My Hero Academia fans won’t have to wait much longer for the series to return, as Funimation announced that My Hero Academia Season 4 will stream on October 12.
Funimation tweeted the announcement, with a picture of Class 1-A’s Izuku “Deku” Midoriya and Mirio “Lemillion” Togata against a red background. The tweet confirms My Hero Academia Season 4 will air on Funimation and Hulu across the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia. FunimationNow will also SimulDub on the same day and date.
Funimation published a dubbed trailer for My Hero Academia Season 4 in July. In the trailer, below, Deku wrestles with the gravity of All Might’s retirement and the impending threat led by a new villain named Overhaul. It seems the heroes in Class 1-A are on a quest to save a little girl with a horn, with Deku striving to be the best and reach the number one spot.
The anime’s first film, My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, screened in August 2018 after premiering at Anime Expo in July 2018. In our review, we said, “While My Hero Academia: Two Heroes may not hit ‘Plus Ultra’ levels of excitement, and it never matches the highest moments of the show, if you’re looking for a fun extra dose of My Hero, Two Heroes is certain to satisfy that craving.” A second film, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, is scheduled to release December 20 in Japan.
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Control is one of the more unique games we’ve seen–there really isn’t anything else like it. Sure, its blend of superhero-like action and Metroidvania-style exploration reminds us of the Infamous series and Batman: Arkham Asylum (both of which you should play), but it’s the supernatural surrealism that makes Control so unique and alluring.
That combination of “What am I seeing?” and “Can I trust what I’m seeing?” is so rarely done with the confidence and mastery that we see in Control. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve already scoured the internet for new experiences that scratch that same itch. That’s why we put together this list of games, movies, shows, books, and more that you should check out after playing Control.
We’re always on the hunt for surreal experiences like Control, so we’ll come back to update this article if anything else catches our eyes. For now, we hope you enjoy our suggestions–feel free to drop your own recommendations in the comments below!
GameSpot’s reviewer certainly thought so: Richard Wakeling awarded it a 9/10 in our PES 2020 review, and you can read a snippet of that below. You can also take a look at a roundup of the game’s critical reception, though if you prefer, you can head on over to GameSpot sister site Metacritic to get the full picture.
Game: PES 2020
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Developer / Publisher: Konami
Release date: Out now
Price: $60 / £45 / AU $85
GameSpot — 9/10
“The licensing issue revolving around PES will likely never going go away, and people are still going to download option files to get all of the official kits and badges anyway. Like its predecessors, eFootball PES 2020 continues to do its talking on the pitch, refining and improving on last year’s game to present what might be the greatest football game ever made. Sure, it’s disappointing that you still can’t play as Borussia Dortmund and the majority of the Bundesliga and a few other leagues, and its single-player offering is almost identical to what was included three years ago. But all of this effortlessly drifts to the back of your mind once you step between those white lines and simply start playing the beautiful game.” — Richard Wakeling [Full review]
GamesRadar+ — 4/5
“For the most part, eFootball PES 2020 offers up a faithful replication of the beautiful game. It’s easily the most realistic PES to date, with various visual tweaks and gameplay enhancements proving key additions. It’s also a more immersive game than last year, particularly in terms of the new TV-style camera and growing number of major licenses, boosting its sense of legitimacy both on and off the pitch. The lack of inventiveness applied to some modes–such as the ever-popular myClub–is a shame, and even Master League isn’t yet the finished package. But when the quality of the football is this good, it’s easy to forgive a few own goals.” — Fraser Gilbert [Full review]
Game Informer — 8.0/10
“PES 2020’s small details create moments that bring into focus the fine margins that determine the results of many soccer games. When compared to the game’s similarities to last year it seems like minutia, but these are the things that elevate it from previous efforts and make PES 2020 look and feel correct. It’s a better game, even if it’s not evolved in every way. It’s like when a manager expresses how pleased they are of the team after a draw: You know they wanted the outright win, but they are also satisfied with the team’s overall performance. PES 2020 can be a familiar experience, but that shouldn’t blind you to its finer moments.” — Matthew Kato [Full review]
Trusted Reviews — 4/5
“It’s undoubtedly the definitive football sim of 2020. PES 2020 takes what you love about the series and makes it more satisfying and fun, without sacrificing its simulation pedigree. The lack of captivating online and offline game modes hold it back, however.” — Adam Speight [Full review]
Metro UK
“Issues aside, this is another hugely exciting entry to the series. Minor surgery is needed in some areas and sure, you need an overhaul in others but you have to hope Konami will be going all-guns-blazing into the next-gen console era because the on-pitch quality is so impressive. For matchdays, it is leagues above FIFA.” — Jay Jaffa [Full review]
Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s release date of November 15 is fast approaching, with new information about the Nintendo Switch games coming all the time. Now, we’ve got our first glimpse of a new Pokemon who looks a little familiar.
