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Image Reveals 21 New Comics for 2018

Image Comics kept up their annual tradition of ringing in a new year with Image Expo. This one-day comic convention allows the company to spotlight many of the most promising and exciting new books in the pipeline. This year certainly didn’t disappoint, with new books from big-name creators like Rick Remender, Annie Wu, Matthew Rosenberg and Todd McFarlane.

From Spawn’s big 2018 push to Remender’s first collaboration with Bengal, here are all the big announcements from this year’s Image Expo.

Image isn’t the only publisher with big plans brewing in the months ahead. DC has an ambitious Superman relaunch in the works as Brian Michael Bendis takes the reins of the franchise. And Marvel has begin shedding light on its “Fresh Start” initiative, one that will see relaunches for titles like The Avengers, Venom and Black Panther.

You Can Soon Trick Out Your Fortnite: Battle Royale Character’s Back

Epic Games has been adding a bunch of new content to Fortnite, especially as the game’s popularity has continued to rise. In the Season 3 Battle Pass for the Battle Royale mode, for example, the developer is releasing some new cosmetic items, such as emotes, loading screens, outfits–and Back Blings.

You read that right: Epic is adding a new customization option for your Hero that modifies the appearance of its back. Basically, anything that a character holds on its back is now part of this option, so you’ll be able to change out previously permanent characteristics like the Love Ranger’s wings or the Knights’ shields.

Any character can use Back Bling, and there are three new Blings being added in the Battle Pass. This new option will probably enable some pretty wild combinations with the different Heroes and their skins.

The Season 3 Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, which is about $10. It comes with 76 items in all; along with the 3 Back Blings, you’ll also get a bunch of emoticons, banners, and other cosmetics. You can read more about what the Battle Pass comes with here. Season 2 wraps up soon, so the new Battle Pass should go on sale this week.

In other news, Epic will soon add a brand new gun, the Hand Cannon, to the game. In addition, a new patch for Fortnite launched recently on PS4, Xbox One, and PC that comes with the Impulse Grenade.

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Fortnite Servers Going Down Soon On PS4, Xbox One, And PC

Fortnite‘s servers will be offline for period of time tomorrow across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, as developer Epic Games launches a new patch. The v.3.0.0 patch will be deployed at 4 AM EST on February 22, though Battle Royale’s matchmaking will go down at 3:35 AM.

The patch coincides with the end of Fortnite’s Season 2, which started back in December. When the servers come back online, that will kick off Season 3, and with it comes the new Battle Pass containing new items like Back Bling and more.

Patch notes for v.3.0.0 will be published tomorrow when the downtime begins. Epic’s post on Reddit does not say when the servers will be back online, but we’ll report back with those details as they’re announced.

You may notice the countdown clock in Battle Royale currently shows that Season 2 ends at 11 AM ET on February 22, but this is an error on Epic’s part. As mentioned, it’s actually sooner than that.

In other news, Epic will soon add a brand new gun, the Hand Cannon, to the game. In addition, a new patch for Fortnite launched recently on PS4, Xbox One, and PC that comes with the Impulse Grenade.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email [email protected]

Two Batmobiles Will Soon Be Playable in Rocket League

Since its release, Rocket League has gotten several tie-in DLC packs that add various well-known vehicles, like the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Soon, another pair of iconic cars will be usable in the game: two Batmobiles.

The vehicles headline the DC Super Heroes DLC pack, which also comes with a variety of cosmetic items. You’ll be able to drive the 1989 version of the Batmobile as well as the Tumbler, the tank-like vehicle from The Dark Knight. These will be the second and third Batmobiles added to the game; back in 2016, developer Psyonix also released the Batmobile from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. You can check the new ones out in action in the video below.

Alongside the Batmobiles, you’ll also get access to a bunch of DC cosmetic items themed after various heroes. There’ll be decals and banners for Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, and several other characters. You can check out the full list below.

The DLC will run you $4, and it’ll launch on March 5 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. In other news, the game is still extremely popular–back in January, it passed 40 million total players. In spite of its success, don’t expect Rocket League 2 soon. Psyonix plans on continuing to support the first game with more DLC.

All Cosmetic Items

Aquaman–Decal (Breakout), and Player Banner
Batman–Decal (Paladin), and Player Banner
Cyborg–Decal (Roadhog), and Player Banner
Flash–Speed Force Boost, Wheels, Decal (Venom), and Player Banner
Green Arrow–Decal (Hotshot), and Player Banner
Green Lantern–Decal (Merc), and Player Banner
Superman–Decal (Octane), and Player Banner
Wonder Woman–Wheels, Decal (X-Devil), and Player Banner
DC–Player Banner

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Doctor Strange: Damnation #1 Review

One could argue that the most significant event to take place during the course of Secret Empire didn’t involve Captain America’s heel turn, but rather the complete and total destruction of Las Vegas. It’s a little strange in retrospect that there’s been so little fallout from or even acknowledgment of that major event in Marvel’s Legacy books. The Damnation crossover looks to be Marvel’s belated attempt to rectify that problem. But for fans of Donny Cates’ Doctor Strange run, all that truly matters is that we’re getting more of a good thing.

