Author: Trafficblast

Nintendo showcased a variety of third-party Switch games during today’s Nintendo Direct Mini. In addition to big surprises like Monster Hunter Rise and Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, the video presentation gave us our first look at Rune Factory 5, the next entry in Xseed’s fantasy RPG sim series.

Whereas past installments primarily featured a top-down viewpoint, Rune Factory 5 lets players explore a full 3D world. The game casts players as an amnesic hero who recently arrives in a small but bountiful town, where they are recruited into a band of rangers who help keep the peace.

Like Story of Seasons, the series from which it was spun off, farming plays a major role in Rune Factory 5. In addition to defending the town from monsters, you’ll be able to tend crops, go fishing, and get married. The battle system also has a few new wrinkles; you can now team up with other characters to unleash powerful combo attacks.

Rune Factory 5 does not yet have a release date, but it is slated to launch on Switch sometime in 2021. You can check out the first screenshots and gameplay trailer for the game above.

Rune Factory 5 is the first new entry in the series since Rune Factory 4, which originally launched on 3DS back in 2013. An enhanced version of that game was released on Switch this past February.

There was a lot of other news out of today’s presentation. In addition to Monster Hunter Rise, we got our first look at Monster Hunter Stories 2, a sequel to the series’ 3DS RPG spin-off. You can catch up on all the biggest announcements from the presentation in our Nintendo Direct Mini recap.

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Following yet another leak suggesting the existence of the Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy, a pre-order for a Dark Horse-produced replica of the Normandy SR2 from Mass Effect 2 has appeared on Amazon, also hinting at an imminent remaster.

Currently on sale for $45.49, The Dark Horse Deluxe Mass Effect Alliance: Normandy SR2 is a small-scale figurine of Commander Shepard’s shop from probably the most acclaimed Mass Effect entry. The figurine is just like the in-game ones you can collect and display in your personal quarters, with a metallic N7 symbol to really stand out when on show. Check it out below.

$45.49 ($50)

The listing specifically mentions that this is a “Remastered Edition” of this model, which could line up with a potential trilogy remaster soon. The replica is set to launch on November 25, but a previous retailer leak suggested that the trilogy is coming to current-gen consoles and PC this October. EA, Mass Effect’s publisher, has yet to formally announce anything.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was the last entry in the series, with BioWare Montreal attempting to spin-off the franchise in a brand-new galaxy with a whole new cast of characters. While a good game, it failed to capture the splendor of the trilogy before it. “As a Mass Effect game, Andromeda falls well short of the nuanced politics, morality, and storytelling of its predecessors,” critic Scott Butterworth wrote in GameSpot’s Mass Effect: Andromeda review.

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You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry–or litigating. Progress is being made on the She-Hulk live-action series, which was first announced at the D23 convention in 2019, even though you might have forgotten it was happening. According to a new report, the title role of She-Hulk has been cast.

Deadline says that Tatiana Maslany, who most will remember as the star of Orphan Black, has been picked to take on the role of Jennifer Walters, an attorney and the cousin of Bruce Banner. She becomes She-Hulk after a transfusion gives her some of Bruce’s blood.

Don’t expect another rage monster like what MCU fans have seen for most of Mark Ruffalo’s run as the Hulk, though. Instead, Jennifer Walters is a lot more like the Hulk, as portrayed in Avengers: Endgame, allowing her to keep her personality and mind for the law even when hulked out.

She-Hulk wasn’t the only series announced at D23 last year. There’s also a live-action Moon Knight series in the works for the Disney+ streaming service, in addition to shows like WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, both of which are already being filmed.

Marvel Studios seems to be putting a big focus on She-Hulk lately, as this is the second piece of news this week to be revealed about the series. It’s also been reported that Kat Coiro (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) is currently in talks to direct the pilot episode of the series, as well as a number of future episodes.

As for whether Ruffalo would reprise his role as Bruce Banner/Hulk on the show, the Avengers star has said in the past that it’s not out of the question. “There’s some talk of having Banner/Hulk show up in She-Hulk. If we come up with something good, that would be really interesting,” he said in an interview with Variety. “Right now that’s about it. That’s all there is on the table.”

There is no set release date for She-Hulk. The first MCU TV show, WandaVision, will debut later this year on Disney+.

Growing up, you probably heard the old “my dad could beat up your dad” line from some random child on the playground. However, on a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, guest host Samuel L. Jackson took that idea a step further, asking the star of Tenet, John David Washington, if his character could beat up one of his father’s characters.

Washington has known Jackson his whole life, so it was a very friendly and down-to-Earth interview, like two old friends having a chat. Then, Jackson asked if Washinton’s character in Tenet–called Protagonist–could beat up Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer. “Because of the rules of inversion, Protagonist [would win],” Washington told Jackson. “There’s a sci-fi element that we have that Equalizer didn’t have—that gives him the edge.”

