Starting from tomorrow, those that have access to Amazon Fire TV streaming devices, Fire TV Edition smart TVs, and Fire tablets will be able to load the HBO Max app onto their devices. From there, HBO subscribers will then be able to start streaming HBO Max’s on-demand vast library of movies and shows, hailing from iconic brands of HBO, Warner Bros., DC, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and much more.
For the rollout, current HBO subscribers through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels will be able to log into the HBO Max app with their Amazon credentials at no additional cost. The HBO app will automatically update on Fire TV and Fire tablets to become the HBO Max app, and customers will be able to log in using their existing HBO credentials. New customers can also subscribe to HBO Max in the app.
This news comes after many months of negotiations between WarnerMedia and their parent company AT&T with Amazon and Roku, two of the major hardware companies for streaming. While Amazon has been successful in reaching an agreement, there hasn’t been any indication of Roku establishing a similar distribution deal with HBO Max at this point in time.
“We are very excited that Amazon customers will now be able to enjoy the best-in-class content that lives within HBO Max,” said Tony Goncalves, WarnerMedia’s Head of Sales & Distribution. “Our continued goal is to make HBO Max and its unparalleled content available to customers across all the devices they love. Fire TV is a favorite among customers and we look forward to working with the Amazon team to engage and grow our existing subscriber base by showcasing all that HBO Max has to offer.”
“We’ve worked closely with HBO for many years to bring their great content to Fire TV and to make it easier to discover and enjoy with features like search integration, Alexa and personalized recommendations,” added Marc Whitten, Vice President of Amazon Entertainment Devices & Services. “We are excited to continue that partnership with the launch of HBO Max to bring even more incredible content to customers on Fire TV.”
The HBO Max app is fully integrated with Amazon’s compatible Alexa-enabled devices, meaning that customers can navigate the platform’s library of content using Alexa voice commands. HBO Max content is also integrated into the universal search on Fire TV, so that content will appear in general searches such as “Alexa, find dramas.” Customers can also ask Alexa to start watching specific movies and shows.
If you’re not sure where to start, IGN has a complete rundown of everything that was available on HBO Max at launch, with notable highlights including the entire Studio Ghibli collection, all eight Harry Potter films, and a curation of timeless Turner Classic Movies like Gone With the Wind, and Once Upon a Time in the West. Plus, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is heading to the service next year.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
The standard edition of Persona 5 goes for $20 on its own, so you’re basically getting all of the 2019 upgrades at no extra cost. This is listed as a “My Best Buy Early Access” deal, so you’ll need to sign into your free My Best Buy account to claim it.
Persona 5 Royal is a significant expansion from the original, adding a new character, a new school semester, and loads of new content like weapons and enemies and gameplay improvements. It received a 10/10 in GameSpot’s review, with editor Michael Higham calling it an “unforgettable and empowering RPG that should be recognized as one of the best games of our time.”
The original Persona 5 is part of the PlayStation Plus Collection, a large library of PS4 games available to PS5 owners who subscribe to PS Plus. As we learned shortly after the PS5 launch, you actually can play the Plus Collection on PS4–as long as your account has logged into a PS5 first.
Masi Oka, known for his roles on Heroes and Hawaii Five-0 as well as for founding The Outer Wilds developer Mobius Digital, has signed on to play a role in the new Brad Pitt action movie Bullet Train.
Deadline reported the news, but the site did not have any details on the character that Oka will play. Regardless, he joins an already stacked cast that includes Aaron Taylor Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Joey King, Brian Tyree Henry, and Andrew Koji in the film that will be directed by David Leitch (Hobbs & Shaw, Deadpool 2).
Bullet Train is inspired by the novel Maria Beetle, and it has been likened to the Keanu Reeves movie Speed, but this time with a train … and assassins. A group of hitmen and assassins are on a speeding train in Tokyo and they’re out to kill each other. The name of the movie appears to be in reference to Japan’s Shinkansen rail train, known in English as the bullet train.
Fear Street director Zak Olkewicz is writing the script, with Leitch overseeing the screenplay.
In addition to this new Bullet Train movie, Leitch is attached to direct the movie based on Ubisoft’s The Division. The last we heard, Oscar-nominated actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain are set to star in the movie, which will debut on Netflix.
