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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will no longer be getting a new rougelike mode, despite being a reward for a stretch goal that was met during the project’s initial Kickstarter funding run.

In an update on the Kickstarter page Jason Ryan, senior community manager at publisher 505 Games, explained explained that the mode was simply not possible anymore due to due to incompatibility with some of Bloodstained’s coding. “Unfortunately, the code that was created early in the game’s development is not currently compatible with this type of gameplay (especially a procedurally generated castle),” writes Ryan. “Due to this, we regret to announce that we will not be developing Roguelike as part of the project’s planned stretch goals.”

Instead of a roguelike mode, Bloodstained will be getting a Randomizer that attempts to bridge the gap by introducing some elements that would’ve been included. This mode will change up the locations of items, randomize where save points and warp rooms are, and change which boss ultimately ends the game. Up to eight parameters can be edited before starting a new campaign to create a unique run, which can then be shared with other players via a generated seed that can be used to spin up custom games.

This new mode will be included in the upcoming Zangetsu patch, which will also introduce a new main character to play as. Although it was previously thought to also include another mode called Boss Revenge, 505 Games has stated that this was previously communicated in error and that this content will ship at a later date.

Although it is disappointing that backers are missing out on a promised feature, this spiritual sequel to Symphony of the Night still has a lot to offer. In our 8/10 review for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, critic Steve Watts praised its smart design, saying, “With more flexible combat and level design that always beckons to check just one more room, Bloodstained shows that a modern Metroidvania can stand alongside its predecessors as an equal.”

Full spoilers follow for the Doctor Who Season 12 finale, “The Timeless Children.”

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After the world saw the Doctor Who Series 12 finale, “The Timeless Children” – in which we learned a great deal we never knew before about the truth behind the development of the Time Lord power of regeneration on Gallifrey, and the related mystery of the Timeless Child (AKA, the Doctor) – Internet fandom went predictably, gloriously mad. Out of all of that craziness, we thought we’d focus on a number of continuity-related questions that have been coming up again and again, as fans try to reconcile these new facts about the formative years of the Time Lords with everything else we’ve ever seen in the show’s 57-year history. We also thought we’d try to provide answers to those questions – if not definitive ones, at least possible theories that might help to smooth over the rough edges. It’s early days yet, of course, and we’re all still reeling from the wonderful insanity of that game-changing episode, but we hope that this might help to process some of it. After all, we’re all in this together.

Without further ado, here are seven of the most frequently asked questions right now about how the information in “The Timeless Children” does or does not match with what went before, as well as some issues of plot and character, and our suggested theories!

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Doctor Who Finale: Questions, Answers and Theories

1) Why did the Time Lords need to give Matt Smith’s Doctor a new regeneration cycle in “Time of the Doctor?”

Since we now know that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, a being with a perpetual ability to regenerate that enabled Tecteun and the other founding Time Lords to grant themselves that power via artificial means derived from the Timeless Child’s genetics, why would the Doctor need to be given another regeneration cycle? Surely he wouldn’t have actually run out of regenerations after all?

As with many of these things, this is only a question if you assume that everything you’ve ever known in Doctor Who is absolutely immutable with no possibility of variance or flexibility. Since much of the Doctor’s pre-Hartnell life is still very murky, and since we don’t know the circumstances under which the Doctor was mind-wiped and reset in order to obscure their time in the Division, it’s just as possible that the cycle of TV Doctors from Hartnell on were specifically engineered and therefore limited as with the other Time Lords’ 12-regeneration, 13-body cycles. Basically, how do we know that eventually the Timeless Child wasn’t robbed of its perpetual regenerative ability and turned into “just another Time Lord,” at least for a while? And who’s to say the Doctor isn’t now back to full Timeless Child mode? As with most things in this show, time will tell…it always does.

2) Where did all the humans go?

We were told that all the humans fleeing the Cyber Wars escaped through the Boundary, but clearly none of them made it to Gallifrey, and we don’t know where else that spatio-temporal or dimensional gateway may have led over the years. In modern parlance, this is a huge “plot hole” (which is what some people call anything in a story that isn’t spelled out to their satisfaction, even if it’s deliberately left open for future exploration and therefore is not really a “plot hole” at all), but the question remains: Where are the people?

No answer for this one; this is surely a deliberately designed dangling plot thread to be picked up down the road. Unless it’s not, in which case, how about this: The future humans all scattered into the past, reintegrated into various times in human history, and we’ll leave it there unless told otherwise. The Doctor kind of does that with their future friends when she drops them off with Yaz, Ryan, and Graham in the 21st century, so maybe that’s a George Lucas kind of clue – it’s like poetry, it rhymes.

