Comedy movie legend Judd Apatow is making a pandemic-inspired movie called The Bubble and it has added Pedro Pascal, Karen Gillan, and Maria Bakalova to its cast.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the three are set to star in the film, joining the previously announced cast that includes Fred Armisen, Keegan-Michael Key, David Duchovny, Peter Serafinowicz, and Leslie Mann.
Filming is expected to begin next week in London, on the film, which is described as a “meta-comedy” that follows a group of actors who get stuck in a pandemic bubble at a hotel as they try to finish a studio movie.
THR said the movie is inspired by what happened in real life with Jurassic World: Dominion, as Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt, and Bryce Dallas Howard became stuck in the UK as they filmed the newest Jurassic World movie.
From THR’s report:
“While much of the details are being kept in the hotel safe but it is known that Gillan and Pascal will play the made-up franchise’s stars, a la Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt. Mann and Duchovny are avataring a duo like Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, playing a fictional, once-married acting duo who now find themselves under the same roof along with their teen-aged daughter, being played by Iris Apatow. (Dern and Goldblum were a couple in the 1990s.)”
The Bubble is reportedly headed to Netflix. It’s likely to be just one of many films touching on the global pandemic that continues to grip the world.
The latest patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has arrived, ushering in some important changes for the just-launched League Play event, while the Zombies mode gets more stability improvements, bug fixes, and more.
League Play kicked off this week and the new patch includes a series of fixes, one of which solves the issue that could cause classes to show up empty in some scenarios. The update also delivers some restrictions, one of which is that you cannot use any type of suppressor attachment, while a number of barrel attachments are also cut.
League Play is the new competitive-minded option for players looking to have a more serious and intense experience.
As for the Zombies changes, players can expect stability improvements as well as changes to the camo challenges. Orda eliminations now count for three eliminations, while the special enemy class now counts for the weapon camo challenges, too. As for the bug fixes, one of the issues that this patch addresses is how players could magically escape the village when using the Aether Shroud Tier III.
Elsewhere, the Tombstone Soda perk has been fixed so players no longer die when fast-traveling as a shadow, while a fix has also been deployed for a bug that could cause the player’s resources to fail to populate as they should.
The new Wonder Weapon also gets a small fix to address some of its visual effects, while the Dark Aether Artifact Intel should now be awarded normally in the main quest.
The February 9 patch for Black Ops Cold War does not contain any fixes or changes for the standard multiplayer mode, it seems. You can see the full notes below, as posted by Treyarch on the developer’s website.
The developers of Call of Duty: Warzone continue to take aim at cheaters in the battle royale game. After banning 60,000 accounts just last week, developer Raven Software has now confirmed yet another ban wave–and the studio is prepared to drop the banhammer again.
“Stepping up anti-cheat efforts on all fronts,” the developer said. “More to come. Let’s keep Warzone clean!”
Another ban wave today across #Warzone. Stepping up anti-cheat efforts on all fronts. More to come. Let’s keep Warzone clean!
With many millions of players, the developers of Warzone face a very difficult and ongoing task of weeding out bad actors from the battle royale game. With a game of that size and scale, some portion of the audience will be jerks who try to ruin the experience for others, and this has been and continues to be the case.
Activision is keeping busy trying to weed out jerks from Warzone and the company will continue to do so by implementing the following measures in the future:
Enhancements to internal anti-cheat software
Additional detection technology
Adding new resources dedicated to monitoring and enforcement
Regular communication updates on progress; more two-way dialogue
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters BioWare’s original Mass Effect trilogy. In order to give you a better idea of just how much of a transformation we’re talking about, we’ve compiled several comparison screenshots.
As the original Mass Effect is getting the most out of the remaster in terms of updated character models and locations, we’ve only compiled screenshots from that game. That said, there are noticeable improvements for Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 in the Legendary Edition as well.
For the sake of convenience, all of the screenshots on the left side of the comparison are from the original trilogy (which were taken from the PC version of the game), while those on the right are from the Legendary Edition. We’ve listed the screenshots in order by which they appear.
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Shepard approaching the deck of the Normandy–the first time in the game we see her.
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One of the first shots of Mass Effect is (thankfully) a clear view of Shepard, letting you decide pretty quickly whether you need to start a new save to go through the character creator again.
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Ashley is the first of several loyal crew members you’ll encounter and recruit on your journey through the Mass Effect trilogy.
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Hey, we can see our house from here!
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Just don’t look down Shepard, it’s a long drop.
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The Normandy SR-1 is both a feat of engineering and a symbol of human and turian cooperation.
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Yeah, the enemy’s flagship is pretty big.
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Damn, that foliage really adds a nice touch to this scene of Shepard getting choked out.
