Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 was announced with a tech demo running on PlayStation 5, and it looked very impressive. In addition to PS5, the new engine supports Xbox Series X, and now two of the top executives at Xbox have weighed in with their responses to the announcement of the new tech.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer said, “Incredible work by the team at Epic.” He added that “many” of the internal Xbox Game Studios teams are using versions of Unreal Engine to make their games, including Ninja Theory, which is using the technology–but he didn’t say Unreal Engine 5 specifically–to develop Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. Spencer added that Microsoft is “excited to bring these Unreal Engine 5 innovations to life on Xbox Series X.”
Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg, meanwhile, stated that the Unreal Engine 5 reveal was “super impressive.” He added, “Can only imagine what the new Unreal Engine 5 Engine will look like on the world’s most powerful console.
The PS5 tech demo, called “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” is not a real game, but it was actually playable. Epic had planned to bring it to the Game Developers Conference in March to allow people to play for themselves, according to IGN, but the show was eventually canceled.
343 Industries has now responded. Community director Brian Jarrard asked fans to be patient and to keep discussion civil as the studio works through solutions for the issues on PC and Xbox One (which also received an update that introduced new bugs). “Yelling at or insulting members of our team isn’t going to help. People work hard under extra challenging circumstances,” Jarrad said, referencing how 343’s teams are working from home
“We don’t want anyone having a bad experience or encountering problems but some of the things we are hearing are hard to pin down / will take some time,” Jarrard added. “To deliver the best experience they can and they are committed to continuing to work to resolve issues that arise. Thanks for your support and to those who are providing helpful details and issue reports. And to everyone who’s enjoying the game and not having issues – GLHF!”
You can see the latest list of known issues for the new MCC update here. The list of issues is very long, and it includes some serious-sounding problems like kills registering as betrayals in Halo 2 Classic multiplayer and the HUD becoming off-center when zooming in co-op. You can see the full list of known issues below. This list does not include issues that were more recently reported, such as issues with Halo 3 multiplayer on Xbox One.
Halo: MCC Known Issues (May 13)
Campaign
On Xbox in Co-op multiplayer, the HUD will become off centered when zooming in
Terminal videos default to English only
In-game audio plays while viewing terminal videos
Subtitles are not present in campaign gameplay
Subtitles are out of sync with audio when viewing cutscenes
Users on AMD hardware may encounter missing and/or flickering textures across campaign (such as the Elevator on Oracle)
Oracle in has several graphical issues including around glass flood tanks, clouds, and lightning effects
Cinematic audio for in Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary is affected by different audio option
Enemy Elites do not dual wield in the Campaign
Campaign cutscenes are much louder than gameplay
Some Campaign missions have FPS drops on first launch of the mission
When having multiple audio devices and swapping between classic and remastered graphics in cutscenes, audio can change output devices
When using a Ryzen 5 and AMD GPU, large rectangle volumes appear on the mission Oracle
Blur Cinematics and Terminal videos can have visual issues in non-16:9 aspect ratios as they were rendered at 16:9
Gunfire sounds are missing from multiple weapons with the Scarab Skull active
With the Scarab Gun skull active, a hardlock can happen when firing a plasma rifle after swapping weapons with an Elite
Sentinel lights will display for a short time after death before disappearing
Some environmental textures appear in lower than expected resolutions
Music will loop incorrectly on Metropolis while in the Scorpion tank
Using Nvidia GPUs on Classic graphics, various foliage environment LOD textures are missing
Gravemind on co-op has hitches and with poor network conditions disconnects can happen
When swapping between Classic and Remastered graphics music will change to different parts of the track
Halo 2: Anniversary
Pixilation on shadows can be seen in Anniversary graphics
Forge map lighting is not appearing correctly
Performance lowers during games of 3 plots
Texture resolution is displaying in low quality through various parts of the title
When looking at the fan on Stonetown, FPS sometimes drops to 45
Audio is missing when reloading weapons when done quickly
Primary weapon audio decreases if you are shooting while picking up a secondary weapon
Decals on the Gauss Warthog turret will detach from the model during the firing animation
When using newer Intel drivers with onboard graphics, you cannot launch
Performance in theater films is capped at 60 fps when framerate is set to unlimited
There are no inversion options in the Settings Menu for dual wielding
Lighting is inconsistent between Elite and Spartan armors
There is visible stuttering on objects when strafing with Unlimited Framerate enabled
Sound effects do not play for the player holding the oddball when playing Hot Potato
The Hoplite armor is missing a rear armor piece in gameplay
Halo 2
When using voice chat there is no notification that players are talking
The music mixing is much quieter in MCC compared to the original
Team Spawn system does not have parity with original
Bullet registration is not in parity with the original
The respawn timer is hidden by the territory capture meter in multiplayer
Gamma values are excessively blown out compared to legacy
Super bouncing does not mirror legacy
Snow VFX do not match legacy behavior on snow weather missions and maps
The sun is not rendering on most maps and missions
When playing at higher field of view, textures will appear to pop in more frequently as the LOD distance is shortened
Banshees turn faster when using Mouse and Keyboard
After a day of working on the first part of Destiny 2‘s latest quest, The Lie, things are going a little slow. In response, Bungie has adjusted this season’s Seraph Tower event to help pick up the pace and make things easier.
