It looks like Ubisoft changed the name of Gods & Monsters to Immortals Fenyx Rising due to a trademark dispute with Monster Energy.
As detailed in this video from Hoeg Law, the Gods & Monsters trademark faced an opposition filing from the Monster Energy Company in April of 2020, which may have forced Ubisoft’s hand, necessitating the name change to Immortals Fenyx Rising.
You can see the full timeline of Gods & Monsters attempted patent registration over on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. Ubisoft applied for the patent back in June of 2019, and did not face any issues until January of this year, when Monster Energy applied to oppose the trademark under a belief that its brand would be damaged due to the “likelihood of confusion” between the two entities.
In the notice of opposition the energy drink brand cites its ties to the games industry through sponsorship of professional gamers and esports organizations in support of its many claims. What’s interesting is that in Ubisoft’s May 2020 answer to Monster Energy’s notice of opposition, they deny almost all of the claims. Yet ahead of September’s Ubisoft Forward, the game’s name was officially changed from Gods & Monsters to Immortals Fenyx Rising.
In an interview with VGC last week, associate game director Julien Galloudec said that the name change was not a technical decision, but one related to the evolved “vision” of the game:
So no, the change of name was entirely because of the vision of the game. When you start a game it’s always an adventure and it’s a very iterative process. So you start with a vision that evolves as you craft it with the team and we get feedback and ideas. […] So after that, the game changed a lot, to the point where we felt we needed a new name to be better aligned with that updated vision, so that’s where we decided to change to Immortals Fenyx Rising”.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising will launch on Google Stadia, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and PC on December 3, 2020. You can check out our preview here.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Remember when making an “edgy” game didn’t mean adding Godsmack to the soundtrack of your swashbuckling 9th century Persian fantasy, or painting Sonic the Hedgehog black and giving him a gun? Hotshot Racing remembers. In this endearingly vibrant and deliberately primitive 3D aesthetic it means octagonal wheels, chunky environments, and plenty of pointy bits and pieces that’ll poke an eye out. As a single-player experience Hotshot Racing definitely runs out of puff a bit faster than I’d expected, but it’s certainly an earnest throwback put together with a huge amount of love for the early 3D racing era.
Hotshot Racing may be full of sharp lines and low on modern detail, but its blocky cars and chiselled characters burst from the screen with retro appeal. Developers Lucky Mountain Games and Sumo Digital’s stab at an authentically ’90s atmosphere has been a roaring success in that regard.
Better still, however, is the handling of most of the cars. Arcade racers live and die on their driving dynamics, but Hotshot Racing boasts a very finely-honed handling model. Cars feel planted on the road with a satisfying sense of weight that’s sometimes absent from pure arcade racers, but they’re still snappy and responsive enough to obey your inputs instantly as you hurl them into sweeping bends. The drifting is painless to trigger with a quick dab of brake, and it’s very easy to add or reduce drift angle throughout a slide to balance your speed for a perfect corner exit. Boost is a potent way to catch opponents (although largely useless to shake them), and there’s a surprisingly powerful drafting mechanic that facilitates some furiously fast slingshot manoeuvres.
Informed heavily by its Sega AM2 ancestors and the very finest of the best-in-class British arcade racers that followed in their slipstream – including Burnout and Split/Second – Hotshot Racing is extremely easy to pick and play but demands near-perfection when tackled at Expert difficultly.
Each of the eight over-the-top drivers has a garage of four vehicles at their disposal. They’re unlicensed, but it’s not at all hard to make out Hotshot Racing’s nod to the likes of Days of Thunder’s iconic Mellow Yellow Chevy Lumina – hell, it’s even called the Thunder! Likewise, racing veterans should be able to easily identify everything from an off-brand Bugatti to a lookalike Lotus Espirit or a pretend Pennzoil R34 GT-R. There’s a decent amount of customisation options of offer for each, too – from blowers to bobbleheads – though the simple visual style means that not all of these custom bits and bobs necessarily make a big impact on screen.
Vehicles drive with subtle differences due to nuances with their speed, acceleration, and drifting stats, although I’ve found I can only feel notable dissimilarities when hopping between cars with stat bars that significantly differ from each other. I can’t really detect the smaller variations. Cars with low drifting stats are my least favourite to drive; I’ve found winning Expert races in them much more difficult than in cars with ostensibly worse top speed and/or acceleration but better drift capabilities. For instance, I won all the Expert cups in the Thunder – despite its apparent top-speed handicap – because of its ability to drift around corners like butter sluicing around the curves of a hot frying pan. The cars that are more cumbersome to drift definitely aren’t as fun to use.
