Video games get delayed all the time. It’s probably never worth fretting too much about because there are always plenty of great games to play. We live in a golden age, truly. But nevertheless, it’s good to keep tabs on the titles you’re interested in so that you can budget your time and money accordingly. These are 11 of the biggest games that got delayed in 2018.
New Release Date: January 25, 2019
Once The Last Guardian finally released in December 2016, Kingdom Hearts 3 inherited the mantle of the biggest game to be delayed the longest. The wait for the next installment in Tetsuya Nomura’s Disney/Square RPG crossover has been nothing short of trying for fans, who’ve seen Disney buy both Marvel and Star Wars since development on Kingdom Hearts 3 began. It – along with its Frozen, Toy Story, and other characters and areas – is finally almost here.
Since Tetsuya Nomura hinted about the possibility years ago, fans have speculated about whether Kingdom Hearts 3 will have another playable character beyond Sora. Now, the sequel’s latest trailer has confirmed that is the case, and who this second character is.
Spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3 follow! Turn back if you haven’t watched the latest trailer for the game and don’t want to know.
During the Kingdom Hearts 3 Final Battle trailer, viewable above, gameplay of Riku as a player-controlled character is shown (around the 1:06 mark).
This isn’t the first time Sora’s childhood friend has been playable in the series — notably, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, originally released for the GBA and then remade for the PS2, included a storyline featuring a playable Riku.
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TP-Link has a new flagship router, and unlike its previous offerings this one is specifically marketed as a gaming router. Dubbed the Archer C5400X (See it on Amazon), this is one of those “we spared no expense” type of routers for people with a ton of devices to connect, and a big budget for home networking because at $400 it’s not for casuals. In exchange for your hard-earned dollars you get a tri-band, MU-MIMO router with link aggregation, lots of bandwidth, eight LAN ports, and built-in antivirus.
Update: Fortnite’s Driftboard has been delayed. Epic had teased that the new snowboard vehicle would arrive in the game as part of this week’s 7.10 update, but the developer has now announced it is holding their release back a little longer in order to further fine-tune them.
“We know we set the expectation for the Driftboard to release in the coming update,” Epic wrote in a post on Reddit. “Unfortunately, we’ve decided to hold the release of this new vehicle to make some final quality of life changes and other polish improvements.
“We want to get you out there carving up the slopes as soon as possible. However, our goal is to make sure that your experiences on the Driftboard are up to our expectations. We still have tons of quality of life and balance improvements on the way in v7.10.”
The original story follows.
Earlier this month, Fortnite developer Epic shared a series of teaser images leading up to the start of Season 7, each of which featured a new element that was being added to the battle royale game. The studio has already introduced the biplane, ziplines, and the Ice King skin at the start of the season, and now the last of the teased items–snowboards–are finally on the way as well.
Fortnite’s in-game News feed is teasing that a new snowboard-like vehicle called the Driftboard is “coming soon,” presumably as part of this week’s update. According to the accompanying description, the Driftboard is a single-rider vehicle that will allow players to “boost past [their] competition.” You can take a look at it below.
The official Fortnite Twitter account also teased the arrival of the new Driftboard, tweeting out a snowboard emoji. Epic hasn’t explicitly confirmed when the vehicle will be available in the game, but Fortnite’s next update–v7.10–is scheduled to roll out for all platforms on December 18, and the wording of the announcement tweet suggests the Driftboard will arrive as part of that patch.
We’re entering Week 3 of Season 7, and already this season has introduced some big changes to Fortnite. Along with the aforementioned ziplines and the biplane vehicle, Epic added a new arctic region to the game’s map. There are also a slew of new skins, emotes, and other new cosmetics to unlock as part of the Season 7 Battle Pass rewards.
Most notably, last week saw the arrival of the Infinity Blade, a new Mythic sword and Fortnite’s first melee weapon. Much like the Infinity Gauntlet from the limited-time Thanos mode earlier this year, only one Infinity Blade would spawn per match and would grant its holder an immense power boost–so much so that it wreaked havoc on the game’s balance. As a result, Epic has since removed the Infinity Blade and said it will be “re-evaluating [its] approach to Mythic items.”
