For the upcoming 2021-2022 season, The CW has renewed 12 of its series for new seasons and has ordered additional episodes for current seasons of Walker and Superman & Lois.
Many of the renewals are from CW’s Arrowverse–even though Arrow is no longer on the air, and Supergirl and Black Lightning are coming to an end. The DC superhero universe has been a major force in The CW’s television arsenal for years. Batwoman–which recently began its second season with Javicia Leslie playing the new Batwoman, Ryan Wilder–landed a third season. Additionally, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow were renewed, and the new series Superman & Lois got two additional episodes added to its first season.
Outside of the DC shows, fan favorites like Legacies and Walker also got renewed as well. “Though we’re just a few weeks into the new season, we wanted to get a strategic head start on next season with these early renewals, which allows our production teams to start laying out story arcs and hiring staff, and at the same time, continues to provide us with a strong, stable schedule to build on for next season,” said The CW’s chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz in a press release. “As The CW’s 2020-2021 season kicks into high gear, we are thrilled creatively with the direction of our first new shows out of the gate, Walker and Superman & Lois, that we wanted to order the additional episodes to complete their first seasons, and we are particularly pleased with the huge success of the launch of Walker, which debuted as our most watched series premiere in 5 years.”
t’s a long list, so check out all the renewed shows The CW announced today.
The CW renewals:
Batwoman (Season 3)
The Flash (Season 8)
Superman & Lois (Two additional episodes)
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (Season 7)
Walker (Five additional episodes for Season 1, and Season 2 renewal)
All American (Season 4)
Charmed (Season 4)
Dynasty (Season 5)
In The Dark (Season 4)
Legacies (Season 4)
Nancy Drew (Season 3)
Riverdale (Season 6)
Roswell, New Mexico (Season 4)
While DC newcomers Batwoman and Superman & Lois had a crossover event planned, that was recently canceled. “We’re not really able to cross over because physically, we can’t cross crews due to the fear of exposure to COVID,” Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries told TVLine, who said that the anticipated meeting between Batwoman and Supergirl is off, too. “If Supergirl weren’t ending this year, I would say there would be more of a possibility. But I’m afraid that at least this year, we’re not going to be able to tap into that dynamic.”
Hopefully, the CW shows will return to crossovers in the next year, as they have become a staple of the Arrowverse shows. And while Black Lightning is coming to an end, there is a spin-off in the works.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Universal Japan’s Super Nintendo World has soft-launched in Osaka, and with it has come a pretty extensive playlist from the Universal Parks News Today YouTube channel of videos showing off Super Nintendo World’s rides, restaurants, stores, and other secrets. There’s tons to see, even if you can’t make it to the park in person quite yet.
Through the videos from Universal Parks News Today, anyone can get a glimpse of what Super Nintendo World is like. The park itself has been gamified, with each park-goer receiving a wearable wristband that works in conjunction with a mobile app to take the experience up a notch. Using these bracelets and the app, visitors can explore the park and solve various puzzles to snag digital keys to unlock special attractions and other collectibles like virtual coins and stamps. There’s even a leaderboard for the visitors who earn the most points across the whole day or for specific rides.
With three keys in hand, attendees can take on Bowser Jr. in an AR duel at one of the attractions. To do so, players have to make their way through a recreation of Bowser’s castle, complete with Bowser family photos and various Mushroom Kingdom graffiti on the walls, to a screen where Bowser Jr. and his cronies are ready to do their worst. Players then have to use their bodies to avoid attacks, swinging their arms to bat away Bob-ombs, ducking to dodge incoming Bullet Bills, and jumping to hit Question Blocks for power-ups. Combining all these movements, it’s time to take on Bowser Jr. and his gang to reclaim the Golden Mushroom for the good guys.
