Jamie Lee Curtis has offered up the first glimpse of Cate Blanchett’s take on Lilith in the Borderlands movie.
On Twitter, Jamie Lee Curtis (who’ll play Dr. Tannis in the movie) posted a “a secret [behind-the-scenes] shot I took of Lilith, our legendary heroine, psycho blasting, vault hunting vixen with a bad attitude”, which shows off Blanchett’s Lilith in silhouette.
While the silhouette doesn’t give too much away, Blanchett’s take on the character definitely looks familiar to those who know the Siren outlaw from the games, with similarly placed holsters, seemingly mismatched boots, and a familiar sweep of (presumably bright red) hair.
Lilith will be the movie’s main character, with the movie’s plot centring around her quest to return to the planet of Pandora and recover the missing daughter of “the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas.” Along the way, she’ll cross paths with Kevin Hart as Roland, Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Tannis, Gina Gershon as Moxxi, Janina Gavankar as Commander Knox, Jack Black as Claptrap, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, and Florian Munteanu as Tina Tina’s protector, Krieg.
The movie, loosely based on the games, is being directed by Eli Roth and scripted by Craig Maizin, and is due to be released in 2022.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Nintendo has won a lawsuit against a ROM-hosting website called RomUniverse.
As reported by TorrentFreak, the site’s owner will have to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after the court ruled in the video game company’s favour. You can read a court order from the suit here. The lawsuit was filed back in September of 2019, with Nintendo seeking damages for copyright infringement and federal trademark infringement.
This is because the RomUniverse website hosted pirated versions of Nintendo games that users could download. It also offered premium subscriptions that allowed RomUniverse subscribers to surpass a download limit.
The website’s owner filed a declaration saying that he “denies and disputes that he uploaded any files to said website and at no time did he verify the content of said ROM file” but had previously testified that “he and or/his “admin” uploaded ROMs of Nintendo’s copyrighted works,” so the declaration was struck by the court.
The website was taken offline last year, but the lawsuit continued, and ultimately Nintendo has now won the case. Nintendo initially sought over $15 million in damages, but the court reduced the damages to $2,115,000 in total.
Nvidia has announced its newest gaming graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti, as part of its keynote presentation at the Computex 2021 virtual event. The 3080 Ti is set to launch on June 3 at a price of $1199, while the 3070 Ti will be available on June 10 for $599–if you’re lucky.
Nvidia is calling the 3080 Ti its “new flagship gaming GPU,” with specs that almost rival the top-of-the-line 3090, Cnet reports. It boasts more cores than the base 3080, including 80 RT cores, 10,240 CUDA cores, and 320 Tensor cores. Its memory has also been upgraded to 12GB GDDR6X, a step up from the 3080, while not quite reaching the 3090’s 24GB.
You can watch the full reveal, along with a preview of DOOM Eternal running at 4K with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, around 32 minutes into the video above.
The 3070 Ti’s specs are a lot closer to the 3070, though it’s been given a major memory upgrade from GDDR6 to GDDR6X. While Nvidia didn’t compare the cards to any in its current generation lineup, it said that the RTX 3080 Ti is 1.5 times faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, while the RTX 3070 Ti is 1.5 times faster than the RTX 2070 Super.
Unfortunately, like all the other cards in Nvidia’s 30 series, it’s likely that these new cards will also be plagued by supply issues, making it difficult for gamers to get ahold of their chosen cards. The company has said in a recent earnings call that it expects supply constraints to continue for at least another few months. Interest in graphics cards for crypto mining is still high as well, with miners snapping up new cards and driving up the price of any still available, despite Nvidia’s efforts to limit mining performance on gaming cards.
Total War: Three Kingdoms‘ newest patch 1.7.1 will also be its last, after Creative Assembly announced that it would be winding down production in favor of a new Three Kingdoms game. While the patch is expansive and contains many of the fixes previously promised by the developers, some promised content was never added to the 2019 game, leading fans to review bomb Three Kingdoms on Steam.
The game’s Steam page now shows an overwhelmingly negative rating for recent reviews, while its overall reviews are still sitting at mostly positive. Negative reviewers stated that they felt betrayed by the developers, citing a promised northern region expansion that never materialized, and complaining that the game never actually explored the Three Kingdoms it’s named for.
The developers’ announcement said that the team had wrapped up the story intended to be told in Total War: Three Kingdoms, and that further parts of the historic story would be told in separate games under the Three Kingdoms banner, with the next installment already in development.
The final patch includes some changes that were promised by developers, such as moving Mount Song and Hulao pass to the right location, but is lacking in the broader map expansion that the Mount Song relocation was meant to accompany. The patch notes also include a large number of bug fixes.
