Netflix has announced that the next Pokémon movie, Secrets of the Jungle, will debut on the streaming service in October.
Revealed on the Netflix Geeked Twitter account, Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle will be available on Netlfix from October 8. The announcement came with a brand new trailer, showing Ash and Pikachu heading into the jungle to discover new jungle Pokémon and meet with Coco and his Zarude.
the next POKÉMON movie is coming to Netflix!
Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle — the 23rd movie in the series — will debut on October 8th. check out the brand new trailer: pic.twitter.com/AXur4CrVqW
The jungle is also seemingly home to the Healing Spring, which a group of scientists show special interest in. No doubt Ash and his friends will need to ensure the jungle is kept safe from evil intentions.
Secrets of the Jungle is the 23rd Pokémon movie. The previous movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution, was a CGI remake of the very first Pokémon movie.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
PUBG creator Brendan Greene AKA PlayerUnknown has left PUBG Studios and is now working on a wildly ambitious-sounding game at his studio PlayerUnknown Productions. Greene shared more details on this project in an interview with GamesBeat, saying the idea is to create a metaverse, of sorts, and give people a new place to exist in a game world that is the size of the Earth.
“We want to give people a new place to live, because this one has some issues,” Greene said of the new game, which is being made under the working title Artemis. Greene didn’t want to say the word metaverse, but it sounds like that’s what he is trying to achieve.
“I don’t want to say that word. I’ve been thinking long and hard about this. I watched Ready Player One and I thought, ‘Holy sh**, that’s what I want to make,'” he said.
Players will get their first introduction to Greene’s vision in the pay-what-you-want tech demo Prologue, which puts players onto a massive map and challenges them to survive against the elements. It’s a single-player game and there is no combat. Greene thinks it’ll be dull and tedious. But it’s meant to serve as a first glimpse into some of the ideas that Greene and his team hope to achieve with Artemis.
“I think it’ll be quite boring. Light fires, board up windows, keep yourself warm against the constant storm where cold weather will knock you out,” he said. “But again, it’s more to show a consistent world with logical points on it where you can do things, and this is systemic gameplay.”
Prologue is a “testbed” for the game elements of the world that he hopes to realize in Artemis. “It’s like what Arma was for battle royale. It was a place for me to test, iterate, get a final game mode, and then be able to say, ‘Okay, it works.’ That’s what we want to do with Prologue,” Greene said.
One of the biggest differences between Prologue and Artemis is the size and scale of the game world. Whereas Prologue takes place on a very, very large map that is 64-kilometers by 64-kilometers in size, Artemis’ world is hoping to be on the scale of a planet. Its radius could exceed 6,000 kilometers, which is about the size of Earth. While the actual size of Artemis’ game world is subject to change, Greene said he has observed a trend among gamers to desire a “digital life” where they can be transported into a new place. The idea is for Artemis to allow users to create cities, societies, and civilizations.
“Providing this space where it’s a big enough world–I love Rust, but if you play on a busy server there are bases every few meters. I want a space where you don’t discover a player’s base for miles. Or when you do it’s a big settlement rather than a box,” Greene said. “This stuff has always excited me, ever since I got back into gaming by discovering really open worlds. Red Dead Redemption is fantastic, but it’s just a bunch of scripts. You go kill all the bears in a region, go away, come back, and they’re all back again. I want to have meaningful life in the world. If you kill all the bears in a region, maybe the deer population explodes.”
To realize his vision, Greene and the team are making a proprietary game engine because they couldn’t find a commercially available option for what the studio had in mind. The team at PlayerUnknown Productions is currently about 25 people, and Greene said the studio only plans to expand to about 50. They don’t need a massive team because the technology and machine-learning will do a lot of the heavy lifting for creating game worlds and systems.
As you might have guessed, Artemis likely won’t be released anytime soon–Greene said it could be five years or longer.