Bungie tweeted on May 13 that it was releasing a hotfix into Destiny 2 that would tweak the Seraph Towers and The Lie’s quest requirements to help players complete it. Seraph Tower progression has been tweaked slightly, and the Champion enemies that show up as the last phase of the event have been made a little weaker. Bungie also adjusted The Lie so that each Seraph Tower completion counts for five times as much quest progression–and 10 times as much on the weekends.
We have made adjustments to “The Lie” Quest and Seraph Tower Difficulty. 💠 Champions have reduced power level and event progression has been slightly tuned. 💠 Effective immediately, quest progression has been given a 5x multiplier which will be increased to 10x on weekends. pic.twitter.com/Z0aHldhbe3
The new quest came into the game with the weekly reset on May 12, which datamining suggests will lead to the return of the Destiny 1 legendary shotgun Felwinter’s Lie. But the first step of the quest requires the community to work together and complete Seraph Tower events–according to the datamines, Destiny players have to log 3 million event completions on each of the three planets that house Seraph Towers. After one day of play, the count is at 5% total completions in the EDZ, and only 1% on the moon and Io.
Players have complained that the Seraph Tower events are too tough, which is part of why the progress is so slow. About halfway through the season, Bungie adjusted the Tower events to be tougher, and that adjustment made it so failing the event altogether happens a lot more often, which doesn’t advance progression on The Lie at all.
Already the adjustment seems to be working. When we checked on The Lie’s progress at the daily reset at 10 AM PST, it was sitting at 5% for the EDZ area. As of this writing, the counter is up to 8%, just a few hours later. Hopefully, players will be able to hurry and complete the Seraph Towers portion so we can move on to the rest of the steps to unlock Felwinter’s Lie.
Epic is making the same tools that allow Fortnite to have cross-play across all platforms free for developers as a part of Epic Online Services.
Alongside the official announcement and unveiling of the Unreal Engine 5 recently, Epic has revealed that it has finally launched the full version of the services with support for PC, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and Mac. Mobile support, for both Android and iOS, will launch at a later date. Future support for Xbox Series X and the PS5 may well be in development, with Fortnite coming to both consoles with cross-play on launch.
“At Epic, we believe in open, integrated platforms and in the future of gaming being a highly social and connected experience,” said Chris Dyl, general manager of online services at Epic Games. “Through Epic Online Services, we strive to help build a user-friendly ecosystem for both developers and players, where creators can benefit regardless of how they choose to build and publish their games, and where players can play games with their friends and enjoy the same quality experience regardless of the hardware they own.”
Developers have already been able to access a limited form of Epic Online Services for a few months now, with ticketing and analytics systems available for usage. The new suite, which went live on May 13, enables a unified gameplay experience across all supported platforms. This includes features such as cross-play, achievements, leader-boards, parties, cloud saves, peer-to-peer network connectivity, cross-progression, lobbies, and unified matchmaking.
Developers are free to use any of the available features in the Epic Online Services suite, using the system as best for their own game. Those who wish to give it a go can head to Epic Games’ official site and sign up to download the SDK. This is available for use even for developers who are not using Unreal Engine to build their games.
The latest online event for the Pokemon Masters mobile game is currently underway, with limited-time only items up for grabs. The Blissful Bonanza event is running from May 13 to May 31, according to the official Pokemon Masters website.
