Not only did a PlayStation showcase happen this week packed with God of War, Marvel and Star Wars games, but the long-awaited trailer for The Matrix Resurrections dropped as well. Cardy, Matt and Joe are here to talk all about them as well as all of the films and games they’ve been enjoying over the past week. There’s a lot, so buckle in for a long one.
Want to submit your own Endless Search, food opinion, or a bit of other nonsense? Feel free to get in touch with the podcast at: [email protected].
Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney over Black Widow has been one of the most talked-about events in recent months, and now another MCU actor has weighed in. Doctor Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch said in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he thinks it’s “sad what’s going on between the lawyers.” He specifically took issue with how the lawsuit has been wrapped up in the context of the pandemic.
“Just the verbiage and the accusations of, ‘Put it in a global pandemic context.’ The whole thing’s just a bit of a mess,” he said.
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Now Playing: Marvel’s Avengers Black Widow Assault Drop Zone Beta Gameplay
Cumberbatch said the shift to simultaneous releases in theaters and on Disney+ With Premier Access is a “new paradigm.” He said it will take time to get to a place where artists can be paid fairly even if a movie’s box office numbers are lower than in pre-pandemic times.
“We’re trying to understand what the revenue streams should be for artists that contribute to the billion-dollar business that is Disney. And it has to be contractualized,” he said. “How does an artist’s normal compensation with box office bonuses, how does it work? It’s a new paradigm, and it’s a very complex one. No one saw this coming, and no one should use hindsight to say, ‘Well, it should have been done.’ [Black Widow] was the first of these films that was going to get a cinematic release during the pandemic and got stalled and stalled and stalled. It’s very new territory.”
Johnasson’s team sued Disney over claims that she is owed more money due to how Black Widow debuted simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ With Premier Access. Her team reportedly asked Disney for a $100 million payment, which included Johansson’s $20 million fee to be in the movie and $80 million for what her team argued would have been her share of the box office results. However, Disney reportedly never made a counteroffer, instead opting to pay Johansson her $20 million fee and nothing else. Johansson’s team then sued.
In response to the suit, Disney’s legal team said Johansson’s case has “no merit,” going on to say the lawsuit is “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Whether or not Johansson makes any more MCU movies remains to be seen. She will appear in the next Wes Anderson movie, which is assembling a big cast that includes Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and Margot Robbie.
Crash Bandicoot’s 25th-anniversary celebrations have officially kicked off, with Activision marking the occasion with a special Crashiversary bundle of the latest games and a teaser for the future of the franchise.
“Happy 25th anniversary, Crash, we’ll see more of you very soon,” Lodato said.
Whether those plans involve Crash Bandicoot 5 or more actors popping up in locations while dressed up as the jorts-wearing marsupial remains to be seen. Toys for Bob has transitioned to a support studio role for Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision’s popular battle royale spin-off from the main Call of Duty series. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s about time was well-received when it landed on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2020, and since then the game has been ported over to Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
“Even more so than playing the N.Sane Trilogy, which literally remade the original Crash games from my youth, playing Crash 4 felt like getting back in touch with the series,” Mike Epstein wrote in GameSpot’s Crash 4: It’s About Time review. “It’s an injection of new ideas into now-classic gameplay that surprises and delights, even as it feels like a homecoming. Truly, games like this are why we come running back to long-dormant franchises with open arms.”
Few first-person shooter series have had the longevity of Far Cry, with a legacy going back more than 17 years and eight main titles released during that period–soon to be nine with the launch of Far Cry 6. It has also gone through some drastic changes and experiments over that time, ranging from the mutant enemies driving the plot of the original game to a return to the stone age in Far Cry Primal. Open-world chaos has been at the heart of Far Cry since the beginning, however, whether the game was set in the snowy Himalayas or the plains of Montana. We ranked the best Far Cry games from worst to best so you know which ones are must-plays and which ones are you-should-probably-still-plays.
8. Far Cry 5
Far Cry 5
One of the only real swing-and-misses in the Far Cry series–the dumpster fire crossover Trials of the Blood Dragon is the other–Far Cry 5 promises a memorable confrontation with a cult that has apparently strong-armed or seduced the population of rural Montana into joining. Head and self-professed prophet Joseph Seed just isn’t all that charismatic or compelling, nor are his siblings, and most of the game consists of doing quests to tick one of them off enough to confront you directly. There are still the typical Far Cry elements like dangerous animals and goofy side characters–and an excellent level-creation tool–but Far Cry 5 wrote a check it couldn’t cash, especially in its ridiculous (in a bad way) final hours.