Alan Wake Remastered, a refreshed 4K version of the 2010 game and its two expansions, is on the way from Epic Games. The remaster will launch this fall on PC via the Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
According to a press release, the remaster will include the core 2010 game, plus The Signal and The Writer DLC, along with a new commentary track from creative director Sam Lake. This also marks the first time the game will be available for PlayStation owners–it was previously exclusive to Xbox 360 and PC. Lake announced the remastered version of the game in an open letter to fans on Alan Wake and Remedy fan site The Sudden Stop.
Alan Wake centers on the titular horror writer as he searches for his missing wife across the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls. The third-person shooter pairs your standard weapons with a flashlight, which you have to use to weaken the supernatural monsters by shining lights on them. It was inspired by mystery and thriller series such as Lost and Twin Peaks, and the works of Stephen King. It received a follow-up, the more arcade-like, combat-focused Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, in 2012.
A remaster of Alan Wake is kind of a big deal for developer Remedy Entertainment, particularly right now. First, the game became something of a cult hit when it was released on Xbox 360, taking Remedy away from its more action-focused roots with Max Payne into the realm of a psychological thriller. But Remedy made the game as an Xbox exclusive, and for quite a few years, Microsoft owned the publishing rights to the property–so an Alan Wake 2 never materialized, and Alan’s story was never fully resolved.
So returning to Alan Wake at this moment, as Remedy works on whatever’s next for these two big properties, seems pretty pointed. Remedy has already said its next game is in the shared Control-Alan Wake universe. This feels like it could be providing fans with a refresher course on what happened in Alan Wake, so they’re ready for Remedy’s next big offering–which suggests it might be soon that we start to hear about what’s next for Alan and Jesse. Alan Wake Remastered also includes a new commentary track from Sam Lake, which might include some further insights about how Remedy means to bridge the two stories even further.
Even if Alan Wake Remastered doesn’t shine more light on the future for the series, though, this should be an excellent opportunity to revisit Remedy’s cult classic. The original title still holds up pretty well even a decade later, but having access to it on new consoles and with improved graphics should allow Alan Wake to scare a whole new batch of players.
Below is a spoiler-free review of Lucifer Season 6, which debuts on Netflix on Sept. 10.
The sixth and final season of Luciferhas come to its appropriately epic and bittersweet end, one that — in many ways — gives the fans what they truly desire.
That’s impressive, considering Netflix took on a lot when it heeded the fan-run campaign and picked up the admittedly odd show after it was canceled by Fox. How do you wrap up a show where characters live for eternity in Heaven, Hell, or elsewhere? How much fan service do you provide the fans who literally saved it? After the way Netflix ended the similarly toned The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I admit I had little faith. However, I, like Ella Lopez, found some things to restore it.
At the close of Season 5, Lucifer and his twin brother, Michael, battled at the L.A. Coliseum to decide which would become the new God. Ultimately, Lucifer and company defeated the duplicitous Michael and Lucifer seemed poised to ascend. Yet as Season 6 dawns, Lucifer isn’t quite so sure he’s ready to leave Lux and all his friends behind. Meanwhile, Chloe — who’s agreed to be God’s consultant in Heaven — can’t seem to hang up her detective persona. This becomes clear in Episode 1, “Nothing Ever Changes Around Here,” when they find themselves smack-dab in yet another whodunit while trying to have a last-night-on-Earth date.
But don’t worry, Season 6 doesn’t slip right back into a murder-of-the-week format. It experiments!
While last season saw Lucifer try musical and film noir episodes, this season features a cartoon episode reminiscent of Community’s “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” and a clips episode that eschews the monotony of the format for some insightful (and hilarious) perspective shifts. They make for some fun changes of pace in a genre that often relies on gimmicks.
And hey, gimmicks aren’t necessarily a bad thing; genre shows often do well with them. Just look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wynonna Earp, The Magicians, and even The X-Files. Lucifer’s work well, too, thanks in large part to the cast’s natural chemistry and the show’s sense of humor.