Damnation builds directly on the aftermath of Secret Empire and Cates’ first Doctor Strange arc, as a newly empowered Strange attempts to singlehandedly will the Vegas of old back into existence. But if we’ve learned anything from Cates’ run so far and Jason Aaron’s before it, it’s that magic always carries a cost, especially spells of this magnitude. That’s actually tied to one of the flaws with this issue. Cates and co-writer Nick Spencer are so quick to set the wheels in motion and establish the supernatural fallout of Vegas’ resurrection that they don’t devote much attention to Strange’s motivations in the first place. The character comes across as unnecessarily foolish and short-sighted as a result.

Is Metal Gear Survive Doomed To Fail?

Join Max Scoville, Brian Altano, and special guest/IGN alum Jared Petty as they discuss Metal Gear Survive’s anticlimactic release, a look back at the PS4’s 2013 reveal, and a bizarre journey into the seedy underbelly of Rec Room VR. Oh, and please go check out Jared’s new show, Hop Blip and a Jump.

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Metal Gear Survive Review in Progress – Fun Builds Over Time

Update (2/21/2018): There’s fun to be had in Metal Gear Survive, but it took a little too long to get there. At about 18 hours in, the grind and the occasional tedium of the endless open-world resource-gathering are still there, but all the time invested in picking medicinal herbs and stuffing my pockets full of screws, scrap metal, and wood is starting to pay off.

By the mid game (I assume, since I don’t know exactly how long it is), customizing your base with a collection of resources and new buildings gradually unlocked via story missions is fun, and contrary to what its opening hours may have you believe, it isn’t all cycling through menus. (Though, there are still a lot of menus.) I’ve settled into a pretty comfortable routine every time I teleport back to base camp through handy wormhole teleporters unlocked by completing mini-tower defense missions around the map: I repair my gear at my workbench, restock on ammo, cook whatever meat I’ve been able to find out in the wilderness, boil some clean water for drinking, and check my farms and rainwater purifiers for output.

How Will Game Of Thrones End? Maisie Williams Says She Knows

The much-anticipated eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones airs in 2019, and we’re excited about it. In particular, everyone wants to know how it’ll all wrap up.

Actress Maisie Williams, who plays Arya, apparently knows how it’ll all go down. She appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week where she claimed to have read the script for the final episode. Kimmel jumped in to say that he’s heard that to protect the secret, HBO is shooting multiple endings so that even the cast is unaware of how it ends. However, Williams sounded confident that she knows what will happen in the very last episode. And she added that she doesn’t believe HBO has the budge to shoot so many different endings.

“I do–I know the end of Game of Thrones,” Williams said, recalling that she read the script while in bed. “It’s just surreal, to be honest; being with this show for so long and then also it having the following that it does. It’s just–everyone is waiting for this moment, and then you read it, and it’s just incredible.”

Williams went on to suggest, with facial expressions, that the ending might on paper sound underwhelming, but when you see it, you’ll understand why it’s so moving. She added that her mom knows the ending, too, because she sent the scripts to her. She broke a rule in doing so, apparently, as she noted that she was told: “Don’t give [the scripts] to anyone.”

Indeed, HBO’s security for Game of Thrones is reportedly substantial, making use of things like scripts written in code and even keeping watch for drones on outdoor sets. And regarding the multiple endings, HBO president Casey Bloys sounded pretty confident that multiple endings would be shot, though of course plans can change. “I know in Game of Thrones the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens,” Bloys said back in September.

Also in the interview, Williams said she still has a lot of shooting left to do on the final season. “A lot, endless amounts,” she said about what’s left of her shooting schedule. “It’s a mammoth task this year. It’s huge.”

Kimmel smartly jumped in to ask if this means her character, Arya, will survive. Williams deftly danced around the question, saying, “No, not necessarily, because some of the episodes take a really long time to shoot.”

Indeed, every episode in Season 8 is reportedly as long as a movie, so lengthy shoots are to be expected.

There will be six episodes in the final Game of Thrones season. We don’t know their titles yet, but HBO has announced who will be directing them. The Game of Thrones franchise is expected to continue after the main show wraps up through a prequel spinoff.

In other news, Game of Thrones TV show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are working on a new series of Star Wars movies for Disney.

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Australian Video Games Spending Passes $3 Billion

Australia’s Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) has today announced that Australian consumer spending on video games and related hardware hit $3.23 billion in 2017, breaking through the $3 billion mark that the industry came close to cracking last year.

The figure includes physical retail sales of $1.176 billion (up 11 per cent on 2016) and digital sales of $2.054 billion (up nine per cent on 2016). The majority of digital sales were from mobile game sales (which generated over $1 billion in 2017) but digital full game downloads and “digital extras” have also increased (17 per cent and 12 per cent respectively).

Monster Hunter World Leads US Sales for January

According to analysts at The NPD Group, Monster Hunter World was the top-selling title in the United States in January.

After a whopping five million copies were shipped in its first three days, Monster Hunter World has gone on to become the Capcom’s fastest-selling game ever. Additionally, Capcom was the leading publisher for January in terms of software sales.

Meanwhile, Dragon Ball: FighterZ was the second best-selling game in the U.S. last month. Worldwide shipments reached two million units a week after launch, making it the fastest Dragon Ball game to reach the milestone.