Total War: Three Kingdoms Patch 1.7.1
MAP CHANGES
Moved Mount Song and Hulao pass to their correct location
Added more impassable areas to the Yellow River to prevent moving past some passes
BUG FIXES
GENERAL
Reduced frequency of AI picking Faction Council missions that spawn Looters
On restoring the Han your factions name will change to the Han Empire and your flag will change to the Han Empire
Removed Imperial Favour gain from positive public order, and adjusted some food-based gains
Xiangyang is now owned by Liu Biao in 200
Friend relationships added between Mi Zhu, Sun Qian and Liu Bei in 200, and family relationships between Lady Mi and Mi Zhu and Mi Fang
Zhou Tai’s now heals 0.2% of max HP every second, 5 times slower than before, and can no longer use his heal when on an elephant
Governors can now restore the Han (or declare independence) if they control the emperor when they hit the maximum prestige level
Fixed two desync errors with Cao Cao in co-op and at the 190 start date.
Fixed starting the game with Chinese IME leading to losing control of keyboard and mouse in-game in certain versions of Windows 10.
CAMPAIGN FIXES
Fixed crash when annexing Yellow Turban settlements as the Han
Fixed crash when extracting a spy when they’re leading an army
Fixed crash related to annexing settlements and amount of action points remaining to the army annexing
Fixed crash that could happen upon zooming in on a besieged settlement
Yellow Turban Rebellion can no longer be invited to join Empires
Postponed the ‘Restore the Han’ dilemma until Emperor Xian is an adult to make sure he could not become faction leader when still a child
Removed duplicate Black Mountain Hideout buildings in the 194 campaign
Fixed issue where if a faction in an alliance left it, alliance peace would be automatically signed but one faction would remain in an alliance war and be unable to leave it
Fixed issue where the Trade Territory function was not always working correctly
Fixed issue where it was possible to annex territory of a faction who had left your Empire
Fixed issue where nothing happened if you attacked a vassal of a member of your Empire, the correct diplomacy pop-ups now occur
Fixed issue where player would get two pop-up messages if the target of a mercenary contract is vassalised by the faction issuing the contract
If a faction which is fulfilling a mercenary contract is vassalised the contract now ends and the mission will expire the following turn
Fixed issue where vassals did not always have access to the option to request permission to declare war from their vassal master
Nanman rebels can now no longer do any diplomatic treaties beyond war, this will only apply to new campaigns
Vassalising a Nanman faction through settlement occupation option as a Nanman faction will now correctly sign peace with that faction
Fixed issue where Nanman diplomatic options with Han factions were not always working correctly
Fixed issue where Demand Fealty for Nanman wasn’t correctly unlocking the option to vassalize Han factions
Fixed issue where Yellow Turban factions were sometimes not progressing and therefore not gaining access to more diplomatic treaties
Fixed issue where Dong Zhuo incorrectly had access to Liu Hong’s specific diplomatic option to annex empire subjects
Fixed issue where Yu Jin leaves Cao Cao on turn 1 of a legendary 194 campaign
Moved Emperor Xian’s pin in the 200 campaign to Xuchang to match his location
Liang Rebels in Mandate of Heaven are no longer affected by Imperial Favour
Han Empire and factions like Liu Hong led by a current/former Emperor now get a boost to Imperial Favour
Northern Army veteran units now have unit caps to be consistent with the basic Northern army units
Fixed many instances of characters appearing in the 200 campaign who should already be dead
Fixed issue where Liu Xie with his unique art could be born to any character
Xun You can now correctly access all skills in his tree, which enables him to gain access to his Turning the Tide ability
Updated text for Lu Bu’s Personal Victories and Momentum to reflect the fact that he gains both from defeating enemy generals in battles, not from duels, as many AI generals are reluctant to duel him
Fixed issue where the Qiao sisters event was not triggering for Sun Ce
Fixed issue where if the Emperor is executed by a non-Han faction a duplicate Liu Xie could spawn
Fixed issue where the ‘Iron General’ title was not unlocking correctly
Fixed issue where when Nanman children are born they would ‘steal’ one weapon and one mount from the factions available pools
Shanyue in 200 were set to Bandit culture but Han military group, their military group now matches their culture which will enable them to recruit more units
Fixed issue where when playing as Dong Zhuo in Mandate of Heaven Lu Bu did not always join the player due to an error in the related events
Corrected unlock conditions for Liu Chong trophy that required 15 spear infantry units but only tested for pike infantry
Fixed issue where Rice Paddies were not providing food production from farming as Bandits