Speaking of unique entries in the Far Cry series, the spin-off game Far Cry Primal certainly fits the bill–well, except for using the same basic layout as Far Cry 4 for its map. The game takes place in the Stone Age, replacing guns and explosives with spears, bows, and primitive handheld weapons. Despite this, it’s still very much a Far Cry game, with the wilderness and human enemies both posing real threats to your survival, and a mix of assault and stealth are often necessary to make it out alive. Heavily inspired by the drug-induced Shangri-La missions in Far Cry 4, we haven’t seen anything like Far Cry Primal from the series since, but it proves that history may be the best source for new games’ settings.
The only game in the mainline series not developed by Ubisoft, the original Far Cry is, well, a far cry from the later installments. It still retains the fish-out-of-water approach we see in so many of the later games, with Jack Carver finding himself stranded on an island and battling in a seemingly unwinnable war against mercenaries, but it also goes in a more science-fiction direction. The mutant-enemy elements present in the game was abandoned for follow-ups, though that does also make it unique enough to warrant a return trip more than 15 years after it first released.
A sequel to Far Cry 5–and one that feels significantly more cohesive–Far Cry: New Dawn sees the plains of Montana largely reclaimed by nature (and bandits) following a nuclear apocalypse. The game has quite a bit more flair and style than its predecessor, and while its antagonists aren’t as memorable as some of the other games, it has a knack for delivering short, fun side activities and never outstaying its welcome. The game takes place on the same basic map from Far Cry 5, but the aesthetic changes and additional locales you’ll visit during certain missions keep the game from feeling like a retread. A few clever tie-ins to the previous game also make it an essential follow-up, and one that makes Far Cry 5’s confusing ending more palatable.
A bit wackier than the typical Far Cry game–and that’s saying something, given the direction of the last few–Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a parody and love letter to neon-soaked action movies of the 1980s. The bite-sized game doesn’t have the same scale as Far Cry 3 or most of the other entries, but playing as the ridiculously named Rex Colt and blasting everything in your path more than makes up for that. Even better? It stars Michael Biehn, who played Kyle Reese in the original two Terminator movies as well as Cpl. Hicks in Aliens. But to video game aficionados, he’s probably best known for being the very strong inspiration for the original Metal Gear’s American box art. Anyway, play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and skip its terrible pseudo-sequel, the crossover Trials of the Blood Dragon.
How do you follow up one of the most acclaimed first-person shooters of a generation? Well, largely by not messing with the formula. Far Cry 4 takes the action from a warm tropical island to a fictional war-torn Himalayan country, and ruler Pagan Min isn’t too happy that you’re there. The game maintains the structure of Far Cry 3–climbing towers to expand the map, clearing outposts, and hunting and gathering for upgrades–but it does manage to maintain its story’s momentum better than Far Cry 3 did. Still, Pagan Min isn’t as memorable as Vaas, nor did the game provide the same sense of surprise and discovery that Far Cry 3 did, though its unique competitive multiplayer mode and Shangri-La sequences did offer a nice bit of variety.
The most underappreciated entry in the series was the first mainline Far Cry developed by Ubisoft itself, as Crytek had been in charge of the original game. Far Cry 2 takes place in war-torn Africa rather than a bright and colorful tropical island, and you have malaria. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough to deal with, you’ll also have to worry about your weapons occasionally jamming, fires spreading and trapping you in a battle, and destructible environments rendering your cover useless. It’s an incredibly ambitious game, which is not a big surprise when considering that director Clint Hocking also led development on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the play-as-anyone sandbox Watch Dogs: Legion. It may have lacked a signature villain or the humor of later games, but it’s an impressive achievement nonetheless.
