Major League Baseball (MLB) has delayed its opening day “by at least two weeks” due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus).
The MLB posted its official statement on Twitter. Following a call with the 30 Clubs, MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. announced the league decided to take these precautions “in the interests of the safety and well-being of our players, Clubs and our millions of loyal fans.”
In addition to the opening day delay, this pre-season’s remaining Spring Training games have been canceled, and the 2020 World Baseball Classic Qualifier games in Tucson, Arizona have been postponed indefinitely. While Spring Training games had already been in progress, the MLB’s proper season was scheduled to begin on March 26.
Several other non-sporting events have also been impacted by COVID-19, as E3,GDC,CinemaCon, WonderCon, and SXSW have all been canceled or postponed due to the ongoing spread of the virus, and the BAFTA Game Awards has transitioned to an online-only event.
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While the latest installment in the Scream franchise is shrouded in secrecy, the upcoming film has found its directors. Ready Or Not’s Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Part of the collective filmmaking group Radio Silence–along with Chad Villela, who will produce the new Scream film–the duo’s plans for the upcoming movie have yet to be revealed. There is no indication if this will be a continuation of the original story, a reboot, or something in between.
The Scream franchise took the world by storm back in 1996, as a slasher horror movie whose characters were well aware of the cliches that exist within the genre. The first film made $173 million on a reported $14 million budget. Three movies and two seasons of a TV series followed, the latest of which–Scream 4–released in 2011 and made $97 million worldwide on a reported $40 million budget.
This new Scream movie would be the first film in the history of the franchise not directed by the creator of the series, Wes Craven. The horror movie icon passed away in 2015 at the age of 76 after almost 50 years working as a horror movie director in Hollywood.
Regardless, the new Scream movie should be in good hands with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett. In GameSpot’s review of Ready Or Not, Rafael Motamayor said, “Ready Or Not breathes new life into the people-hunting genre with a fast-paced, brutal fun time. In just 95 minutes, blood is spilled, laughs are had, and expectations and genre tropes are met and subverted, ending in an explosive finale that will leave you eager to RSVP for this particular wedding over and over.”
Mario Day has come and gone, but the sale prices on Switch games have stayed live and in the case of Mario + Rabbids, gotten even better. The sale prices for Super Mario Maker 2, Yoshi’s Crafted World, Super Mario Party and Mario vs. Sonic run through Saturday, but the deal on Mario + Rabbids is brand new and probably won’t last.
Not only are there some great chances to save on Mario games this week, but we just added a ton of new Super Mario designs to the IGN Store, as well as other Nintendo t-shirts from Metroid, Zelda, and even Animal Crossing.
For Honor is receiving a Prince of Persia in-game event called Blade of Persia. The crossover event will be playable starting today through April 2 and feature a limited-game mode as well as Prince of Persia-themed cosmetics.
The new mode is called Ruler of Time and it will require players to fight the Prince and his army of sand creatures who’ve arrived in Heathmoor following a sandstorm. Players will fight the Prince in a changed Harbor Dominion map where the Prince will periodically emerge and attack heroes using the Dagger of Time.
Along with the new mode are Prince of Persia-themed changes, including a new menu, and a variety of customization items. If players have the free event pass they will have access to 30 tiers of Prince of Persia-themed loot, including a new Battle Outfit, Sand Mood Effect, Emblem OUtline, and 26 Ornaments.
The Prince of Persia theme will also evolve with time as the Prince will eventually embrace his evil side and turn into the Dark Prince. A new game mode will be available on March 19 when that happens.
For more about Ubisoft’s medieval fantasy game, check out IGN’s review of For Honor here or our For Honor wiki for tips and walkthroughs.
Infinity Ward has released a few hotfixes to address bugs and exploits in Call of Duty: Warzone–a new free-to-play battle royale game that also ties into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. One of the more notable hotfixes addresses an exploit that allowed players to easily survive the gas cloud ring.
YouTube user Steve noticed that, while in the gas cloud ring, two players can keep their squad alive by constantly reviving each other. The reason this worked is because Warzone didn’t have a feature tied to revives to discourage players from helping each other multiple times in a row.
We’re rolling out a playlist update across all platforms that fixes an exploit where players could counter the gas ring while in Battle Royale.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, for example, decreases the amount of time you can remain in a downed state before an ally needs to pick you up with each time you’re killed–this makes it hard to reach a teammate in time if they quickly get downed two or three times in a row. In Apex Legends, your time decreases if you’re downed in quick succession and you come back with very low health, making it all but impossible to pick up a downed teammate as the closing ring grows more deadly with every round.
Since you can revive your squadmates relatively quickly in Warzone and they come back with most of their health, Steve and his friend discovered you could just endure the gas cloud and automatically win. If you’re far from where the final safe circle will be, there’s pretty much no way the final few squads will be able to locate and kill you.
Infinity Ward has also rolled out a hotfix to address the lag some players experience when approaching or picking up a contract in Warzone. Additionally, on Twitter, Infinity Ward co-design director of multiplayer Joe Cecot wrote that a future update will address one of the more annoying aspects of Warzone. Currently, downing a player doesn’t net you the kill–finishing them does. You could down 50 players, but you’ll still only have zero kills if your teammates or another squad swoop in and finish off all 50. The update will change that, adopting Apex Legends’ system where the kill goes to the person who actually downed the target and removed them from the firefight.
CCI has not set a new date for the convention yet but stated that refunds for those who already purchased their badges will begin rolling out in the coming days. They also confirmed that no decision has been made regarding San Diego Comic-Con which, at present, is still scheduled for July 23-26. CCI is maintaining close contact with officials in the city of San Diego to settle on an official decision at a later date.
