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Ally McBeal, the popular Fox legal dramedy that ran for five seasons from 1997 to 2002, is reportedly being considered for a revival, according to Deadline. The report, which repeatedly makes it clear nothing is yet officially moving forward on such a series, says as of this writing the idea of bringing Ally McBeal back is only being “explored.”
Unnamed sources have told Deadline that original series creator David E. Kelley (Netflix’s The Lincoln, ABC’s Big Sky) is “expected to have some involvement in the project, but likely not as a writer.” Calista Flockhart, who became a household name in the titular role, “has been approached about reprising her role, but there have been no formal talks.”
In the largely pre-internet and pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe, the series had both the distinction of commanding over 11 million viewers on average across its first three reasons, and also casting Robert Downey Jr., before he ultimately bowed out due to substance abuse issues. In 2021, the series is likely best remembered for it launching Lucy Liu’s career, plus featuring a co-ed bathroom and vivid fantasy sequences, including the early internet sensation dubbed “Dancing Baby.”
An Ally McBeal revival is not at all that far-fetched. It would be following in the footsteps of–just to name a few–Dexter, Party Down, King of the Hill, Beavis and Butt-Head, and on and on. It may be more expedient to instead list what shows are not getting revivals.
GameStop is gearing up to kick off its next big sale this weekend. The retailer’s annual Spring Sale will begin this Sunday, March 28, and run all next week, ending Saturday, April 3. As usual, the GameStop Spring Sale will bring a medley of game deals for PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch as well as discounts on collectibles and accessories.
GameStop has released a preview of its Spring Sale deals ahead of time, so we’re rounding up the best ones here. The sale doesn’t have any particularly mind-blowing offers, but there are a few things worth calling out. There’s a preowned games sale that’s a good opportunity to snag a bunch of older games for relatively cheap–the offer lets you pick five games for $50 (they must be preowned games under $20 though). In terms of new games, some of the best game deals include Yakuza: Like a Dragon for $40, Little Nightmares II for $20, and Persona 5 Royal for $30. You can also pick up Splatoon 2 for $50–that’s not a huge discount, but Splatoon 2 rarely crops up in sales like this, so it’s notable.
Aside from games, accessories and gaming tech are seeing discounts in the GameStop Spring Sale as well. If you have more than one pair of Joy-Cons, you can snag PowerA’s Joy-Con Charging Dock for $20, letting you charge four Joy-Con controllers at once. GameStop is also releasing a Razer PC gaming bundle that gets you the Cynosa Lite gaming keyboard, Viper Mini gaming mouse, and Gigantus V2 gaming mouse mat for $70 during the Spring Sale. And if you’re in need of a cheap gaming chair, the Victorage gaming chair will be $40 off and is made of thick PVC faux leather, reclines up to 145 degrees, and comes with head and lower back pillows.
If you end up heading to your local GameStop next week, you’ll also be able to take advantage of an in-store-only deal on collectibles. It’s an offer we’ve seen many times, but you can get a Pokemon-themed bag for $5, fill it up with any action figures, statues, board games, or toys you want, then get 25% off everything. On the flip side, those who shop online will get $15 off when you spend over $75 or $30 off if you spend over $125.
Beyond GameStop’s Spring Sale, there are plenty of other great gaming and tech deals floating around right now, including a buy two, get one free sale at Amazon that’s ending soon, the Epic Games Store’s Spring Sale, and Sony’s Play at Home offer with nine free PS4 and PSVR games available now.
A pair of top Apex Legends ranked players, or Apex Predators per the game’s tier system, have been banned by developer Respawn Entertainment for DDoSing an Xbox server.
A couple of videos hit the Apex Legends subreddit that showed an in-progress game crash after an Apex Predator was knocked down. When the server reconnected, the knocked Apex Predator was revived and standing over the player responsible. The fourth and sixth ranked players in the match were then accused of colluding and performing the “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack that overloaded the Xbox servers.
The usernames of the Apex Legends players have not been revealed, but the two have been banned, according to Respawn security analyst Conor “Hideouts” Ford
It also seems DDoSing is rampant in Apex Legends on consoles. Some users report frequent attacks that result in timed penalties and a loss of reputation points due to server disconnects.