If you want a closer look at what is in the park, the Universal Park News Today channel also has videos that allow viewers to experience a full POV of different rides in the park like Koopa’s Challenge, and even what it’s like to wait in line for them. Or if you want a more atmospheric look at Super Nintendo World, there’s a video that shows off the experience of simply walking around and checking out the sights.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
All 11 seasons of the comedy Modern Family are coming to Disney-owned Hulu and NBC’s Peacock beginning February 3, according to a statement. You can start watching the show about the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker clan in Los Angeles immediately.
“Peacock is home to a massive catalog of iconic movies and shows, so a groundbreaking comedy like Modern Family is a perfect addition and representative of the quality entertainment our free and premium customers enjoy on the service,” said Val Boreland, executive vice president of content acquisitions for NBCUniversal Entertainment, Television, and Streaming. “Because viewers of all ages love Modern Family, we are creating a fan experience on Peacock that goes beyond just episodes of the series to include curated collections, bonus content, and more.”
It’s hard to read that and not think immediately of how Peacock has given The Office the royal treatment by offering Superfan Episodes–re-cut and re-edited episodes of the beloved series that add a wealth of bonus materials, deleted scenes, and even completely new plotlines that never made it to air. Boreland recently told Deadline that “the bar has been set by The Office,” in rolling out classic series on these streaming services, but it’s unclear if Modern Family will be supplemented in a similar fashion.
Modern Family ran from 2009 through to 2020, and according to Deadline there is tentative talk about exploring a spin-off. Not quite something to pin our hopes on just yet, but Modern Family co-creator/executive producer Christopher Lloyd (not that Christopher Lloyd) said last year, “I don’t want to say it’s a long shot, it’s under discussion but we’ll see.” So he’s saying there’s a chance?
The Medium, the latest horror game from Bloober Team, is heavy on story and has plenty of elements that are open to interpretation. Now that the game has been out for a few days on Xbox Series X|S and PC, we’re diving deep into its plots and gameplay in a Spoilercast edition of GameSpot After Dark.
Video producer Jean-Luc Seipke is joined by associate editor Jordan Ramée, who reviewed The Medium on GameSpot and gave it a glowing 9, and editor Phil Hornshaw (who also played). The three are all pretty big fans of the game and discuss its Silent Hill and Resident Evil influences, its old-school horror gameplay, and its next-generation features–specifically, The Medium’s gameplay sequences that have you navigating the material world and the spirit world at the same time.
The trio also delves into The Medium’s story to discuss aspects that greatly affected them, as well as some parts that didn’t land so well.
This is, of course, a Spoilercast, so be warned: There are spoilers for The Medium within. But if you haven’t played the game yet, fear not! We held back on spoilers for the first half of the discussion, so you’re free to listen up to the point when we mention a transition into spoiler territory to hear our general impressions of the game and how it plays.
It’s certainly no secret that many on the internet have fallen head over heels for Resident Evil Village‘s main antagonist Lady Dimitrescu, AKA The Big Lady. Gamers have fully embraced their “horny on main” energy thirsting after this large and in charge vampire. With Capcom releasing the official details on the vampire queen’s height, memes have gone pretty wild.
Xbox leaned into not just the Big Lady hype, but also the joke that the Series X kind of looks like a fridge with its most recent “update” on the next gen console, featuring Lady Dimitrescu for scale. Though they haven’t revealed how many teraflops per inch of big lady the next console/fridge might be packing.
Remedy brought its own spin, creating a size chart comparing the villainous monsters from its own franchises with Lady Dimitrescu. In the Remedy-verse, our girl isn’t quite as imposing, with the Former towering over her at 79.12 meters. The team even added teeth to the Former so it could pose for the meme with a picture ready smile. But Lady Dimitrescu still manages to outclass protagonist Jesse Faden with her imposing height.
Elgato took a similar, though more tech-minded approach, comparing the vampire to various streaming equipment like green screens and mounts. If the new monster mistress wants to start streaming due to her newfound internet fame, she may have to invest in a custom green screen setup.
