Adult Swim Con’s Rick and Morty panel (titled “How Do They Do It: Rick and Morty”) — featuring co-creator Dan Harmon and cast members Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell, and Spencer Grammer, and moderated by IGN’s own Terri Schwartz — gave fans a cool sneak peek from Season 5 in the form of an awesome animatic.
The few minutes of footage shown hit the floor running, dropping us into a storm of interdimensional chaos and calamity as Morty carries a mortally injured Rick in an attempt to reach their ship and escape back to Earth. Along the way, they see a reality where they’re both “Blade” versions of themselves. “That f***in’ tight,” Rick remarks.
The footage ends with Rick and Morty inadvertently angering Rick’s pretentious seafaring nemesis, Mr. Nimbus: an arch-enemy Rick apparently never told Morty about because – well – he’s kind of embarrassed by him. Check it out!
“f**k death, I wanna live!”
Morty decides he has something to live for in this animatic sneak peek at Rick and Morty Season 5, straight out of Comic-Con@home. #IGNComicConpic.twitter.com/WsgYWlcsYR
As for series updates, Harmon remarked that, despite the pandemic, they were in the midst of both “finalizing the [Season 5] finale” and “almost done writing” Season 6. Even though quarantine Zoom meetings have meant the writers have had to curb their looser, improvisational spitballing methods of story development, Harmon said the “material coming out of it is just as good if not better” than previous seasons.
A Season 5 premiere date wasn’t revealed, though Harmon did mention Season 5 would not feature the unnamed cat voiced by Matthew Broderick, The Vindicators, the Cronenbergs, or Morty’s Mind Blowers.
Harmon also mentioned that “there are some Clone Beth fireworks” coming, but not until Season 6.
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.
As if Batman doesn’t have enough to deal with in 2020, DC is about to introduce a new villain to his iconic rogues gallery, and he may just be the most twisted member yet.
The DC Comics panel on IGN’s Comic-Con@Home livestream offered fans a closer look at Dark Nights: Death Metal, with writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo appearing to tease what’s still to come in the remaining five issues of the series. Death Metal #3 will shine a spotlight on Batman’s newest nemesis, a villain known as The Robin King.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Death Metal #1 and 2!
As the first two chapters of Death Metal have shown, The Batman Who Laughs has only grown more powerful and dangerous in the Death Metal era. Though this twisted, Joker-ized version of Batman was killed by Wonder Woman in issue #1, his brain was transplanted into the body of another evil Batman in issue #2. In his new body, the Batman Who Laughs has the reality-altering powers of Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan. He even has a new name to befit his boosted power level – The Darkest Knight.
Issue #3 will introduce The Darkest Knight’s new sidekick, The Robin King. Formerly one of the demonic Robins The Batman Who Laughs keeps chained by his side, this ex-Boy Wonder may just be the most demented and terrifying foe Batman has ever grappled with.
“I’m just writing his dialogue now,” said Snyder. “His whole history you’ll learn – what his secret is, who he is, all of that stuff. Because I’ve seen a lot of speculation about who he is.”
Dark Nights: Death Metal – Legends of the Dark Knights #1 cover by Kaare Andrews. (Image Credit: DC)
Snyder then teased a majorly disturbing encounter between The Robin King and the JSA, As Snyder describes the character, The Robin King seems to have the personality of Burt Ward’s Robin mixed with a love of violence and sadism to rival his master’s. As he encounters these stately older heroes, The Robin King reveals he dug up the corpse of Barry Allen’s mother and stuffed her into a Flash ring, and then murdered Alan Scott’s children, mixed their ashes and created a ring capable of canceling out the Green Lantern.
“He’s this ten-year-old kid, but he’s definitely one of our darkest creations,” said Snyder. “But I love him, because… what I want the heroes to go up against here is something that says ‘Everything you believe people to be, everything you hope we are, we aren’t.’ And you want representations of that. With The Batman Who Laughs and with The Robin King, the eviler and darker the villain, the more the heroes are challenged by what they see in human nature. It becomes harder and harder to be hopeful.”