Respawn has responded by prepping a “console reckoning” for those who perform DDoS attacks in Apex Legends. Ford said on Twitter that cheaters “can’t hide any” of the DDoS attacks they participated in.
In other Apex Legends news, Respawn brought heat shields back with a nerf to fast-healing. Elsewhere, the studio has added an option that once again lets players more easily inspect their weapon mid-match.
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The recently released revenge-action film Nobody, starring Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, Mr. Show), seemed to pop up out of nowhere with a sudden announcement and subsequent theatrical release on March 26. But as Variety is reporting, its star “underwent two years of training to do his own stunts.”
For the everyman turned action star, it’s an impressive amount of dedication, but hardly a shock as hardcore Better Call Saul fans have heard Odenkirk’s fitness regimen discussed for years on the Better Call Saul Insider Podcast. (Particularly around the comic actor being directed to make his character less athletic onscreen and pretend to be winded more easily.) In addition to that work, while also filming Better Call Saul, Variety says Odenkirk “trained twice a day for 45 minutes in martial arts with stuntman Bernhardt.” Once production got underway for Nobody, that 45 minutes became a total of two hours minimum.
“When you have a star who is willing to learn complicated bits of [fight choreography], it becomes a bit easier,” director Ilya Naishuller said. “We could do everything without cheating the camera.”
Odenkirk had been praised for his commitment to dramatic acting in Better Call Saul, and Naishuller says the actor extended that to the physical aspects of his performance overall in Nobody. Supervising stunt coordinator Greg Rementer agreed, adding, “Bob could feel comfortable about where his punches landed and unleash them in a way that took his training to the next level. It’s such a special scene because he looked like a prizefighter ready to take his first fight; he looked like he was going to rip those guys apart.”
It will be interesting to see whether any of this preparation boomerangs back and is present on the upcoming sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, which began filming recently and is “likely” to air in early 2022.
A new Transformers movie is in development. According to The Hollywood Reporter, director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Marco Ramirez have been hired to work on the film.
THR states that this movie will be separate from the main universe of Transformers movies featured in Michael Bay’s five films and the spin-off Bumblebee. Further details about the project are currently unknown.
Soto made his feature debut with the acclaimed drama Charm City King, and was recently announced as the director of the Blue Beetle movie for DC. Ramirez is best known as the showrunner of the Marvel Netflix series The Defenders, and he also wrote episodes of Daredevil, The Twilight Zone, and Fear of the Walking Dead.
This isn’t the only Transformers movie in the works either. In November last year, it was reported that Creed II director Steven Caple Jr is also developing a new film in the series.
There’s also a new Transformers animated series on the way. Last month it was confirmed that it is being produced by Nickelodeon, and will be a 26-episode “action-comedy series” that focuses on a new species of transforming robots. The final season of the animated Netflix show Transformers: War For Cybertron is also expected later this year.
For all its automated systems, Loop Hero can be incredibly stressful. Battles play out without any input from you, navigation loops over a predetermined path, and resources are collected for you, but that doesn’t mean you can take your eyes off the battlefield for even a second. This captivating mix of familiar genres demands constant attention, testing your ability to think well into the future when making your moves. It’s a riveting balance of risk and reward wrapped in a deviously challenging roguelite that will tempt you into pushing forward for just one more round.
Loop Hero is a distinct mish-mash of multiple genre ideas, none of which influence gameplay enough to easily classify the overall gameplay experience. Loop Hero is primarily a run-based role-playing game in which you indirectly control a hero through procedurally generated loops. Instead of controlling the hero’s movements, you mainly control what they encounter by placing objects on the loop that create the world–things like cemeteries that can spawn skeletons, villages that can heal you, or swamps that generate nasty mosquitos. These are provided by cards that you draw from a limited deck which you can edit between runs, letting you curate each one to a degree. And while your hero automatically navigates in circles and resolves fights with enemies without any inputs, you also manage their inventory carefully to deal with the increasing challenges that each new round trip brings.
