Author: Trafficblast

Techland is finally delivering a more complete Hellraid experience, just not how you would expect. The currently on-hold game from Techland was revived in Dying Light last year as a piece of DLC, and as of today, has been updated to include a full-on story mode.

Previously, the Hellraid DLC for Dying Light would let players escape out of the game’s zombie-infested world through an arcade cabinet. They would be teleported into a fantasy world, and instead of bashing up zombies, they could beat the bones off of some walking skeletons and other undead ghouls. However, it was all rather directionless, simply putting players through a dungeon of enemies.

A new update today for the DLC specifically changes that. An all-new story mode has been added to the piece of extra content, along with new weapons, zones, and a suite of visual improvements.

The story mode for Dying Light Hellraid will task players with saving a mage from Ba’al’s Temple. Who they are and what they’re doing there is for players to find out. If you don’t have the Hellraid DLC for Dying Light, it’s currently on sale on Steam for $7. On both the Microsoft Store and PlayStation Store, the DLC costs its full price of $10.

Dying Light 2: Stay Human is also just over the horizon, with a stream last month announcing a release date for the game. The Dying Light sequel is set to come out on December 7 and will feature a changing world based on player choices.

Fortnite Season 7 is merely hours away, and Epic Games is teasing what players can expect to find in the latest season. From Rick and Morty, to a missing-in-action Jonesy, to even an apparent Superman tease, Epic’s next season of Fortnite looks to be just as massive as ever, with aliens descending on the island to cause chaos and alter the landscape of the popular game once more.

Epic has been slow-rolling the release of brief and cryptic teasers for a few days. The first one appeared over the weekend and does not immediately point to any known characters from outside the Fortnite fiction, though it does suggest Agent Jones, the Troy Baker-voiced main character of the game’s expansive lore, is now missing in action. His face appears on the side of a milk carton with the words “MISSING” just like the old days.

The text description with the teaser seems to come from the aliens themselves, which have recently been abducting players at the end of Season 6:

“Catalog Entry #437-887. The creatures of the Island seem to use this strange, flimsy holding device to consume their… bone modification liquid? Fascinating indeed.”

Since then, two more similar teasers have arrived, both pointing to licensed crossovers with some massive properties, which lately has been the focus of Fortnite’s Item Shop and Battle Passes.

Superman

The first seems to suggest DC’s foremost superhero, Superman, will be making his way to Apollo. Along a video featuring objects like a new sci-fi weapon and a guitar (likely unrelated Bling Bling), a pair of glasses comes with a jokey caption. “When placed onto the face this strange plastic device seemed to make us appear as unrecognizable.”

It would make a lot of sense for Superman to arrive in Fortnite. The past few months have been especially DC-heavy thanks in part to the ongoing Batman tie-in comic. He would join others such as the Teen Titans Beast Boy and Raven, Harley Quinn, and even Green Arrow, who arrived by way of the Fortnite Crew subscription in January.

Rick and Morty

Because one huge collaboration is never enough for Fortnite, it seems Rick and Morty will be coming to the game in some fashion. The third and final teaser for Fortnite Season 7 arrived today and in no uncertain terms includes the existential dread-filled butter robot.

As the season looks primed to focus largely on aliens and adjacent science fiction concepts, a Rick and Morty collaboration is, in hindsight, one we should’ve seen coming when we wrote about possible tie-ins we want to see in the game. We’re still holding out for Agents Scully and Mulder though.

It’s the final day of Fortnite Season 6. Be sure to close out your last few Week 12 challenges. Tomorrow, we’ll be bringing you a full rundown of Fortnite Season 7, including the map changes, a Battle Pass overview, and guides on any other new elements Epic adds to the game for its season of invasion.

According to Forza Motorsport creative director Chris Esaki, the next game in the series will deliver a “huge generational leap” in terms of the foundational driving gameplay for the series.

“I’m a core gameplay guy, a core mechanics guy, and I really think about all the things that we do–the rubber meets the road and that sort of thing–as core gameplay and essentially we’re building on this solid foundation of our Forza feel that our players know and love and just making it that much better,” Esaki explained in the latest episode of Forza Monthly via VGC.

Esaki added that the difference in gameplay will be greater than all the changes made from Forza Motorsport 4 and though to Forza Motorsport 7. One of the bigger changes is in the tire collision model, which traditionally has only had one point of contact with the road and refreshed itself at 60Hz. For the next Forza Motorsport, there will be eight points of contact with the track that will run at 360Hz.

“So if you’re doing the math there, it’s a 48x fidelity jump in a single tire collision itself so there’s just a huge amount of work there that has just really paid off for us,” Esaki said. “This goes to all the feedback we’ve got from this last playtest, you can really feel the track surface a lot more, there’s a lot more communication to the player and the feeling of the tires on the track is really insane.”

Esaki also mentioned that curbs had been dramatically changed from the usual coarse or unsettling feeling that had been prevalent in previous games, and now feel more smooth and natural while allowing tires to feel “the undulations” in each part of the road. On the brand recognition side of the game’s development, Esaki also confirmed that the next entry in the series won’t feature a sequential 8 at the end of its title, and will be a new start for the series.

