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Here are all of the best Morty moments from Season 2!When Rick and Morty first started with Season 1, Morty was setup to be a character that was really more of Rick’s punching bag.
However, season 2 is when Morty truly started to come into his own and gain more independence, standing up to Rick.
These are the Mortyest moments of Season 2.
If you’re looking for a new gaming PC, then you can snag an incredible deal on Newegg right now. The ABS Gladiator gaming PC is $1,500 and boasts some great hardware, including an RTX 2070 Super graphics card, and Rainbow Six Siege: Gold Edition. This deal ends today at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET, so you’ll want to act fast if you’re interested. It comes with free shipping and can arrive as early as August 24, depending on your location and shipping speed.
The ABS Gladiator gaming PC boasts an i7-10700K processor, an RTX Super graphics card, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB SSD. These specs are enough to run most modern games at high settings at 1080p and 1440p, though your performance will vary depending on resolution.
The 1TB SSD storage space is enough to fit a number of your favourite games, though with titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Microsoft Flight Simulator having huge file sizes, you may need to buy some extra SSDs or HDDs to ensure you have enough space for everything.
As for your free copy of Rainbow Six Siege, it’s redeemable on Uplay. The Gold Edition is normally $55 and comes with all of the base operators as well as the 16 operators from Year 1 and 2’s DLC passes. It also gets you the Year 5 pass, which features this year’s DLC operators, including Sam Fisher. This edition gets you some of the best operators Siege has to offer, and if you’re interested in any operator from Year 3 and 4, then you can purchase them later.
The next season, Operation Shadow Legacy, is just around the corner as well. The next Siege operation will introduce Splinter Cell’s Sam Fisher as a playable operator as well as make a lot of impactful changes. These include a Chalet map rework, scope and sight refinements, and a new reinforcement pool that should help teams deal with roamers and those who don’t reinforce walls.
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If the success of the movies Resident Evil and 28 Days Later in the early 2000s kickstarted a resurgence the zombie genre, then the record-breaking popularity of The Walking Dead in the following decade brought it straight into the mainstream. By 2016, it was hard for movies and shows to do anything new with the undead. The South Korean movie Train to Busan was a rare exception–this fast moving thriller didn’t set out to reinvent the genre, but by giving it a great setting for its zombie mayhem (a high speed train), and by ensuring the characters and drama were as strong as the action and horror, it found huge worldwide success.
An animated Train to Busan prequel titled Seoul Station was also released in 2016, and now we have the follow-up movie. Peninsula is directed by Yeon Sang-ho once more, and while the film’s setting is very much the world of the first movie, that’s really the only link to the original. This is a standalone film, with a very different location, story, and collection of characters.
The plot is straightforward. In the four years since the zombie virus infected South Korea, the entire Korean peninsula has been annexed–no one gets in or out. An enterprising American gangster living in Hong Kong learns of a huge stash of US dollars trapped in a truck in the Korean city of Incheon, so he hires a team of assorted misfits to retrieve it from the peninsula. The team is led by former soldier Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won), who is tormented by the loss of his sister and her daughter years earlier, and inevitably things go wrong soon after the money is found.
Ahead of Peninsula’s release, Yeon spoke of his plans to make a movie with a much bigger scale than Train to Busan. He definitely succeeded in this. From the early scenes of chaos on a ship to the wide shots of the now deserted and half-destroyed Incheon, Peninsula deliberately goes the other way from Train to Busan’s claustrophobic terror. This is a big, expensive-looking zombie movie, perhaps the biggest in the genre since 2013’s World War Z.
But while Peninsula is an impressive-looking film, Yeon fails to do anything very interesting with the scale and budget. There are some extremely obvious influences at work here–a dangerous mission into a sealed off post-apocalyptic city is straight out of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, while the team of rogue soldiers living in the city are reminiscent of the villainous military in George Romero’s Day of the Dead. Along the way we have some wild car chases and a Thunderdome-style death arena á la Mad Max, and a shopping mall setting that is presumably a homage to Dawn of the Dead. While it’s notable that Yeon has taken more influence from ’80s post-apocalyptic action movies than the horror genre, his failure to bring anything new to these elements only serves to remind how much more impressive these earlier films were. It’s not surprising that Yeon has opted for a new story–making a sequel set on another train (or maybe a bus this time) was never going to work. But unfortunately the route he has taken this time feels disappointingly uninspired and derivative.
