Hollywood wrestling movies usually fall into two categories: the serious drama of The Wrestler and Foxcatcher, or comedy flicks like King of the Ring and Nacho Libre. Stephen Merchant’s supremely enjoyable sophomore directorial offering, Fighting With My Family, is somewhere in the middle of both, though it definitely shares more in common with classic sports movies like Rocky and The Karate Kid as it follows the story of real-life wrestler Paige on her journey to becoming the youngest ever WWE Divas Champion.
Though it is a WWE production that stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Merchant’s is very much a British film. There’s something magical about the authenticity and realism that Merchant and his stellar cast–including Nick Frost, Lena Headey, and Florence Pugh, who is brilliant as Saraya A.K.A. Paige–bring to the story of a working class family of wrestlers and their daughter’s journey to the big time. It helps that the film is based on a 2012 documentary of the same name which gave an unprecedented look at the family, their struggles, and their success. The docu is a great watch and Merchant’s film does it justice whilst adding a little Hollywood sheen on the way.
We’re now just hours – not days – from posting our review of the first of the five major games launching on Friday, February 15. Metro Exodus will be the first out of the gate, going up at 7am Pacific time on Wednesday, February 13. Make sure to come back and read/watch it while it’s hot! Or, you know, whenever – it’s not going anywhere.
That’ll be followed by our review of Crackdown 3’s single-player campaign (because multiplayer isn’t yet available for review) at 5am Pacific time on Thursday, February 14. You can expect a multiplayer review and overall review shortly after launch.
Jump Force and Far Cry: New Dawn reviews will be up at
In 2017, following the tepid reception to Mass Effect: Andromeda, a report said that the Mass Effect franchise was put on ice. That may be the case, but now a pair of BioWare higher-ups have spoken about their eagerness to make more Mass Effect games … someday.
Mark Darrah, the executive producer Anthem and the Dragon Age series, told Polygon that BioWare is “definitely not done with Mass Effect.”
He said the Mass Effect universe is ripe with storytelling opportunities. “We could pull on the threads we put down with Andromeda; we could pull on threads from Mass Effect 3. There’s a lot of interesting space to be explored.”
BioWare general manager Casey Hudson is also quoted in the piece. He said the Mass Effect franchise is “very much alive.”
“I’m thinking all the time about things that I think will be great. It’s just a matter of getting back to it as soon as we can,” he said.
BioWare producer Michael Gamble weighed in on Twitter, saying BioWare is “of course” not finished making more Mass Effect games.
Sources told Kotaku in 2017 that BioWare is giving the Mass Effect franchise a rest instead of getting to work right away on another game to follow Andromeda. That title was the first that BioWare Montreal served as lead developer on; the developer previously acted as a support studio for other BioWare projects.
BioWare’s next big game is the multiplayer shooter Anthem, which launches later this month for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The studio is also working on a new Dragon Age game, and the first teaser can be seen here.
Would you like to see more Mass Effect games? Let us know in the comments below!
On top of Ubisoft’s ongoing PSN sale, a new selection of game deals are now available in the US PlayStation Store. Just as it has on Xbox this week, publisher Take-Two is offering deals on a range of games for PS4, PS3, and Vita–but they’ll only be discounted for a limited time.
If sports games are more up your alley, the latest entry in Take-Two’s annual wrestling series, WWE 2K19, is on sale for $19.80. Basketball fans can pick up NBA 2K19 for the same price ($19.80), while NBA 2K Playgrounds 2, a more arcadey take on the sport in the vein of NBA Jam, is down to $15.
You can see some other notable deals below; the full list can be found on the PlayStation Store. Much like the aforementioned Ubisoft sale, these deals will only be available until Friday, February 19, so you have until then to take advantage of the offers.
