Category: Games

Remedy Entertainment’s upcoming third-person shooter Control has gone gold, according to a developer on the team. Effectively, development on the game has completed and discs are ready for manufacturing and distribution. Everyone can rejoice and wait with bated breath as the game’s August release date inches closer.

Remedy’s game director Mikael Kasurinen tweeted that Control is “done,” noting that the work the Finnish studio’s put in over the past three years was “an achievement from the best dev team on the planet.” Control is headed to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on August 27.

Ville Ruusutie, Remedy’s principal animation programmer, offered some additional context on Kasurinen’s news. In a tweet of his own, Ruusutie said the team “lost animation middleware and wrote new from scratch” while noting it was a “big risk” but thinks the studio has done well considering some of the “big tech challenges” Remedy has faced working on Control.

Control comes three years after the studio’s last outing, Quantum Break. In Control, you play as Jesse Faden, the Federal Bureau of Control’s new director, exploring the Oldest House and harnessing supernatural abilities to defeat enemies and find her brother. We found it to be Remedy’s most interesting game since Alan Wake after spending some time with it, saying, “Control is being designed with a Metroidvania-like structure that requires you to re-examine previously explored locations when new skills are unlocked, and the thought of incorporating an alternate dimension into this concept is very intriguing.”

Though Control is headed to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, the game will be a limited-time Epic Games Store exclusive. PC requirements have been revealed, and while one of them is a mandatory Epic Games account, Control will arrive on Steam in Summer 2020.

Pokemon Masters, the new Pokemon mobile game from DeNA (the studio behind Fire Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, and other Nintendo mobile titles), is coming to iOS and Android soon. The Pokemon Company has previously said the game would launch sometime this summer, but we may now know its exact release date thanks to the App Store.

While the official Pokemon website still lists Pokemon Masters as “planned for Summer 2019,” the game is expected to launch on August 29, according to Apple’s digital storefront. GameSpot reached out for clarification, and a PR representative for The Pokemon Company confirmed the game’s tentative release date is August 29; however, the rep noted the release date is subject to change, and it will be officially announced once it is finalized.

Meanwhile, certain countries will be able to play Pokemon Masters a little early. A “preview version” of the title is launching for Android devices in Singapore this week. The preview version will also come to Canada, although no specific date was announced. Progress made in the preview version can be carried over to the full game when it launches later this summer.

If you’re eager to jump into Pokemon Masters, pre-registration for the title is now live on the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. Everyone who pre-registers for the game will receive a notification when it is available to download. Like many other mobile titles, Pokemon Masters will be free to download and play, with optional microtransactions. You can read more details on the official Pokemon website.

Pokemon Masters is set in a new island region called Pasio, where famous Pokemon trainers from around the world have gathered to participate in the Pokemon Masters League tournament. Each trainer has one partner Pokemon, forming a “Sync Pair,” and you can team up with other Sync Pairs to engage in three-on-three Pokemon battles and earn Gym Badges. You can take a look at some of the confirmed Pokemon Masters Sync Pairs so far in our gallery. For more on the title, check out our Pokemon Masters hands-on impressions.

It’s been a good day for fans of the animated series Batman Beyond. Not only is the series finally being remastered and released on Blu-ray this fall, co-creator Bruce Timm teased a potential Batman Beyond: Season 5.Timm hinted at this possibility during the Batman Beyond 20th Anniversary panel at Comic-Con today. During the Q&A session, a fan asked if a fifth season revival would ever happen, to which Timm replied, “If this thing sells like crazy on Blu-ray and creates buzz, that would make it more possible.”

While hardly confirmation of a fifth season, this does offer hope that the animated saga of future Batman Terry McGinnis could still continue. It’s worth remembering that Young Justice co-creator Greg Weisman made similar comments when the series first hit Netflix, and now a long-delayed third season is current airing on the DC Universe app (and a fourth season was confirmed at the DC Universe panel).

According to Timm, the series may have continued after the direct-to-video movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker had that film sold better. He revealed that the Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue” (which is set in the Batman Beyond timeline and reveals Bruce Wayne to be the father of Terry and Matt McGinnis) began life as a second Batman Beyond movie. Initially, that movie would have featured Catwoman as the main villain, with Selina Kyle filling the role that eventually shifted to Amanda Waller in “Epilogue.”

Comic-Con 2019: 33 Must-Have Exclusive Collectibles

Voice actor Will Friedle voiced his interest in a storyline focused on Matt McGinnis coming to terms with his true parentage and possibly even taking up the mantle of Batman. “I had never put that together until a year ago. Poor Warren never had any kids. But it’s good to have a Batman on hold.”

