The gaming industry has been moving toward a digital future for years now, but our current worldwide predicament has made digital games more vital. With shops closed and retailers like Amazon understandably prioritizing essential goods during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, digital is the way to go right now. Thankfully, the infrastructure is already set up for digital PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC games, so everything you could buy in store is available with the press of the button from the comfort of your couch. Even better? There are tons of great deals this week on digital games across all platforms, including discounts on brand-new releases like Doom Eternal and Resident Evil 3 Remake.
All three console digital storefronts–PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, and Nintendo Eshop–are hosting massive spring sales, discounting hundreds of incredible games. PC users can save at multiple storefronts, including the Epic Games Store and Fanatical, which offers Steam codes. We’ve collected all of the best digital game deals on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC in one place.
Also, if you’re watching your spending at the moment, we have a running list of every free game that’s being given away to promote social distancing.
It’s the season of spring sales–many storefronts are discounting fantastic games right now across PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PC. If you’re looking for discounts on Steam games, Fanatical just kicked off another big sale in time for Easter, marking down the prices on thousands of games.
Fanatical’s Easter sale includes the newly released Resident Evil 3 Remake, which follows S.T.A.R.S. agent Jill Valentine as she tries to escape Raccoon City’s outbreak while evading the monstrous Nemesis. Capcom’s latest remake is down to $46.79 as part of the sale, the best deal yet on this new release.
If you’re looking for a way to play board games online with friends while we’re all social distancing, Tabletop Simulator is a fantastic solution. The Steam game allows you to play and create digital versions of board games on PC, and there are thousands of fantastic mods for many of the best board games. Tabletop Simulator is 50% off, with a single copy selling for $10 and the four-pack selling for $30. If you plan to play with others, the four-pack is absolutely worth snagging at this price.
More Spring Sales
Jackbox Party Packs are another great option for those looking to play games with friends who are remote. These party game bundles include classics like Quiplash, Fibbage, and Trivia Murder Party, and anyone can join in on a game using any device of their choice. While designed for local multiplayer, there are many ways to play Jackbox online by streaming or screen-sharing the game. While Fanatical’s codes must be redeemed on Steam, Jackbox Party Packs are on sale across multiple platforms right now, including Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and the Epic Games Store. Fanatical’s deals aren’t as steep as other stores’, but the games are still full price on Steam, so if you want to own Jackbox on that platform, it’s worth taking advantage of Fanatical’s offers.
There’s also a new mystery bundle available for the Easter sale. In the Mystery Egg Bundle 2, you’ll get 10 Steam game keys for $7, and the bundles offer the “chance of finding amazing action-adventure, addictive strategy, compelling RPGs, action-packed racers and much more,” according to Fanatical.
A board game based on Resident Evil 3 – made by the same team responsible for the Resident Evil 2 board game – is set to launch on Kickstarter later this month.
Resident Evil 3: The Board Game will land on Kickstarter on April 28th, 2020. The tabletop game has been created by Steamforged Games in collaboration with series publisher Capcom. This follows the release of Resident Evil 2: The Board Game, which was revealed by Steamforged back in 2018 and launched last year.
The board game is naturally focused on survival horror and will allow up to four players to experience a “19+ hour campaign with an overarching storyline.”
The game can also be experienced via one-shot scenarios and will see you taking control of Resident Evil 3’s most important characters, including heroine Jill Valentine and UBCS mercenary Carlos Oliviera.
“Players must carefully manage resources, make intelligent and meaningful decisions, and be wary of curveballs thrown by the tension deck,” the statement reads. “[The Tension Deck] is a mechanic carried over from the RE2 board game which will surprise players with unexpected threats to replicate the terrifying suspense of the video game.”
If you would like to support the game ahead of its crowdfunding launch, you can follow the campaign over on Kickstarter. If the campaign reaches 2500 followers, the developers will unlock a miniature of Jill Valentine in biker gear.
John Krasinski released the second episode of his new YouTube series, titled Some Good News, featuring a special guest appearance from Lin-Manuel Miranda and the rest of the Broadway cast of Hamilton.
Taking to Twitter, Krasinski shared the latest instalment of his feel-good newscast, which spotlights positive stories from around the world amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In one segment, Krasinski chatted to Aubrey, a Hamilton superfan who planned to see the Broadway musical for her 9th birthday but was forced to stay home due to government directives.
