Paramount+ is getting a new, less-expensive subscription tier for those who aren’t already overwhelmed by the sheer number of streaming services. The new tier goes live on Monday, June 7.
If you subscribe to Paramount+ right now, you have two options. If you’re feeling premium, you can pay $10/month or $100/year to get access to the “Commercial Free” plan, which includes ad-free streaming and live television with limited commercial interruptions. If you don’t mind more ads, you can pay $6 per month or $60 per year for ad-supported streaming and the same live television access. Starting Monday, though, ViacomCBS is replacing that lower tier with a new option.
The $6 “Limited Commercials” plan will disappear, and a new $5 “Essential” plan will replace it. This plan keeps the same ad-supported streaming but drops the access to live television.
If you want to grab that cheaper streaming plan that includes live TV, you have until Monday to subscribe at the $6 tier. As long as you stay subscribed, you’ll be able to access live TV at that lower price point. If you subscribe or re-subscribe later, though, the Limited Commercials plan will be unavailable.
If you’re wondering whether or not to take advantage of that price, you’ll want to check out our list of the best horror shows and movies on the service. You can also look forward to the upcoming Rugrats revival, the Mark Wahlberg sci-fi thriller Infinite, and the in-development Pet Sematary sequel. Paramount+ began as CBS All Access, but was rebranded last fall.
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There are some really awesome deals today that you don’t want to miss out on. The Amazon free credit offer is one of the best deals you’ll find for Prime Day. The PlayStation Plus discount is the best Sony Days of Play deal we’ve seen so far, And the Civilization 6 bundle is the best Humble Choice package of 2021. Check out these deals and more below.
Buy a $40 Amazon Gift Card, Get Free $10 Amazon Credit
If you buy a $40 Amazon gift card (for yourself, let’s say), you’ll get $10 of free Amazon credit deposited into your account. If you shop regularly at Amazon, that basically amounts to free money. Really, if you have $40 lying around, there’s no reason not to do it. The only catch is that the credit expires if you don’t use it by August 7. I’d recommend you spend it on Prime Day. Note that you can select an eGift Card delivered instantly instead of a physical gift card.
The Sony Days of Play Sale is already under way, but the most useful of these deals just launched today. The PS Plus membership is necessary to play online, but it also offers perks like new free games every month (this month includes Star Wars Squadrons), exclusive discounts at the PlayStation Store, and access to the very impressive PS Plus Collection for PS5 owners. The PS Plus Collection includes games like God of War, Persona 5, The Last of Us Remastered, Days Gone, Final Fantasy XV, Mortal Kombat, Ratchet & Clank, and more, many of them optimized for 60fps gameplay on the PS5 console.
Civilization 6 Platinum Edition + 11 PC Games for Only $10
The new Humble Choice bundle might be the best one we’ve seen for 2021. You get the entire Civilization 6 Platinum Edition collection, along with 11 other indie games, all for a mere $10 when you sign up for a Humble Choice Premium subscription (sign up for only 1 month and cancel afterwards if you just want this deal). The Platinum Edition includes both Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm expansions, which beefs the base game up considerably, as well as all the other smaller skin and faction packs that have been released. That alone sells for $40 or more elsewhere.
65.6 Feet (2 x 32.8 Feet) of Bluetooth RGB LED Strip Lights for $19.19
You won’t find 65 feet of LED strip lights for a mere $19 at your local brick and mortar electronics store. These lights do feature some extra functionality, like color changing, music-sync, and app control via bluetooth. If you’re in the market for some cheap yet good looking bling, you can’t do much better than this. This strips cannot be cut shorter and spliced, so it’s probably too long as accent lighting for your gaming monitor, but it’s definitely long enough to light up your entire gaming desk area or home entertainment center. This kit includes two rolls of 32.8ft strips.
Audible Premium Plus normally costs $14.95 per month. It’s already a very reasonable deal for the amount of audiobooks you have access to, but there’s an even better deal for new customers ahead of Amazon Prime Day. For the first four months you can save over 50% off. The only caveat: you’ll need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantaqe of this deal. In addition, you’ll be eligible for one free book credit each month for a total of four credits; each credit can be used to redeem an audiobook of your choice that you can keep indefinitely.
