Author: Trafficblast

Nintendo has outlined some of what players can expect from Animal Crossing: New Horizons over the next two months. Updates for the hit Nintendo Switch game will bring not only new features and visitors, but also a series of events that dot the calendar from now through the end of June, including Nature Day, May Day Tour, International Museum Tour, and Wedding Season. Here’s when each one starts and what we know about it so far.

Nature Day

• Dates: April 23 – May 4

The one impending event we already knew was coming, thanks to a Nintendo Direct mini broadcast, was a celebration of Earth Day, which takes place on April 22. Specific details and dates hadn’t been shared previously except that Leif would return in some capacity. Nature Day begins on April 23 and will see special Nook Miles+ objectives that involve planting trees, watering flowers, and taking advantage of a new feature–the ability to plant shrubs.

May Day Tour

• Dates: May 1-7

During this week-long event, beginning May 1, you’ll get a one-time ticket–the May Day Ticket–to head out on a May Day Tour from the airport. Nintendo says that the location you’ll head to will be different from the usual mystery tour deserted islands, and based on the video, it appears you’ll have to navigate a hedge maze. Nintendo also teases, “A special visitor who looks familiar might also be there…” Based on the video, that’ll be Rover.

International Museum Day

• Dates: May 18-31

The museum is set to receive an expansion for art as part of a New Horizons update that brings back returning character Redd. Starting on May 18, there will be a Stamp Rally event that equips you with a stamp card that you can fill out by browsing the fish, insects, and fossils you’ve collected. Collecting stamps will lead to an unspecified reward.

Wedding Season

• Dates: June 1-30

During June, you can visit Harv’s island to encounter Reese and Cyrus, a married couple and another returning set of characters from the series’ past. Given the photography-themed nature of Harv’s island, you’ll be decorating a studio and taking anniversary photos. Rewards include “wedding-themed items.” (This wouldn’t be the first time the game helped facilitate a wedding of some sort.)

WarnerMedia has announced that its new streaming platform HBO Max will officially launch on May 27.

The new streaming service will be available to U.S. customers for $14.99 per month (the same price as HBO Now), with approximately 10,000 hours of content available to viewers from day one, including a mix of original projects and an extensive lineup of library and acquired programming. Existing HBO customers will get access to HBO Max at no extra charge.

Where all of HBO meets your favorite shows, movies, and new Max Originals. Streaming May 27.

Sign up for updates: https://t.co/e3U0f0wgAV pic.twitter.com/SbBjZ0smb8

— HBO Max (@hbomax) April 21, 2020

Launch day originals include the scripted comedy Love Life, starring Anna Kendrick; Sundance 2020 Official Selection feature documentary On the Record; underground ballroom dance competition series Legendary; Craftopia, hosted by YouTube star LaurDIY; all-new Looney Tunes Cartoons, from Warner Bros. Animation; and Sesame Workshop’s The Not Too Late Show with Elmo.

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The service will also launch with a large selection of library titles such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who, Rick and Morty, plus CW shows such as Batwoman, Nancy Drew, and Katy Keene, the first season of DC’s Doom Patrol, and much more, with the platform expected to add the complete libraries of South Park, Gossip Girl, The West Wing, and many others in the first year of launch.

In addition to TV series, specials, and documentaries, HBO Max will feature a catalogue of more than 2,000 feature films within the first year, including titles from Warner Bros., New Line and DC such as Joker, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, as well as a mix of films acquired specifically for HBO Max via Warner Bros., the Criterion Collection, and the acclaimed Studio Ghibli.

HBO Max officially acquired U.S. streaming rights to Studio Ghibli films last year, meaning that 20 films from Japan’s legendary animation arthouse will be available on the platform at launch, including Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, as well as fan-favourites My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, and Kiki’s Delivery Service, while The Wind Rises will join the collection in the Fall.

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“Our number one goal is having extraordinary content for everyone in the family, and the HBO Max programming mix we are so excited to unveil on May 27 will bear that out,” said Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct-To-Consumer. “Even in the midst of this unprecedented pandemic, the all-star teams behind every aspect of HBO Max will deliver a platform and a robust slate of content that is varied, of the highest quality, and second to none. I’m knocked out by the breadth and depth of our new offering, from the Max originals, our Warner Bros library and acquisition titles from around the world, and of course the entirety of HBO.”

After the initial launch, Max Originals will continue to premiere on the streamer at a regular cadence throughout Summer and Fall, so there is a significant amount of content in the works. In fact, it was recently revealed that three high-concept projects from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot are in development – a DC Comics-inspired series using characters from Justice League Dark; a show set at The Shining’s infamous Overlook Hotel; and a 1970s-set drama about a getaway driver.

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The highly anticipated Friends unscripted cast reunion will also be released on the platform at a later date, as the production was delayed indefinitely amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer were all set to return to the original soundstage, where the show started out about 25 years ago, to film the special on March 23 and March 24, but plans had to be postponed.

