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Actor Mark Wahlberg is creating a new show that focuses on one person in particular: Mark Wahlberg. HBO Max, the new streaming service scheduled to launch in May, has ordered an eight-episode series focused on Wahlberg called “Wahl Street,” according to Variety.

The show will follow Wahlberg as he balances his acting life and growing his businesses. The show’s official description adds that “viewers will learn about his successes and failures and glean powerful business and life lessons while also getting to know the cast of colorful characters that make up Wahlberg’s real-life entourage.”

On top of focusing on Wahlberg’s own life, Wahl Street will feature other entrepreneurs pitching Wahlberg on a new business idea in each episode.

“We’re documenting the ups, the downs, the hits and the misses. It’s all the real stuff that’s happening while I’m growing my businesses,” Wahlberg said. “We’re pulling back the curtain and hopefully it’s an opportunity to inspire other entrepreneurs.”

Wahlberg earned Oscar nominations for The Fighter and The Departed. He is also known for his roles in the Transformers franchise and Seth MacFarlane’s Ted movies. His newest film is Spenser Confidential, which debuted on Netflix earlier this month. Looking ahead, Wahlberg will play Sully in the Uncharted movie alongside Tom Holland as Nathan Drake.

In terms of his business ventures, Wahlberg is a co-owner of the burger chain Wahlburgers with his brothers, Donnie and Paul. The restaurant also spawned a TV show, Wahlburgers. Additionally, Wahlberg owns a stake in the fitness company F45, while he has also co-founded a sports nutrition company called Performance Inspired.

With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s standalone free-to-play spin-off, Warzone, Activision is pushing deeper into the battle royale space, and the impact for the publisher could be massive. Not only that, but if successful, Warzone could potentially have implications for the entire video game industry.

Battle royale is not a fad. It started strong with PUBG, which paved the way for making battle royale games a household name and a viable business category for developers to pursue, and the genre has only grown in size and popularity since. Fortnite built upon that success and elevated the genre to incredible new heights inside of gaming and out. Apex Legends helped the category grow even further with its unique innovations and refined gameplay and gunplay.

For its part, Activision was already in the battle royale business prior to Warzone thanks to Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode, but that was just a baby step. Blackout was locked behind the paywall of having to already own Black Ops 4–despite the fact that, it was arguably the game’s major selling point. But with Warzone, Activision is opening up Call of Duty for everyone. It’s a very big deal because, up until this point, the Call of Duty franchise (on console, at least) relied on the annual $60 releases. Warzone subverts that tried-and-true model with a new take.

This is potentially a significant step forward for Call of Duty and the entire gaming industry. If Warzone becomes successful, it could represent a way for publishers to have their cake and eat it too, argues Atreides Management’s Gavin Baker. In essence, Activision can make money from the upfront sales of new Call of Duty games every year, and stack even more money on top of that from Warzone.

Activision’s mainline Call of Duty franchise is not going anywhere. The publisher already announced that it plans to launch a new frontline release this fall, and rumors peg it to be Black Ops 5 from developer Treyarch. Even though 2020’s Call of Duty isn’t expected to sell as many copies as the record-breaking Modern Warfare, Call of Duty is always a money-maker. In fact, Call of Duty has been the No.1 best-seller in the US every year this decade except for 2010 and 2013 when Red Dead Redemption and GTA 5 were released respectively. The franchise is a sales juggernaut.

Whatever 2020’s Call of Duty turns out to be, Activision will likely sell this new game alongside ongoing development and support for Warzone, creating yet another Call of Duty revenue stream for the company. Free-to-play games have the lowest possible barrier of entry, so they are risky in that Activision is giving it away for free, but also potentially lucrative if they spark. Free-to-play games, when done right, can generate mountains of money through their microtransactions. Just look at Fortnite and Apex. It’s also worth mentioning that Activision already operates the free-to-play Call of Duty Mobile, which is steamroller with 150 million installs and a battle royale mode of its own that brings in many millions of dollars every month from microtransactions.

