How PUBG Corp. Brought the Core PUBG Experience to Mobile

Earlier this week, following a successful beta test in Canada, PUBG Corp. launched PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile internationally on iOS and Android.

IGN recently spoke with key members of the mobile version’s development team and found out how PUBG Corp., in partnership with Tencent, worked to bring the complete PUBG experience to mobile devices around the world.

From the start, PUBG Corp. CEO Chang Han Kim knew a mobile version of the hit battle royale game would have to deliver the same “core excitement” players have come to love in the pre-existing PC and Xbox One versions. As the team would learn, accomplishing this required them to strike the right balance between consistency and optimization.

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34 Awesome Cosplay Photos from WonderCon 2018

With WonderCon 2018 kicking off, we’ve been busy snapping pictures of our favorite cosplayers at the California convention. Whether professionally assembled or made at home, these cosplayers showed off their fandom in a variety of creative and awesome ways.

There are some standout Disney, Marvel, Pokemon, Star Wars and IT cosplayers and as well as some epic crossovers, so check ’em out! We’ll be updating this throughout the con, so be sure to check back from March 23 through March 25 for our latest cosplay photos.

WonderCon is taking place all weekend long, so make sure to stay tuned to IGN for all the biggest reviews and hottest news coming out of the convention.

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The Best Switch Game From Nintendo’s 2018 Spring Nindies Showcase – NVC Ep. 400

Weeelcooome to episode 400 of our weekly Nintendo show and podcast, Nintendo Voice Chat. This week, Brjann Sigurgeirsson, Founder & CEO of Image & Form joins the panel to discuss SteamWorld Dig 2’s massive success on Switch, what it’s like working with Nintendo to get a game on the eShop, and the possibility of SteamWorld characters in Smash! Later in the show, Filip and Brian give a rundown of the best Switch games they played from Nintendo’s 2018 Spring Nindies showcase, and Zach chimes in for a very special nod to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker!

As always, you can watch NVC here on IGN and on our YouTube channel (subscribe and hit that bell! It gives fairies wings!) or listen to it on your commute in audio format. If you enjoy the show, share it with other Nintendo fans, leave us a comment, and give us a thumbs up or leave us a review! If you prefer audio over video, please subscribe to NVC on iTunes or your podcast service of choice. You can also download and listen to the Latest Episode of NVC Right Here.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance Graphics Sure Can Look Bad

Kingdom Come: Deliverance looks pretty great. The game is a beautifully harsh recreation of life in the medieval ages. In this first-person RPG, you play as a peasant trying to stay alive in 1400s Bohemia amid a brutal civil war, and the experience can be punishing at times thanks to a steep learning curve. Rob and Joey have decided to take a dive back into Kingdom Come to dial the game’s graphics back to an equally punishing level.

In this episode of Potato Mode, the guys slowly take the game’s graphics from historical recreation to hysterical wreck. Want to see the intricate textures, environments, and even the eyes of your favorite characters melt away? Then be sure to watch the video above. And while you’re at it, play some dice on the lowest graphics settings and watch your table and chair disappear right before your eyes.

In GameSpot’s Kingdom Come review, the game praised for being a “rare, memorable” experience with lifelike quests, strong storytelling, and voice-acting and visuals that immerse you in the setting. Of course, once you pare back the most essential of graphics layers, it’s also ridiculous. Enjoy, and then watch the last Potato Mode when Rob and Joey dialed back the graphics on Grand Theft Auto V with equally obscene results.

Nintendo Switch Eshop Adds 12 New Games And Pokken Tournament DLC This Week

Some more games are now available for Nintendo Switch. This week is fairly light in terms of releases; only 12 new titles have been added to the Eshop, but they include a couple of notable games that are worth a download if you’re looking for something new to play on Nintendo’s console.

Headlining this week’s Switch releases is Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, the third installment in WayForward’s well-received platforming series. It’s joined by Attack on Titan 2, the video game adaptation of the popular anime and manga series. We called the latter “one of the more surprising releases of the year” in our Attack on Titan 2 review.

