Author: Trafficblast

Director Christopher Nolan has long been an outspoken advocate for all films, its culture, and also the future of his upcoming new film Tenet. Nolan has steadfastly been pushing for Tenet to be released in theaters this summer and to be viewed by audiences first on the big screen, but the realities of COVID-19 have possibly pushed this release date further back and into the realm of wishful thinking. Although August 12 is still the current, expected, release date, Vulture is now reporting there is growing skepticism Tenet will be released this summer at all.

Citing a report from movie-industry analyst Eric Handler, Vulture is speculating that what could do Tenet in is a lack of theaters able to stay open amidst doubts over safety to see movies out in public–and the movie being pulled can only harm theaters further. An anonymous high-ranking executive told Vulture, “The theaters are going to lose the biggest if Tenet doesn’t come out next month… They’re going to spend $100 million on face masks and [disinfection] sprays. Then the theaters aren’t going to open in August? They’re most at risk.”

Further fanning the flames of uncertainty is the fact that industry pundits like Richard Rushfield, who runs the popular entertainment newsletter The Ankler, aren’t sure if movie theaters are even able to deliver pre-COVID audience numbers right now. “Between now and the end of the year, 50 percent loss is probably the best-case scenario.” Rushfield told Vulture. He estimated that 80 percent is a more likely, realistic number to expect.

Tenet was originally planned for release in theaters July 17, then July 31, and recently shifted to August 12. The movie, which was written and directed by Nolan, stars Robert Pattinson, John David Washington, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Martin Donovan, Kenneth Branagh, and Elizabeth Debicki, and Michael Caine. Despite all the attention the movie has garnered, and even a trailer being released, not much about its story or plot is yet known.

Japanese video game giant Square Enix has established a brand-new studio of sorts that brings internal and external action game developers together under one umbrella.

That conglomerate is called Balan Company, an “action game brand” that will unveil its first project in the future–though when remains unclear. The group’s official website simply features a red curtain with a white top hat sitting on a stage. The text reads: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show of wonders brought to you by the Balan Company. We thank you for your patience while we make preparation for the grand opening.” Whatever is coming sounds like it may be extremely theatrical.

Square Enix has not publicly clarified what Balan Company is, but the studio did share a teaser for the group on its official Twitter account.

In other Square Enix news, the studio has announced that the beta for Marvel’s Avengers will kick-off this August. Those who pre-ordered the game on PlayStation 4 can access the beta starting on August 7. Xbox One players who pre-ordered Marvel’s Avengers will get into the beta on August 14. Conversely, everyone else will be able to participate in the game’s open beta on August 21 before it launches on September 7.

Are vampire attacks covered by life insurance? In episode 7 of American Horror Story Hotel, John Lowe finally gets the help he needs, The Countess learns the emotion of fear, and if it looks too good to be true… there has to be a stunt double involved.

Marcy from Murder House checks in. It’s only fitting for a realtor who specializes in selling haunted houses to stumble upon Hotel Cortez. Another soul stuck within these walls.

The Countess (Lady Gaga) finds herself in another love triangle with Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova. James March saves The Lady in Black from heartbreak and we learn the true origin of their relationship.

John Lowe can’t let go of the Ten Commandments Killer. He takes a one way trip to West Los Angeles Health Center for much needed evaluation, and to bring him one step closer to solving the string of crimes.

More details about the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller will be revealed tomorrow, July 17, by Geoff Keighley. The stream, part of Kieghley’s Summer Game Fest, will be at 9 AM PST / noon EST on the event’s official website.

The stream was announced on Twitter by Keighley with a short video of him holding the controller, which you can see below.

The DualSense controller features haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and a built-in microphone. The controller will also feature a rechargeable battery, just like the DualShock 4.

Sony is reportedly increasing its PS5 console production for the launch window, with an increase from 6 million units to 9 million.