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Ensuring that Mass Effect 3’s iconic look for female Shepard was included in ME1 and ME2 was one of the first things BioWare implemented in the Legendary Edition.
Many can agree that Bloodborne is one of the best games of the previous console generation–perhaps even the best–but playing it at sub-30 frames per second can be a major adjustment if you’re used to dodging your way through Sekiro at 60fps. Now, the well-known hacker Lance McDonald has released his 60 FPS patch for Bloodborne on his Patreon, but you’ll need a jailbroken PS4 to try it out.
Ok here it is! Bloodborne running at 60fps for real on PlayStation hardware. We’re all wondering if Bloodborne will ever get a 60fps patch for PlayStation 5. Meanwhile I hacked the feature into the game and put together a showcase of results. Full video: https://t.co/1Rflgy6FCfpic.twitter.com/bodmDAVvkx
We’ve known about McDonald’s 60fps patch for a while now, since he first showed it last year, but this is the first time that it’s been publicly available. McDonald teamed up with Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry to do a technical breakdown of the 60fps patch, and the results are fascinating. McDonald’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes materials for From Software’s games, including Bloodborne and the Souls series. The patch also gives you the option of lowering the rendering resolution of the game to 720p to get a more consistent frame rate.
McDonald’s hacking has revealed secrets in other games as well. For example, he showed that God of War’s antagonist is flipping the player off in one scene, and that P.T.’s Lisa was following behind you all along. If you were hoping to use a PS4 emulator to try out this patch, we’ve got bad news: There aren’t any legitimate PS4 emulators that can run games as of yet, but there are some fake ones out there that look legit, so watch out for that. For the rest of us, we can only hope that From Software brings a way to play Bloodborne at 60fps on the PS5 that doesn’t require hardware modification. Some first-party PS4 games have gotten PS5 updates that improve performance, but nothing like that has been announced for Bloodborne as of yet.
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The first images of Jared Leto as the Joker in Zack Snyder’s Justice League have been revealed, and he’s looking much more like a classic interpretation of the character than the version seen in Suicide Squad.
The black and white images, first revealed by Vanity Fair, show a Joker with heavy white makeup, smudged eyes and lips, and greasy, long hair. The big difference, though, is that there’s not a single tattoo in sight. Yup, the much debated ‘Damaged’ forehead design is gone. The white coveralls and disguise if his arm and hand tattoos remain, though.
We’d already heard that Joker would have a “road-weary” look in Zack Snyder’s new cut of Justice League, and this version of the character is certainly that. We’d previously been granted a very blurry shot of Jared Let’s new look on Twitter, and back then we guessed that the white clothing may be a hospital gown or some kind of straight jacket/institution clothing. We can now see that it’s a surgical gown, and that there’s a mask hanging from his neck. Snyder told Vanity Fair that this is “probably” a remnant of his escape into the wild.
Snyder also revealed how Joker factors into the movie’s story, so if you’d like to remain in the dark for your viewing of the Snyder cut of Justice League, perhaps it’s best to turn away now. But if you’re up for spoilers, catch them in the next paragraph.
Joker will appear in a new sequence set on a ruined Earth after Darkseid has invaded the planet. This is a vision experienced by Bruce Wayne as a warning of what will happen if the Justice League fails to stop Darkseid’s plans. Naturally, Batman’s iconic nemesis is alive and well in this terrible nightmare future.
“The cool thing about the scene is that it’s Joker talking directly to Batman about Batman,” Snyder told Vanity Fair. “It’s Joker analyzing Batman about who he is and what he is. That’s the thing I also felt like fans deserved from the DC Universe. That is to say, the Jared Leto Joker and the Ben Affleck Batman, they never really got together. It seemed uncool to me that we would make it all the way through this incarnation of Batman and Joker without seeing them come together.”
Batman and the Joker have never faced off in the current DCEU movies, but in Batman v Superman we saw that the two definitely have history. Snyder suggests that this appearance will address the death of Robin, who’s armour we saw in the Batcave, covered in the Joker’s taunting graffiti.
Minecraft’s latest spinoff, Minecraft Dungeons, has crossed a huge new player milestone. Developer Mojang has announced that the dungeon-crawler game recently reached 10 million players on all platforms.
“I don’t think any of us at Mojang Studios could have ever imagined that the community of our dungeon-crawler passion project would grow to this point,” the studio said in a blog post.
Minecraft Dungeons is available for $20 on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as Nintendo Switch and PC. The game hasn’t necessarily sold 10 million copies, however, as it’s also available on Xbox and PC through Xbox Game Pass.
In the blog post, Mojang shared some stats about Minecraft Dungeons so far:
Players have defeated the Arch-Illager 5,934,629 times
Players have collectively spent 1141 years in their camps
Players have defeated the Redstone Monstrosity 7,044,521 times after 19,511,944 attempts
To celebrate the achievement, Mojang is releasing a new cape and pet for players as free gifts. “It’s a small way to say thank you for being the best community out there (and saving the Overworld over and over again),” Mojang said.