Other new releases this week include two more classic Arcade Archives games, World Heroes 2 Jet and Moon Patrol; the humorous horror-puzzle game Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut; the retro beat-’em-up Gekido Kintaro’s Revenge; the medieval side-scrolling action game Castle of Heart; and BlazBlue’s food-eating rhythm game spin-off, Eat Beat Deadspike-san. You can find the full list of this week’s new Eshop games below.

This week also sees the release of the some new DLC for Pokken Tournament DX. Wave 2 of the Battle Pack is now available and introduces another new playable Pokemon to the game: Blastoise. Two more Support Pokemon–Mew and Celebi–have also been added, as have an assortment of new customization items for your avatar.

Wave 2 of the Pokken Tournament DLC can only be purchased as part of the game’s $15 Pokken Battle Pack. The first wave released back in February and added Aegislash as a playable Pokemon. It also includes another pair of Support Pokemon–Mega Rayquaza and Mimikyu–and various other items to customize your avatar.

This Week’s New Nintendo Switch Releases

March 20

  • Attack on Titan 2
  • Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
  • Swim Out

March 22

  • ACA Neo Geo: World Heroes 2 Jet
  • Arcade Archives: Moon Patrol
  • Eat Beat Deadspike-san
  • Gekido Kintaro’s Revenge
  • No Thing
  • Opus: Rockets of Whisper
  • Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut
  • Sol Divide: Sword of Darkness

March 23

  • Castle of Heart
  • Pokken Tournament DX: Battle Pack Wave 2

Pro-Union Game Developers Fight for Change at This Year’s GDC

Thousands of game industry professionals gathered this week in San Francisco’s Moscone Center to attend the annual Game Developers Conference. Panels on game design, business, culture, and community filled the daily scheduled lineup of talks and meetups, but one roundtable in particular stood out for reigniting conversation around one of the industry’s most important questions: should game developers unionize?

The answer, according to the room, was a resounding yes.

Note: Some game developers quoted in this article have been kept anonymous for their privacy.

Jen MacLean, Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) was invited to moderate the roundtable, officially titled “Union Now? Pros, Cons, and Consequences of Unionization for Game Devs.”

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Netflix’s Game Over, Man! Review: It’s Dumb, Fun Die Hard

Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, and Anders Holm may go by different names in Netflix’s Game Over, Man!–Alexxx, Joel, and Darren, respectively–but they’re basically still doing their Workaholics characters. Netflix’s latest original comedy is a variation on everything Workaholics fans love; it wouldn’t be surprising at all to learn that Game Over, Man! began as a Workaholics movie, or an idea for a parody episode where the boys recreate Die Hard as only they could: dumber, gorier, meaner, and extremely funny.

Recommending Game Over, Man!–or not–is easy: If you liked Workaholics, which ended its seven-season run on Comedy Central just over a year ago, you will probably like this movie. And if you found the show puerile and obnoxious, go ahead and pick one of Netflix’s hundreds of other original movies or original TV series instead. This movie was even directed by Kyle Newacheck, the starring trio’s Workaholics co-creator, frequent episode director, and occasional guest star (as the gang’s drug dealer and fellow misfit Karl), and it was written by Holm.

The story follows Alexxx, Joel, and Darren, three hotel housekeepers who dream of hitting it big with their latest scheme, a full body-controlled video game called “Skintendo.” When a rich Instagram star–Utkarsh Ambudkar’s obnoxious but likable Bey–throws a party at their hotel, the gang decide to pitch him on Skintendo in the hope he’ll invest. Their plan is derailed when a group of terrorists led by the charismatic Conrad (Neal McDonough) and the psychopathic Irma (Rhona Mitra) take the partygoers hostage to extort Bey’s fortune. Our heroes skulk around the hotel trying not to get killed while thwarting the bad guys, mostly by accident or dumb luck.

