This is an advance review out of the Toronto International Film Festival.
It would be easy to dismiss director Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner as a film that’s too late to the conversation. After all, a politician losing his career for cheating on his wife may seem too small to deserve a movie now when contemporary politicians get away with far bigger misdeeds. But while Reitman’s well-acted film does manage to find relevance in its scrutiny of politicians and the press who cover them, it’s just too indecisive to say anything deeply important about either camp.
Hugh Jackman plays a different kind of great showman here, real life US politician Gary Hart who, after coming in second for the Democratic primaries in 1984, became the obvious front runner to win the presidency in 1988. The title card notes that a lot can happen in the three weeks leading up to the election, and we subsequently follow the downfall of a man who not only seemed like the sure winner, but the absolute best candidate to lead a nation. Jackman captures Gary Hart’s quick wit and charisma, convincing one there was never any doubt of him winning. During his campaign tour, we see Hart expertly throwing axes, calming a journalist scared of turbulence, and sharing his radical viewpoints (for the time). He seems like the perfect man, and Jackman sells it with a winning smile. Yet behind the smile hides a very private man. “It’s none of their business”, Hart says repeatedly throughout the film when grilled about his personal life, and it encapsulates the film’s approach to such a guarded character. Some will likely leave The Front Runner not knowing anything more about Gary Hart the person than they did before, and that’s probably how he would have wanted it.
After spending time with NHL 19, exploring its different modes and customization options, I think it might be my favorite hockey game. Scratch that — I think NHL 19 is one of my favorite sports games, period. It uses the same animation engine as Madden and FIFA, has excellent presentation and atmosphere, and the players look like who they’re supposed to look like.
Part of NHL 19’s appeal is its accessibility. You don’t need to keep up with every iteration of the series to immediately jump in and have a good time. One of the first things it asks you to do is choose a play style based on your personal skill level. Are you a complete EA NHL rookie? NHL 19’s got your back with the option to play with a simplified rule set and NHL ‘94 controls. A seasoned vet looking to show off your puck-handling skills? The skill stick option lets you flex your muscles on the ice. Hybrid controls meet somewhere in the middle. It’s awesome how NHL 19 can be played by anyone at any skill level.
The next Shadowverse set – Omen of the Ten – is launching at the end of September and I’m hugely excited. Why? Because the overall theme is quite dark and twisted, and it feels like developer Cygames is having heaps of fun with the gameplay concepts that come along with it.
Omen of the Ten, you see, refers to ten characters – each a legendary card in the set – each of which has a unique theme, often tied to their Omen number. The Omen of One, Mjerrabaine, for instance, is Shadowverse’s first card to promote singleton decks – i.e. decks with only one copy of each card (aside from Mjerrabaine himself in this case). Valnareik, Omen of Lust – the seventh Omen and a Bloodcraft legendary – has an ability that’s activated if your leader has taken damage at least seven times during the match. The ninth Omen, meanwhile, is Raio, Omen of Truth, a Runecraft legendary with a fanfare that spellboosts all the cards in your deck nine times. Woah!
You and millions of others around the world already know how it goes: in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (AKA PUBG) up to 100 players skydive down to one of three distinct islands, scavenge for gear, and race against an ever-closing circle to kill each other (with no respawns) until there’s just one left standing. PUBG is the game that kicked off the battle royale craze with its great, semi-realistic style of gameplay, and now that the Xbox One version is final and performs well, its excellent balance really shines through.
With the 1.0 update that arrived last week, PUBG on Xbox One shakes off its janky reputation from the Xbox Game Preview version and is finally a solid version of the now second-most popular battle royale shooter. Frame rate stutters a bit in the lobby area and during jumps, but other than that it rarely has trouble holding 30 frames per second on a standard Xbox One, and connection problems or disconnects are rare. I’ve been playing on a standard Xbox One the visuals are a noticeable downgrade compared to the PC version, but I haven’t had many issues other than some buildings taking extra time to fully render.
PS4’s Spider-Man makes dozens of references to the stories, allies, and enemies from the wall crawlers’ comics. There are quite a few littered throughout the game’s final moments, which all seem to be pointing towards a specific comic series.