The first Happy Death Day was a slasher-tinged riff on Groundhog Day, the 1993 classic in which Bill Murray lives the same day over and over until he learns to be less of a dick. Like that movie, Happy Death Day never explained what caused the time loop in which Tree (Jessica Rothe) woke up every morning hungover in a stranger’s dorm room and was murdered every night by a killer in a baby mask. Was an omnipotent being trying to teach Tree a lesson? Did someone put a curse on her, like in the infamous second draft of Groundhog Day’s script? The movie provided no answers and few concrete hints.
As in the movie to which Happy Death Day owes its existence, the cause of the anomaly was less important than the journey, and the lessons learned along the way. Happy Death Day 2U throws that out the window and explains everything.
Luckily, though, it doesn’t feel like they scrambled to come up with some cockamamey explanation upon learning they’d get to do a sequel. Director Christopher B. Landon even told Insider back in 2017 that he already knew what was causing the time loop, long before a sequel was a sure thing. “It’s in my back pocket…if I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to make a sequel, the answer to that question is the premise of my sequel,” he said.
I won’t spoil what it is, but it doesn’t take long into HDD2U until we find out. And as Landon stated in the same interview, the time loop’s cause is heavily hinted at in the original–although it’s only obvious in retrospect.
So in return for taking out the mystery, what do we get in Happy Death Day 2U? The sequel is a much more potent blend of genres, mixing elements of slashers, comedy, and sci-fi, all with a tongue-in-cheek wit that tells the audience the movie knows exactly what it is. It expands on the cast of characters, introducing some new ones while adding new dimensions to the old ones–literally, the plot this time around involves parallel universes, as anyone who’s seen the trailers can surmise.
The movie shifts gears several times, from the opening, in which Carter’s (Israel Broussard) hapless roommate Ryan (Phi Vu) finds himself stuck in a death loop of his own, to the out of place narrative cul-de-sac of a comedic heist, to Tree’s trip to an alternate universe in which several key parts of her life are different. HDD2U spends a lopsided amount of time on that, and Tree’s conundrum ultimately makes up the majority of the film’s runtime, which winds up being disappointing after the movie’s efforts to flesh out its other characters early on.
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Happy Death Day 2U – Official Trailer #2
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Ryan–the douchebag roommate who started every morning of Tree’s original loop by referring to her as “fine vagine”–turns out to be an intriguing protagonist in his own right, before the focus shifts entirely back to Tree. And the movie introduces several other students (Sarah Yarkin and Suraj Sharma), as well as the ’80s movie-style villainous Dean Bronson (Steve Zissis), all of whom should have been fleshed out more.
Part of the reason they’re not may be that Jessica Rothe is so magnetic as protagonist Tree. The ranges of frustration, determination, joy, despair, and fatigue that she displays throughout both movies are justification enough for the series to keep going past number two. The rest of the characters are destined to just be bit players with a protagonist this likable, so it’s understandable why the sequel leans into that and keeps the focus mostly on her. The other standout this time around is Rachel Matthews’ alpha boss sorority sister Danielle, who winds up playing a fairly different version of the character in Tree’s alternate universe.
Ultimately, Happy Death Day 2U works despite the incongruity of its various parts. Jumping between horror, comedy, and sci-fi tones is a difficult balancing act, and HDD2U pulls it off, despite a few stumbles here and there. When it wants to be funny, it definitely is, while there are also legitimate scares that will have some viewers jumping out of their seats. And the sci-fi elements lead to an intriguing–while still hilarious–conclusion that I genuinely hope gets picked up in another Happy Death Day sequel.
The original Happy Death Day easily stands on its own as a complete, self-contained movie. Like Groundhog Day, it didn’t need to be explained. But if you’re going to expand on a movie like Happy Death Day, this is the way to do it.
The Good
The Bad
Jessica Rothe is an incredibly likable protagonist
Could have spent more time with side characters
Expands on the original without detracting from it
A couple of narrative cul-de-sacs, including an out of place heist section
Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, and for romantic movie fans, that means a chance to spend quality time with some great on-screen love stories. From Casablanca and Brief Encounter to When Harry Met Sally and Before Sunrise, the decades have delivered some incredible romantic movies that have made generations of viewers laugh, cry, and swoon.
