Author: Trafficblast

Now more than ever, I’ll take any chance I can get to feel like a demigod – even if it’s just in a video game. Doom Eternal offers that power fantasy in spades but is always ready to check your first-person-shooting ego around the next corner with a bigger, faster, nastier demon from Hell. This evolved followup takes everything good about the fast and punchy 2016 reboot and proves it wasn’t a fluke. In fact, it’s largely ruined the first game for me in retrospect because the addition of Eternal’s mid-air dashes make the last thrillride of a game feel like wading through waist-high molasses by comparison. Even multiplayer’s been innovated on, with 2016’s forgettable vanilla DeathMatch replaced by Eternal’s inventive 2v1, Demons-vs.-Slayer Battlemode. The full package is expertly crafted from both a design and technical perspective.

So far I’ve done in-depth reviews of both the single-player and multiplayer modes. First, here’s what I said about the campaign:

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Doom Eternal Single-Player Campaign Review

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Simply put, Doom Eternal is one of the best first-person shooter campaigns I’ve played in years. As the second game of its kind it’s lost some of its novelty but none of the joy of its intense and furious combat style. This excellent refinement of the already outstanding 2016 reboot makes you an unspoken deal: if you can keep up with it, it will keep up with you. It continually teaches you how to play faster, smarter, and more efficiently, with lots of options at every step of the way to tailor fights to your prefered slaying style, and it’s an absolute blast along the way.

And here’s my Verdict on multiplayer:

Doom Eternal Battlemode Multiplayer Review

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A quick Battlemode walkthrough intro and bare-bones tutorials for each playable demon give you a quick look at what each bad guy can do in your hands, but the fun of Battlemode is getting out there and figuring out how to best put each Demon’s abilities to work. Doom Eternal is a game that demands and respects player skill, and while Battlemode doesn’t allow you to put yours to the ultimate test on a traditional level playing field, it is nevertheless a clever mode that’s a lot of fun if you’re willing to give it a try and get to know its nuances.

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Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood will remain closed beyond the original March 28 reopening date that Universal announced March 12.

“We are extending the closure of Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood through April 19 as we continue to respond to current conditions and make the health and safety of team members and guests our top priority,” Universal said in a statement posted Tuesday.

“This includes our theme parks and Universal CityWalk at both destinations. The Universal Orlando Resort hotels have also temporarily suspended operations. We will continue to monitor the situation and make adjustments as needed, based on guidance from health agencies and government officials.”

Our original report follows.

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Universal has shut down operations at the Universal Studios theme park, with current plans to reopen as of March 28 at this time.

Variety reports that in response to and in order to help contain the spread of novel coronavirus COVID-19, Universal will be closed starting March 14.

“The health and safety of our team members and guests is always our top priority,” Universal Studios spokesperson told Variety. “Out of an abundance of caution and in response to the guidance provided by the California Department of Public Health, Universal Studios Hollywood will temporarily close beginning Saturday, March 14. The theme park anticipates reopening on March 28 as we continue to monitor the situation.”

Universal CityWalk, however, will remain open.

Universal joins Disneyland and Disney California Adventure in closing in response to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. Those two parks, however, are closed indefinitely as of this time. News of Disney World’s closure has yet to be announced, and that park is operating normally as of press time.

The film world has also seen several changes due to efforts to contain COVID-19. Universal Pictures earlier announced nearly a year’s delay for the release date of Fast 9. And Disney has delayed the releases of Mulan, as well as pushed the release dates for New Mutants and Antlers.

IGN spoke with a number of medical experts to learn how movie delays may help stop the spread of COVID-19. Events like E3 2020 and SXSW that bring large amounts of people together have closed as well.

Veteran actor Michael Biehn has been cast in the second season of The Mandalorian, Disney+’s Star Wars series. The actor is best known for his turn as Kyle Reese in James Cameron’s The Terminator.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Biehn is set to join the second season of the Star Wars series as a bounty hunter, though details about the character remain sparse. Other actors appearing in The Mandalorian season 2 include Rosario Dawson who is reportedly cast as Ahsoka Tano.

