In a series of tweets, Leto has revealed that he has in fact been on an isolated 12-day desert meditation retreat, and has only just emerged to discover what is happening. “Wow. 12 days ago I began a silent meditation in the desert,” he wrote. “We were totally isolated. No phone, no communication etc. We had no idea what was happening outside the facility.”
“Walked out yesterday into a very different world,” Leto continued. “One that’s been changed forever. Mind blowing–to say the least. I’m getting messages from friends and family all around the globe and catching up on what’s going on.”
Wow. 12 days ago I began a silent meditation in the desert. We were totally isolated. No phone, no communication etc. We had no idea what was happening outside the facility.
Walked out yesterday into a very different world. One that’s been changed forever. Mind blowing – to say the least. I’m getting messages from friends and family all around the globe and catching up on what’s going on.
Leto’s next movie is the Spider-Man spin-off Morbius, which is currently set to arrive on July 30. Unlike many of the summer’s other big movies, the release of Morbius hasn’t been delayed yet. Or perhaps the movie’s producers were waiting for Leto to emerge from the desert to talk to him about it.
Leto isn’t the only person currently in the news for not knowing about the pandemic. As reported by the BBC, contestants on the German edition of Big Brother have been isolated in the house in which the reality show is filmed for more than a month. Following criticism that broadcaster SAT.1 had not told the 14 men and women in the house about the coronavirus, they will now be informed today, March 17, in a live TV special. They will also be allowed to ask questions about the pandemic and speak to relatives.
The need to socialize is a primal part of human nature, so while the world practices social distancing, it is important to fill that void. Luckily, there is a Google Chrome extension that allows you and your friends to watch Netflix together without having to be in the same room.
Netflix Party is a simple-to-use extension that allows people to watch something together. You can catch up on what’s happening in your lives in the chat or MST3K/Rifftrax a movie together. So in order to test out Netflix Party, we needed to pick out a movie to watch, and what better movie than Horse Girl, which has a very bizarre trailer. Considering “horsie movies” is already a weird inside joke with the entertainment team, why not watch this movie together?
GameSpot’s Mat Elfring, Chris Hayner, Dan Auty, and Will Potter “partying”
After Netflix Party is installed, the person running the party selects a movie on Netflix, then clicks on the “NP” button in your browser, to the right of the address bar. From there, you start the party and get a specific URL to copy and send to your friends. You can also select whether you have control over the movie or if everyone else can. But how does it work?
As you can see, the chat box pops up on the right side. You can customize your chatroom name and pick from a few avatars. It is very basic, but it brings back a very nostalgic feeling of hanging out in an AOL chatroom–why didn’t any of us write “A/S/L?” The person controlling the party is streaming their Netflix account to the others in the group, so there is a tiny bit of a delay, but that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things since it’s a chatroom.
The only issue with Netflix Party was finding out how to exit. There’s not button in the chat section to do this. Very quickly, we learned you just exit the movie, and that’s all you need to do. The most obvious answer is the correct one.
Netflix Party is available now, so you can add it to Chrome and all watch horsie movies together.
Id Software’s Doom Eternal launches this Friday, March 20 on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch port coming sometime down the road. You can check out our Doom Eternal review-in-progress for thoughts on what to expect, but how long does it take to beat? With it being a sequel to 2016’s excellent Doom, it’s worth looking at how Doom Eternal compares in length to its predecessor.
For those who haven’t played it or don’t remember, Doom clocks in at about 11 hours long, according to game length tracker How Long To Beat. Those 11 hours only included the main story, though; you’re looking at closer to 16 hours if you do some side content and a little over 25 hours if you’re a completionist. While Doom Eternal isn’t available just yet, the sequel took our reviewer about 16 hours to complete, after gathering most collectibles and skipping some optional in-game encounters.
In total, Doom Eternal has 13 chapters that will take you anywhere from about 14-20 hours to finish, depending on how you comb through the game. Earlier this year, director Hugo Martin said Doom Eternal’s main campaign is supposed to be well over 20 hours long, which does seem to be the case if you’re being thorough–you can spend a fair amount of time investigating every last corner to find all of the available collectibles, which include various in-game upgrades, classic Id game soundtracks, and more.
