanda for the death of Tony Stark serves as reminder that What If is at its best when expanding our understanding of established characters by putting them in wholly new situations, as the show did with T’Challa’s Star-Lord back in Episode 2. T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns this week as the serious, leery Black Panther we’re familiar with from the MCU movies. Boseman’s third What If performance is, appropriately, significantly more subdued as he cautions Killmonger about his methods from the Ancestral Plane.
Episode 6’s other returning MCU vets rise above the relatively low bar for voice acting the series has set up to this point. Andy Serkis’ Klaue is just as off-the-wall as ever and Danai Gurira’s continually great work as Okoye makes the wait for the Disney+ Wakanda-set series even more unbearable. Her dig on the Liberators (“they’re built by Americans, we’ll be home by lunch”) makes her 2-for-2 dunking on the U.S. after last week’s hilarious comparison of American reality shows to horror movies.
Things start to fall apart by the end, though, as Killmonger pulls a Syndrome and defeats his own drones to look like a hero to the Wakandan people. The climactic battle against the Liberators looks good, but lacks any real stakes, as there’s no real effort made to mask the fact that Killmonger is staging this invasion as a means to further his conquering of Wakanda (and claiming of the Black Panther mantle.) Worse, it’s hard to believe that T’Chaka (John Kani) wouldn’t see this double-cross coming from his nephew after killing his brother N’Jobu for the exact same reason. Wakanda’s king may have held on to the nation’s isolationist tendencies for too long, but a fool he was not. Of course, there’s hope for Wakanda as Shuri (Ozioma Akagha) arrives at Stark Industries to enlist Pepper Potts’ (Beth Hoyt) help, but the meeting’s abrupt nature hardly feels like a resolution. Other episodes this season have suffered the same fate, and it’s yet another area of improvement for What If to focus on next year.
The official trailer for TUDUM: A Netflix Global Fan Event has been released together with highlights of the event’s all-star talent line-up.
The trailer features a host of famous faces urging fans to mark their calendars for the three-hour show, which is coming up on September 25, to ensure that no one misses out on the exciting day the streaming giant has planned for its first-ever global fan event. Check out the trailer for blink-and-you’ll-miss-them snippets from Red Notice, The Witcher, and more:
Get ready for #TUDUM: A Global Fan Event where more than 145 of your favorite stars will reveal exclusive first looks from over 70 of Netflix’s biggest shows and films.
TUDUM refers to the signature sound that plays ahead of Netflix’s original series and films but on this occasion, it signals a whole lot more. Fans attending the virtual event will be amongst the first to hear the latest breaking news and see first looks, new trailers and exclusive clips during interactive panels and conversations with the creators and stars from Netflix.
The virtual stage will spotlight some of Netflix’s most popular returning shows such as Stranger Things, Bridgerton, The Witcher, The Umbrella Academy, La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) and Cobra Kai, as well as blockbuster films like Red Notice, Don’t Look Up, Extraction, The Harder They Fall, and The Old Guard, amongst others.
The show will feature a number of Netflix luminaries, including the likes of Jason Bateman, Zazie Beetz, Halle Berry, Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, John Cho, Lilly Collins, Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Regina King, Jennifer Lawrence, Adam Sandler, Zack Snyder, Charlize Theron, and so many more.
The virtual livestream will begin on September 25 at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 4pm GMT / 1am JST and KST across Netflix’s YouTube channels, in addition to Twitter and Twitch. There will also be special pre-shows spotlighting Korean and Indian series and films along with exciting anime content that will kick-off at 5am PST / 8am EST / 12pm GMT / 9pm JST and KST.
Nightbooks premieres Wednesday, Sept. 15 on Netflix.
Jessica Jones‘ Krysten Ritter channels some of her Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 brattiness for Nightbooks, a new junior scare-fest that comes with solid performances, sharp teeth, and some pacing problems.