The official Pokemon website currently features a fun, intentional glitch whereby an unknown creature moves around the screen, evading your mouse. Once you manage to catch it, you’re taken to a Pokedex listing for the monster, but many details, including the image, name, and parts of the description, are obscured.
What we do know is that the creature is a Fighting type who weighs 257.9 lbs. It possesses the Steadfast ability, and its description reads: “Only [BLANK] that have survived many battles can attain this [BLANK]. When this Pokemon’s [BLANK] [BLANK]ers, it will retire from combat.”
While the creature’s glitchy appearance has drawn comparisons to Pokemon Red and Blue‘s MissingNo bug, some fans have speculated the unknown creature is actually an evolved form of Farfetch’d. Others say it could be a successor to Marowak. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
My SPECULATION:
Only Farfetch’d that have survived many battles can attain this evolution. When this Pokémon’s stick/leek shatters, it will retire from combat.
The image appears to be something holding up a sword cane. The green and white makes me think a leek. pic.twitter.com/wFRUjMg150
All September long, IGN is highlighting the best TV coming your way in the 2019-2020 season. Today we’re featuring Netflix’s new superhero drama Raising Dion, executive produced by Michael B. Jordan, and based on the comic and short film adaptation by Dennis Liu. According to Netflix, Raising Dion “follows the story of a woman named Nicole (Alisha Wainwright), who raises her son Dion (newcomer Ja’Siah Young) after the death of her husband, Mark (Michael B. Jordan). The normal dramas of raising a son as a single mom are amplified when Dion starts to manifest several mysterious, superhero-like abilities. Nicole must now keep her son’s gifts secret with the help of Mark’s best friend Pat (Jason Ritter), and protect Dion from antagonists out to exploit him, while figuring out the origin of his abilities.” Ahead of the show’s October 4 premiere date, we spoke to showrunner Carol Barbee and star Alisha Wainwright to discover how they brought this new twist on a superhero origin story to life.
We all know about the video game movie curse, but what about the anime curse?
Live-action and anime have rarely gone together well, but still, just about every major Hollywood studio is trying to jump in on anime with live-action remakes these days.
Would you have ever thought that an Alita movie would make $400 million at the box office? Imagine what a good Naruto or Attack on Titan movie could do. Or imagine how much attention a Cowboy Bebop or Sword Art Online remake could bring for a company like Netflix. Those are just four of the live-action anime remakes that are reportedly in the works at the moment. Some are further along than others in their development — and some may be stuck in development hell for that matter — but with Tokyo Ghoul S about to get a theatrical release, we figured it was a good time to check up on the status of them all…
October is right around the corner, and the focus will be on the world of horror movies. And one such film, which arrives on October 25, is called Countdown.
The movie follows a nurse who downloads an app that tells you when you are going to die, only to find out she has three days to live. With others users dying mysteriously, she needs to figure out how to stop her impending doom. Check out the trailer above.
Why didn’t she read the user agreement? There are plenty of apps on the various mobile stores that do this very thing, except it’s a random algorithm and not a real prediction. Interestingly enough, this movie takes that simple premise down a dark path, and that first trailer gives the film a thriller feel while introducing some hideous beast with long, black fingers.
The horror movie stars Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Bateman, and Tichina Arnold, and is directed and written by Justin Dec. This is Dec’s first feature-length film.
Borderlands 3 follows in its predecessors’ footsteps by offering a nearly endless supply of guns to collect. The game lets you cash in special credits distributed from outside the game for loot, and the store Spencer’s Gifts is running a promotion that will let you bank some credits early.
From September 13-23, you can stop by a Spencer’s and pick up a free scratch-off card with a purchase. That scratch card will entitle you to 1500 VIP Diamond Club points, which you can use to claim in-game loot. To use the code you’ll need to have registered as a Vault Insider through the official site.
