Author: Trafficblast

Not that it’s much of a surprise, but the signs are pointing to a successful launch for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate when it launches in early December.

Nintendo has announced that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best “pre-selling” Super Smash Bros. game of all time, and it’s also the best “pre-selling” Nintendo Switch game ever. Pre-order figures may not be as important or reliable as they once were, but it remains a notable achievement, and one that likely signals a strong performance for the upcoming title.

High pre-order figures may or may not be indicative of future performance, but whatever the case, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has big shoes to fill. 2014’s Super Smash Bros. for Wii U sold 5.35 million copies, while Super Smash Bros. for 3DS told 9.35 million copies. The Wii Smash Bros. game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, sold 13.29 million copies. It is a very popular franchise.

The best-selling Nintendo Switch game is Super Mario Odyssey, which sold 12.17 million copies, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (11.71 million) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (10.28 million) following closely behind, according to Nintendo’s publicly disclosed sales data. With Nintendo announcing that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has set a new pre-selling record, it will be interesting to see how the game fares commercially relative to the best-selling Switch games.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has leaked ahead of launch, so be careful out there on the internet if you’re wary of encountering spoilers.

The original Mary Poppins will be voicing a character in the upcoming Aquaman film. Julie Andrews will voice the undersea creature Karathen, an instrumental figure in the title character’s quest to unite the undersea and surface worlds.

“We wanted the Karathen to have the voice of a classic British actress, albeit somewhat digitally altered,” producer Peter Safran told EW. “And when we found out Julie was interested and available and excited to do it, casting her was a no-brainer.”

Coincidentally, Aquaman is already prepared for a head-to-head box office competition with Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the role that Andrews made famous. Emily Blunt is starring in this new interpretation, and Andrews declined to appear in cameo. She has reportedly stated that she didn’t want to distract from Blunt’s interpretation of the character.

Andrews hasn’t appeared on the big screen for years, but has starred in the Netflix series Julie’s Greenroom and has voiced characters in movies like Shrek Forever After and Despicable Me 3.

Mary Poppins Returns opens on December 18. Aquaman will follow on December 21, though Amazon Prime members will have access to advanced screenings on December 15. For more on Aquaman, check out the dozens of things we learned from its director.

Wreck-It Ralph has now starred in two title roles all about hopping between different video game and internet properties, and some of that has made the transition into the real world. Fortnite streamers have spotted the character making a brief cameo in concert with the release of his second movie.

Fortnite streamer MozzzyyTwitch spotted Ralph on a movie screen in Risky Reels. The cameo is short–just Ralph walking on screen, waving, and walking away–but it has sparked speculation that something bigger may be in the cards. It could just be an Easter egg to promote the release of the new movie, of course, especially given that the appearance is on a movie screen.

Ralph is a natural fit for a video game cameo, based on the premise for the character. In the first movie Ralph is a dissatisfied classic arcade game villain who wants to be a hero and hops into different games looking for an opportunity to prove himself. In the new sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, he and his newfound buddy Vanellope go on a trip to the world wide web. As an online-only video game, Fortnite checks both boxes. Plus Risky Reels has been regularly used for quirky displays.

This wouldn’t be the first time Fortnite has included a popular character from a big-budget movie. Upon the release of Avengers: Infinity War the game temporarily added the film’s villain, Thanos, as a playable character. Predictably he was a little too powerful, and got nerfed almost immediately.

Hearthstone‘s next expansion, Rastakhan’s Rumble, is storming into the arena on December 4. Blizzard is slowly showing off the full set of cards, and once again GameSpot has its own to reveal. This time, thanks to the synergy between them, we have not one but two new Priest cards to show.

The first is Sand Drudge, a nasty troll who summons zombies with Taunt each and every time you cast a spell. The Priest class already has a number of cheap spells, as well as methods of generating more. Cards like Lyra the Sunshard and Radiant Elemental are already used to make long chains of spells, and Sand Drudge will add a defensive element to the combo. While a row of 1/1 Zombies are weak to area-of-effect removal, the card creates one more obstacle before your opponent can take down your other minions.