Ultimately, Loop Hero challenges you to balance risk and reward by keenly considering all the options your current cards give you to make your next loop challenging, but not deadly. Each run is an opportunity to gather resources you use to expand your camp in the hub world, unlocking new cards, classes, and abilities to use on subsequent runs. Enemies drop specific resources that you’ll need to further progress outside of each expedition, giving you incentives to place multiple groves for wild, mutated dogs or dimly lit houses that can spawn bloodthirsty vampires on tiles around them. With each new addition to the loop, you’re also extending the time it takes to make a trip around it, which directly affects spawn rates of enemies that are tied to a persistent day-night cycle. While a tile might seem harmless when it’s only adding one enemy to the loop every day, it can become dangerous when the route is stuffed to the point where an entire group might be waiting the next time you make it around again.
Balancing the placement and density of enemies on the loop is what will inform each of your moves, pushing your understanding of how each of these small singular systems play out over extended stretches of time. Each battle rewards you with additional cards and loot, forcing you to recalculate the right balance of risk that fits with your current capabilities and the current toughness of enemies. Overestimating your ability is punishing–if you die in battle, you only get to keep a third of the resources you’ve gathered during that run. You’re able to flee at any point during a loop if you’re not engaged in battle, but you only take everything you’ve earned if you do so at the single campfire on the path. And because you’re ultimately in control of the overall difficulty and balance of each run, even brutal failures still feel fair–and clutch victories are all the more satisfying when you successfully risk it all on one more loop.
A lot of Loop Hero’s fun stems from the vague descriptions of cards and figuring out how different cards can play off each other. Meadows, which heal you at the start of each day, can be placed around a loop to give you additional health at the start of each new day. Place it next to any existing structure, however, and this effect is buffed. Not all effects are beneficial to your hero, either. A group of Mountains placed together will turn into a Peak, which gives you a nice resource bonus but also starts spawning enemy harpies you’ll have to contend with. Villages offer you small quests and healing outside of your campfire but also attract thieves who will steal equipment off your back while in a fight.
Seeing any given loop fill up with the consequences of your actions while exploring the potential possibilities of new combinations keeps each run interesting. It can be somewhat frustrating, however, when you can’t figure out how or why an effect occurred. While some cards will explicitly state what their properties are, it can be difficult to decipher why the placement of one card in a particular slot had the effect it did. Other times the consequences of your actions only become apparent when you face a new enemy on the loop, for example, making it difficult to track when and where those consequences came from. The ASCII-like art style used for enemy sprites on the loop itself is partly to blame for this, with the tiny icons and limited animations often easy to overlook until you actually get into the battle and see an unfamiliar enemy as battles play out automatically in a Final Fantasy-like style.
Also providing some variety are a handful of classes you can choose from at the beginning of each run, with unique equipment for each that alters your physical and magical attributes. The standard warrior will let you equip a range of items including swords, shields, and armor, while both the rogue and necromancer introduce additional complexity to the standard formula. The rogue can equip two weapons and boots instead of a shield but gathers loot in a bag that can only be accessed once you pass through a campfire; this forces you to commit to what you have in your inventory and what you have equipped for each loop, while also overwhelming you with new loot at the end of it. The necromancer, by contrast, doesn’t allow you to use any weapons but instead gives you the ability to summon increasingly powerful skeletons to do battle for you. Items like amulets increase a magic shield that protects your far more limited maximum health, while grimoires and rings help you increase both the quality and total possible number of summons you can muster.
The loot you gather during a run is specific to the class you play but comes in thick and fast most of the time, pushing you to make quick decisions about what to keep. Your inventory space is limited, with new items pushing out old ones and scrapping them for resources. Any item you unequip is similarly destroyed, forcing you to be careful when you want to make a switch. Each class also comes with inherent passive abilities (the rogue starts with life steal, for example) that can help guide your dynamic builds. Just like the cards dealt to you, the effectiveness of a run is entirely down to how quickly you can adapt to the loot that you find, which in turn feeds into the decisions you must make regarding the complexity of the loop you’re constructing.
You obtain these new classes and additional cards by expanding the survivor camp outside of your run-based expeditions. Each new structure requires numerous resources to build but rewards you with permanent upgrades and equipment that can help you with each new run. While you’re still getting adjusted to the balance between risk and reward during your runs, this progress can feel incredibly slow. The resource requirement for new buildings is steep enough that even successful runs where you managed to flee without losing anything might not be enough to make any progress back at camp. This is meant to motivate you to flee runs rather than push too far and die, but without the ability to make a difference to your hero or the cards you bring into each expedition, it is easy to feel like you’re just spinning your wheels for a few hours. Once you settle into Loop Hero’s cadence, and especially after you construct some of the most basic structures, this frustration eases up and forward progress is more regular and rewarding, but it’s a pity it takes some grinding to get to that point.