One of Train to Busan’s greatest strengths was its genuine emotional power. Yeon spent time building sympathetic characters with believable relationships, so that when the mayhem began and people started dying, it really mattered. He attempts the same thing here by giving Jung-seok a tragic backstory, and by foreshadowing his later encounter with a woman named Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun), who still lives on the peninsula with her two children and her father. But it’s set up too quickly, and Yeon uses the shorthand of familiar clichés rather than developing a truly empathetic situation. It all climaxes in an emotionally overwrought final scene that is more laughable than moving.
Thankfully, Yeon’s skills as an exciting, kinetic filmmaker remain intact. The skirmishes with running, snarling zombies throughout the deserted streets of the city are grippingly shot and edited, and there are plenty of the huge zombie hoards that made for some of Train to Busan’s most striking scenes. And while we’ve seen post-apocalyptic death arenas many times before (including a zombie one in Romero’s Land of the Dead), those scenes in Peninsula are enjoyably tense and bloody. There is some much appreciated humor too, mostly involving Min-jung’s two resourceful young daughters, who are far better equipped to deal with the zombie apocalypse than most of the adults.
Had Peninsula been released as a standalone zombie action movie, with no link to a far superior predecessor, the movie might just have seemed like a derivative but reasonably entertaining slice of blockbuster horror entertainment. But it’s hard not to compare the two, especially with the addition of “Train to Busan Presents” to the US title making the link so blatant. If a third film follows–and the success of Peninsula in South Korea suggests it might–then hopefully Yeon will find something more interesting to do with his zombies.
Xbox Live is currently running into issues that are stopping both Windows and Xbox Store users from purchasing downloadable products. If you were hoping to buy Battletoads today and start trying your luck with the trio of amphibians, you may have to wait a little longer.
No timetable has been given for when the problem will be fixed, but Microsoft said its team is investigating the issue and will keep players updated on its Twitter page and the official Xbox Live status site. You can sign in to your Microsoft account on this site to be notified as soon as it is resolved, as well.
We are aware that some users may be experiencing issues when completing purchases from Windows and Xbox Store; our teams are investigating. We’ll keep you updated here and on our status page. https://t.co/dG2dbISiH7
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) August 21, 2020
This problem affects not just Xbox One and PC users, but also those on Xbox 360 and the Xbox website.
The problem also seems to be causing one extra issue for those using prepaid cards or codes on Xbox One specifically. If you have an Xbox Live Gold card you are trying to redeem and have run out of membership time, you may need to wait, as well.
If you’re looking at building a gaming PC or just upgrading your CPU, then Newegg has an excellent deal on a great 9th-gen i9 processor. The Intel i9-9900K Coffee Lake processor is down to $400 with promo code EMCDPFG42. It’s the same processor we used in our PC build guide and is more than enough for all modern PC games–it’ll keep you from needing to upgrade for quite a long time as well.
This deal is valid through Saturday, August 22, and supplies are limited, so you’ll want to order soon if you’re interested. It comes with free shipping and can arrive as early as Monday, August 24, depending on where you live.
This i9-9900K Intel processor (8-Core, 16-Thread) clocks in at 3.6GHz with a maximum Turbo frequency of 5.0GHz. This means you can use Intel’s Turbo Boost Technology to push the processor even harder to increase your performance. Please note that this CPU is only compatible with Intel 300 Series motherboards.
If you’re curious whether this processor is compatible with your gaming PC, then check out PC Part Picker, where you can plug in all of your components and then see if there are any conflicts with compatibility or power usage. It’s also extremely helpful for building a PC from scratch–it’s what we used for our PC build guide.
Epic is preparing to launch Fortnite Season 4 later this month. Amid an ongoing legal battle with Apple and Google, the studio has started to promote teasers for the upcoming season, including a big cameo from Marvel Comics. Read on for all the details.
