Netflix’s Grudge Horror Show Gets Terrifying First Trailer

The Grudge–also known as Ju-On–was one of the key movies in the wave of Japanese horror of the 2000s. There have been no fewer than 12 Japanese movies and four American versions to date, the most recent of which, The Grudge, was released in January this year. The franchise is now making the move to the small screen as a new Netflix series. The first trailer has been released.

The show is titled Ju-On: Origins. It’s a Japanese production and is set to focus on the evil house that supposedly inspired the original movies. The trailer delivers everything that fans love about the franchise, including terrible curses, creepy kids, and weird noises, plus some scary-looking stuff involving a deformed baby. Check the trailer out below:

Ju-On: Origins hits Netflix on July 3. The streaming giant has released a synopsis, which reads, “The J-Horror classic franchise Ju-On was actually based on real events that occurred over four decades–and the truth is even more terrifying. Can the people haunted by this house escape from its curse? And what kind of grim incident occurred in this cursed house in the past?”

In a recent interview with Moshi Moshi, series producer Takashige Ichise spoke about what drew him to the new show. “I’ve long had thoughts of wanting to write the part of the story that can’t really be adapted into a film and make it into a drama series,” he said. “But there are too many restrictions in Japanese television so I haven’t been able to do it. Even when I made horror for TV before, I was told to not make it too scary. So when I got the call from Netflix to do this, I responded immediately with a ‘Yes!'”

For more check out GameSpot’s guide to the biggest upcoming horror movies of 2020 and beyond.

Robert Pattinson Talks Playing Batman, Nolan’s New Film, And Awful Pasta Recipes In Incredible Interview

Robert Pattinson isn’t a typical leading man, in many ways, and in an extraordinary new interview published by GQ shows off the oddball energy he is bringing to The Batman (which has halted production) and Christopher Nolan’s next film, Tenet. Here are some of the highlights from the long, strange interview.

While Batman has typically been a pretty muscular, bulky screen presence, Pattinson admits in this interview that he has not been working out during his isolation in London. “I think if you’re working out all the time, you’re part of the problem,” he tells GQ. “No one was doing this in the ’70s. Even James Dean–he wasn’t exactly ripped.” Pattinson says that while co-star Zoe Kravitz has reportedly been working out five days a week, he is “barely doing anything,” ignoring his trainer’s advice.

This could mean that we’ll see a different kind of Batman in the upcoming film, one with less muscle–and perhaps quite unique, judging by some of Pattinson’s comments. “I kind of like the fact that not only are there very, very, very well-done versions of the character which seem pretty definitive, but I was thinking that there are multiple definitive playings of the character,” he says. “I was thinking, it’s fun when more and more ground has been covered. Like, where is the gap? You’ve seen this sort of lighter version, you’ve seen a kind of jaded version, a kind of more animalistic version.”

“And the puzzle of it becomes quite satisfying, to think: Where’s my opening,” he continued. “And also, do I have anything inside me which would work if I could do it…In some ways it’s, I don’t know… It makes you a little kind of spicy.”

He admits that he tends to be quite candid in interviews too, saying this his publicist regularly asks after interviews if there are “any kind of fires” he has just set with his words.

Pattinson also talks about Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s new film that he stars in. The film remains fairly mysterious, with little revealed outside the one trailer, and Pattinson doesn’t have much to add. “Even if I had seen it, I genuinely don’t know if I’d be able to,” he says, asked to describe it. “This thing, it’s so insane,” he continues, before talking about how the crew travelled the world to shoot it. “And in each country there’s, like, an enormous set-piece scene, which is like the climax of a normal movie. In every single country.”

He also adds that the movie, despite appearances, features no time travel. “That’s, like, the one thing I’m approved to say,” he adds.

But all of these insights pale in comparison to Pattinson’s stated plans to start a pasta fast food restaurant, Piccolini Cuscino (Little Pillow). You absolutely need to read the full piece to enjoy this story the way it’s meant to be enjoyed, but it involves valuable lessons about not microwaving foil and using a lighter to burn messages into your food.

