Quite possibly the most annoying thing about The Flash this season (aside from Barry’s hideous costume) is that the writers can’t seem to separate the wheat from the chaff. “Snow Pack” is a perfect example. The series has plenty of great material to mine in this episode in terms of the falling-out between Barry and Nora and the question of how Eobard Thawne fits into everything. But this episode devotes just as much time to the agonizingly dull Killer Frost/Icicle storyline. Then, for good measure, Cicada stumbles back into the picture out of nowhere. This is easily one of the most uneven and frustrating installments of the show in a very long time.
Ben Affleck is set to direct and star in Universal Pictures’ Ghost Army, based on the book, The Ghost Army of World War II, by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, according to Variety.
The film will also follow the documentary of the same name, with Affleck reworking the script that was most recently written by True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto, and a prior draft by Shazam!’s Henry Gayden.
Ghost Army is based on a true story of a squadron of recruits from the creative realm of art schools and ad agencies, who had to trick Nazi’s into thinking the U.S. had more troops than they did by using methods such as sound-effects records and inflatable tanks to deceit them.
Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star in Guillermo del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning hit, The Shape of Water.
According to Variety, DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in del Toro’s adaptation of Nightmare Alley. In addition to directing, del Toro co-wrote the screenplay with Kim Morgan.
Fox Searchlight, which handled distribution for The Shape of Water, will also distribute Nightmare Alley.
The film is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, which tells the story of a sleazy con-man and a mentalist who work at a carnival. A 1947 adaptation of the film starred Tyrone Power, but Variety reports the del Toro adaptation will be rooted more in the novel than the prior movie adaptation.
Cuphead just arrived on switch and besides, the free content update that includes character selection, fully animated cinematics and brand new animation, the developers of Cuphead decided to gift us with three secret bosses! You can find one secret boss in each of the three isles. Cuphead is now playable for PC, Mac, Xbox and Switch.
Minecraft’s biggest update, Village & Pillage, is now available and brings with it Pillagers and their Beasts, over 10 new Villagers, and even a Crossbow.
Available on PC, Xbox One, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch with the Bedrock Edition and on PC with the Java Edition, the list of additions is substantial and includes everything from a new Wandering Trader to Raids with these new Pillagers to to Villager Trading to bug fixes and so much more.
Another bit of exciting news for those playing the Java Edition is that Pandas are finally available after being only available on the Bedrock Edition since last December.
While Fallout 76 has gotten off to a rough start, Bethesda continues to implement bug fixes and patch updates to get the game into a more playable state. The game’s latest patch update, Wild Appalachia Patch 8.5, intends to address growing pains, adds the controversial repair kits, introduces a new photo mode, and more. Here’s a rundown on the highlights and the full patch notes.
The update is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. On consoles, it’s approximately 2GB in size, while the PC version is a little under 1GB. The headlining feature is the addition of repair kits. These single-use items, which restore an item to 100% (Basic) or 150% (Improved) condition, have been added to the Atomic Shop and can be purchased using Atoms unlocked with either microtransactions or by completing in-game challenges.
In response to criticism, Bethesda has explained why these new items have made their way into Fallout 76. “While Repair Kits do offer a way to fix an item in the field, we feel you will find that they are a convenient option you can utilize during your adventures,” the patch update reads. “If we find that Repair Kits do offer any sort of competitive advantage once they are available, we will make any changes necessary to ensure that advantage is removed.”
Alongside that, the patch adds a new photo mode (along with accompanying challenges) and includes numerous bug fixes to C.A.M.P., items, quests, and more. Issues like infinite loading screens and incorrect Survival scoreboards have also been addressed. Additionally, balance tweaks have been made to what you receive when scrapping certain items, including aluminum oil cans, aluminum trays, and empty cans.
The ProSnap Deluxe is a functional in-game camera you can use to fill your Photomode Gallery with snapshots of your adventures.
The ProSnap Deluxe can be equipped and favorited like a weapon.
Use the “Aim” button to look through the Camera’s lens, and then press the “Attack” button to snap a photo.
You can use a Tinker’s Workbench to build a ProSnap Deluxe and apply mods, like lenses.
The Camera uses Film to take photos, and you can use the Tinker’s Workbench to craft additional Film.