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Biehn is best known for his collaborations with director James Cameron. Aside from playing the protagonist Kyle Reese in the first Terminator movie, Biehn worked with Cameron by appearing in Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989).

The Mandalorian premiered alongside Disney+ in 2019. The Star Wars live-action series starred Pedro Pascal as the titular Mandalorian tasked with finding The Child, popularly referred to as “Baby Yoda” as the two characters are from the same species.

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Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, served as creator and showrunner, while a rotating cast of directors helmed individual episodes including director Dave Filoni, Fick Famuyiwa, Deborah Chow, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi.

Season two is set to premiere this October on Disney+.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

LG is one of the biggest names in the display market and has gaming monitors to match every budget. Today, we’re looking at the LG27GL850 Ultragear. Coming in at $499, it’s on the upper end of the company’s range but offers a suite of features to tempt enthusiast gamers looking for a premium display. With a large 27-inch Nano IPS display, the LG27GL850 promises rich colors, HDR, a 1ms response time, and a crisp 1440p, 144Hz picture.

Design and Features

The LG 27GL850 makes an impression right from the start. Setup is easy and took me less than five minutes to unbox and assemble. The stand comes in two parts and the feet attach to the arm with a single thumbscrew. The arm attaches to the monitor itself with a simple snap and can be removed with a button which makes disassembly equally simple.

The stand itself is excellent. It offers a bit of extra flair compared to simpler monitors with a red finish on the rear of its two feet and a stylish red ring in the center of its back. It also offers a bit of cable management thanks to a removable clip. You can adjust height up and down four inches, as well as both tilt and pivot into portrait orientation. If you’re planning on a multi-monitor setup, it’s very versatile to position exactly as you would like, especially if you’d like a taller display for monitoring chat while you stream.

The video inputs are centered on the back of the monitor, which works out much better for rotation than the standard location along the bottom third. The wires were never torqued rotating into portrait mode and stayed nicely hidden behind the display. The 27GL850 offers two HDMI ports and a single DisplayPort 1.2. There’s also a headphone jack and a pair of USB ports for quickly connecting devices. I liked this, since I could connect my keyboard and mouse right to the display and keep my wires more tidy than if they were running into the back of my PC.

The LG27GL850’s 27-inch display feels wide and spacious thanks to its thin bezels. This also makes it a good fit for multi-monitor setups, though as a flat panel you won’t get the same wrap-around effect that multiple curved monitors offer. There’s also the usual internal black border built into the screen itself, but since the actual frame is only a millimeter thick, it doesn’t feel intrusive.

Having reviewed dozens of monitors over the years, I’ve found 27 inches to be the sweet spot between size and resolution. That is certainly the case here as the screen feels big without allowing you to see the individual pixels at a normal sitting distance. 1440p resolution offers a crisp and detailed picture with more than 33% more pixels per inch than a 1080p screen of the same size. It’s not as clean as 4K, of course, but most mid-level graphics cards released in the last several years should be able to run 1440p on the Ultragear, which isn’t something I can say for 4K.

As an IPS panel, I expected it to offer better colors than a VA or TN monitor, but the LG 27GL850 is downright stunning. The monitor uses LG’s Nano technology, which embeds microscopic particles into the display to absorb excess light and increase the color gamut to 98% of the DCI-P3 spectrum. The real-life effect is absolutely vibrant colors with or without HDR. The panel is HDR10 compatible and supports full 10-bit color without chroma sub-sampling at 144Hz. For gaming and movies, it’s excellent.

There are some meaningful limitations, however. The contrast on offer here isn’t impressive at only 700:1. Compared to the IPS panel in Pixio’s PX7 Prime, it’s a noticeable step down in dark areas from the 1000:1 ratio that’s fairly standard in IPS gaming monitors. Likewise, the presentation of high-dynamic range content is also held back by a peak brightness of only 350-nits, which falls below VESA’s guidelines for entry-level HDR certification. That said, at a normal sitting distance, 350-nits is comfortable while still feeling bright. It makes for gaming experiences that won’t strain your eyes and remains a big step up from 250-nit SDR monitors.