Epic Games has rolled out a new update for Fortnite. The game’s 12.20 patch is now live on all platforms, and while the developer is continuing its streak of not sharing patch notes, there’s one obvious new addition to the battle royale shooter this week: helicopters.
The choppa is a brand-new aerial vehicle that can be found at helipads across the island. While it isn’t outfitted with any weapons itself, it seats up to five players–one pilot and four passengers–and lets you fly around the map. You can take a look at the new vehicle in the trailer below.
Beyond that, some areas of the map have been update. As Fortnite News points out below, the oil rig has been destroyed, while the soccer pitch at Pleasant Park has been turned into a helipad.
The update has also kicked off a new Spy Games limited-time event, which includes a corresponding set of challenges and a new mode called Operation: Dropzone. Unique to this mode is a Tech system that allows you to unlock weapons, items, and special abilities as you play matches.
Season 2 of Fortnite Chapter 2 is currently slated to end in April, so there are still a lot more challenges on the way over the next few weeks. If you need help completing any earlier missions from this season, we’ve rounded up all of our maps and guides in our Fortnite Season 2 challenges hub. Be sure to also check out our Fortnite Season 2 roundup to catch up on everything that’s new in Epic’s popular battle royale game this season.
Amazon tends to be generous with deals on its own hardware during blowout sales like Prime Day and Black Friday, so if you’re interested in any of Amazon’s tablet or smart devices, that’s usually the best time of year to shop. However, you can get one of Black Friday’s best tablet deals in today’s Deal of the Day at Amazon, where the Fire HD 8 tablet (16GB) is down to $50. That’s $30 off its usual price of $80, but you’ve got less than 24 hours to claim it (and it may sell out before the day is over).
The Fire HD 8 tablet comes with an 8-inch HD display and is available with 16GB or 32GB of storage. The 32GB option is on sale as well, selling for $70 instead of its usual $110, but you can add up to 400GB with a microSD card. The Fire HD 8 tablet holds up to 10 hours of battery life, features a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, and, of course, comes with Amazon’s friendly AI, Alexa. The Alexa integration allows you to use the tablet hands-free and can play media, answer questions, and much more.
Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet – $50 (was $80)
This tablet was designed for entertainment, so it’s great for watching shows and movies, reading ebooks, listening to music, and playing games. If you’re already an Amazon Prime member, you’ll get unlimited streaming of movies and TV on Prime Video, many of which can also be downloaded for offline viewing, as well as ad-free access to over two million songs on Prime Music.
The tablet earned a solid 8.1/10 in our sister site CNET’s Fire HD 8 review. Critic David Carnoy appreciated the multiple small upgrades to the 2018 version of the Fire HD 8, including the better front-facing camera, expandable microSD storage, bright screen, and loud speakers, but noted its display isn’t as sharp as the iPad’s and the need for a Prime membership to really reap its benefits. “The latest HD 8 isn’t much of an upgrade over last year’s model, but the ‘always-ready’ hands-free Alexa feature is a nice addition to what remains the best tablet value,” he wrote.
When I went to last month’s preview event for Persona 5 Royal, I spoke with senior localization manager Yu Namba about some of the changes Atlus West made to the new version of the game. In our conversation, he mentioned that two gay characters, who were portrayed as predatory in the original version, had their lines of dialogue tweaked. Namba and company recognized the issue, saying, “the community had a very strong response,” and mentioned the process the team went through to change these scenes.
Well, now that we have the localized version of P5R, I’ve been playing it and have about 60 hours clocked in at this point (you can get my thoughts so far in the video below). This also means we can see how these scenes have actually changed in the localization process.
The following is one of those scenes from the original version of Persona 5. It’s the first time you encounter the two gay characters that approach Ryuji in Shinjuku:
Uncanny Voice: Oooh, a real huuuge catch, you say? I’m getting pumped too!