Those Expert cups came pretty quickly though; there are four GPs, each featuring four races, and I collected them over a single session. Hotshot Racing attempts to incentivise attacking them over and over again by tying upgrades to achieving specific feats across the entire assortment of vehicles, but the tracks probably lack the zest to make tackling them a dozen times each feel hugely tempting.
That said, they are quite fabulous to look at and packed with eye-catching, living elements, like spinning carnival rides to animated water displays, and raging dinosaurs to somersaulting sea creatures. But that’s all on the periphery; the track ribbons themselves don’t really linger in the imagination. The circuits are wide and well-suited to this aggressive brand of racing, but they’re also not exactly brimming with memorable strings of weaving esses or cool switchbacks. You don’t want every track to be a punishing barrage of mad bends one after another, but Hotshot Racing probably features too many simple courses versus more complex ones.
The regular racing is buoyed by the presence of a couple of additional modes – the pursuit-themed ‘Cops N Robbers’ and a Speed-inspired mode called ‘Drive or Explode’ (drop below a certain speed and you’ll blow; you know the drill). Cops N Robbers is a bit more like an infected-style mode (taken down robbers are just converted into cops) and isn’t quite as fun as it sounds playing solo. The secret to success as a robber just seems to be to hang back and let the AI hassle the frontrunners, and the car combat as a cop is fine but a little one-note.
The breakneck Drive or Explode is the better of the two – a hectic battle against both the clock and an ever-increasing minimum speed limit. Collecting checkpoints to fend off the bomb timer, avoiding damage, and keeping your car travelling as fast as possible is a frantic juggling act and some of the better fun I had in Hotshot Racing.
The best way to have fun, however, is the four-player splitscreen. It doesn’t quite reach the highs of a full-on, four-way combat racer like Mario Kart or Crash Team Racing, but the high-speed hijinks of Hotshot Racing makes for some quality same-couch competition.
There’s a fine line when playing a deliberately awkward game. On one hand, unreliable physics and purposefully clunky controls can yield hilarious results, as the struggle to perform basic actions is delightfully silly. Much like other absurdist “simulation” games such as Goat Simulator and the original Surgeon Simulator, Surgeon Simulator 2’s best moments come from facing a ridiculous scenario while being woefully ill-equipped to deal with it. However, the laughs eventually die down, replaced by exasperated sighs as surgeries become more complex and picking up a scalpel doesn’t get any less cumbersome.
Played from a first-person perspective, Surgeon Simulator 2 is far closer to a wobbly puzzle game than a proper simulation–albeit one with tongue firmly planted in cheek. In addition to performing surgery, you’ll be navigating hospital labyrinths, solving conditional logic puzzles to access medical supplies, and generally trying to prevent the surgical dummy affectionately known as Bob from dying. Surgeon Simulator 2 features a story mode, playable solo or cooperatively with up to four players, where you’re learning on the job using allegedly state-of-the-art simulation technology instead of bothering with stuffy medical school. This takes place over a series of levels, beginning with a tutorial, after which you’ll be attempting your first heart transplant–a completely natural progression for medical practitioners, surely.
Surgeon Simulator 2’s story is communicated through voiceover while you encounter increasingly outlandish situations. What begins as solely performing surgery quickly escalates to uncovering mysteries and conspiracies facing the shady medical facility in which you find yourself. It’s all highly ridiculous, but in a way that complements the equally bizarre gameplay.
Each level challenges you to not only fix what ails the patient but also to solve various problems en route to providing treatment. This includes passing through inexplicably locked doors that won’t open unless a button is pushed or a specific item is placed on a nearby scanner. Usually, an essential item lies behind these locked doors, such as a fresh set of intestines required for a transplant. However, the unlock condition is often placing the patient’s old organs on the scanner, resulting in a frantic dash between rooms to replace organs before poor Bob bleeds out. Regardless of how badly you botch an operation, the only fail state is running out of blood. It doesn’t matter if you conveniently forget to replace a lung as long as the diagnosed ailment is resolved. You also don’t need to bother putting Bob’s insides back in anything resembling anatomically correct order–just slap them in and Bob’s your uncle (or rather, creepy surgical test dummy). Conversely, heads and limbs must be attached correctly. Surgeon Simulator 2 doesn’t provide an explanation for this discrepancy, but making a mess of someone’s insides is often incredibly funny.