Snyder continued, “He’s not evil just to make something incredibly fun and dark. He is those things, but it’s also meant to be something you read and hits you in a way that’s poignant. Because he says, ‘All these different hopes and aspirations for us are nothing, and I’ll show you why.’ So he’s a very spooky kid.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Warzone both still have a problem with cheaters, and developer Infinity Ward isn’t tolerating it. In a new statement posted on its Twitter, the studio explained the steps it is taking to eliminate unfair play for the games, as well as what you need to avoid doing if you don’t want to get banned.
The full statement, which you can see above, explains that any bans are related to “unauthorized manipulation of game data” and any third-party software being used to mod or hack can result in a ban. Aimbots, texture hacks, and trainers are all banned, and you should not attempt to modify any of the camouflage patterns you’ve obtained, nor should you try to alter the memory on your system to get new gear.
Because it has to maintain two games now instead of its usual one, Infinity Ward certainly has its work cut out for it. The standard Modern Warfare multiplayer matches are nothing like Warzone’s enormous battle royale fights, but your actions are probably going to catch up to you if you attempt to cheat in either of them.
It’s already July, and Activision has yet to detail what its Call of Duty 2020 game will be. It has been heavily rumored that it will be a Black Ops game set during the Cold War, and a Red Door listing appeared to confirm this. However, nothing official has been announced yet and we could be left waiting until closer to launch to learn more.
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SYFY’s newest profile documentary, Todd McFarlane: Like Hell I Won’t, centers on the iconic comic book creator, who co-founded Image Comics and is the mastermind behind the Spawn character and McFarlane Toys.
The documentary, which premieres on SYFY on Saturday, July 25, “gives viewers a peek behind the curtain into Todd’s creative process of bringing Spider-Man & Spawn to life. Revealing his motivations & inspirations, it illustrates his struggle to navigate and upend the status quo in the comics & toy industries,” according to SYFY. IGN can officially reveal a clip where McFarlane shares a personal story about how Spawn’s origin story is influenced by his own life experiences.
Watch the revealing clip in the video below or at the top of the page:
Halo Infinite is being marketed as a “spiritual reboot” for the series, continuing the story from Halo 5 but centering the action on a mysterious ring world like in the original game. Such a big change could have resulted in other major departures, such as recasting voice roles, but that won’t be the case for the series’ two biggest characters.
The Master Chief will once again be played by Steve Downes, an actor whose low, measured tone has defined the hero since his first appearance nearly 20 years ago. He’s joined by Jen Taylor, who voices both Cortana and Dr. Catherine Halsey, the researcher who lent her voice to Cortana when she was “born.” Given the dark path Cortana traveled down in Halo 5, we expect to hear a lot of Taylor in Halo Infinite.
There are a few newcomers that 343 Industries has revealed thus far, as well. “The Pilot,” who does have a name that has not been officially revealed yet, will be played by Nicolas Roye. He has appeared in several other video games such as Resident Evil: Resistance earlier this year and Apex Legends. War Chief Escahrum, who is the Brute featured at the end of the campaign teaser, is played by Darin de Paul. He plays Reinhardt in Overwatch and also voiced the legendary J. Jonah Jameson in Marvel’s Spider-Man.
We’ll see how the new characters pan out when Halo Infinite launches this holiday season. The game will be a launch title for Xbox Series X and will also come to Xbox One and PC.
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Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ motion capture actor has shared a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse at the motion capture process for the upcoming PlayStation 5 game, which will feature the young hero following in the footsteps of 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. “To become a character so impactful means the world to me,” tweeted Nadji Jeter.
