Meet The Players Competing On The Exotic Fringes Of Their Favorite Games

It was the biggest match of Leaf’s Super Smash Bros. career, and her Lucas was one of the best in the game. All that stood in her way on the path to the tournament crown was a nasty Ridley player in a two-stock match. Leaf quickly dispatched Ridley’s first life by luring them to the map’s edge. But, immediately after respawning, Ridley knocked Lucas off the stage in a bold attempt to even the odds. Ridley then rushed forward to try and spike Lucas into oblivion, but whiffed the killing blow. Leaf quickly readjusted Lucas and gave Ridley a spike of their own, sealing the first-place finish.

Leaf, who prefers to go by her in-game tag, claimed victory in the Smash tournament, but she didn’t actually play in the match–her Amiibo did. Leaf is an Amiibo trainer: she “trains” an AI-controlled fighter, Lucas in this case, by playing against it in matches. But when Lucas competes in tournaments, it does so all on its own. Leaf can only watch and hope she’s prepared her Amiibo enough ahead of time whenever it goes to battle in the small, weird world of competitive Amiibo fighting.

Esports has become a booming industry with a huge number of players and spectators, but around the fringes of the games that get major attention, like League of Legends and Call of Duty, are the smaller, weirder competitions. Some well-known competitive games have smaller communities that focus on different aspects from the major competitors, such as with the Amiibo trainers or Rocket League hockey players. Other games that get little attention have thriving groups of competitors, like that of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy dualists. These groups rely on their own organization and programming ability to create the competitions they want without support from the mainstream.

“I was a day-one trainer,” Leaf said. It all started when Leaf’s uncle gave her a Link Amiibo when the line of Nintendo toys launched in 2014. She scanned the NFC chip that comes with every Amiibo into Super Smash Bros. Wii U, which generated an AI-controlled Link for Leaf to play against, and which would level up and become more skilled as they continually faced off in bouts. These Amiibo AI-controlled fighters served as sparring partners for Smash players with playstyles that developed based on how their owners played. The act of training Amiibo fighters soon took on a life of its own for players like Leaf. She found that she enjoyed training her computer-controlled fighter more than playing Smash the traditional way. Now, almost six years later, Leaf is one of the best Amiibo trainers in the world. In fact, the Link Amiibo her uncle gave her is a Super Smash Bros. champion.

“All you can do is watch and believe in your training.”

Leaf is part of a tiny but passionate and well-organized community of Amiibo lovers, one that put together a site hosting deep Amiibo training reports and guides called Amiibo Dojo (now known as Exion Vault) and a semi-regular tournament series with cash and custom Amiibo prizes.

The tournaments focus on a segment of the Smash Bros. community that uses the game in a very different way from other competitors. Participants don’t actually play as they compete; instead, they watch their AI-trained figures fight. “By the time your Amiibo plays against an opponent, your work is already done,” said “Cloud,” the founder of Amiibo Dojo, who also goes by his username. “All you can do is watch and believe in your training.”

The Amiibo community is much stronger today than it was after the figurines first launched in 2014, and is now home to several tournaments and many star trainers like Leaf. One of those is the Professional Amiibo League (PAL), hosted from Provo, Utah, by a Smash player who goes by the handle “Splice.” As many as 80 Amiibos fight in the league’s live-streamed open bracket before the top competitors go head-to-head in the playoffs and championship.

For Amiibo trainers, all the work and skill is pressed into
For Amiibo trainers, all the work and skill is pressed into

“I ran a small Melee league when I was going to college at [Brigham Young University]. It’s still going today,” Splice said during a Discord call. He had just finished commentating a series of matches for the PAL. “I was not interested in Amiibo whatsoever. They announced it for Super Smash Bros. Wii U and I thought it was weird … but someone gave me a Wii Fit Trainer as a thank you for running the league.”

Before Splice knew it, he was running a secondary tournament at BYU that featured nothing but Amiibo fighters. He eventually started helping another Amiibo Dojo community member set up the Professional Amiibo League by spray painting Amiibo for custom prizes (like a golden Pichu) and casting the tournaments on his Twitch channel.

Organizing tournaments for Amiibo was a little different than creating those for players, though. Participants had to actually mail their figurines to tournament organizers in order to participate, thanks to the way the figures work–they store all the information for the AI fighters inside the physical toy, which meant the only way for a tournament to pit Amiibo fighters against each other was for them all to be in the same place. It was a huge pain logistically and some players worried about never getting their figurines back.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate brought online functionality to the Amiibo community, but that didn’t actually solve the problem. Nintendo’s poor online infrastructure has led organizers like Splice to keep tournaments offline. Luckily, competitors don’t have to mail Amiibo anymore; they’ve since figured out how to rip the AI data files from the Amiibo figures themselves. “[Competitors] can send a .bin file and then I spoof it,” he said. “We still do it all offline since the [online] lag is so bad.”

The Professional Amiibo League and the community that competes in it is a prime example of a small but vibrant esport that has all the trappings of an Overwatch League or IEM Katowice, just without the expensive production value and booming fan-filled arenas. The Professional Amiibo League and organizers like Splice will never rival the ESL or Major League Gaming in size or popularity, but still come together to offer prize money, stream a month-long tournament, run an open bracket, and navigate various hardware hurdles for what many would consider a “weird” competitive game.