Baker observes that, should Warzone become successful, it could become a model for other developers to follow as they look to expand the profitability of their franchises across multiple releases in the same franchise. It’s not a stretch to imagine other shooter series following suit with their own standalone battle royale offerings.

But Warzone also raises some interesting questions about the future of Call of Duty, including what threat of cannibalization might exist. That is to say, if Warzone becomes the next bona fide battle royale phenomenon, could this impact the sales of 2020’s Call of Duty? Activision is emphatically marketing Warzone with the tagline “Free Call of Duty” and this raises questions about how players view the franchise. Will the expectation be, going forward, that Call of Duty is a free game like Fortnite or Apex?

Beyond that, Activision has now released a battle royale game or mode for the latest two Call of Duty games. So should fans expect 2020’s Call of Duty and those beyond it to also include battle royale modes? There are no answers to these questions yet, and that makes sense.

Activision is clearly experimenting with Warzone, both in terms of creative design and business strategy, so it’s too early to say what the impact will be long-term for Activision and the wider industry. What is clear is that Activision is finally delivering on what fans have been asking for: a multiplayer-only, standalone Call of Duty release on console, and that’s a very big deal.

A new Spider-Man spin-off movie is coming, but it’s not going to be part of the MCU. According The Wrap, Sony has hired Amazing Spider-Man 2 writer Roberto Orci to write a new spin-off. There is no word on which character the movie will focus on, however.

The key thing to know here is that this movie will be part of Sony’s own Spider-Man universe, and not the MCU. Sony’s Spidey universe also includes Venom and Morbius, among others.

Orci is a Hollywood veteran. He co-created the TV shows Fringe and the Hawaii Five-O reboot, while he also wrote the new Star Trek movies and Mission: Impossible III.

As for Sony’s comic book hero universe, the next movie on the way is Morbius, which stars Jared Leto and opens in theatres this July. The Tom Hardy-starring Venom 2, directed by Andy Serkis, will follow in October. 2018’s Venom was bashed by critics but it made $856 million worldwide, making it one of the year’s most successful movies at the box office.

Sony and Disney (which owns Marvel) had a falling out over the future of Spider-Man’s existence in the MCU, and Sony had a plan to move forward with its own Spider-Man series. However, the two sides eventually came to terms, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will stay in the MCU for the time being.

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With Modern Warfare’s standalone free-to-play game, Warzone, Activision is pushing deeper into the battle royale space, and the impact for Activision could be massive. Not only that, but if successful, Warzone could potentially impact and influence the entire video game industry.

In a new video, Eddie Makuch looks into how Activision is trying to have its cake and eat it too with Warzone. Activision will continue to release big new Call of Duty games that it charges $60 for every year, on top of making even more money from Warzone (and this is to say nothing of the huge amount of money that Call of Duty: Mobile brings in every month).

But some questions remain. If Warzone sparks fire and catches on, is Activision running the risk of cannibalizing future Call of Duty games? Will Warzone’s free-to-play label change how fans view the franchise? Will Activision release a new battle royale game for the franchise’s yearly instalments? Check out the full video above to learn more about the situation.

Yokai powers are the most significant new addition to combat in Nioh 2. As a half-Yokai human known as a Shiftling, you can leverage your supernatural abilities in a couple of ways to give you an edge during the game’s toughest battles. But all of this may be confusing to you early on. After all, Nioh 2 isn’t shy about throwing a ton of tutorials your way the moment you begin.

Below we break down the essential things you need to know about Yokai powers in Nioh 2, including details about Yokai Shift forms, Spirit Cores, and Guardian Spirits. For more Nioh 2 tips, be sure to read our essential beginner’s guide. Also, be on the lookout for our Nioh 2 review in the coming days.

Yokai Shift

As to be expected, your primary Yokai ability is to turn into one! Known as the Yokai Shift, this form grants you devastating power for a limited time. It’s similar to Nioh 1’s Living Weapon form but is greatly expanded. There are three Yokai Shift forms in total–Brute, Feral, and Phantom–and the form you can become depends on the Guardian Spirit you equip.

