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Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5 will complete the coming of age arc for the fledgling hero that began in Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4.

Slight spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4 follow.

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Marvel’s Spider-Man introduced Miles Morales as an (occasionally playable) side character who’s taken under Peter Parker’s wing. The core game ends with Morales being bitten by a new radioactive spider, while DLC packs featured him taking his first steps as a superhero.

Speaking to EW, game director Brian Horton explained that the upcoming spin-off game is designed to finish the story that the first game started:  “This is a full arc for Miles Morales that started in Spider-Man [on PS4]. We really are completing this hero’s coming of age in our game. It is a complete story.”

Insomniac has already hinted at a fully-fledged Spider-Man 2, and said “we still have much of Peter [Parker]’s story left to tell”, but it feels as though Miles will be a trained superhero in his own right by the end of his starring role.

EW also posted a brand new PS5 shot from the game:

Elsewhere in the interview, Insomniac reiterates that the Miles Morales game isn’t a formal sequel to the first game, and that it’s a “shorter spin-off, likened in scope to the Lost Legacy game in the Uncharted series.”

Horton adds that the decison to have the character star in a shorter game was a way of telling his story in an “impactful” way: “When we started crafting it, we realized that, with a little bit more of a compact storytelling style, we could tell a very emotionally impactful story that would fit really well as an experience that would take Spider-Man 1 and [Miles Morales] and do justice to this character.”

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is due to arrive in Holiday 2020, exclusively for PS5. So far, we know a few plot details, we’ve seen the game’s box art, and learned that the game will feature an optional 4K/60FPS mode. We’ve also speculated about 6 comic book stories that could inspire his next journey.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales isn’t a full sequel to 2018’s web-spinning adventure, but developer Insomniac Games is still approaching this standalone project with the goal of telling a complete coming of age story for the newest wallcrawler in New York City.

“This is a full arc for Miles Morales that started in Spider-Man,” creative director Brian Horton said in an Entertainment Weekly interview.

“We really are completing this hero’s coming of age in our game. It is a complete story. When we started crafting it, we realized that, with a little bit more of a compact storytelling style, we could tell a very emotionally impactful story that would fit really well as an experience that would take Spider-Man 1 and [Miles Morales] and do justice to this character.”

The article also dropped more details on how Morales will function in his first solo outing, as Horton described how the unique bio-electrical and invisibility powers that the original Spider-Man’s protégé possesses are also metaphors for the hero’s journey that he embarks on.

“What I think is really compelling about Miles as a character is he has friends that he could actually let into his world — his human world and his Spider world. He’s a little different in the way he approaches it,” Horton said.

EW also revealed a new screenshot for the game in which Morales is outfitted in a costume that blends his comic book costume with the more modern style of Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is launching for the PS5 during Holiday 2020 and features a Performance Mode option that will let you play the game at 4K and 60 frames per second.

Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story will be released on VOD & Digital platforms on August 18 from Wood Entertainment in North America, as well as internationally through Garage (Australia), Sky Documentaries (UK), and Program Store (France).

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Pretending I’m a Superman focuses just as much on video games as it does on the history of skateboarding and the culture surrounding it. Those who either grew up playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater or used to skateboard (and those who still ride) will find fascination in the details of what really went on behind-the-scenes and how the game’s release had a major impact on the growth of the sport worldwide.

The film is grounded in the reality of seeing professional athletes and well-known bands struggle in their respective fields, until the video game industry gave them an unexpected opportunity that changed their entire lives. Tony will be the first to admit the success in his career is due to Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

The opening of the documentary has parallels to classic skate videos, which is a subtle yet appreciated throwback for anyone who remembers watching skate vids on repeat. Punk music blares as the shots highlight the main pro skaters interviewed for the documentary – all household names – including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, Bob Burnquist, Jamie Thomas, Eric Koston, and Aaron “Jaws” Homoki. Each of these skaters offer valuable insight to what it was like during the beginning and later periods of the game’s release.

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Pretending I’m a Superman flawlessly flows through the eras of skateboarding and effectively chronicles the ups and downs of the sport to lay the groundwork of the progression that leads to Tony Hawk Pro Skater’s success, starting with the popularity of skateboarding in the ’70s and moving through the crashes and rises in the ’80s and ’90s. It wasn’t until the extreme sports event, X Games, launching in 1995, that Tony’s name became recognizable following his gold and silver medals for vert and street skating categories.

Swedish award-winning filmmaker Ludvig Gür does a fantastic job directing a piece that has so many moving parts in various timelines, yet intertwining the older, classic shots on VHS with modern tech and cinematics to pull out the depth in the story so it doesn’t fall flat. There are areas that could use improvement, but are minor in comparison, such as towards the end of the film when the focus gets slightly lost while trying to add in various topics before it wraps.