Fans of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy have to do a lot of work on their own to create working competitions in their favorite game.
Fans of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy have to do a lot of work on their own to create working competitions in their favorite game.

A 15-year-old community rallied around dueling one-on-one with lightsabers in Star Wars: Jedi Academy is another instance of a niche community sprouting up around an addicting competitive aspect of a game. The third-person Jedi-fighter came out in 2004 with what fans call some of the best lightsaber combat ever. “You have a lot of free movement and can direct your swings in almost any direction you want to,” said Smoo, a player who competes in Jedi Academy tournaments. “Mike Gummelt, who worked on the saber combat, was inspired by Bushido Blade; if you are skilled enough and have good timing, you can kill your opponents in one hit.”

Jedi Academy had players duking it out in several different modes, including duel, free-for-all, and team free-for-all. There wasn’t a specific mode for team-based deathmatch, however, so players filled servers and played by their own rules in order to create competitions.

“There wasn’t a competitive ruleset out of the box,” said Steve, a member of the community who goes by the name “Inject.” Tournaments had to be played using the team free-for-all option, with competitors careful to follow their own two-versus-two and three-versus-three rulesets. The community even went as far as to tweak the game’s code to fit their needs. “We made a new build with some added console commands to streamline the tournament system. We added a command to reset the game state, giving a 1-2-3 countdown.” They even found tips, like how some lightsaber hilts gave you longer attack reach, hidden in the game code.

A remaster of Jedi Academy launched on PS4 and Nintendo Switch earlier this year, but it’s severely lacking in online functionality. It doesn’t support playing directly with friends on the Nintendo Switch and only lets players come together in parties on PS4, which means players can only battle people on their friend lists. It’s pretty hard to run a competitive tournament without being able to run your own server. While it’s unfortunate, the competitive community may have to rely on the old PC version of the game indefinitely.

Rocket League has a big esports competitive league, but beyond the teams who play intense matches of the game’s take on soccer with cars, there’s another, smaller competitive community that goes for one of Rocket League’s less-popular game modes. That community gathers on Discord servers that focus on competing in Rocket League’s hockey mode, Snow Day.

“Psyonix introduced Snow Day as a temporary holiday mode,” said DA Cook, one of the leaders in Rocket League’s hockey community. “A small but dedicated core group of players petitioned them to keep it permanently after it was removed.” They call themselves the Rocket Hockey League (RHL) and one of their commissioners actually delivered “a care package of NHL western conference hockey-pucks” to Psyonix to help convince the developer to keep the mode alive. It worked–Psyonix kept Snow Day as a permanent game mode.

Playing with a puck makes Snow Day vastly different from traditional soccer with cars, with its own idiosyncrasies that appeal to its competitors. One, a technique players use called “pinching the puck,” can mean launching it at incredibly high speeds towards the net. “The fastest I’ve personally seen in regulation puck is 132 mph,” Cook said. Many of the players that enjoy Snow Day rarely play Rocket League’s standard mode. The community around Snow Day is hoping to kick off their sixth competitive season this June.

Like Amiibo fighting or Jedi Academy team fights, in-game Rocket League tournament features are lacking, so RHL fans have to turn to third-party options to run their league of 18 teams. While still small, the community believes they’ve helped expand the game mode in significant ways. Their enthusiasm also resulted in Psyonix adding a ranked playlist and balance patches to Snow Day specifically, but they are always hoping for more.

“I honestly don’t think the devs think about us much, and that makes sense from a certain viewpoint given the small size of our community,” Cook said. “We’re looking forward to another season of growth and continued efforts to increase visibility and awareness of the mode and league.”

While Cook, Splice, and Leaf would love for their communities to grow into something much bigger, they don’t think the Professional Amiibo League or Rocket Hockey League will ever get close to being as big as Dota 2 or Counter-Strike. They do want to make both leagues sustainable to give Super Smash Bros. and Rocket League players a way to compete in their own way. As Splice explained, more players are coming into the Amiibo league each season, despite technical hurdles.

“I almost never play Smash regularly–I’m 35 and I can’t keep up with these kids with 10-step combos and all the time to train,” Splice said. Training Amiibos to fight in their stead is a way for people like Splice, who can’t contend against players in traditional Smash tournaments, and Leaf, who doesn’t live close to a local Smash community, to compete in their own ways.

But the current state of the toys-to-life genre has left the community’s future a mystery. Amiibo are still popular, with new figures coming out for new Smash fighters like Richter and Incineroar, but players like Leaf don’t know if that’ll continue after the Nintendo Switch. And two other toys-to-life franchises that competed with Amiibo, Skylanders and Disney Infinity, have been all but canceled in recent years.

“That’s the biggest question,” Splice said. “There’s been a Smash game for every system since the N64, but when they come out with the next thing, will it have NFC-reading technology? The community could die at the whim of Nintendo’s decision.”

“Amiibo is in a weird place right now; a lot of people have given up on collecting them.”