Based on the book by J. A. White and produced by Sam Raimi’s Ghost House (Don’t Breathe, The Grudge), Nightbooks does its best to evoke quality grim children’s fare, trying to find that sweet spot for younger viewers with regards to suspense and intensity. The story of a young boy — an ostracized horror fan — lured into a trap and held captive by a demanding witch, the movie features kids steeped in serious peril, as those who fall victim to the witch’s lair (a magical apartment that can leap into any building in the world and swipe youths) are never heard from again. From a danger aspect, it dabbles in some nicely disturbing terrain.
Nightbooks, however, never quite finds its full groove, as its middle act is stodgy, bogged down in CGI mayhem (which can often undercut actual scares) and a mystery that’s a little too easy to get in front of. If we focus on just the set-up and resolution, Nightbooks has the goods, but some of the center is a bit chewy. Fortunately, the bulk of the film is held aloft by Ritter’s nervously cranky silver-haired spell-caster and the performances of both Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett.
As Alex, a writer of spooky stories, Fegley is great as the kid who’s metaphorically forced to smoke the entire carton of cigarettes. In the clutches of Ritter’s witch, Alex proves himself useful, thereby ensuring his day-to-day survival, by reading his homegrown scary tales aloud on a nightly basis. The very thing that’s turned him into an outcast is now demanded of him, like debris for a never-ending pyre.
It’s a fun concept that almost provides Nightbooks with a cool anthology vibe, but it’s never fully embraced. Alex’s stories are unveiled using animated interludes, as his sessions with the witch very much feel like a storytime ceremony, but they’re not used frequently enough. Too quickly, the format is ditched and its flare replaced with less intriguing fare. Overall, the movie would have been better if it served up more of this short-form creepiness than baby-stepping around in the witch’s mystery.
Jewett’s Yasmin is the only other known human survivor of the lair, a morose girl who was stolen from her home years ago and now resides as the witch’s defeated assistant. Having watched her original captive friends die, Yasmin is now, understandably, a tough nut to crack, and both Fegley and Jewitt do a great job of finding the friendship beats between the two characters so that they can hatch an escape plan.
Nightbooks never quite finds its full groove.
Ritter is the true draw here, though, snapping at the kids with ghoulish glee and barking criticisms at poor Alex’s stories like an impish internet comment board. She succeeds in being colorfully venomous, creating a character who you both enjoy and dread.
As (basically) a single location story, Nightbooks tries hard to make the magical apartment both surprising and sinister, creating entire wings that transport Alex and Yasmin to grander realms, but mostly there’s a stale sameness to the sets. The rare reprieve is the film’s use of Alex’s spare story interruptions, which, to the story’s credit, pay off in an emotional way in the end, but still aren’t utilized enough throughout. Nightbooks succeeds with its characters, but stumbles with pacing and potency.
IGN reviewed the Pulse 3D Wireless headset, which received a 9/10 on our rating scale. We noted the headset goes beyond making PS5 games sound great; it makes the games feel more alive.
Star Wars: Hunters, the free-to-play mobile game coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, has released a new cinematic trailer that shows off a number of the game’s playable characters, including a very unlikely duo.
Star Wars: Hunters has remained further off-radar than even the Dagobah system since its initial announcement as part of the February 2021 Nintendo Direct. With very few details shared at the Nintendo event aside from a short teaser trailer and the game’s logo, fans’ first real look at the title came during the release of its recent cinematic trailer, which can be seen below and shows off a number of characters in the game.
While the trailer predominantly depicts a close-fought encounter between the Sith warrior Rieve and her Mandalorian counterpart Aran Tal, it was the inclusion of another of the title’s characters that really caught our eye. Stood one on top of another and dressed in a full-length trench coat, the real stars of the Star Wars: Hunters trailer are a pair of ungainly balanced Jawas known together as uTooni. Although the duo gets little screen time, the Outer Rim tag-team can be seen clumsily readying a grenade before the scene cuts away. With little else shown of the pair, fans will have to wait to see how the Tattooine scavengers adapt to arena combat.
Among other playable characters shown off in the trailer, fans received a more detailed look at Grozz, a Wookie warrior with a penchant for disarming droids; J-3D1, a suitably named droid programmed to believe that he has an affinity with the force; Sling Shot, an ugnaught controlling the husked out shell of a destroyer droid, and more.
