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The Best Reviewed Movies of 2018

The year is coming to a close, and the time has come to look back at all the films that blew our minds.

IGN’s film critics watched a heck of a lot of movies this year, and these were the very best. IGN rates its movies on a scale of 0-10, and any film released (theatrically or streaming) between January 1 and December 31st is eligible for this slideshow, which highlights all the films that earned a 9 or above from any of our various film critics.

On this scale, any film rated 9.0-9.9 is considered “amazing” and anything that gets the coveted 10 rating is declared a “masterpiece”. And we don’t give 10s out to just anything, either. In fact, not one motion picture earned a 10/10 rating in all of 2018. (And be sure to check out our worst reviewed movies of 2018.)

Nintendo: A Year in Review

2017 was a hard act to follow for Nintendo. The Switch’s launch last year was accompanied by some of the best Mario and Zelda games each of their respective series has seen, as well as the fantastic Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. So it’s not too surprising that Nintendo had trouble hitting that bar again in 2018, but that’s not to say it’s had a bad year overall.

In the special episode of NVC at the top of the page, we broke down the highs and lows of Nintendo’s 2018, and you can keep reading to see some of the biggest highlights from the year.

Nintendo’s Biggest 2018 Exclusives

PUBG Adds New Vikendi Snow Map On Mobile

Hot on the heels of its release on PC, Vikendi has arrived in the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The new snow map is now available on both iOS and Android as a free update, and it comes alongside a handful of other new features.

Unlike PUBG’s other maps thus far, Vikendi is 6×6 km large, making it smaller than Erangel and Miramar–both of which are 8×8 km–but larger than the 4×4 Sanhok. Its defining feature is its snow-covered terrain, which encompasses mountains, open fields, frozen lakes, and deserted villages.

The map also boasts some unique elements, including an exclusive vehicle–snowmobiles. Players will also be able to take part in snowball fights on the spawn island. You can take a closer look at the map in the trailer below.

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In addition to Vikendi, the latest update for the mobile version of PUBG introduces cross-server matchmaking and improved anti-cheating measures. PUBG Corp. and Tencent have also added a firearm finish upgrade system, as well as “Lucky Treasure,” which gives players a chance to get the Glacier – M416 after completing daily missions. You can find the full patch notes for the update on Reddit.

Vikendi arrived for the PC version of PUBG this week, following its release on the game’s test server during The Game Awards earlier this month. PUBG Corp. also released the Vikendi: Survivor Pass on PC, which lets players unlock exclusive skins and rewards by completing certain milestones. Vikendi is slated to come to Xbox One and PS4 in January 2019.

12 News Stories That Shook the World in 2018

2018 was a memorable year in the world of entertainment. The box office thrived behind blockbusters Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, as well as surprise hits like Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place. The gaming community celebrated an equally successful year behind AAA masterpieces Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War, with help from high-quality indies such as Celeste, Dead Cells, and Return of the Obra Dinn.

While there was a lot to celebrate, this year featured an equal amount of surprising and controversial stories that will leave a lasting impact on the gaming, film, television, and comics communities. From celebrity deaths to studio closures, these are the twelve news stories that shook the world of entertainment in 2018, listed chronologically.

Free Steam PC Game For A Limited Time: Lego The Lord Of The Rings

Sure, you could peruse the Steam Winter Sale for big discounts on PC games. Or you could hop on over to the Humble Store and grab a copy of Lego The Lord of the Rings for free. All you need is a Humble account and a willingness to subscribe to the Humble newsletter (you can always unsubscribe later), and you can add it to your library. No other strings are attached. Get your copy here.

The only problem is that the deal doesn’t last long. It goes away December 22 at 10 AM PT (1 PM ET). It’s also possible codes for the game will run out, so head to the Humble Store quickly to secure your freebie.

As for the game itself, like the book and film trilogy it’s based on, it follows the adventures of Frodo Baggins, an unlikely hero who ends up transporting a ring of great power into the realm of the enemy to see to its destruction. The big differences are that many parts of the game are made of destructible Legos, and it’s suffused with the Lego franchise’s signature brand of humor.

In GameSpot’s 8.5/10 Lego The Lord of the Rings review, Jason Venter wrote, “TT Games and Lego struck gold when they united for Lego Star Wars in 2005, and that rich vein is still yielding worthwhile results. Lego The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the finest treasure that the partnership has yet produced, a compelling mixture of cooperative gameplay, secrets galore, and a story that remains one of the most fantastic that Hollywood has ever captured on film. If you haven’t given the Lego games a chance yet, there has never been a better time to start.”

Grab your copy before the game goes back to regular price.

Check Out Six Photos From John Wick: Chapter 3

New photos from John Wick: Chapter 3 have been revealed.

The film, starring Keanu Reeves as the titular protagonist, sees Wick return with a $14 million price tag on his head and “an army of bounty-hunting killers on his trail.”