Players also develop a real connection to their Amiibo.

“Amiibo is in a weird place right now; a lot of people have given up on collecting them,” Leaf said. “Nintendo has accepted that they are a collectible item.”

The same uncertainty can be said about the Rocket League or Jedi Academy communities. Their futures may not be as uncertain as the lifespan of Nintendo’s Amiibo figurines, but those players also don’t know if Psyonix and Aspyr Studios–the studio handling the remake of Jedi Academy–will respectively support each down the line. Even though it has a precarious future, Inject and the rest of the Jedi Academy community will make do by using the 2003 version of the game.

Regardless of developer and publisher support, all three communities strive to leave a legacy on the games they’ve sunk thousands of hours into. Cook and the Rocket Hockey League don’t see themselves slowing down anytime soon and are working with the Hoops community–who play a basketball-inspired add-on mode of the game–to help Rocket League’s side modes grow.

Snow Day started its life as a short-term Rocket League event, but fan enthusiasm has kept it in the game and created a competitive scene all its own.

For now, Leaf, Cloud, and Splice are enjoying the popularity that the Nintendo Switch and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have brought to their community. Leaf’s planning on transferring the AI fighter from the Link Amiibo her uncle bought her in 2014 into a custom figure with the Fierce Deity skin that’s featured in Ultimate. They’ve been through a lot together over the years.

“I’ll be using shady methods to transplant the brain onto the custom Amiibo I have used, and will continue to use that figure,” said Leaf, whose custom Amiibo should arrive in a few weeks. “It’s the skin I put on him in-game. It seemed only fitting to get him a special figure due to his infamy.”

Finding The Cyberpunk In Cyberpunk 2077

In our first hands-on preview of Cyberpunk 2077, Tamoor Hussain lamented the relative lack of humanity he witnessed in the game’s main questline as he played through the opening hours as a street kid. After all, in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the most impactful stories were often the smaller, more intimate ones. He eventually found a glimpse of that in a sidequest involving two monk brothers and their vow of non-violence, which complicated a rescue mission with grey decisions.

With the benefit of this knowledge and my own Cyberpunk 2077 demo to play, I went in with the express purpose of trying to find more of those glimpses. Above and beyond CD Projekt Red’s proven ability to create complex, humane storytelling, the cyberpunk genre itself is attractive because of its portrayal of its people and communities in an extreme future. As David Rayfield wrote back in 2018 (around the time when CD Projekt began to tease Cyberpunk’s resurfacing after a long silence), cyberpunk media draws us in with its cool-as-hell aesthetic, but the best cyberpunk stories “reveal to us modern society’s worst tendencies and offenders.”

And so I went into the opening hours of Cyberpunk 2077 with these questions in my head: How does 2077 use and play with cyberpunk conventions? What stories does 2077 want to tell outside its grandiose main questline? Does 2077 actually feel like a cyberpunk world beyond its flashy tech and neon-soaked Asian-inspired aesthetic? The results were… a little mixed.

Corporate Control

In cyberpunk fiction, capitalism rules. The genre imagines a world where international corporations have grown to such a size that they are untouchable by governments. The class divides are extreme, and quality of life is greatly determined by how much money you have–a scenario that feels even more real now than it did in the genre’s infancy back in the ’80s.

At the beginning of my demo, I chose the Corporate Life Path as the origin for my version of the protagonist, V. This situated her in a lofty counter-intelligence position in the Japanese corporation, Arasaka. V’s boss, the instantly-hateable Jenkins, orders her to organise a hit on his boss, Abernathy. V is conflicted, she’s anxious. She tries to confide in her best friend Jackie, she throws up in the bathroom. It is absolutely not something that she wants to do, but what choice does she have? Her livelihood–salary, apartment, Trauma Team medical insurance–is all made available to her because of her corporate loyalty.

At the end of this prologue, while V is trying to convince Jackie to help her out with the job, Arasaka goons confront her. Abernathy has found out about the scheme and V is cut off without recompense. It’s whatever the opposite of recompense is. She sees her bank balance zero out before her eyes, and all her corporate augmentations get fried. Jackie intervenes to prevent the goons from taking her out back (to kill her probably!), but her life is ruined. No money. No medical insurance. No home.

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Seeing first-hand how people might suffer in a world of extreme capitalism was a pretty great start to things. But unsurprisingly, being the game’s protagonist, V has a safety net in the form of a thick wad of cash she just happened to have on her. She eventually gets back on her feet within six months, building a new working life for herself with Jackie. When the game truly begins, V has a swish apartment centrally located in the bustling city.

It stands to reason that others in this world would not be so lucky. To me, one of the signature aspects of cyberpunk fiction is a look at the ugly side of things. The rainy street level of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. The claustrophobic slums of Prague in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The clinical housing, fabricated clothes, and protein goop of Technobabylon.