The panelists offered another tease toward a potential future storyline. A pair of fans dressed as twin villains (and granddaughters of Harley Quinn) Dee Dee asked if we’ll ever learn the identity of their grandfather. According to Timm, “We’ll have to think about that for a future sequel.”

For more on Batman’s TV future, check out our advance reviews for the Batwoman series premiere, the Pennyworth series premiere and the Harley Quinn series premiere.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Fortnite isn’t the only battle royale game on the cusp of a new season. PUBG Corp. has rolled out PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘ Season 4 update on PC, introducing some big changes to the shooter, including a revamp of its original map, a new Survivor Pass with an assortment of new missions to complete and rewards to unlock, and more.

The biggest changes come to the aforementioned map, Erangel, which has received a major visual overhaul. PUBG Corp. says it has “improved the graphical quality of Erangel’s various areas and terrains across the board,” ranging from improved textures to updated terrain. According to the developer:

“We’ve updated existing terrain, signage, and buildings and have added a small number of buildings to some areas as well. To better illustrate Erangel’s history, terrain elements have been added or revised. Trenches, blast marks, camo nets, and abandoned tanks have been added across different areas of the map.”

Additionally, PUBG’s Season 4 Survivor Pass, dubbed Aftermath, is now available. The pass can be purchased on Steam for $10 USD and grants holders access to a variety of seasonal, premium, and weekly missions to complete, which will level the pass up and unlock an assortment of new cosmetics and other rewards, such as emotes, clothing items, and weapon skins.

The Season 4 Survivor Pass also introduces a new cooperative mission system. Much like Fortnite’s Party Assist feature, this allows players to team up with friends and contribute to a mission’s progress. New weekly missions will go live every Wednesday throughout the season. The Season 4 Survivor Pass will be active until October 15.

In addition to those changes, the Season 4 update also makes balance adjustments to many weapons and vehicles. You can find the full patch notes for the update on the PUBG website. PUBG Corp. says Season 4 will also be coming to the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game this summer, although no exact date has been announced just yet.

The X-Men have a bit of a reputation for being, well–complicated is probably putting it lightly. Divisive may be a better buzz word. There’s a tendency in fan circles for people to fall into one of two categories: The kind whose eyes light up at the mere mention of a mutant and the kind who instantaneously go gaunt and fearful the moment they realize they’re about to have to engage in an X-Men related conversation. This reputation is certainly well earned–X-Men live-action films pre-date the MCU, their cartoon series is second only to Batman: The Animated Series in terms of Saturday morning nostalgia bombs, and the team’s most famous members are more readily recognized and understood by the general population than most of the Avengers.

It’s just that their comics are also notoriously insurmountable, their stories are the absolute epitome of everything that makes superhero comics seem absurd, and their continuity seems to be in an almost permanent state of flux. Trying to figure out just how and where to engage with X-Men stories can feel like the worst kind of homework, where well-meaning fans will spout off list upon list of classic stories that are required reading, and then follow them up with list upon list of caveats to explain which parts need to be remembered, which parts should be cherry-picked and forgotten, when the dead characters come back, where the time travel kicks in, how Cyclops is the worst, how Cyclops is the best, how Jean Grey’s powers are changed and then changed again–and so on, and so on.

The past several years of Marvel comics publication haven’t really helped the problem. The X-Men status quo has been up in the air, split between multiple color-coded team books with key players like Charles Xavier tabled, time-travel plots bringing duplicate past versions of characters like Jean Grey and Bobby Drake to the present, and mutantkind itself being all but wiped out because of an Inhuman disaster that may or may not have been thanks to some behind-the-scenes movie rights conflicts between Fox and Disney. Thankfully those days are behind us.

It wasn’t that the stories themselves were bad, per se, but trying to find somewhere to start that didn’t leave you feeling like you’d missed a few seasons was all but impossible–especially if you were someone who really just wanted to read a story about your favorite big-screen X-Men without needing to graduate from a college-level course in X-Men history to understand it.

But thankfully, there is a light at the end of that particular tunnel, and it’s coming from an unexpected quarter. Legendary writer Jonathan Hickman, whose work on Avengers provided a ton of the groundwork that went on to inform movies like Avengers: Infinity War, has teamed up with artist Pepe Larraz for an X-Men reboot like no other–one that is intended to completely overhaul the way X-Men stories work for the foreseeable future, and provide the perfect gateway for anyone and everyone to finally start reading X-Men comics.