The first three episode of The Expanse Season 5 will drop on Prime Video on December 16th. After that, Amazon will release the remaining seven new episodes weekly until February 3, 2021. Amazon released a trailer for The Expanse Season 5 in October. It has plenty of hints for the upcoming episodes, including indications that the main characters will spend much of the season off on separate missions.
Amazon’s official plot synopsis teases the continuation of the galactic gold rush we saw begin in Season 4, with “multitudes of humans leaving the solar system in search of new homes and vast fortunes.” But there’s also a “reckoning” between the inners and the belt brewing thanks to the season 5 villain Marcos Inaros.
The prolific and influential comedy writer-director Judd Apatow is not letting 2020 close out with adding a new project to the pipeline: He is now reportedly developing a “pandemic comedy” for Netflix. The untitled film will “follow a group of actors and actresses stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel attempting to complete a film,” according to Variety. This will be Apatow’s first feature film with the streaming service.
Apatow will be co-writing with Pam Brady (South Park), and his longtime producing partner Barry Mendel will be executive producing. Mendel and Apatow have worked together on hit comedies for over a decade, beginning with Funny People and continuing their tradition of personal, poignant, and rites of passage stories with Bridesmaids, This Is 40, Trainwreck, and The Big Sick.
Of anyone to attempt a pandemic comedy, Apatow definitely particularly well-suited to tackle it in such a manner given his background in TV with Freaks And Geeks–it basically sounds like a film-length bottle episode, or a sitcom convention where an entire episode takes place in one set or location. And depending on your temperament, a comedic approach to the pandemic might be more appealing than, say, Michael Bay’s upcoming Songbird–a thriller that imagines COVIDs 20 through 23 as the virus develops a taste for human brain tissue. That is a direction, most likely, Apatow will not be steering this new film towards.
In contrast to when many assumed the coronavirus’ spread to the US earlier this year would mean a prolonged stoppage or lengthy pause in new TV and films, it seems we have now turned the corner from “Zoom shows” made during the pandemic (like HBO’s Coastal Elites or Freeform’s Love In The Time Of Corona) to now, hopefully safely, having somewhat meta stories being told about COVID while it’s still playing out.
The new console generation has introduced a frustrating problem as some PS5 owners have realized they are accidentally playing the PS4 versions of certain games. Publisher Activision has outlined how Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War owners can ensure they are playing is the PlayStation 5 version.
From the PS5’s Dashboard, highlight Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and scroll down to highlight “Play.” Select the three dots icon and open that menu. From there, select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.” This will ensure that the game version is the PS5 one.
How To Ensure You’re Playing PS5 Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Highlight the game tile on the Dashboard.
Scroll down and highlight “Play.”
Select the 3 dots and open the menu.
Select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.”
Launch the game.
It’s a bizarre quandary to have in the first place, with the PlayStation 5 sometimes preferring to download the PS4 version of a game. Sony has not yet addressed the situation, but a fix is among the items on our PS5 wishlist.
To make sure you’re playing the next-gen version of #BlackOpsColdWar on PS5: 1. Highlight the game tile on the Dashboard 2. Scroll down and highlight “Play” 3. Select the 3 dots and open the menu 4. Select “PS5 | Full | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” 5. Launch and enjoy!
In our Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War review-in-progress, we scored the game an 8/10. While we still need time with multiplayer and Zombies, we were impressed with this year’s offerings–especially when it came to the features used by the DualSense controller.
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In prep for this review I dusted off my PlayStation 3 and spent about a week replaying through the original 2009 Demon’s Souls. My main takeaway from that experience was, “Man, as fantastic as this game is, it feels old.” And I don’t just mean graphically: you can only roll in four directions, character controls feel loose, and just overall, there’s a lot of jank. But Bluepoint – the team that so expertly remade Shadow of the Colossus in 2018 – has addressed just about all of those major issues and more in the absolutely gorgeous PlayStation 5 remake, resulting in a game that feels much tighter to control and one that brings FromSoftware’s neglected original Souls game back to the forefront, reminding us what a strong foundation the Dark Souls series was built upon.