Amazon Music Unlimited is Amazon’s premium music subscription service similar to Pandora Premium or Spotify. Stream millions of songs to your mobile device, PC, Echo devices, Alexa compatible speakers, and much more. It’s normally $7.99/month for Amazon Prime members but new (Prime) customers can sign up for four months for absolutely free. For those of you who already subscribe to the service, make sure you sign up for the free HD upgrade.
If you’re looking for a solid USB microphone for your Twitch or YouTube streaming needs and you don’t want to spend a ton of money, the Blue Snowball iCE offers the best bang for the buck. It’s one of the best mics you’ll find for under $50, it’s compact, includes its own integrated stand, and looks great to boot. It’s $50 everywhere else, but Walmart currently has it for 30% off.
Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends roughly 1/4 of his income on stuff he posts. Check out the IGN Deals articles and subscribe to the IGN Deals Twitter page.
Martial arts star Donnie Yen is joining the cast of John Wick 4, Deadline reports.
Longtime John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski has brought Yen onboard to play a friend of John Wick’s who has a similar history and shares the same enemies.
Yen is known for his numerous martial arts roles in movies like the Ip Man franchise, where he played the titular Wing Chun master who would go on to train Bruce Lee. His appearance as Sky in Jet Li’s Hero is regarded as his breakout success, pitting him against Li’s protagonist in a rain-soaked sword vs. spear fight.
More recently, Yen appeared as the blind Guardian of the Whills, Chirrut Imwe, in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and in 2020’s live-action Mulan remake. Before his bigger acting roles, he starred in numerous Chinese films (including a co-starring role in Once Upon a Time in China II alongside Jet Li), founded a production company, and choreographed action in films like Blade II, which earned him a cameo role.
Yen will join Keanu Reeves and Japanese-British pop star Rina Sawayama in a lead role of her own. The film begins production this summer, with filming scheduled to take place in France, Germany, and Japan.
“We are very lucky to have Donnie Yen join the franchise,” Stahelski told Deadline. “I am looking forward to working with him in this exciting new role.”
It’s possible that 2K Games’ E3 announcements have been leaked on Reddit, and that they include a Borderlands spin-off featuring Tiny Tina, a new Marvel game, and a very early development action game.
According to a Reddit post that received a nod on Twitter from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, 2K’s E3 announcements may include a Borderlands universe title codenamed Daffodil, potentially dubbed either Wonderlands or Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (both of which are already trademarked by 2K). It’s said to be in a similar gameplay style to other Borderlands games and features playable “multiclass heroes.”
Update 6/3/21 4:30 pm PT: Schreier has since tweeted again that the 2K leak is real but isn’t “sure all of it is going to be at E3.”
Another potentially leaked announcement is a new game from Firaxis said to be a turn-based action game using Marvel characters. According to the leaker’s source, it was described as “XCOM with Marvel Heroes” and may feature some “famous actors” voicing characters.
Also in the leak is something the source called “Codename Volt,” an action game that “seems to be in really early development” and was described as “Cthulu meets Saints Row.” It was unclear as to what studio was developing this game, though the leaker pointed out that last year a different leak revealed Hangar13 was working on an “open-world sci-fi title with supernatural elements,” which may be it.
Finally, there’s the unsurprising NBA 2K22, with Dirk Nowitzki on the cover (though other athletes could also appear on other editions).
For now, these are all just rumors sadly. 2K has said officially that they have a total of 21 games planned for release between now and March, four of which are “immersive core releases” and two of which are from new franchises. One of those new franchises is being made by Gearbox, though a Tiny Tina spin-off probably wouldn’t count as a new franchise in this case, so it’s possible there maybe something else in the cards.
Whatever the case, we’ll get a chance to see what 2K’s plans really turn out to be during E3 2021 and its adjacent events, all of which you can find our coverage of as a part of IGN’s Summer of Gaming.