The most iconic game in the entire series and one that set the template for future installments, Far Cry 3 has it all. The tropical island setting is a joy to explore, with wildlife to hunt–and be hunted by–outposts to liberate, vehicles to joyride, and radio towers to climb. The weapons feel excellent, ranging from simple bows and arrows to assault rifles and explosives, as well as a knife that you can use for some creative kills. Even swimming, which is notoriously difficult to nail in a video game, doesn’t get in the way, but the real star of the show is villain Vaas. An erratic and terrifying criminal henchman portrayed by actor Michael Mando, his “definition of insanity” monologue is oft-repeated. Future games included their own big, charismatic villains to hit the same notes, but none of them did it as well as Far Cry 3.
PlatinumGames has updated fans on Bayonetta 3 , saying that development is continuing as expected, but that the release of further details surrounding the game is essentially out of the studio’s control.
In an interview with VGC, Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya said that the studio is “proud” of the work that it has put into Bayonetta 3. However, despite previously saying that fans might see more from the game this year, Kamiya remained cautious about announcing when fans might expect a reveal for the game, stressing that the decision to show it off was ultimately up to Nintendo.
“If you remember last time, I said that even though everyone was asking about Bayonetta 3, maybe you should tell everyone to forget about it for a while,” said Kamiya when asked whether fans would likely see anything from the game in time for Christmas. “I kind of need to keep to that stance for now because ultimately, it’s not our decision what to say and when to say it.”
Bayonetta 3 was originally announced at The Game Awards 2017, where a short teaser trailer was shown for the title. However, since then, nothing been shown off from the series’ third installment. Elsewhere in the interview, Kamiya spoke further about how the studio is keen to show fans more from Bayonetta 3.
“As much as everyone is clamoring to see it, we are really, really waiting to release it too,” said Kamiya. “Everyone who is working on the project is of course very proud of what we’re doing and wants everyone to see what we’re doing. As much as fans are waiting for it, we are waiting for the day when we can show it. We want everyone to cheer us on as we run to the final stretch. We want to show it too!”
Considering the general silence surrounding the game, it wouldn’t be too unrealistic for fans to wonder whether this was due to issues in its development. However, PlatinumGames’ studio head Atsushi Inaba was reported to have reassured fans when speaking to VGC. “There’s no need to worry,” he said. “Don’t worry about it at this time. Everything’s OK.”
Back in June, Nintendo said that Bayonetta 3 was “progressing well” despite its absence from E3 2021. Nintendo’s Bill Trinen said, “We like to show things when we’re ready to show them. And certainly, we like to show things when the developers are ready to show them. We didn’t have it here at E3, but stay tuned.”
For more on Bayonetta 3, make sure to check out our dedicated IGN page for the game where you can read up a range of the latest news about the upcoming Nintendo title.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
Alan Wake Remastered is coming later this year and it’ll be followed by a full-on sequel, according to a new report. Reporter Jeff Grubb said Epic Games has agreed to greenlight a sequel.
“They’re planning an Alan Wake sequel. They are working with Epic Games on producing an Alan Wake 2, or at least it’s in the planning stages. So does that turn into anything concrete and real? I’m hopeful. I think so. I don’t imagine it will get derailed,” Grubb said on GameSpot sister site Giant Bomb’s Grubbsnax show, as reported by VGC.
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Now Playing: Alan Wake Remastered Trailer | Playstation Showcase 2021
Remedy’s Sam Lake said in 2018 that making Alan Wake 2 would be a “dream.” At the time, Lake said the Finnish studio was exploring possibilities for more Alan Wake games.
In 2020, Remedy signed a publishing deal with Epic Games for two multiplatform games. One of these is Remedy’s “most ambitious” game yet, described as a “AAA” game that was in the pre-production phase as of March 2020. The second is a “new, smaller-scale project” that is set in the same series. Whether or not these projects are Alan Wake 2 and Alan Wake Remastered, or other endeavors, remains unknown.
In May this year, Remedy confirmed that it had six games in production. These include the two mentioned above, the single-player modes for Crossfire X and Crossfire HD, a free-to-play game called Vanguard, and one “new, exciting early-phase project.”
Bayonetta 3 for Nintendo Switch remains in development, but whether or not we’ll actually see the game again before the end of the year remains a mystery. Director Hideki Kamiya and PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba recently shared an update on the game with VGC.
Asked if Bayonetta 3 might be shown before Christmas, as Kamiya previously alluded to, the director said, “It was more of a not definitely ‘something will come out this year,’ but if there is a year, then something should happen, right?”