Blissful Bonanza begins! ✨
Complete daily event battles to earn tickets, and exchange those tickets for useful items, such as lucky cookies, lucky scrolls, and co-op sync orbs. This blissful rally lasts until 5/30 at 10:59 p.m. PDT.
A maximum of 10 Lucky Scrolls can be obtained through ticket exchanges, but other items like 3-star Cookies, Lucky Scrolls, and co-op Sync Orbs have no limit on exchanges. Lucky Scrolls can be used to unlock Lucky Skills, which are passive skills that are randomly assigned to your Pokemon. Usually it takes multiple items from the Battle Villa to unlock them, but this event is a one time chance to grab a myriad of Lucky Skills without grinding too much.
The final day of the event will guarantee players 10 Bliss Tickets, so don’t worry about missing too many daily battle events. Replay tickets will also allow players to challenge the Blissey team again and earn more tickets.
League of Legends has been around for more than 10 years now and, with Legends of Runeterra, Riot Games is hoping to capitalise on that heritage to propel its world and characters into a whole new genre: digital collectible card games (CCGs). The result is stylish, exciting, cleverly designed, and full of nods to League – whether that’s through iconic Champions like Yasuo, Jinx, Ashe, Garen, and Teemo, or the many adorable Poros that populate the game.
Importantly, while Legends of Runeterra is firmly rooted in an established world, it in no way excludes newcomers who may be picking it up because of its genre instead of its MOBA pedigree. It’s very much like Blizzard’s Hearthstone in that way; I personally came to Hearthstone without any real knowledge of Warcraft, and six years later I’m still playing. Legends of Runeterra is no doubt hoping to also bottle that lightning.
That said, when Hearthstone burst onto the scene, it upended the gameplay of other collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering by being more straightforward and thus more accessible. Legends of Runeterra, on the other hand, sits somewhere in the middle, with some mechanics that streamline gameplay and others that ambitiously add layers of depth and complexity other games haven’t attempted.
The overall goal of a match, however, is much the same; each player brings a deck of 40 pre-selected cards and faces off against an opponent, to the death. Initiative is passed back and forth, allowing each person to play units to the board, cast spells, and choose how to attack or defend. The match is won or lost when one combatant reduces the health of their opponent’s Nexus from 20 down to zero.
Like Hearthstone, your mana reserve – which dictates the cards you’re able to play – increases by one each round, as opposed to using a Land-style system similar to Magic. Unlike Hearthstone, however – and like Magic – you’re able to choose how your units will block enemy attackers, creating an entirely different style of gameplay that sits between the two.
The ability to respond immediately is foundational in Legends of Runeterra; its gameplay is intended to be like a conversation between the players, full of exchanges and interjections, as opposed to a debate of dueling speeches. Control can go back and forth many times within a single round as each player gets the chance to counter their opponent’s actions.
To give you an idea of how this works in practice, let’s say my opponent plays a unit late in a match. Doing that takes up an action and passes control over to me. I decide I want to kill it, so I target it with a spell that deals just enough damage to be lethal. That spell, however, isn’t a Burst spell, so doesn’t instantly cast. Instead, control goes back to my opponent and offers a chance to respond. He or she may then play a Burst spell to instantly buff the unit’s health out of mortal range. My spell still doesn’t cast, though; I then have another opportunity to cast an additional spell to increase my damage output and take out the unit. When both players have run out of options or passed, the spell (or spells) finally casts and the results become clear.
This action-and-reaction gameplay opens up a lot of strategy that other games in the genre don’t have. I could have gambled, for instance, by not lining up the spell initially and simply passed the turn back, in the hope that my opponent might spend enough mana doing something else that I could then cast my spell later, preventing them from being able to answer it. Of course, once I pass, my opponent could also pass, ending the round entirely before I get a chance to do anything.
Attacking with units adds another layer to all this. Between each round, an attack token is passed from one player to the other. As the name suggests, whoever has this is able to initiate an attack and can do so at any point during a round. If a round starts and I have the attack token, I can choose to “open attack,” or start my turn by attacking. I might do this if I have a full back row (the area between my hand and the battlefield, which is where units go when played) that could trade favourably with the units my opponent has. Once I choose which units are going to attack, my opponent is only able to respond by choosing where – or if – the units that are already in their back row will be positioned to block, and/or by responding with Burst or Fast spells.