Epic has revealed that Fortnite Season 4 will begin on August 27, 2020. The studio confirmed the launch date in a blog post regarding the upcoming Free Fortnite tournament. That tourney is another move intended to put pressure on Apple and Google, both by offering exclusive prizes and encouraging players to send feedback to the platform-holders. The tournament will be held on Sunday, August 23.
Since the legal dispute between Epic and the mobile storefronts for Apple and Google began, Epic has used the imminent launch of Season 4 to rally its player base to complain about the game’s removal from its store. That indicated that the launch wasn’t too far off, but the company only recently announced exactly when.
Epic hasn’t detailed exactly what to expect from Season 4, but it has already teased a big cameo. A Twitter post shows Marvel branding, along with what appears to be Thor’s glowing eyes and golden locks visible in the logo. This is supported by the tweet itself, which sports a hammer, lightning, and rainbow emoji–all symbols associated with the character.
Another collaboration with Marvel makes sense. Fortnite has incorporated several Marvel Comics characters into its game, from a Thanos tie-in to Infinity War to the recent addition of the popular (and very R-rated) character Deadpool.
Amid all this stage-setting for Fortnite Season 4, the company is moving forward with its antitrust suits against Apple and Google. The legal dispute began when Epic Games introduced a way to circumvent Apple and Google’s payment systems with direct payments to Epic, thereby cutting out their share of the sales. Both platforms then pulled the game, prompting a lawsuit and PR blitz that appeared to have been prepared in advance.
Most recently, Epic says Apple has “retaliated ferociously” against the company, threatening to cut off dev tools like the ones used by Unreal Engine developers across the industry. That could have a wide impact on much more than Fortnite.
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“Don’t try to understand it–feel it.” Laura (Clemence Poesy) says to John David Washington’s character near the beginning of director Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. She’s speaking about the rules defining Tenet’s unique time-bending mechanic, known as “inversion,” and her words guide the entire film.
Time travel is nothing new in media–and it’s worth noting, Tenet is not a time travel movie per se–but the film provides a fresh perspective on it by delivering a story and setting that encourages viewers to question the nature of reality and existence in the here and now.
Tenet’s story involves incredibly high stakes. Early on, it’s suggested that the villain, Kenneth Branagh’s Andrei Sator, wants to bring about World War III, but it’s actually much worse than that. The movie begins in a literally explosive and violent manner, similar in heart-racing action to the beloved beginning of Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This shocking opening sets the tone for what to expect throughout–and that is to constantly be on guard and braced for the unexpected.
After the dramatic opening, John David Washington’s character, known only as The Protagonist, finds himself recruited by a shadowy organization known as Tenet and sets out on a path to take down Sator, who claims to have the power of a god. On his journey, he meets up with Robert Pattinson’s Neil, who draws you in with the mysterious nature of his character from his first scene. The third main character is Elizabeth Debicki’s Kat, Sator’s tortured and somber wife. Kat’s grief and suffering are immediately apparent through Debicki’s brilliant performance, and her story is a central throughline. The Protagonist, Neil, and Kat work together to go after Andrei, and their journeys are distinct but connected in an intelligent way that makes sense and feels rewarding.
Built in concept on the foundation of Nolan’s earlier work, Inception, Tenet zig-zags through genres, blending mystery with thrills, and time travel–sort of–with blockbuster action, and does so to tell its story in a unique way. “Knowledge divided” is a phrase that pops up again and again in Tenet, and this speaks to how the film is presented. The rules of how time travel works–which themselves are not strictly or clearly defined–are such that you are pushed to question what you see happening on the screen. After a while, you, like the Protagonist, begin to understand that Tenet’s world moves in a non-linear fashion. This opens up new possibilities for how the story can unfold and how the motivations–and true realities–of its characters are revealed.
Like the James Bond series, Tenet bounces around to numerous different locations to hammer home the idea that this is a global story that will impact the world. Tenet’s scale is a delight, and the gorgeous sights and sounds in lovely locations like Rome and India inspire awe–this movie shines on the big-screen. However, the “end of the world” plot doesn’t resonate as much as Nolan’s earlier, more character-focused and intimate stories of people and places. I never fully understood the reason behind the high stakes or why Branagh’s character so vehemently wanted to end the world. Nevertheless, Tenet offers a story that is engaging and exciting to watch as the layers peel back and the mysteries of the narrative unfold.