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3) What was the deal with Brendan in “Ascension of the Cybermen”?

This one really was answered directly in “The Timeless Children,” but in the massive wave of revelations happening in that episode, it’s not too surprising that people might have missed it. The Master explains that in the vast swath of missing data in the Matrix that would have shed light on the Doctor’s pre-Hartnell life as a Division operative, material was redacted and further obscured by hiding it under a visual perception filter of sorts, making it appear to be mundane recordings of a guy growing up in Ireland. So in other words, the Brendan sequence can be seen as a sort of visual cloak hiding the way in which the Timeless Child was pressed into service by the Division (like the police department Brendan joined) then forcibly mind-wiped at the end of a regeneration/incarnation. Also, it mirrors the story the Master told us about the Timeless Child’s first death, in which both the Child and Brendan fall off a cliff.

4) If the Timeless Child is not Gallifreyan, how does the Doctor have two hearts?

Again, this is one of those questions that only exists because fans of the most imaginative series in television history aren’t exercising their own imagination just a bit more (but hey, it’s a lot to mull over, so we’ll help). This question seems to be based on the idea that if the Timeless Child is from some other race, and we know that Gallifreyans/Time Lords have two hearts, it’s therefore a coincidence that the Timeless Child/Doctor has two hearts too. But it’s really not.

There are a multitude of possibilities here, so take your pick. One, it’s exactly that, a coincidence, and both races – whatever the Timeless Child is, and the Shobogans of Gallifrey – have two hearts. Two, the genetic experiments Tecteun conducted to derive regeneration from the Timeless Child altered the Time Lords to have two hearts too. Three, the Timeless Child didn’t have two hearts originally, but when the Time Lords used the Chameleon Arch on the pre-Hartnell Doctor to mind-wipe and reset a regenerative cycle, it also altered the physiology. Four…actually, come up with your own here. This isn’t a problem at all, it’s science fiction!

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5) Surely the Master didn’t die for good this time?

Oh, of course not, why would you even think that? But if you did indeed wonder whether this time around, the Master may have truly met his end alongside his beautifully-designed Cyber-Time Lords, rest assured the episode actually had a clue to their survival in those explosive final moments, although apparently a lot of us (myself included) missed it. When the Death Particle is activated, you can hear Sacha Dhawan’s Master shouting “All of you, through here, now!” Presumably, the Master and at least some of his clockwork-motif minions managed to make it into a spare TARDIS (there were a lot of them laying around at the end of the episode), which means they will surely return one day soon.

6) How did the Judoon get inside the TARDIS? And will it connect to Revolution of the Daleks?

At the end of “The Timeless Children,” just in time to set up the seasonal special coming later this year (or perhaps New Year’s 2021) called Revolution of the Daleks, a Judoon “cold case” squad turns up in the TARDIS and takes the Doctor into custody. But wait, how did they get in there? In fact, how is it that lately the integrity of the TARDIS’ previously impregnable interior has been somewhat lacking?

The TARDIS has gone through a number of traumas over the years, and given that it is more than just a machine but a sentient being that often goes not where it’s told but where it believes the Doctor needs to be, and is also capable of seeing into the future in order to make that determination, there’s therefore a lot of leeway as to its behavior at any given point. For all we know, the TARDIS drops its defenses when it knows that the Doctor will need to get involved in an adventure later on, and whatever is going to happen in the next story may only be facilitated by the Judoon getting into the TARDIS and taking the Doctor out, which the TARDIS may have predicted. Well, that’s better than treating it like a mistake, right?

7) This is the big one – where is the Timeless Child/Doctor from?

Ah, this one has no answer right now. After all, it’s simply a refreshed and restated version of the question that has always been right there at the very core of the series itself, part of what drives us all to be fascinated by that mysterious heroic time traveler and her journeys through space and time…

Doctor Who?

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Find Arnold T. Blumberg on Twitter at @DoctoroftheDead.

Washington University Researchers have discovered that voice assistant programs like Siri can be hacked with ultrasonic sound waves that go undetected by human ears – but you probably won’t have to worry about it too much.

Those same researchers say the environment required to make this possible is very specific and not likely to be found in everyday life. The researchers presented their findings on the Siri and Google Assistant-backed phone hack at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium on Feb. 24. Their findings report is nearly 20 pages long, but the team published a summary on the Washington University website shortly after the symposium.