Other devs have hopped on the bandwagon in slightly less creative ways, either highlighting the tall ladies in their franchises like Destiny did, or jokingly retconning certain characters to be taller like Ninja Theory. Apparently Senua is now nine feet tall, which I’m sure they’ll explain in the sequel…Not to be outdone, Kaizen Gameworks shot out a tweet featuring Paradise Killer’s own unconventional beauty Crimson Acid asking fans just how tall they’d like her to be and adding a special new game command: “Beg to be stepped on.” Where do I sign up?
We’ve gathered our favorites below, so check them out and let us know which Big Lady meme you’re loving!
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
What do you associate with the term “ninja game”? Perhaps you think of speedy action and superhuman agility, crazy character maneuvers, intense swordplay, or sneaky stealth. Odds are, however, that you also associate video game ninjas with games that are really, really hard. You wouldn’t be wrong; in the long history of ninja-themed games, a lot of the standout titles are known for the formidable challenges they present. Knowing that, you’d likely expect a retro-throwback 2D platformer starring a cyborg ninja to be a tough test of your skills. Enter Cyber Shadow, a game that delivers everything above, especially the difficulty.
Cyber Shadow puts you in the role of the titular Shadow, a cyborg ninja awakened from stasis in the ruins of a massive city. A mad scientist is on the rampage, having fashioned an army of robotic supersoldiers in a crazed quest to revive the dead, and it’s up to you to foil his ambitions. It’s a simple premise, but Cyber Shadow’s story has a complexity that reveals itself as you progress. As you find the souls of your fallen comrades and discover records of the city’s destruction and the lunatic doctor’s experiments, you learn of a backstory far more interesting and tragic than a simple “mad scientist gone rogue” yarn.
Shadow starts the game quite weak, having simple jumping, slashing, and running capabilities. Thankfully, the first level is a merciful introduction, with plentiful health drops, relatively weak enemies, and lots of checkpoints. But it’s not long before things start to ramp up considerably, with early bosses and their bullet-spewing, fast-moving patterns giving you a taste of what’s to come very soon. By the second area, you start to feel the pressure–quite literally, as crushing factory debris and instant-kill compactors make it clear that your mission is not going to be a walk in the park.
Fortunately, Shadow is very adaptable and can even the odds with the challenges his environments and adversaries present. The world of Cyber Shadow is filled with hidden chambers yielding secret enhancements like permanent life- and spirit-increasing upgrade items, just waiting for the eagle-eyed explorer behind destructible walls and out-of-the-way routes. By defeating bosses and completing certain tasks, you earn new skills that greatly enhance combat and movement: a long-range shuriken, a downward stab, a wall cling, a dash and faster-than-light slash strike. Not only do these skills enhance your ability to combat and evade enemies, but they also open up new areas for exploration in previous areas.
But even getting to the bosses that hold these skills can be a trial by fire. To ease the pressure, you can make good use of the game’s checkpoint enhancement system. Many of Cyber Shadow’s checkpoint terminals have optional boosts you can activate by choosing to spend collected essence points. These enhancements include full health and spirit restores along with robot helper items like a charge cannon and a shot-absorbing drone. Once you pay for the enhancement, it will always be available from that checkpoint–and if you die and respawn, you’ll come back with those enhancements in tow. This system adds a level of resource-management strategy to the game while also enabling you to make use of some really cool weaponry that can aid you in facing upcoming obstacles.
Even with enhancements, though, getting through the stages requires you to stay alert, figuring out enemy and obstacle patterns while making good use of the skills and resources available to you. There are a lot of great and satisfying “a-HA!” moments in Cyber Shadow, where suddenly an inaccessible item or area can be reached with a skill or a difficult enemy can be safely eliminated using a ninja skill or helper weapon wisely.
Once you do reach the boss battles, you’ll be in for some very fun and challenging fights. These encounters are where Cyber Shadow really reaches its peak, featuring imaginative and unique boss and attack designs that require both fast thinking and reaction to successfully fend off everything that gets thrown at you. Each boss does something new to put the skills you’ve honed through the stages to the test, and every win feels like a satisfying, hard-fought victory. One boss, the Mekadragon, has a particularly unique gimmick that I won’t spoil here, but I know I’ll be remembering what a blast that particular fight was for years to come.