Like the rest of the Souls series, the appeal of Demon’s Souls is that it’s an action-RPG that prides itself on difficult, cerebral, and methodical combat, as well as extraordinarily deep character build customization. In combat, every action poses a risk, whether it’s committing to an attack and leaving yourself vulnerable in the start-up and recovery of it, or committing to defense and sacrificing a portion of your stamina to avoid taking damage. Rather than relying mostly on reflexes, Demon’s Souls relies more on making smart decisions both in and out of combat, and making the right decisions in order to overcome its many tough challenges feels incredibly rewarding in ways few other games can match.
Demon’s Souls may be the game that kicked off the Souls subgenre of action-RPGs, but it is the ways in which it’s different from the Dark Souls games that really make it stand out. The biggest is that rather than being one contiguous open world, Demon’s Souls is split into five isolated worlds, each made up of three to four sublevels, each offering their own unique rewards and challenges. The thing I love so much about this structure is how easy it becomes to just pack up, leave, and try out a new area if you find yourself struggling in the one you’re currently in. Each level is difficult, but in very different ways, and never for reasons as simple or as boring as the enemies simply just being stronger.
World 1 is tough because you frequently have to contend with an obnoxious dragon that spends its whole day roasting each of the bridges you need to cross in order to proceed; World 2’s enemies are resistant to most damage types outside of piercing; World 3 is a labyrinth that’s easy to get lost in and is guarded by tough mind flayers that can kill you in just one or two hits; World 4 has highly aggressive skeletons that are also resistant to most weapons outside of maces and hammers; and World 5 has a ton of enemies that are easy to kill, but have a nasty habit of swarming you with rapid hits and wild attack patterns. Not to mention the whole “lake of poison” thing.
What’s clever about this is that Demon’s Souls’ structure makes every playthrough feel different because you’re able to approach each world in new ways. For my first playthrough, I went with a magic-focused build and went to world 3 first so I could stock up on magic-replenishing consumables and unlock the NPC that grants access to the most powerful spells. But in my second playthrough with a more dexterity-driven character I bounced from world to world, picking up useful items and gear from each one before committing to beating any of them. It’s this flexibility that makes Demon’s Souls so distinctive among the Souls games.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Demon%E2%80%99s%20Souls%20features%20some%20of%20the%20most%20memorable%20bosses%20of%20any%20of%20FromSoftware%E2%80%99s%20games.”]Demon’s Souls also features some of the most memorable bosses of any of FromSoftware’s games, and certainly some of most mechanically interesting ones. Many feel like experiments to really push the limit of what a boss could be; of course, not all are successful. The Dragon God was a disappointingly gimmicky boss fight in 2009, and annoyingly it’s just as bad in the PS5 remake. But others, like the emotional and story-driven battle against Maiden Astrea, or the epic fight against the Storm King that has you picking up a special weapon to shoot giant slicing wind attacks at the godforsaken manta rays that had been making your life a living hell for the last three hours, are absolute classics.
All of this is true for Bluepoint’s remake, which largely stays true to the spirit of the original Demon’s Souls, both for better and for worse. Not all of the ways Demon’s Souls differentiates itself from the rest of the Souls series are positive ones. Demon’s Souls is exceptionally grindy in often frustrating, time-wasting ways. If you run out of health-restoring grass, you’ll need to either farm it by repeatedly killing specific enemies in specific worlds that drop it, or you’ll need to farm souls (that you could have used to improve your character) and purchase it from a merchant. Weapon upgrading is also needlessly convoluted, with 16 different types of upgrade materials to find and make sense of, and almost every weapon type requiring different materials in order to upgrade them. Dark Souls addressed both these issues with the introduction of Estus Flasks and a simplification of the weapon upgrade system, and going back to how it used to be made me remember how much of an improvement Dark Souls was in those regards.
The Quality of Life
The real stars of the show here, though, are the litany of smaller quality-of-life upgrades that make me never want to even think of going back to Demon’s Souls on the PS3. There’s so many to touch upon, but the long list includes: The addition of a tool belt that lets you equip up to four situationally useful items in a submenu that’s accessible with the touchpad; the ability to use archstones like a bonfire and reset the enemies without having to go back to the Nexus; being able to see the durability of your weapon in the HUD; being able to see what the next item you have equipped is; and all of this is on top of a much cleaner and more intuitive menu UI that sacrifices some of the original’s unique visual style in favor of simplicity and readability.