When you take aim with the ProSnap Deluxe, it will also display the names of nearby locations and creatures it recognizes in the viewfinder.
Learn to craft a ProSnap Deluxe Camera by finding a broken one on the corpse of a tourist who met their end in the Wasteland.
Once you’ve acquired a Camera, you’ll begin the new “Bucket List” quest, which allows you to finish the tourist’s photography collection, if you so desire.
Many new Camera-related Challenges have been added to Fallout 76 that you can complete using your ProSnap Deluxe.
General
NEW CONSUMABLE UTILITY ITEM – REPAIR KITS
Repair Kits are new, single-use consumable items that immediately restore the Condition of an item in your inventory. They come in two forms: Basic Repair Kits and Improved Repair Kits.
BASIC REPAIR KITS
Each Basic Repair Kit you own can be used to restore one item in your inventory or Stash to 100% Condition.
Basic Repair Kits do not consume any of your crafting materials when repairing an item.
Additionally, they cannot be crafted, dropped, sold to vendors, or traded with other players.
After acquiring a Repair Kit, use it by opening your Pip-Boy, finding an item that you’d like to repair, selecting the “Inspect/Repair” option, and then choosing “Repair Kit”
The number of Repair Kits you own will be displayed to you on the “Repair Kit” button in the “Inspect/Repair” menu.
Basic Repair Kits are unlockable in the Atomic Shop using Atoms you’ve purchased or those you’ve earned by completing in-game challenges.
Please note: If you purchase Basic Repair Kits by entering the Atomic Shop from the game’s Main Menu, they will be added to your most recently played Character’s inventory. Prior to purchasing Repair Kits, please ensure you’ve logged into a world with the character that you’d like to receive them.
IMPROVED REPAIR KITS
Each Improved Repair Kit you own can be used to buff one of the items in your inventory or Stash to 150% Condition.
Like Basic Repair Kits, Improved Kits cannot be dropped, crafted, traded, or sold, and do not use any of your crafting materials when consumed.
Improved Repair Kits are not available in the Atomic Shop. They are rare items you can earn by completing in-game content.
They are currently dropped as loot by the Scorchbeast Queen and may be added as rewards for other types of in-game content in the future.
If you own both Basic and Improved Kits, you will be prompted to select which type you’d like to use when repairing an item.
Design and Balance
Junk: Aluminum Oil Cans now each grant 1 Aluminum when scrapped, rather than 1 Steel, and the can’s base value has been increased from 9 to 13 Caps.
Junk: Aluminum Trays and Empty Cans now each grant 2 Aluminum when scrapped, rather than 2 Steel, and their base values have each been increased from 1 to 10 Caps.
Sound
News Screen: Sound effects have been added and will play when interacting with the News Screen.
Bug Fixes
C.A.M.P., CRAFTING, AND WORKSHOPS
Blueprints: Attempting to add an object that was built on top of another object to a Blueprint, such as a chair on a foundation, no longer sometimes prevents the Blueprint from including those objects.
Bulb Lettering: The letter “W” now correctly lights up when powered and activated.
Wall Décor: The Nuke Mobile is now correctly located in the Wall Décor build menu rather than Lights.
CHALLENGES
General: A number of Challenges and Subchallenges have received updated descriptions to improve clarity.
Rad Storm Challenges: Nuke zones now count toward Rad Storm-related Challenges, such as the “Kill a Glowing Creature in a Rad Storm” Daily Challenge.
ITEMS
Apparel: All Fasnacht masks are now immune to Condition damage.
Headwear: The Baaad News Billy mask is now correctly located in the Headwear crafting menu rather than Outfits.
Mods: Found Mods can now be correctly applied to Power Armor and weapons.
Weapons: The Salvaged Assaultron Head’s crafting requirements now correctly include the Science Expert Perk rather than the Gunsmith Perk.
PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY
Loading: Fixed an issue that could cause players to encounter an infinite loading screen.
Performance: Implemented an improvement to reduce hitching while running the game client.
Stability: Fixed an issue that could cause the PC game client to crash after exiting to the desktop from the Main Menu.
Stability: Addressed an issue that could cause the game client to crash when entering the Atom purchase screen from the Atomic Shop.
QUESTS AND EVENTS
Encryptid: Individual Pylons during the Encryptid Event will only register one interaction at a time and only count as one of the three required Pylons.