However, as you get further in the game, Cyber Shadow’s stage difficulty begins to take a turn toward being plainly brutal. Strangely, as you get more skills for your attack and movement repertoire, the game puts less and less emphasis on creative combat and reaction, instead relying on obnoxious elements like instant-kill spikes and offscreen enemies in very bad places. At several points in the latter half of the game, I felt like I was being forced to do overly precise and specific actions with absolutely no room for error over and over again until I got things exactly right. The increasingly sparse checkpoints, along with limited health pickups and hazards that have a bad habit of blending into the other visuals, made traversing many of these areas feel like an arduous task. I had to put the game down more than a few times because I was on tilt from dying repeatedly in certain areas, sometimes only noticing an inconspicuous instant-kill spike after my death.
Gallery
While you can go back to earlier areas to find upgrades to make the late game a little bit easier, the way Cyber Shadow handles backtracking is quite messy. There are limited warp terminals in the game, and you’ll sometimes go far very long stretches without seeing one. You can always attempt to backtrack the long way, as many of the stages are interconnected, though the ways they intersect are confusing–and the game’s limited map does little to help. A more detailed map system would have done wonders in assisting players with exploration and finding all of the game’s hidden areas and items, as well as making the world feel a bit more cohesive overall. It makes exploration more of a chore than it should be, and that’s unfortunate.
Cyber Shadow is a solid retro throwback with a few things that drag it down. The feeling of becoming more powerful and being able to take down huge enemy threats with your wits and skills is very rewarding, and the levels when you can use your abilities more freely to overcome challenges are quite fun. It’s the trial-and-error areas littered with cheap deaths, demanding exact precision over long and frustrating stretches, that hamper the experience. Still, if you’re looking for an old-school-styled ninja game that will test your skills (and sometimes your patience), Cyber Shadow is a worthy contender.
Amid the ongoing drama around GameStop’s stock price, the video game retailer has announced the hiring of new executives to help lead the company’s efforts in the digital and e-commerce markets, as well as other units.
GameStop has hired Matt Francis, the former engineering lead at Amazon Web Services, to become the retailer’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer. His first day will be February 15.
In his role, Francis will lead and oversee the team that runs GameStop’s technology and e-commerce units.
GameStop announced two more high-profile hires as well. Kelli Durkin will become the senior vice president for customer care when she starts on March 1. Durkin previously worked at the pet food company Chewy as its vice president of customer service. She’s just the latest Chewy veteran to join GameStop, as the billionaire founder of Chewy, Ryan Cohen, is now on the company’s board of directors.
The other new hire is Josh Krueger, who will become the vice president of fulfillment at GameStop when he starts on March 1. Krueger previously worked in high-level fulfillment roles with Walmart, QVC, and Amazon.
GameStop has yet to discuss the recent activity surrounding the company’s stock price, so we don’t know yet what the company thinks about what’s happening or how it might affect the business going forward.
The company’s share price has since come back down to Earth, trading at around $100 on February 3. However, this still represents a gigantic surge over the past year, as GameStop was trading below $5 per share last summer.
Final Fantasy XIV‘s next seasonal event is set to kick off next week. The MMO’s Valentine’s Day and Little Ladies’ Day celebrations are being combined into one event this year, and it’ll feature a new questline to complete and seasonal rewards to unlock.
The event begins at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET on February 10 and runs until 6:59 AM PT / 9:59 AM PT on March 8. To participate in the event quest, A Delivery of Love, you’ll need to speak to Lisette de Valentione in Old Gridania. You’ll also need to be at least level 15 and have completed the Gridanian Envoy, Ul’dahn Envoy, or Lominsan Envoy story quests before you can participate.
You’ll be able to earn two special items as part of the event: the Lovely Moogle Cap headgear and the Stuffed Kupka Kupp tabletop decoration, both of which you can take a look at below. You’ll have until the end of the event to complete the seasonal quests and unlock these items. You’ll also have another chance to purchase some items from past years in the Seasonal Shop.