1500 points is enough to get 10 Gold Keys, which can be traded for random guns. Or you can save those points toward more expensive items like specific specialty weapons (4000 credits), or cosmetics like new skins and character heads (3000-4000 credits). Points won’t expire as long as the VIP program exists, so you can hold onto them for as long as it takes to find something you want.
“If you’ve never been a fan of the franchise, it’s unlikely Borderlands 3 does enough things differently to change your mind, as the game best excels at continuing what the series has always done: deliver a humorous tall tale of misfits looting and shooting their way to heroism,” wrote Jordan Ramee.
With its new commentary team and updated presentation package, NHL 20 represents the franchise’s biggest shakeup in years–and they’re mostly positive changes. Combined with excellent controls, fluid gameplay, numerous fun and engaging different modes to play, a fine attention to detail and appreciation for hockey culture, NHL 20 is a step forward that is generally excellent.
Big Changes
The biggest change for NHL 20 is its broadcast package. It is almost completely different this year, and the changes–which span commentary, UI, and graphics–are mostly positive but not always for the better. Commentators Mike “Doc” Emerick and Eddie Olczyk are out, while nearly the entirety of the NBC Sports Network license package, including live-action sequences, are gone, too. It’s a jarring change, as Emerick and Olczyk have been the voice of EA’s NHL games since NHL 15.
The new commentators are Canadian sports radio personality James Cybulski and former player and current rinkside analyst Ray Ferarro. They do a mostly adept job at calling plays with style, flair, and personality, and their back-and-forth banter succeeds at capturing the essence of hockey culture with hockey IQ and knack. Some commentary lines are repeated too often, however, and Cybulski in particular sounds at times like he is hamming it up and acting like every game is Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
Outside of the new commentary team, NHL 20’s updated broadcast presentation includes more colorful and dynamic graphics that display important information in more eye-catching ways. In addition to brighter colors and sharper fonts, NHL 20 introduces more dramatic, slow-motion highlights of goal scores, as well as Overwatch-style “Play of the Period” and “Play of the Game” highlights. These moments do a good job at breaking down key plays, and, with their unique angles and close-ups, provide nice moments to sit back and revel in your achievements.
Part of this updated broadcast package is a new location for the score clock, which is the only major misstep. It’s now at the bottom of the screen compared to the top-left in last year’s game–and it cannot be moved in the Settings. The new score clock location opens up more space on the screen for action, but I found it positively difficult to quickly and easily see the important information like time left in the game, penalty minutes, and other datapoints while simultaneously keeping my eyes on the action. It’s a baffling choice, especially considering many of NHL 20’s various other modes keep the score clock where it was. This inconsistency worsens the experience, as you have to train your eyes in multiple ways depending on which mode you’re playing.
Authentic Hockey
NHL 20 succeeds the most with excellent, tight controls that give you the freedom to execute basically any hockey move you can think of. There are also changes to animations and skating mechanics that make the game appear more lifelike. Building off what was already the franchise’s best foot forward with NHL 19, this year’s entry feels faster and more fluid with better animations that more realistically depict important transitional moments like catching a pass and getting intro stride at a quicker pace. Overall, the on-ice gameplay feels faster and more true to the real NHL experience.
There are new shot animations as well, which are contextual in nature and better represent what a shot might look like from a particular part of the ice and depending on angles, power, speed, specific player attributes, and more. In NHL 19, your player would oftentimes still complete the shot animation even if the puck never got to them, which looked very strange, but that rarely happens this year. NHL 20 also introduces “Signature Shots” for a number of the league’s best players; one of these is P.K. Subban’s booming slapshot and Alex Ovechkin’s electric one-timer. It’s a treat to see player-specific animations in NHL 20, and it’s yet another part of the way NHL 20 faithfully represents the real NHL experience. Additionally, goalie AI appears to be smarter this year, with netminders giving up fewer soft rebounds and making generally smarter decisions during important scenarios.
NHL 20’s in-game attention to detail and careful consideration of the sport is astounding. Players look and react as you’d expect them to on a TV broadcast, down to the way players subtly peek back toward their teammates during a face-off to the sharp crackle of skates gliding over outdoor pond ice. On the outdoor rinks, the crimson red glow of sunset over the pond is something to behold. On the ice, the physics system is so realistically presented that I found myself wincing after big open-ice hits.
Unfortunately, NHL 20 doesn’t do much in the area of improving player models. In fact, the character models for players, referees, and the crowd appear largely unchanged from last year. When the replay camera zooms in on fans on the glass, you might be wondering what kind of time vacuum the NHL series exists in for people to never age or look at all different from year to year.