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“If you remember last time, I said that even though everyone was asking about Bayonetta 3, maybe you should tell everyone to forget about it for a while. I kind of need to keep to that stance for now because ultimately, it’s not our decision what to say and when to say it.”
As for Inaba, he told fans not to worry. “There’s no need to worry. Don’t worry about it at this time. Everything’s OK.”
The decision about when to show more of Bayonetta 3 rests with Nintendo, which is publishing the game.
“As much as everyone is clamoring to see it, we are really, really waiting to release it too… We want everyone to cheer us on as we run to the final stretch,” Kamiya said. “We want to show it too!”
Bayonetta 3 was announced all the way back in 2017, and updates since then have been few and far between. At E3 2021, Nintendo said development on the game is “progressing well,” but it was still too soon to actually show more of it.
“We like to show things when we’re ready to show them,” Nintendo’s Bill Trinen said at the time. “And certainly we like to show things when the developers are ready to show them.”
There’s been a running question in video games this year, as thirsty fans have been wondering just how tall certain characters are in video games. Not to be outdone by Resident Evil’s statuesque vampires and Destiny 2’s towering trickster gods, God of War: Ragnarok also happens to have a giant in the form of Asgardian deity Tyr. He’s big, but he’s not quite Lady Dimitrescu big.
PlayStation’s UK Twitter account asked God of War: Ragnarok developer Sony Santa Monica for some numbers on the imprisoned deity’s height, and the studio obliged by revealing that he stands at an imposing 8 feet and 5 inches. For the sake of comparison, that would make Tyr almost as tall as Robert Wadlow, the tallest living human in history at 8 feet and 11 inches.
On the fictional scale, Tyr is an entire foot shorter than Lady Dimitrescu and is dwarfed by gaming’s current tall lady record-holder, Destiny 2’s Witch Queen Savathun. Even if he stood on the shoulders of Kratos–who is also quite tall–Tyr would still be looking up at Savathun.
In more God of War: Ragnarok news, this week’s PlayStation Showcasedropped a new trailer for the game. With the game now being helmed by God of War 2018’s combat and systems designer Eric Williams, this latest chapter is set to be the end of the current Norse saga and will continue the story of Atreus and Kratos’ relationship as father and son.
God of War: Ragnarok is scheduled to be released on both PS4 and PS5 in 2022.
The first morsels of news about Christopher Nolan’s next movie have come to light. Deadline reports that Nolan with follow up Tenet with a World War II movie focused on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s part in creating the atom bomb.
The subject of the movie is only part of the story. The site reported that Nolan may be shopping the film around to other studios outside of Warner Bros.–with whom he made all his biggest movies–due in part to the controversy over WarnerMedia’s simultaneous release strategy for HBO Max. Deadline said that “several of the major studios” in Hollywood are now reading the script for the untitled Nolan movie and talking with the director about it.
But Nolan breaking away from Warner Bros. would be a very big deal, as he’s made his most successful movies for the studio, including Inception, Interstellar, his Batman trilogy, Dunkirk, and Tenet most recently.
As for casting for the untitled Oppenheimer movie, Deadline said “details are a bit scant,” but Cillian Murphy “might be involved.” Murphy appeared in Nolan’s Dark Knight series, Inception, and Dunkirk.
In other news, Netflix’s top movie boss Scott Stuber recently spoke about how he plans to stop at nothing to encourage Nolan to make his next film with Netflix.
“If and when he comes up with his new movie, it’s about can we be a home for it and what would we need to do to make that happen,” Stuber said. “He’s an incredible filmmaker. I’m going to do everything I can. In this business I’ve learned you need to have zero ego. I get punched and knocked down and get back up.”
Much like the iconic Rocky Balboa himself, the glory days of the arcade boxing genre are well behind it. Hell, when Midway’s respectable Ready 2 Rumble Boxing first laced up its gloves the President of Russia was Boris Yeltsin, Justin Timberlake was merely the tallest guy in NSYNC, and putting on a Marvel movie just meant watching Wesley Snipes kill a bunch of vampires.
Modern iterations just don’t have the same magic, and while Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions is an earnest enough, budget-priced trip back to 1999, developer Survios’ attempt to breathe a little life into unpretentious arcade pugilism that’s two decades past its prime is honestly pretty disappointing.