The camp also acts as the main hub for Loop Hero’s story progression. An omnipotent villain has managed to wipe away the memory of all existence from every living creature on earth, with only your hero able to recall some parts at a time. This premise allows for some surprisingly sharp and often witty writing, giving a new spin to the idea of what it means to be a hero and who a hero might be fighting for. An early exchange with a harpy encapsulates this idea well, with the foe questioning the hero as to why they would help them recreate the world as it was when it can just be reformed into something more kind to monsters. You don’t play an active role in how these conversations or the overall narrative path play out, but Loop Hero’s story, as light as it is, does manage to carve out some poignant moments that break up the consistently run-based gameplay nicely.
You’ll have to battle numerous bosses at the end of each act to see it through, however, which epitomizes how all of Loop Hero’s mechanics need to be carefully considered before challenging them. As you play cards during a run, a boss meter fills up, with the big bad of each act spawning at your campfire when it’s completed. This locks you into a climatic yet automated fight where every decision you’ve made during a particular run is put to the test. You can do nothing but watch your hero duke it out with an extremely powerful foe, grinning at every evasion or counter attack or wincing when a heavy blow carves through what you thought was a solid defense. Despite being completely passive, these moments are exhilarating. Even if you don’t manage to win (and you will fail many times before you overcome each), the encounter teaches you a little more about how to build your hero and construct the loop around them for this one, final encounter.
It’s these moments that make the hours of looping before worth it, as you watch your kitted-out hero land the final blow on an enemy that was once wiping the floor with your mismanaged builds. The thrill of learning in Loop Hero is the driving force of its procedural gameplay, with each small discovery and minute change in approach producing outcomes you might not have imagined. Its opening hours are a punishing hurdle to overcome, but once you’ve found the rhythm of Loop Hero, you won’t want to break from its beat.
Katana Zero is still getting its free DLC, but the project has grown dramatically in scope according to its developer.
In a new blog post, Katana Zero creator Askiisoft explained that the size of the DLC for the 2D action game has grown by six times, with the entire thing about half as long as the original game. This has delayed the release of the DLC a bit, the blog goes on to confirm that the content is locked and won’t be expanding any further.
“The game is progressing at a healthy pace, and the whole dev team is working full steam on production,” the post reads. “The DLC won’t be expanding anymore either–the plan is set and now we’re focused on finishing it.”
Despite the increase in scope, the DLC will remain free for all Katana Zero players as initially promised. There’s also a tease of what will be included, with some first looks at new weapons that will allow the assassin to carve through enemies with a plasma blaster or return shot to them with a robotic gravity arm. Both look like slick additions to the fast-paced hack and slash action of the original adventure.
Katana Zero is out on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch and is as fast as it is clever. Like Hotline Miami, Katana Zero puts you in incredibly dangerous scenarios where one mistake will get you killed, challenging you to intelligently dispatch enemies with dexterous attacks. Our 8/10 Katana Zero review reads, “Katana Zero is bloody and brutal, but it’s also a heartfelt tale that you shouldn’t overlook lightly.”
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Microsoft’s ID@Xbox event on Friday featured a great many independent games–in total, the company showed off more than 60 games that are coming Xbox and PC in the future. More than 20 of these are launching day one on Xbox Game Pass.
If you missed the broadcast or need to catch up, a selection of 50+ games is below. The list includes higher-profile games like Among Us from developer Innersloth and the new D&D game Dark Alliance from Wizards of the Coast and Tuque Games. STALKER 2 is also on the list, as is the intriguing-looking top-down interactive thriller 12 Minutes from Annapurna.
This was the first ID@Xbox showcase from Microsoft and its streaming partner Twitch. Microsoft said it will share more details on these games and others later in 2021 and beyond. Outside of indie games, Microsoft will host some kind of news event this summer where it will talk about its own upcoming games and new projects from its recently acquired studio, Bethesda.
