Author: Trafficblast

Capcom has announced that the remake of Resident Evil 2 will see the return of both The 4th Survivor and The Tofu Survivor bonus modes. Both come included in the game at launch, but you’ll need to unlock them.

The 4th Survivor mode allows you to play as Umbrella Security Service special Agent HUNK, the fourth person to survive the events of Raccoon City, in a standalone canon story. Meanwhile, The Tofu Survivor puts you in control of a person-sized piece of tofu. This story, unfortunately, is not canon. It is, however, much harder to complete, as the piece of tofu can only carry and use a combat knife, two green herbs, and one blue herb.

Both modes existed in the original 1998 Resident Evil 2, but Capcom has not announced if you’ll unlock them in the remake via the same method used in the original game. Previously, you unlocked The 4th Survivor by completing both of Leon and Claire’s scenarios with an A rank. For The Tofu Survivor, you just had to get six A ranks, but they needed to be achieved consecutively and in under two and a half hours.

If you want to try the new Resident Evil 2 before buying it, there’s a “1-Shot” demo now available. The demo only lasts 30 minutes, whether you beat it or not. So don’t take too much time being horrified by the disgusting sights and sounds. The demo will expire on January 31, a few days after the launch of the game.

The remake of Resident Evil 2 is one of our most anticipated games of 2019. Capcom’s reimagining of the original game follows the same story beats, but additional elements have been added to surprise players with new scares. A modernized control scheme has been implemented as well, allowing players who are unfamiliar with the original game to more easily pick up this remake.

Resident Evil 2 launches on January 25 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. You can pre-order the game now.

Rocket League is now the second PS4 game to support cross-play with other consoles. Developer Psyonix announced that its hit vehicular soccer game has joined Sony’s cross-play beta program, allowing players on PS4 to be matched up with those on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

According to Psyonix, cross-play will be enabled on PS4 by default, although players will be able to opt in or out of it by going to the Options menu and checking the Cross-Platform Play box in the Gameplay tab. When on, it will allow PS4 users to be randomly matched up with or against players on other platforms in Casual, Competitive, and Extra Modes.

Additionally, Psyonix says that it will implement a cross-platform party system in an upcoming update. More details about that will be shared “soon,” but the feature will allow players to “partner up with friends on any platform with the push of a few buttons.”

While Rocket League has already supported cross-play between PS4 and PC, Psyonix has long wanted to allow the feature with other consoles. Back in 2016, the developer said it had already figured out how to implement cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One, and all that needed to be done was work out an arrangement between platforms.

“The only thing we have to do now is sort of find out where we stand politically with everyone, and then it’s full steam ahead to finish the solution that we’ve already started,” Psyonix vice president Jeremy Dunham said at the time. “Technologically everything works, we’ve got it figured out, just a little bit of time to get everything up and running. Right now, excitement is the best way to put it. We just want to get in there and make it happen.”

After years of preventing cross-network multiplayer between PS4 and other consoles, Sony loosened its rigid stance on the issue somewhat last September when it finally allowed cross-play in Fortnite. While Epic’s battle royale game was the sole title to support the feature at the time, it was a welcome sign that Sony was reconsidering its controversial policy, saying it had “identified a path towards supporting cross-platform features for select third-party content.”

“We recognize that PS4 players have been eagerly awaiting an update, and we appreciate the community’s continued patience as we have navigated through this issue to find a solution,” John Kodera, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said. “We see the beta as an opportunity to conduct thorough testing that ensures cross-platform play is best on PlayStation, while being mindful about the user experience from both a technical and social perspective.”

10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg has been tapped to helm the Sony Pictures adaptation of Uncharted, Variety reports. This comes following reports late last year that the film adaptation had lost director Shawn Levy due to scheduling conflicts with another game adaptation, Free Guy.

Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War) is still set to star as a young Nathan Drake, and will detail his first encounter with his thieving mentor, “Sully” Sullivan. The production date hasn’t been nailed down, however, as Sony is organizing it around Holland’s press tour for Spider-Man: Far From Home. It hopes to start production this year.