The “inversion” time travel conceit, while confusing at times, leads to some genuinely thrilling action moments and scenes that are visually stunning. There is a striking fight scene where The Protagonist squares off with an enemy who is moving backward through time while he is progressing forward. It’s a remarkable scene that sticks with you. There is also an extended car chase scene involving a firetruck and a high-speed handoff on a motorway that plays out with some elements moving forward and others backward–and at different points in time–and it melted my mind to consider that what I was seeing is happening from two different perspectives and moments in time.
All of the high-octane action sequences in Tenet are bolstered by the thumping soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson, which is excellent.
Tenet holds many mysteries, involving the characters and how the story unfolds and reveals its many layers, and to say too much would edge too close to spoiler territory. That being said, Washington is fantastic as The Protagonist. The character is strong and smart, and Washington’s performance makes you believe that he is just as flummoxed as the viewer about what is happening and why. Though The Protagonist may never fully understand what’s happening around him, he’s confident and decisive in his actions, while also questioning what it all truly means. A standout scene involves a most inventive and brutal use of a cheese grater.
Pattinson adeptly portrays the sidekick with murky motivations and deep mysteries, all of which are eventually unraveled. The actor carries his air of mystery with confidence, constantly challenging the viewer to mark his every word for clues about the existence of reality and his place in it.
Elizabeth Debicki turns in a stirring performance as Kat. She suffers a horrible existence in Tenet, and Debicki believably communicates her character’s pain and turmoil, culminating in a crescendo in the third act that pays off in a satisfying way. Kenneth Branagh, meanwhile, delivers a memorable and haunting take as the villain, but the character is at times too one-note. I never fully connected with his motivations, and thus his character arc fell flat. Some of his scenes turned my stomach but mostly due to the ruthless violence he employed. He didn’t come across as a particularly intelligent person despite having created a time travel machine and a doomsday device. That said, Branagh’s excellent performance as the heartless villain helped explain the motivation behind the rest of the characters for why they would stop at nothing and sacrifice so much to stop him.
Overall, Tenet is a mind-bender of a movie that has action galore, characters you can for the most part connect with and understand, and a time travel story that doesn’t get bogged down in the details and just lets you enjoy the spectacle. It all climaxes with a final action scene that ties together loose ends, intelligently uses the “inversion” mechanics, and delivers a big, Inception-style twist that connects the dots and provides a level of clarity that feels eye-opening. Even then, some questions remain, and fans will no doubt unravel new mysteries as they watch and re-watch in the future.
Typically, when covering what is coming out on Netflix for the upcoming week, we tend to highlight numerous movies or TV shows. However, this upcoming week is special, and we’ll be spending most of the time on one item you need to watch because it’s awesome. Here’s what’s coming to Netflix this weekend and next week.
Lucifer: Season 5 finally hits the service on this Friday. While it was once a Fox series, it luckily found a new home on Netflix, and new episodes–loosely based on a Vertigo/DC comic series of the same name–have arrived. Additionally, Season 3 of the anime series Aggretsuko arrives next Thursday.
Now, let’s chat about one of the greatest shows in the era of streaming: Cobra Kai. Originally a YouTube Premium series–which was not a great home for it–the follow-up show to the classic Karate Kid movies sees the first two seasons land on Netflix on Friday, August 28. And Season 3 is right around the corner.
The show takes place in present-day, following the events of the original Karate Kid trilogy. Daniel LaRusso is married with two children, still living in the San Fernando Valley, and he now owns a car used dealership chain. Johnny Lawrence, however, is having a rough go, trying to make ends meet as a handyman, but he ends up drinking the days away.
However, Lawrence busts out his old karate moves in order to help a kid who is being bullied, and that moment leads him to reopen the Cobra Kai dojo. Of course, LaRusso catches wind of this, and their old rivalry ignites.
This show typically does everything many people disagree with when revamping a series. It takes a beloved property from the ’80s and adds a young supporting cast as the next generation. However, Cobra Kai is the perfect continuation of that classic movie franchise, blending the old with the new, and everything about it works exceptionally well. There’s a reason GameSpot’s Chris E. Hayner and myself have fought for this show to be on the annual Best TV Shows lists for the past two years.