In terms of capability, none of the Yokai Shift forms have inherent weaknesses. Instead, their abilities suit specific tastes. To quickly summarize each form’s strengths: Brute is proficient for those big on inflicting powerful melee damage, Feral is fantastic for scrappy hit-‘n-run tactics, and Phantom is for more ranged, defensive-minded Onmyo Magic players.

I chose Feral, as it works well with my twitchier Devil-May-Cry-and-Bloodborne-action-game background. So if that sounds appealing, then that Yokai Shift form may be for you. However, if you’re predominantly a heavy-weapon user in Soulsborne games, then I can see Brute’s arsenal of hard-hitting special attacks being ideal. On the other hand, Phantom is all about controlling the space between you and enemies, sporting attacks with more reach, and an ability that allows you to throw a projectile and teleport to your foe–perfect for fans of zoning in fighting games.

Guardian Spirits

At the start, you have the choice between three Guardian Spirits, which each has an associated Yokai Shift form. Your options are Makami the wolf (Brute), Ame-no-Mitori the bird (Feral), or Kagewani the shark (Phantom).

Aside from dictating the Yokai Shift form you take, Guardian Spirits also yield unique Special Effects that buff your character’s stats in varying ways. For example, Makami decreases your melee attack Ki consumption, increases your final blow damage, enhances your Yokai ability damage, and improves your resistance to fire. For a full rundown of a Guardian Spirit’s special effects, hop into the respective menu in the pause screen. During the opening tutorial, you can always backpedal your choices to check out the Special Effects, as well as practice the Guardian Spirit’s Yokai Shift form abilities.

Don’t sweat the choice too much, though. You do get more Guardian Spirits the further you progress, so you’ll ultimately find one that suits you even better. And the more you get, the more Yokai Shift forms you’ll have at your disposal, so you’re not locked into one form for the rest of the game. Though it’s worth considering the impact of choosing the bird Guardian Spirit, Ame-no-Mitori early on.

Yokai Burst Counter

While the abilities of the three Yokai Shift forms subtly vary, they all share one core essential: Yokai Burst. When timed correctly, this technique can interrupt and counter special enemy attacks imbued with red energy, leaving them open to attack. The timing varies withn the enemy, but try to execute it just as its attack is about to hit.

It’s also worth noting that the Yokai Shift form you choose has its own unique Yokai Burst maneuver and timing. Brute form has a backhand attack that covers a small space in front of you, Feral form has a rush attack/quick dash maneuver, and Phantom puts up a shield in a stationary defensive position. Whichever Yokai Shift form you choose, make sure to practice using it often against the different enemy types.

Yokai Burst is a significant pillar of Nioh 2’s combat and can quickly turn the tide of a tough encounter when used correctly. Be mindful that the maneuver consumes Anima energy–the purple gauge below your Ki–so avoid unnecessarily spamming it.

Soul Cores

Aside from Yokai Shift, your Yokai powers also manifest in Soul Cores. Special items collected from bosses and powerful enemy Yokai, Soul Cores grant you powerful attack abilities. You can equip up to two at a time, so long as you have enough capacity to attune it to your Guardian Spirit. Each has a unique attack attached; for example, the Enki Soul Core quickly turns you into the monkey Yokai as you throw a spear at an enemy.

Soul Cores consume a lot of Anima energy when performed, so try to be smart about when you choose to unleash them in battle. Steadily deliver damage, and you should earn another Soul Core use in no time. Soul Core abilities are recommended in the Dark Realm, where you’re Ki regeneration is handicapped, and your Anima recharges faster.

When you obtain any Soul Core, prioritize returning to a nearby Shrine to purify it, as you can lose any in your possession if you die and fail to retrieve your Guardian Spirit grave. It’s possible to collect multiple Soul Cores of the same type, which you can fuse at a shrine to increase the potency of its Special Effects. Like most things in Nioh 2, it’s always good to consolidate, so make sure to use Soul Fusion often to improve your Soul Core power. Otherwise, you can use Resting Rites to dispose of any unwanted duplicates cluttering your inventory.