“We were supposed to see Hamilton in Jacksonville tonight—DD’s 9th bday present (seeing Hamilton has been her dream since she saw her 1st Broadway show last year), but we’re home watching Mary Poppins Returns instead. At least we’re safe & healthy,” Aubrey’s mother tweeted on March 21.
Hearing this news, Krasinski and his wife Emily Blunt promised to fly Aubrey and her mother out to New York to see the show once the crisis had passed over. The duo then surprised the young fan with a virtual performance of her favourite song, Alexander Hamilton, from the opening of the hit stage show, led by Lin-Manuel Miranda via live video on Zoom.
Miranda was joined by former castmate Leslie Odom Jr., then Daveed Diggs, followed by Okieriete Onaodowan, Phillipa Soo and Christopher Jackson alongside Jasmine Cephas Jones, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff and many, many more.
Elsewhere in the episode, Krasinski highlighted the huge corporations, local companies and wider communities who have banded together in a massive effort to provide more medical supplies to all of the healthcare heroes currently working on the frontline to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
The host also acknowledged the “incredible” response to the first episode of his show, which has now amassed over 12 million views on YouTube.
The fact that remakes of both Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy 7 arrive just a week apart is pretty incredible, especially because they couldn’t be more different in their approaches as far as a “remake” goes. While RE3 is a mostly faithful modernization of its original, Final Fantasy 7 is less a remake and more a complete reinvention. It swaps turn-based combat with exciting real-time action and expands the first leg of the original story by dozens of hours – including with a bit too much filler and some convoluted new plot points. The long wait for this revival may not be a perfect reunion, but with or without nostalgia in play, it’s still a great JRPG in its own right.
Of course, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is actually only the first in what is planned to be a series of as-yet-unknown length that will, if it’s ever completed, retell the entire story of the 1997 JRPG classic. This game only covers the events that take place in the city of Midgar, where Cloud Strife and his freedom-fighting allies battle the evil Shinra corporation that run it. That means roughly the first five hours of the original have been stretched into a campaign that took me more than 33 hours to complete, and there are still a few optional stones I left unturned.
It’s an odd decision that undoubtedly results in some structural problems, but also gives the city and its heroes more time to become fleshed out as interesting characters – even smaller ones like Avalanche’s Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge have time to become nuanced and compelling co-stars. This new telling regularly jumps between shot-for-shot recreations of the original, welcome expansions to existing sequences, and brand-new scenes that offer either enticing new perspective or pointlessly dull padding that frequently makes you retread previously explored areas.
Bust a Move
Thankfully, the guiding star through areas new and old is FF7R’s combat, which more than proves itself to be endlessly engaging across dozens of hours and against more than 100 different types of enemies. I’ll admit that I was initially sad to hear this remake wouldn’t use the original Final Fantasy 7’s turn-based Active Time Battle (ATB) combat, but the way that iconic system has been transformed into real-time brawling is exceptional. And though you only directly control one character at a time, you’ll constantly be giving orders to and swapping between two more mid-fight.
While you can hack away at enemies all you want with the square button, doing so charges up your ATB bars, which you can then use on unique weapon abilities, equippable spells, and items. Pulling up the command menu to pick one of these things slows time to a crawl, letting you comfortably pick actions for your entire party in the middle of combat – but that persistent slow creep forward adds a tension to every choice that truly reminded me of the frantic decision making the original elicited. (There is a “Classic” mode difficulty option, but all it does is automate all your actions in combat apart from ATB use, making it a strange middle ground I didn’t enjoy.)
Every character also has a unique ability mapped to triangle that doesn’t use ATB – for example, Cloud can switch to “Punisher Mode” for extra damage but reduced speed, while Tifa can unleash a big finisher that’s powered up by one of her abilities. You can also dodge and guard at will, and you’ll need to do so a lot. Though it never got super challenging on Normal difficulty, there’s enough nuance to it that just mashing square to unleash flashy basic attacks won’t get you too far.