But for every great movie love story, there are countless bad ones. It takes a very special combination of great acting, writing, and on-screen chemistry to deliver a convincing on-screen romance, and if even one of these elements fails, then the results can be laughable and embarrassing. Sometimes a movie tries to emulate a past love story but with totally the wrong actors, and others, unconvincing love stories are shoehorned into a film for no other reason than its writers and directors think they should be there.
And then there are those love stories that are doomed from the start, with ideas and characters that are so wrongly conceived or badly written that even the most charismatic actors can’t make them work. So for those those among you who have had enough of great movies filled with beautiful stars falling hopelessly in love, and who want to see how filmmakers can get love stories very, very wrong, here are the worst movie love stories of all time…
Far Cry: New Dawn sees Ubisoft’s open-world FPS series head into the post-apocalypse, where society has fallen after the events of Far Cry 5. One of the game’s new features are Expeditions, a series of self-contained missions that take place outside of the main setting of Hope County, and around various US-based locations.
Expeditions are snatch-and-grab affairs; your goal is to sneak into an enemy-occupied region, steal a package with valuable crafting materials, and get to an extraction point as the whole base comes chasing after you. One particular mission is dubbed “Government Plane Wreck”, and involves sneaking into an enemy-occupied base established in the body of an enormous military aircraft. You can see a narrated walkthrough of the mission in the video above.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a perfectly shady government plane without a few secrets, and it doesn’t take much for fans of stealth games to you to quickly realize that the government plane in question is the C-147B Paladin from the Splinter Cell series, which served as the mobile HQ for the special ops unit, Fourth Echelon.
But it goes further, of course. Throughout the plane, you can find conveniently-placed notes signed by “SF”, presumably Splinter Cell protagonist Sam Fisher, and they describe what happened to him after the events of Far Cry 5. Turns out, he was on his way to find his daughter, Sarah, after the apocalypse, and he ruminates over the fact that the world needs survivors in this day and age. The notes also make references to Fisher’s fellow Fourth Echelon agents Isaac Briggs, Anna Grímsdóttir, Andriy Kobin, and Charlie Cole.
The icing on the cake is that you can find and switch on a Shadownet terminal within the plane, which that opens up a secret wall compartment, letting you retrieve a full Sam Fisher getup, complete with the iconic trifocal goggles, for use with your New Dawn character. The flavor text for the outfit pokes fun at the relentless enemy barks that the Splinter Cell series was infamous for: “Fisher’s on the loose! I heard something, better not be Fisher. Fisher wouldn’t try his luck here, would he? That’d be f***in’ crazy! Fisher, Fisher, Fisher!”
The last time we saw Sam Fisher in his own game was 2013’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen references to the series in a recent Ubisoft game. He made a cameo in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, which stirred up talks of a new game, which Ubisoft previously hinted at in 2017. Does this mean we should expect more from the series in the near future? Are the Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and Far Cry universes all connected? Should we expect more Splinter Cell references in The Division 2?
You’ll be able to play through this Splinter Cell-themed Expedition when Far Cry: New Dawn launches on February 15, 2019 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
As part of Activision Blizzard’s earnings report, the company announced that a new Call of Duty game is coming out in 2019.
Activision Publishing boss Coddy Johnson offered some very high-level insight on the game, saying it will appeal to veterans and newcomers alike. He added that the game is a “great step forward” for the franchise, going on to say that it’s rooted in Call of Duty’s history, which suggests it will be a sequel to an existing sub-brand.
Also during the call, Activision management confirmed the new Call of Duty will feature some kind of campaign, which is notable because Black Ops 4 did away with a traditional campaign. Whether or not the new Call of Duty returns to the traditional campaign remains to be seen, however. Whatever the case, Activision also confirmed the new game will have a “huge expansive multiplayer world,” as well as “fun co-op gameplay.” More details are expected in the coming months.
