More Halo Infinite Toys Announced Before The Game Has Its Proper Unveiling

2020 is a big year for Halo, as Microsoft is releasing Halo Infinite as a launch title for Xbox Series X. While the company is yet to show any proper gameplay footage, some of the first merchandise around the game has been revealed. Hasbro announced new Nerf blasters earlier this week, and now another company has followed with its own announcement.

Mega Construx, the new toy brand from Mega Bloks, has announced it will be releasing new sets based on Halo Infinite. The company revealed these in a tweet today through a series of shadow-y images. From the looks of it, you can expect new Halo Infinite Mega Construx toys for the Warthog, Pelican, and Mongoose.

The announcement of these new Mega Construx toys for Halo Infinite arrive not long after Hasbro announced a new Halo Infinite-inspired Nerf blasters. Additionally, Wicked Cool Toys will produce new toys and collectables inspired by Halo Infinite.

Mega Construx and Wicked Cool Toys will show and discuss more of their Halo Infinite products during the New York Toy Fair this weekend.

Halo Infinite is poised for a big showing at E3 2020, which is coming up in June. In addition to Xbox Series X, Halo Infinite will play on Xbox One and PC.

Now Playing: Halo Infinite Master Chief Trailer | Microsoft Press Conference E3 2019

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Xbox Game Pass For PC Adds An Unexpected Game For Horror Fans

Every now and then an Xbox Game Pass game will drop without any previous fanfare or announcement, which is always a nice surprise. The Early Access version of World of Horror has just joined the service, bringing a low-fi black-and-white scares to users worldwide.

World of Horror is an RPG with roguelike elements, set in a Japanese fishing village that is being reclaimed by the Old Gods. There are five characters to choose from in this Early Access version, and you can solve 10 mysteries through a text adventure-style interface.

If you’re familiar with the comics of Junji Ito (particularly Uzumaki, his masterpiece about a town infected by spirals), elements of World of Horror will look familiar. The game is also inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

The game is also available on Steam for $15, and will eventually make its way to Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One (including Game Pass) later in 2020. The launch trailer is below.

Cassandra Khaw, a scriptwriter for Ubisoft who previously worked on The Silence Under Your Bed and Where The Water Tastes Like Wine, is credited on the game’s script.

The first major patch for the game has also been released, addressing many early issues players have reported.

If you’re a subscriber to Xbox Game Pass for PC or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you can check the game out now at no additional cost.

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The Office Star John Krasinski Has A Marvel Hero He’d Love To Portray

John Krasinski, who despite all of his career advancements will always be Jim from The Office to us, has never been in a Marvel movie. Although he auditioned for Captain America (a role that went to Chris Evans), Krasinski now has his eyes on a different Marvel hero–Mr Fantastic, the leader of the Fantastic Four.

Talking to Total Film magazine (via Gamesradar) ahead of the release of A Quiet Place Part 2, which Krasinski directed, the actor talked about wanting to take on the role of Mr Fantastic. The Fantastic Four can now be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe following Disney’s purchase of Fox.

“I would love to be in the Marvel universe,” he said. “I love those movies because they’re fun, but I also think they’re really well done…I have no idea what [Marvel] are thinking. But if they are considering me for Mr. Fantastic, continue to consider me because I would love it.”

Krasinski also said that he does not think he will ever direct one of the films: “Oh man, directing one of those things? I don’t think I’m your guy.”

His wife, Emily Blunt, was the original first choice for Black Widow. Unfortunately for her, a scheduling clash meant that she was unable to take on the role, and instead starred alongside Jack Black in the largely forgotten Gulliver’s Travels.

Marvel Studios has not set a date or cast for a Fantastic Four film, and the 2015 film didn’t do so well. It remains to be seen if and when they will get their own film, and there’s no guarantee that Krasinski would be on their shortlist.

Recently, we learned that the note Jim wrote for Pam during The Office, which we never got to see, contained a goodbye from Krasinski written for actor Jenna Fischer.

Now Playing: 9 Minutes Of Fantastic Four Themed Spider-Man In Action

Sales Of Friends On DVD And Digital Spike After The Show Leaves Netflix

Friends, one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, left Netflix at the end of 2019, and until it reappears on HBO Max in May it’s currently unavailable on any streaming services in the US. Because of this, fans are turning to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital releases to get their hands on the show, and sales have gone way up.