While each level increases in scope and complexity, the controls offer the most consistent challenge. Beyond the standard act of moving in first-person, Surgeon Simulator 2’s controls are wildly unconventional. Most notable is the sole arm dangling in your field of vision, which is used to interact with anything you can grab, be it a switch, a tool, or a vital organ. If you’re using a keyboard and mouse on PC, holding shift locks your feet in place, allowing you to extend and retract your arm using the mouse. Similarly, clicking in the right-mouse button enables hand rotation, necessary for getting the correct grip angle on objects. Combined with the left-mouse button used for grabbing and releasing, Surgeon Simulator 2 intentionally makes actions taken for granted in typical first-person games incredibly clumsy. Even picking up and using a swipe access card is an awkward flailing mess, let alone successfully completing a double amputation.
At first, this baby giraffe level of coordination is hilarious; gleefully tossing vital organs across the room delights for a while. However, as Surgeon Simulator 2’s levels and puzzles ramp up in extravagance, imprecise controls begin to grate. Even when wielding a scalpel, there’s no aiming cursor or highlighted outlines to indicate what you’re about to cut free. Accidentally ripping out the wrong appendage while Bob’s vitals plummet only amuses so many times before frustration sets in.
A recurring example of Surgeon Simulator 2’s double-edged clumsiness is prominent whenever limbs are involved. Sure, you can literally grab and yank Bob’s leg off, but taking the time to use a saw results in far less blood loss. Saws and axes cause dotted lines to appear where you can chop away at the unfortunate patient, but it’s far too easy to miss these guides and cause more damage than intended. While mimicking the physical act of sawing with your mouse is morbidly amusing, Surgeon Simulator 2’s deliberately clumsy control system undermines its skill-based elements. This surgical anarchy would prove to be more amusing–especially in story mode–if the penalty for losing too much blood wasn’t restarting the level from scratch. Some later levels are hefty and mazelike in structure, requiring a decent amount of exploration and puzzle-solving. This makes it all the more annoying when you’re forced back to the beginning due to the unreliable controls causing a medical mishap of epic proportions.
Fortunately, Surgeon Simulator 2 isn’t all exasperation. To help prevent disasters, there are two types of syringes: one for stopping bleeding and another for replenishing Bob’s blood stores. If you prepare ahead of time by having some injections on hand, everything will usually turn out okay. Most malpractice will only occur when chasing the story mode’s extra challenges, such as finishing a level within a strict time limit or keeping blood loss below a set amount.
Where Surgeon Simulator 2’s obtuse nature works more consistently in its favour is in the community-created content. You can even make your own levels with a comprehensive creation mode, giving you access to all the tools seen in the story mode to enact your own brand of chaos. Oddly, the creation mode tutorial redirects you to a YouTube playlist instead of an interactive guide, which feels a little disjointed. Regardless, playing community-made levels is refreshing, largely due to how the objectives differ from simply healing Bob. You can access community levels by joining a random quickplay queue or searching for specific content to play by yourself or with others. Naturally, the quality of these levels varies, but there are plenty of clever twists on the core surgical gameplay. Some of my favorites included various escape-the-room settings, one of which was an Indiana Jones-themed level replete with giant boulders and Bob in a sarcophagus.
Surgeon Simulator 2 likely began its own medical school in protest of being kicked out of the real thing. In creating its own brand of hospital hospitality, there are plenty of laughs to be had. However, hearty chuckles from chucking a heart across a grimy hospital room only last for so long before Surgeon Simulator 2’s clumsiness begins to frustrate more than entertain.
As the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes some of the biggest games out there (literally), Strauss Zelnick doesn’t see cloud gaming making a huge difference to his business. Zelnick explained his lack of enthusiasm in an in-depth interview with Protocol.
Though he isn’t claiming cloud gaming is a bad thing, the gaming exec is reluctant to believe the cloud is going to make a big dent in industry income. “Any new distribution vehicle that offers high-quality, efficiency and a reasonable price is good for our business,” he prefaces. “That said, there was all this hype for years about VR, and I wasn’t very compelled by that. Thankfully, as a result, we didn’t waste any money on it. Equally, there was an enormous amount of hype around movement to the cloud for interactive entertainment distribution.”