“The story of Miles is what this generation & the next need! I just thank the heavens above for blessing me with the opportunity & responsibility to bring him to Life!! “
To become a character so impactful Means the World to me. The story of Miles is what this generation & the next need! I just thank the heavens above for blessing me with the opportunity & responsibility to bring him to Life!! #MilesMoralesps5pic.twitter.com/iz2vLZrHgD
In the images, Jeter can be seen donning a motion capture suit, with dozens of extra markers applied to his face so that every nuance of his acting can be captured by developer Insomniac Games. Due for release at the end of the year, Spider-Man: Miles Morales will feature both a quality and a performance mode, with the latter allowing players to web-sling across New York City at a a stable 60 fps at 4K resolution.
Star Wars is expanding once again, but this time into an age where the Jedi are at the peak of their power and influence within the galaxy. Announced back in February, Star Wars: The High Republic is set 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace but will also feature a familial connection to the original Star Wars film trilogy era that novelist Justina Ireland discussed in an hour-long panel at Disney-Lucasfilm Publishing’s Comic-Con at Home panel via THR.
According to Ireland, that link to the future will be seen in Avon Starros, an ancestor of Sana Starros whose first appearance came in Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars comic book series.
“If fans are familiar with Sana Starros,” Ireland said, “we know she’s the best scoundrel to ever have scoundreled, she has no shame, she’s out there to get what she needs to get, and she’s kinda ruthless. “She’s literally my favorite.” “But The High Republic takes place many hundreds of years earlier before she exists, and so who we’re going to meet instead of Sina is her great, great, many-times-great ancestor — there won’t be a direct relation there because genetics are murky in the Star Wars galaxy.”
Avon Starros will be one of the co-leads of Ireland’s Young Adult novel The High Republic: A Test of Courage, who Ireland described as a scientist who is fascinated with uncovering a more logical explanation for how The Force functions.
“Avon is a 12-year-old girl, she has been sent to the edge of the galaxy by her mother who’s a republic senator because she’s just trouble,” Ireland explained. “She is a scientist and the only things she wants to know are the answers to the questions that drive her. So, ‘How does the Force work, from a scientific perspective?’ That might be something a scientist would want to know. ‘What happens if you take a khyber crystal out of a lightsaber, what does that look like?’”
Ireland’s YA novel will be but the first of many new books and comics when it arrives in January 2021, with writers such as Charles Soule, Claudia Gray and Daniel José Older all contributing to a new storytelling initiative that will cover “a more hopeful, optimistic time,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said during the debut announcement for The High Republic.
While The Walking Dead TV series has become its own universe, with three different shows, it’s all based on the amazing comic book series written by Robert Kirkman with art by Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. However, there is another adaptation of Kirkman’s comic books coming to the small screen, and that’s Invincible. During the Robert Kirkman at Home panel for Comic-Con@Home, the creator revealed a slew of people who have been cast on the show.
The upcoming Amazon Prime animated series will obviously feature the Guardians of the Globe, the superhero team. And there are some Walking Dead actors who will make the jump to this new series that were announced during the Kirkman panel. This includes Khary Payton (Ezekiel) as Black Samson, Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha) as Green Ghost, Lauren Cohan (Maggie) as War Woman, Chad Coleman (Tyreese) as Martian Man, Michael Cudlitz (Abraham) as Red Rush, Lennie James (Morgan) as Darkwing, and Ross Marquand (Aaron) as The Immortal & Aquarius.
They’ll join the central cast of the Grayson family, which you can see below.
Current Invincible cast:
Steven Yeun – Mark Grayson
J.K. Simmons – Nolan Grayson
Sandra Oh – Debbie Grayson
Khary Payton – Black Samson
Zachary Quinto – Robot
Lauren Cohan – War Woman
Chad Coleman – Martian Man
Michael Cudlitz – Red Rush
Lennie James – Darkwing
Ross Marquand – The Immortal & Aquarius
Sonequa Martin-Green – Green Ghost
Additionally, Kirkman said that the TV series will move faster than the comic book, but he won’t say specifically what the first season will cover. “I will say we will be starting at the beginning,” Kirkman explained. “So there’s not any kind of time jumps. We’re not gonna start in the middle of the series or anything like that. But we’ll be going from there. We will be moving at a faster clip than the comic book did. So at the end of the eight episode, we will be–I would say–long past the eighth comic book issue.