One of the upcoming Summer Game Fest events is the Xbox Summer Game Fest Demo Event, which runs from July 21 to July 27, featuring more than 60 demos available on the Xbox One dashboard.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey completed its extensive DLC roadmap last year, and since then it’s been issuing occasional daily challenge updates or extra costumes. With the new Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on the way, a small update has hit that lets you get into the Viking mood.

The title update 1.5.4 patch notes were posted to Reddit, and it is about 3-4 GB across all platforms. It has some bug fixes but also teases a new item pack in a seeming homage to Valhalla. The Northern Traveler’s Set looks very much like Viking armor, complete with furs and an ornate axe. The patch does not mention exactly how or when to obtain them.

Valhalla, of course, actually does take place during the Viking Age, as you manage your band of settlers and lay siege to Saxon fortresses. We recently got much more detail about Valhalla, including more information on the hero Eivor, the revised romance mechanics, going fishing, and how you can recruit Viking cats–or just regular cats that happen to hang out with Vikings, but “Viking cats” is so much cuter.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is coming to PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on November 17. It’s also coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X, but release dates for those platforms have not been announced. For more details, check out our Valhalla pre-order guide.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey 1.5.4 Title Update

• Addressed an issue where Cyclops quests weren’t available to some players after Title Update 1.5.3.
• Addressed an issue with the audio output of some of the crowd stations.
• Addressed an issue where a placeholder pop-up could appear upon unlocking Ezio’s Roman outfit.

Sneak Peek: Northern Traveler’s Set

We’re excited to provide you with a first glimpse at an all-new item pack that our development team has been working on: Northern Traveler’s Set!

Now Playing: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Gameplay Overview | Ubisoft Forward 2020

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Although no release date has yet been given for the upcoming Disney+ Home Alone reboot, information is starting to come out about its cast. The reboot has added Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live), Ally Maki (Toy Story 4), and Chris Parnell (Archer). The news comes from Deadline, who also is reporting that Archie Yates (Jojo Rabbit), Rob Delaney (Deadpool 2), and Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) will star in the film.

The film’s official synopsis is as follows: “The new Home Alone film will follow a husband and wife who go to war with a young boy, Max, who has stolen from them. Max is an energetic, witty nine-year-old boy with a mischievous side. He feels wise beyond his years and has the personality to easily converse with adults–plus the uncanny ability to relentlessly push their buttons. But, he also displays a sense of innocence and a kind heart, much like the original protagonist.”

Rumors have persisted but remain unconfirmed that actor Macaulay Culkin, who starred in the original ’90s film and its sequel, could make a cameo in this new version of Home Alone.

Dan Mazer (Dirty Grandpa) is set to direct the upcoming movie, working from a script from Saturday Night Live veterans Streeter Seidel and Mikey Day. Day will also act in the film. Hutch Parker (Logan) and Dan Wilson (Patriots Day) will produce.

By now, several months into a pandemic that has shut down production and pushed back the release of more movies and TV shows than any of us can or should be able to remember off the tops of our heads, we’ve all become a little numb to the concept of delays. They’ve gone from being a once-in-a-blue-moon oddity to a normal part of pop culture. It no longer feels weird or ominous or even like a punchline.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the distant, halcyon past a movie getting bumped to a new release date could spark all sorts of speculation, even elevate the movie itself to a sort of meme status amongst fans–and no movie did that better or with more panache than Fox’s New Mutants, a movie that is still not out yet, here in 2020, some three years after it’s intended premiere. To make matters even more hilarious, Fox (or, well, Disney now, who, in the intervening years, acquired the 20th Century studio) has stubbornly refused to even acknowledge the possibility that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong for the New Mutants. There’s even going to be a Comic-Con At Home panel for the movie where, if there’s any justice in the world, we’ll finally be able to stop pretending it’s ever going to hit theaters and get a date for its streaming debut.

Though it’s probably best not to get our hopes up, all things considered. After all, the long and horrible journey New Mutants has been on since that first trailer released is arguably more memorable than the trailer itself at this point. So, with that in mind, let’s chart out the New Mutants timeline from beginning to (probable) end.