USER INTERFACE
Photomode: Players who have unlocked the Looking to the Future Pose can once again select and use it in Photomode.
Pip-Boy: Item stats now correctly remain visible when inspecting an item in the Pip-Boy.
Power Armor: The Bone Raider Excavator paint preview image no longer incorrectly appears when inspecting unpainted Excavator Power Armor.
Repair: Item stats now remain visible after entering and exiting the Inspect/Repair menu.
Scoreboards: Survival Beta Scoreboard icons on the Map now correctly update to reflect new rankings after a player disconnects from a world.
Scoreboards: The first score type listed on the Survival Beta Scoreboard now correctly matches the Top 3 for the week.
Shop: Addressed an issue that could cause controls to become unresponsive upon returning to the Main Menu after exiting the Atom purchase screen.
Social: The Friends List once again sorts friends based on their current status: Online, Online Different World, Main Menu, Offline, Ignored, and Blocked.
Workshops: The Corvega Small Water Purifier variant is now correctly marked as a premium item in the Workshop build menu.
With E3 2019 less than two months away, many publishers have begun detailing their plans for this year’s show. Last week, Microsoft confirmed the date and time of its annual Xbox press conference, and now Square Enix has announced it is holding another live presentation of its own at this year’s expo.
The Square Enix Live broadcast is scheduled to take place on Monday, June 10, at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET–the time slot traditionally occupied by Sony’s E3 press conference. Sony, of course, won’t be using that time slot this year, as the company announced back in November that it won’t be attending E3 2019, leaving a sizable gap for other publishers to fill.
The Square Enix Live presentation will be broadcast online on the company’s website and other social media channels. As for what will be revealed during the broadcast, Square Enix has only hinted that it will focus on “another exciting line up of titles.” Last year, the company showcased Kingdom Hearts 3, Just Cause 4, and even revealed a handful of unannounced games like Babylon’s Fall, a new title from Bayonetta developer Platinum Games.
What was conspicuously missing from last year’s presentation was the Final Fantasy VII remake. Little has been said about the title since it was first announced back at Sony’s E3 2015 press conference, so there is a chance it may make an appearance in this year’s broadcast. Square Enix also has an Avengers game in the works that we know very little about, and a Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Quest XI is on the way this year, which will presumably be one of the games highlighted during its live event.
E3 2019 officially kicks off on Tuesday, June 11. This is notably the last year the show has been confirmed for its current venue, the Los Angeles Convention Center, which has traditionally served as the site of E3 for most of the expo’s history. Microsoft’s E3 2019 conference is scheduled for Sunday, June 9, while Nintendo traditionally airs a pre-recorded presentation on the day E3 proper begins. Be sure to check out our roundup of all the E3 2019 conferences announced so far.
How do you wrap up a movie as big as Infinity War–hell, a franchise as expansive as the Marvel Cinematic Universe? How do you tie up the loose ends, close the time loops, and fulfill the character arcs of almost two dozen movies and over a decade of storytelling? According to co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo, they knew what they were getting themselves into with this whole thing–they wanted this ultimate conflict to be so complex and desperate that they’d be challenged to envision a way forward. And they definitely created that challenge.
The question now is whether that challenge paid off. And the answer, like the challenge itself, is complicated.
Avengers: Endgame absolutely works as a blockbuster movie experience. If you’re at all invested in the plight the remaining Avengers face after the events leading up to and including Infinity War, you will feel satisfied with this movie. The much-discussed three-hour runtime is no joke, but almost every minute of it is used well, barring some extended gag scenes that probably could have been left for the Blu-ray. Endgame manages to tie the entire MCU up with a beautiful, emotional, gut-wrenching, hopeful conclusion, which is an undeniable achievement.
But it also frequently loses the thread, especially as the remaining Avengers break into distinct teams and embark on their own separate missions in an extremely complex series of plots and sub-plots to defeat Thanos once and for all. Part of the problem is that simply defeating him isn’t enough–understandably, they want to undo what he did, as well. And their methods for doing so create infinite potential for plot holes, hand-waving, and rules that seem to get established in one scene and broken in the next. In other words, the Russos and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote themselves into a corner, and writing themselves out of it became maybe more complex than any movie–even one that’s three hours long–could have possibly supported.