The area you start 2077 in is probably one of the more glamorous interpretations of cyberpunk I’ve seen. It’s densely populated and filled with the prerequisite amount of highrises and neon signage; when it’s raining at night it hits all the familiar notes. But the people and places that it is home to are definitely cut from a different kind of cloth. There’s a degree of wealth that is prevalent, people flashing their shiny augmentations, spending their nights at exclusive nightclubs and bars, exercising their fleshy parts at gyms and dojos, and spending time kicking back on rooftops wearing brightly-coloured activewear and chunky, impossibly clean sneakers. It’s cyberpunk chic, which I was a little taken aback by. That grim futuristic world was suddenly kind of aspirational more than anything.

There is a unique degree of ugliness to be found, though. I played most of my demo when the in-game sun was out, and it was still a good-looking city in a technical sense–I had the benefit of playing a locally-run code on PC, seeing it run in 4K with ray-tracing and DLSS effects pointed out to me. But seeing a cyberpunk city under the bright light of day was another interesting twist to what I’ve come to expect from the genre.

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The first thing that shocked me was how clear the horizon was. I could see some rolling Californian mountain ranges in the horizon, and I wondered whether pollution and the environmental angle is something that will come into examination later. The depletion of Earth’s natural resources is another common cyberpunk theme–did the governments of 2077 work all those green deals out?

Without the darkness and neon to hide and distract, there’s definitely a more down-to-earth grimness that comes from residing in a concrete jungle of a city. Freeways criss-cross the district and as a result, there are areas of Night City where there isn’t much to see at all. But that dullness makes it feel pretty true-to-life, which I quite liked. Those underpasses, dead ends, and long stretches of deserted footpaths through industrial areas also helped make the bustling centres feel that much busier and exciting. And it’s here where I found hints of the less alluring side of this city.

Makeshift tents here and there suggest some kind of homeless or displaced population, and one curious encounter I had with a Cyberpsycho (Cyberpunk’s take on boss-like enemies that inhabit the world) came accompanied with some flavour text: He was a former mercenary, fired by his corporate employer but left on the street with the memories of the jobs he had done, and now suffering from PTSD. Given the size of the map, I’m hoping to see a lot more of these kinds of stories–the Pacifica region is supposedly the dedicated slum region–although in retrospect, given Night City was initially described as “the worst place to live in America” with a “sky-high rate of violence and more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else,” I was expecting something a lot worse from the get-go.

Stranger Strangers

Tamoor’s amazing-sounding experience with the Buddhist monks encouraged me to actively seek out more side-quest characters in my demo in order to gauge the temperature of the kinds of people that CD Projekt wanted to flesh out in this world. I spent a lot of my demo chasing question-mark icons on the map, but most of the time they would turn out to be Gigs, Cyberpunk’s more straightforward quests where you’re simply asked to kill someone or find something for a reward–there certainly are a lot of things you can distract yourself with in this open world, as was the case in The Witcher 3 or even something in the style of GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2.

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Two side-quest characters managed to get my attention. The first was a pair of twins, who had such a close relationship that they used technology to fuse their personalities into a single entity. “One person, two bodies” is the way they put it. They were part of a multi-part quest that asked you to rise up and be the best fist-fighter in the district, and they had a vaudeville-style routine going on with their back and forth banter, describing how they (he?) dealt with girlfriends. The second character was someone whose augmented penis was malfunctioning and causing him a lot of pain. The hysteric man wanted V to drive him to the nearest ripperdoc–surgeons that specialise in installing and repairing cybernetic implants. He seemed to be involved in a multi-part quest, since V adds him as a phone contact afterwards (as “Flaming Crotch Man” with a banana as his profile picture).

Both of these characters are on the more lighthearted side of the character spectrum–not exactly the humane character studies I was on the lookout for, but playful imaginings of the oddities that might come up in a technological future. It works in a sense because the main questline at this point revolves around more serious considerations of where technology might move, like the incredibly cool Braindance mechanic. It’s an edge that veers closer to the Yakuza series in terms of silliness than I was expecting from this game. I don’t mind that at all, but I’m still hopeful that there are more of those morally grey gut-punch stories too because Cyberpunk 2077’s side quests can’t just be all sunshine and hijinks, right?

The ambient street scenes poked at this a little bit during my time–a street preacher condemning body modification to make sure the next generation is pure was an immediate example, but they seemed to be almost drowned out by ever-present scenes of danger. Random world incidents involving cops and criminals can be found around nearly every corner, with various gang members and the Night City Police Department acting incredibly on edge all the time. This is one part of the game that certainly worked in establishing the “worst place in America” thing, but also to remind me that Cyberpunk 2077 is definitely cut from the same cloth as The Witcher 3, and not so much Deus Ex, despite appearances. There are even “nests” of enemies, so to speak, in the form of gang hideouts, which make it seem like the city’s primary goal is to give you things to do first and foremost. When it came to random Night City citizens, my handgun did most of the interacting.