But that’s not all. Blizzard is also adding Regenerate, a new 0-Mana spell card that restores 3 Health. It’s a simple effect with a lot of versatility, from activating your Northshire Cleric, to pairing with Prophet Velen, to serving as a cheap offensive option with Auchenai Soulpriest. Naturally it also pairs well with Sand Drudge, letting you one-two combo a healing effect while also protecting yourself behind a Taunt.

GameSpot spoke with Dean Ayala and Liv Breeden of the final and initial design teams for more insights on the ideas that sparked the two new Priest cards. In this case, Sand Drudge came from augmenting an existing Priest arch-type, which stacks the deck with lots of spells.

“It lets you cast a bunch of spells and have your engine for that hide behind a wall of Taunts,” Breeden said. “They’re not particularly aggressive or powerful but they do get in the way.”

Since it fits so comfortably into Priest, the card was nearly ready-made from the start. Ayala noted that it may have once been a 3/2, but otherwise its design was essentially finished from the early design phase. He said the team likes to make cards that have a tension inherent in their decision-making.

“Sometimes you don’t really want to play Sorcerer’s Apprentice on [turn] two because you maybe you have a bunch of spells and you want to wait until you can get a huge effect from it,” he said. “Whereas Sand Drudge, maybe you use it on turn three because you have a read on your opponent and they’re not going to be able to get rid of it. Or maybe you have a bunch of spells in hand and you want to wait until turn six or seven. It plays a lot like Lyra does in that you don’t just want to play it blank but if you do it’s a risk you might take.”

Meanwhile, Breeden noted, it gives your opponent more to do. “It’s cool to have a bunch of minions on the board because if you’re playing a heavy spell Priest, your opponent doesn’t have a lot to interact with,” she said. “This gives your opponent something to do besides hit you in the face. It creates interesting choices. Do you go for the Sand Drudge, do you go after zombies, do you ignore that and go face?”

And while the dream of any card like Sand Drudge is to become nigh-invincible, the likelihood is more that it will force your opponent to make sub-optimal plays. The zombies are vulnerable enough that they can be removed with most area-of-effect spells, but as Ayala noted, that means your opponent had to spend AOE on essentially dealing with a single card.

Meanwhile Regenerate adds a totally different kind of threat. Mana is one of the sharpest tools Hearthstone’s designers have to balance a card, and 0-Mana cards remove that factor entirely. The only price is the opportunity cost of including it in your deck over another card. While Ayala says he likes the simplicity, it can make for tricky balancing.

“Anytime you’re doing something for 0 Mana you’re asking for trouble, because Mana is the restriction that you have,” he said. “It’s complicated because you have to think of all the different ways you can use a 0-Mana card and make sure that it’s so absurdly broken that it’s the only deck anyone plays.

“We knew we wanted to have a card that said restore X health, we knew we didn’t want that number to be large, and I think when you have something that restores three or four [health] having it at 1 Mana cost just doesn’t align with what the power level should be. It was just a matter of figuring out if there was any way to use this card that was so aggressive that it would restrict what else we could do.”

And both cards fit into the flavor of Rastakhan’s Rumble, albeit in different and sometimes counter-intuitive ways. Regenerate makes sense as a card in the troll-themed expansion, Breeden says, because trolls in World of Warcraft are known for growing back limbs. The creepy zombie mechanic may seem odd for an expansion loosely themed around professional wrestling, but Breeden made the case for it as well.

“We wanted the teams to feel unique and special,” she said. “The Warriors are very much about smashing and trashing, going to the brawl. But the zombies are a little bit spooky. Not every wrestler is straightforward, some of them are the undead sort of vibe. They have weird stories, right? We wanted to play into different stories for different teams.”

These are just two of the 135 new cards being added in Rastakhan’s Rumble, so check out our gallery of all the cards revealed so far. Pre-purchases are now on sale in two tiers: $20 for 17 packs and a special card back, or $50 for 50 packs, the card back, and the Rastakhan Shaman skin.