The film also reunites Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane and Lance Reddick and introduces new characters played by Halle Berry, Anjelica Huston, Asia Kate Dillon, Mark Dacascos and Jason Mantzoukas. Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman join the cast as “formidable professional killers that Wick has to face off against,” and martial arts star Tiger Hu Chen.

Russo Brothers’ New Superhero Syfy Series is Hogwarts for Killers

Syfy has made the series premiere of Deadly Class available online ahead of its official broadcast debut, scheduled for Wednesday, January 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. This is an advanced review of the first episode.

There’s a wellspring of violent, nihilistic stories to match the current political climate. The Deadly Class comic — the Rick Remender-Wesley Craig monthly from Image — is one of them, and while its TV translation captures the feel of modern America, it has little to actually say about it.

Created by a who’s who of writers and producers (including Remender himself, along with Avengers: Infinity War’s Joe & Anthony Russo), the first chapter in Syfy’s series has arrived nearly a month ahead of schedule. Starring Benjamin Wadsworth as boys’ home runaway Marcus Lopez and Benedict Wong as a school-for-assassins ringleader — the suave, Rhadamanthine Master Lin — Deadly Class drops us right in the middle of Reagan’s America in 1987.

16 Changes WWE’s Raw And Smackdown Need To Make In This New Era

WWE’s programming has hit a slump. Viewership on its flagship show, Raw, is way down, and Seth Rollins even commented on the quality of the show recently. Although that was part of the storyline, Rollins was saying what fans of WWE programming have been saying for quite some time. WWE’s non-NXT content had become stagnant and boring.

On the December 17 episode of Raw, the entire McMahon family–sans Linda–came out to announce that there will be changes in WWE, and much like the announcement in the ’90s that ushered in the Attitude Era, the landscape for the sports entertainment company will change.

However, this change won’t happen overnight. The episode of Raw that followed was a bit more of the same, as expected, but we did get a fun gauntlet match for the number one contender for the Raw Women’s Championship. And Tyler Breeze returned to television and challenged Dean Ambrose for the Intercontinental Championship. On top of all that, six NXT superstars are getting called up. When? No clue, but probably in the new year.

We got more of this “everything is changing” landscape on Smackdown the next night, but again, it’s going to take time to see how all of this plays out. The Roadie didn’t become the Road Dogg overnight.

As we look at the current landscape with WWE’s primary programming–Raw, Smackdown, and the PPVs–we have a few ideas on how to return these shows to their glory days. Let us know what changes you want to see in the comments below.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead Final Season Becomes Epic Store Exclusive

Skybound Games has announced that the final two episodes of the PC version of Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season will be exclusively available through the Epic Games Store. The PC version of the previous two episodes of the final season will also be added to the store.

This does not apply to anyone who’s already purchased the Season Pass for TWD: The Final Season. If you’ve purchased the Season Pass through another PC game store–such as Steam–then you will still get the last two episodes through said retailer. However, if you’ve been buying episodes of the PC version of The Final Season individually, then you’ll have to go through Epic for the last bits of the story.

“The team at Epic owns a major chapter in the history of the game industry,” wrote Skybound Games CEO Ian Howe and president of interactive Dan Muray in a prepared joint-statement, according to Variety. “We’re excited to work together on their latest transformative event with the launch of the Epic Games Store. Epic stepped up to the plate immediately to work with us in order to bring the original team back together and ensure fans will receive the completed season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season.”

This announcement comes in on the tail end of several major events that shook up the games industry. After facing a financial crisis, Telltale closed its doors and laid off pretty much its entire staff, as well as announcing the cancellation of TWD: The Final Season. However, Skybound saved the game and took over development, and also did its best to hire on former Telltale employees to finish the project. Epic announced its game store months after, creating direct competition to Steam with the reveal of exclusive titles such as Hades and Journey, as well as a more favorable revenue split for developers. Days later, Discord followed up that announcement with the reveal that its game store would also have a better revenue split for developers in comparison to Steam, and also secured its own exclusive titles. The landscape of PC gaming is certainly changing, with both Epic and Discord making big moves to combat Steam’s control of the market.

Episode 3 of TWD: The Final Season, titled Broken Toys, is scheduled to release on January 15, the same day the game is made available for consoles.

The Games and Game Services With the Most Downtime in 2018

Whenever PSN, Xbox Live or any other major online game or service goes down, these become some of the most heavily searched topics on IGN. So, we wanted to see how various services, platforms and individual games fared throughout 2018 when it came to staying online. To do so, we asked Downdetector, a website that collects data on online service outages, who experienced the most downtime in 2018.

To determine which games and services go down and for how long, Downdetector “collects status reports from a series of sources. Through a realtime analysis of this data, our system is able to automatically determine outages and service interruptions at a very early stage.” Downtime analyzes reports from sources like Twitter, and detects outages when the number of reports jumps above a relative baseline level.