The hack involves a series of pieces of equipment sending inaudible waves – which can still be picked up by most phone voice assistants – to a phone on the same table, and activating various functions of the phone, from taking selfies to reading out passwords or authentication codes in texts. 15 of 17 phones tested were vulnerable to this technique.

“We did it on metal,” assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering Ning Zhang said. “We did it on glass. We did it on wood. It still worked. We want to raise awareness of such a threat. I want everybody in the public to know this.”

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The conclusion reached by the researchers was that Siri and Google Assistant listen to sound frequencies much higher and lower than that of the human voice and when hit with ultrasonic waves in specific conditions, the programs will interpret such waves as a human voice.

Zhang and fellow researchers created a number of scenarios to use the method to steal information through Siri and Google Assistant. Each scenario included an ultrasonic wave generator, a hidden microphone used to listen to the program’s response, a piezoelectric transducer (which turns electrical signals into physical ones), and software capable of producing the necessary ultrasonic wave.

Thankfully, you can already see how unlikely it is that someone would be able to do this in public. Researchers found that softer materials failed to conduct the signal of the ultrasonic wave rendering the scenario a failure, so if you’re worried about this happening to you, just keep your phone on a napkin or in your pocket.

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Zhang has said that it’s unlikely this method of hacking will be used commonly: “I don’t think we will see such an attack a lot in common places, but probably used for a more targeted attack.”

Scientists recently discovered that we’re receiving wave signals from extragalactic space in an unexplained pattern, although these signals are radio and not ultrasonic. Scientists also discovered that the way we thought the brain processed movies might be false. For more science news, check out this story about dinosaur DNA remarkably preserved in a 75 million-year-old fossil. And while you’re at, check out how scientists created a bionic moon jellyfish recently.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

The sky is blue, water is wet, and everybody loves Batman. It’s a fact of life.

With a new cinematic Batman now in the works in Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman, we thought there would be no better time than to reflect on the Dark Knight’s big-screen adventures.

He’s had a wide variety of theatrically-released adventures going back all the way to 1966 – some of them better than others – and during that time Batman has proved to be a Hollywood constant that can bounce back from anything, be it the breaking of his back or rubber nipples. The Dark Knight’s legacy onscreen will surely continue on long past the rest of us.

Keep in mind that this list includes only feature-film, theatrical releases in which Batman is a central figure, which means the old movie serials and direct-to-DVD animated releases don’t meet the criteria, nor do movies like Suicide Squad or The LEGO Movie. But that said, read on for IGN’s ranking of the Batman movies!

Note: This is an update to our original Ranking the Batman Movies story.

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12. Justice League

In what should’ve been Warner Bros.’ answer to Disney’s enormously popular Marvel Cinematic Universe, the first-ever big screen meet-up of DC’s premier superhero team mostly just fizzled out, featuring a slew of problems – on and off-screen – and just too little chemistry to really crackle. That being said, Ben Affleck’s Batman gets to have a little fun in this one, a stark contrast with his turn in Dawn of Justice (more on that in a minute), bantering with Alfred and even cracking one-liners in battle.

Unfortunately, the few moments that are memorable in Justice League don’t really involve the Caped Crusader. Still, there’s something to be said for getting to see Batman take down Parademons, arguably the most delightfully “comic booky” thing an onscreen Batman has ever done.

11. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

In many ways, Batman v Superman has a direct correlation to the movie that nearly killed big-screen Batman 20 years before it, Batman & Robin. Like B&R, Dawn of Justice is a gross miscalculation of what most viewers wanted from the Dark Knight on the big screen (it received the same audience-awarded CinemaScore as the Catwoman and Green Lantern movies). Except where Joel Schumacher went with camp and bat-nipples, Zack Snyder went grimdark with a Batman out for blood.

It’s a better movie, technically speaking, than Justice League, and it does lots of things right: Wonder Woman’s introduction is fun and there are some interesting questions raised about Superman’s place in the world. Even some of the heavy-handed Justice League cameos are a blast. But for watching Batman himself, it’s a purely joyless experience that leans into the biggest problems of its predecessor Man of Steel instead of course-correcting them.