Fixed issue where increase in spy slots was not applying unless campaign is saved and reloaded
Fixed issue where Imperial units were not being unlocked correctly by technologies in the Eight Princes campaign
Fixed issue where Liu Yan/Liu Zhang’s tier 6 settlements were wrongly giving a faction-wide bonus of +50% to commerce income
BATTLE FIXES
Fixed issue where several settlement maps were covered in the caltrops ground type
Fixed issue where Yu Jin had different abilities in custom battle to campaign
Fixed issue where several characters unrelated to Yuan Shao had the ‘Familial Conflict’ ability, and added it to Yuan Shu
Fixed issue where faces of Nanman units could appear black at certain angles/lighting
UI FIXES
Fixed issue where some already researched techs in the Nanman tech tree were not being displayed correctly
Fixed issue where player would get notifications and pop-ups about Imperial Intrigue before the feature was active
Fixed issue where first notification for a turn does not always pop-up
Fixed issue where more than 11 administrator positions did not fit into the court UI, a scroll bar has been added
Fixed issue where the ‘King of Kings’ UI for Meng Huo was not updating with the correct duration
Fixed issue where some character names were shown in lower case when loading into battles
Fixed issue where the ‘Discredit Faction’ was sometimes available in circumstances that weren’t valid
Removed outdated information on the Info Overlay for Cao Cao and Yuan Shao
Fixed issue where the Abdicate Emperorship diplomatic proposal had wrong description, it wrongly suggested the faction being proposed to would abdicate, instead of the one proposing the deal
ASSEMBLY KIT
Fixed issue where startpos processing was not being done correctly
Fortnite Week 12 is nearly here which means the Week 12 challenges are also just around the corner. Week 12, the final week of Season 6, is set to go live on Thursday, June 3 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET. With it will come another full slate of Epic Quests and Legendary Quests for players to chase. As usual, they’ve leaked ahead of time. If you still need to hit Battle Pass tier 100–or 220 for the enlightened skins–these challenges will provide massive XP boosts to get you across the finish line. Here’s the full list of Week 12 challenges.
Fortnite Week 12 Challenges
Epic Quests
Visit the Zero Point (1) – 24,000 XP
Craft pistols (3) – 24,000 XP
Defeat a spire guardian (1) – 24,000 XP
Hunt predators (3) – 24,000 XP
Tame boars outside of Colossal Crops (1) – 24,000 XP
Chicken Glide at Colossal Crops (1) – 24,000 XP
Raid an artifact from Stealthy Stronghold and from Coral Castle (2) – 24,000 XP
Legendary Quests
Spend Gold Bars (150) – 35,000 XP
Spend Gold Bars (300) – 24,000 XP
Spend Gold Bars (450) – 24,000 XP
Spend Gold Bars (600) – 24,000 XP
Spend Gold Bars (750) – 24,000 XP
Spend your Gold Bars before the end of the season. They don’t carry over!
The Legendary Quest seems easy, as 750 Gold Bars is the price of roughly any two Mythic weapons, like the Marksman Six Shooter or the Grappler Bow. It should be even easier this week since the final Wild Weeks event of Season 6 is rumored to make collecting bars even faster. If you’re looking to visit the Zero Point, it’s the glowing metal orb at the top of The Spire, located in the very center of the map. You may recall The Foundation is currently trapped inside.
Crafting pistols is something you’ve been doing all season, most likely, but follow our weapon crafting guide if you’re stuck. The Spire Guardians are located at any of the six mini-spires. One resides at each of the extremities of the orange parts of the map. They put up a good fight, so be careful and maybe bring a friend or three. Hunting predators (wolves and raptors), taming boar, and performing a chicken glide are all neatly addressed in our Fortnite Season 6 animal guide.
As for raiding artifacts, these items won’t show up until the moment the quest goes live, but should they leak in the meantime, we’ll jump on a guide even sooner than that morning, so check back soon for your full Week 12 challenges roadmap.
This is the final week of Season 6. On June 8, Fortnite Season 7 kicks off with what appears to be an alien-themed season, as evidenced by the recent They’re Coming ARG and the Foreshadowing Quests. Get in there and finish up your final few challenges before the alien spaceships touch down on the island.
Several older Need for Speed games will be removed from digital stores and have their in-game economies shuttered starting May 31, publisher EA announced. Online services for these games will cease operations in August.
Carbon, Shift, Shift 2: Unleashed, The Run, and Undercover are the Need for Speed games that are being prepared for retirement. All five games will no longer be purchasable from digital storefronts and players can’t participate in their in-game economies to buy things like car parts and currencies. Online services such as leaderboards and matchmaking will stay active until August 31, at which point all five games will be relegated to strictly offline play.