Dirty Dangles
The NHL series is known for its tight, precise controls, and this level of excellence continues with NHL 20. No matter what control setup you’re using, the controls allow for a complete command of your player with astounding simplicity and a lot of depth at the same time. Puck possession and clever play-making are paramount in NHL 20, and the controls never fail to provide you with many different options to keep the puck, get around defenders, make the extra pass, and light the lamp. You have the freedom to play with as much creativity as you want. The game also features a slick and smart on-ice trainer that reacts to how you’re playing and provides dynamic feedback that, for the most part, helps you improve your game.
There is such a level of fine precision with the controls that you can determine the specific angle of a poke-check or toe-drag the puck at just the right time to open space up to make a shot on goal. In essence, the controller’s analog sticks feel like an extension of your on-ice stick. The excellent baseline controls stand out even more once you move on to trying out more more advanced techniques. It takes time and practice to learn the dirtiest dangles the game has to offer, but it’s deeply rewarding to perform spins and dekes that together combine to give you ample opportunities to play with style and pizzazz.
In addition to the standard hockey simulation, NHL 20 has an abundance of arcade-style modes. The pond hockey mode, Ones–which sees three players on a small, outdoor rink competing against each other–introduces four new locations, including a rink set on a secluded farm and another inspired by the Rideau Canal in Canada. These new locations, in addition to weather effects like snow coming down during games, make Ones an even more authentic and holistically representative depiction of the outdoor hockey experience.
Ones is lots of fun with its stripped-down, back-to-basics recreation of outdoor hockey with fast-paced play and lots of goals. Outside of the new locations, the biggest change for Ones is the introduction of offline play for couch co-op, and this is a very welcome addition after last year’s game left it out in a head-scratching move.
The Threes mode, meanwhile, remains NHL’s flashiest and wackiest mode with completely unhinged commentary, mascots lacing it up, lots of goals, and big hits. It’s the mode I found myself coming back to the most due in part to its quick games relative to the standard simulation mode and constant progression rewards in every game played.
The social hub, World of Chel, returns with NHL 20 with some noteworthy updates. The biggest introduction is the “Eliminator” mode, which is NHL’s spin on battle royale. You can go it alone in Ones or team up with two others in Threes to try to survive four consecutive rounds in a bracket to win the tournament. It’s a thrilling, incredibly challenging, high-stakes challenge that, like the battle royale games it’s inspired by, encourage you to keep coming back and improve your skills.
There is a robust character-creator and you earn XP for everything you do across all of World of Chel’s modes. It’s rewarding to invest in your character and know that, whatever mode in World of Chel you’re playing, you’re working towards growing your character with meaningful advancements like new player traits, in addition to nice extras like cosmetic gear. New for World of Chel with NHL 20 are weekly challenges that track your performance and reward you with cosmetics around a particular theme. For example, the launch-week theme is NHL 94, so you can earn all kinds of themed cosmetics like jerseys and other gear. I anticipate coming back regularly.
Elsewhere in NHL 20, the career-minded Be A Pro remains a satisfying and rewarding ride to take as you start your character from the ground floor and build them into a superstar, though there are no noteworthy updates to speak of this year. Franchise, meanwhile, features a new system that gives you multiple team coaches who have influence on the direction of your team today and in the future. The system, which also includes a light conversation mechanic where you can gauge the morale and interest of your coaches, adds a further level of strategy to the already robust Franchise mode that helps you feel like you’re really the GM of a pro team. Franchise also introduces a trade-finder system that makes it less laborious to find and make trades.
Ultimate Team returns as well, and its noteworthy addition is the introduction of Squad Battles. These function the same way they do in Madden and FIFA where you go up against HUT squads created by other players or, after launch, sports stars and celebrities. Hockey Ultimate Team is all about grinding to collect new cards, and it remains a fun experience to build a fantasy team comprised of legends and current stars alike, and compete against others.
NHL 20 successfully captures the ice hockey experience from the ponds to big games under the bright lights, with a fine attention to detail and simple yet deep controls that are best-in-class. Once you get over the shock of Eddie and Doc being out of the game, the new commentary team do an adept job of providing informative and playful banter, while the game’s multitude of varied modes each have their own distinct feel and appeal that go a long way to make NHL 20 an excellent representation of hockey culture across the board.