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The “Dew Crew,” as they call themselves–because they love Mountain Dew–are playing versions of their Workaholics characters. Devine’s Alexxx–three Xs–is an immature, drug-dealing man baby bursting with terrible ideas, Holm’s Darren is an insecure drug addict, and Anderson’s Joel–nickname “Baby Dunk”–is just Anderson, but not-so-secretly gay. They’re supported by a hodgepodge of a cast, including Daniel Stern as the hotel’s sleazy manager, Aya Cash as their hapless co-worker, and party guests including Joel McHale, Fred Armisen, Action Bronson, Shaggy, Steve-O, and Mark Cuban as themselves.

Game Over, Man! isn’t shy about its influences. One of the funniest jokes comes when the terrorists’ hacker–Sam Richardson’s Donald–insists that they didn’t bring him along just “because I look like the black nerd from Die Hard,” and he’s sick of hearing about it. There are also a weird number of (granted, hilarious) references to the 1997 Robin Williams movie Flubber.

The crew take full advantage of their freedom from cable’s content restrictions, though not necessarily in the ways you might expect. Game Over, Man! must have a record number of penises in it, for example, including one that gets severed from its owner early on and returns later as a gross but gut-busting sight gag. This movie is also surprisingly gory, but always in a low budget way that makes exploding heads look like bursting water balloons full of fake blood.

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It’s also not pulling any punches, whether it comes to the various celebrities at Bey’s party or his adorable little chihuahua. Nobody is safe in this movie, which is admittedly fun, though it does go a little too far in a couple of scenes.

By the end, the Dew Crew has scraped together what amounts to a semi-decent plan to save the hotel’s remaining guests and convince Bey to invest in Skintendo (don’t think for a second they lose sight of that dream, even as the bodies drop around them). That’s after several terrible, failed plans and multiple bloody, hilarious scraps in which they count their bad guy kills like it’s a video game. That includes one weirdly heartwarming run-in with two very murderous, very gay thugs who the boys attack as they’re distracting one another in bed.

There are plenty more good gags, fight scenes that will make you cringe with the creativity of their cartoonishly over-the-top violence, and stunts that include the gang hanging on an ironing board suspended a dozen stories up, and sending a Weekend at Bernie‘s-style animated corpse into a room full of machine gun-toting thugs.

Game Over, Man! isn’t smart, essential, or particularly well made. But it is a funny, blatant Die Hard tribute made by four friends whose specific brand of stoner-bro humor has earned them enough fans to justify their continued collaboration. If you count yourself among those fans, enjoy.

The Good The Bad
Workaholics‘ signature sense of humor Goes too far in a couple of scenes
Cartoonish, over-the-top violence Inherently dumb humor won’t appeal to everyone
Great supporting cast
The “Dew Crew” are on point

15 Movie Sequels That Dumped the Original Cast

Put yourself in the position of a filmmaker whose new job is directing a sequel to a massive blockbuster hit that everybody loves. Now, imagine you find out that the cast of the original film is unavailable, or too expensive to bring back, so you’re practically going to have to start from scratch.

It’s a tricky scenario that has, over the years, forced filmmakers to get creative. The new release Pacific Rim Uprising is just the latest in a long line of these types of projects. The original Pacific Rim starred Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) as a giant robot pilot with a lot of baggage and a ton of unresolved issues and storylines that could have been mined for sequels. But when Hunnam was unavailable, they went in another direction, and the new film stars a whole new character, played by John Boyega (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), and a lot of new supporting cast too.

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Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trailer

Nickelodeon has released the first trailer for Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The trailer, which you can view below, shows fans what they can expect from this new take on the Ninja Turtles, which promises to completely reimagine the beloved characters. The series follows the four brothers discovering new powers and encountering a mystical world beneath the streets of New York City.

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo will also go up against some new villains, including John Cena’s Baron Draxum. He’ll make his debut in the series’ premiere episode and remain a recurring character throughout the show’s 26-episode first season.

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