10. Batman & Robin

Joel Schumacher’s sequel that nearly destroyed the Batman movie franchise can’t be taken seriously, we can all agree. The Bat-skates, the Bat-credit card (expiration: “Forever”), Mr. Freeze’s campy ice-related one-liners, a neon Gotham City, and even shoddy cost-saving edits were just a few of the issues that plagued this disaster, and yet… it’s oddly enjoyable to watch? It’s not good by any metric, but we’d certainly be more likely to throw on Dawn of Justice over B&R on a rainy Saturday night.

Despite George Clooney being a convincing Bruce Wayne, he was unable to bring the duality that the role requires to be Batman. To be fair, the (few) scenes between a dying Alfred and Bruce are actually quite touching and would probably be remembered fondly if they existed within a different Batman movie. At least Schumacher himself has since admitted the movie was basically just a toy commercial. Respect.

9. Batman Forever

After Tim Burton left the Batman franchise following two wildly successful movies, Joel Schumacher took over, along with a new Dark Knight and a new direction. Gotham became less gothic and more like a perpetual nightclub, Val Kilmer put on the cape and cowl, and Robin was thrown in for good measure. Batman Forever is strange; in today’s Hollywood it would be considered a reboot, but back in 1995 it was expected to be the continuation of Tim Burton’s dark exploration of Gotham City and its inhabitants. We got a little of that, but mostly it was just wacky antics, new costumes, and Tommy Lee Jones doing his best Jack Nicholson impression.

At least Batman Forever is a sincere attempt to explore Bruce Wayne as a character, even if its end result is a confounding plot that involves Bruce kind of forgetting why he became the Dark Knight to begin with.

8. The Dark Knight Rises

The ridiculously anticipated finale to Christopher Nolan’s massively popular Dark Knight Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises shot for the stars with a larger scope than any Batman movie before it. While reactions were mixed to some of the choices in the movie, on a psychological level The Dark Knight Rises shows the resolve of the Bruce Wayne character on screen like never before. We get to see him do what his father had always told him he could – learn to pick himself up – and save the city he loves.

In a lot of ways, The Dark Knight Rises is more Batman Begins than it is The Dark Knight, bringing back a lot of elements from the first movie and making loads of callbacks. The Dark Knight Rises should be considered a great feat despite its shortcomings if only for being the first wildly connective Batman tale ever told on screen, working in tandem with its two predecessors to tell the story of Bruce Wayne’s time as the Dark Knight from beginning to end, while still reinforcing Nolan’s idea of Batman in the first place – to be a symbol of Gotham City, no matter who is under the mask.

7. Batman: The Movie

In the ’60s, superheroes didn’t get bigger than Batman, thanks to the runaway success of the Adam West TV show. The movie that resulted was a Rogue’s Gallery roll call that featured the Dynamic Duo running around Gotham trying to stop a dastardly plot by the likes of The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, and Catwoman. Stopping an evil plan in the ’60s incarnation of Batman meant Shark Repellent Bat-Spray, being unable to rid oneself of a giant bomb, illogical riddle solving, and the seduction of Bruce Wayne by a disguised Catwoman.

It was campy, sure, but it was meant to be. While some die-hard Bat-fans might scoff at the idea of a silly incarnation of Batman (done on purpose, no less), the genius of the Adam West version was that it was not only a commentary on ’60s culture, but also the nature of Batman; he’s a character that’s meant to be adaptable to any story, as silly or as serious as can be.

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6. The LEGO Batman Movie

In many ways the spiritual successor to the 1960s Batman, the LEGO Movie version of the Dark Knight proved so popular that he was spun-off into his own feature film to hilarious results. The LEGO Batman Movie is a film made for fans by fans, chockfull of deep-cut Easter eggs and callbacks to other big-screen versions of Batman (not to mention a cavalcade of other pop-culture references).

Yet despite all of the goofy fun contained within its 104-minute runtime, The LEGO Batman Movie still manages to distill the character down to the reason he’s endured for over 80 years: his absolute unwillingness to give up, even in the face of seemingly unconquerable odds.

5. Batman Returns

Tim Burton’s Batman sequel took the “bigger and better” sequel mantra to heart, delivering a darker, scarier Gotham City and not one, but two iconic Batman rogues in The Penguin and Catwoman. While Batman does some… rather un-Batman like things in Returns, ultimately it’s more about the vibe and tone of the world that Burton creates.

There’s something about Gotham City at Christmas time that’s visually exciting, and Burton’s clear interest in his villains, as opposed to the titular Caped Crusader, gave us some truly memorable performances. A generation fell in love with Michelle Pfeiffer forever and realized how truly terrifying Oswald Cobblepot can be. It succeeds at showing how Batman’s rogues are a different side to the same coin as the Dark Knight, with the obvious shortcoming being that it comes at the expense of Batman himself.