“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed,” Max said. “The development teams and operational staff have put a lot of time and passion into the development, creation, release and upkeep of the game over the years, and we love to see you play. But the number of players has come to a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed The Run up and running.”
This news isn’t too surprising considering the age of these games, with the oldest on the list being Need for Speed: Carbon (2006) and the youngest being Need for Speed: The Run (2011). EA has published six other Need for Speed games since The Run; the latest was 2019’s Need for Speed Heat.
Various Need for Speed games are on EA’s subscription service EA Play, including Heat, Payback, and Rivals. The publisher will host an all-virtual EA Play Live on July 22. Though it’s unclear if a new Need for Speed will surface, fans might get information about Battlefield 6 and Dragon Age 4.
EA has announced that Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed, and Need for Speed The Run will be removed from digital storefronts beginning today, May 31.
EA took to Reddit to share the news, saying in-game stores for the previously mentioned titles will also be closed from May 31. While online services will remain on for now, they will be retired on August 31, 2021. From September 1 onwards, the games will remain playable offline.
“Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed,” Community manager Max_Joker wrote on Reddit. “The development teams and operational staff have put a lot of time and passion into the development, creation, release and upkeep of the game over the years, and we love to see you play.
“But the number of players has come to a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed and Need for Speed The Run up and running. We hope you have gotten many victories, satisfying drifts, moments of friendly rivalry, and hours of joy over the last few years out of these games.”
Need for Speed Carbon is the oldest game on the list and was released in 2006, and 2011’s Need for Speed The Run is the newest game impacted by these changes.
Both editions of Minecraft, Bedrock and Java, will get part one of the Caves & Cliffs update on June 8, developer Mojang has confirmed. The latest patch–which includes new blocks and mobs–will be available on mobile devices, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Three new mobs will be added with this update: the underwater creatures axolotls, the Minecraft Earth-exclusive glow squid, and goats. Though axolotls only attack Drowned, they’re mostly harmless. The same goes for the glow squids. Goats, on the other hand, are the most aggressive of the three new mobs in Minecraft, headbutting players whenever possible.
That goat is just looking for some trouble.
On top of the three mobs, Caves & Cliffs brings some 91 new blocks to Minecraft. This includes amethyst, copper, and dripleaves, but Mojang said the rest “might be a bit trickier to discover.” Players can switch to Creative mode to get immediate access to all of the new Minecraft content.
This is just the first part of what has become a massive update. Mojang split Caves & Cliffs in two to focus on the “much bigger changes” planned for the second half. Part two launches this holiday.
While Sega is mostly known for the Sonic and Yakuza franchises these days, there was a time where the developer and publisher was also a fighting game powerhouse. During the 1990s, Sega launched the Virtua Fighter franchise, the first 3D fighting game that utilized the now standard polygon-based graphics and physics. The series would go on to have a dedicated following as it set the arcade scene and Sega built platforms like the Saturn and Dreamcast, carving out a fanbase that enjoyed its incredibly technical fighting mechanics. Even today, players still engage in competitive play with the previous entry, 2012’s Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, being a fixture in fan-run tournaments.
With the upcoming Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, and its placement as a free game for PlayStation Plus members at launch on June 1, the fighting game franchise will be making a comeback in a big way. Before its release, we spent some time getting reacquainted with the game’s uncompromisingly technical combat mechanics, which still manages to give way to satisfying and thrilling matches when you nail the right flow. With VF5’s new look and refined combat mechanics–now running on the Dragon Engine, which powers the recent entries in the Yakuza series–Ultimate Showdown brings the franchise back in serious style. Before the reveal of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, we had a brief interview with chief producer Seiji Aoki about returning to Sega’s original 3D fighting game series.
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Now Playing: Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown Full Arcade Run
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
It’s been about 10 years since the last Virtua Fighter game. What has it been like to return to such a well-loved fighting game franchise?
Personally, I’ve been a big fan of the series as a player for many years and it’s been very rewarding to take part in a new project. Virtua Fighter is such a historically important series to Sega, well-loved by so many players dating all the way to the initial arcade launch nearly 28 years ago! I think we were able to create an amazing new game that hopefully lives up to the high standard we’ve set for ourselves over the decades.
What do you think is special about the Virtua Fighter series that has allowed it to endure in the minds of hardcore fighting game fans throughout the years?