According to a report on Variety, sale of Friends on disc and digital have “roughly tripled” since the show disappeared from Netflix. According to Rosemary Markson, senior vice president of TV marketing at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, it has been the “top-selling catalog-TV franchise in home entertainment” since the beginning of 2020.

The show’s portal on the Warner Bros website directs potential customers towards stores where they can potentially buy the series, which debuted almost 26 years ago. Friends: The Complete Series on Blu-Ray sells for $115 on Amazon.

The report also notes that disc sales were down 20% in revenue overall in 2019, but that some TV shows, like Game of Thrones, did very well, and that digital sales were up 5% on 2018 numbers.

A Friends reunion, while not officially confirmed, is looking more and more likely, with an apparent budget of $20 million having been set to get the show’s six stars back together.

2020 will be the final year that The Office will be available on Netflix, too. It will transition onto NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock, in 2021.

Now Playing: Netflix Is Paying A Massive Fee To Keep “Friends” On Its Platform, Report Says – GameSpot Universe News Update

League Of Legends Dev May Need To Pay Much More To Settle Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

In December, it was reported that League of Legends developer Riot Games would pay $10 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit. However, this settlement total was later thought to be many millions lower than what it should have been, and now it’s been withdrawn by the legal team representing the staffers who filed the lawsuit in the first place.

A new team of lawyers hired by the former female employees of Riot Games withdrew the proposed settlement of $10 million, saying it was the result of “alleged mistakes and improprieties by prior class counsel,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The members of the class action group have now hired women’s rights attorney Genie Harrison and employment lawyer Joseph Lovretovich to take over for the previous counsel.

The new legal team will fight for a much larger payout for the class group. The California Department of Fair Employment and House and the Department of Labor Standards and Enforcement said in January that the initial $10 million settlement was “rushed.”

The groups maintain that Riot Games should actually be on the hook for a further $390 million in damages, bringing the total settlement to $400 million.

All of the approximately 1,000 female employees who worked at Riot from November 2014 until the settlement is complete are set to receive a share of the payout. If it does come out to $400 million, and if it is divided equally, it would work out to $400,000 each–but that won’t be how it works. The Los Angeles Times reports that the payouts will depend on the length of their employment and their status as full-time versus contractor.

“These brave women spoke out against gender inequality and sexism, and I want to make sure they are fairly compensated,” Harrison said. “Our well-qualified statisticians are already analyzing pay data. We intend to recover the compensation due to the women of Riot Games and achieve institutional reform, in order to level the playing field for women.”

Lovretovich added: “We don’t step into these types of cases lightly, but where questions of fairness and justice are at stake, we want to ensure these class representatives are getting the justice they seek.”

An August 2018 expose from Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio contained numerous serious and dramatic accusations about the “bro culture” within Riot. Among the details was that managers were said to have had lists where they ranked women by attractiveness.

In August 2019, when the initial settlement was first announced, Riot maintained that it doesn’t have systemic issues related to gender discrimination, though it did acknowledge that the workplace environment was less than ideal.

“After extensively reviewing these issues, we can confidently state that gender discrimination (in pay or promotion), sexual harassment, and retaliation are not systemic issues at Riot,” the company said. “But, what we also learned during this process was that some Rioters have had experiences that did not live up to our values or culture. In addition, we’ve encountered considerable fatigue among Rioters, who have been drained by constant engagement with the internal and external dialogues emerging from these lawsuits and recurring media cycles.”

Riot Games is yet to comment on the withdrawal of this $10 million settlement.

Riot is owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent. The free-to-play MOBA reportedly brings in billions of dollars in revenue every year.

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See How Star Wars: The Mandalorian Used Fortnite Engine’s Tech To Film The TV Show

The new Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian, makes use of a variety of special effects that Lucasfilm created in partnership with iconic effects studio Industrial Light and Magic and Fortnite studio Epic Games. A new behind-the-scenes video showcases the fascinating technology that was used to bring The Mandalorian’s sets to life.

The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau says the technology, which uses Epic’s Unreal Engine to project scenes onto LED screens surrounding the physical set, will impact and influence how TV shows and movies are made in the future. In the video, it’s not hard to see why.

With LED screens in the background projecting anything imaginable, the actors on set can physically point at things and actually see what they’re looking it. Not only that, but this technology allowed the producers to have sunrises and sunsets that could last all day. They could also literally move mountains in the background because they’re digital. This opens up incredible new possibilities for digital filmmaking.”