As usual, cities will be adorned with seasonal decorations throughout the event. This year, however, Square Enix says the decorations will vary between cities. Each town’s residential district will also have different decorations as the event progresses. Valentine’s Day decorations will be up from February 10-21, while Little Lady’s Day decorations will be up from February 21 to March 8.
In the meantime, Square Enix will be hosting a Final Fantasy XIV Announcement Showcase this Friday, February 5. Although the publisher hasn’t shared many details about that broadcast yet, it’s likely to give us our first look at the MMO’s next expansion. The broadcast begins at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET.
Sacha Baron Cohen has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards. This distinction puts the actor in intriguing company who share rarefied air–previously, Helen Mirren earned three nominations in 2007, and Jamie Foxx as well in 2005.
Cohen has been nominated for his work separately as an actor and a producer to last year’s surprise release (but unsurprising hit) Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a follow-up to its 2006 shock comedy tightly laced with satirical content. Additionally, Cohen has been nominated for his supporting role in The Trial of the Chicago 7, a polar-opposite role where he played Abbie Hoffman, the political and social activist. On Twitter, Cohen said he was “shocked and humbled” by the news.
Wawaweewah! I’m shocked and humbled to be nominated for 3 Golden Globes, and congratulations to the incredible @MariaBakalova96 too! We’re so honoured–and just in case we don’t win any, I’ve already hired Rudy Giuliani to contest the results. pic.twitter.com/CSligPsmI8
Cohen faces stiff competition in each category–Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton for the best performance by an actor in a motion picture category, for example. But Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm co-star Maria Bakalova has also garnered a nomination for best performance by an actress for her American debut as Tutar Sagdiyev–very nice.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 can be watched on Netflix; Borat Subsequent Moviefilm can be viewed on Prime Video.
The 78th Golden Globes, airing February 28, 2021, and will be hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series is returning to US theatres this week for a special engagement that will bring the movies to IMAX screens for the first time in 4K. Whether or not you want to or feel comfortable going to a cinema, however, is a decision you’ll have to make for yourself.
The screenings begin on February 5 in select markets–you can see if your local cinema has the movies on this website. Right now, it appears this event is only for The Lord of the Rings and not The Hobbit.
For the first time in IMAX, experience the magic of Middle-Earth. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is making its debut on the BIG screen. Remastered by Peter Jackson in stunning 4K, experience the epic in IMAX theatres Feb 5. Reserve your seat: https://t.co/LBzdw8tML0pic.twitter.com/Q9wexUkRAx
Jackson has said the Lord of the Rings films (and his Hobbit movies, for that matter) lacked consistency in their coloring and other elements, due to the evolving way in which the movies were shot. Updating them for 4K gave the team an opportunity to go back and address this.
“It was interesting going back and revisiting these films because I realised how inconsistent they were,” he said. “And that’s really due to the way in which the Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot first, about 20 years ago. The lord of the rings was shot on 35mm. The color timing was done on an old-fashioned mechanical way for the first Lord of the Rings movie. Then we switched to digital color timing for the 35mm negative for the next two,” he said.
Jackson also said that the process was not solely about increasing the crispness of the picture–the director said it was important to preserve the “cinematic look” of the films, while also boosting the overall fidelity.
“Great to be able to have all the films looking like they were shot at the same time, finally,” Jackson said.
When updating the Lord of the Rings for 4K, the team noticed that imperfections in the visual effects were more pronounced. Some of the shots did not hold up, Jackson admitted. So with the re-release, the team went back and removed or painted out some of these oddities and imperfections.
To be clear, however, the VFX are not upgraded or enhanced. But Jackson said of them, “They look like they were done today, not 20 years ago” as was the case for the first Lord of the Rings movie.
If you can’t or don’t want to visit a cinema to watch the movies in 4K, you can now do so at home thanks to the remastered versions. Another set is coming this year that will bundle The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as well as some new bonus features.