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I came away seeing a lot of unexpected things, but there was one facet of cyberpunk fiction that I noticed 2077 was staying true to. Unfortunately, it’s a personal gripe I’ve always raised an eyebrow to despite being a huge sucker for the genre: It’s the fact that despite cyberpunk absolutely revelling in the look and feel of modern neon-soaked Asian cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong, and being filled with citizens from all kinds of multicultural backgrounds, those cultures are rarely represented in the main cast of characters and primary perspectives these stories deal with. The only notable Asian character I came across during the first five hours was the head of the Arasaka corporation, Yorinobu Arasaka, who at this stage is just a big bad. Cyberpunk fiction was born with an orientalist problem, so my personal hope is that somewhere in Cyberpunk 2077, we get a deeper look into all the different cultures and factions of Night City (of which there are many), through characters you can meaningfully relate to. After all, given how heavily this supposedly Californian city is saturated in noodles, katanas, rice hats, and people yelling in foreign languages, there’s gotta be at least some cool Asian cyberpunks of note to hang out with, right?

At this point, you might think I’m nitpicking and speculating based on playing what is a relatively tiny portion of the game–but that’s only because I’m incredibly excited by it, like you, probably. Even though I came away with some wariness about 2077’s take on a cyberpunk world, I’m glad there are some twists here. I hope those interesting glimpses I saw will unravel into a variety of notable themes, characters, locations, and situations hours down the line. This is going to be the biggest interactive cyberpunk-themed world to date. Let’s hope its portrayal will be meaningful, too.

Now Playing: Cyberpunk 2077 Hands-On Impressions: All Three Classes Explored

From Iron Man to Endgame: How The Avengers’ Salaries Changed

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which all began with an announcement from Kevin Feige back in 2006 at San Diego Comic-Con, enjoyed over a decade of sheer dominance at the box office, with the saga’s first three phases taking us from 2008’s Iron Man to 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

In that time, Robert Downey Jr., as Tony Stark, enjoyed a cool career resurgence while other stars (even some relative unknowns at the time like Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston) rose through the ranks as well. And with their MCU careers cemented, their pay pushed into blockbuster proportions.

It’s time to assemble all of the Avengers’ paychecks to see how these performers made out over the course of their MCU tenure. Some, like Downey and Chris Evans, have ended their journey while others are still out there, as the franchise’s founders, readying themselves for their next handsomely-paid adventure.

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Robert Downey, Jr.

imageRobert Downey, Jr. earned $500,000 for the first Iron Man film back in 2008. Flash-forward over a decade, and nine MCU films (plus a cameo in The Incredible Hulk), and Downey was pulling in $75 million for 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which is the highest-grossing film of all time. Downey reportedly raked in $20 million up front for Endgame and then an additional $55 million in a back-end deal that gave him 8% of the film’s profit.

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Chris Evans

chris_evans_captain_america_via_marvel_endgame_trailer_2019Chris Evans, who was certainly no stranger to comic book films at the time (Fantastic Four, The Losers), made a cool million for Captain America: The First Avenger. By the time it was time for the “time heist” in Avengers: Endgame, Evans was earning $15 million per Avengers outing.

Scarlett Johansson

film-lost-summer-movie-season_78082c40-9ca8-11ea-9ae4-6c4a5d56c128As huge as Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is in the MCU, having debuted back in Iron Man 2, she’s never had her own solo adventure until 2020 (and that film’s release date has been pushed due to the pandemic). For the second Iron Man movie, Johansson reportedly made $400,000. By the time the Snap settled, like Evans and Hemsworth, she was making $15 million an Avengers film. Now she’s expected to make around $20 million for Black Widow.

Chris Hemsworth

avengers-endgame-thor
Not a household name at the time, Chris Hemsworth earned $150,000 for 2011’s Thor. He’s been earning $15 million an MCU film now since 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok.

Mark Ruffalo

avengers-endgame-smart-hulkA late-ish entry to the team, Mark Ruffalo replaced The Incredible Hulk’s Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in The Avengers. For this movie he made around $2 to $3 million. We assume Ruffalo made a lot more for Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame but those numbers haven’t been fully reported. He may or may not have a similar deal to Hemsworth, Johansson, and Evans.

Jeremy Renner

jeremy-renner-avengers-endgame-1200After making a brief appearance in Thor, Jeremy Renner then earned $3 million for The Avengers. After presumedly making a lot more for Civil War and his subsequent Avengers films (he reportedly made $6.1 million for Age of Ultron). Renner’s Hawkeye is one of the MCU’s supplemental heroes who’s now getting their own Disney+ series. Renner might get his biggest payday to date when he headlines his own Marvel Studios’ series.

Don Cheadle

infinitywar5ac5d1bc04b95_copyDon Cheadle got $1 million dollars for Iron Man 2, where he replaced Terrance Howard as James “Rhodey” Rhodes aka War Machine. At this time, it’s not known what Cheadle has been making since his debut as War Machine, but some best guesses place it at around $4 to $7 million a film.

Tom Holland

590579-tom-holland-spider-man-homecomingWhen Tom Holland’s Spider-Man swung into the MCU he was making $250,000 for Civil War and $500,000 for Spider-Man: Homecoming. We don’t know what the young star made for Far From Home but he did get a pay bump for Avengers: Infinity War, earning $3 million.

Anthony Mackie

captain_america-civil_war-anthony_mackie-photofest-h_2019We don’t know what Anthony Mackie was making for each of his films, which began with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and then culminated with the awesome “On your left” callback in Endgame (though it’s rumored he made $100,000 for his small part in Age of Ultron). Like Jeremy Renner though, Mackie is about to top-line his own Disney+ series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, alongside Sebastian Stan. For that he’s reportedly making $475,000 per episode, which would bring him to $3.8 million for the series.

