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There are a whole bunch of other people floating around in Altered Carbon Season 1, who play integral but sometimes confusing roles in the plot.

Laurens Bancroft: The super-rich Meth who makes a deal to get Takeshi out of cold storage to enlist him in solving Bancroft’s murder. Bancroft was so rich that he not only can afford clones of his original body to resleeve his stack into, he has a dedicated satellite in orbit, which holds a backup copy of his consciousness–so even if his stack is destroyed, he can live on. Just before the start of Season 1, Bancroft’s sleeve was murdered and his stack destroyed. When he redownloaded from his satellite, he set about trying to figure out who killed him. (There are a lot of suspects, including his extremely crappy family.) Turns out that Bancroft killed himself, though, after committing a murder and being blackmailed by Rei. He destroyed his own stack out of shame, minutes before his scheduled backup, so that when his consciousness was downloaded again from the satellite, he wouldn’t remember what he’d done.

Vernon: Tak found Vernon by investigating death threats against Bancroft, who blamed Bancroft for his daughter Lizzie being beaten and driven to madness. When Tak confronts and interrogates him, he makes Vernon an ally by helping him try to treat Lizzie’s psychological problems, with Poe’s assistance. Vernon becomes an ally of Tak’s and helps him in his fight to solve Bancroft’s murder and take down Rei.

Lizzie: Vernon’s daughter Lizzie was a sex worker who was visited by Laurens Bancroft, and eventually got pregnant by him. When she went to his house to tell him about it, Lizzie was confronted by Bancroft’s wife, Miriam, who feared the threat of an illegitimate Bancroft child and nearly killed Lizzie. Miriam enlisted Rei to have Lizzie driven insane with virtual reality torture, fragmenting her mind. Vernon kept Lizzie in VR to protect her, and Tak and Poe worked to help Lizzie recover. When she did, Tak learned about what had happened, revealing another piece of the puzzle regarding Bancroft’s murder and Rei’s involvement.

Ortega: A police officer who worked with Tak on Bancroft’s murder, and was in love with the man who owned the body Tak inhabits in Season 1. She was the officer originally assigned to Bancroft’s murder, but ruled it a suicide against Bancroft’s wishes. She spends the first season of Altered Carbon helping Tak as he works to solve the mystery, and they develop a close relationship. Ortega was formerly a Neo-Catholic–according to her faith, she could never be resleeved due to her beliefs. She renounced her religion, however, which causes strain between Ortega and her family.

Every year on February 27th, the Pokemon Company and fans celebrate the release of the original Red and Green Pokemon versions in Japan. Along with the celebration comes news on the various Pokemon franchises for the year ahead.

This year, we got a look at the next Mythical Pokemon, Zarude, who will feature in the next Pokemon movie, Pokemon the Movie: Coco, as well as as appearing in the upcoming DLC for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield.

Along with Zarude, we also got a trailer for Pokemon the Movie: Coco. The trailer shows a shiny Celebi flying through a forest and a young boy named Coco, who lives in this forest with his Pokemon. Ash comes across Coco, and it doesn’t take long for things to go wrong.

All new Wild Area Events have kicked off in Pokemon Sword and Shield, with Mewtwo, Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur now getting a chance to appear in Max Raid Battles. Mewtwo cannot be captured, but you can still earn rewards by defeating it (like Ability Capsules and PP Max).

Some news was also revealed for the Pokemon Masters mobile game, showcasing a number of future content updates that will be implemented. Starting from tomorrow, 3,000 Gems will be free to all players who log onto the app to celebrate Pokemon Day, along with the addition of Red and Charizard as a Poke Fair exclusive Scout. Over 10,000 Gems are up for grabs over the course of the event.

Story events now include Event Maps to assist you in progressing through them with the use of Travel Tokens. More areas and rewards will be unlocked as you complete the story. The Battle Villa will also be open tomorrow, introducing an all new feature called Lucky Skills, which can be added to Sync Pairs with a Lucky Cookie or Lucky Scroll. The Battle Villa allows you to create a roster of up to 9 different Sync Pairs to challenge the Battle Stages. Like a traditional league challenge, HP and PP will carry over from battle to battle.

Improvements to legendary events and the Sync Grid will be added down the line, as well as a new Pokemon Egg feature.

And finally, Mewtwo Strikes Back EVOLUTION is now available worldwide to stream on Netflix (aside from Japan and South Korea). The movie can be streamed viewed with either English voice acting or with the original Japanese voice acting–a first for an international Pokemon movie. Armored Mewtwo can still be caught in Pokemon Go up till March 2 to celebrate the movie’s international release.

Devolver Digital has announced Sludge Life for Nintendo Switch and the Epic Games Store. It’s an open-world title set on a sludge-coated island that’s rife with corporate branding, and it looks as grimy and goofy as you might expect. You play as Ghost, a graffiti tagger, and depending on how you play you can either rise to be a hero to the people of the island or bring the whole thing crashing down.

The trailer, below, shows off the game’s unique aesthetic–note, for instance, how the cats have two butts. The game will also carry a dedicated fart button, which is good: in the wake of Untitled Goose Game, dedicated noise buttons are all the rage.

