Netflix Buys Sci-Fi Thriller Extinction from Universal

Netflix has acquired sci-fi thriller Extinction after Universal ditched it from its slate.

The Lizzy Caplan (Cloverfield) and Michael Pena (Ant-Man)-starring flick was due to hit theaters last month, but Universal pulled it from release without explanation last November. Netflix has subsequently confirmed to Variety that it has bought the rights to Extinction and plans to release it later this year.

The news comes in the wake of another ‘Netflix Film’ that already came pre-packaged from another studio, The Cloverfield Paradox, suggesting a strategy for the streaming service of, er, picking up the scraps.

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Destiny 2 Dev Discusses Nightfall Changes And More

Bungie has shared further details on the big changes coming to Destiny 2‘s Nightfall Strikes. One of the biggest changes is related to the countdown timer. Game director Christopher Barrett started off by saying Nightfall Strikes should allow players to determine their own level of challenge. If players want to zip through it as fast as possible, they should be able to; and players who want to play “slow and steady” should have that option available to them as well.

Senior design lead Tyson Green said in Bungie’s extended blog post that a lot of potential Strike players have passed over Nightfall Strikes because “it is both difficult and indexes performance solely on speed.” Under the new setup, there will still be a timer, but your score will “bleed” over time. “We are watching this closely–score decay can feel bad, but all else being equal, a team that clears faster than another team should score higher. Score decay achieves this in the most transparent fashion,” Bungie said.

When the clock hits 15 minutes, the new points you earn have their value decreased by 50 percent. At 18 minutes, you will no longer earn any points, and the experience turns into “a race to finish the run and post your score,” Bungie said.

“We want time to matter, but we also want to avoid some of the problems we saw with Prison of Elders, where a ‘high score’ might involve punishing respawning combatants (and yourself) for a few hours until the novelty wore off,” Bungie said. “A good Nightfall clear shouldn’t feel like a slog.”

Also new for Nightfall Strikes will be team-based scoring, with all participants contributing. “A team should be able to focus on what works best, not feeling put out by who stole whose kill,” Bungie said. “Scoring is primarily driven by kills and secondarily by orb generation. We want you to find what works best for clearing strikes instead of telling you which weapons to use, but we want coordinated use of Supers and other team support mechanics to contribute to high scores. We’re interested in restoring special point awards based on medals, but we want your input to understand the basic meta first.”

Regarding the new Nightfall Strike scoring changes, Bungie said it had a number of design goals in mind for what it wanted to achieve. These include:

  • Reward you for engaging and defeating enemies instead of running past them.
  • Avoid over-emphasizing specific mechanics like precision kills that highlight certain areas of the sandbox (and/or punish other areas), so that players are the ones who determine the most effective Meta.
  • Reward you for taking on greater challenges up to the limits of your own capabilities.
  • Reward you for doing the above quickly and over the course of a short run versus long slogs over several hours.

Additionally, there will be new Nightfall modifiers for Prestige mode.

“The current Nightfall climate encourages play that pushes players through the encounters as fast as possible, focusing on extending bonus timers, and skipping encounters unless they are required, which was more stressful than fun,” designer John Favaro said. “With Nightfall strike scoring, we were looking to give players a little more control, allowing them to modify their experiences to provide them the challenge they want and incentivize more methodical progression through the activities. People like big numbers, and the best way to get big numbers is to kill everything. We’ve been listening to the community’s feedback, and this is our first step in making a few improvements. We’re hoping you’ll put some time in and let us know how you feel.”

The new modifiers will add a multiplier to your score in Prestige mode, but you can still lose points through things like the previously discussed score bleed. Additionally, the timer reduces your multiplier as time goes along, to encourage faster play. These are the modifiers that Bungie plans to introduce with the new Nightfall Strike scoring:

  • Void/Solar/Arc Singe – currently provides a +25% increase to player and enemy damage of the corresponding element.
  • Extinguish – fireteam wipes return the team to orbit
  • Power modifier – voluntarily decrease your power to gain a score bonus.

“If you still enjoy the thrill of racing through quickly, you will be rewarded with a higher score,” Bungie said. “If you prefer to go in solo and take your time, you might lose some points, but will still finish the activity and collect a reward. You can complete the normal Nightfall and get a score, or you can take on the Prestige Nightfall and ratchet up your score with some modifiers.”

Go to Bungie’s website to see a full rundown of what’s changing in Destiny 2 and more. The Nightfall Strike changes are scheduled to go live in an update coming on February 27.

In other Destiny 2 news, the game’s Valentine’s Day event, Crimson Days, is scheduled to start on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 13. Among other things, it introduces a 2v2 Crucible gametype where staying close to your teammate causes your abilities to recharge faster. You can learn more about Crimson Days here in GameSpot’s previous coverage.

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Dark Knight’s Goyer Drops Out of Directing He-Man Movie

Dark Knight and Batman v Superman scribe David Goyer will no longer be directing the Masters of the Universe reboot for Sony.

In December it was reported that Goyer was in talks to direct the film, but THR has put the rumors to rest, stating scheduling conflicts were the cause of the exit. However, Goyer will still serve as writer and executive producer on the reboot, based on the popuar line of ’80s toys from Mattel and the subsequent cartoon series and Dolph Lundgren film. He is the latest in a short line of directors to drop out of the gig, following McG, who left the project earlier last year, and Jon M. Chu.