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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
There was a time not too long ago where some games never left Japan. It didn’t matter if they were the next entry in a beloved series or some genre-twisting mashup. Monster World IV was one such game on the Sega Mega Drive, the last in a well-known series that for whatever reason never made it to the American Genesis like its predecessors did. Remade and released now as Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, this formerly 16-bit classic retains everything that fans loved about the series back in 1994. Unfortunately, it is no longer 1994, and this dedication to old-school platforming fundamentals makes Asha’s adventure a museum piece rather than a triumphant resurgence.
Like the retro original, Asha in Monster World carries on mechanically from previous Monster World games but presents a brand-new journey with only a few ties to the ongoing story. Asha was born with a gift to sense spirits, and their cries for help serve as a call to adventure. Over the course of around five hours, Asha saves a quartet of helpful sprites that series fans may remember from Wonder Boy in Monster World and foils the shadowy plot to contain them. It’s a simple tale that works for a colorful platformer like this, providing good motivation without getting in the way of the action.
Improving a classic like this seems like a slam dunk, and general nostalgia for the 1990s has produced a bunch of remasters and remakes that breathe new life into old favorites. In the case of Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World, a new coat of paint can’t hide simplistic gameplay and outdated mechanics.
Asha in Monster World is a straightforward action game featuring a hero whose moveset consists of a single sword swing, a rechargeable “magic hit” for extra damage, a shield for defense, and aerial attacks that go up and down. The only other interactions in each level come from Asha’s floating puffball of a pet, a fantastical creature known as a Pepelogoo that Asha can throw to retrieve items located off-screen, push buttons, or climb up plumes of lava. Grabbing onto its feet is also the only way to perform a double jump. It’s a wide variety of moves when compared to other Genesis action games, but it’s crushingly limited compared to most similar games we see nowadays.
Take the double jump in particular: Monster World’s four levels take full advantage of this extra height once Asha learns the move, laying out paths that need you to make several in a row to proceed. In most games, this means simply hitting the jump button twice, but in Asha’s adventure, there’s an extra button press and a time buffer whenever she needs the Pepelogoo to give her some added distance. The creature also evolves over time and gets too heavy for Asha, forcing her to stand still as she holds onto her pet instead of running around freely.
To modern eyes, all this fiddling with Pepelogoo to accomplish jumps that almost any other platforming hero could easily clear feels less like interesting design and more like a simple waste of time, and it’s not the only instance of this. The levels have plenty of examples of backtracking for simplistic puzzles, rote memorization, and times where a needed key spawns directly next to a locked door. These are the type of gameplay elements that games left behind for a reason, and they’re the biggest cause of why Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World doesn’t stand up to modern scrutiny.
The physical edition of Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World comes with an English edition of the 1994 game. It’s a great bonus, and it’s a shame that not everyone has access to it. It’s only when playing each version side by side can you see how faithful the developers are to the original. It’s a shot-for-shot remake in the vein of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, only with a layer of cartoony cel-shading instead of pixels.
Different people will prefer different styles, but the original presentation put me more in the right mindset for what was to come. The new graphical treatment might set expectations for a game that’s evolved from its original era, and that makes simple things like the lack of mid-level checkpoints and limited healing items all the more frustrating.
If you do happen to prefer the newer look of the Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap remake and the spiritual sequel Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, it’s worth noting that Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World’s modern graphics are a significant downgrade from both of those games. The bright colors and simple designs all mirror the classic well, but there’s no style to the translation. The simplicity makes Asha’s world look like a cheap Wonder Boy knockoff rather than a long-lost entry in the series.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom for the new version, which does include a few colorful cutscenes that expand on important moments in the story in fun ways. NPC dialogue scrolls at a much more reasonable pace when compared to the original, which makes the forward-thinking meta humor in the town square all the more enjoyable. The soundtrack is also improved with many renditions of a main theme, although it can get repetitive on some of the longer levels.
While it’s early days yet, we sure do like the cut of Far Cry 6’s jib so far. We’ve found the best discounted deal on this forthcoming FPS, just in case you feel the same way. We’ve also sourced some cheap consoles, wheels and an array of must-own titles that all deserve a place in your collection!