In Conclusion

Yokai powers seem overwhelming at first, but with enough time and practice, they’ll naturally become a part of your attack repertoire. You’re encouraged to use them frequently, so make sure they are front of mind at all times, especially during a tough encounter. If you’d like to practice using your Yokai powers, I highly suggest jumping into the Training Ground from the Starting Point on the world map. There you can transform and remain in Yokai Shift form to get the hang of its attacks and abilities without worrying about a time-limit.

And with that, I’ve imparted all of my Yokai power wisdom to you. Now, go! Let the legend come back to life!

Now Playing: Nioh 2 – 12 Things You Should Know Before Playing

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A new game focused on learning other languages, Trancelation, releases for Switch on March 13. It’s an arcade-style title that gamifies the learning process, and publisher Baltoro Games has given early adopters a few incentives to purchase the game.

Nintendo Life is reporting that if you grab the game on Switch before March 16, you’ll be able to download an extra four games for free. They’re not the most high-profile games on the system, but they’ll be yours to keep. The four games up for grabs at Freecell Solitaire Deluxe, Pizza Bar Tycoon, 2048 Battles, and Flowlines VS.

While Trancelation carries an RRP of $10, it will be discounted by 30% at launch, costing $7. So that’s $7 for five games–we haven’t reviewed any of them, but if you want to bulk out your Switch collection, it could be a good deal.

This isn’t quite as great as the Qubic free games campaign from late 2019, but it’s still not bad.

There are some other big Nintendo Switch sales happening this week, including discounts on Mario games.

Ori and the Blind Forest was a delight in 2015–a tough-as-nails combination of a metroidvania structure and Meat Boy-like demands with a surprising amount of heartfelt heft. Five years later, Moon Studios’ followup, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is every bit as graceful and lovely as its predecessor, even if some of the emotional beats and exploration feel a little less novel the second time around.

Will of the Wisps picks up almost immediately where Blind Forest left off, with Ori’s patchwork family unit welcoming a new member, the owlet Ku. The family is happy and loving, but Ku wants to fly and Ori wants to help her. Soon the two are swept off in a gale to a new forest deep with rot, which begins the adventure in earnest.

Because this setting is disconnected from the one in Blind Forest, the geography is new, yet familiar. The painterly imagery is comforting, especially in the opening hours as you explore similar biomes. They’re beautifully rendered again, but a little samey if you’ve played the first game. After a while, Will of the Wisps opens up to more varied locales, like an almost pitch-black spider’s den or a windswept desert. The theme throughout the story is the encroachment of the Decay, a creeping evil that overtook this neighboring forest after its own magical life tree withered. But if it’s meant to be ugly, you wouldn’t know it from many of the lush backgrounds–especially in the case of a vibrant underwater section. Ori is often swallowed up by these sweeping environments, emphasizing just how small the little forest spirit is compared to their massive surroundings.

Ori’s suite of acrobatic moves makes delving into new areas a thrilling treat. Exploration becomes especially engaging as you unlock more abilities and become increasingly adept. Some of them are lifted directly from the first game, which can be disappointing next to the excitement of discovering a shiny new ability. Still, those old standbys still work well and make the improvisational leaps and bounds feel as great as ever.

The picturesque vistas seem to be pushing the hardware hard, however. Playing on an Xbox One X, I encountered visual glitches like screen freezes on a semi-regular basis, and the map would stutter. Usually these were a simple nuisance, but once in a while it would come mid-leap and throw off my sense of momentum and direction. A day-one patch significantly reduced the freezing and fixed the map issue altogether.

While Ori is ostensibly a metroidvania, Will of the Wisps is less focused on exploration and backtracking than is typical for the genre. Your objectives are usually clear, straight lines, and shortcuts littered throughout the environments get you back to the main path quickly. Most of the wanderlust comes in the form of plentiful sidequests, like delivering a message or finding a knick-knack for a critter. There’s even a trading chain. Eventually you open up a hub area that can be built into a small community for the forest denizens. These upgrades are largely cosmetic, so it’s mostly a visual showcase of having collected the specialized items used for it. The sidequests are almost entirely optional. I was glad for the freedom to pursue the critical path without artificial barriers, but I also plan to go back and plumb the depths simply to spend more time in the world.