Johnson said Activision has “high expectations” for the game, though it’s predicting that sales of the mysterious game will be lower than 2018’s Black Ops 4. The Black Ops franchise is historically the best-performing Call of Duty sub-brand, so a year-over-year downturn in sales is expected.
2019’s Call of Duty is rumored to be Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward. The series is on a three-year, three-studio development schedule, so 2019’s title is expected to come from Infinity Ward, the studio that created the Modern Warfare series.
As for Activision’s earnings report, the biggest news was Activision laying off around 800 employees, or about eight percent of its workforce. The job losses will affect teams at Blizzard, Activision, and King, in a number of non-game-development roles.
Activision Blizzard, publisher of Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Candy Crush, has announced significant layoffs. Employees were notified of the cuts today, with people at Activision, Blizzard, and mobile game company King affected.
Activision has also detailed its financial performance for the forth quarter of 2018 and, as part of this, noted that it “will increase development investment in its biggest franchises, enabling teams to accelerate the pace and quality of content for their communities and supporting a number of new product initiatives.” It also cited that the number of developers that will be working on “Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone and Diablo in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019.”
However, this greater investment, it says, will be funded by “de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business”–referring to the layoffs. In its financial call, COO Coddy Johnson said there would be an eight percent reduction in headcount at Activision Blizzard.
Company CEO Bobby Kotick, said that, while Activision Blizzard’s “financial results for 2018 were the best in our history,” the it “didn’t realize our full potential.” As a result, the company has made leadership changes designed to “enable us to achieve the many opportunities our industry affords us, especially with our powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct digital connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily talented employees.”
In a statement acquired by Kotaku, Blizzard president said “staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with [the company’s] current release slate,” which has necessitated the need to scale down. Although the layoffs are currently isolated to the US business, Brack indicated that other regional offices will also be evaluated in the future and could also be impacted, “subject to local requirements.”
Brack’s message to Activision Blizzard’s reportedly states “a comprehensive severance package,” in addition to job assistance and a profit-sharing bonus will be offered to those at Blizzard that are being affected by the layoffs.
Amidst these layoffs, Activision Blizzard has increased the dividends it is paying to its shareholders by nine percent from 2018. At the same time, it has authorized a two-year stock repurchase program. These measures are intended to soften potential impact on Activision Blizzard’s stock price, but paints a negative picture when placed alongside the layoffs.
Xbox One’s backwards compatible library continues to expand. Microsoft’s Major Nelson announced that another pair of Xbox 360 games are playable on the current-gen console beginning today, February 12: The King of Fighters XIII and Orcs Must Die.
Both of this week’s BC titles originally debuted in 2011. The King of Fighters XIII is one of the latest installments in SNK’s long-running fighting game series; at the time of its release, it was considered a return to form for the franchise, addressing many of the elements that made its predecessor, The King of Fighters XII, disappointing. GameSpot awarded it an 8.5/10 in our original King of Fighters XIII review.
Orcs Must Die, meanwhile, is a humorous tower defense/action game, in which players assume the role of a battle mage who must fortify their castle with spikes and all other manner of traps to defend it against an incoming army of orcs. While the game lacks any multiplayer options, we thought it was enjoyable and gave it a 7.5/10 in our original Orcs Must Die review.
If you still have a physical copy of either game laying around, you can simply insert the disc into your Xbox One to initiate a download and begin playing. If you’ve previously purchased either game digitally, they’ll automatically appear in the Ready to Download section of the My Games and Apps menu.
Microsoft has been steadily rolling out new BC games on a near weekly basis since the feature was first introduced. The previous batch included Lego Batman 2 and Port Royale 3. You can see all of the backwards compatible games to date in our full list of Xbox One BC games.