Tony shares how he’s always been a gamer and was an “arcade kid,” which is when the documentary transitions into discussions around the creation of a skateboarding game. From various publishers pushing back against the idea to Activision ultimately working with Neversoft on the project, you see the nitty gritty of what appears to have been a lengthy process. A common theme from the negative responses were publishers thinking a skateboarding game wouldn’t be marketable enough – something that is clearly proved otherwise throughout the film.

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Mockup illustrations for level designs and characters, along with demo footage, and behind-the-scenes motion-capture bring you into that time and make you more curious as to what the process was like, which continues to be elaborated on between each scene and interview. Walter Day, accurately described as the “father of competitive gaming,” even makes an appearance, going back to the beginning of skateboarding games and what Tony Hawk Pro Skater meant for the gaming world.

The only scattered part of the documentary is the focus on the bands that were highlighted in the original game, including Goldfinger, Primus, and Bad Religion. The discussions are more than captivating and inspiring, but they seem to be edited into random sections throughout, which ultimately interrupts the flow of the film in those parts.

Something this documentary does extremely well is instantly make you want to jump back into playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater (which will be possible on current-gen consoles come September with the remake) or head outside and get back on a skateboard – the latter of which inspired those who played the game originally, including pro skater Elliot Sloan who elaborates on his influence from Tony and the game.

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The film also details the complexity surrounding the sequel and growth of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater brand, including mistakes that were made and titles that died off due to various factors – one of which was when the game Skate released in 2007, which saw a substantial decline in sales for the Tony Hawk games, since they all of a sudden had another competitor in the field.

Civilization 6 has been released for Android devices, nearly 3 years after it arrived on iOS.

The fantastic strategy game will be free-to-start on Android devices from today (available on the Google Play Store), offering you 60 turns of play, before offering a $19.99 USD purchase for the core game.

Add-ons will be additional in-app purchases after that initial purchase:

• Rise and Fall expansion – $29.99
• Gathering Storm expansion – $39.99
• Civilization and Scenario packs – $4.99-$8.99

 

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It’s not clear if this new version will include the New Frontier DLC pass, which delivers new content every two months.

When it arrived on iPad in 2017, we awarded Civilization 6 a 9.1 review, saying it was “about as good of a PC-to-iPad conversion as we could have hoped for. It brings nearly every feature of the single-player version of the outstanding PC game to a much more comfortable tablet, courtesy of intuitive touch controls.”

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

For the first time in what feels like living memory, EA Sports appear to be making notable changes to Career Mode with FIFA 21 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with the Switch seemingly being left behind for another year and no news on what’s in-store for next-gen FIFA yet. Alterations are being made to how you sign players, develop them and manage their schedules, and while not quite displaying the level of control over your squad that you’d see in perennial simulation Football Manager, these changes do seem like they’ll actually make a genuine difference to who the mode will be played. Let’s take a look at the major additions in some more detail:

Interactive Match Sim

A new way to play through a season in FIFA 21 that lands somewhere between playing through each match and using the instant result simulation option to skip through games you just don’t fancy playing. It’s presentation borrows heavily from the classic Football Manager viewpoint of bouncing circles shuffling around the pitch from a birds-eye view but on a gameplay level is much closer to the Play the Moments option found in the Madden games since Madden 17.

You’ll be able to watch your fixtures take place at an increased pace, but crucially can jump in at any moment during the match to take control of your players on the pitch. Whether this be as short a moment like attempting to score a crucial penalty, or a full half if your team is trailing after 45 minutes and the tide is in need of turning. There’s no limit to how many times you can seamlessly jump in and out of each viewpoint and should provide a new level of flexibility as to how you manage your fixtures.

More Transfer Options

New ways to sign players are being introduced. Loan to buy options with both optional and mandatory fees will be available, as well as these types of deal being initiated by AI managers. When you start a new career mode, new set-up options will also be available. Authentic transfer mode can be turned on, leading to tougher negotiations and less bizarre transfer dealings from other clubs. On the other end of the spectrum though, you can choose to start with a financial takeover to instantly boost your transfer funds and play more of a fantasy football style.