Scruffy Romantic: What a cutie! And so muscular too. I give you an 85 out of 100!
Ryuji: Gah! Wh-Who are you!?
Beefy Trendsetter: Gwahahaha! I’m the naughty troll of Shinjuku! I’m gonna eat you up!
Ryuji: H-Hey, wait… Lemme go!
Ryuji: Dude, help! You can hear me, can’t you!?
Ryuji: You just gonna leave me here like this!? C’mon, your best friend’s in trouble here!
Beefy Trendsetter: Hehehe, what an energetic studmuffin, I’ll give you all the freebies you could ever desire!
Scruffy Romantic: The night is young, and so are you! Let’s party it up!
A snippet of the scene in question from the original version of Persona 5.
The following is how that same dialogue sequence plays out in Persona 5 Royal:
Deep Voice: Ooh, you’re right! He really WOULD be a natural! But, a graphic tee with plaid pants? Ugh, kill me now.
Ryuji: Whoa, who the hell are they!?
???: Oh, hell has nothing to do with it, honey. I’m Angel–straight out of heaven!
???: And I’m Julian. Julie, if you’re feeling saucy!
Angel: What a cutie! You’d never guess he was into the drag scene… I say we show him the ropes!
Julian/Julie: You can’t deny it! We saw you peeking into Crossroads! Well, sweetie, if you’re curious, we’ll help you look DIVINE!
Ryuji: Wait, hey, it’s not like that–
Ryuji: Dude, help! Tell them we were just investigatin’, or something!
Ryuji: You just gonna leave me here like this!? C’mon, your best friend’s in trouble here!
Julian: Oh, honey, you’ve got the chutzpah. And those cheekbones–I LOVE it! That’s what it takes to be a star!
Angel: Just follow my lead, stud! We’re gonna put your name in lights! And I know just the dress for you…
That same scene, but from Persona 5 Royal.
One thing to note is that the context behind why the scene takes place is much different, too. In P5R, the two characters here noticed Ryuji peeking into Crossroads, which is a crossdresser bar ran by the character Lala-chan and where you just met with confidant Ichiko Ohya to progress the story. This prompts the couple to approach Ryuji about getting him to do drag. In the original game, they simply approach Ryuji after overhearing his conversation with Joker about their investigation and Ryuji being pumped about it.
Another thing to note is that the two characters now have actual names–Angel and Julian/Julie–instead of odd descriptors for names. And there’s no longer an implication that one of them put their hands on Ryuji as he no longer says, “lemme go!”
As for the dialogue options you have in response to Ryuji’s predicament, the original game lets you say the following lines:
“So this is Shinjuku…”
“You’re so popular.”
“Show them your inner man.”
In P5R, your dialogue choices have changed to the following options:
“Can’t blow our cover.”
“But you’re a natural.”
“Knock ’em dead.”
Is the change in P5R a better portrayal of these characters than what’s in the original? Yes, by miles. Is it a decent portrayal of these characters on its own? I’m not sure. I’ll be updating this article with a look at how the beach scene with the same two characters later in the game was changed as well.
The premiere of Fargo Season 4 has been delayed indefinitely due to COVID-19 (coronavirus). The fourth season of FX’s acclaimed crime drama anthology series was set to start screening on April 19 but will now premiere at a later date.
The postponement comes two days after production on the show was suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak. According to FX, eight of the season’s 10 episodes had been completed so far. A statement from network reads, “Due to the postponement of production related to the coronavirus, the fourth installment of FX’s award-winning limited series Fargo will no longer premiere on Sunday, April 19th. A new premiere date will be determined once production resumes.”
Fargo Season 4 stars Chris Rock as a crime lord in 1950s Kansas, and the cast also includes Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, Jessie Buckley, and musician Andrew Bird. The show will no longer be eligible next year’s Emmy awards either, as the majority of its episodes must have aired by May 31 for it to be nominated.