But one big challenge this season had was giving love to its supporting characters, arguably just as cherished by fans as Deckerstar, and here’s where it succeeds most. Season 6 sees a lot of Ella — always a bonus — and gives her more to do than play sidekick. Maze and Eve have some great scenes together, including a fun episode that revisits Eve’s past. Meanwhile, Linda contemplates her time as a celestial therapist, while Dan deals with being in Hell. It would’ve been a shame to nix Dan entirely after he spent five seasons going from Detective Douche to a likeable guy, so it’s nice to see the show catching up with him.
Amenadiel has perhaps the most poignant arc. Last season, he decided to enroll in the police academy, motivated in part by racial disparities he’d seen while trying to help Caleb, a Black teen bullied by cops and gangs alike, in Season 4. Actor DB Woodside has been open about the racist treatment from police he’s faced in his life, and told EW the episode with Caleb had been one of his favorites.
Amenadiel has perhaps the most poignant arc.
So, while Lucifer ignores the pandemic, it does revisit police brutality and racial injustice without mentioning specific real-world reckonings. It rightfully points out that Chloe, a white woman whose dad was a cop, wouldn’t have the same experience on the force as Amenadiel, an angel perceived on Earth as a Black man. As a white-passing Latina, I do not experience police harassment the way Black and Brown people do, so my ability to gauge how well this arc works is limited. What I do appreciate is that Lucifer didn’t back down on or forget the issue, chalk it up to “a few bad apples,” or cheerily wrap it up, the way shows might have in the past. It treats it as the ongoing, systemic problem that it is.
As for the main arc, the crux is obviously Lucifer’s upcoming job change, and it doesn’t come easy. There are new and old faces that come with whirlwinds of chaos, plus numerous Easter Eggs from seasons pasts. All told, it makes for a mostly satisfying conclusion, despite some timey-wimey plotting and unanswered questions. Will hardcore fans like it? It likely depends on what they see as the best endings for Deckerstar and company. Like Lucifer himself, it’s a little exasperating, but still a good time.
Remedy has announced a full remaster of its cult classic Alan Wake, due to arrive this fall on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC (via Epic Games Store). Perhaps more excitingly, it opens the door more than ever for Alan Wake 2 to come down the line.
After a leak last week, Remedy and publisher Epic announced that Alan Wake Remastered would come with both of the game’s expansions, allow for 4K resolution, and will include a new commentary from creative director Sam Lake. No official release date has been announced, but the previous retailer leaks have pointed to October 5.
Lake himself wrote about the remaster on Alan Wake/Remedy fansite The Sudden Stop, beginning his letter by writing “this is for you”. He confirmed that the game was almost complete, and that it is “the original experience you fell in love with all those years ago. We did not want to change that. But the visuals all around, including the character model of Alan Wake himself and the cinematics, have been updated and improved with some choice next-generation upgrades.”
The announcement of the remaster will undoubtedly see fans getting excited about a long-awaited sequel. When Remedy partnered with Epic Games, the developer was said to be working on two games from the franchise – one was a “AAA multi-platform game”, and the other a “smaller-scale project”. It feels very likely that Alan Wake Remastered is the smaller project, leaving a full Alan Wake 2 more possible than ever.
Despite troubles with the first game – it was designed as an open world game but had to be drastically altered due to production difficulties – Remedy has made no secret of wanting to return to Alan Wake’s world. It’s started work on the sequel before, but never been able to reach the finish line. However, after folding Alan Wake into the world of Control, it seems Remedy has big plans for its own interconnected universe of games – and Alan Wake 2 feels very much like it could be a part of that.
Alan Wake originally arrived in 2010, and told the story of an author on the search of his missing wife, slowly discovering that a horror story he wrote is coming true around him. This remaster marks the first time the cult classic has ever been released on PlayStation.
We awarded the original release a 9/10 review, saying it did “a great job of mixing elements of written work, television, and video games to create an experience full of scares, laughs, and thrills that’s just as fun to play as it is to watch.”