Take a look at the full video to learn more about the new LED tech that was used in the making of The Mandalorian. Presumably this will continue for Season 2, which is due out in October 2020.

Like Season 1, the sophomore outing of The Mandalorian will stream exclusively on Disney+. Recently, Disney announced that the service had reached 28.6 million paying subscribers.

Now Playing: Baby Yoda’s Best Moments In The Mandalorian

Dragon Ball FighterZ Showcases Upcoming DLC Fighter Kefla’s Moves In New Video

The third Fighters Pass for Dragon Ball FighterZ was recently announced, and will begin on February 28 with the release of Kefla. She’ll be the first of five new characters coming to the game, with Ultra Instinct Goku and three unannounced warriors also joining the battle.

Bandai Namco has released video of a fight featuring Kefla, showing off her fast kicks and red ki blast attacks. It looks like she’ll move fast, and the video shows off some of her longer potential combos as she cuts through Frieza, Goku, and Vegeta.

Kefla, who debuted in Dragon Ball Super during the Tournament of Power, is a fusion character–she’s Universe 6 Saiyans Kale and Caulifla fused together. She joins Vegito, Gogeta, and Gotenks, the other fused Saiyan fighters in the game.

Her super move is pulled from her iconic battle against Ultra Instinct Goku–it’s a giant ki wave fired from both hands.

Dragon Ball FighterZ will feature in the Evo 2020 line-up in July, where we could potentially see combatants fighting using Kefla and any new fighters added to the game by then.

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Westworld Season 3 Trailer: 33 Things You Missed

Westworld Season 3 Trailer: 33 Things You Missed – GameSpot

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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company


Watch the Intense Opening Credits for Al Pacino’s Hunters

If you’re looking for another blood-soaked action series with comic book sensibilities while you’re waiting for Season 2 of The Boys, Amazon is likely hoping that its new Al Pacino-fronted thriller, Hunters, makes it onto your watchlist.

Centered around a group of Nazi hunters in 1970s New York, led by Pacino’s Meyer Offerman (who recruits Logan Lerman’s naive young comic book aficionado, Jonah Heidelbaum, to the cause), Hunters was created by David Weil, who was inspired by his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, to tell a fantastical but all-too relevant tale about a young Jewish kid who is able to reclaim power from his oppressors.

“She would tell me stories about her time during the war. And as a young kid, five, six years old, hearing those stories, they felt like the stuff of comic books and superheroes. And as I got older I struggled with that feeling of birthright: What was my responsibility now to continue her story? So many Holocaust survivors are no longer with us and that community is growing smaller and smaller by the year,” Weil pointed out during Amazon’s presentation at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “And so for me this was a love letter to my grandmother. It was a quest to don that vigilante cape in the face of rising antisemitism in the world, racism, xenophobia. It was a desire to shed light on hidden crimes and hidden truths. And it was also kind of a desire to create a sense of catharsis and wish fulfillment for a young Jewish kid growing up on Long Island who wanted to see superheroes who looked like him on screen.”

IGN has an exclusive sneak peek at the show’s stylized opening credits, showing Meyer’s band of hunters set against the Nazi leaders who have infiltrated US society, including those played by Dylan Baker and Lena Olin.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/20/amazons-hunters-watch-the-intense-opening-credits”]

The cast also includes Jerrika Hinton, Josh Radnor, Carol Kane, Tiffany Boone, Greg Austin, Louis Ozawa, Kate Mulvany, and Saul Rubinek, and was executive produced by Jordan Peele through his Monkeypaw Productions banner, alongside executive producer Nikki Toscano and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who directed the first episode.

Pacino also shared what attracted him to the TV series when speaking to critics: “There’s an originality in this show and it’s somewhat eccentric. And all of a sudden you’ll see it from certain angles… There are a lot of elements in it that catch you off guard, and that’s part of the interest. It holds your interest because you never know when a joke is going to come,” he said. “That was what really appealed to me when I read it, that there was this element [that] things are not what they seem.”

Watch the red-band trailer for Amazon’s Hunters below:

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/13/amazon-prime-video-hunters-red-band-trailer”]

Hunters will release all 10 episodes of Season 1 on Friday, February 21 on Amazon Prime Video.