Tenet is still scheduled to hit cinemas on July 17 (although that date is looking increasingly unlikely as the COVID-19 pandemic continues), while The Batman has been delayed until October 1, 2021.

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Halo 2 Anniversary Is Now Available For PC And On Game Pass

Halo 2 is available now on PC, through both Steam and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Yes, this was also true in 2007, when Halo 2 for Vista launched–but now the game has been freed from Microsoft’s doomed operating system.

Halo 2: Anniversary Edition has launched as part of The Master Chief Collection, which continues its rollout onto PC. This is the third game in the collection to arrive on PC, with three more on the way. Thankfully, Halo 2’s infamous cliffhanger ending won’t leave PC players hanging as long as Xbox fans were made to wait–Halo 3 is right around the corner. That game has, of course, never been available for PC.

While there’s plenty of reason to celebrate the arrival of Halo 2, it’s not necessarily a perfect port. The game is launching with a litany of bugs, so although you can play the game today. However, the update that introduces Halo 2 to The Master Chief Collection has also resolved several issues.

Halo Infinite, the first new Halo FPS since 2015’s Halo 5, is due later this year. It’ll be on Xbox One and PC, but it’ll also be an Xbox Series X launch title.

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Valorant’s First Ban Wave Eliminates Over 8,000 Cheaters

While Valorant is still in closed beta, Riot is cracking down hard on cheaters already. Exactly 8,873 cheaters have been struck by the ban hammer from Riot in a first wave of bans.

The news came from Phillip Koskinas, one of the designers of the anticheat pipelines for Valorant. While we don’t know how many players are currently in the closed beta, 8,873 may just be a drop in the ocean.

The very first players banned from Valorant was over a month ago, with hackers being banned just three days into the closed beta. Riot is pulling out all the stops to put a halt to cheaters and hackers before the game releases in Summer.

The primary system behind these player bans is Riot’s Vanguard system, 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.

Cheating isn’t the only thing Riot wants to stamp out in Valorant, with player harassment in the company’s reticle. The development team behind Valorant are hoping to cut down on the issue of player harassment within the game, with the intent of creating a fair and non-hostile environment for players to enjoy.

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PS5: Sony Says Hardware ‘On Track’ and ‘No Major Issues’ With Software

Sony has said PlayStation 5 remains on track for its Holiday 2020 release, and game development has seen “no major issues” due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

As part of its financial results briefing, Sony Global reiterated that its new hardware is “on track for launch this holiday season”. A statement on the impact of the pandemic reads: “Although factors such as employees working from home and restrictions on international travel have presented some challenges in regards to part of the testing process and the qualification of production lines, development is progressing.”

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has previously said that while Series X hardware development is relatively unaffected by the effects of the outbreak, game development remains the bigger unknown. Sony does not appear to have the same fears about its upcoming software right now: “At this point in time major problems have not arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios.”

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While things seem to be progressing somewhat on track for Sony’s games division, the problems caused by COVID-19 has been serious enough for the company to suspend any forecasts about its future performance, meaning we’re unable to see how the company expects PS5 to perform after launch.

As for its current products, Sony reports that PS4 hardware production has taken a hit due to “issues in the component supply chain.” However, sales of existing hardware are “trending well”, and digital game sales and subscriber numbers for PS Plus and PS Now have “significantly increased”.

Yesterday, Sony announced that it had grouped all of its first-party studios’ output under a new brand, PlayStation Studios (and revealed a Marvel-like intro animation to go with it). For more on PS5 check out its full specs, how they compare to Xbox Series X, take a look at its new controller, the DualSense, and the games we know are coming to the system. For a full round-up, here’s everything we know about PS5 so far.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter.

F1 2020’s New My Team Mode Is ‘Absolutely Enormous’

F1 series game director Lee Mather has explained balancing F1 2020’s new My Team mode has been a significant challenge, although finalising the game in the middle of the global COVID-19 crisis has been largely seamless.