Sludge Life will have a very open structure, as you can wander through the island and complete tasks or explore at your own rate–there’s an ending (in fact, there are three potential endings), but it’s going for a non-linear structure. You can also get sidetracked by the game-within-a-game, Crypt Creeper, shown in the trailer.

The game’s official website also shows off the game’s trashbag aesthetics (which I mean as a positive).

The game is due in Spring 2020, so we won’t be waiting long to get our slime on. If you’re at PAX East in Boston from February 28 to March 1, the game is also playable there.

Devolver Digital also recently announced Disc Room; there’s some developer crossover between the two titles.

Even if you’ve played every Pokemon game, there’s a good chance you’ve never played it competitively. That’s because competitive Pokemon has a high barrier to entry, and there’s a lot you need to know just to start battling. That said, competitive battling is exciting and incredibly rewarding–it’s worth it, and Sword and Shield are a great place to get started.

In the video above, we break down that barrier to entry so you can actually enjoy battling. Part 1 of this mini-series is all about how Pokemon’s stats work: species stats, IVs, natures, and the basics of EVs. What do all those words and acronyms mean? This video explains all of them with plenty of charts to make it a lot less intimidating.

In GameSpot’s Pokemon Sword and Shield review, Kallie Plagge wrote, “In collecting, battling, and exploring, Sword and Shield cut out the bloat and focus on what makes these pillars of the Pokemon games so captivating in the first place. You’re not held back by overly complicated back-end systems or hoops to jump through; from the outset, you can start wandering the Galar region, seeing its new Pokemon, and trying out its new battle strategies with very little in your way. This leaves you free to enjoy what Pokemon is all about, and that makes for an incredibly strong showing for the series’ proper debut on Switch.”

Deadpool is the latest big-name character to hit the Fortnite scene. Joining the ranks of Thanos and John Wick, the Deadpool challenges continue in week 2, season 2.

Each Friday, two Deadpool Fortnite challenges will be unlocked. Originally these challenges were going to drop on Thursdays, but according to a tweet from @FortniteStatus, they have been moved to Fridays.

This week’s challenges are:

• Find Deadpool’s Milk Carton
• Find Deadpool’s Chimichangas around HQ

Deadpool isn’t the only addition to the game. During the first two weeks a Brutus skin will be available with specific quests to unlock the skin. There are currently 20 challenges to complete towards the Brutus skin. On completion of 18 of these challenges a ghost-like version of the skin will be unlocked.

Check out our Fortnite hub for all the latest news and challenge walkthroughs.

The follow-up to The Dark Pictures – Man of Medan was first glanced after that game’s credits, where we got out first teaser trailer for Little Hope. Now, we have a better idea of when this next episode will arrive, and it won’t be as long a wait as it was for Man of Medan.

Little Hope will release in Summer 2020, effectively meaning that we can expect it sometime between June and August. Bandai Namco also debuted a new trailer, but don’t expect new footage–it’s mostly made up of streamer reactions to Man of Medan (and a celebration of actor Will Poulter’s casting in Little Hope), with the release window announcement buried in the comments below the video.

Little Hope is set in the titular town, which is isolated and abandoned. Four college students, along with their professor, are trapped by an impenetrable fog, and have to escape the “nightmarish visions” that are pursuing them. It’ll be up to the player, alone or with a partner in co-op, to search the town and discover what is happening, how it’s connected to them, and–hopefully–how to escape.

Some screenshots have also been released, showing off the game’s cast (and again celebrating the casting of Will Poulter).

In a press release, Pete Samuels, CEO of developer Supermassive Games, said that the studio was “Delighted by the reaction from players and the success of Man of Medan.” He went on to say that they “really appreciate feedback from the community and the team remains committed to the goal of making each new instalment deliver further thrilling horror experiences.”

Man of Medan was, itself, a follow-up on Until Dawn, which became something of a PlayStation cult hit. Although Man of Medan wasn’t received as well in GameSpot’s review, the online multiplayer aspect of the game earned a lot of praise: “It feels like you’re working together to wring as many interesting outcomes as you can out of the game, and effectively doubling the number of potential choices leads to a much stronger sense of variety.”

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Coming from the developers of Minit, Disc Room is a sci-fi dungeon crawler that immediately makes it clear that you will inevitably meet your death–quite often. As a reimagining of the developer’s game released on itch.io in 2016, the new take on the hardcore dungeon-crawling dodger places you in the role of an interstellar scientist who has to explore a massive underground network filled with rooms lined with killer buzzsaws. As soon as you come in contact with the deadly hazards, you’ll meet your grotesque end. But that’s not where your journey stops. Your repeated deaths can satisfy certain conditions, such as lasting a certain amount of minutes or dying by a particular hazard a certain number of times, allowing you to access to more areas of the facility.

We had the chance to go hands-on with Disc Room at PAX East 2020, and its masochistic approach to a challenge reveals a surprising sense of depth to its progression. In the above gameplay, it’s clear that you certainly have to do a lot to survive in the various rooms of death. Your demise reveals the path forward, and in some cases, your character will adopt certain traits from their fate–which includes an ability to dash, gained from rapidly moving buzzsaws. It’s an incredibly challenging game, but its unusual and bizarre setting makes it worth going another round in the proverbial meat grinder.