“It really is an all-new Forza Motorsport experience,” Esaki concluded.

Little else is known about the next Forza, aside from it having recently wrapped up a beta test and has scheduled another one for this summer. If Microsoft is ready to reveal some new details on its signature racing game series though, its joint briefing with Bethesda on June 13 will be as good a place as any to show off all those handling improvements.

For more on that event and other conferences around it, don’t forget to check out our E3 2021 hub for the full schedule.

Wedding Crashers 2 isn’t officially in the works yet, but it sounds like some of the cast might be considering tying the knot with the prospective sequel.

According to Collider, Wedding Crashers 2 hasn’t officially been given the green light by New Line, but Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have reportedly taken a seat at the table to enter into “early discussions” to reprise their roles as divorce mediators John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, the headliners of the original 2005 rom-com, which grossed $285 million worldwide on a $40 million budget.

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While no deals have been finalized yet, sources say there is a script for the sequel that has been universally well-received, and that filmmaker David Dobkin, who helmed the first movie, has already started to scout locations and venues in the event that New Line pops the question and he signs on to direct a Wedding Crashers sequel, 16 years after the first premiered in theaters.

Rumors of a sequel have been circulating for years, with Vaughn revealing in November that talks were becoming more serious. “Owen and I and the director of Crashers have been talking for the first time seriously [about] a sequel to that movie,” Vaughn told Entertainment Tonight.  “So, there has been an idea that is pretty good. So, we are talking about that in the early stages.”

Hopefully, the duo will be able to “save the date” for the potential sequel before their respective calendars get booked up. Vaughn will next be seen on screen in Queenpins, a crime comedy inspired by the true story of the largest coupon counterfeit scam in US history, while Wilson will be taking to the small screen for Marvel’s Loki, which debuts on Disney+ this week.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

F9 has so far made $250 million at the international box office. The latest movie in the long-running Fast and Furious franchise hit theaters in some overseas territories last month.

As reported by Variety, F9 has to date grossed a massive $203 million in China, where it arrived on May 19. Other countries in which the movie has been released include South Korea, where it has made $17.7 million, and Rusia, with a $15.8 million gross.

F9 hits US theaters on June 21. Obviously $203 million is still some way behind the $1.2 billion gross of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious, but theaters are now reopening across the US and the recent box office success of movies such as Godzilla vs Kong showed that the box office is starting to bounce back. In addition, F9 will only be available to watch in theaters.

It will be followed by a number of other high profile movies, many of which were delayed from last year. Marvel’s Black Widow arrives on July 9, with Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, and Space Jam: A New Legacy all following over the next few weeks.

F9 stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, John Cena, and Jordana Brewster, and is directed by Justin Lin. In his review for GameSpot, Chris E. Hayner described it as “loud, explosive, and filled with the type of action dying to be seen on the big screen in a room with other fans to go along with you on the ride.”

In terms of this weekend’s US box office, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It topped the chart with a $24 million gross.

Gearbox, the developer of the Borderlands series and publisher of games like Homeworld, is apparently going to show off something new during the Summer Game Fest Kick Off event. It could be a new game called “Wonderlands,” according to references found on a new website.

A website called Be Chaotic Great has gone live that teases an announcement on Thursday, June 10 of a “new adventure from Gearbox and 2K.” That’s all the information there is to go on now, and it’s not immediately clear how the phrase “be chaotic great” factors in. Whatever the case, we won’t have to wait long to find out, thankfully.

Although Gearbox has been sold to Embracer Group, the Texas-based studio continues to work with 2K Games on the Borderlands franchise. Recently, it was reported that a Borderlands spin-off is in the works and might be announced around E3. The game is reportedly focused around Tiny Tina, according to another leak.

Twitter user Wario64 found references to something called “Wonderlands” in what appears to be the source code on the website. Wonderlands is the rumored title of the supposed Borderlands spin-off. GameSpot was also able to find this in the source code.

Summer Game Fest’s Kick Off Live event will have 30+ games featured during the show, including a dozen world premieres and announcements.

For more on Summer Game Fest, have a look at GameSpot’s Summer Game Fest roundup that covers the showtimes, what to expect, and more.

GameSpot will livestream Summer Game Fest, E3 2021, and all the major games events and showcases as part of Play for All 2021 during June, raising money for AbleGamers, which focuses on helping people with disabilities play games and improving accessibility in games.

Veteran Hollywood and TV composer Danny Elfman has an incredible story about composing the music for Tim Burton’s Batman while on an airplane. He said on Marc Maron’s podcast that he flew to London to visit the set to get inspired. On his trip back to America, inspiration struck, but he had a problem: he was on an airplane and wanted to record his ideas before he forgot them.

So he took his personal recorder into the bathroom to hum his musical ideas. But each time he got back to his seat, it wasn’t long until he had another idea and he headed for the bathroom again “because I couldn’t do this with the guy sitting next to me,” he said on the podcast, as covered by The Hollywood Reporter.