The plan is relatively simple. Hickman and Larraz are kicking off their effort with two dueling mini-series called House of X and Powers of X with alternate release schedules. House of X #1 hit shelves today while Powers of X #1 will hit shelves next Wednesday, and so on. Then, in the conclusion of each mini-series, a “new era” of X-Men stories will begin in earnest with new ongoing X-Men titles kicking off for monthly consumption, picking up threads laid in HoX and PoX to move the ball forward.

So, in theory, everything you could need to know about the future of mutants in the Marvel universe is contained in these two mini-series, and should you choose to engage, the next twelve weeks will become your one-stop crash course in X-Men.

Senior editor in charge of X-Men comics, Jordan D. White, spoke with GameSpot at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con about what, exactly, HoX and PoX are setting out to do. “House of X is the story of the most eventful month in the history of the X-Men, where the big, huge changes are happening in the present,” White said. “It has to do with Xavier’s master plan–[which] we haven’t heard about until now…Whereas Powers of X is the story of the past, present, and future of mutantkind, all connecting to that master plan. So the two stories really, really are two halves of the same whole. They weave together.”

Though they’re definitely accessible for people who have never picked up an X-Men comic before, White also assured us that they won’t be holding anything back. Anyone who’s read a Hickman comic, or just sat through Infinity War, would know enough about his style to expect a little bit of mind-bending–but don’t let that put you off.

“If you feel overwhelmed, the people who know a lot feel overwhelmed too,” White laughed. “Let me say that. Jonathan likes to throw big ideas out there. If you were reading Avengers for 50 years before he wrote Avengers, you still were going, ‘Whoa!’ And that’s the same with X-Men. So I think everybody is going to be on the same level playing field. You’re going to go in, your mind’s going to be blown, but you’re going to be ready for it.”

White continued, “[The point of these stories is to] reaffirm what is great about the X-Men while making people see them in a new way. It repositions them. I mean, Jonathan’s very big on that. [He understands that] you definitely need to be connected to what came before. You need to give people that feeling that this is all one piece. But at the same time, if you’re not doing something new, you’re not doing your job. Ideally, in a year, you will be reading a completely different kind of X-Men stories than you’ve ever read.”

If you’ve picked up House of X #1 today and are feeling particularly amped–don’t worry. White was also kind enough to give us a list of his favorite classic X-stories for new readers. These aren’t essential to understanding the new stories, of course, but if you’re hungry for some mutants and the week-long wait between issues feels like too much, these are for you.

• Astonishing X-Men vol. 1: Gifted

• New X-Men vol. 1: E is for Extinction

• Days of Future Past

• X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga

• X-Men Schism

House of X #2 hits shelves on August 7, while Powers of X #1 arrives next week on July 31.

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Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is reportedly being turned into a television show for the streaming service Hulu.Deadline is reporting that a television adaptation of the sci-fi comedy series is coming to the streaming service. Carlton Cuse (Lost, Locke & Key) is attached as showrunner and Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) is a writer on the series.

We reached out to Hulu for verification, but the company declined to comment.

Everything Coming to Disney’s Streaming Service (So Far)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a radio series on BBC Radio 4, which premiered in 1978. Adams adapted the series into a novel in 1979, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was adapted into many different forms since, including a video game and a 2005 feature film.

The 2005 movie adaptation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide starred Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschannel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Stephen Fry, and Alan Rickman.

Disney owns the IP rights to the Hitchhiker’s Guide, which would explain why the TV series is heading to Hulu. Disney acquired Hulu after purchasing stakes in the service from Fox and Comcast. Furthermore, the adaptation is being developed by ABC Signature, another Disney company.

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.

If you’re a fan of id Software games like Doom, Quake, or Rage, you’re probably aware that QuakeCon 2019 is about to kick off this week. The four-day convention, which will take place July 25-28 in Dallas, is one of the longest-running bring-your-own-computer gaming events in the world, drawing thousands of gamers every year to attend panels, compete in tournaments, and demo upcoming releases.

Naturally, the star of the show this year is Doom Eternal, which releases November 22, and attendees will get a first-hand look at the upcoming FPS and highly anticipated sequel to Doom (2016). But while the event’s 2019 tagline is “The Year of Doom,” there are plenty more games involved with QuakeCon than some people may realize. And for the vast majority of gamers who won’t be at the convention in Dallas this week, there are great deals to be had as retailers celebrate QuakeCon with huge sales on PS4, Xbox One, and PC games.