Washington tried to dance around a little about why his character could beat up his father’s character, as he can’t say much about the film. “So you’re hitting us with a riddle,” replied Jackson. “So now we got to go to the movie and make up our own minds whether The Equalizer can kick your ass or not.”

Washington replied with a solemn, “Yes, Uncle Sam.” Tenet is out in movie theaters globally, even though many movie theaters in the United States are not open because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, the film passed the $200 million box office mark worldwide. Because of the pandemic, it is extremely doubtful that Tenet will be that $1 billion global money-maker for Warner Bros. Studios, regardless of positive critic reviews.

In GameSpot’s review of Tenet, Eddie Makuch said, “Tenet is a mind-bender of a movie that has action galore, characters you can for the most part connect with and understand, and a time travel story that doesn’t get bogged down in the details and just lets you enjoy the spectacle.”

Currently, Tenet sits at a 69 on Metacritic, with 31 favorable and 11 mixed reviews.

There’s the common saying how iron sharpens iron, but is there an equivalent about chainsaw on chainsaw? In the climax of Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, an enraged and blood-covered Nicolas Cage picks up a chainsaw and battles it out with a much bigger man who also happens to be holding a much bigger chainsaw.

The memorable chainsaw fight is now captured in a brand-new collectible statue from Legion M and crafted by Level 52 studios, out this December. Just take a look below.

It captures the intensity and raw violence Cage’s Red Miller experienced throughout the film that gave horror fans one of the most insane duels ever.

For those that didn’t catch Mandy in its extremely-limited release, it’s the story of Red Miller (Cage) and Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) leading a lovely life together in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s. When their existence is savagely destroyed by a cult, led by the sadistic Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), Red is thrown into a fast-paced, hellish journey filled with bloody vengeance and purging fire.

This stylized limited-edition collectible statue was made of polystone. It’ll arrive in a Level 52 Studios’ signature premium art box packaging. It measures 1/10 scale, 9 3/4″ tall x 10″ wide x 6 1/2″ deep at a $250 price point. Best news is you can pre-order it now through Legion M.

Following on from Sony’s PlayStation 5 Showcase, where the console’s price was finally revealed, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan has made it clear once again that there are no plans to launch a competitor to Xbox Games Pass.

Microsoft offers the subscription service across both Xbox and PC, giving players over 100 games to download and play for as little as $10 a month. The kicker is that all of Microsoft’s exclusives launch day and date on Games Pass, which is something Ryan doesn’t see as sustainable.

“These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don’t see that as sustainable,” Ryan said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

Sony does eventually put its exclusives on PlayStation Now, its own subscription service that allows you to play games via the cloud or download them to your console. The company also announced the PlayStation Plus Collection at the showcase, bundling numerous acclaimed PS4 titles and making them free for PS Plus members on PS5 soon. Despite that, Ryan says that Sony won’t pursue something like Games Pass.

“For us, having a catalogue of games is not something that defines a platform,” Ryan added. “Our pitch, as you’ve heard, is ‘new games, great games.’ We have had this conversation before–we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model.”

Sony announced prices for the PS5 during its showcase, with the digital-only PS5 going for $400 and the standard edition for a pricier $500. By comparison, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X will also be $500, while the less powerful Series S comes in at $300. Preorders for the PS5 have already gone live (and are predictably scarce already), while Microsoft will launch its preorders on September 22.

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As previously revealed for the Xbox Series X, Microsoft has shown off the Quick Resume feature for the company’s Series S as well in a new trailer.

The feature lets you seamlessly switch between multiple games without exorbitant loading screens or startup times. With Quick Resume, you can play one game, pause that one to pick up your progress in a completely different game, and repeat without any hiccups. The trailer, embedded below, shows someone switching between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Minecraft Dungeons, Skate 3, Black, and back to Jedi Fallen Order with only a few seconds of delay between each swap.

The trailer is reminiscent of the Xbox Series X Quick Resume demo that dropped in March 2020. That video showed someone swapping between State of Decay 2, Forza Motorsport 7, Ori and the Blind Forest, The Cave, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and back to State of Decay 2 with no issues.

Microsoft detailed the Quick Resume feature earlier this month in a comparison video that showed off the load times between the Xbox Series S and the Xbox One S. Thanks to the system’s increased power and new features like Quick Resume, load times on the Series S are as low as 12 seconds for a game like Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds. The Xbox One S took 53 seconds to load the same content.

Both the Xbox Series S and Series X launch on November 10 for $300 and $500, respectively. Check out our Xbox Series S/X preorder guide to learn where to get one when preorders go live on September 22.

From the infamous $600 price tag on the PlayStation 3 60 GB launch model, to the Xbox One with Kinect, home consoles can cost a pretty penny. Now that we finally know the launch prices for the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5, we’ve gone back to take a look at some of the most expensive home gaming consoles ever released.

We’ve ranked the top ten by adjusting their launch prices to 2020 value using an online inflation calculator. Believe it or not, some have almost doubled in value since their original launch.