Paul Rudd

mgid-ao-image-mtv.com-82645Despite having a successful TV and movie track record at the time, Paul Rudd was reportedly paid $300,000 for Ant-Man. We can assume that Rudd’s pay went up significantly for Civil War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Avengers Endgame.

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany

Wandavision-Scarlet-Witch-Vision-ChildrenOstensibly, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany made their MCU debut in Age of Ultron, as Scarlett Witch and Vision, though if we’re counting voice acting Bettany was actually one of the main starters for the entire MCU as he also voiced Jarvis in all three Iron Man movies. Details about both of their actual salaries are hush hush though they’re both starring in Disney+’s WandaVision, a six-episode series that will directly tie into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

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Chadwick Boseman

c12be3e49342602a0d6550d55a3087c1Chadwick Boseman took home $700,000 for his debut in Captain America: Civil War and then pulled in $2 million for his solo movie. Boseman’s next reported project for Marvel is Black Panther 2, so it’s safe to assume, given the exceptional success of the first film, that Boseman will get a pay hike and profit-sharing.

Brie Larson

captain-marvel-ss-mainOscar winner Brie Larson made $5 million in her debut as Captain Marvel, which also came with a seven-picture deal. Up next for Larson, unless she appears in Marvel’s Eternals or some other MCU project, is Captain Marvel 2.

Benedict Cumberbatch

doctor-strange-in-infinity-warBenedict Cumberbatch’s MCU payments have been going up steadily since his debut as Doctor Strange, with reports saying he earned about $5.1 million for Infinity War and will get $6.4 million for the Doctor Strange sequel.

Chris Pratt

star-lordChris Pratt, who was known mostly for his many seasons on NBC’s Parks and Recreation at the time, reportedly made $1.5 million for his work on Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s rumored that he made $5 million for Avengers: Infinity War. It’s actually outside of the MCU where Pratt seems to be picking up the most pay, netting $10 million for Jurassic World and $12 million for Passengers.

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Pokemon Sword And Shield – The Isle Of Armor DLC Review

One of the best parts of Pokemon Sword and Shield was exploring the Wild Area, an expanse of rolling hills, sand dunes, and lakes that made collecting the games’ 400 Pokemon especially enticing. The first DLC for the games, The Isle of Armor, improves upon the original Wild Area–in fact, the island is all Wild Area, with far more variety and much more interesting locales to explore. While it doesn’t alter the game much, The Isle of Armor recaptures the joy of exploration and catching new Pokemon, and it makes me especially eager to see where the next DLC takes us.

In my original Pokemon Sword and Shield review, I said that “the Wild Area is the show-stopping feature of this generation. Pokemon roam the fields and lakes, changing with the day’s weather. They pop up as you walk by, and you can even identify Pokemon out of your direct line of vision by their cries. It’s all too easy to set out for one destination only to be distracted by a Pokemon you haven’t caught yet, an item glittering on the ground in the distance, or even an evolved form of a Pokemon that you didn’t realize you could catch in the wild. There’s constantly something new to do or discover, and it’s there to engage you right out of the gate.”

Me and Kubfu enjoying the sights.
Me and Kubfu enjoying the sights.
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The Isle of Armor doubles down on this. The island is bigger and better than the regular Wild Area, and its various biomes all feed into each other more naturally. Open fields transition to wetlands, which border a beach and a forest. Rivers flow out to the ocean, and following a river can sometimes lead you to a cave. Changing weather patterns make more sense than they do in the Galar region’s main Wild Area, too, where weather shifts seemingly at random as you bike through similar-looking fields. Instead, because most areas on the Isle of Armor are separated by rivers or caves, the transition from rain to sunshine to fog isn’t so abrupt. It’s overall an even more satisfying place to explore.

This DLC adds about 100 returning Pokemon not in the original Galar Pokedex, and they, too, make sense within the Isle of Armor’s landscape. Bouffalant and Quagsire roam the wetlands; Amoonguss and Tangela lurk in the forest; and Sharpedo charge at you at high speeds while you ride your Rotom bike across the seas. You can even spot a giant Wailord out on the ocean from the mainland, in a rare example of the Pokemon being represented at its correct size in any of the video games. Encountering and catching the new additions is its own reward, of course, but it’s also just a delight to see them in their “natural” habitats.

An appropriately huge Wailord out at sea.
An appropriately huge Wailord out at sea.

Driving your exploration of the Isle of Armor is a light but cute story about a martial arts dojo and the adorable new Legendary Pokemon Kubfu, who becomes your training partner. The story has a quirky kung fu-movie energy, from the rather mean-spirited rival to the kooky master who teaches you wisdom through seemingly unrelated tasks to Kubfu overcoming his shyness in order to master his martial art. Kubfu is absolutely the star, and I didn’t really want to evolve mine, considering how spirited and teddy bear-like he is.