When I tested the monitor on Lagom’s LCD Test Pages, I was very impressed by how well it performed. I was able to make out every box and pattern in the Black Level and White Saturation tests, which means you won’t lose detail in very bright or dark scenes. Likewise, the gamma was spot on and there was no banding in the Gradient Test.

I was most interested in how the display would perform on the Response Time and Ghosting tests.  IPS panels are well known for their improved colors and viewing angles but often deliver those benefits at the expense of response time. The LG 27GL850 performed outstandingly. There was no visible color shifting in the Response Time test and absolutely minimal color disparity in the Ghosting test, which is quite an impressive result that even tops the more expensive Acer Predator XB273K. These results prove that LG has done an outstanding job of pushing this panel to its limits for speed – this response is faster than some VA monitors I’ve reviewed.

The monitor also offers Nvidia G-Sync compatibility. The 27GL850 is officially certified by Nvidia, part of a small but growing number of FreeSync displays that are guaranteed to offer excellent tear-free performance on Nvidia GPUs. Gaming with G-Sync makes fast-paced games feel distinctly smoother as the frames produced by the GPU are synced with the monitor’s refresh, eliminating screen tearing.

Performance

Synthetic tests are one thing, but what really matters is how it handles high intensity games. I’m happy to report that it’s excellent. Seeing those rich colors, I couldn’t help but spend hours lost in Overwatch with its saturated color palette. The Nano IPS screen made the game look better than I’ve ever seen it, though I do wish the contrast were better to make blacks actually look black instead of dark grey.

At 1440p, my RTX 2080 Ti was able to push the FPS in Overwatch and Apex Legends to the limit, really allowing me to see its potential. Before this review, I spent a good amount of time playing on my 4K 60Hz monitor to see if I could feel the change in refresh rate and resolution even as a gamer already used to high refresh rate gameplay. The answer is yes to both, but the dramatic improvement in smoothness and responsiveness that comes with the jump to 144Hz vastly outweighs the slight drop in detail from 4K to 1440p, especially with the massive bump in performance that the Ultragear offered.

Playing through the new maps in Battlefield V was an absolute pleasure on the monitor. Playing in HDR wasn’t as impressive as my big 4K TV with local dimming, however, but it still offered an excellent, vivid picture thanks to the 10-bit color depth and Nano IPS screen.

The only glitch I experienced was when I tried to load Overwatch in fullscreen mode. Oddly, it would randomly kick the monitor out of HDR mode until I played in Windowed Borderless. I also discovered an odd quirk where the Vivid picture mode caused halos around text. The color enhancement was great for gaming but made reading email and social media difficult.

Purchasing Guide

The LG 27GL850 Ultragear is available on Amazon, B&H, and Best Buy with an MSRP of $499.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on all areas of the entertainment industry, and comics is no exception. Diamond Comic Distributors, which is the main distributor for most major US publishers (including both Marvel and DC), has announced plans to stop shipping new comic book deliveries to stores as of the week of April 1.

Effectively, this means comic shops will stop receiving new books for the foreseeable future. Diamond’s sister company Alliance Game Distributors is adopting a similar policy, with both its distribution centers shutting down indefinitely on Tuesday, March 24.

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“Our publishing partners are also faced with numerous issues in their supply chain, working with creators, printers, and increasing uncertainty when it comes to the production and delivery of products for us to distribute,” said Diamond’s Chairman and CEO Steve Geppi in a statement. “Our freight networks are feeling the strain and are already experiencing delays, while our distribution centers in New York, California, and Pennsylvania were all closed late last week. Our own home office in Maryland instituted a work from home policy, and experts say that we can expect further closures. Therefore, my only logical conclusion is to cease the distribution of new weekly product until there is greater clarity on the progress made toward stemming the spread of this disease.”