Although Insomniac has not confirmed a connection, most of the characters in Spider-Man are similar to their counterparts from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. As opposed to earlier stories that used radiation and pseudoscience as the basis for how Spider-Man and his rogue’s gallery of super-villains came to be, Ultimate Spider-Man takes a more modern approach and uses genetic splicing, tinkering, and degradation as the origin story for its heroes and villains. The comic debuted in October 2000 and ran for nearly 11 years, making it the second longest continuous Marvel series that’s created by only two people.
Like Ultimate Spider-Man, PS4’s Spider-Man gives Peter Parker a larger background in science and mathematics, making him an engineering prodigy. Mary Jane is also the first to find out that Peter and Spider-Man are the same person. Plenty of other characters have similar personalities and appearances to their Ultimate counterparts too, including Aunt May, Rhino, Kingpin, and more.
Admittedly, some of the game’s characters do not match up with their Ultimate Spider-Man counterparts. Spider-Man’s Vulture is Amazing Spider-Man‘s Adrian Toomes, and not Ultimate‘s Blackie Drago. The Vulture costume is similar in both the game and comics though, as is Toomes’ poor health (he’s initially not in Ultimate because he dies from an illness). There are enough similarities, though, to use Ultimate Spider-Man to help dissect the final scenes of the game.
Spoiler Alert: The rest of this article delves into the ending, mid-credits, and post-credits scenes of Spider-Man, as well as major plot points from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.
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Spider-Man’s Ending, Mid-Credits, And Post-Credits Scenes
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A lot happens in the final moments of Spider-Man, but one of the more puzzling developments is the departure of Silver Sable. After being prominently featured in promotional material for the game, Silver Sable has a pretty minor role in the overall story. She leads the private military force hired by Norman Osborn to keep order in the city, but after warming up to Spider-Man she just leaves. Moments before the final battle, she calls Peter to say she’s gone home and we never see her again. It’s odd she was included in the game at all with how minor a role she plays.
That changes if this Silver Sable is inspired from her Ultimate counterpart. In Ultimate, Silver Sable is initially one of Spider-Man’s villains, but only because she was hired to hunt him down. She has a begrudging respect for the wall-crawler and tolerates him when a job needs to get done. More importantly, Silver Sable and Spider-Man eventually team up in Ultimate, and it’s to take down Venom in the “War of the Symbiotes” arc.
Spider-Man’s post-credits scene reveals that Venom’s origin might be on the horizon, and that lends more credence to the prediction that Silver Sable will return to New York. Silver Sable might have been introduced in this game so that she and Spidey can work together to hunt down Venom in a future expansion or sequel.
The Mid-Credits Scene: Peter’s Successor
In Spider-Man’s mid-credits scene, Miles reveals to Peter that his body is undergoing some changes, before showcasing that he can stick to the ceiling. Peter immediately jumps up to join him to reveal that he’s Spider-Man. It’s a touching, almost brotherly moment.
Miles Morales was first introduced in 2011’s Ultimate Fallout, which ties into Ultimate Spider-Man‘s final arc. Like Peter, he’s bitten by a genetically enhanced spider from Oscorp’s lab. This gives Miles similar powers to Peter, including the ability to stick to walls, super strength and reflexes, and an enhanced sixth sense. However, Miles is bitten by a different species of spider, so he ends up with a few more powers. Miles isn’t as strong as Peter, but he can emit a paralyzing venom from his fingertips and camouflage himself against nearly any surface, rendering him invisible.
We’ll have to wait and see whether or not Miles has inherited all of the powers he has in Ultimate, but the fact that he has powers at all might foreshadow a dark future. In Ultimate, Miles becomes a superhero to honor Spider-Man after New York watches Peter Parker give up his life to stop the Green Goblin in the “Death of Spider-Man” arc. There’s no guarantee that Insomniac is moving towards that storyline, but the post-credits scene does hint at the rise of Green Goblin. In the game’s final battle, Peter also lets himself get stabbed so he can stop Doctor Octopus and save the ones he loves, so it’s not that big of a stretch to imagine him sacrificing himself in a future game.