In other Star Wars: Hunters news, a limited amount of gameplay footage was also shown off during last night’s (September 14) Apple event as part of a showcase to display the capabilities of the tech company’s new iPad Mini. While brief, footage from the game gave fans a glimpse at what they could expect from the title’s combat and in-game HUD.
Star Wars: Hunters is set to release for mobile devices and Nintendo Switch sometime in 2022. To keep up with a range of the latest news from Star Wars: Hunters, make sure to keep checking back to our dedicated page for the game.
Correction: This article originally stated that uTooni were holding a switched-off lightsaber but, on closer inspection, it appears to be a grenade.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
Toem begins when your nana gifts you a camera as you head off to see the “Toem” phenomenon. She nearly shows you her own photo from when she did the same thing at your age, but hastily hides it. Seeing the Toem phenomenon is presented as a rite of passage, and something you really just need to experience for yourself. She never describes exactly what Toem is, just that it’s spectacular and life-changing. But maybe what she’s really remembering is the journey to see it.
Most of Toem is essentially a series of photo puzzles. When you first journey away from home, you learn that you can collect stamps on your community card by performing acts of kindness for townspeople (which almost always involve a camera, somehow) or fulfilling photo challenges. You might be asked to find a cartoonishly shady character hanging around town, or to point a lighthouse keeper in the direction of boats that need help using your zoom lens. Collecting enough stamps gets you a free bus pass to the next area. It’s a simple, clever construct that creates a broad space for different types of puzzle challenges.
All of this is presented in a stark black-and-white style that feels boldly minimalist. The view is isometric in a way that often limits your ability to see all of your surroundings, so you’ll look from behind the camera lens to get a better view of things. The interplay between these views is constant, and despite a sparse visual style and monochrome presentation, it never feels confusing. Everything is perfectly readable in both views, which is a testament to the strength of the art design.
With a concept like this it would be easy for puzzles to become over-reliant on forced perspective, making two pieces of the background join together in some way to make them look like one object. That isn’t the case. This is first and foremost a cozy game, so the challenges are never outrageously tricky. Usually they’re more like visual riddles requiring you to suss out what a person means by their request and how the surrounding environment can help you find it for them.
Occasionally, though, a puzzle will be obscure or poorly explained. The worst is when you’re certain you know what the answer is, but not how to complete it in the way the game wants. Sometimes a piece of dialogue explaining the puzzle, which may have given a clue, cannot be repeated and isn’t marked the same way in your logbook. And while Toem is very open-ended–you can pretty much collect the all-important stamps in whatever order you wish–there are occasional times when one task is obviously acting as a gatekeeper for others. Getting stuck on one of these, however temporarily, can be frustrating.
When you first arrive in a new area, you’ll be absolutely inundated with new requests. The environments are designed with a natural circular flow, so as you get the lay of the land you’ll find more people, unlock new areas, and fulfill requests. There’s a natural rhythm to walking around town, spotting new things you hadn’t spotted before and grabbing photos, and then repeating the loop to do it again. Often you’ll find yourself getting a new request and having a “eureka!” moment, remembering something conspicuous you had seen on your last trip around. I made a habit of taking photos of anything that seemed out of place or visually interesting, just to be prepared.
Exploring the different areas also gives you an ever-growing collection of cassette tapes you can play on your Hikelady. Toem cycles through these by itself, but you can pick one to play as well. The soundtrack is soothing and inviting, with a variety of musical and instrumental styles to represent the various areas. You have limited control over playback, though, and will have to manually select one track at a time instead of creating any kind of playlist or blacklisting songs that aren’t your fancy. The catchy tunes usually fit the mood well enough on their own without fussing with the controls.
There’s a light equipment system at play in Toem. Sometimes you’ll need to wear a particular hat to gain access to an area, or wear a certain type of footwear to use a special ability. Most of the equipment is purely cosmetic and the game clearly signals when it has an actual gameplay function. Fiddling with your equipment is only slightly and occasionally tedious, since it doesn’t come up often. It’s not much of a hassle, but it does slightly interrupt the soothing experience when you’re in an area that requires costume changes.