I also got surprisingly invested in a side activity that has you searching for 151 Alolan Diglett across the island, which had the effect of getting me to scour the entire map for their three little hairs sticking out of the ground. It brought me to the areas that the story didn’t, necessarily, and kept me busy as I searched for Pokemon and items. I was incredibly satisfied with myself when I found the final Diglett, and the rewards are great on top of that.

One of the 151 Diglett to find on the Isle of Armor.

On that note, items are another strong suit of The Isle of Armor. While Sword and Shield made a lot of key quality-of-life changes for the series, most of which take out annoying grinding and make high-level competitive play far more accessible, there were a few gaps–some important items were still ridiculously hard to get. Those items are now more plentiful on the Isle of Armor, including the elusive Flame Orb, which was the bane of my existence for several months. These kinds of tweaks are small, but they do improve the experience overall.

The Isle of Armor is open to you almost from the very beginning of the main game, and while that’s great, it doesn’t add much in the way of endgame content for returning players. There is a battle arena that challenges you to defeat a series of trainers using only one Pokemon that have a particular type, like water or fire–and it’s cool to see a Pokemon game give a platform to a very popular battle format among fan groups (where it’s called “monotype”). I actually already had a fully trained electric team in Shield, and I still found these battles pretty challenging, which was a nice surprise that made me want to try out other monotype teams.

DLC is new to the main-series Pokemon games, and it’s certainly a great alternative to replaying the same game a year or two later when the souped-up rerelease comes out. But like the traditional third or “Ultra” version, The Isle of Armor does refine much of the experience we had in vanilla Sword and Shield, with a more interesting Wild Area to explore and some small quality-of-life tweaks that further the progress Gen 8 has made in that regard. It doesn’t totally change up the game, to be sure, but The Isle of Armor is definitely a delight.

Dying Light: Hellraid DLC, Based On Unreleased Game, Is Out In July

Several years ago, Dead Island and Dying Light developer Techland announced the first-person fantasy combat game Hellraid. It was set to be a violent and brutal action game and even received a puzzle spinoff title for mobile, but it was ultimately shelved as Techland moved forward with Dying Light 2. However, it will live on as DLC for Dying Light, and you’ll be able to play the new content next month.

Out July 23 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, Dying Light: Hellraid is accessed through an eerie arcade machine within the Tower in Dying Light. You’re sent directly to Hell after using the machine and can battle against demons using axes, hammers, and swords. The DLC has its own Hellraid rank as well as bounties that you can complete for additional rewards.

As with the main game, you can play Dying Light: Hellraid either cooperatively or solo. Up to four players can slaughter demons together.

Curiously, Hellraid itself has never been officially canceled. The Steam page for the DLC describes it as “on hold,” suggesting that the project could be revived in the future. Gauging players’ interest via the DLC could help to get the wheels turning on the game, though Techland already had to delay Dying Light 2 in order to give it more development time. Narrative lead Chris Avellone also recently left the project following several sexual misconduct allegations.

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Why Tim Burton Wanted an ‘Average’ Batman: ‘That Was the Point of the Character’

Here at IGN we occasionally like to showcase something from geekdom’s rich history — a pop-culture Time Capsule, if you will, that gives us a peek in to the past, perhaps providing a new appreciation for previous projects.

If you’d like, please check out the past few Time Capsules:

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You either weren’t alive at the time or you weren’t aware of it at the time (because the cute-but-cursed antique doll known as the internet didn’t exist yet) but Bat-fans were pissssed when it was announced Michael Keaton was playing Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 Caped Crusader film. There was a letter-writing campaign, fans (and members of the media) picked on Keaton’s looks (even Bob Kane infamously drew a toupee on a Keaton photo to show how he’d be “70% more handsome” with more hair), and so on.

“The guy from Beetlejuice?” they’d howl. “The dude from Gung Ho?” they’d whine. “The comedian-turned-dramatic actor who gave an acclaimed performance in Clean and Sober?” they’d wail. It was a cyclone. However, they had nowhere to vomit out their pre-judgey bile so the world kept turning and Warner Bros. never had to deal with a #ReleasetheMrMomCut movement.

Nowadays, Michael Keaton and the two Burton Batman movies he starred in are looked back upon with ultimate reverence. And the news that Keaton is now in talks to reprise his role as Batman three decades later in the upcoming Flash movie, appearing alongside Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen, has been met with absolute elation.

With all this in mind, check out this cool old interview from 1989 with Tim Burton where he talks a bit about why he wasn’t afraid of Jack Nicholson’s Joker stealing the movie and why he wanted to get away from the “traditional six-foot-five hulking square-jawed guy” look for Batman and take a big risk with Johnny Dangerously over here…

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Burton reasons, “If a guy looks like that, why does he need to put on a Batsuit?” The idea of transforming an average-looking guy into a shadowy vigilante was much more appealing to him. (His casting goals would become a bit more literal in Batman Returns though when he was like, “What if a guy shaped like a penguin played The Penguin?”)

“He’s a very modern superhero character,” the director adds of Batman. “It’s a guy with problems. I mean the guy has problems. He’s a bit of a split personality, and that’s the whole point of him.”