Eventually, the flight attendants took notice of this erratic behavior. After recording another segment of the music for Batman in the bathroom, Elfman opened the lavatory door and a flight attendant asked if he was OK. He said he was. But he quickly returned to the bathroom to record more of his thoughts. Later, he was greeted by three flight attendants who Elfman says believed he was in the bathroom doing cocaine.

“They were probably going, ‘What the fu** he is doing so frequently? You can’t do that much blow. You can’t shoot up that often. What is he doing in there?!’ And I piece by piece was working out the Batman score in my head.”

In 2017, Elfman told People that Batman was his most challenging project ever, in part because he’d never made music for a drama before. “Batman was, and still rates as, the most difficult and challenging movie experience I ever had in my life,” he said.

Elfman is a longtime and frequent collaborator with Burton. In addition to writing the music for Batman, Elfman composed the scores for Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He also did the music for Good Will Hunting, Men in Black, and the Fifty Shades of Grey movies. Elfman famously created the theme song to The Simpsons as well.

Season 7 of Halo: The Master Chief Collection will make it easier for players to hop into a game of Firefight, according to a developer update from 343 Industries.

Specifically, Firefight is being added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s social games match composer with the game’s latest update. When Season 7 launches, players should simply be able to go to the social games menu and choose to search for a game of Firefight. Naturally, crossplay will be enabled for anyone that searches for a Firefight match this way.

Currently, 343 Industries is finishing up testing for integrating Firefight into Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s social games menu. Once the feature is ironed out, the developer hopes that the game mode, which currently has its own separate menu, will be easier to access for players. Additionally, 343 Industries claims that giving Firefight its own tab in the social games menu will “bring the Firefight communities between ODST and Reach closer, so they can all find more matches.”

The addition of Firefight to the social games menu of Halo: The Master Chief Collection is the latest in a long list of features being added to the game with its Season 7 update. Halo 3 will also be getting its first new map in 12 years, titled Edge. That being said, the map isn’t entirely new, having debuted in the Russia-exclusive title Halo: Online.

Season 7 of Halo: The Master Chief Collection will also include a swathe of visual improvements for Halo: CE. The current version of the first Halo title included in the Master Chief Collection is based on Gearbox Software’s 2003 PC port. However, this version includes a ton of visual downgrades, which will soon be fixed, giving the game a dramatically improved look on PC for the first time.

If you’re looking for more Halo news, Xbox’s E3 show is right around the corner. Halo Infinite is sure to play a large role at the showcase, along with other upcoming titles from Xbox’s first-party studios.

A sequel to Disney’s Cruella movie starring Emma Stone is in the works, it seems. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a sequel is in “early development” at Disney, with director Craig Gillespie and writer Tony McNamara set to return, along with Stone in the title role.

A spokesperson for Disney said the company is “very pleased” with how Cruella is doing at the box office and through Disney+ Premier Access. Not only is the movie succeeding commercially, but Disney said it’s happy with Cruella’s 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and its A rating on CinemaScore. Cruella is “among the most popular of our live-action reimaginings,” Disney said.

“We look forward to a long run as audiences continue to enjoy this fantastic film,” the spokesperson said.

Cruella has made more than $87 million at the box office worldwide. Disney has not shared any hard data about how Cruella is performing on Disney+ Premiere Access, however, but it’s apparently strong enough, combined with the box office numbers, to get a sequel off the ground.

A prequel, Cruella told the story of how Estella became Cruella, so it’s natural that a sequel would pick up from there as her villainous exploits take shape. Whether or not she’ll try to capture and kill 101 Dalmatians in the sequel remains to be seen.

Cruella is just the latest of Disney’s live-action reboots of animated classics. The most successful of these have been Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, all of which grossed more than $1 billion at the box office. More are coming, including new live-action versions of The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan & Wendy, and Pinocchio, among others.

Space, the final frontier that many of us will never reach. Unless you happen to be one of the richest men on the planet that is, as Jeff Bezos is getting ready to catch a rocket into the great void of the cosmos after he steps down as CEO of Amazon.

Bezos announced his temporary departure from the planet on July 20 via an Instagram video, in which he revealed that he and his brother Mark Bezos will be part of the crew of the New Shepard rocket built by Bezos’ space company Blue Origin.

“You see the earth from space and it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth,” said Bezos in his post. “I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”

The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winning bidder of an online auction that will end on July 12, where the price for a ticket is currently sitting at $2.8 million. Lift-off will take the crew of the rocket to the Kármán line, which is 62 miles above sea level and should provide a once-in-a-lifetime view of Earth’s curvature. Something which video game developer Richard Garriott has plenty of experience with after he spent a few days in space back in 2008.

After the trip has completed, the crew capsule will detach from the booster and will land in the West Texas desert via the aid of parachutes. Bezos isn’t the only billionaire to aim for outer space, as Tesla’s Elon Musk and Virgin’s Richard Branson all have their own initiatives in place to offer space tourism to anyone with the deep cash reserves who can afford such an experience.

There’s no word yet on how Tim Curry has reacted to the news of capitalism finally escaping the gravitational pull of Terra Firma.