Did this weekly “What’s coming to Netflix” piece just turn into a review essentially? Sure, but do yourself a favor; watch Cobra Kai, especially if you love the Karate Kid movies. Also, check out what’s coming to Netflix for September while you’re at it.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a rousing success for developer Mediatonic. The whimsical battle royale is selling exceptionally well on Steam, and the decision to include it as a PlayStation Plus freebie is a stroke of genius. Early in development, however, no one could have predicted how popular it would eventually be–especially not the publishers who opted not to fund it.
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Mediatonic creative designer Jeff Tanton talks about Fall Guys’ initial inception, its early development, the creation of the Beans, and the difficulties the studio had finding a publisher.
It began back in January 2018, when lead game designer Joe Walsh came up with an idea for a 100-person battle royale inspired by Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle. The game was initially titled Fool’s Gauntlet, and while the core conceit of Fall Guys was already there, the first draft was a bit more punishing than the game we eventually got. For one, death always resulted in elimination, and it was possible to finish a game with no winners. How very Takeshi’s Castle.
Cut to Jan 2018 – and I invite Joe Walsh (@gosujoe) to brainstorm on a completely different internal pitch – something just clicked and he had his epiphany moment midway through.
I got the one-pager for “FOOLS GAUNTLET” a few days later pic.twitter.com/NBU8PeqdqT— Jeff Tanton (@Jeff_Tanton) August 20, 2020
Tanton was immediately sold on the idea and forwarded it to one of the studio’s founders. From here, the team started working on a pitch deck to establish the look and feel of the game. The focus was originally on the courses, but after principal concept artist Dan Hoang designed the Beans as characters, the focus of the game suddenly shifted to the competitors and how heroic they would always be in their “indefatigability.” Tanton says that this is probably where the Fall Guys name emerged from.
Second, the BEANS. Obviously just little capsule shapes Dan had thrown in but suddenly we realized the focus of this game was the competitors… not just the course pic.twitter.com/bKETRIpJS1
— Jeff Tanton (@Jeff_Tanton) August 20, 2020
That’s probably where ‘Fall Guys’ as a game title first appeared (RIP Fool’s Gauntlet and ‘Stumble Chums’) – our characters that would fail for our amusement, but crucially always get back up again. Always. They would be heroic in their indefatigability. pic.twitter.com/Cjbc1FIE2w
— Jeff Tanton (@Jeff_Tanton) August 20, 2020
Tanton pitched Fall Guys to about 10 different publishers during GDC 2018 until Devolver Digital decided to fund it. Development began some six months later.
The rest of the thread is well worth reading, as Tanton talks about the original Fall Mountain course, the redesign of the Beans and their costumes, some of the challenges the studio ran into during development, and the decision to drop the player count from 100 to 60.
In other Fall Guys news, Twitch streamer DrLupo has been awarded a special in-game costume for being the statistical best player in the world. Mediatonic has also released a new patch that makes some tweaks to two of the game’s finale modes. If you need some tips to help you win Fall Guys’ coveted Crown, we’ve got you covered with a comprehensive beginner’s guide.
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A definitive ending to an excellent story is a truly precious thing. That’s part of why Samurai Jack’s return for a final season in 2017 was so refreshing, as it capped off the legendary cartoon show with an appropriately epic and conclusive sendoff. Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time makes a risky choice, then, by attempting to squeeze one more thrilling adventure out of the series post-finale, but it handles that responsibility with care – and manages to be an enjoyable trip into the past of the action game genre in the process.
For those who weren’t tuning into Cartoon Network in the early 2000s, Samurai Jack is about the titular warrior fighting to return to the past and slay the evil wizard Aku. Battle Through Time cleverly posits that Aku had one more trick up his sleeve: he interrupts Jack’s trip back through time and forces the samurai to relive his most exciting battles.