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The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Episode 2, “The Star-Spangled Man” began streaming on Disney+ today, and with it came another hour’s worth of information about not only the new Captain America, but also the landscape of the post-Blip world. Turns out when half the population of the planet disappears for five years and then suddenly comes back, things get really, really messy.
But first, we have to deal with the elephant in the room. John Walker is the new Captain America, handpicked by the military for his impressive resume of medals and achievements. Comics readers will recognize the name as the man who is currently US Agent and formerly Super-Patriot, who briefly stepped in as Cap when Steve temporarily gave up the gig. We spent a considerable amount of time during this episode getting to know how Walker works–and frankly? He seems like kind of a jerk. A well-intentioned jerk, sure, but a jerk nonetheless.
The show went out of its way to draw some parallels between Walker’s early days as Cap and Steve’s time spent on the USO circuit back during World War II, while also subverting those parallels by giving Walker the sort of power and authority Steve never had back in the ’40s. It’s easy to get suckered into feeling sympathetic for someone like Walker who, by his own admission, just wants to “do the job” and be the best Captain America he can be, but time and time again across this episode he can be seen using his status and position as a cudgel to get what he wants–especially as he, Sam, and Bucky begin to clash. Steve’s earliest years as Captain America were spent breaking the rules set by his superiors rather than enforcing them.
Walker also has his own partner in the mix, a man named Lemar Hoskins, AKA Battlestar, who is an incredibly obvious corollary to both Sam and Bucky’s relationship with Steve. That said, it is important to note that neither Walker nor Hoskins is enhanced in any way–they’re both just regular, very athletic guys, not super soldiers or cyborgs and they’re not outfitted with any cutting edge tech (beyond the shield, of course).
This is important because it relates to the plans of the Flag-Smashers, the terrorist group we first learned about last week from Sam’s friend Joaquin Torres. It turns out the Flag-Smashers are juicing themselves somehow with what looks like a version of the super soldier serum that created Steve and was famously lost back in The First Avenger when Dr. Erskine was killed. Remember, that’s why Steve was stuck as a USO performer for so long in the first place–the military didn’t want to risk their only super soldier.
But now there are plenty of super soldiers running around in secret–and their mission is still mostly unknown. The Flag-Smashers are rallying against an organization called the GRC, or the Global Repatriation Council, which was apparently formed in the wake of the Blip being reversed to help deal with people who suddenly found themselves completely displaced. As it turns out, vanishing from existence for five years really screws up your life. Who could have guessed? This has resulted in refugee camps of displaced returned people cropping up all over the world and the Flag-Smashers are, apparently, trying to help them while the GRC fails them. The mission they execute this week involves stealing vaccines–and someone, though we can’t be sure who, is less than thrilled with their meddling.
Honestly, the Flag-Smashers might be a little violent, but you have to admit it does seem like their hearts are in the right place. But that doesn’t answer the question about where they’re getting their super serum juice–a concern Bucky has some ideas about.
Episode 2’s biggest reveal was a major Easter egg for Marvel comics fans–the introduction of Isaiah Bradley, the Black Captain America, to the MCU. It turns out that Bucky, during his time spent as the Winter Soldier, had been sent on a mission for the Korean War, which led him to encounter Bradley in action. Bradley, a Black soldier who had been forcibly experimented on in the name of trying to recreate the super soldier serum after Steve’s “death” in the ’40s, was used as a secret super soldier during the war and kept out of the public eye–then, when the war was over, Bradley was promptly disavowed by the government and imprisoned despite being a hero.
Isaiah comes from a limited comics series called Truth: Red, White, and Black where it was revealed that 300 Black Americans were forcibly experimented on in the name of creating the super soldier serum and only Isaiah ultimately survived, but was placed in jail and erased from history for his trouble. It seems that story is being mostly adapted here as Isaiah explains that not only was he jailed after the Korean War, he was subjected to even more experimentation by both the military and HYDRA–which likely explains the origins of the Flag-Smashers’ serum.
Of course, there are still more variables on the table to consider here–and Bucky realizes that the only way to know exactly what happened to that version of the serum is to go to the only man left alive with in-depth knowledge of HYDRA’s machinations: Zemo.