In addition, a variety of this year’s big upcoming movies have had their releases pushed back or cancelled. The Bond movie No Time To Die and Fast & Furious 9 will now release in November 2020 and April 2021 respectively, while A Quiet Place: Part 2 and Mulan are yet to be given new release dates.
Doom Eternal is an intense game so you can be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed by the demon horde, especially on higher difficulties. Compared to its predecessor, it’s a far more faster-paced experience because of its emphasis on mobility and demand for even twitchier shooting reflexes.
To make sure you’re ripping and tearing in the most efficient way possible, we’ve got a few tips to get your slaying started ahead of the game’s release this coming Friday. Once you get your hands on the game, be sure to leave tips of your own in the comments below and we may do a follow up with even more hints, to keep you all ripping and tearing.
Doom Eternal is out on March 20 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. For more about the game, be sure to read our full review in progress. Otherwise, be on the lookout for more guides from GameSpot in the coming days!
Doom Eternal is an intense game, so you can be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed by the demon horde, especially on higher difficulties. Compared to its predecessor, it’s a far more fast-paced experience because of its emphasis on mobility and demand for even twitchier shooting reflexes.
To make sure you’re ripping and tearing in the most efficient way possible, we’ve got a few tips to get your slaying started ahead of the game’s release on Friday, March 20. Once you get your hands on the game, be sure to leave your own tips in the comments section below, and we’ll update this feature with even more hints to keep you all ripping and tearing.
For more Doom Eternal, be sure to read our review in progress. Otherwise, be on the lookout for more guides in the coming days.
Never Stop Chainsawing
The chainsaw works a little differently in Eternal than it did in DOOM 2016: in fact it’s essential for obtaining the valuable ammunition you need to mulch enemies. You should be revving it more often than in the first game, as it will automatically recharge to one pip pretty quickly, which is all that is needed to shred apart basic imps and soldiers. However, you’ll still need to find fuel out in the world if you want to bisect larger enemies like cacodemons and revenants.
It took me a little while to break the 2016 habit of saving the chainsaw for larger foes, but in Eternal, get yourself in the mentality of cleaving demons every damn opportunity you get. It’s an essential tool for refilling your ammo, as those minor demons you tear asunder should drop plenty of shells and bullets for the rest of your arsenal. **Play Rocking Heavy Metal Guitar Solo**
Be ‘nade Happy
Both your frag and ice grenades exist on their own cooldowns, so you should not be afraid to spam throwing both and detonating carnage and freezing blasts. This can be super useful in moments where you need to freeze a bunch of demons to give you some space, so that you can blow them apart with frags. Though be sure to save some spares so you can deal with those pesky cacodemons: jam a grenade into their mouth and blow them apart with a subsequent shot. After a few upgrades, you’ll also be able to fire grenades out more rapidly, as well as bonuses that allow you to turn Imps into ice cubes or zombies into a thin red paste.
Never Stop Moving
Doom Eternal comes with a whole host of new movement options available to you from the outset, so be sure to utilise them! It’s weird that it feels like you’re barely on the ground while playing this game, but movement is key to staying alive in Eternal. With enemies firing rockets, whipping energy blasts, or mobbing you with their numbers, you can get overwhelmed very easily.
As bad-ass as the Doom Slayer is, he’s far from invincible, so agility is the best defence from fireballs and rocket blasts. Keep an eye out for things like monkey bars, try to keep dashing as soon as you’re able, and don’t be afraid to use the super shotgun’s meathook to drag you out of the fray and towards a lone enemy.
Barrels and Ammo
Another way to get ammo if you’re short between battles and need a few extra shells and rockets is to take advantage of the exploding barrels around you. Not only are they great to help you gib enemies that wander too close to them, but with the right upgrades, they can also be a means to resupply.
If you use a combination of the Thicker Skin, Environment, and Generating Barrels upgrades, not only do the big red barrels drop munitions, but they also respawn. And with immunity to their blasts you can go around shooting and punching them point-blank to your heart’s content until your pockets are brimming with bullets.