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The setup serves as a convenient way for the developers to pick and choose their favorite moments from the series and remake them as scenarios with you in control. And the ends justify the means in this case: it’s fun to revisit fan favorites like The Scotsman and dog explorer Sir Rothchild alongside less well-known characters like the Imakandi tribe and the Witch Hag. Even the common fodder enemies you’ll regularly hack through are all straight from the cartoon. Everything feels authentic to the source material, complete with their original voicework and charming recognizable mannerisms.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=It%E2%80%99s%20fun%20to%20revisit%20fan%20favorites%20like%20The%20Scotsman%20and%20dog%20explorer%20Sir%20Rothchild.”]That dedication to replicating the show stretches even further: The first thing you see when loading up Battle Through Time is the signature opening speech from Aku; Actual animation from the episode in question bookends the campaign, and other clips from the show occasionally pop up and highlight just how well the 3D graphics mesh with what aired on TV. Each level takes inspiration from the episode it’s based on, changing Jack’s appearance and the environments to mirror the show’s evolution as the campaign goes on.
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When Battle Through Time does go into the 3D art style full time, every character and location serves as a stunning recreation of Samurai Jack’s world. It’s been a long time since cel-shading was the peak of making games look like cartoons, and the angled and stylized character models on display here really add dimension to the cast. It’s not quite at the (admittedly high) level of Ubisoft’s South Park games in terms of flawlessly recreating the look of the cartoon, but it’s right up there, making the whole campaign feel like an extended episode of the show.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=It%20reminds%20me%20of%20PlayStation%202-era%20action%20games%20more%20than%20modern%20trendsetters%20like%20Bloodborne.”]Battle Through Time succeeds in capturing the source material, but its choices when it comes to gameplay are wholly original – at least in terms of 2020. Its combat systems and campaign structure turn the clock back just as far as Aku does, reminding me of PlayStation 2-era action games like Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and the original God of War more than this generation’s trendsetters like Bloodborne.
This retro action style is fitting for a TV show that emerged during the same period as a deluge of licensed products imitating gaming’s greatest hits. If you’d told me Battle Through Time was actually a high-quality remaster of a lost GameCube classic, I’d probably have believed you. It plays like nothing else available today, and the fast-paced sword swinging activates old reflexes I thought I’d long forgotten.
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This is an eight to 10-hour linear affair featuring arenas full of enemies, giant boss fights, a shopkeeper that inexplicably stays one step ahead of the player, and a score-based ranking system. It all feels like a spot-on replication of a bygone era, but it doesn’t feel outdated. The graphics and the intricate combo system are totally up to date, leading to a complete package that suggests a return to form rather than a crusty selection from the bargain bin.
Speaking of combat, there are serious advantages to looking backward, especially if you’re tired of the constant parades of Soulslikes the action genre has become in recent times. You can button mash through the fights on lower difficulties, but the combat system supports parries and combo moves that add nuance without going full Dark Souls, and when cranked up you’ll find that there can be just as much challenge in Battle Through Time’s combat arenas as there is in any area guarded by a fog door.
[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20core%20combat%20is%20designed%20to%20thrill.”]However, I will admit that, much like other games of its era, most will enjoy Battle Through Time more as a breezy adventure than a test of skill. The core combat is designed to thrill with everything from the various ways Jack cuts through robotic opponents to the crunch of the various super moves. Each weapon you wield has a set of combo strings to master, and there are reasons to use everything. Clubs can tear through rock and bone more easily, and the bo staff can take out hordes of foes at once. However, nothing compares to the thrill of slashing enemies one at a time while wielding Jack’s magic sword.
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Of course, because Battle Through Time looks back for its design, it also brings forward some problems best left behind. For example, instead of growing stronger through leveling from regular experience gains, you must purchase upgrades with several different currencies picked up from enemies. Awkwardly, some of these resources seemingly stopped dropping a few levels before the end, locking me out of some of the more elaborate upgrades. Even if the currency was available, upgrades have to be unlocked in order, meaning that the complexities of the counter system and longer combo strings were trapped behind useless expansions to an already generous weapon inventory.
There are also a few bizarre quirks, like how Jack will only climb up scalable surfaces one rung at a time. In these moments, the titular samurai looks less like a deft warrior and more like a nervous beetle crawling for the first time. The movement is so slow that it’s always preferable to awkwardly jump up the sheer cliffs then navigate them as intended.