Again, this is all about predicting what my opponent might do. If I choose to play a follower instead of open attacking my opponent can do the same, potentially putting down a strong blocker that ruins my attack, or he or she could simply cast a Slow spell that can clear my board. The fact that you can attack with a unit on the same turn you play it – provided you have an attack token – really helps make Legends of Runeterra feel tactically distinct from its peers. By ditching the concept of “summoning sickness,” units have a very dynamic feel – often functioning a lot like spells on your attack turns. That gives matches an interesting rhythm where the evaluation of what to play on turns with an attack token are really different to turns when you’re defending.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20fact%20that%20you%20can%20attack%20with%20a%20unit%20the%20turn%20you%20play%20it%20really%20helps%20make%20Legends%20of%20Runeterra%20feel%20tactically%20distinct.”]
A simple example of this would be units with the “Scout” keyword. Once each attacking round, a unit with Scout can attack on its own (or alongside other Scout units) without using up your attack token. Their value, then, is largely in their ability to let you attack twice, so they’re not units you want to play at the start of your opponent’s attack turn, when they may be forced to block and be killed. Playing them after your opponent has attacked and is out of resources, however, makes total sense, as you could then open attack at the start of the next round, preventing your opponent from playing any more units to the board first, and still leaving you with the ability to attack again after playing more units or spending mana throughout the round. It’s genuinely compelling trying to work out what the optimal way to play each round might be.
Your strategy typically extends across multiple rounds, of course, as you set up for certain combos or clears – and in another clever twist that gives you more flexibility, you can even bank mana. Yes, up to three unspent mana units can be saved from one round into the next as spell mana. As you’d expect, this mana can only be spent on spells, and means that you can do things like pass on turns one and two, then play a three-cost unit on turn three and still have three mana leftover to spend on spells. It’s a clever system, as floating mana can become a strategic decision rather than a missed opportunity.
Legends of Runeterra really is designed to give you ample opportunity to outplay your opponents. The fact that initiative is passed back and forth allows you to bluff and bait opponents into overextending, and really rewards those who know how to get the most out of their resources and anticipate what their opponent might do with theirs. Buffs, in particular, typically only last the round they’re played, so working out the counters your opponent could have when using a buff (or committing additional resources in general) is key.
Importantly, while actions go back and forth repeatedly, Legends of Runeterra’s gameplay still feels remarkably snappy. Part of this is because players have a short duration to make any one decision and part of it is because your turn will simply pass automatically if you have no available options. (This can be turned off if you’re worried the system is giving your opponent information about what’s in your hand.)
It’s also worth pointing out that Legends of Runeterra has only minimal randomness in its card designs compared to a game like Hearthstone. There’s merit in both approaches, of course, as randomness can be really fun when implemented well, and can even help you come back in heavily unfavoured match-ups, but at the same time there’s something to be said for feeling that you can showcase your knowledge in a contest where the rules are largely fixed.
If you’re facing off against a well-known meta deck in Legends of Runeterra, for instance, you have a very good idea what your opponent’s capabilities are, and those won’t change to anywhere near the extent they can in Hearthstone. This also means that there’s value in playing something off-meta in this game. An opponent used to facing the same lists may have a hard time making reads or playing around cards if he or she has little idea what’s in your deck.
Decked out
Legends of Runeterra gives players a pretty incredible suite of tools to build decks with. The exciting idea underpinning deckbuilding is that any card can be paired with any other card. To make that possible, the card pool is divided up into regions based on the geography of Runeterra, with players able to combine any two regions together to make a deck.
Each region has a very specific flavour in terms of both design and aesthetic, and as you’d expect from a League of Legends game, each has a set of Champions that represent it. Noxus, for instance, is an overtly aggressive region. Its cards are all about doing and capitalising on damage and much of the art is obsessed with war or arena-based combat. Noxian Champions include Draven, Katarina and Darius.
Ionia, on the other hand, has units that prefer to strike from the shadows, stunning opponents or utilising Elusive, which means they can only be blocked by other Elusive units. Ionian fighters are ninjas, samurai and wielders of mystical power, and Ionian Champions include Lee Sin, Yasuo and Zed.