Linking Upgrades
As you progress, you’ll start to find Sentinel Crystals that can be used to upgrade basic stats, like your health, armour, and ammunition levels. While you can use the standard tree on the top left corner to get exactly what you want, you can slot them into the special perks below it, which require you to invest into two basic stat upgrades to unlock.
An essential perk to get is Loot Magnet, which brings all those sweet item and weapon drops to you; it also gets you every piece of armour possible, and since you’re battling through a demon infested earth, you’re going to need that constant protection. Quickdraw Belch and Belch Armor Boost are also wonderful, as they make the most of every fiery shot you unleash from the shoulder cannons.
Optimising Your Runes
Runes offer valuable passive upgrades, but which runes you’ll find helpful depends on your playstyle. Based on my experiences, there’s a few stand out ones I can heartily recommend.
Seek And Destroy allows you to launch into a glory kill from further away, which is not only great for regaining health, but also grants some valuable invincibility during the animation to get you out of a sticky spot if you’re cornered. Punch and Reave lets you throw your Blood Punch much more safely, as you’re guaranteed to get a good chunk of health back with each meaty right hook.
On the other hand, Dazed and Confused increases the enemy stagger state, which may not seem that valuable at first, but later on when arenas get really hectic, you’ll be glad that the demons you didn’t get to tear in half are still kindly waiting for you to finish them off.
I’m also a fan of Chrono Strike. With this handy Rune, using your weapon mods mid-air allows you to slow down time, which is great for assessing the situation you’re about to shortly land into, or just for maximum cool points when you land an in-air slow motion headshot on whatever soldier is below you.
Prison Yard Practice
You’ll visit the Doom Fortress Prison once in the story, but remember you can always go back there anytime you want to warm up your shooting skills, try out a new weapon build, or just practice things like movement and weapon switching without consequence. All those imps are locked up down there in the bowels of your fortress, so you may as well use them for something…
Useful Praetor Perks To Get
Not all Praetor Suit perks are created equal,and some will serve you much better in the early game, especially when praetor points are harder to come by. Thicker Skin and Frag Stock Ups will allow you to shrug off barrel explosions and fling your own munitions more frequently. Getting Item Finder as early as possible will make it much easier to find future upgrades and collectables, as long as you keep one eye focused on your map, that is. It’ll help you find more tokens, as well as Sentinel Batteries, which will then allow you to unlock more items and secrets back in your fortress.
Editor’s note: We will be finalizing this review once Doom Eternal has officially released and its multiplayer servers become available. Look out for an update after the game launches on March 20; for now, read on for our full thoughts on the single-player portion.
Id Software’s return to Doom in 2016 was a phenomenal update of the franchise’s classic shooter formula. It was fast and intense, full of huge monsters and scorching metal tracks, modernizing the feel of the 1990s original while adding some new-school flourishes. Where Doom 2016 brought the original Doom into the present, Doom Eternal feels like a big step forward in making the franchise something new: It’s a master class in demon dismemberment after the introductory course to ripping and tearing of four years ago. Like its predecessor, Doom Eternal makes you feel like a monster-shredding badass–not just because you’re the strongest Doom Slayer, but because you’re also the smartest.
Doom Eternal is all about effectively using the huge amount of murder tools at your disposal. Health, armor, and ammo pickups are at a minimum in Eternal’s many combat arenas, and the game instead requires you to earn these by massacring monsters in a variety of different ways. Stagger an enemy and you can tear them apart with a brutal glory kill, which refills your health; douse a demon with the new flamethrower and they’ll start to spout armor pickups; or cut them in half with the chainsaw to grab some much-needed ammo.
In order to stay alive, you can’t just run around blasting madly, expecting to tear through everything in your path; you have to run around blasting rationally to keep yourself at fighting strength. Keeping all your numbers up means continually rotating through your glory, chainsaw, and flamethrower kills while also making sure you’re using the right gun for a particular job. Many of the toughest enemies now have weak points that allow you to snipe off their most lethal weapons, and you’ll need to assess threats and knock them out quickly.