4. Batman

This was the one that changed everything. By the time 1989 rolled around, the Superman franchise had sputtered to a halt after the abysmal Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and superhero flicks weren’t getting made. But Warner Bros. took a chance on a fresh director named Tim Burton, and his visual flair and love of villains turned Batman into a pop-culture/marketing phenomenon.

The movie was darker than any superhero movie had been before, and the grittiness of the Dark Knight revival in the ’80s with comics like The Dark Knight Returns and Year One were a clear influence, leaving Bat-fans happy and memories of the campy Adam West Batman in the rear-view mirror. Jack Nicholson added star presence to the film as Joker and created the most memorable movie villain since Darth Vader debuted over a decade earlier.

3. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

The beloved Batman: The Animated Series was created in the wake of Burton’s Batman, pleasing fans of all ages. The one and only animated theatrical release based on the show, Mask of the Phantasm, remains one of the Dark Knight’s most stunning big-screen adventures and a fan-favorite.

In Mask of the Phantasm, Batman is wrongfully accused of the murders of mobsters in Gotham City as a result of a creepy new vigilante that’s running around. The entire tale gets woven into Bruce’s own history, his first love, and even the origin of the Joker (taking a cue from the Burton movie with the appearance of Jack Napier). It’s a dark and gothic tale of loss, love, and tragedy. The film was a bit edgier than The Animated Series was on TV, and is still one of the most potent tales of the Dark Knight depicted on the big screen or elsewhere.

2. Batman Begins

After the Batman & Robin debacle of 1997, Warner Bros. struggled to get the Batman franchise in motion again and suffered lots of stops and starts with various scripts and filmmakers. Finally, indie darling Christopher Nolan came along and everything fell into place. Telling the Batman origin in-depth for the first time onscreen, Nolan approached the Dark Knight with a hyper-realism that made audiences forget the buffoonery of the Schumacher era and embrace Gotham City once more.

With a grand cast, endearing performances, and just enough comic book geek-out moments (that Joker card!) to make the die-hard fans swoon, Batman Begins reinvigorated the character’s cinematic standing.

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1. The Dark Knight

Following on the heels of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight quickly became one of the most hyped movies of the decade. Helped by its amazing viral marketing campaign, the sequel quickly took on legendary status as the summer’s most anticipated movie. Remarkably, it delivered beyond expectations.

Nolan’s middle chapter introduced the ultimate foil to Batman – Heath Ledger’s Joker – and depicted how the arrival of a masked vigilante affected Gotham City and its citizens. The Dark Knight is essentially Gordon’s speech about “escalation” at the end of Begins coming to fruition. Meanwhile, Bruce himself has to deal with what being Batman has forced him to sacrifice personally. It’s a well-rounded movie that takes multiple plot threads and seamlessly weaves them towards an intensely thrilling climax, resulting in what remains the ultimate big-screen Batman story.

For even more Bat-rankings, check out how we ranked the many movie Batsuits, what we think of the actors who have played Batman, and how we rank the live-action Bat-movie villains!

Hardcore mode is back in the latest PUBG Mobile update today, giving you the chance to show off your small-screen skills. The mode is available in the game’s Arcade section, and several changes and additions have also arrived to Classic mode.

In Hardcore mode, the game is made much more challenging by removing sound prompts and making item pickups manual. This means you’ll need to stay much more aware of your surroundings and keep track of every entrance and exit in a building.

Among the biggest new features added to Classic mode is a death replay function, letting you see exactly how you died so you can better prepare for the next round. Universal Marks were added, as well, with doors, death crates, vehicles, locations, and supplies all available to mark alongside enemies.

A new air drop weapon called the DBS has been added. It’s a double-barrel shotgun that is extremely powerful at close range and uses 12 Gauge ammunition. It’s only available via air drop and holds two shots per magazine.

User-interface and accessibility changes have been added, as well, including teammate volume control and a colorblind mode that changes color options for in-game indicators like smoke and poison. For newer players, you can also register as a Rookie for Classic mode and have more experienced players guide you through your first matches to get a feel for the game.

PUBG Mobile is about to celebrate its second anniversary, and the game’s new Season 12 Royale Pass will arrive on March 9. Called “2gether We Play,” it features colorful gear and rewards. There will be an amusement park set up in the original Erangel map with special attractions on March 12.