Trachtenberg gained notoriety for 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane, a thriller filled with mostly human drama that tied tangentially into the universe created by the cult horror film Cloverfield. It was the first such experiment with using the franchise name for spin-off stories, a strategy that didn’t work out as well with last year’s The Cloverfield Paradox. He is also known for having shot his own fan film for Portal, and for having directed an episode of Black Mirror.

The Uncharted project has gone through several iterations and false starts, and at one point it was set to star Mark Wahlberg in the lead role. This latest script starring Holland was penned by Jonathan Rosenberg and Mark Walker.

Chances are, the name Young Justice has come up in your life from some corner of pop culture, but with not one but two major returns for the brand dropping this month, the specifics can be a bit confusing. There’s the cartoon, Young Justice: Outsiders, the third season of the cult classic that’s been six years in the making, and there’s the new Young Justice #1, a comic reviving a long defunct superhero team that was shelved back in the early 2000s.

To make matters even weirder, the two properties actually have nothing to do with one another. Sort of. Almost. Look, it’s complicated–but don’t worry, we’re here to help.

Here is your beginners guide to the world of Young Justice, and a look into what makes both versions of the story well worth your time.

Let’s Talk Comics

The origin of the Young Justice brand at DC was, unsurprisingly, a comic. Young Justice #1 was published in 1998, springboarding three core characters–Tim Drake aka Robin, Bart Allen aka Impulse, and Conner Kent aka Superboy–into one ongoing story. They weren’t specifically a “team” so much as they were three kids with big name mentors who sort of fell into hanging around with one another–the team stuff just followed naturally. Even the name “Young Justice” fell into their laps as a sort of gag as they wound up practicing some public superheroics and trying to explain to the press afterward that they weren’t a new Junior Justice League, they were “young and it’s just us.”

Of course, in the name of slapstick ’90s humor the explanation got misheard and the name “Young Justice” wound up sticking. That’s when things truly kicked off and the team began to perform in earnest. Tim, Conner, and Bart were joined by other young superheroes from every corner of the DCU and actually garnered a pretty large following both in terms of in-universe notoriety and real life fans. They weren’t specifically designed to be a new incarnation of the Teen Titans, but that’s largely what they ended up being–and later, the connection became literal when a crossover event in 2003 called Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day officially promoted the Young Justice roster into the new Teen Titans niche.

That’s actually why the name became defunct–the group didn’t actually disband (though some members left and/or faded into obscurity over time) but rather shifted positions and swapped names. With the core roster now taking over as the Teen Titans, the Young Justice brand stepped decidedly out of the spotlight.

At least, until now. With the announcement of Brian Michael Bendis’ curated imprint, Wonder Comics, Young Justice fans were able to rejoice with an all new issue #1–the first in nearly two decades–that would return the original core line up as a team while bringing in a handful of new characters to the mix.

For some characters, this was a lot more than a simple pivot. DC’s undergone a number of tricky, multifaceted continuity reboots in the past ten or so years, including the line-wide total revamp known as The New 52, making things like history and canon a bit tricky to puzzle out. Officially, despite versions of Impulse and Superboy existing through the New 52, the ones fans were familiar with in the pre-New 52 era have been missing in action since 2011.

Now, however, after another major reboot known as Rebirth, the runway has been cleared for major returns and the puzzle pieces have been slowly placed over the last year or so, making it possible for Bart, Conner, and their friends to actually make the jump back into the limelight.

Okay, What About The Cartoon?

The first thing you need to understand about the Young Justice cartoon is that it premiered in 2010, long after the name had gone defunct on the comics side of things. The second thing you’ll need to understand is that it’s officially set on an alternate Earth, meaning it’s not actually beholden to any of the comics continuity at all.

The Young Justice cartoon, while technically having no real relationship or legitimate connection to its comic book predecessor, borrows pretty heavily from things like tone and style to make its original story work. It’s not actually adapting anything in a literal sense, but it does cherry pick all sorts of things from the DC Universe’s long history and complicated canon to make something new–meaning that while it is technically a Young Justice property “in name only,” it does embody the spirit of Young Justice as a whole.