I absolutely love the flavour of each of the seven regions currently in Legends of Runeterra, and the interplay of mechanics, keywords, and Champions opens up a vast array of potential strategies. You might want to combine the control tools of the Shadow Isles with Bilgewater’s ability to summon spell damage boosting Powder Kegs to try and outlast opponents. Or you might be excited about the idea of a deck that utilises a combination of Champions with spell synergy, such as Karma (who generates spells) and Ezreal (who benefits from playing spells), or Heimerdinger (who generates zero cost units by playing spells) and Vi (who gains attack power whenever you play a card).
Each region currently has five Champions and they really do stand above normal units. You can include up to three copies of a Champion in your 40-card deck (with six Champion cards in total), but unlike other cards, Champions can level up mid-match. Meeting this condition is different for each, and can be anything from attacking a certain number of times or seeing a certain number of units die through to emptying your hand or having 15 cards or less left in your deck. There’s a stack of variety. Tryndamere levels up if he’s going to die, for instance.
When a Champion levels up it typically gets a small stat increase, but it often gains entirely new abilities too. Ezreal, for instance, has to target enemy units with spells and abilities eight or more times to level up, and once that happens every spell he casts also deals two damage to the enemy Nexus. He turns into a win condition, in other words, so if you can ramp him up you can burst opponents down.
Champions also behave differently in that they’re unique entities when it comes to the board. If you have two copies of Ezreal in hand, for instance, then play one to your backrow, the other Ezreal transforms into “Ezreal’s Mystic Shot,” an alternate version of a collectible spell from his region. Each Champion has a spell associated with them, and these typically help progress them towards leveling up, or at least tie in thematically. Playing the spell then shuffles a copy of the Champion back into your deck. And if you choose not to use the spell, and the Champion in play is killed, the spell then transforms back into the Champion card and can be played as such.
From a lore and worldbuilding perspective, the idea that each Champion is a unique fighter underlines their status, and it has also allowed the designers to run with some pretty powerful designs, as they know their effects can’t (easily) be stacked.
When it comes to building your collection, Legends of Runeterra has a robust progression and reward structure in place. Playing games and completing daily quests earns you XP, which is then funneled into two rewards systems – a vault that unlocks once a week, and a region-based unlock road. Want cards from Freljord? Choose that region and you’ll steadily unlock rewards that will help flesh out that part of your collection.
Legends of Runeterra has no traditional card packs, so the rewards you’ll get are cards, an in-game currency called shards, and Wildcards, which can be spent on any card of a corresponding rarity. So yes, if you get a Champion Wildcard you can simply swap it for one copy of the Champion that you want. Shards can also be spent directly on cards.
The rewards are pretty generous, but if you want to build your collection quickly without spending, consistency is key. Legends of Runeterra gives players bonus XP for their first three wins each day, so playing daily is important to maximise how quickly you get down each region road. And if you want to speed things along, you can spend real-world money on coins and simply buy the specific cards you want.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Legends%20of%20Runeterra%20puts%20a%20definitive%20price%20on%20how%20much%20cards%20cost.”]
The whole system makes for a refreshing change from most games in this genre, although newcomers may find it hard to decide which region road to activate and how to spend their Wildcards initially. After all, if you’re just learning the basic mechanics, how can you know what you’re going to want to play until you’ve truly got a feel for all the different archetypes and their strengths and weaknesses?
My approach when I had a small collection was to spend a small amount of money so that I could build a cheap but competitive deck that only had three Champion cards in it. I then used that deck to learn the ropes and earn XP to expand my collection further. Playing every day, the rewards flew thick and fast, but I still wanted to be able to hop between regions and decks more often, so eventually I spent more.
Of modes and men
I’ve spent most of my time in Legends of Runeterra playing ranked mode, in which you work your way from Iron IV up through to Diamond I, and then on to Masters. It’s a familiar and entirely reasonable system, and the current season will last for around two months, which gives people a good amount of time to climb. There’s also a “normal” PVP option for those that are learning a deck and aren’t ready for ladder, as well as the option to tackle a series of challenges or play practice games against AI.
The other main mode is Expeditions, in which you draft a deck of cards then try and win seven games. Its archetype-based drafting mechanics are pretty interesting, presenting you with sets of cards from defined buckets, and then changing what you’re offered as the draft progresses based on your choices.