The Invincible comic ran for 144 issues kicking off in 2003 and running to 2018. The series followed a teenager named Mark Grayson who is the son of Omni-Man–the world’s greatest superhero. Mark quickly learns he has superpowers of his own and takes on the moniker of Invincible. From there, the story goes to incredible places with lots of twists and turns, which we will not spoil here–because you should read it.
While the book was known as a breath of fresh air to the superhero genre–as it’s a mature series and doesn’t pull its punches–one of the things it’s best known for is the art, from Cory Walker for one arc and Ryan Ottley for the rest of the series. The art is violent, bloody, and one of the few superhero comics around that isn’t afraid to get into the brutality of battle, as you won’t see someone’s intestines getting pulled from their body in a Marvel or DC comic book.
At this time, Amazon Prime’s Invincible animated series does not have a release date.
As you’re slinking around air ducts and planning a surprise attack on a helpless scientist, it’s difficult not to feel empowered by Carrion‘s approach to horror. Here you aren’t the one slowly peeking around each corner to make sure you’re safe–you’re the one doing the hunting, leaving a gory trail of devastation as you pick apart an underground laboratory one department at a time. When Carrion gives you the tools to be the best betentacled killing machine you can be, it’s a satisfying monster simulator with engaging puzzles and clever combat, but it falters in moments where you don’t feel as in control as you should be.
Carrion’s star is undoubtedly the gooey red monster you play as. Simply moving around is immensely satisfying. It feels as though you’re constantly floating, with extending appendages latching onto surfaces around you to feed into the illusion of chaotic but calculated traversal. By making movement effortless, Carrion lets you appreciate how good it looks in motion, from squeezing your red mass into a narrow air duct to transforming into a school of parasitic worms to swim through grates. There are a handful of instances where your size makes orienting yourself slightly challenging, but they’re small teething issues as you learn to navigate around.
When you consume humans, you gain life and grow, while the reverse happens when you take damage. As you progress through each level, you unlock new abilities which are directly tied to your current size. When you’re at your largest, you can cause devastating damage by sending a flurry of tentacles forward and viciously pulling anything in their way towards you. At a medium size, you can encase yourself in spikes and roll around a room dealing damage in all directions, while your smallest sizes offer more utility-style abilities like stealth and a handy stun attack. Tying abilities to your size makes combat dynamic, where you’re constantly watching the damage you take and adjusting your strategy as you go. It takes a bit to get comfortable with the sudden ability shifts in the heat of the moment, but getting access to movesets that let you dominate or flee a fight when you need them feels great.
These skills aren’t just integral to combat, but also to Carrion’s puzzle-filled stages. They make full use of your abilities in varied ways: to flip out-of-reach door switches or find and control the mind of a nearby enemy, for example; in another instance, an otherwise lethal bomb can be used to clear debris blocking a path if you can withstand its blast. These puzzles require specific abilities to solve rather than quick reflexes or intricate movements, which means you’ll sometimes be backtracking through a level to find a spot where you can deposit some of your biomass and shrink accordingly to access the abilities you require. The other side of the coin is more punishing, and I was forced to exit a level entirely on a few occasions to hunt down humans so that I could grow to the size a puzzle required.
The entrance to each level is contained within an overarching hub world, which contains its own puzzles to solve. Navigating the hub world is an annoying chore. You have no map to guide you, and thanks to many routes that involve one-way paths, backtracking to a previous stage is a frustrating endeavor. And if you happen to forget where a previously locked route was after obtaining the right skill to bypass it, you can find yourself doing circles around this area just looking for a way to continue.
While levels are filled with hapless humans to feast on, Carrion features a varied roster of enemies that provide an ample threat to your progress. As powerful as you are, enemies can quickly tear you to shreds with handguns, flamethrowers, and massive mechs with gatling guns. Flamethrowers will damage you over time and force you to find a pool of water to extinguish yourself, while the high rate of fire from a gatling gun will take you from your most powerful to dead in a handful of seconds. Enemies will also defend themselves convincingly from your attacks, turning to face you and using energy shields to repel attacks from head on. It’s difficult to use your size to simply overwhelm a room full of armed soldiers, encouraging you to tackle each one with a formulated strategy.