The good news is that, even without the Friends reunion special, HBO Max will have plenty of content to offer subscribers when it launches next month, as it attempts to compete with the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the Disney+ platform. If you want to find out more about these services, check out our breakdown of the state of the streaming wars so far.

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

IGN can exclusively reveal Peaky Blinders: Mastermind, a puzzle-adventure game made by Futurlab and published by Curve Digital, which will come to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC this summer.

Mastermind comes with a fairly unique twist – every level of the top-down game has you controlling six members of the show’s Shelby family simultaneously. That’s made possible by putting the entire level on an adjustable timeline, which can be rewound and replayed, allowing you to adjust the actions of each character to find solutions to obstacles, whether violent, stealthy, or both.

Each member of the Shelby family comes with unique abilities – Tommy (threatening), Arthur (brawling and door kicking), Polly (bribing and lock picking), John (arson and brawling), Ada (distraction) and Finn (sneaking and pickpocketing). You’ll need to to use each one, linking the many abilities in sequence, to get through the game’s challenges. It’s essentially an action-tactics game, and you can get a good look at how that works in the reveal trailer, below:

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Made in collaboration with show creator Steven Knight, Mastermind’s story acts as a prequel to the show’s first season, as the Shelby family discovers a plot to put their burgeoning criminal empire out of business. The game’s set-up is a nod to Tommy Shelby’s ability to think through complex scenarios in his head – you’re essentially creating, enacting, and retooling his plans before they happen for real. The game’s soundtrack has been created by Feverist, the art-rock band that scored the show’s first season.

Game director James Marsden explains the inspiration for the game’s core mechanic: “There’s a point in the show where Tommy Shelby explains he has no concern for the past, nor the future; all he cares about is a crucial moment he calls the soldier’s minute. We designed our game around that idea, allowing the player to plan actions backward and forward in time, choreographing an ensemble cast of characters to synchronise their actions during these crucial moments. The player gets to feel like the smart and sophisticated leader that Tommy is, so we think becoming the mastermind will resonate with fans of the show and gamers alike.”

To see how that mechanic plays out across an entire level of the game, check out our exclusive gameplay from the first level below:

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The game won’t be released until summer this year, but you can wishlist the game on Steam right now.

For those not familiar with Peaky Blinders, the series offers a gritty snapshot of life in 1920s Birmingham, following the Shelby family’s schemes and setbacks. We named the fifth season one of the best drama TV series of 2019.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News, and those hats make him feel terrified these days. Follow him on Twitter.

The Iron Mask is currently available to rent in the UK, and was first released in Russia and China in 2019. 

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Before the opening prologue of The Iron Mask begins, you have to sit through no less than nine company logos. Hailing from China, Russia, and beyond, this multitude of investors, studios, and other controlling parties is the first indication of how the movie plays out. This is a film that’s pulling in so many different directions, and attempting to fulfill the expectations of at least three different cultures, that the fact it is merely a disaster is quite a fortunate end result.

The Iron Mask – known as Viy 2: Journey to China in its home territories – is a Russian/Chinese collaboration, and the follow-up to Forbidden Empire. Its sequel nature has little impact on the plot, which deals with an 18th Century army of dark wizards who have forced a magical dragon into a deep slumber by refusing to cut its eyelashes. Those same eyelashes are also used to grow tea, the sales of which are funding said army of dark wizards. I’m sorry to say that yes, you did read all that right.

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Somehow linked to all this is a Russian conspiracy that has seen the true Tsar, Peter the First, locked up in the Tower of London, his face encased in the titular iron mask. His cellmate is Jackie Chan, the original master of the magical tea dragon, who now spends his days fighting thin air in sequences barely distinguishable from the Star Wars kid video meme from 2003. The Iron Mask’s tonal inconsistency means it’s never clear if Chan’s ‘skills’ are meant to be awe-inspiring or laughable, although the speed at which he’s pushed to the sidelines means this matters little. The Iron Mask’s best A-lister is merely an odd bit-part among an even stranger collage of mismatched ideas from Russian, British, and Chinese cultures.

Chan’s presence in the film seems purely to allow him to have a bust-up with The Iron Mask’s wildest casting choice: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Tower of London’s chief jailor, complete with (sadly inauthentic) tricorn hat and naval uniform. Looking permanently bemused in every scene, Schwarzenegger finally gets to 1v1 Chan in the climax of the story’s first act, and the results are every bit as underwhelming as you’d expect from two men in their senior years, despite their action pedigree.

Dreadful fight choreography isn’t a given for every scene – segments set in China have a notably better approach to battle, although lack the energetic spark of great Eastern fantasy – but even when the plot calls on fun ideas they’re poorly executed. The film’s final showdown involves four characters played by the same actor, all dressed identically, and fighting with indistinguishable combat styles, which works as a concluding indication that this is a film uninterested in story and legibility. Instead, spectacle is what’s left to lead the way.