We’ve crossed December’s halfway point, which means Xbox Live Gold subscribers have new games available to download for free. The titles in question are Never Alone for Xbox One and Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction for Xbox (it’s also playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox One thanks to backwards compatibility). You can add them to your account here.
Never Alone is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer about a girl and a fox. Made in partnership with Native Alaskan Iñupiaq elders and storytellers, it includes actual folklore and history from a culture that’s unfamiliar to many. It’s free to download until January 15.
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is actually an original Xbox game from 2005, but it’s compatible with both Xbox 360 and Xbox One. You play as a mercenary tasked with bringing down an evil military regime. The game takes place in an open world that’s filled with vehicles and weapons you can use as you go about your various missions. You can add Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction to your account between now and December 31.
Also available until the end of the year for anyone who hasn’t picked it up yet is the first-person puzzle game QUBE 2. Microsoft hasn’t announced January’s Games with Gold yet, but will likely do so by the end of the year.
Every major actor from the first film is in the sequel, including Chris Pratt as Emmet (and new character Rex Dangervest), Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle, and Will Arnett as Batman.
Morgan Freeman, who played Vitruvius, has not been announced for the sequel, but there’s good reason for that if you saw the first film.
Joining them will be Stephanie Beatriz, who voices antagonist Sweet Mayhem, and Tiffany Haddish, who voices antagonist Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi.
The first thing we see after the studio logos in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the “Approved by the comics code authority” stamp. This is not only a great Easter egg that comic book history buffs will understand, but also a subtle and great introduction to the kind of film you’re about to see. You see, this is not just another movie about Spider-Man, or another movie about superheroes, but the closest we’ve ever come to a comic book truly coming to life. As GameSpot wrote in our review, this is “literally a comic book turned into a movie.”
Into the Spider-Verse feels special in more ways than one. Not only is this the first time we see a major superhero of mixed-race on screen, and the first full-length animated superhero film to get a wide release in theaters since Batman: Mask of the Phantasm in 1993, but also the first film of its kind that truly feels like it’s telling the story from the perspective of someone living inside of a comic book. The opening scene of the film, where Peter Parker recaps the story of his life, is one we are familiar with by this point, since we’ve seen the story being told over 17 years and 7 Spider-Man movies.
That opening scene feels fresh because it reflects how it would actually feel to live in a world where superheroes are real. Everyone in the MCU knows the real names of Iron Man and Captain America, but we don’t really see how this affects their day-to-day lives or the world around them at a micro level. Sure, we saw those robbers wearing Avengers masks in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the X-Men comic in Logan was a cool Easter egg, but not until Into the Spider-Verse have we seen how superheroes being real affects the popular culture of the film’s universe. Here we get not only a celebrity Spider-Man, but actual comics made out of his exploits–here called “True Life Tales”–Spider-Man cereal, even a Christmas album. Not only is this fun to see in a meta-storytelling way, but it also makes you feel like you are actually reading a comic book with a vibrant and lived-in universe.
It isn’t only through worldbuilding that Into the Spider-Verse pulls you into the world of the film as if it’s an actual comic book, but also the animation itself. From start to finish, any frame that you pause could look just like a comic book panel. Each frame has a CGI foundation in 3D that is then followed by an overlay of 2D hand-drawn art, giving the look of 2D art in a comic book page. In an age where every American animated film is following the Pixar mold of going for smooth and clean designs, this film instead goes for rougher? designs to simulate the look of hand drawings like you would have in a Spider-Man comic. The film even replicates retro comic details like the Ben-Day dots (the inexpensive mid-century printing method that used visible colored dots). Into the Spider-Verse uses the Ben-Day dots in the background of most scenes, to make the frame look like it was printed on a page.