F1 2020’s My Team mode will cast players as a modern-day Jack Brabham – not just a team owner and manager, but key driver as well. Mather believes the nature of driving for your own team, plus seeing a teammate out on track that you hired personally, adds a brand new dynamic to F1 2020’s racing. You’re not fighting for glory for Austrian energy drink companies or Canadian investment consortiums; you’re doing it for your own team.

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My Team will let players become the 11th team on the grid and build a brand new organisation from the ground up. For the first time players will be able to create team colours and a unique badge, sign a power unit from the current engine suppliers, find a major sponsor, select and customise a livery, design race suits, and hire a second driver

“For us, the sheer challenge of balancing a game mode such as My Team – there’s so many moving pieces,” says Mather. “There’s so many things that the player’s going to manage.”

“Obviously, we want to make sure they’re all enjoyable to engage with, but also that the AI do them as well. We can’t just have a player who’s upgrading their team, developing their driver, upgrading their facilities – the team’s have to do that too.

“Formula One’s always been a big game and basically My Team is almost a game again; it’s absolutely enormous.”

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Formula%20One%E2%80%99s%20always%20been%20a%20big%20game%20and%20basically%20My%20Team%20is%20almost%20a%20game%20again%3B%20it%E2%80%99s%20absolutely%20enormous.”]Mather explains that F1 2020 has a fully-fledged driver market, an in-game economy where drivers have values, team budgets, and several other financial factors to consider.

“There’s a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things to balance, [but] with regard to how we’ve worked since the lockdown it’s actually been incredibly seamless,” says Mather. “I think, at the most, we probably lost one or two days while equipment was ferried between studios and to different locations but, aside from that, it’s actually gone really well.”

“I think probably the nicest thing is it’s shown – and I know this is an easy thing to say – just how insanely professional the team is and how versed they are in dealing with an annual franchise. I think without that experience, and also the skill of the newer members of the team, we would’ve been in a very different place. Not everybody who’s got games coming out in a similar window to us have maybe been able to mobilise quite as effectively.”

Cryptically, Mather concedes there was something else “incredibly challenging” about building F1 2020 but won’t reveal it for now.

“[U]nfortunately I can’t talk about it just yet; we’re holding it back for a couple of weeks,” he says. “There’s still something that was really interesting for us to work on and that will be discussed in detail very soon.”

Check out the video below for an overview of some of the new features for F1 2020, including My Team, casual mode, and local split-screen.

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Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter sporadically @MrLukeReilly.

PlayStation 4 Lifetime Sales Top 110 Million, And Digital Sales See A Huge Increase

The PlayStation 4 is the second-best selling Sony console (after the PlayStation 2), and the company’s latest earnings report has given the most up-to-date figure on how the console is doing. Although there has been the expected year-on-year decline as the PlayStation 4 nears the end of its life cycle, the console has continued to do well, and has now sold through 110.4 million units over its lifetime.

Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, has compiled data from the latest Sony earnings report to paint a picture of the PS4’s sales over the last financial year, ending March 31, 2020. 13.6 million units were sold over the last financial year, down from 17.8 million the previous year. It’s expected that sales in the current quarter of the 2020 financial year might actually exceed those from a year ago, as COVID-19 means that people are at home and bored.

245 million units of software were sold over the same period. This is down from 257.6 million the previous year, as is to be expected. This also marks the first time that digital sales have exceeded physical–51% of game sales during the financial year were digital. A whopping 66% of sales in the final quarter of the financial year were digital, which is, again, likely due in part to self-isolation and restrictions that came into effect in March 2020.

Overall, this was a good year for Sony’s games and network services–the second best on record, in fact, lagging only behind 2018.

Essentially, despite a slump, the PlayStation 4 is still doing very well. Subscriptions for PlayStation Plus have also gone up, hitting 41.5 million by March 31, 2020 (up from 36.4 million a year earlier).