In addition to a health bar, enemies have a stagger gauge that stuns them and increases the damage they take when full. It’s a system we’re seeing more of nowadays, but the clever twist is that every enemy’s stagger gauge fills in a different way. Sure, some of the more basic guys like Wererats and Shinra soldiers you just need to hit a lot, but others might be weak to a specific elemental magic, require you to dodge a certain attack, or cripple a body part in order to stagger them. Those differences keep combat fresh the whole way through, and I loved learning the puzzle of how to take down each enemy.
That variety is a big part of why FF7R’s boss fights are so incredible, too. These cinematic showdowns are as intimidating as they are exciting, always multi-phase confrontations that rarely left me mindlessly swinging my Buster Sword. It’s incredible to see how returning bosses have been reimagined as well, with what were once throwaway creatures like the sewer-dwelling Abzu transformed into epic confrontations full of newfound personality. These bosses have unique moves to learn and avoid alongside weak points that need to be taken down in strategic order with the right moves. And the way cutscenes are woven in at pivotal moments always put a smile on my face.
And even though I loved the spectacle of fighting a giant monster or robot, some of my favorite fights were actually against human enemies. FF7R has clearly taken some notes out of the Kingdom Hearts playbook (not always to its benefit, but more on that later) and these intimate, often one-on-one duels are a great example. Each of these bosses are interesting and unique from each other, but they all rely heavily on parries, dodging, and waiting for your window to strike. They play out like an overpowered anime duel in the best possible way.
Another important factor to conquering any fight is how you use your party. You’ll have up to three of the four total characters available and fighting at once (with your team determined entirely by where you are in the story). The ones you aren’t controlling will attack and defend well enough on their own, but nowhere near as effectively as when you take direct control – and crucially, they won’t use ATB bars unless you tell them to, which can easily be done from the command menu. This juggling act of managing the ATB of three characters at once can be thrilling when you’re also worrying about the robot trying to pummel your face, and it’s intuitive enough that I got the hang of it quicker than expected.
You’ll often need to switch the character you’re controlling directly too, since each one feels like a specific tool for a certain job. Barrett can more easily shoot down flying enemies, Cloud can quickly increase stagger, Tifa can lay massive burst damage on exposed enemies, and Aerith can send out big healing or magic damage as needed. Swapping between them sort of feels more like switching weapons than people in the heat of things, especially if you need to jump onto another character to more quickly charge their ATB for a specific move. While I spent my most time with Cloud, I’d also find myself frequently switching between them just because they were each a lot of fun to use.
Weapon of Choice
It’s good that their playstyles are so different, too, because any Materia can be given to any character. These collectible orbs are slotted into equipment to give a character spells and buffs, allowing you to make whoever you choose act as the mage, healer, tank, etc. of your party (although their base stats do have some influence on that decision as well). This flexibility is really pleasing, and I found myself swapping Materia and roles frequently as the story shook up my party composition.
There were certainly times where that got frustrating, however. It’s leaps and bounds easier to adjust your Materia here than it was in the original, but people can come and go from your party so often that I found myself in menus reslotting my rarer Materia more than I wanted to be. Materia ranks up as it’s used, so even if I had duplicates the ones I had equipped consistently were always better, and moving that Rank 3 HP Up Materia to a new character every time I was forced to switch parties certainly got old.
FF7R’s weapon system also had me digging through menu management more than I would have liked, but it’s such an intriguing system overall that I didn’t mind nearly as much. As opposed to being the quickly replaced stat increases that they so often are in RPGs, new weapons are persistent items that you’ll gather, keep, and upgrade throughout the campaign. Each one has a unique ability that can be earned permanently through use – things like Aerith’s AoE Sorcerous Storm or Cloud’s awesome Infinity’s End finisher – and that always gave me an incentive to try a new weapon out. Each character only has around a half dozen to find total, so you don’t get a ton of these game-changing upgrades, but my party, weapons, and Materia shifted around so much anyway that things never went stale.
As you get stronger, your weapons can even be upgraded with a currency called SP that they earn automatically as the character who carries them levels up. SP can be spent on simple stat boosts, like increased physical or magic attack, or more unique effects, like one that heals you when enemies die or another that increases your damage when you’re at high health – there are also some effects unique to each character, like a set percentage for Tifa to enter a fight with her finisher (and fists) already powered up. The upgrades aren’t too exciting on their own, but the overall result is a huge benefit: each weapon stays relevant over the entire course of the campaign, growing in strength alongside you.