Welcoooome to Nintendo Voice Chat! Nintendo hasn’t pulled the curtain back on the highly-rumored Switch Pro, but the company did finally reveal its plans for E3 2021! Join Casey DeFreitas, Seth Macy, Logan Plant, and NVC newcomer Jada Griffin as they lay out expectations and hopes for the 40-minute Nintendo Direct that’s less than two weeks away. Plus, after a recent lawsuit, the panel discusses the place ROMs hold in video games. Stick around for WarioWare, Knockout City, and Question Block!
You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.
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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.
Shazam is getting a bit of a costume change for the sequel according to a new teaser (that showed up suspiciously after some set photos leaked).
In a brief video posted by director David F. Sandberg, Zachary Levi’s Shazam can be seen in a dark hallway with close-ups showcasing new parts of his costume.
Levi’s Shazam 2 outfit appears to feature more gold accents and a sleeker look, particularly around the boots and wrists. Shazam’s lightning bolt chest logo is also slightly altered to match the overall ensemble.
The Shazam sequel is officially titled Shazam! Fury of the Gods and the upcoming DC movie will once again follow teenager Billy Batson who can transform into the superhero Shazam by saying his name.
Alongside other returning cast members like Batson’s superpowered family, new to the cast are Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren who play the daughters of Atlas and the villains for the movie.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is just one of the many DC films currently in the pipeline, and it won’t even be out until 2023.
The leak covers three unannounced titles from the publisher in addition to one of the cover athletes of the upcoming NBA 2K22. According to them, Dirk Nowitzki, who retired from the NBA in 2019, might be on the cover of one of the premium versions of the title, similar to Kobe Bryant on the Mamba edition last year.
The leak states that Firaxis Games, the developer of XCOM, is working on a Marvel game, which is described as “XCOM with Marvel heroes,” so expect some of your favorite Marvel heroes in a strategy game. The Borderlands spin-off is being developed by Gearbox, with Randy Pitchford tweeting that any Borderlands title would be developed solely by Gearbox. The game is apparently titled “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands” and is expected to follow the class-based shooting gameplay of the main series.
The final game in the leak is currently called Codename Volt, a supernatural sci-fi game being developed by Hangar 13, which previously made Mafia 3. The game was described in the leak as a cross between Saints Row and Cthulhu, which sounds like a promising combination.
As with any leaks, take all of this with a grain of salt until 2K officially announces any of these titles. Gearbox is holding its E3 presentation on Saturday, June 12, but it does not yet have an official time. Take-Two, the parent company of 2K, is scheduled to hold its presentation on Monday, June 14, also with no set time. While it’s not guaranteed any of these games would show up if they are real, there is a possibility we’ll see some or all of these announcements during E3.
Watch live streams, videos, and more from GameSpot’s summer event. Check it out
Between Entwined and Concrete Genie, PixelOpus has made a name for itself creating stylish, colorful, and painterly games. It appears that the studio is doubling down on these attributes with its next project, as PixelOpus has announced that it is working on a PS5 game in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation.
News of the collaboration was revealed through a new PixelOpus job posting for a Principal Graphics Programmer. In the job description, the studio states that it is looking for someone to help build its tech in conjunction with Sony’s animation house.
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“We are seeking a Principal Graphics Programmer to contribute to our development process as we tackle exciting innovation and rendering opportunities through a collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation,” the job listing explains. “This position specializes in programming that centers around the graphics functionality of the PlayStation 5 and Unreal 5 game engine, but with our small team, responsibilities will be diverse.”
We can glean only a scarce few details from this posting about what PixelOpus’s next game might be. Right now, it seems to be coming only to PS5 and will be built on Unreal Engine 5. Unfortunately, that’s all we know at the moment.
PixelOpus remains a small team, originating from a group of game designers who got their start as college students working on Entwined. It is now fully owned by PlayStation and is headquartered at PlayStation’s headquarters in San Mateo. The studio’s second game, Concrete Genie, came out in 2019 and tasks players with creating graffiti art that then comes to life.
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