WonderCon is following in the footsteps of E3, which was recently canceled for 2020 earlier this week, and major film premieres like A Quiet Place Part 2 and F9: The Fast Saga which announced their delays this morning.
Many local governments are instituting bans against gatherings large gatherings of people to stem the spread of the virus. The CDC and WHO are providing daily updates on how you can protect yourself and others.
Bloodshot keeps a lot of things from the original Valiant comics the same, from the character’s general backstory to his ability to heal any wound thanks to the nanites swimming around in his veins. But as fans have noted, there’s one thing in the Bloodshot adaptation that’s very different from the original books: Bloodshot’s appearance.
When we got the chance recently to sit down and chat with Bloodshot director Dave Wilson, we asked him why they didn’t try to make Vin Diesel look more like the comics version, and his answer surprised us.
“The easiest [change to discuss] is his look: the white skin, the red eyes, the red dot. And he’s never wearing a shirt in the comics,” Wilson described, explaining that he thought it would be strange for the movie version to follow the same rules. “It just presents an impractical approach. Why is he wandering around like that the whole movie?”
“Also, I feel like I need a physiological reason for it,” the director continued. “I asked [then-Valiant CEO Dinesh Shamdasani] about, like, ‘Hey, why does he look that way? What’s causing the red dot? What’s causing the white skin?’ And it was never really like, ‘Oh this is why.’ Honestly. There isn’t [a reason].”
Based on some independent research we conducted ourselves (ie, a quick search that led us to this Reddit thread), it seems Bloodshot’s big red chest circle may relate to the original way Nanites were injected into him, or it might be a wound that the nanites for some reason can’t heal, or it may have simply been a creative choice born of the “x-treme” culture bubble of the early ’90s. Regardless, Wilson has a point–along with the chalky white skin, it would have been a strange choice for the live-action version.
That said, there are several nods throughout the movie to Bloodshot’s original appearance, including an early action scene in which Vin Diesel walks through a cloud of flour from an overturned truck and temporarily takes on a dusty, pale veneer. However, the money shot appears later–as seen in the movie’s trailer, Diesel’s version of the character does eventually start to look more like his counterpart on the comics page.
Vin Diesel as Bloodshot
“This happens at the end of the film,” Wilson said. But it’s not simply perfunctory–the appearance change happens for a reason, relating to the nanites flowing through his body. “I just wanted it to be a response to something he was doing, and to have some logic behind that,” the director continued. “For example, someone says to you, ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost;’ it’s because your skin’s gone pale, because in that moment, adrenaline causes you to focus your necessary functions on fight or flight. So blood rushes away from the skin to your muscles, so you can either run, or punch whatever the hell is terrifying you. And Bloodshot is the epitome of that.”
Throughout the movie, when the nanites are hard at work repairing Bloodshot’s various wounds, they glow red. When they concentrate in his chest, you get a version of the red circle. And because his “blood” is concentrated in his torso, the rest of his skin appears pale white. “So that’s why his skin goes that pale, and his chest goes that red, because they’re clustered in his thoracic cavity, making his heart work overtime,” Wilson said, adding for good measure, “And his eyes go red because they force the aperture open, so he can take in more visual information. And that causes his blood vessels to burst.” Voila.
The director hinted that in future movies–should Bloodshot get a sequel or be used as the foundation for a Valiant Comics cinematic universe–the character might have greater control over the nanites. He wouldn’t look like the comics version of the character all the time, but it’s something that might happen as he concentrated the nanites on specific tasks.
“As it goes on, and he realizes that it’s part of his ability, that he can overclock himself, that he can do that, I feel like you’ll start to see more and more of it,” Wilson teased. “So it’s a little more sort of Bloodshot meets the Hulk, in terms of, it’s something that happens to him, or something that he manifests, rather than just something that’s always present.”
Bloodshot hits theaters March 13. Read our Bloodshot review here.
Epic Games, owner of the Unreal Engine widely used across the games industry, has acquired the company behind the facial animation work deployed in games such as God of War and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.
Cubic Motion is the creator of facial animation technology that is used in conjunction with facial rigs used for animations to produce subtle facial expressions that can be used to convey expressions in a more natural way. It’s the reason Epic Games wants to include it in its suite of tools available to Unreal Engine developers.
“Facial animation that conveys the slightest nuance of human expression is essential to crossing the uncanny valley,” Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri said in a statement to GamesIndustry.biz. “We believe that holistically combining Epic’s Unreal Engine with 3Lateral’s facial rig creation and Cubic Motion’s solving technology is the only way to answer this challenge, and ultimately, to reach the pinnacle of digital human artistry with Unreal Engine.”
All Cubic Motion employees will retain their jobs in the transition, while Epic Games also promised to continue working with existing partners on their projects. This suggests that Epic Games won’t make the technology proprietary to Unreal Engine at this time.
Hellblade’s sequel, as part of what is now titled the Senua Saga, was revealed at The Game Awards last year alongside the Xbox Series X. It featured some impressive looking facial animations that have improved on the original implementation. A release date has not been announced yet.
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If you’re one of the many people excited about the latest installment in the Fast & Furious franchise–titled F9: The Fast Saga–you’re going to have to wait to see it. The film will now be released on April 2, 2021 in the US.
Originally shceduled to release on May 22, the official F9 account tweeted out a message announcing a new global release date of April 2021. While COVID-19 (the coronavirus) is not listed as a factor, the tweet does mention taking consideration of everyone’s safety. You can see the full message below.
F9’s rescheduling is the latest film to see a delay. Recently, A Quite Place 2 had its release postponed with no new date scheduled at this time. Originally, it was supposed to release on March 20.
All of these cancellations are to limit the amount of human contact, which in turn, will limit the transmission of the virus. For information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the CDC has a list of things you can do to keep yourself safe.
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