Upgrades cause a weapon’s strengths and weaknesses to become magnified over time, giving them different roles depending on how you want a character to play. Cloud’s signature Buster Sword offers well-rounded damage, but his Iron Blade can sacrifice that for defense. The Hardedge is a physical attack powerhouse, while the Mythril Saber is all about magic power – and though the Nail Bat (yes, the Nail Bat is back) is weaker by default, you can upgrade it to land tons of critical hits. It even transforms Cloud’s Punisher Mode attack combo into a single, home-run swing. I found myself frequently switching weapons as my Materia builds and party changed, but thought it was poetic that my favorite ended up being the starting Buster Sword by the final chapters.
Filler Fantasy
Running through levels that range from the Midgar slums to industrial Shinra facilities (the visual variety here is actually fairly impressive for a set of locations limited to a single city) and swinging these powerful weapons was always fun, even if that was usually because of the enemies themselves rather than their surroundings. The level design in FF7R is serviceable but fairly simplistic; they’re generally just a linear series of paths with larger areas to fight in and not much to think about beyond some simple puzzles or hidden items to sniff out. The abundance of tiny bridges that you have to slowly walk across and stacks of boxes you have to tediously sidle past definitely didn’t help get to the good stuff, either.
While almost everything from the Midgar section of the original game is here – with some rooms being recreated exactly as I remember them and others extravagantly evolving in spectacular fashion – there’s also a whole lot of new stuff too, though not all of it is what I’d consider an improvement. Generally speaking, I love that this brief section of a much larger RPG has been zoomed-in on and fleshed out with real character development and a more robust story, but there are places where those additions elevate the source material and others where they drag both it and this new game down.
Anything that offered more context or insight into either Midgar as a city or the characters I once knew as blocky PS1 blobs was phenomenal. I loved meeting Jessie’s mom, learning Wedge is a cat lover, or seeing that Biggs clearly has anxiety – and I even enjoyed just getting to visit lively Midgar neighborhoods full of innocent bystanders living their lives while Cloud and friends attack their Shinra providers. I particularly appreciated one new mission that has you wrestling with the need to turn off the giant sun lamps that provide light to Midgar’s slums in order to progress further, giving more direct weight to Avalanche’s actions. These infusions of humanity were incredible and welcome, whether they were in entirely new sections or expanded existing ones.
What I didn’t love, however, was when FF7R clearly decided it needed more stuff, regardless of quality, for the sake of achieving “full” RPG length. The most dull of these pop up whenever Cloud reaches a new residential area of Midgar’s slums – all of which are wonderfully detailed and brimming with life in a way that was truly magical to see realized – where he’ll be asked to do odd jobs as part of his mercenary work (something we previously never saw him do in Midgar outside of his work with Avalanche). The problem is that these are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the weakest parts of this entire game.
Suddenly, the unique and foreign world of Midgar gives way to bottom-of-the-barrel JRPG tropes: a shopkeeper who unironically wants you to go kill some rats, a teacher who asks you to find her boring students around town, multiple fetch quests that send you looking for random items for essentially no good reason. All of this kills the pace and belittles the importance of the high-stakes events going on around you in the most cliche RPG sort of way. Their stories are rarely interesting, but worse is that nearly all of the combat areas in these quests have you retreading areas you’ve already completed, sapping these segments of FF7R’s strength in variety.
While these side quests (as well as more amusing arena-style fights and minigames like darts or Wall Market’s signature squat competition) are entirely optional, skipping them will cause you to miss extremely valuable items and unlocks – things like unique weapons, rare accessories, and much more – and can sometimes even minorly influence sections of the story later on without warning. I completed nearly all of the side quests, but more felt forced to do so out of a sense of obligation rather than amusement. Most of the time I was on one I couldn’t wait to get back on track.
