Trafficblast – Page 9406

Since The Sims entered the video game market in 2000 on the PC, it has defied easy categorization. Designed to be a mix of an architectural simulator and a high-tech doll-house, The Sims’ release marked some of the most extensive customization in a video game at the time. All iterations of The Sims since have continued the trend. There is no definitive story mode or sense of linearity; the draw is in the details.

Your sim pays their bills, cleans themselves, eats, and remembers if they had a sour social interaction with another sim. Players have a great deal of freedom to guide their sims in whatever way they wish. Whether that’s toward success — through wealth, fame, family, popularity, a stylish vampire coven, or unbeatable cooking skills — or death. You can kill your sims in progressively stranger ways (because, at some point, we’ve all put our sims in a pool and removed the ladder to observe as nature takes its course).

IGN Can’t Draw: Our Imaginary Pokemon Sword and Shield Starter Evolutions

Since this morning’s reveal of the three new starters in Pokemon Sword and Shield – the grass chimp Grookey, the fire rabbit Scorbunny and the water lizard Sobble – there’s been a lot of discussion around what their evolutions might look like.

After all, Pokemon always start out cute and cuddly but can end up as imposing, muscle-studded beasts. We at IGN decided it would be a fun experiment to draw what we think Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble’s evolutions might look like, but the catch is…not a lot of us can draw.

Please enjoy IGN Can’t Draw: Our Imaginary Pokemon Sword and Shield Starter Evolutions Edition.

Marvel Gives Kraven the Hunter His Groove Back

Corporate-owned superhero comics are what they are, and there’s little use complaining about the cyclical nature of these stories or the revolving door of death that persists in the Marvel and DC universes. Still, there are some characters one can’t help but feel would have been better off staying dead. Kraven the Hunter is one of them. Sergei Kravinoff was given a terrific sendoff in 1987’s “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” and Marvel has never really built on his resurrection in a compelling way. What purpose does the original Kraven serve that his various successors couldn’t? Fortunately, that’s a question writer Nick Spencer seems to have firmly in mind as he sets the stage for the upcoming “Hunted” storyline.

What You Need to Know About Umbrella Academy’s Commission

This article contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy Season 1.

For more on Umbrella Academy, check out our feature on What Happened to Ben, or catch up on our Umbrella Academy Powers Explained piece!

Time travel plays a huge role in the first season of Netflix’s Umbrella Academy. We see Number 5’s time-traveling misadventures, meet two assassins (Hazel and Cha-Cha), and their boss (The Handler), and get a sneak peek at their place of work: The Commission. But the organization and its operatives leave plenty of unanswered questions at the end of Season 1, including whether we’ll see Hazel and Cha-Cha in Season 2. Here’s everything we know about The Commission, and the role it could play if the show gets a second season.

Avengers: Endgame Is Expected To Make More Money Than Infinity War For Its Opening Weekend

It’s not a big surprise, but now one research firm has put out a report about how much money Avengers: Endgame is predicted to make for its opening in April–and it is a lot.

Numbers from Research Exhibitor via Collider state that Endgame is lined up to make $282 million in the United States and Canada for its opening weekend to set a new opening-weekend record. For comparison, 2018’s Infinity War made $258 million domestically on its opening weekend.

A massive opening weekend for Endgame is expected. Infinity War ended on an epic cliffhanger thanks to Thanos’ snap, and the film itself is said to mark a conclusion of sorts to the overarching storyline that began 10 years ago.

One factor that could hurt Endgame’s box office take is its length. The movie is currently sitting at around three hours, which makes it the longest MCU movie ever. That long of a runtime means theatres will be limited, to a degree, in the number of daily screenings they can accomodate.

The next Marvel movie is Captain Marvel, which hits theatres in March and is also expected to make lots and lots of money for its opening weekend. The film introduces Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel to the MCU, and she’ll play the role again in April’s Endgame.

For more on Endgame, you can check out GamerSpot’s recent feature on why Tony Stark, not Captain America, should die in the film.

FedEx Building Delivery Robots

FedEx announced it will begin testing an autonomous, six-wheeled delivery robot called the SameDay Bot this summer.

Revealed by FedEx, the SameDay Bot features four primary wheels and two extra front-facing wheels designed to navigate over various kinds of terrain including streets, sidewalks, sand, puddles, steep slopes and steps. Its cargo can be configured for single or multiple deliveries, and secures its contents so a recipient only has access to their own delivery. It also allows for the transportation of hot and cold items, like food deliveries or groceries.

The SameDay Bot. Credit: FedEx.

Detective Pikachu: Every Pokemon in the New Movie

At this point, there are over 800 species of Pokemon in this wildly popular video game franchise. And with another pair of sequels hitting the Nintendo Switch later this year, expect that number to grow. But Pokemon fans are also looking forward to the release of Detective Pikachu, the very first live-action Pokemon movie. The trailers released so far have been absolutely crammed with Pokemon both large and small, so to help you make sense of this sensory onslaught, we’ve got a breakdown of every Pokemon we know will be appearing in the movie (so far).

Check out every Pokemon from Detective Pikachu below!

Alien: Isolation Digital Series Announced With Trailer And It Releases Tomorrow

Why wait for whatever Ridley Scott has planned next to dive back into the Alien franchise after 2017’s Alien: Covenant? A new digital series is is coming soon–very soon–and will take viewers into the world of the Alien: Isolation video game from 2014.

The new series, which will debut on IGN on February 28, will present the cut scenes from the game as “a new animation experience to add additional layers to the story of Ellen Ripley’s daughter.” To achieve that, Fox has partnered with Reverse Engineering Studios and DVgroup to develop new scenes that, when combined with newly shot-and-edited first-person footage from the game and existing cut scenes, will create a complete story.

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The Isolation game is set between the original Alien film and its 1986 sequel Aliens. In it, Amanda Ripley–daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen–searches for a hint of her mother’s whereabouts on a space station and comes face-to-face with the same kind of alien creature that plagues the rest of the franchise.

A description of the series reads, “Fifteen years have passed since the deep-space freighter Nostromo disappeared with all hands. And for fifteen years, Amanda Ripley has scoured the known universe for information about her mother, Ellen Ripley, the Nostromo’s warrant officer. When representatives from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation approach Amanda with news that the Nostromo’s flight recorder has finally been found and brought to the space station Sevastopol, Amanda joins the Company’s expedition to the remote outpost. But when Amanda reaches the station, she walks into a living nightmare: Sevastopol’s inhabitants have been terrorized, hunted, and brought to the brink of annihilation. Now she and a band of unprepared–and perhaps untrustworthy–survivors will have to confront the same diabolical species that changed her mother’s fate forever.”

The Alien: Isolation digital series runs seven episodes, all of which will be released at 9 AM PT on February 28.

How Can Anthem Survive Post-Launch?

BEYOND!

On this week’s episode of IGN’s PlayStation show Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush discusses the launch of Anthem with Brian Altano, Max Scoville, and Andrew Goldfarb. The panel takes a look at the ups and downs of the launch of BioWare’s latest, and dive into what we’d like to see to give Anthem longevity moving forward, and to keep us coming back beyond its launch.

But beyond that, we also say goodbye to Andrew Goldfarb, after he’s announced he’s leaving IGN this week. Andrew’s been with the show since episode 221, and will have more to say about his future soon.

Timecodes:

0:00 – Andrew’s goodbye
19:10 – Anthem