To give you an idea, one archetype you might get offered from is “Terrors From the Deep,” which spans Bilgewater and Shadow Isles and is about reducing your deck to 15 cards or less to boost units with the “Deep” keyword by +3/+3. Naturally, the cards in the archetype bucket include Sea Monsters with Deep, ways to reduce your deck size, and two Champions – Nautilus and Maokai – who fit the theme perfectly.
Not all archetypes are this deliberately synergistic, so there’s a lot of room to go for your own homebrewed strategy. Sometimes you might wind up with a single region deck, and other times you might have cards from three regions. Overall, though, the archetype system means the variance between the best decks and the worst decks isn’t super large, so you’ll generally stand a chance in each match, particularly if you’ve played enough to understand how to draft effectively.
You’re able to add to and refine your deck as you progress too, but lose two games in a row and your run is over. Thankfully, each expedition is comprised of two attempts, or “trials,” with the prize based on your best run. Expeditions cost 2000 shards or 200 coins to compete in, which is two thirds the purchase price of a Champion. The rewards if you do well make this worthwhile, but I’d definitely recommend waiting until you’re very comfortable with Legends of Runeterra in general before spending in-game currency on an expedition.
That said, after you’ve done three expeditions in a week, any future runs are free. You don’t get rewards beyond the expected XP for completing games, but it’s a good way to get practice in.
Full disclosure
Legends of Runeterra breaks new ground with its interface and presentation too. Key information is always at your fingertips: you can quickly scroll through the cards that have been played, for instance, or bring up the Champions in your opponent’s deck. I also love that if you know what a card in your opponent’s hand is, it will remain face up.
While I’d have liked to know how many cards my opponent mulliganed at the start of each match, I’m rarely in the dark about anything else. If I line up a sequence of spells or attacks and am unsure how it will resolve, I can hover over the “Oracle’s Eye,” to see what will happen, assuming nothing changes. I imagine the top players would prefer that this feature didn’t exist, as a deep understanding of the game systems and the ability to do maths on the fly helps give them an edge, but for someone like myself it’s a great option for quickly double-checking what you think’s going to happen, and is also no substitute for understanding the core mechanics.
If nothing changes, my spell plus unit will kill the opposing Braum.
My favourite part of the interface, however, is being able to see every card that’s associated with a card you’re interested in. Say my opponent plays Heimerdinger, but I want to check how he actually works; I can right-click on him and bring up an overlay showing his base card, his leveled-up card, his spell card, and every card he’s able to create. Each keyword or term has a pop-up explanation, too. That’s great design.
From the card overlay you can also click through to the full widescreen art for each and every card. It’s all gorgeous, and really helps flesh out the world: the people, creatures, landscapes, cultures, and tone of each region. The impressive amount of in-match VO doubles down on this, giving a sense of the relationships between characters.
Legends of Runeterra’s presentation is just so polished, whether it’s the smoky trails of spells waiting to fire, or the epic full screen level up animations for each Champion. And a range of cosmetics – pets, backdrops and emotes – let you customise your half of the board.
The mobile client retains all of this, and in terms of gameplay, interface and presentation is essentially the same as the PC version, just with less screen real estate to work with. Legends of Runeterra was designed with both platforms in mind, and you can tell.
Mission Impossible has two new installments in development right now, a 7th and 8th film, both from director Christopher McQuarrie (who directed Mission Impossible 5 and 6–Rogue Nation and Fallout). With shooting on the 7th (as yet unnamed) film currently postponed, McQuarrie has spoken to the podcast Light the Fuse via Zoom about some of his plans for the next two movies, and The Hollywood Reporter has rounded up the highlights of their chat.
The question of why two films are being planned back-to-back was raised, and McQuarrie said that it’s all about the emotional arc of the series’ characters. McQuarrie says that going into Fallout, he told star Tom Cruise that he “really want(ed) to make this more of an emotional journey” for his character, Ethan Hunt.
Now, for the next films, McQuarrie wants to go further and focus on the rest of the cast. “I want to take what we learned from Fallout and apply it to every character in the movie,” he says. “I just want the movie to have more feeling across the board.”
This will presumably include Simon Pegg’s Benji, Ving Rhames’ Luther, and Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa, all of whom will be returning for the next films. Vanessa Kirby will also return as The White Widow, The Hollywood Reporter confirms, and we’ve previously learned that Henry Czerny will return as Eugene Kittridge for the first time since the original movie. Hayley Atwell will also join the series as a new character.