Most combat encounters force you to think carefully about picking off enemies individually, using parts of the level that let you flank them from all directions. Levels give you the freedom to choose multiple ways to achieve this; pipe systems let you quickly move from beneath enemies to directly above them, for example, letting you break through glass skylights and yank them inside the vents you’re hiding in. If you get exposed in the open, you also have numerous ways to flee, like by forcibly squeezing yourself into small gaps in the walls or breaking open grates on the floor to make a hurried getaway. It feels empowering to scurry around the edges of a room and pick apart a platoon of soldiers with calculated efficiency, but also comforting to know that when you overcommit you have options to correct your misjudgment. Finding creative solutions isn’t only encouraged, but it works well towards the horror fantasy Carrion strives for.
Executing your coldly calculated plans sometimes requires an exactness that is frustratingly not afforded by Carrion’s control scheme, however. Moving a single tentacle using a thumbstick is simple enough, as is pressing the trigger to grab and let go of switches, doors, and enemies. But when combined with movement, it’s difficult to parse which of your tentacles are part of your movement and which single one is under your control for actions. This isn’t an issue when you’re given the time to solve puzzles or dispatch enemies one at a time, but in the many instances where you’re thrust into bursting combat arenas with danger coming from all angles, it’s often easier to flail around while grabbing things indiscriminately rather than trying to direct attacks accurately. Wiping out a room isn’t as satisfying when you don’t feel wholly responsible for its execution.
Some infrequent flashback sequences where you play as a human scientist instead of the far more interesting monster also hamper some of Carrion’s pacing, while not adding much to its sparse story in the moment. These sections don’t feature interesting puzzles, and sport slower and slightly unresponsive platforming and odd issues with ladders, resulting in far less satisfying movement when compared to that of the monster. The way these moments eventually tie into the surprising ending that comes full circle with the game’s opening almost makes them worth it, but it’s only once the credits are rolling that you’ll likely find a reason to forgive their inclusion at all.
When it’s letting you live out its proposed reverse-horror fantasy, Carrion is at its best. It excels at making you feel empowered as an evolving lab experiment gone wrong, giving you ample opportunities to flex your death-dealing tentacles and tear enemies limb from limb. While giving you numerous tools to wreak havoc, it also uses them in smart ways to find a good balance between its gory combat and problem-solving. Carrion falters when it requires too much fine precision from you with a control scheme that doesn’t allow for it, and is at its lowest when you’re not playing as its headlining monster at all. These are disappointing distractions, but Carrion’s main event is still a bloody great time.
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We still have a bit of a wait for the Comic-Con@Home panel for HBO’s new show, Lovecraft Country, which is scheduled for July 25 at 4PM PT / 7PM ET, but a new trailer has been released to make time pass just a little bit faster.
The show, which has been developed for TV by Misha Green (Underground) and will be produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Matt Ruff. It focuses on Atticus (Jonathan Majors), a Korean war veteran trying to navigate segregated 1950s America in search of a family legacy and his missing father, Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams). Check out the trailer now.
Joining Atticus is Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), who follow him through an escalating horrific road trip to the heart of “Lovecraft country,” the real life area in New England that was fictionalized and used by H.P. Lovecraft as the setting of many of his novels. It’s roughly around Essex County Massachusetts on an actual map, but in Lovecraft stories, you’ll recognize it from names and locations like Arkham and Miskatonic University.
The trailer takes an extended look at some of the nightmares Atticus and his companions face, from racist police and white supremacist secret societies to genuine eldrich monstrosities that chase them through the woods. Suffice it to say, it’s actually difficult to tell which is more of a threat as the trailer escalates–the shotgun toasting sheriff, or the Cthulhu-like creature trying to flip their car.