I need to give a special mention as well to the new ability to send items to your storage box without having to return to the Nexus. Item burden is a huge factor in Demon’s Souls, and in the original, when you picked up something that you had no space for you’d have to either make room for it by permanently destroying something in your inventory or you’d have to just leave it and convince yourself that you didn’t really need whatever it was anyway. And then you’d also have to trek back to the archstone just so you could offload any unnecessary items. This is an elegant fix that still keeps the inventory management without any of the frustration.
There’s still an annoyingly common tendency to use a shove attack when I don’t mean to, and I wish the developers had done something to better explain World Tendency to newcomers. But those nitpicks notwithstanding, Bluepoint did an excellent job of updating Demon’s Souls to modern standards without changing the core of its gameplay.
One other area that Demon’s Souls obviously benefits by virtue of being on a console with an SSD is a substantial reduction in load times. Rarely will you ever wait more than five seconds in between deaths or while teleporting to a new location before you’re back in the action. I can’t overstate how huge this is for a game like Demon’s Souls, in which you’re expected to die over and over again and also to repeatedly reset a level for the purpose of farming.
The DualSense controller is much bigger than a DualShock 3, which makes it a tiny bit less comfortable to use the infamous “claw grip” that is almost required in a game like Demon’s Souls, but my hands adjusted over the course of X hours it took me to beat it. Most notable, though, is the way the haptics react to you being hit. When you block a big shot with your shield, you feel that strong jolt localized entirely on the left side of the controller; when you run over a fallen vase and it shatters you hear and feel that distinct impact; and when you ride an elevator, there’s an almost roller coaster-esque rumble that accurately imitates the churning of gears. It’s incredibly cool.
Also, the provided in-game tip videos are fantastic tools that give progressively more specific hints. Those can either point you in the right direction if you’re lost in a stage or give you crucial tips against tough bosses to help you figure out a proper strategy to deal with them.
Sights and Sounds
As one of the first games available exclusively on the PlayStation 5, it’s no surprise that Demon’s Souls is breathtaking to look at. There is a staggering level of attention to detail here. Enemies display looks of fear, anger, and desperation, and react realistically to every hit; Blood spatter sticks to your armor, weapons, and body; just about everything you walk through or on reacts naturally to your physical presence, whether its a puddle, box, vase, or a fallen enemy’s armor; fat jiggles on the grotesque Vanguard Demon when you make impact with a weapon. The list goes on and on.
It is all around just a magnificent showcase of the power of the PlayStation 5 and an enticing taste and what’s to come if things can look this good on a launch game. Bluepoint definitely took more liberties with the art style and soundtrack than it did with the gameplay, and personally I love the art direction, even though I will say that I miss the jovial mystique of the PS3’s Fat Official compared to the remake’s, which looks like a radiation experiment gone horribly wrong. The soundtrack, in comparison to the mostly somber and lo-key music of the original, feels much louder and more bombastic during boss fights, which I dug – but it is so different that I can definitely understand people preferring the original.
Demon’s Souls offers two visual modes labelled “Cinematic” and “Performance.” It’s the usual split that we’ve come to expect at this point, with the cinematic mode targeting 30fps with a true 4K resolution, and the performance mode keeping a consistent 60fps at 1440p, which is then upscaled to 4K. Personally, I’ve always been a framerate over fidelity guy, so I played the whole thing in performance mode and never looked back. That said, cinematic mode is definitely a stunner if you don’t mind sacrificing half the frames.
Summoned Souls
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Souls game without asynchronous multiplayer. If you’re familiar with how multiplayer has worked in other Souls games, Demon’s Souls should come as no surprise: Players can leave messages to give hints, point out secrets, or absolutely troll the heck out of you; you can play cooperatively with the tried-and-true method of leaving and activating summon signs; you can invade other players who are running the risk of going through a level while in human form; and you can lay down a red summon sign for some good ol’ fashioned consensual PVP.