We’re all still waiting on a video where Burton goes into depth about Bob the Goon and how important he was to Joker’s operation and how everything went downhill for the Clown Prince after he callously gunned down Bob. Man, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone and you’re never aware of how much background programming your partner provides for you in your life until after you flippantly murder them because Batman stole your balloons.

So with the news of Keaton possibly returning as Batman in The Flash, and the rumor that the role might also be that of a Nick Fury-style mentor and recruiter to other superheroes in other DC movies, here’s a look at some other possible DCEU character cameos in The Flash.

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

The Final Season of Netflix’s Dark Delivers a Satisfying End

This is a mostly spoiler-free review for Dark Season 3. All 8 episodes are now available to binge on Netflix worldwide. For more, check out what’s new on Netflix in July.

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Knowing when to call it quits on one’s own terms is a rare event for most TV shows, which are either canceled before their time or end up outstaying their welcome by running for far too many seasons. Dark, now in its third and final season on Netflix, joins the likes of AMC’s Breaking Bad and HBO’s The Leftovers, which were able to deliver a satisfying conclusion to their respective stories in five seasons or less. While not quite on par with the “Masterpiece” rating those aforementioned series received from IGN, Dark’s final outing continues the series’ legacy of delivering excellent world-building, complex characters, and fascinating apocalyptic paradoxes.

Before we briefly touch on that satisfying ending (don’t worry, no spoilers here), creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese throw another paradoxical wrench in their already intricate narrative by introducing the concept of alternate worlds. We were given this surprising revelation at the end of Season 2 when another version of Martha (Lisa Vicari) appears just after Jonas’ (Louis Hofmann) Martha is killed. This new multiple-earths storyline provides Dark with a fresh coat of paint, as we get to see Magnus, Martha, Franziska, and Bartosz with new haircuts and different personalities.

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But even more fascinating than the town of Winden’s new appearance, is that we get to know more about this particular version of Martha, who Vicari effectively portrays as a bit more rugged and downtrodden due to the fact that she’s traveled between worlds. (Basically, she’s seen some s**t.) The story also continues to skip from 2020 to 2053 to 1954 to 1888, so not only is there a different version of Winden to explore on a different earth, but there’s also all of the time-traveling conundrums from the first two seasons to account for.

Miraculously, it all makes sense somehow. The creators don’t hold up a sign that reads, “Hey, this is Earth-2,” or anything so obvious. But the purposeful way scenes transition from character to character, from year to year, from earth to earth, all track in a way that’s easy to follow. Well, not easy per se, but at least doable for us mere mortals that don’t possess Odar and Friese’s brain capacity.

While the number of point-of-view characters continues to grow in Season 3, Hofmann’s Jonas is still at the center of it all. Continuing in the same vein as Season 2, Jonas is a more proactive character who’s not afraid to show his rage and frustration with all of the unending talk of the apocalypse and time loops. In one exhilarating scene, Jonas bares his teeth when he says, “I’m tired of having all these obligations.” It’s a simple phrase, but as a viewer, watching Jonas’ vulnerability here makes it easier to empathize with him. How much does one guy have to go through to save the world(s)?

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And speaking of saving, Jonas and Martha’s struggle to find a solution to preserve both of their worlds has less to do with confronting an actual villain in Season 3, and more about battling ideologies between Adam’s (Dietrich Hollinderbäumer) Sic Mundus organization and some new players that you’ll discover throughout your binge. These philosophical debates do get a bit tiresome after the third or fourth time you hear about “ends” and “beginnings” and “free will,” but it all culminates in a satisfying hour and thirteen-minute finale that doesn’t disappoint.

Without getting into specifics, the finale is able to explain (in great detail) what in the hell has actually been going on these past three seasons. And what’s even more admirable is that Odar and Friese leave enough ambiguity that there’s room for the viewer to use their own imagination for certain unexplained parts of the story. It’s a delicate balance that is handled expertly. In fact, the finale does such a thorough job of explaining itself, that you could just skip to the end. Of course, we don’t recommend that since you would miss out on all of the other mind-bending events in Season 3.

New Metal Slug Game Coming From Pokemon Unite Studio

The Metal Slug series has been missing in action for more than a decade, with ports and re-releases the only mainline games fans of SNK’s run-and-gun franchise have had to get excited about. That’s changing soon, however, as SNK and developer Timi Studios are currently working on a new entry for mobile devices.

Metal Slug Code: J, which is only a working title for the game, is a sidescrolling shooter like the rest of the series, and it has virtual buttons on the screen as well as an analog stick to handle shooting, aiming, and movement, along with other actions. In a game as frantic as Metal Slug, it remains to be seen if this will be effective, but the art style and music both appear to be spot-on for the series.

Vehicles are also available, giving extra firepower and armor when you come across one in a level, and this will be necessary for dealing with some of the game’s more powerful bosses.

While a mobile game might not be exactly what Metal Slug fans were hoping for, developer Timi Studios does have a good track record. It previously co-developed Call of Duty: Mobile and is currently working on Pokemon Unite, the recently-announced MOBA for Nintendo Switch and mobile.

Metal Slug Code: J doesn’t have a release date yet, but you can check out the announcement trailer above. Several of the original games are available on Nintendo Switch.

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