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 developer Ninja Theory has been revealing tidbits of information about the upcoming game, and the latest tweet from the studio shows just how far it’s willing to go to achieve fashionable accuracy.
“Sometimes to create, you must first destroy,” Ninja Theory tweeted as someone at the studio took a blowtorch to some leather material that looks similar to the costume that Senua actress and video editor Melina Juergens wore recently.
It’s not a video of the office pyromaniac in action–probably–but a demonstration of how Ninja Theory plans to use real-world assets in its games, creating a library of scorched materials that it can reference when needed. “It’s high-quality scans like this that will help us reach an amazing level of detail in our games,” the developer explained in a separate tweet that showed off the digital replica.
Ninja Theory showed off some behind-the-scenes footage from Hellblade II at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, which founder Tameem Antoniades said came from a “chunky slice” of the game that had been developed exclusively so far for PC and Xbox Series X|S.
It’s still early days though, and Ninja Theory is looking to create something more ambitious than a simple sequel so Hellblade II won’t be arriving anytime soon. For more on the game and the impressive amount of prep work being done for it, you can watch Juergens undergo warrior training as part of her process to make Senua more authentic.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the 2012 RPG from Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s since-shuttered 38 Studios, is still getting new DLC almost a year later.
The latest expansion is called Fatesworn, and it’s now in the “final stages” of production, the game’s Twitter account announced recently. Acknowledging that it’s been a “long time coming” for any updates on Fatesworn, the developer revealed a new look at the Gale Crossing location in the Fatesworn expansion. This looks like an idyllic little town in the forest.
“Centuries ago, Gale Crossing was an integral stop on the bustling trade route known as the Sativa Road, a treacherous passage over the mountains that brought wealth and industry to a region once considered unlivable,” reads a line from its description. “But all good things must come to an end. After series of catastrophic foreign wars, the price of Sativa Fiber dropped dramatically, devastating the Sativa industry and gutting the region’s importance as a source of this once-valuable reagent. Despite these tragedies, Gale Crossing remains a crucial junction for travelers hoping to pass safely through the Eldrith Mountains.”
“After the fall of the Sativa Road, residents of Gale Crossing continued to rely on outsiders for their survival. Courageous travelers and merchants still hoped to pass through the mountains as a more direct alternative to shipping by sea, but the vast infrastructure for such treks began to disintegrate quickly without attention and maintenance. High Sativa prices had driven the boom times, funding improvements along the trade route, supplying Gale Crossing and smaller camps with the equipment to support travelers and their teams. Without this money, the mountain passes soon returned to their natural state, deadly and impassable.”
THQ Nordic now owns the Kingdoms of Amalur series and is publishing it going forward. A release date for Fatesworn has not been announced yet.
Kingdoms of Amalur is a fantasy RPG that came from the minds of author R.A. Salvatore, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, and Ken Rolston of Elder Scrolls fame.
GameSpot’s original Kingdoms of Amalur review from 2012 concluded it had top-notch combat but was held back by generic characters and world-building. The game came to Nintendo Switch back in March 2021. A new Re-Reckoning Edition of the game is also available, featuring all DLC and upgraded and enhanced visuals.
Legendary game designer Hideo Kojima seems to be teasing the new Matrix movie on Twitter, but it’s not entirely clear why.
18 years have passed since the release of Matrix Revolutions, the series’ last installment. However, with the franchise set to revive itself with the release of The Matrix Resurrections in theatres and on HBO Max this December 22, fans are currently scouring the internet for new content about the film.
Kojima himself seems to have stepped away from the world of games for a moment to answer their call by teasing the movie in a tweet featuring the Warner Bros Pictures What Is the Matrix website. Alongside thematrix.com, both sites have recently been updated with video loops that show the franchise’s iconic green code animating vertically down the screen.