I’ve always kind of been lukewarm on Souls multiplayer, and Demon’s Souls is no exception. My attempts in trying to get summoned in co-op were met with a ton of waiting and very little payoff – especially since without the covenant system added in Dark Souls, there’s little incentive to offer your help outside of the fuzzy feeling in your belly that you get for doing a good deed. My one success in getting summoned for PVP didn’t fare much better as I got summoned for the Old Monk boss battle, only to have it end abruptly when the player I invaded never even made it to the door. After that, I simply lost the will to sit and wait for multiplayer in general unless I was coordinating with a friend.
A big Halo Infinite community update is in the works, but there are currently no plans for the game to be at The Video Game Awards, 343 Industries confirmed.
In the weekly discussion thread on the Halo subreddit, 343 Industries community director Brian Jarrard stopped by to share that plans for a community update are in the works, but not in time for the VGAs.
“Full disclosure we don’t have anything planned for the VGAs but are hoping to offer at least a high-level update within the next few weeks so we can kind of restart this journey together after the holidays,” Jarrard writes.
“Putting together something like a demo or a big beat for the VGAs is an enormous amount of work and would cause challenges with the current milestones of the holidays,” Jarrard added.
Presently, Jarrard says 343 is still “going through the huge cascade of implications and ramifications” that appeared after the studio announced it will delay Halo Infinite to 2021. The new Master Chief adventure was supposed to be a launch title for the Xbox Series X, but the developers felt it required more time to get right.
Of particular note is Jarrard’s use of the word “restart” to describe the official press around Halo Infinite. After a tepid gameplay demo reveal, 343 has taken Halo Infinite back into development and hired Halo series veterans like Joseph Staten to bring the title “back on track.”
It’s unclear what the current state of Halo Infinite is, the developers are clearly taking the feedback from the gameplay reveal, which was criticized for its art style and fidelity, during this summer’s Xbox Games showcase seriously.
Blizzard has revealed new details about Overwatch‘s Symmetra with the release of a new short story titled “Stone by Stone.” In Christie Golden’s tale, Symmetra is sent by Vishkar Corp. to fix a PR fiasco caused by the accidental destruction of a sacred Omnic statue. While in the village, she encounters Zenyatta, the Omnic monk, and learns what she must do to correct Vishkar’s mistake.
A new Symmetra skin was revealed at the end of the comic, featuring a yellow design that contrasts with Symmetra’s typical blue-colored abilities. The skin’s new design is also tied to the short story and the bridge she establishes with the Omnic village and faith. Blizzard will likely reveal more details on how to obtain Symmetra’s new skin soon.
Symmetra previously received a short comic introducing her, as well as her employment with the mega-corporation Vishkar. In “A Better World,” the hard-light architech faces her own doubts around the dubious tactics Vishkar undertakes to achieve its goals. She joined Vishkar to improve the circumstances of the world, but soon realizes that the ends do not justify the means. In one mission, Vishkar blows up a building and injures a little girl in a favela. As a result, Symmetra appears to be doubtful of who Vishkar actually benefits and what her work with them means.
In other Overwatch news, Overwatch 2 is on the way with an unknown release date. Echo is supposedly the last hero before the sequel is released. The character is another damage dealer in a long lineup of damage heroes, but Blizzard has promised that more tanks and support characters are on the way. BlizzCon takes place on February 21, so we’ll likely hear more news about Overwatch 2 then.
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“Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X recently performed multiple in-game concerts inside the massively popular MMO Roblox, and now we have some numbers that speak to how much of a success the event was.
The developer told The Wall Street Journal that the concert series picked up 33 million views over the course of the rapper’s four, 10-minute sets where he debuted a new single, “Holiday.” The official page on Roblox’s website for the event now states that the viewership numbers have climbed to 34 million.
Rolling Stone reported that the Lil Nas X event in Roblox was a long time in the making. The site reported that Roblox Corp, Lil Nas X, and his label, Columbia Records, spent nearly eight months working on nailing down the specifics of the in-game concert. Columbia CEO Ron Perry and marketing boss Ryan Ruden are said to have personally pitched the idea to Lil Nas X with the aim of targeting the game’s younger audience. Before this, Ruden met with Roblox developers in October 2019 to discuss the possibility of such an event.
Whatever the case, Ruden said the aim with the Lil Nas X concert in Roblox was to find “new and innovative ways to reach and find and to create communities around the new music of the artist.”