The Post-Credits Scene: Two New Foes
As stated before, Spider-Man’s post-credits scene hints at two possible supervillains appearing in Peter’s future: Venom and Green Goblin. There’s a lot to unpack in that final scene, including the fate of Harry Osborn. Earlier in the game, Peter and Mary Jane learn that Harry didn’t go abroad for vacation but instead left the country to receive intensive treatment for a genetic disorder. In the post-credits scene, we find out that Harry didn’t even leave. His father is keeping him in a tank that’s filled with green liquid.
This green liquid is most likely OZ. In Ultimate Spider-Man, Norman Osborn develops the green goo as an experimental drug that boosts strength, reflexes, and intelligence. He’s not completely successful in keeping the substance stable, and so he tests the drug on other animals, one being spiders. When the spiders bite Peter and Miles, they transfer the drug in a less volatile state into their systems, which is why Peter and Miles are enhanced without becoming deformed in the process. Perhaps in the game’s continuity, Norman developed OZ as a way to strengthen his son and stabilize his genetic condition. However, it’s clearly not enough as Norman also has a black substance webbed around Harry that’s seemingly keeping him alive in suspended animation. The black web reacts to Norman when it senses the man’s presence. It might be what’s keeping the OZ from mutating Harry.
In Ultimate Spider-Man, the symbiote isn’t an alien, but a man-made suit that’s seemingly alive. Its primary purpose is to cure cancer by strengthening the host body’s immune system and giving them superhuman levels of strength and endurance. Perhaps–much like the OZ–Norman builds the suit for his son, and the suit–much like its Ultimate counterpart–desires more humans to feed on in order to strengthen its host. If the suit’s hunger for more humans is strong enough, or if it feeds on the OZ, it could break Harry out of his tank and transform him into the toothy black monster that pushes Silver Sable and Spidey to work together.
If that’s the case, stopping the suit would kill Harry, as it looks like it might be the only thing keeping him alive. The loss of his wife and son would probably drive Norman to madness and cause him to try and take revenge on Spider-Man and Silver Sable, who he’d see as murderers. If Norman ingested unfiltered OZ, then like his Ultimate counterpart, he’d transform into the monstrous-looking Green Goblin. His war against Spider-Man might lead to Peter giving up his life to save the city, and pave the way for Miles to become New York’s next friendly neighborhood wall crawler. Insomniac has already proven they’re willing to kill off major characters–like Aunt May–in order to tell an emotional story, so killing off Peter at the end of Spider-Man 2 so that Miles can be the protagonist of Spider-Man 3 is not so far-fetched.
But of course, that’s all just speculation based on the information we can glean from Spider-Man’s final scenes. We’d love to hear what you all think. Again, not all characters in Spider-Man follow the same beats as Ultimate Spider-Man so Insomniac could draw inspiration from a different comic–like Amazing, Spectacular, or All-New, All-Different–or create a completely unique storyline. What type of future do you think the final scenes of Spider-Man are hinting towards? Leave your responses in the comments below.
Spider-Man is currently only available for the PS4. We loved it, and gave the game a 9/10 in our review. Insomniac has revealed that the game is getting a New Game Plus mode in the future, as well as a three-part DLC expansion called The City That Never Sleeps.
Insomniac’s Spider-Man game does a great job of putting players in the web-swinging shoes of Peter Parker as he swings through the skyscrapers of Manhattan. It doesn’t hurt that players are always dressed for the part. Spider-Man features 28 costume choices, most of which are based directly on iconic Spider-Man comics and movies from years past.
Check out our slideshow or scroll down to get a closer look at every single costume in the game and learn more about their history and ties to the comics.
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In Magic: The Gathering Arena you are counted among the elite spellcasters of the Multiverse—the Planeswalkers. Your deck of cards represents your weapons, containing the spells and the creatures you can summon to fight for you. Magic: The Gathering Arena is a free-to-play online Magic game, reborn digitally for gamers, fans, and streamers. This is real Magic for the modern era. Play, collect, and build online just like you would at your kitchen table or local game store.
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