While COVID-19 has impacted Sony’s revenue, their earnings report also says that there are no plans to delay the PlayStation 5, nor its planned software, at this time. We’re still not entirely sure what games we’ll get on PS5 when it releases, although we know quite a bit else about it.

The PlayStation 4 is now the fourth best-selling console ever, behind the Game Boy/Game Boy Color, which sold 118.69 million units. It remains to be seen if the PlayStation 4 will overtake Nintendo’s handheld; the Nintendo DS (154.02 million) and PlayStation 2 (155 million) are likely out of reach.

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Josh Gad Will Save Humanity In Next Disaster Movie From Roland Emmerich

Josh Gad has been cast in the next movie from well-known disaster film director Roland Emmerich. Gad, who recently played Olaf in Frozen II, will play a character named KC Houseman, who is described by The Hollywood Reporter as “odd and unkempt.”

The film is called Moonfall (no connection to the video game of the same name) and it has the kind of absurd plot that you’d expect from an Emmerich movie. The moon becomes knocked off its orbit by a “mysterious force” and begins falling toward Earth, threatening to wipe out humanity. Weeks before the moon crashes down on Earth and annihilates humanity, a motley crew is assembled to fly a ship onto the moon and save the day.

Gad’s character is a “genius who correctly predicts that the moon has fallen out of its orbit, thus making the space-obsessed, profoundly unfiltered and eccentric man one of the most important people on Earth.”

Gad is the first actor to be cast in Moonfall. The premise of the film sounds similar to the 1998 Michael Bay movie Armageddon, in which a ragtag team of blue-collar workers are called on to save humanity from a meteor on a collision course with Earth.

Emmerich wrote the script for Moonfall alongside Harald Kloser, who co-wrote Emmerich’s disaster movie 2012, along with Spenser Cohen. Emmerich also directed Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, as well as the movie that was not related to the annihilation of the planet, The Patriot.

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Call Of Duty: Warzone Cheating Update: PC Players Must Now Use 2FA

Call of Duty: Warzone developer Infinity Ward is taking further steps to help stamp out cheaters in the popular battle royale game, at least on PC. The studio has released a new “security update” that adds mandatory two-factor authentication.

According to Infinity Ward, this is “another step to provide an additional layer of security for players.” Note that 2FA is only required for people who are playing the free-to-play client, not those who are accessing Warzone through Modern Warfare. This new 2FA update only applies to PC.

With more than 60 million players, there were always going to be some bad eggs in Warzone. For what it’s worth, other popular battle royale games such as PUBG and Fortnite have also acknowledged cheating issues.

Warzone players who have been identified as cheaters are being placed in matches together as a way to combat the issue. Looking ahead, Infinity Ward is planning to add a player-reporting feature to the Warzone kill cams and spectator modes. Not including Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward has already banned more than 70,000 cheaters from Warzone.

For more on Warzone, check out GameSpot’s recent interview with Raven Software about the Gulag, which is linked below

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The Untamed Is A Perfect Quarantine Binge

Now that the passage of time is feeling more imaginary than ever before, finding something to focus on for an extended period is becoming something of an art form. Let’s face it: Re-watching the full series of The Office for the millionth time or speeding through something nostalgic like The X-Files all over again was fun when this all started, but we could use something new to take our minds off things for more than just a few hours at a time–or, better yet, something that is so new it doesn’t immediately become background noise as you zone out and gaze into the void (or tend to your Animal Crossing island).

Enter: The Untamed, or Chén Qíng Lìng (abbreviated CQL–this is a world with lots of alternate titles, abbreviations, and acronyms. Don’t panic, you’ll get used to them).

If you’re on social media at all, there’s a good chance you’ve seen rumblings of this show in some form or another. The Chinese historical-fantasy drama, which originally aired on YouTube back in the summer of 2019, was given official English subtitles and later picked up by Netflix late last year. And while this ease of access certainly played a role in the fan boom, it quickly became apparent that it was more than just the ability to watch for free that made The Untamed so special.