The reduced emphasis on exploration seems to have been replaced by a major expansion of combat. Rather than the passing nuisance of the occasional enemy, Will of the Wisps introduces myriad threats that are a near-constant presence. Thankfully, the combat system has been overhauled to match the elegance of the platforming. The story progress provides a sword and bow, with other optional weapons for purchase, and you can map any combat moves to X, Y, or B. The combat does take some getting used to, though, in part because it’s built to work in conjunction with Ori’s nimble moves. While I felt awkward and imprecise in combat at the start, slashing my sword wildly at even the mildest of monsters, my comfort level grew as I gained new platforming skills. Around the mid-game I realized I had become adept at stringing together platforming and combat skills, air-dashing and bounding between threats with balletic rhythm and barely touching the ground until the screen had been cleared.

That level of finesse is necessary, because Ori and the Will of the Wisps introduces a series of massive boss battles, each more complex than anything in Blind Forest. Their attack patterns are often signaled by barely perceptible tells. Most of the time, the boss fills up a significant portion of the interactable foreground, and even more of the background–but this can make it frustratingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t vulnerable to your attacks, or what parts will do crash damage. This all makes defeating them feel like a relief and accomplishment, though sometimes more of the former than the latter.

Likewise, tension-filled escape sequences dot the map, requiring almost perfect precision and execution of your tool set to survive a gauntlet of threats. The game offers occasional checkpoints in these sections, as well as a more generous checkpointing feature around the overworld.

The sprawling bosses and climactic escapes are ways to express a larger, more operatic feel for Will of the Wisps. Blind Forest was a humble little game that told an intimate, relatable fable. Wisps has a grander, sweeping scope, and in the process it loses some of that intimacy. It still has moments with emotional heft, both exhilarating and heartbreaking, and Moon Studios still has a way of expressing an incredible degree of wordless emotion with subtle moments of body language.

The story in Will of the Wisps is often darker, and even its touching moments are more bittersweet. The chief antagonist, an owl named Shriek, is similar to the first game’s Kuro in having suffered a tragedy in the past. But how the story addresses that tragedy is significantly sadder, and stands as a moment of haunting animation that will stay with me more than any other single image from the game. Even the moments of finality that end the story, while appropriately heroic and hopeful, are tinged with quiet sadness and inevitability–the sense that everything ends.

That finality could signal that this is the last Ori game, a farewell to the fantastical world and memorable characters that made Moon Studios such a standout developer from its very first effort. If that is the case, you could hardly ask for a better send-off. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a remarkable synthesis of artful design and beautiful moments.

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One of the most important deaths in the Batman mythos, the death of second Robin Jason Todd in #428, almost didn’t happen. In 1988, in the lead-up to Jason Todd’s death, readers were able to vote on whether or not the divisive character should survive a beating from the Joker (followed by the explosion of the building he was in), and the fans ultimately voted for his death.

Now, Polygon has gotten an exclusive look at the original alternate pages that were created in case the poll had swung the other way, revealing how Batman would have handled Jason Todd’s survival. If Todd had survived the Death in the Family arc, as it turns out, DC still had a way to keep him off the pages for the foreseeable future.

Head to Polygon to see the pages that were not printed. In them, a jubilant Batman discovers that Todd is alive, but badly hurt. Batman quickly removes his costume and wraps him in a towel so as to hide his identity as they go to the hospital. In a single later panel, Bruce visits Jason in the hospital–he’s in a coma, and Bruce says that it’s up to “the boy’s own recuperative powers” whether or not he pulls through.

This essentially means that the comics could have continued on, as they did, with Jason Todd’s survival not affecting the course of the arcs that followed until D.C. decided to wake him from his coma. That’s not what happened, however, and instead Todd died.

DC received 10,614 calls about Jason Todd’s fate, with the decision to kill him coming down to a margin of 72 votes. Todd would famously return in 2005 as the Red Hood, having been revived by Superboy-Prime altering reality (which is to say, some comic book nonsense).

Batman will return to cinema screens in 2021, seemingly without Robin, in Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Here’s our first look at the new Batmobile.