His problem with cloud gaming isn’t around the technology or the execution, but rather the premise that it will open up a whole new market of people who haven’t previously been gamers. “There were some parties who were saying there are 130 [million] to 140 million current-gen consoles out there,” Strauss explained. “There are billions of PCs out there. You know, if you can make in a frictionless way, console video games available to everyone who has a PC or a tablet or a phone, then your market size automatically would be 20x, just mathematically. Of course that doesn’t make any sense at all. Because the implication is you are super interested in video games but you were just unwilling to buy a console.”
He also brings up an issue that people in parts of the world with slower internet speeds know too well. “[The consumer is] beholden to whatever technology exists wherever they live,” Strauss said. “You may be out on the cloud, but if they’re on a phone line, they won’t be able to avail themselves of what you’re distributing.”
While the CEO admits that he may be speaking against his own interests, he doesn’t see it making a big change to any of Take Two’s biggest games. “We’ve sold 135 million units of Grand Theft Auto V, 32 million units of Red Dead Redemption. I wish I could tell you that there will come a point where various cloud gaming services will mean those numbers are doubled or tripled, but I don’t really see it.”
The Mario franchise celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, and Nintendo is celebrating with a number of exciting projects like an All-Stars bundle for Switch. To promote the anniversary, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto spoke to CNN about the legacy of the character. One interesting tidbit that came out of the interview was the advice that Miyamoto would give to Mario if he was a 35-year-old man.
In reality, Nintendo claims Mario is 26, and that’s the age he will always be in the game universe. But if he was 35, Miyamoto says he would tell the portly plumber to live in peace and harmony–and also don’t let your facial hair get out of control.
Miyamoto said he would tell Mario to keep “living in a way that’s true to yourself is more enjoyable than being in competition with others. You’ll be keeping plenty busy, so don’t forget to work out and keep your mustache well groomed.”
Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the next major Mario game, and it bundles together Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy with “modern upgrades.” The game launches on September 18 for Switch, but the game will only be available until March 31, 2021. Also as part of the celebration, Nintendo is releasing the Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. device on November 13 for $50, though in limited qualities.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Troubling allegations continue to surface about the alleged abusive and unprofessional behavior of Joss Whedon on the set of Justice League, a controversy first brought to light by Cyborg actor Ray Fisher back in July.
Since then, Fisher’s co-star, Aquaman actor Jason Momoa has taken to social media to proclaim his support for his colleague–first in an Instagram story where Momoa used the hashtag “IStandWithRayFisher” and now in a full Instagram post.
In the post, Momoa says that a “fake” announcement of his involvement in an upcoming Frosty The Snowman film by WB was leaked without his permission to try and distract from both he and Ray’s allegations. He also says that this “sh*t has to stop and needs to be looked at,” referring broadly to how “serious stuff went down” and that it, as well as “everything else that happened under [Warner Bros. Pictures] watch” needs to be taken seriously.
It’s unclear whether this means Momoa’s involvement as the voice behind a new Frosty The Snowman film was wholly fabricated or if Momoa was not aware of the announcement or the finalized deal before it was leaked back in July.
Meanwhile, both Momoa and Fisher will be returning to their roles as Aquaman and Cyborg–at least in some capacity–for the release of the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League on HBO Max. It has since been given an official title, revealed in the second part of DC’s FanDome virtual event. Goodbye Snyder Cut, hello Justice League: The Director’s Cut. It will be a four-hour long movie, broken up into four parts and presented like a mini-series on the streaming platform.
Justice League: The Director’s Cut will hit HBO Max in 2021.
The state of New York has recruited Ant-Man star Paul Rudd for a new public health campaign to help raise awareness about wearing masks.
The video begins in a silly fashion, as Rudd pretends to be a young person. “Yo, listen hype-beasts, masks protect you and your dank squad. Because caring about other people is the new not caring about other people. We gotta yeet this virus.”
It gets serious at the end, with Rudd breaking from character and staring into the camera as he delivers his message:
“Just wear a mask. It’s easy. It’s simple. Please. It’s not hard. People are dying. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying, and it’s preventable. It’s preventable. Just wear a mask. I shouldn’t have to make it fun–it’s science.”
A familiar face from Captain America’s past is making his way to the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, if new photos from the show’s set are to be believed. According to new images from JustJared, filming has resumed on the series, after being halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. What’s more, one of the stars of Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been seen on set–in costume.
In the photos, you can see actor/former UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre in costume as Georges Batroc, the mercenary Cap and the team did battle with at the beginning of The Winter Soldier. The character, known as Batroc the Leaper in the comics, is a master of savate (French kickboxing) and has yet to appear anywhere else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It looks like that will be changing soon.