As you might have guessed, fans have already begin speculating as to whether Kojima has something to do with the new Matrix film, or if a tie-in game might be in the offing. It seems more likely that he’s simply acting as an ‘influencer’ in this instance, or is just an interested fan like the rest of us – but there is still the mystery of why the website has been changed now.
Until recently, WhatIsTheMatrix.com looked rather different. As Reddit user Lego_496 shared in an r/matrix thread, the promotional website (which has been used on and off since the marketing for the original Matrix movie) featured advertisements and links to Blu-Ray copies for previously released films from the franchise.
Many fans will be hoping that the change to both websites has come as part of a promotional campaign that launches the film’s first official trailer. Following an earlier leak, behind-closed-doors footage of The Matrix Resurrections was shown at CinemaCon, and officially revealed the film’s title, but we’ve seen nothing publicly since.
Guests at the event were reportedly shown details about returning cast members and previewed action shots featuring some signature style Matrix action. Despite growing anticipation from fans, Warner Bros decided at the time not to make the footage shown off at CinemaCon available to the public. You can find a range of the details reportedly shown off at the event in the short video below:
In other Matrix 4 news, IGN recently reported on details surrounding why Lilly Wachowski, the co-director of the original Matrix trilogy, decided against returning to the franchise to helm its newest entry. Wachowski explained that she found the idea of “going backwards” in her career “expressly unappealing” and noted that she struggled to find the motivation to return to the franchise following some major shifts in her personal life.
For more information on The Matrix Resurrections, make sure to check out our dedicated page for the film where you’ll find a range of clips and news from across the title.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN who often wishes he could stop objects in mid-air. You can follow him on Twitter.
After Halo Infinite‘s long-awaited first beta, the team at 343 Industries has been hard at work gathering and processing player feedback from the play test. Now, in one of 343’s characteristically long and in-depth blog updates, the studio is sharing some of that feedback and how it’s being implemented–including updates to Infinite’s contentious radar changes.
343 first hinted that Infinite would be shaking up Halo’s classic motion tracking radar all the way back in 2017, when similar changes were introduced in Halo 5. In that game, the changes were only introduced in Ranked mode, limiting the motion sensor to only show players who were sprinting or shooting, rather than all walking-speed movement. While the changes made sense for competitive Ranked play, a similar iteration in the Halo Infinite beta wasn’t well-received by play testers.
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“The Combat Sensor, or radar, that sits in the bottom left of your HUD followed a different set of rules than previous Halo titles,” the Halo Infinite multiplayer team explained in the blog post. “It only displayed enemies when they were sprinting or shooting, which was more in line with Halo 5’s ‘Threat Tracker.’ We knew that this implementation was going to feel different, maybe even a little contentious, and that’s why we wanted to get feedback on it as soon as possible in the Tech Preview.”
The outcome of the play testing is that 343 is going to revert to a much more traditional radar for Halo Infinite, with the blog post saying “most players” preferred the old style radar for social matches. “We’ve updated the Combat Sensor to feel more like the ‘Motion Tracker’ of old, which shows all movement besides crouch-walking, and should have that ready for folks to test in the next flight,” the post promises.
The post goes through a whole lot more detail on player feedback that’ll be implemented into the game, with some changes due before the next beta test, some in time for the game’s launch on December 8, and some scheduled to arrive post-launch. Check out the rest of the feedback in the full blog post.
If you want to try out Halo Infinite before its full launch in December, there’s still time to sign up as a Halo Insider for the next beta, which will feature 4v4 Arena and Big Team Battle.
I’ve got quite the eclectic mix of bargains here today. The co-op afficionados are covered (Overcooked 2, Dead Island, Lego Harry Potter). Same deal with anybody looking to swap their current four walls with broader horizons (The Outer Worlds, Spidey Miles Morales, BioShock Infinite, AC Valhalla). Oh, and there’s also something for the rarer individual who just can’t get enough pandemic (66% off Plague Inc.). Sick game. Liked it more when it was less relatable.