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New Overwatch Skins And Map Are Out In New Update; Here Are The Patch Notes

A new Overwatch event is now underway, as the latest update for the game has kicked off the Year of the Dog. This is the new iteration of the Lunar New Year event that was held last year, and it introduces a bunch of new content across all platforms: PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

As is often the case for many players, the most exciting addition will be new skins. There are a total of six new skins, including those for Genji, Mercy, Zarya, and Pharah. There are also more than 50 new seasonal items in all. You can see all the new Year of the Dog Legendary skins (and more) in our gallery. The event runs from now through March 5.

Also new is a map set in Thailand called Ayutthaya. This is the first Overwatch map made specifically for Capture the Flag, which has undergone some changes as part of its return in this update. Flags are now picked up immediately but are dropped when using certain abilities (such as Winston’s leap). Additionally, ties are no longer possible since matches will go to sudden death, if necessary. During this phase, teams flags are positioned closer to the center of the map so that flag carriers won’t have to run as far to score.

In addition to the standard CTF mode, a new competitive season centered around CTF is being launched. This will run for four weeks, and those who make it into the top 500 will receive a special spray and icon.

One other change of note in this update is a fan-requested feature. Before starting a match, you’ll now be able to easily change between any of the skins you own for a given character. This is done from the Assemble Your Team screen and can’t be accessed mid-match, but it’s still a welcome addition, particularly as players continue to amass increasingly large collections of skins.

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Fortnite Hits 3.4 Million Concurrent Users On Same Weekend Of Server Outages

Fortnite, the stylized shooter from Gears of War creator Epic Games, has reached a new player milestone. Over the weekend, on Super Bowl Sunday, the game hit a new record of 3.4 million concurrent players, Epic announced in a blog post this week.

By comparison, that’s ahead of the 3 million peak concurrent players that PUBG reached in January. The big difference, however, is that Fortnite’s concurrent figure almost certainly covers all platforms–PS4, Xbox One, and PC–while PUBG’s was for PC alone.

Still, 3.4 million concurrent users is a huge number and it speaks to the ongoing popularity of Epic’s game. The developer did not provide a breakdown of how that figure is divided between the paid Fortnite base game and the free-to-play Battle Royale mode, but it can be safely assumed that Battle Royale has the bulk of the players.

Fortnite’s newest player milestone is all the more notable when you consider that the game ran into some serious and significant issues recently. In a frank blog post, Epic talked about how the “extreme” server load led to six different incidents on Saturday and Sunday, which in some instances included “total service disruptions” for the game.

Epic’s blog post offers a postmortem on the server issues that cropped up alongside the new player record. It goes deep into detail on the systems that power the game and what went wrong, along with a rundown of the steps Epic is taking to ensure server stability in the future. You can read that blog post here.

“Problems that affect service availability are our primary focus above all else right now,” Epic said. “We want you all to know we take these outages very seriously, conducting in-depth post-mortems on each incident to identify the root cause and decide on the best plan of action. The online team has been working diligently over the past month to keep up with the demand created by the rapid week-over-week growth of our user base.

“While we cannot promise there won’t be future outages as our services reach new peaks, we hope to live by this great quote from Futurama, ‘When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

Epic sometimes brings down Fortnite’s servers intentionally, as it did this week in advance of the game’s next big update, which is out now. Update 2.4.2’s biggest feature is a new weapon, the Crossbow. This was teased as a silent weapon recently in-game, and it’s not only stealthy, but it also has another perk: It fires arrows, which are a new type of ammo that are unlimited in supply. Crossbows can be found as ground loot or in chests, with Rare and Epic versions also available. You can see a Valentine’s-themed version of the weapon, as well as upcoming Valentine’s skins, our gallery of images here.

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PS4’s Shadow Of The Colossus: Watch Us Play New Game Plus

This week marked the release of Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus remake, bringing Team Ico’s PS2 masterpiece to a whole new generation of players. Despite originally launching 13 years ago, the game remains one of the most stunning achievements the industry has ever seen due to its simple, affecting story, beautiful soundtrack, and hauntingly vast world, and it looks even more breathtaking on PS4 thanks to the care Bluepoint took in modernizing the title for the current-gen hardware.

Shadow of the Colossus places players in the role of Wander, a young man who journeys into the Forbidden Lands in search of a way to bring his beloved back to life. He’s instructed by an omnipresent being known as Dormin to travel across the sprawling, desolate landscape and hunt down the 16 colossi that make their home there. Each colossus is a towering puzzle unto itself, and players must figure out how to scale the monolithic beings and spot their weak points in order to bring the giants down.

Despite the vast scope of the game, Shadow of the Colossus is a fairly brief adventure, running from eight to 10 hours on your first playthrough. Fortunately, the title also features a New Game Plus mode for those who want to continue adventuring in the Forbidden Lands. We checked out New Game Plus in a recent livestream, which you can watch above. In the video, we surf atop our horse as it gallops across the vast expanse of the Forbidden Lands and hunt down some of our favorite colossi in the game.

Shadow of the Colossus is available exclusively for PS4. You can learn more about the game and how it holds up in our Shadow of the Colossus review. For more gameplay footage of Shadow of the Colossus, check out our video of the game’s first five colossi. We also took a look at all of the new filters you can use in Shadow of the Colossus and explain just why the game remains a masterpiece, even 13 years after it first released.