I think it’s the strategic depth, intricate balance, and wide range of real-life martial arts styles–all performed at a fluid 60fps. That defines Virtua Fighter, and that realism defines it when compared to other fighting games. Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown brings back the combat fans know and love, remade with modern graphics, enhanced online play and spectate features, new background music, and more. We’re really excited to see how fans respond to this new entry.
Given the growth of the esports scene these days, do you feel that competitive Virtua Fighter play can still carve out a following with modern audiences?
With Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, we’ve remade the infrastructure of 2012’s VF5 to get up to the standards of competitive play in 2021. That includes a number of new features and tools built for organized online competition: expanded match room sizes, new modes and match types like Tournaments and Leagues, live replay and spectate, new hit effects, and communications tools like stamps that enhance the experience for viewers as well as players.
With VF5, we’re preparing our first forays into organized esports, with two official sponsored tournaments in Japan on the horizon, and we’d love to some day participate in global tournaments like EVO and see professional VF players emerge. That all starts by giving our community the tools they need to continue growing in that space.
What led to the decision to release Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown as a free game on PlayStation Plus at launch?
This project started as a part of Sega’s 60th Anniversary Celebration–it was made as a gift for our community. We want as many people to play it as possible. Launching on both PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now allows us to offer the definitive Virtua Fighter experience as an essentially “free”game for millions of players around the world, many of whom may just be trying out the series for the first time!
Modern fighting games see regular updates and DLC components as a part of their roadmap. Are there plans for VF5: Ultimate Showdown to have DLC after launch?
We do! The new Legendary Pack will launch right alongside the new game. That pack includes over 2000 customization items, and a ton of new and classic content that celebrates the entire history of the Virtua Fighter series. This includes retro UI, stages, alt costumes, never-before-released background music from the previous games in the series, and all the original classic character models from the first Virtua Fighter–which you can use as special costumes. As for additional post-launch content, there are plenty of items and features we wanted to add that didn’t make it in time for launch, and we hope to share those details in the future.
On a more fun note, fans of the Yakuza series have been eager to see characters like Kazama Kiryu and Goro Majima show up as guests in fighting games. Would you ever consider having characters from Yakuza join the Virtua Fighter roster?
We actually did discuss adding new characters during development. However, to add new characters we’d need to readjust the balance of the game, which we felt had been perfected in VF5: Final Showdown–so we put that idea aside for now. But we know there’s demand for more characters, and we will continue to look for ways to include them in the future.
Sega has also worked on other fighting game franchises as well, such as Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx, and even a Sonic fighting game (which we see a small return as a bonus game in Lost Judgement). Is there another fighting game franchise that you would like to revisit?
There are plenty of popular Sega games that have their passionate fanbases, particularly in the fighting game space, that I would love to see revisited. But right now I am 100% focused on VF5: Ultimate Showdown and re-introducing the Virtua Fighter series to modern fans now.
With this remaster, do you hope that this will lead to a new beginning for the franchise? Many fans have been clamoring for a new entry in the series.
As a fan of the series, of course, I’d love to play a new Virtua Fighter game. For now, our goal is to get as many people playing Virtua Fighter as possible, and we’ll see what the future holds.
Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown hits PS4 (and PS5 via forward compatibility) on June 1, and with it comes an expansion pack bundling original series content like character models and background music.
The $10 Legendary Pack includes exactly what it sounds like it would. The DLC features a plethora of content from the series’ past, like OG character models and various stages from 1993’s Virtua Fighter and beyond. It also packages the background music and battle UI from the series’ older entries.
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Original series content isn’t all the Legendary Pack comes with. There are also character customization items and costumes, as well as emojis and stamps that can be used in Ultimate Showdown’s spectator mode.
A look at Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown’s $10 Legendary Pack.
Prior to Ultimate Showdown’s reveal, we chatted with producer Seiji Aoki about the series’ return and what could be next for Virtua Fighter. Aoki also talked about the Legendary Pack (which is a separate purchase despite Ultimate Showdown being free) and possible future DLC plans for the game.
“The new Legendary Pack will launch right alongside the new game” Aoki said. “That pack includes over 2000 customization items, and a ton of new and classic content that celebrates the entire history of the Virtua Fighter series. This includes retro UI, stages, alt costumes, never-before-released background music from the previous games in the series, and all the original classic character models from the first Virtua Fighter–which you can use as special costumes. As for additional post-launch content, there are plenty of items and features we wanted to add that didn’t make it in time for launch, and we hope to share those details in the future.”
Originally released as a PS3 and Xbox 360 game, Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown is an enhanced digital port launching as a free PS Plus title for June. All character models, stages, and cinematic have gotten the HD remaster treatment, and online features have been tweaked to allow for things like 16-player private rooms and more.