The QuakeCon sales this week expand to multiple Bethesda franchises, like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored, with deals at various retailers like GameStop, Steam, and Fanatical as well as the PlayStation and Xbox stores. Notably, Rage 2 is down to $40 on Xbox One and PS4 ($27 on PC), and Doom Eternal is only $51.59 to pre-order on PC at Fanatical. Plus, Fallout 76 is only $15 at Amazon for both PS4 and Xbox One, and Prime members receive $15 back in reward credit afterward, essentially making the purchase free. The Amazon Prime deal ends after this Friday, July 26.

See more of the best QuakeCon game deals to take advantage of below!

PS4

Xbox One

PC

*PC key is redeemable at Bethesda, not Steam

4. Do the Borg have any weaknesses?

Were you to encounter the Borg, unpredictability would be your friend; the Borg would be susceptible to any tactical strategy they haven’t previously seen.

Starfleet has designed weapons specifically to battle the Borg. The Defiant, for example, was one such starship; its phaser cannons rotated their frequencies so that the Borg could not adapt. But brute strength is not a long-term solution against such vast numbers.

The Borg’s confidence is their undoing. One of the Borg’s quirks is that they do not attack unless they see their targets as imminent threats. Borgs will often board ships or beam down to planets just to survey and scan the technology and biology; they will not appear aggressively hostile at first. And during this small window of opportunity, Starfleet crew members have boarded Borg cubes and walked around unencumbered. This is an excellent opportunity to gain tactical advantage before the fighting inevitably starts.

The Borg are particularly susceptible to tech-based attacks.The most successful ones have come from scenarios where Starfleet captured a drone, established a neural link with it, and compromised the Borg’s defense systems.

There have also been scenarios, suggested or acted upon, where Starfleet used drones or assimilated humans to upload viruses and malignant programs to the collective. These instances have only been possible, however, through a combination of specific circumstance and dumb luck, and they would be nearly impossible to replicate.

To say that Game of Thrones‘ final season was divisive amongst fans is the biggest understatement of 2019, but HBO President Casey Bloys still isn’t sweating the audience backlash. In fact, he says that the response to the events of the final season hasn’t changed the way the network is approaching the upcoming prequel series “at all” — which does make sense, if you consider that the new series has an entirely different creative team.The new series, which may or may not be called The Longest Night, comes from a concept that X-Men: First Class’ Jane Goldman developed with George R.R. Martin. Set 5,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the new series doesn’t creatively involve the flagship series’ showrunners David Benioff or D.B. Weiss, or executive producer Bryan Cogman, who is off working on Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. (Though Cogman was originally conceptualizing a spinoff series, HBO did not move forward with it.)

The Game of Thrones prequel series’ pilot was shooting in Northern Ireland earlier this summer, and Bloys confirmed that “shooting has wrapped” during the HBO executive session at the 2019 summer TV Critics’ Association press tour. The new show stars Naomi Watts as its lead, and the cast includes Josh Whitehouse, Naomi Ackie, Denise Gough, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sheila Atim, Ivanno Jeremiah, Georgie Henley, Alex Sharp, and Toby Regbo. The pilot was directed by S.J. Clarkson.

“It looks really good. The cast was amazing,” said Bloys. “Jane and S.J. are busy in the edit room so I haven’t seen anything yet, but we’re looking forward to it.” The prequel series only got a pilot order, and once the pilot is reviewed HBO will determine if the new show will be picked up to series.

As for the Game of Thrones finale backlash, Bloys said that there was never any actual consideration to reshoot the final season despite almost 1.7 million people signing a Change.org petition to remake it with “competent writers.”

How Game of Thrones’ Main Characters’ Looks Have Changed Over the Seasons

“There are few downsides to having a hugely popular show but one I can think of is when you try to end it, many people have big opinions on how it should end… I think that comes with the territory. The petition shows a lot of passion and enthusiasm for the show, but it wasn’t something we seriously considered,” said Bloys.

HBO’s president of programming also revealed that the network was fairly hands-off with Benioff and Weiss in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones since the producers had hit their stride by that point. “When a show is in the sixth, seventh, eighth season of a highly successful run, there’s usually a rhythm between the network and the showrunners, so there’s minimal back and forth here and there,” he explained. “That’s not just Game of Thrones; that goes for Silicon Valley which is in its final season, they have a really good handle on what they’re doing and how they want to end it … it’s not like we’re all over them.”

As for the other Game of Thrones spinoff series that still are in development, Bloys stayed mum, saying, “The only update I have [on the GoT companion shows] is that we finished shooting the prequel in Belfast, very excited by the footage that we saw and the cast, but we’re editing that.”

For more on the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series, find out which of the Great Houses it will feature, and which ones you won’t see popping up in Westeros.

Terri Schwartz is Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.