Also seen on set was Emily VamCamp, who appeared in both The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War as Sharon Carter/Agent 13. You might remember her as not only Steve Rogers’ (Chris Evans) love interest, but also the niece of his other love interest–it’s complicated.
You can check out all of the photos from the set at the link above. It remains to be seen how major a role either character will play in the first season of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. As of now, a release date for the Disney+ original series has not been given.
Microsoft recently announced the prices of the Xbox Series S ($300) and Xbox Series X ($500), and they came in lower than some might have imagined, especially the lower-spec S model. The consoles were intentionally priced low, and Microsoft is launching the phone-style subscription plan, to make it easier to get people into the Xbox ecosystem and then start spending money on games, according to Xbox CFO Tim Stuart.
Stuart told Barron’s that the aggressive pricing for the Series S/X consoles will help Microsoft “kick-start” the new generation.
“Our goal was to increase that top-of-funnel as fast as possible, get people into the ecosystem, get people into that next-gen experience, and frankly kind of kick-start this generation as fast as we can,” Stuart said. “If you can get that install base as big as you can up front, you have customers enjoying the next-gen experiences we have to offer. And from a business side, we start to monetize and build a customer lifetime value much faster than a slow build over time.”
Microsoft could lose as much as $100 on every Xbox Series X sold, but the company will make up those losses with game sales and subscription revenue like with Xbox Game Pass. Stuart spoke about this in the interview with Barron’s.
“I like to talk about how engagement equals currency,” he said. “If customers are playing, they’re buying more things from our partners, they’re buying more things from us, and their enjoyment goes up.”
For comparison, the Xbox One launched at $500, which was a full $100 more than the PS4. This price gap, along with various other stumbles by Microsoft, led to a difficult position for the company relative to the competition.
This generation, Microsoft is starting off from a stronger position with a lower price (when factoring in inflation) and the smartphone-style Xbox All Access program where you get can an Xbox Series S for $25/month or an Xbox Series X for $35/month.
Kotaku did some calculations and reported that the Series X ($500) is less expensive than the launch prices for the Xbox 360 ($529) and the Xbox One ($555) when adjusting for inflation.
While Microsoft has announced the price and release dates for its next-generation consoles, Sony has yet to divulge the launch details for the PS5 and the digital PS5. We also don’t know if Sony will follow Microsoft’s path and offer a subsidized program as well for the consoles.
Sony is holding a PS5 showcase on September 16, so it might not be long until we learn more about the console and its price/release date.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Back in July, it was announced that Universal Studios was calling off its Halloween Horror Nights celebrations at both the Florida and California parks. While Universal Orlando Resort is open at limited capacity, Universal Studios Hollywood remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, though, it seems the Orlando parks do have something in the works for Halloween.
This coming weekend, September 19 and 20, the park is holding an event dubbed “Halloween seasonal experience testing.” Universal Orlando Resort tells GameSpot that currently, these are the only two days scheduled for the event. Given that the word “testing” is in the name, though, it would not be a surprise if this is expanded in the weeks to come.
Included in the weekend event is access to two new haunted mazes–Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives and Revenge of the Tooth Fairy, both of which are not recommended for guests under age 13. You can check out descriptions of the mazes, from Universal’s website, below.
The Bride of Frankenstein Lives: “We belong dead.” The last words of Frankenstein’s monster on that fateful night when his Bride rejected him. But his end was her beginning. Now the Bride is stepping out of the shadows to bring him back. And there’s nothing she won’t do as she sharpens her brilliance by experimenting on unsuspecting victims. The mate will have her monster. And the monster his mate.
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy: The innocent traditions of the tooth fairy hide a darker ritual. All children must give up their baby teeth to the goblinesque tooth fairies or pay a gruesome price. Step into an old manor that has been overrun by yellow-clawed fiends who extract teeth by force. It’s an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
In addition to the haunts in the Universal Studios park, Islands of Adventure will feature trick-or-treating for those 12 and under. It’s unclear how trick-or-treating in the parks will work, given social distancing measures.
Additionally, you’ll be able to wear costumes while you visit, if that’s your thing. It’s important to note that unlike Halloween Horror Nights, this is not a separately ticketed event. Instead, these experiences will be available during normal operating hours for those that decide to visit the parks.
Universal Orlando Resort first opened its doors again in June, with a list of new rules and procedures to visit the theme parks. For more on those, you can check out GameSpot’s first-hand report on the experience of visiting a park during the pandemic.