McQuarrie says that he and Cruise realized that the film they were planning was “too long,” and that after removing about 40 minutes of content–which will go on to form part of Mission Impossible 8’s narrative–the movie was in better shape. “The ending of the first movie snapped into place,” the director says. “And now I had these two sequences, which means, I’ve got 40 minutes of Mission: Impossible 8 figured out.”
He also touches on the recent news of a Tom Cruise movie where the 57-year-old actor will be filming in space, and says that he has no such plans for Mission Impossible. “What is happening in 7 and 8 is so insane that we don’t need to go to space,” he said.
Super Mega Baseball 3 is available now on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and a free demo has been released alongside the main game. But this demo isn’t just designed to let new players decide whether they’d like to take the plunge on Metalhead Software Inc’s third go at the sport–it will also keep the online Pennant Race mode populated at launch.
The demo gives players limited access to single-player and same-room multiplayer Exhibition mode matches (albeit with a 3-inning limit), but it also grants them unlimited matches in Pennant Mode, the new online mode. While demo players can’t access the leaderboards, they’ll be able to play against other players who either own the game or are just playing the demo themselves.
Here’s a screenshot taken from the demo, showing what is and isn’t available in the demo version.
Having tested the demo myself, there was a short wait to find a match at “beginner” level on Switch, but once I was in it ran smoothly. The exhibition mode also gives you a brief overview of the controls, although it will likely take time to master all of the game’s nuances and timing, especially if you are new to the series.
The demo is available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and Steam–as is the full-game, which costs $45.
The Seth Rogen movie An American Pickle, in which the actor falls into a vat of pickles and wakes up 100 years later, now has a release date and a new distribution parter. The movie will premiere on August 6 through the new streaming service, HBO Max, according to Deadline.
An American Pickle was originally planned for a theatrical release from Sony Pictures, but HBO Max owner WarnerMedia bought it from Sony in the wake of mass theatre closures due to COVID-19.
Couldn’t be more thrilled that my next film “An American Pickle” will be on HBO Max this summer. I can’t wait for you all to see it, but here’s a taste! Get it?!?! pic.twitter.com/zcM725FNzu
The movie is adapted from the 2013 Simon Rich novella, Sell Out. The movie features Rogen as a man, Herschel, who immigrates to America in 1920 with the hope of finding the American dream. On one fateful day, he falls into a vat of pickles. He becomes preserved in the brine for 100 years, waking up in present-day Brooklyn without ageing at all. His immediate family is dead. His only friend in the world is his great-grandson Ben (played by Rogen as well), who is a computer coder with nothing in common with Herschel. You can bet a lot of silliness and hijinks will ensue.
Rogen shared the first image from An American Pickle on Twitter with an old-timey photo of himself as Herschel.
An American Pickle is directed by Rogen’s longtime collaborator, Brandon Trost, who is making his solo directorial debut with the film. He previously worked with Rogen on This Is the End, The Interview, and Neighbors.
This week’s dev blog post from the team behind Valorant talks about the development and implementation of the anti-cheat system.
The current anti-cheat system in Valorant consists of a kernel mode driver that loads during the boot system. This means that those who have downloaded Valorant will have the Vanguard system running in the background, even when not playing the game. It is possible to disable the Vanguard, but it will have to be turned back on in order to play.
“We’ve heard feedback from players that it felt like Vanguard was being overbearing in its approach to security so we’re taking another approach. As of last week, Vanguard’s compatibility with vulnerable software packages has been expanded. While a small number of drivers are still blocked, from now on almost all of the software that Vanguard was previously blocking will work properly on Vanguard protected computers.
In the future we’re going to prefer non-invasive solutions to security issues where possible, finding ways for Vanguard, Valorant and that one weird RGB driver to coexist. If we can’t find a way for them to all work together, we’ll disable the game rather than disable your other software. Only in the most egregious cases will we block any software from running on your computer.
We’re continuing to improve Vanguard and we need your feedback to make good decisions. So please let us know how you feel about our anti-cheat efforts and we’ll do our best to keep everyone (except cheaters) happy,” comments Chamberlain.
The blog post also touches on the element of peeker’s advantage and how ranked/competitive play will work going forward.
Valorant is set to officially launch this Summer on PC.
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