Gallery
The story themes in Toem are delivered with the lightest of light touches. You’re encouraged to go out and see the world, and in an abstract way, it seems to resemble a gentle coming-of-age story about a kid’s first trip away from home. While it’s ostensibly about seeing the beauty of the world through a camera lens, it’s open-minded about the forms that beauty can take. You’re not limited to nature or wildlife–though both of those play a part. You’ll find something worthwhile in the way kids play in the woods, a salty old fisherman on a dock, or graffiti along the sides of buildings in a cityscape. It’s a very silly and whimsical game on the whole, but those moments make it feel like it has something to say about appreciating your surroundings, whatever they might be.
Toem is a slight game–just around three to four hours–which keeps it from overstaying its welcome. Going back through every area to collect every last photo for your collection will extend its playtime, but on the whole it’s just short and sweet.
When you reach Toem, the event itself, it really does feel spectacular in the context of the game. More important, though, is what it represents. Toem is a simple, cute fable about growing up and engaging with the world. And like the phenomenon, it’s really best if you see it for yourself.
Microsoft’s next stress test for Age of Empires 4, in which it sees just how many people it can throw at the game before breaking it, finally has a date. From 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on September 17 and until September 20, you’ll be able to grab the game from its Steam page or the Xbox Insider app.
Provided that your PC can meet the moderate minimum requirements for the real-time strategy title, the goal behind this weekend’s test is to ensure that matchmaking, lobbies, and additional systems can hold up when the full game launches.
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Age of Empires 4 will automatically check your PC to see if it can handle its visuals, and will assign graphics settings based on what it finds. Much like last week’s stress test, the content on offer will include a tutorial mission, AI skirmishes, and a chance to throw down with real people in multiplayer.
Other changes from last month’s closed beta are various bug fixes, more balancing of the English and Chinese civilizations, and changes to camera distance, as the maximum distance that the camera can zoom out has been tweaked to provide more visibility.
There won’t be any Non-Disclosure Agreements to adhere to either so that fans are able to invite and play with their friends without needing to follow extra steps to do so.
Age of Empires 4 launches on October 28 on PC via Steam, the Windows Store, and through Xbox Game Pass. Developed by Relic Entertainment and World’s Edge, Age of Empires puts you in the center of several historical eras from the Dark Ages up to the Renaissance and plays out across 35 missions over five centuries of conflict and war elephants.
God of War: Ragnarok includes a new mythological character, Thor, who is played by Sons of Anarchy’s Ryan Hurst and sports a different look compared to Chris Hemsworth’s MCU version. Some corners of the internet and social media took issue with Thor’s look in Ragnarok. British powerlifting champion Darren McCormac has now shared his insights on Thor’s appearance in Ragnarok, saying Thor’s bulk is indicative of his super-strength.
“Like it or not, God of War’s Thor is the peak of male performance,” McCormac told The Sixth Axis. “As a strength athlete, there is a correlation between bulk and strength. In powerlifting, the most competitive classes are the under 100kg and under 110kg–guys who are lifting multiple times their own bodyweight. They won’t be tall, they’ll be bulky.”
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“Not all these guys will have abs, far from it,” he added. “They’ll have a layer of lard over it, a power belly. Any old fool can get abs–yes I am looking at you, Mr. Hemsworth–but a power belly and big traps (the muscles either side of your neck) are the sign of a bloody strong man.”
There are some exceptions, but in general, the competitors in the World’s Strongest Man competitions are usually “brick houses with power bellies.” This helps give them a strong center of gravity, McCormac said.
Ragnarok is in development at Sony Santa Monica and is slated for release in 2022 for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. It picks up after the events of 2018’s God of War and, in addition to Thor, brings in new characters like Odin, Angrboða, and Tyr.
Behind the scenes, Eric Williams is directing Ragnarok, taking over for Cory Barlog, who is now making something else. Bear McCreary is returning to compose the music. For more, check out GameSpot’s rundown of everything we know about God of War Ragnarok.