The noticeable padding isn’t entirely limited to side quests either, unfortunately. One required mission later on in the story also has you retreading a previous section in what felt like little more than tried-and-true filler. I’m certainly not opposed to this remake inserting more than just added detail – the way the Train Graveyard has been reworked, for example, is truly fantastic, along with another fun new level near the end – but there’s a notable issue: Square Enix clearly wanted to make changes, but didn’t want to alter the core plot, which means many of its more elaborate inserts are entirely irrelevant to the story at hand. It reminded me a lot of the filler episodes and movies of popular anime: these diversions can definitely be fun, but nobody in the story will ever really mention them again and nothing about the plot will actually change as a result. If you could somehow skip some of them entirely, you wouldn’t even realize you’d missed anything at all.
A great example of this is Roche, a brand-new character who shows near the start of the story for an extra motorcycle chase scene (these sequences are still about as thin as the original was in 1997) and a single fight with Cloud, and is then bafflingly never heard from again. Sure, it’s a fun fight, and he’s a cool character, but his inclusion (alongside the entire new scenario around him, for that matter) is so irrelevant to the plot that he stands out like a sore thumb.
Thankfully, regardless of padding, this story is at least told in gorgeous fashion. The cutscenes here are truly magnificent to watch, and the graphics are generally stunning both in and out of them. Not to mention, the music is unbelievably good throughout, featuring excellent remixes of iconic songs that stretch past the walls of Midgar. There is some truly wonderful cinematic spectacle on display here, even if some of that spectacle (like my friend Roche) makes my eyes roll so hard I get dizzy.
To Infinity and Beyond
One major concern I had before starting FF7R was whether or not this previously brief Midgar section would feel like enough of a complete story on its own, and the result is mixed. Square Enix has done a great job of making this feel like a bigger story, and showing Cloud’s cold merc heart and awkward social demeanor soften over time gives vital character development to a section of the original that didn’t have much. That said, it’s impossible not to feel like this is anything but the setup for a bigger story we don’t actually get to see yet – because it is. I once again became invested in Avalanche’s fight against Shinra, but I was ultimately left wanting a more satisfying conclusion to this story, as well as a little anxious for how the next game might pick up from where this cliffhanger leaves off.
This remake also raises a metric ton of questions that it doesn’t deliver any semblance of answers to – some of these are clearly nods to fans of past games that will be incomprehensible to anyone out of the loop, but a lot of the totally new stuff (like the new hooded adversaries already shown off in trailers) is convoluted and confusing regardless of your previous experience. The way FF7R wantonly spouts nonsense that it just expects you to roll with toward the end of its story can only be properly described as “Some Kingdom Hearts BS” – and I say that as a fan of Kingdom Hearts. On top of that, its insane climax left me with a bad taste in my mouth no matter where the story decides to go from here.
Apart from additions that work toward making the world of Midgar and its people feel more real, the theme behind most of FF7R’s newly inserted plot points is one of uproarious spectacle with very little thought. Bear in mind, I was almost always having fun thanks to the excellent combat and I almost always enjoyed what I was seeing thanks to the amazing presentation. The issue isn’t that there are new story elements, but that most of them fall apart the moment you think about them too hard.
One post-game highlight, however, is that as soon as the credits roll you are given access to Hard Mode and the option to jump back into any of its chapters with all your current stats and equipment to complete missions, gather items, or just replay it from the beginning. That means you can seamlessly roll into what is basically a “New Game+,” or just finish up things you may have skipped past. I plan on diving back in to tie up some loose ends and throw some more darts, partially because of just how easy Square Enix has made it.
If you missed the mafioso open-world game Mafia 2 when it first came out in 2010, you might soon be able to play it on current-gen consoles for the first time. As first spotted by Nibel, entries related to the Mafia series have appeared on the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee site, including definitive editions for Mafia 2 and 3, and a complete edition for Mafia 3. These new releases would be on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Mafia 3, the latest entry in the series, first came out in 2016 to a somewhat-muted reception. While reviewers praised its storytelling–especially its protagonist, the black Vietnam vet Lincoln Clay, who wages a war against the Italian mob depicted in the first two games–others panned it for its simplistic mission structures and panoply of bugs. In our review, critic Scott Butterworth called it “frustratingly repetitive.”
According to Take-Two’s latest earnings report, the developer behind Mafia 3–Hangar 13–is working on an unannounced game. While it could be a sequel to the series, given the fact that Mafia 3 shipped a record-breaking number of units, it’s not at all clear as of yet. The CEO of Take-Two expressed disappointment in the game’s review scores, and there were some layoffs at Hanger 13 following the game’s release.