With Chan and Schwarzenegger brushed aside before the first hour is done, however, it’s left to the film’s core cast to carry that spectacle, which they stumble with at practically every turn. The previous film’s protagonist, Jason Flemyng’s British cartographer Jonathan Green, takes centre stage alongside Yao Xingtong’s mysterious Cheng Lan. They embark on a journey to China, in parallel with the masked Tsar, in order to save big old eyelashes from the grips of its dark masters.

Flemyng’s journey is as dull as you’d expect from a mapmaker trundling along the Silk Road. But the voyage of Peter the First over the oceans from England turns the whole thing into a Pirates of the Carribean rip-off, right down to the daughter-of-a-Lord character whose arc sees her dressing as a man in order to gain passage with the crew.

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The pirate adventures also bring into focus how many of The Iron Masks’ directional sensibilities are Western, which makes it feel far more pedestrian than its cultural parentage would suggest. That’s exacerbated by dollar-store costuming and cheap visual effects, which maintain the film’s downward spiral. As the nonsensical final act plays out, a spreadsheet’s worth of characters are introduced, all of whom feel as if they were added to the script with the use of a nail gun. Late game reversals of fate are so rushed that they feel like emergency retcons rather than twists, none of which are even explained away with the easy get-out card of magic.

Worse than any of the film’s production or plotting woes, though, is its script and dialogue performances. The translation of the exposition-heavy and frequently blunt script into English is reminiscent of the poor localisation that Eastern video games suffered in the 1990s. Its most serious issue, though, is the fact that each of its multinational cast performs in their native language, with dubbing used to correct for the appropriate territory. Even those who speak English are over-dubbed for the English release, meaning talent like Rutger Hauer – in his rather unfortunate final role – speak out of sync with their voices. It makes for deeply irritating viewing.

 

You probably know LinkedIn as a networking and job-searching site, but it also offers online courses to help you better yourself. It’s actually a pretty genius move on LinkedIn’s part, because you can take courses through LinkedIn Learning and then turn right around and post your new skill to LinkedIn. I believe in the corporate world they call that “synergy.”

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Even if you’re not on the search for a new career, LinkedIn Learning has a good selection of classes in a variety of subjects you’re actually interested in for making yourself more valuable, like HTML, Python, JavaScript, Swift or Excel. Wait, am I the only one who gets excited about Excel? Surely I can’t be alone in this.

Anyway, if your college canceled classes for the remainder of the year, which is extremely likely, or you just have more spare time than you’re used to and want to funnel it into something constructive, the free trial lasts 30 days and you can just blast through as many classes as you possibly can before it converts to a paid subscription.

The paid subscription, by the way, is $29.99 a month, unless you sign up and pay for a whole year in one fell swoop. The 12-month subscription works out to $19.99 a month if you pay for it all at once. Not a bad use of part of your stimulus check, if you ask me.

If you’d rather spend your free time a little less constructively, the ComiXology free 60-day trial offer is still live, so you can swing in the complete opposite direction.

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Seth Macy is IGN’s tech and commerce editor and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Twitter @sethmacy.

 

 

 

A new iPhone is coming out this week, and it’s available to preorder now. Despite the lack of a big promotional event to announce the 2020 iPhone SE, it’s an incredibly appealing new product from Apple. It looks like an iPhone 8, but it runs on the same ultra-powerful chip as the iPhone 11, Apple’s current flagship device. That means it’ll be super snappy and supported for years to come. But perhaps the biggest selling point for deal hunters is that it starts at $399, much cheaper than any other new iPhone on the market.

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• Get it at Walmart
• Get it at Apple

The iPhone SE has a pixel-dense 4.7-inch Retina display and it runs on the incredibly capable A13 Bionic chip, the fastest chip in any smartphone on the market. It comes in three colors: black, white, and (Product)Red.

Why is it so much cheaper than the iPhone 11 (which starts at $699)? Mainly due to its slightly older tech in a few key places. For one thing, it re-uses the iPhone 8’s design, and Apple has been making that phone for a few years now. It also has a TouchID-enabled home button, which the latest iPhones do not. (They use FaceID, which presumably requires an expensive front-facing camera). And while the iPhone 11 has multiple rear-facing cameras, the new iPhone SE uses the same single camera from the iPhone XR.

If saving $300 is more important to you than having a phone equipped with the latest, expensive new tech, the iPhone SE is the obvious choice. And since it has the iPhone 11’s chip, it can still take gorgeous portrait mode pictures, which blurs the background to make your photos look more professional. You can even use a slider to choose how blurry you want the background.

Basically, this is the best deal on a new iPhone we’ve seen in maybe forever. And with Walmart’s discounts (which vary depending on carrier), you can save even more.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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