July 17, 2017 – Principal photography began on the project, most of which taking place in Boston’s historic, and historically haunted, Medfield State Hospital. Spooky! Maybe the process of filming at that location cursed production from the start and we’re just seeing the fallout, Poltergeist-style. Who knows?

September 16, 2017 – Filming wraps, according to director Josh Boone on instagram.

October 13, 2017 – The first trailer for the movie is released, touting an April 13, 2018 release date..

January 11, 2018 – The movie is officially pushed back from its original release date (April 13, 2018) to February 22, 2019. The stated reason for the move was to avoid conflict with Deadpool 2.

March, 2018 – The first public inklings of behind the scenes drama start to kick up as cast and crew begin offering comments on creative tension. Reshoots start becoming a topic of conversation.

April 13, 2018 – The first release date comes and goes with no movie to show for it.

January, 2019 – The second delay shifts release to a third date, from February 22 to August 2, 2019.

February 22, 2019 – A second release date is missed.

March, 2019 – Disney acquires 20th Century Fox. The status of any planned reshoots remains completely unknown or speculatory at best. A fourth release date is set: April 3, 2020. Cast members get frustrated.

August 2, 2019 – The third try isn’t the charm as yet another release date is missed.

January, 2020 – A second trailer is released. The April release date appears to be holding firm.

March, 2020 – Boone comes forward to set the record straight, claiming no reshoots ever happened. Meanwhile, the Coronavirus pandemic forces Disney to completely shift its 2020 release schedule.

April 3, 2020 – Nope, it didn’t show up here either. That’s a fourth release date gone by and still no movie.

May, 2020 – The fifth release date is set for August 28, 2020.

July 16, 2020 – The Comic-Con At Home panel for the movie is announced along with a new trailer. The panel is scheduled for July 23 at 2PM PST/5PM EST.

August 28, 2020 – Will it actually release this time? Will it be a streaming exclusive? Does this movie even exist?

The biggest question now is whether or not Disney will try and continue to push for an actual theatrical release, or if the movie will drop as a streaming exclusive, similar to other long-delayed projects like Artemis Fowl, which skipped theaters for Disney+ earlier this year. All things considered, the pandemic-related shutdowns offer the perfect excuse for Disney to put this shambling mess out of its misery on something like Hulu (it’s probably too scary to fit with the Disney+ brand, after all) but the likelihood of that happening is impossible to determine. If a global pandemic isn’t enough to force The New Mutants from out of the shadows and onto our TVs, we should probably start to accept that nothing is or will be.

Maybe The New Mutants will go down in history as a series of ever shifting release dates and hastily recut trailers that continue to be trodden out Weekend At Bernies style whenever Disney needs to drum up conversation. Honestly, that might be kind of fun.

You can tune into the New Mutants Comic-Con At Home panel on July 23 at 5PM EST, 2PM PST.

The first thing you should know about Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 is that it features a playable corgi named Hachi who pilots an enchanted mecha-tank. The second thing you should know is that the classic Castlevania homage is in every way a marked improvement over the first Curse of the Moon. In fact, silly and meme-able as it is, the corgi represents a more playful spirit in this sequel that makes the whole experience richer.

The first Curse of the Moon was a short and sweet diversion, a little treat for Bloodstained backers and a neat idea to contextualize the new franchise venture from Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi. It essentially presented an alternative history, where Bloodstained was a known retro franchise and the then-upcoming Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a bold reinvention a la Symphony of the Night.

For all its charms, though, Curse of the Moon played it pretty straight with its influences. The tone was moody and gothic and the heroes were stoic slabs of granite. Then Ritual of the Night came out and mixed its macabre and demonic imagery with elements that were self-consciously goofy, like giant kitten heads peeking through the castle windows. In that context, Hachi the corgi feels like developer Inti Creates embracing the cheeky oddball quality of the Bloodstained universe, now that it has been more well-defined. If you happen to die as Hachi–and how dare you, you monster–the game is sure to show a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it animation of the little dog bailing out just before his mech explodes.