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Saints Row 3, the hit 2011 open-world crime/comedy action-adventure, is being remastered for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It will be released on May 22 under the name Saints Row: The Third Remastered. Check out the trailer above, which shows some side-by-side comparisons between the original version and the remaster.
Saints Row 3 is arguably the most beloved in the long-running crime-and-mayhem franchise, in which you, as the head of the Third Street Saints gang in Stilwater, have built an empire. Naturally, there are challengers to the Saints’ throne, and chaos ensues. You’ll jump out of airplanes, ride in convertibles with hungry tigers, appear on life-threatening reality TV shows, and more. Here’s what we thought of Saints Row: The Third when it originally released.
The remaster will include 30+ pieces of DLC, and the game world has been given a visual upgrade. New weapon models, car models, lighting, and more headline the improvements on offer here.
Saints Row: The Third Remastered is being developed by Spearsoft under the direction of the original development team at Volition. We recently got a demo of Saints Row 3 Remastered. Take a look at what we thought.
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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
In the debate over which Saints Row game is the best, Saints Row 2 or Saints Row: The Third, it’s clear where developer Volition and publisher THQ stand: they’ve chosen the third entry in the open-world comedic crime sandbox to get the remaster treatment. I for one, am with them on that: Saints Row 3 pushed the series further out into self-aware absurdity while still keeping one foot firmly planted in reality – something that’s been lost in the franchise since then. And I’m all for bringing this 2011 game up to current-gen standards, but unfortunately the framerate will be sticking to last-gen norms.
Yes, Saints Row 3 Remastered will only run at 30 frames per second, even on a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Only the PC version will allow you to go north of that. That’s extremely disappointing, particularly given that this isn’t a full-blown remake but instead an upgrade on the nine-year-old core game. That aside, there are some notable improvements worth keeping an eye out for, even if this update won’t be melting your console’s GPU anytime soon.
The most obvious upgrade in Saints Row 3 is to the lighting. Global illumination, enhanced fog, physics-based rendering – the buzzwords are all here, and you can see that they look pretty good on screen. Meanwhile, Volition art director Mark Fisher told me that virtually all of the visual effects in the game have been reworked. The gun models are all completely redone, and what should be even more noticeable than that are the vehicle models – they too have been rebuilt from the ground up.
I haven’t played Saints Row 3 Remastered yet, but I did review the Switch port of Saints 3 last year, so I can at least say that, in my opinion, running wild in the fictional city of Stilwater holds up pretty damn well despite the core experience being almost a decade old. This was an incredibly fun game at the time, and it still is.
Saints Row: The Third Remastered includes over 30 pieces of DLC and will be out on May 22 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Volition says there is no next-gen version planned for PS5 or Xbox Series X at this time. On a side note, it’s worth noting that this remaster is being handled by Spearsoft, which means the full Volition team is likely prepping something new for next-gen. Is it a Saints Row reboot or a new Red Faction? Time will tell, but until then, at least we can play the hilarious-as-ever Insurance Fraud mode one more time…
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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
2020 has turned out to be kind of a bust as far as new movie releases go, but we’re still hopeful we’ll see Black Widow arrive in theaters at some point later this year. After waiting so long for Natasha Romanov’s first solo MCU movie, what’s another few months?
While we continue waiting for Black Widow, we thought it might be fun to revisit an old but still very popular theory. While we know Taskmaster is making his MCU debut in Black Widow, is it possible he’s not the only major Avengers villain on tap? Could Black Widow be introducing the deadly android known as the Super-Adaptoid? Read on to see the evidence Taskmaster is just the tip of the iceberg.
While it’s gone by several names over the years (including just “The Adaptoid” in its earliest appearances), the basics remain the same. The Super-Adaptoid is an android empowered by shards of the Cosmic Cube (or Tesseract, as it’s known in the MCU) and designed to replicate the powers of the Avengers, from Hawkeye’s marksmanship to Thor’s lightning to Hulk’s incredible strength. Most versions of the Super-Adaptoid have been created by the super-science organization A.I.M.