The clips that have been released leading up to Endgame’s release take place almost entirely within the first few scenes of the movie. Eventually, the Avengers split and head off in very different directions, and the teams that form aren’t the most obvious pairings: Nebula and Rhodey, Thor and Rocket, Clint and Natasha, and one larger team comprising Ant-Man, Hulk, Tony, and Steve. A huge chunk of the movie–most of the middle, in fact–feels itself like a bizarro take on the original Avengers formula, one where cosmic Marvel intercepted with Earth Marvel much earlier, where Don Cheadle and a daughter of Thanos team up and blast off into space together.
It’s so fun. There are a ton of twists and turns, and at every stage Endgame will turn your expectations upside-down. Characters you thought would live will die, and characters you never expected to see again will re-appear where you least anticipate it. This really is the movie where everything from the MCU comes together all at once–Infinity War felt stuffed to the brim at the times, but it has absolutely nothing on the bursting mess that is Endgame. Even diehard MCU fans will struggle to recognize every random side character who makes a cameo, every one-liner that’s actually a callback to a callback from a movie from years ago, and every other reference that seems familiar but you just can’t quite place it because, come on, there are more than 20 of these movies and it’s been a decade.
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Avengers: Endgame – “Go” TV Trailer
Top New Games Out On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week — April 21-27 2019
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Infinity War was the cliffhanger of the MCU, and Endgame is its cathartic climax. There’s a battle that rivals Infinity War’s final clash, but with even more characters. It feels less personal as a result–there are fewer epic hero moments like Thor’s grand, crackling entrance into the Wakanda battle in Infinity War, and there are characters who have led their own movies who get one or two lines in this entire thing–or none at all. It was impressive how Infinity War felt like every character got some time in the spotlight, but Endgame doesn’t try to replicate that. This movie is about the core Avengers, and the background characters and supporting cast around them are just that.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark kicked the MCU off with the original Iron Man, and in many ways he’s the main character of this movie as well. The actor has come to completely embody Iron Man, and Endgame totally does him justice. Chris Evans’ Captain America is arguably just as important, and he has quite an arc in this film. I won’t spoil anything about Bruce Banner except to say his situation has changed quite a bit since the last time we saw him, and Mark Ruffalo’s performance in this movie isn’t marred by any distracting floating head CG like in Infinity War’s final fight. Scarlett Johansson has always brought a lot of warmth to the role of Natasha, a character who should by rights be a stone cold killer, and Black Widow is arguably the team’s beating heart. And as anyone who saw the trailers anticipated, Clint undergoes quite a transformation, although honestly the movie could have spent even more time on that.
Even with all the ground Endgame has to cover, it also has time for plenty of smaller, emotional moments–arguably too many, as it’s easy to view the movie with a clinical eye and imagine all the scenes here and there that could have been surgically cut to make it leaner. The events of Infinity War truly screwed the world up, and scenes like seeing Captain America leading a survivors’ support group emphasize the trauma. Some of these characters have changed a lot by the time we catch up with them–you’ll be surprised by Thor’s arc here.
But most of all Endgame is truly a love letter to the entire MCU–the whole thing. It’s messy and confusing, and there’s going to be a lot of discussion about whether the ending even makes sense–it basically breaks the rules set up throughout the entire movie leading up to it. But holy hell is it an emotional, fulfilling ride. I have no doubt we’re going to spend the coming weeks picking and pulling it apart until we’ve over-analyzed every single aspect imaginable, but right now, in the aftermath, Avengers Endgame feels like a win.
This is a SPOILER-FREE review of Avengers: Endgame, but honestly, you probably still shouldn’t read it. If you’re already sold on this movie, go see it, come back, and let’s compare notes. If you’re not, read on for some reasons why you should be.
The less you know going into Avengers: Endgame, the more you’re likely to enjoy it. Obviously, you wouldn’t have clicked on a review of this movie if you didn’t want to know something about the culmination of a decade’s worth of Marvel’s superhero storytelling, but trust me: more than Avengers: Infinity War, more than any Star Wars movie, Endgame is truly a story that needs to be experienced. Forget all the external noise from the deliberately vague teaser trailers, perfectly-calibrated celebrity soundbites, and footage leaks, and just strap in for the ride.