The items will appear in your inventory on February 24 through a free game update that launches that day that adds new expansion content.
Spoilers follow for WandaVision through Episode 5.
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If you’ve been trying to make sense of the mysterious world of WandaVision by tuning in to theories and speculation about the show, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Mephisto. The formidable fiend, originally created by Stan Lee and John Buscema in The Silver Surfer #3, is often mentioned alongside Wanda Maximoff because their long comics histories are irrevocably intertwined.
Don’t know how they’re connected and you’re afraid to ask? Or maybe you don’t know who this Mephisto guy even is? Do you have theories about WandaVision’s Agnes or Dottie Jones? Could Pietro Maximoff actually be Mephisto in disguise? Let’s learn a little more about the demonic villain and how he could make his MCU debut.
Who Is Mephisto?
Mephisto’s Origin
Mephisto’s Powers and Abilities
Is Mephisto Actually the Devil?
Mephisto and Wanda Maximoff
Could Mephisto Be Connected to WandaVision and The Snap?
The red-skinned fiend is a dealmaking demon, a corrupter of good, and lord of a hellish dimension. Mephisto is in the business of souls. The master of lies and temptation will make just about any bargain to claim the souls of those he deems pure, in particular the heroes of the Marvel universe.
He’s clashed with the Silver Surfer, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange on more than one occasion. He’s even faced the combined powers of Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom in a mystical showdown for the ages. No matter how many times he’s defeated, Mephisto eventually returns, hellbent on claiming all souls on Earth for his own.
So long as there is evil in the world, ever shall Mephisto endure.
Mephisto made his first Marvel Comics appearance in the late 1960s as an early adversary of the Silver Surfer. Sensing Silver Surfer’s power on Earth, the lord of evil couldn’t stand the existence of a hero as pure and good as the Surfer and sought to be his undoing. The Silver Surfer resisted all temptations and bargains Mephisto could throw at him, and the demon was driven away in a rage.
As for Mephisto himself, his origins are mysterious. He proclaims that he is older than not just humanity, but time itself. Doctor Strange shed a little light on the being’s beginnings not long after one of their first major encounters.
“Mephisto did not create the evil in this world,” Strange revealed in the pages of Fantastic Four #277. “Rather, it was the evil that created Mephisto. He was but a shadow, a reflection of the blackness that crouches in every human soul.”
Mephisto’s Powers and Abilities
Mephisto is the master of deceit. The archdemon has the staggering ability to alter both space and time to fulfill his end of an ill-struck bargain. He can grant his victims unimaginable power, is capable of changing history itself, and can even restore his claimed souls back to life and body.
When he is in his own domain, Mephisto is almost infinitely powerful and practically unstoppable. He traps his victims’ souls in that dimension, where he also commands a host of demons and monsters to do his bidding.
He’s also responsible for the creation of Ghost Rider—and even transformed several of the Avengers into Ghost Rider-like demons in his service for a time—and, as a result, Johnny Blaze holds a grudge. Can you blame him?
Is Mephisto Actually the Devil?
Mephisto isn’t actually Satan, but his dark deeds are worthy of the title of Lord of the Lower Depths. And he’s certainly not fond of the man upstairs. While striking a timeline-altering deal with Peter and Mary Jane Parker in the famed “One More Day” storyline, the demon indicated that part of his motive to destroy their pure love was simply to antagonize “he who I hate most.”
“To deny him is a victory unlike none other imaginable,” Mephisto said with undisguised glee.
There are also other figures in the Marvel universe who are Satan-like or have called themselves Satan or the Son of Satan, and many demons lay claim to hell-like dimensions. Marduk Kurios is one such demon who uses the name of Satan; Hela is the Asgardian goddess of death who rules over another dark dimension. The One Below All, an evil entity with power that dwarfs even that of Mephisto, might be the being the Marvel universe has that’s closest to Satan.
For all his scheming and evil deeds, Mephisto probably had the biggest impact on the Marvel universe thanks to an inadvertent connection to the Scarlet Witch. In the comics, Wanda’s abilities are both mystical and mutant in nature. Her magic is affected by and sometimes enhanced by her chaotic mutant ability to alter probabilities.
After a disastrous run-in with the Fantastic Four, the demon’s essence was shattered into pieces and dispersed. Wanda, in her desperate search for happiness with Vision, unknowingly used two of those fragments to create her twin sons Tommy and Billy. “The children are not real,” her friend and mentor Agatha Harkness later explained. “They are manifestations of Wanda’s will.”