Given its knack for turning its opponents strengths against them, the Super-Adaptoid is a tough foe to beat in a direct fight. Generally, defeating the Super-Adaptoid requires a lot of outside-the-box thinking and a willingness to exploit its inability to understand the human mind. For instance, the X-Men managed to destroy the Super-Adaptoid when it tried to replicate Mimic’s mutant copycat power, resulting in an endless feedback loop that overwhelmed the android. Another version was destroyed when it tried to copy The Sentry and wound up inheriting that hero’s psychological demons.
While often depicted as a faceless robot wearing elements of multiple Avengers costumes, some versions of the Super-Adaptoid can pass for human. Hydra has even perfected the technology to implant Adaptoid tech inside human bodies. That’s where the Black Widow movie comes in.
How the Super-Adaptoid Connects to Yelena Belova and Taskmaster
Fans have long been speculating the Super-Adaptoid could appear in Black Widow, largely because Florence Pugh’s character Yelena Belova is one of those humans transformed into an Adaptoid cyborg. Hydra transformed Yelena from a simple spy into a superhuman powerhouse with the powers of Iron Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Spider-Man and more. Even if that transformation doesn’t happen in this movie, it seems very likely we’ll see the MCU draw on that plot element sooner or later.
One possibility is that Black Widow will end with Natasha believing Yelena to be dead, only for Yelena to be resurrected as a deadly android in a post-credits sequence. Given that we see Nat wearing Yelena’s green vest in Avengers: Infinity War (which takes place after Black Widow), many fans have logically assumed she’s wearing it in tribute to a fallen friend. Whatever the case, clearly there’s a lot of ground to cover in between the events of Civil War and Infinity War. Yelena becoming the Super-Adaptoid could be a way of giving her a much more prominent role in the MCU and including an iconic Avengers villain, while also giving that villain a more human face.
As for Taskmaster, while he has no connection to the Super-Adaptoid in the comics, there’s certainly a comparison to be drawn between an assassin who can copy the fighting style of anyone he observes and an android who can replicate the powers of anyone it fights. We don’t know how closely the movie is drawing from the comics where Taskmaster is concerned, but we could see a scenario where his copycat abilities are the result of cybernetic enhancements. Those enhancements, in turn, could be the prototype for the Super-Adaptoid, perhaps with the Red Room harnessing old Hydra tech or discarded Ultron drones to create their unstoppable android. Taskmaster may be merely a taste of what’s come from the Red Room.
If the past 12 years’ worth of MCU movies have taught us anything, it’s to always expect a twist where the villains are concerned. Marvel has an established history of keeping its cards close to the vest in that regard, often keeping the real villain shrouded in secrecy until release. For instance, remember how Ben Kingsley’s “Mandarin” turned out to be a goofy, out-of-work actor named Trevor Slattery? Watching the trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 or Spider-Man: Far From Home, there’s no reason to assume Kurt Russell’s Ego or Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio are the bad guys unless you’re familiar with the comics.
Even when these movies are straightforward about which characters are the antagonists, they tend to change up the source material in significant ways. Thor: Ragnarok’s Hela and Black Panther’s Killmonger were rewritten to become relatives of their respective enemies. Thanos and Karl Mordo are quintessential examples of MCU villains who believe they have the moral high ground. Where Ultron was created by Hank Pym in the comics, in the MCU he’s instead the brainchild of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.
Bearing all that in mind, we’re expecting Black Widow to deliver a significant twist on the villain front. Consider the fact that we still don’t even know who’s playing Taskmaster. That strongly suggests Marvel is keeping the actor a secret so as not to spoil a major plot twist. We fully expect Taskmaster will turn out to be someone close to Natasha, possibly either Yelena Belova or Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokov. After all, both of those characters are generally portrayed as villains in the comics. Why should we expect anything less here?
One of the big challenges with the MCU is finding new ways to up the ante and always go bigger and more ambitious with the conflicts. Marvel may be hard-pressed to do that with Black Widow if the conflict hinges on a battle between two people who fight really well. But if Taskmaster is merely a preamble to the Super-Adaptoid, then it’s a whole different story. Then the film culminates with a life-or-death battle between elite assassins and an android with the powers of the Avengers. That would be one way to cap off what may very well be Scarlett Johansson’s final MCU adventure.