Based on the novel Mó Dào Zǔ Shī (“The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation,” abbreviated MDZS), The Untamed is a sprawling, densely packed story in the Xianxia genre, which essentially means it’s a fantasy story based thoroughly on Chinese mythology, Taoism, and other traditional beliefs. Part of what makes The Untamed so engaging is the fact that it’s steeped in genre traditions that are wholly unique to Xianxia works. These stories typically focus on “cultivators,” or people who are working to cultivate (get it?) their spiritual powers and abilities with the goal of attaining immortality or enlightenment through rigorous study and practice.

It’s not specifically high-fantasy–for example, there are no orcs or elves running around. But it’s certainly not gritty or grounded. In The Untamed, ancient China is populated by various cultivation sects with different worldviews and methodologies, training students who, in turn, venture out into the world and use their spiritual power to help common folk deal with pesky supernatural nuisances. You know, resentful spirits, curses, demons and the like.

Naturally, with different sects all vying for power and influence, the political landscape is a bit of a nightmare. It’ll immediately ping associations to things like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Game Of Thrones, and it’s easy to see why. The sects are often coded onscreen by colors, and they each have their own specific home bases (some with incredibly cool names like “The Unclean Realm” or “The Nightless City”), and there’s enough machiavellian betrayal and political puppeteering to make your head spin.

But that’s just the story at its most macro level. The worldbuilding serves to prop up the most important part–the core characters themselves and their deeply meaningful and outstandingly complicated relationships. If you’re the sort of person who loves novels that come with a glossary of terms and a fold-out family tree, this show is for you.

Reductively, I could tell you that The Untamed is about two cultivators from diametrically opposed worldviews coming together against astronomical odds and falling in love. This is true–but that’s only part of the story. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji (played by pop idols Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, respectively) serve as a sort of narrative throughline and if you’re only interested in heartbreakingly tender romance, then great news: There’s plenty of it. While The Untamed, on paper, was forced to remove the majority of the source material’s textual queer romance (MDZS is what’s known as a BL, or boy’s love, novel, which means exactly what it says on the tin) to appease China’s strict censors, the subtext remains so obvious that if you didn’t know the love story had been truncated, you probably wouldn’t realize it at all. In fact, if anything, the clever ways the romance is communicated in the story just serve to make it hit you directly in the heart even harder.

But if romance isn’t your particular bag, that’s fine too. The Untamed takes place over 50 (yes, 50) hour-long episodes, and when it’s not asking you to wax poetic about the existence of soulmate level bonds, it’s throwing nonstop twists and turns at you. It’s one part murder mystery, one part political thriller, and one part family drama, all with the high-camp, charmingly low-budget feel of your favorite ’90s adventure classics. If you were a fan of Xena: Warrior Princess, or more recently, Netflix’s Witcher TV show, the action and melodrama will feel like comfort food. There are plenty of monsters to fight, evil leaders to assassinate, political coups to execute, and families being torn apart. People carry magic swords and cast spells with enchanted instruments. There’s an entire subplot across three episodes that takes a hard turn into dark, psychological horror and another that makes The Red Wedding look relatively tame.

Best of all, once you’ve completed your 50-hour journey, there’s plenty more to consume. MDZS has been adapted as an animated series, a manhua comic, and an audio drama. And while only the animated series has been officially subtitled in English, fan communities have been hard at work providing unofficial translations for virtually every adaptation. In addition, the live action universe is still, technically, in progress, with spin-off films being released as recently as March of this year, that focus more on the show’s many side characters. With any luck, they’ll soon be made available with English subtitles as well.

As we progress into a summer where more and more events are canceled, keeping yourself occupied is key, and that’s exactly what a head-long dive into The Untamed will help you with. The sheer volume of content to consume, mixed with the level of attention it will ask you to pay to follow its intricate web of stories, characters, and relationships, on top of the thrill of learning the ins-and-outs of a rich genre full of its own conventions and traditions, make it a triple threat. It’s the ideal binge and the perfect gateway to a brand new obsession.

The Untamed is streaming in its entirety on Netflix and YouTube.