Eventually, Mephisto reabsorbed the pieces of his dark soul, destroying the children and shattering Wanda’s heart. Harkness attempted to erase their memory from Wanda’s mind to spare her from the grief. This would prove to be catastrophic in time, as the resulting stress would lead to the events of House of M and the subsequent decimation of mutant powers on Earth. You can learn more about Wanda and Vision’s children here.
Wanda learns the truth about her children in West Coast Avengers #52.
Could Mephisto Be Connected to WandaVision and The Snap?
One huge question has remained unanswered since the events of Avengers: Endgame. Where did all those people go after The Snap? Mephisto, as a collector of souls, seems like one possible answer. Perhaps The Snap (a.k.a. The Blip) gave Mephisto a vast bounty of souls — half of all living things were snapped away, after all.
So, if that’s the case, what happened once everyone was un-snapped? Could he be on a mission to reclaim those souls and using Wanda to help him do it? And why use WandaVision to depict Monica Rambeau (and others) being un-snapped? We already know from Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home that the missing half of the population was returned by the Hulk’s Snap, so perhaps WandaVision has more to say on the matter…
Mephisto’s connection to Vision and Wanda’s children in the comics is one of the reasons why so many fans are eager to place him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And there have certainly been some tantalizing clues, like Agnes’ sly remark that the devil isn’t just in the details. Could Agnes (Kathryn Hahn) or maybe even Emma Caulfield’s Dottie Jones actually be Mephisto in disguise? Don’t rule it out yet.
Agnes, Dottie Jones, and Pietro are all candidates for actually being Mephisto.
Mephisto in TV and Games
TV: Mephisto hasn’t played a significant role on any television series, animated or live action, except for a quick cameo in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
Games: The archdemon has appeared in Marvel video games since the Silver Surfer game for the NES. He can be seen in the Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider games, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Most recently you could find Mephisto in Avengers Academy.
Kelly Knox is a freelance entertainment writer who also contributes to StarWars.com, DCComics.com, Nerdist, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @kelly_knox to talk Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and comics.
In a recent Reddit AMA, a designer at Respawn said that the lock-down Legend Caustic may get nerfed in the near future. This was in response to a question from a player who said that recent buffs to Caustic have caused competitive play to “suffer immensely” due to his abilities. Associate Live Balance Designer John Larson called Caustic “undeniably strong” and said that the Legend may receive some attention in the future.
“Good question. I think ever since the change to gas allowed teammates to play in gas with relatively no repercussions, there was a lot of unrealised potential that was quickly tapped into within the past couple months,” Larson said, in part. “Caustic is undeniably strong and has the highest win rate in matches that last longer than 20 minutes. Caustic plays a unique role as a defensive legend that can act offensively in certain scenarios, and we have to make sure we tweak him in a way that removes frustration without hurting how it feels to play as Caustic.”
For much of his Apex career, Caustic was considered one of the least powerful Legends in the game. Apex is a highly mobile shooter, and Caustic’s kit specializes in area-control, meaning that his abilities tend to become more useful as the game’s area of play dwindles. However, as Larson mentioned, recent buffs have rendered our gas-throwing friend far more powerful, particularly a change from May 2020 that removed his gas traps’ slow-down effect from affecting his teammates.
Some players have opined that this Caustic buff and the recent release of the explosive expert Fuse have made Apex more like Overwatch, where ability use is just as important as twitch reflexes. In response, Larson says that Respawn is looking at all the synergies possible between Legends and will adjust them as needed. In other Apex news, the game’s next gun will be unique, and a recent hotfix revealed that Kings Canyon will only be around until February 9 instead of February 16.
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Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is making its way to PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, and more this year, following its 2020 debut on PS4 and Xbox One.
Activision and developer Toys for Bob have announced that Crash 4 will be released for PS5, both Xbox Series platforms, and Nintendo Switch on March 12, with a PC release via Battle.net sometime later this year. The PS5 and Xbox Series X versions will run natively at 4K 60 FPS, while the Xbox Series S version will run at 60 FPS with upscale to 4K. These next-gen versions will also include faster loading times and 3D audio, and players who have already purchased It’s About Time on PS4 or Xbox One can upgrade to the respective next-gen version at no extra cost, except for in Japan, and transfer over save data.
The PS5 version of It’s About Time will also make use of the DualSense’s adaptive triggers when using weapons like Neo Cortex’s blaster and Tawna’s Hookshot, while Activity Cards on the system will offer breakdowns of progress in each dimension.
For those not upgrading, the PS5/Xbox Series versions will cost $59.99, and the Switch version is available for preorder today in certain territories for $39.99, the same price it will cost on PC.
Activision also promises more “fun happenings in celebration of the franchise’s 25th anniversary” to come later this year for Crash fans to look forward to, but future plans remain a secret for now.