This is actually developer Survios’ second licensed boxing game based on the Rocky and Creed film saga; its first was 2018’s well-regarded VR game Creed: Rise to Glory. Unlike Creed: Rise to Glory, however, Creed Champions is an entirely non-VR experience and the two games have little in common beyond the same modest array of uninspiring and clichéd fantasy boxers that Survios has recycled from Creed: Rise to Glory.
The Bleakest Victory
Creed Champions’ take on the sweet science is simple enough to understand, with a straightforward two-button approach to strikes, a single button for special punches, and a button to block, which doubles as the button to slip punches and land counters if you time it right. Boxers fit into a handful of different styles, and there’s definitely a noticeable difference between the swarmers and the sluggers.
Button mashing will certainly suffice on the lowest difficulty setting in most instances (and, if it doesn’t, loading up on powerful hooks or uppercuts from afar tends to get the job done). That changes on the higher settings, however, where opponents are cannier and quicker to pulverise you with combinations and slip counters. Here you must play more strategically by dodging, answering your opponent’s attempted counterpunches with instant counterpunches of your own, and making doubly sure they’re committed to throwing a punch at you before activating your special attack (which will prevent them from being able to block it).
There’s nothing necessarily terrible about Creed Champions’ casual, pick-up-and-play approach, although it’s pretty weird how your boxers can’t make small movements without looking like they’re in slow motion. I also find it incredibly annoying that the AI is able to somehow interrupt my special punches with their own special punches, even though I could never do the same. The brief wind-up vignette would play for my character, only to immediately segue into the wind-up vignette for my opponent, and then my character would be the one getting his face caved in. It’s also pretty irritating that the AI is almost always able to get up milliseconds before the 10-count after three knockdowns, while getting up after a third knockdown for me was rare as it requires woodpecker-like reflexes that threatened to turn my thumb to dust.
Blunder in Your Heart
Creed Champions is not especially stunning to look at, and its arenas in particular seem quite plain and plagued by repetition. For instance, sure, the pictures on the wall at Delphi Gym seem authentic, but the same pictures are on every wall. That’s a simple thing but it gives you an idea of the level of attention to detail you’ll find throughout.
The bigger problem, however, is really the startling lack of things to do. Arcade mode features individual arcade towers for each character, although as a Rocky fan the only ones I found mildly interesting were for the official movie characters like Rocky and Apollo, and I’ve absolutely no desire to ever play them again. Rocky’s story doesn’t even cover the films up until Rocky Balboa and his bout with Mason Dixon; it just stops at Rocky IV. Even Ubisoft’s Rocky Legends in 2004 included Rocky V’s brawl with Tommy Gunn.
The story segments play out in text boxes accompanied by simple grunts and exclamations, alongside a stock pose from the boxers in one of a limited set of emotions. These are the times where Creed Champions more resembles a stereotypical mobile game, and it looks cheap and lacks personality. The closest thing it has to a cutscene looks like two pieces of clip art fighting in a Monty Python interstitial. The approach is also regularly clumsy, with dialogue flipping between being attributed to the main character of the story and a “narrator”, which is actually just the same person. The matches are broken up with training montages that are ultimately pointless, as boxers have no skills or stats to improve and the score you get seems meaningless.
The presentation also clashes with established Rocky fiction. I’ll concede that switching Rocky and other characters from southpaw to orthodox (or vice versa) depending on what side of the screen they’re on is just a side-effect of Creed Champions’ arcade approach. However, little things like letting us play out the legendary third, secret fight between Rocky and Apollo in front of… dozens of people did make me cringe a little as a huge fan of the film series.
Outside of Arcade mode, all Creed Champions has is a Versus mode where you can fight individual bouts against the AI or a friend, and a training mode. With no online functionality, however, all training mode can do is help you be better at Creed Champions than the people who either already live at your house, or are willing to visit. You can eat as much lightning as you want, but if you’re just gonna crap thunder all over you mates I doubt they’ll want to play Creed Champions with you for long.
There’s a smattering of objectively incredible music lifted from the movies, but the little other music that’s been included pales in comparison to the likes of Bill Conti and Survivor and gets repetitive almost instantly.