This announcement comes shortly after word that Free Comic Book Day 2020 has been postponed until the summer.

This is dire news for an industry already hit hard by COVID-19. Many shops have shifted to curbside and home delivery options in order to safely fulfill orders, while publishers like BOOM! Studios and IDW Publishing have begun offering full returnability on new releases and other incentives designed to lessen the financial strain on comic shops in an uncertain market. But with this shipping moratorium, shops remaining open during the pandemic will have to rely on existing stock and non-Diamond-distributed products for sources of revenue. As Geppi notes in his statement, Diamond is only cutting off shipments of books with an on-sale date of April 1 or later, meaning shops will theoretically have the ability to restock older releases and evergreen graphic novels, at least as long as Diamond still has available stock and the means to ship it.

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Perhaps the biggest question now is whether publishers will continue to make new books available digitally through services like Comixology, or if new comic book releases will simply stop entirely come April 1. Diamond doesn’t handle digital distribution, so this is likely a decision that will have to be made individually by each publisher. Marvel and DC both have a number of high-profile comic book crossovers planned for spring and summer 2020, including Marvel’s Avengers/Fantastic Four crossover Empyre and DC’s Dark Nights: Metal sequel Death Metal. It remains to be seen whether these and other major books will be delayed or published solely in digital form for the time being.

IGN has reached out to both Marvel and DC for comment but did not hear back by time of publish. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

Be sure to check out IGN’s guide for staying safe and helping out during the pandemic.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Modiphius has just released Dishonored: the Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, which is now available as a digital edition PDF for £15 (approx. $17.71). While the physical edition is only available for pre-order on the site for the end of June, the PDF is available immediately on purchase.

Dishonored: The Roleplaying Game delves into the Empire of the Isles, a place filled with occult lore, intrigue, and drama. This core book contains all the rules and background information needed to start off your group’s adventure into the Arkane whalepunk universe. It even contains a mini-campaign, The Oil Trail, for the city of Dunwall that can be used for your own party.

The book was designed in collaboration with Dishonored director Harvey Smith, along with a diverse selection of writers and artists, many of which were involved in the games as well.

The game will come in a deluxe, 300 page hardcover book, and there will be custom dice and cards available too.

If you would like to get the PDF edition now, but down the line want to purchase the physical edition, just email [email protected] who will provide you with a discount code to redeem for the printed purchase.

Now is the perfect time to move your tabletop group online. With more RPG’s having downloadable PDFs to use, players can tune into games from the safety of their own homes and enjoy the co-operative nature of a role play game with friends.

As Sword Art Online anime fans probably know, the most recent season of SAO takes place in a completely different kind of virtual world, one that has no connection to the previous MMO games. Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris follows the anime’s progression into a whole new virtual world, a world where the AI are actually living beings with their own personalities and history.

Anime characters Renly, Sheyta, and Sortiliena are all available as playable characters which can be recruited into your party. Hersyrain is an all-new character not from the anime that has been added to the game. New enemies, the Black Knight, Kayode, and the Mysterious Giant are also featured in the trailer as foes to vanquish. Team up to defeat your enemies and build bonds with your party members--you can even date them in game.

Free updates to Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris will follow after the game’s release, with more chances to earn SAO coins and CUBES. Monthly Raids and Daily Quests can be completed in exchange for tickets that can be traded for CUBES. CUBES enable players to randomly win in-game prizes such as costumes, accessories, weapon skins, and more. Players can also purchase CUBES with SAO coins or just buy the in-game prizes individually.

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is now available for pre-order on Xbox One and Steam. The standard edition includes the base game and four Design Contest costumes. The deluxe edition pre-order includes the base game, the four Design Contest costumes, the Premium Pass, Premium Pass Bonus Costume, and 200 SAO Coins. The four Design Contest costumes are also available for purchase separately on the Playstation Store, Microsoft Store, and on Steam from May 22 to June 22.

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is set to launch in the US on May 22 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.