Likewise, the movie uses onomatopoeia and kinetic typography to emphasize sound effects and emotions in the same way a comic book would. An early scene where Miles mixes up having spider powers with hitting puberty is enhanced by the use of kinetic typography and onomatopoeia sound effects, as well as thought bubbles, narration boxes, and even panels that split the screen. These are things familiar to anyone who has ever picked up a comic book, but to see it used in the film enhances the story–by allowing the filmmakers to emphasize and visualize sounds or showing you Miles’ inner thinking–and further blends the comic-reading and film-viewing experience.
Into the Spider-Verse isn’t the first film to do this. Ang Lee’s Hulk also used panels to split the screen into different points of view 15 years ago, but it used it as a means to continuously wink at the audience to remind them that the film was based on a comic book, instead of as a meaningful part of the storytelling. Even worse, the film’s tone and story were so serious that the use of panels took the audience right out of the film because it felt out of place. The last movie to attempt the comic book aesthetic in a major way was Scott Pilgrim vs The World back in 2010, which also used typography to visualize sound effects, as well as other visual nods to comic books and video games like health bars and hit-counters during fight scenes. In an interview for Animation World Network, Edgar Wright described the film as “a normal world of a normal young man filtered through his overactive imagination.”
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Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse – Official Trailer
Kingdom Hearts III – ‘Final Battle’ Official Trailer
The hyper-stylization in Scott Pilgrim worked because it’s the filter through which the story is told, which is exactly what Into the Spider-Verse does. The thought bubbles and “BOOM!” “WOOSH!” and “KAPOW!” sound effects are not only used as nods to the film’s comic book roots, but as part of the very fabric of the storytelling. Just as Scott thinks he’s in a video game, Miles knows he lives inside a comic book. A scene in which Peter B. Parker tells Miles his plan to sneak inside a secure lab is told through a series of panels, with the characters commenting on its comic book look and interacting with the panels. This doesn’t feel like a break of the fourth-wall, though, because there is no layer separating the storytelling techniques and the story. When Miles asks, “why are my thoughts so loud?” while looking at the thought bubbles, it doesn’t feel out of place, because on some level he’s aware he is a comic book character, something the movie’s overall aesthetic allows us as the audience to accept.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse truly embraces what it’s like to read a comic book, by making its characters and the tone of the film feel like part of a comic book itself. Deadpool may have known he was in a movie, but this Spider-Man is in an actual comic book, looking up to the audience from the page. This film not only proves how versatile animation is as a medium, but how well the look and feel of a comic book translate into animation. Watching a scene in Avengers: Endgame suddenly be divided into panels would feel out of place, yet watching Miles Morales’s thoughts appear as text boxes floating in the air feels right at home.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is top of the UK sales chart once again as we reach the penultimate week before Christmas. The week ending December 15 saw Rockstar’s open-world title sell more physical copies than any other game, despite heavy retailer discounts helping some big hitters to climb the chart.
FIFA 19 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 were two of those AAA titles to rise up the chart–EA’s sports sim climbed one place to No.2 and Activision’s shooter is up four places to No.3. Nintendo’s Switch exclusive Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, meanwhile, is down three places to No.4 after a strong debut last week.
The Christmas No.1 will be confirmed in next week’s chart, with Red Dead Redemption 2, Black Ops 4, and FIFA 19 all vying for top spot. Those three games were awarded, 9, 8, and 7/10 respectively in GameSpot’s reviews; check out the full verdicts below.
You can read the full top 10 sales chart for this week below, courtesy of UKIE and GfK Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
The writer/director of The Big Short is back, and once again he can barely contain his anger about America’s broken institutions. Adam McKay’s new film, Vice, tells the story of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a secretive and influential politician who transformed a political office with limited political responsibility into a position of incredible power, and used it to transform domestic and foreign policy, the economy, human rights and the entire world.
Christian Bale (under a tremendous amount of makeup) stars as Dick Cheney, a young drunk who, at the urging of his wife Lynne (Amy Adams), pursues a career in politics. He ventures to Washington D.C. where he becomes the intern for Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), whose chuckling demeanor hides a no-nonsense political viciousness. Dick Cheney rises through the ranks of the White House for decades, gaining experience and notoriety, until the tide shifts, his health fails, and he finally retires to a lucrative career in the private sector.