It just does so without really leaning too heavily on any one specific story arc, issue, or team roster from the things that came before it. For example, the core roster of the Young Justice cartoon includes Conner Kent, but uses Wally West instead of Bart Allen for the team’s original speedster and Dick Grayson rather than Tim Drake for the team’s Robin. Other characters who have never been members of the comics team like Kaldur’ahm, aka Aqualad, are given the spotlight, while heroes like Artemis, the show’s amalgam of the comic’s original Arrowette and another character named Tigress, were given complete revamps.

You absolutely don’t have to have a background in the Young Justice comics to understand the show, the same way you don’t need to have an understanding of the show to jump into the comics–but it certainly won’t hurt you to be familiar with both at any given time. If anything, being comfortable with both iterations of the team and the story will only bolster your overall experience–and make you an Easter egg hunting pro.

The third season of the show is currently debuting on the DC streaming service, DC Universe, while the new volume of the comic just release its first issue this month–so, really, no matter which angle you want to tackle the Young Justice franchise from, now is probably the best possible time to take the leap.

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Battlefield V‘s second free DLC expansion is almost here. Developer DICE is rolling out the first wave of Chapter 2: Lightning Strikes on PS4, Xbox One, and PC this Tuesday, January 15, bringing new modes, weapons, and other content to the World War II shooter.

First, the update will introduce Squad Conquest, which DICE describes as “an intense version of Conquest that enables more tactical gameplay.” In this mode, two teams of eight players–each of which is further divided up into two four-person squads–can do battle on “smaller, more tactical” versions of the Arras, Rotterdam, and Hamada maps.

On top of that, DICE is adding four new weapons to the game. These can be unlocked by completing Weekly Challenges in January and February. The four weapons are as follows:

• Zk-383 SMG (Medic class)
• Modele 1944 semi-automatic rifle (Assault class)
• M1922 MMG (Support class)
• Mk. III bolt-action rifle (Recon class)

Finally, DICE is implementing a handful of improvements to Time to Death and Death Experience in this week’s update. Among other things, the developer has added a camera that zooms in on and follows players who have killed you. You can find the full patch notes for the update on the Battlefield website.

DICE has a lot of other content in store for Chapter 2: Lightning Strikes, including a new Grand Operation–Battle of Hannut–as well as the new Tank Hunter vehicle. The developer is also bringing back the fan-favorite Rush mode for a limited time this March.

The new year brings new offerings for your streaming pleasure on Netflix. The weather outside is getting chillier across most of the US, making it the perfect time to stay indoors and watch new streaming shows and movies till your heart’s content.

This week the service adds a few highly anticipated series, most releasing on Friday. Season 2 of The Punisher will arrive on January 18, alongside Netflix’s original take on Carmen Sandiego as a Robin Hood-style noble thief. We’ll also be seeing more Grace & Frankie, the cartoon Trolls: The Beat Goes On, and the reality series The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes.

This week also marks your last chance to see some films as well. On January 18, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will exit the service, but you can still watch Solo: A Star Wars Story since it became available on January 9. This slow shuffling out of Disney properties has also included cancellation announcements for the Marvel shows, so we expect to see one for Punisher sometime soon.

Make sure to check out our full wrap-up of the month for more details, and read up on our recommendations if you need a little more direction.

Avail. 1/15/19

• Revenger– NETFLIX FILM
• Sebastian Maniscalco: Stay Hungry– NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Avail. 1/16/19

• American Gangster

Avail. 1/17/19

• American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Avail. 1/18/19

• Carmen Sandiego– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• Close– NETFLIX FILM
• FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• GIRL– NETFLIX FILM
• Grace and Frankie: Season 5– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• IO– NETFLIX FILM
• Soni– NETFLIX FILM
• The Punisher: Season 2– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes: Season 2 Part B– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• Trigger Warning with Killer Mike– NETFLIX ORIGINAL
• Trolls: The Beat Goes On!: Season 5– NETFLIX ORIGINAL