Hachi may be the best new addition to Curse of the Moon 2, but he’s far from the only one. With the exception of the grim samurai-like protagonist Zangetsu, each of the playable characters in the main campaign is new. There’s Dominique, an exorcist from Ritual of the Night who wields spears and healing magic; Robert, an agile sniper; and the tank-like Hachi.

Like in the first game, each character has their own lifebar and specialized abilities, but these are more differentiated and specialized than before. For example, Robert is the only character who can wall-jump and his rifle can strike threats from all the way across the screen, but it takes a moment to reload and so he isn’t ideal for threats that are closing in. Inversely, Hachi is a short-range bruiser who can walk across spikes, and while he lacks the versatility of swappable special attacks, that button instead maps to temporary invulnerability that drains the magic meter. The variety of monsters and demons means there’s usually a character ideally suited for taking them out, whether it’s Robert safely taking down an armored enemy or Hachi power-stomping a gaggle of tiny swarming demons. Though it’s an action-platformer at its core, due to a faithfully created (and pretty brutal) knockback effect it’s usually worthwhile to avoid direct damage and meet the moment with the best tool for the job.

Then there’s Dominique, who adds a deceptively complex layer of strategy. She has higher jumps and longer-range attacks than Zangetsu, which at first makes her seem simply like an upgraded version of the balanced main hero. But her healing magic makes for an interesting risk-reward assessment. You can swap between the four characters at any time, and the stages are designed with both enemies and optimal paths that are best for one character’s specialty, but once a character dies the others keep going without them. That makes the ability to keep everyone alive and healthy a major advantage. Choosing to rely too much on Dominique’s superior combat abilities runs the risk of taking her out of commission, which then impacts the whole team who are deprived of her healing ability. (Zangetsu eventually gets an upgrade that makes him more unique, and less of a strictly worse Dominique.)

Thanks to that greater level of differentiation, the stages are rife with hidden nooks and secrets to explore. At first glance it still borrows the aesthetic from Castlevania 3, but the stage design is much more complex and rewarding to explore. This isn’t a “metroidvania” in the sense that there’s no large open environment to explore, but the ability to reenter completed stages with new characters who have unique traversal abilities gives it a feeling akin to that.

Each stage ends with a massive boss, and while undeniably strange, these almost universally lean more toward the macabre. From a massive dragon with an Alien-like second maw and a lightning cannon in its chest to a lava wyrm, these are some of the most conventional parts of the game. Still, it is impressive how their attack patterns are so fine-tuned to allow any of the four characters to at least conceivably take them down. Almost all of them have some form of a last-gasp attack, when their life bar is drained and they decide to try to take you with them. These can be tense and frustrating since they’re so hard to predict after you’ve already defeated the boss, but they add a layer of gruesome monstrosity to the victory.

The first story campaign is on the short side, but it ends in a cliffhanger which prompts a second quest. To see the story through to its full conclusion, you’ll need to play through at least three times, and these are marked as individual episodes. The story hand-waves its way through any explanation for why these episodes–which ostensibly take place in chronological order–would involve facing the exact same bosses in the same environments.

Your reward for seeing the story through to the end is a unique final stage and boss, along with one particularly wacky, game-changing Easter egg that makes the whole effort worthwhile.

This has the effect of feeling like padding with repeated content, but that feeling is somewhat mitigated by the wealth of shortcuts and alternate paths available as your subsequent playthroughs involve different combinations of characters. The bosses are also subtly ramped up with at least one new attack pattern in each episode, and this combined with the different team compositions makes for challenges that feel fresh. Your reward for seeing the story through to the end is a unique final stage and boss, along with one particularly wacky, game-changing Easter egg that makes the whole effort worthwhile.

That Easter egg owes both its story justification and its level of meta weirdness to Hachi, which is really what sets Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 apart. It’s still a classic Castlevania homage at heart, but it has an eccentricity that feels right at home alongside the giant kitty-cats of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. When a game seems to be having this much fun at its own expense, it’s hard not to join in.