At first, it seems like Doom Eternal provides an altogether unwieldy list of things to manage. Between all its weapons and tools, their various ammo counters, and your health, it can all become overwhelming. With so much to keep in mind at all times, it takes a bit to get accustomed to Doom Eternal. And constantly pausing the action to pull up your weapon wheel to check ammo counters and decide which weapon to use on the monster about to tear your face off can feel antithetical to Doom’s run-and-gun, rip-apart-everything approach.
Once you get the hang of it, though, all of Doom Eternal’s many elements come together in a cascade of mayhem that makes you into the brainiest killing machine around. This isn’t the kind of shooter in which your twitch reactions and aiming skills will carry you through; Eternal is a game in which you have to be constantly plotting your next move, executing a calculus of carnage to keep yourself alive and make everything else dead. Every moment is about analyzing the battlefield to find the next enemy you can stagger and slice apart for health or ammo, figuring out which enemy is your top priority and what guns you’ll need to take it out safely, and where you need to head next in order to take the shots you need or keep the creatures chasing you from getting their own chance to rip and tear.
The mental math of figuring out how to keep yourself alive is a big part of what makes the game fun, but it’s the improved mobility that really lets Doom Eternal kick off a metal guitar solo and start shredding. Every big battle takes place in a multi-level arena adorned with jump pads and monkey bars that let you get around quickly, and you also have a double-jump and horizontal dash move for avoiding attacks and crossing distances. A few arenas have their irritations, especially those where it’s easy to trap yourself in a tight corner or back over a cliff, but mostly, Eternal’s level design provides plenty of opportunities to zip around like a bat out of hell, constantly finding your next target and assessing if you need to set it on fire, freeze it, cut it in half, tear it apart, or some combination of all of them. It all makes just about every fight feel like a speeding train seconds from going off the rails, with disaster only averted because you’re so damn good at killing stuff. Once you get the rhythm of Doom Eternal, it becomes a brilliant extension of what made Doom 2016 so cool.
Between battles, you spend your time using Eternal’s mobility to navigate its sprawling, twisting levels, and to uncover myriad secret locations that hide upgrades and weapon mods. There’s an even bigger emphasis on platforming than in Doom 2016, and puzzling through the environments to get around provides a welcome breather between fights. Some of the platforming can be a bit trying at times, especially when you need to clear big gaps to grab distant monkey bars or hit sticky walls you can climb. For the most part, though, navigating the environment is almost as much fun as smashing through Hell’s armies. These portions are also pretty forgiving, thanks to the fact that falling into the abyss now only penalizes you with a small loss of health instead of instant death.
The campaign took me around 16 hours to complete, and that included tracking down the vast majority of secrets and completing a lot of the optional fights that earn you additional upgrade points. Running throughout is a pretty involved story, which feels like a fundamental shift from the satirical, jokey tale of Doom 2016. Where that game put you in the Praetor suit of a Doomslayer who literally destroyed the radios trying to provide context for his endless massacres, Doom Eternal is much more self-serious, constantly spewing proper nouns and character names as if you’re intimately familiar with all the actors leading Hell’s invasion of Earth. Some of the humor of the last game remains, but the majority is all pretty tough to follow if you don’t spend time reading through the many collectible lore drops scattered around every level. Thankfully, keeping up with Eternal’s confusing plot isn’t really a necessary component of enjoying the game.
In addition to the main campaign, Doom Eternal also includes a multiplayer mode, as well as Master Levels, which are remixed versions of missions from the main campaign that provide additional challenge and will get added to Eternal over time. The multiplayer offering wasn’t available ahead of Eternal’s launch, so we’ll be updating this review and finalizing the score once we’ve had a chance to test it out.
Though it can take a bit to get the hang of it, the intricacies of Doom Eternal’s combat, combined with its enhanced mobility and option-heavy level design, create a ton of white-knuckle moments that elevate everything that made Doom 2016 work so well. Its combat is just as quick and chaotic, but requires you to constantly analyze everything that’s happening in order to come out victorious. Once you get the hang of the rhythm of Doom Eternal, it’ll make you feel like a demon-slaying savant.