Change Player Positions

This is the most exciting new aspect to career mode in my eyes and should allow for new levels of variety when team-building. The way you develop individual players in your squad once you’ve signed them is also being overhauled. The new growth system will allow you to train players into learning new positions. By selecting their new position and monitoring their attribute changes in training you’ll be able to see how well they are adjusting and hopefully watch their stat numbers rise. There’s no guarantee of success though, the more the drastic the position change, the less chance of the player adopting it. You’ll likely have far more joy converting Raheem Sterling from a winger into a centre-forward due to his pace and finishing stats or Alexander-Arnold into a play-making midfielder than you would attempting to turn Neymar into a rock of a centre-back. It’s this sort of experimentation that could lead to some fun results though. [widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=fifa-21-13-new-images&captions=true”]

Match Sharpness

Match sharpness is a new attribute that indicates how likely your players are to perform in the most crucial moments of a game. You can increase your players’ sharpness by organising group training sessions that focus on specific situations. Want your forwards to put away their big chances? Do a finishing drill. Think you might be on the back foot in the next fixture? Focus on getting your defenders sharp in the training session beforehand. It’s not quite clear how much of an impact match sharpness will have on the pitch yet, but adds another dynamic to take into account rather than just skipping through all training sessions to get to the next match.

Schedule Planning

You’ll now have more flexibility than ever before about what your squad does when not playing matches. Balancing rest days with training sessions will be key as you try and keep match fitness, sharpness and morale in perfect harmony. It will be an extra level of challenge on top of playing the actual matches that once again relates to the Football Manager series. It’s not got quite the level of depth to the systems found in Sports Interactive series but definitely is a step in the right direction of taking in account more of the aspects of a manager’s role. It will be intriguing to see if this system is genuinely useful, or just becomes an annoyance to manage over time as the inevitable fixture pile-up occurs.

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While I can see myself using the new interactive match sim option intermittently and having a lot of fun messing with players positions and developing them, career mode maybe isn’t get the complete overhaul that FIFA fans have been wishing for quite some time now. Nonetheless, I’m excited to get my hands on it for myself and see just how much these changes will affect how I approach the mode. What changes are looking forward to, and what features would you like to see added to career mode in the future? Let us know in the comments below!

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Simon Cardy loves everything about football despite being regularly tortured by his Tottenham Hotspur season ticket. Send old Gareth Bale goals to him on Twitter at @CardySimon.

AMC will reopen theaters at more than 100 locations in the U.S. on August 20, with admission prices set at just 15 cents per ticket, for one day only, in a promotion that commemorates the chain’s centennial celebration.

Variety reports that AMC Theaters will be rolling back ticket prices to roughly match the same rate that moviegoers would have paid in 1920, “the year that the company’s founders, the Dubinsky Brothers, began operations with a single movie screen in Kansas City, Missouri.”

Celebrate a century of movies at AMC with 15¢ tickets to any movie on Thursday, August 20! Hurry – get your tickets online now before they sell out! https://t.co/FyQXj4G9qb pic.twitter.com/1TQcT2iU35

— AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres) August 13, 2020

The throwback ticket prices will apply to the chain’s slate of legacy movies, which includes the likes of Black Panther and The Empire Strikes Back. Tickets for these catalog titles will increase to $5 apiece after opening day while new movies will cost approximately $10 per ticket, depending on the market.

The theatrical release calendar for new films comprises of Russell Crowe’s revenge-thriller Unhinged and Disney’s long-awaited New Mutants, which is expected to debut on August 28, while Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Tenet is set for September 3, one week after its international release.

Warner Bros. demonstrated flexibility by releasing Tenet in other territories first while the U.S. theater release date suffered several delays due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. AMC now aims to have approximately “two-thirds of its more than 600 locations operational” in time for the film’s release.

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AMC is just one of many companies that has been hit hard by the pandemic. After closing more than 600 locations in March, AMC furloughed its CEO and other corporate employees, as the company faced financial uncertainty after its credit rating was downgraded amid fears that the entertainment chain would run out of cash during its extended theater closures.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Ember Labs’ Kena: Bridge of Spirits debuted during a PS5 showcase, but it will be coming to PS4 as well. You can buy the current-gen version with confidence, though, as the studio says the upgrade to the PS5 version will be free.

The studio addressed a fan asking about next-gen upgrade, and confirmed that it will be free. It does come with one caveat: Ember says it hasn’t finalized the time limit details yet. Some next-gen upgrades, like EA’s Dual Entitlement for many sports games, only apply if you upgrade to the next-gen version within a certain window. Other games, like Control, have made waves by offering less generous upgrade programs.

The debut for Kena: Bridge of Spirits showed off a lush, vibrant world in the style of Studio Ghibli films. We saw combat with magic powers and a bow, as well as the assistance of a magical woodland spirit.

PlayStation competitor Xbox is offering next-gen upgrades as well with Smart Delivery. That program is voluntary for third-parties, but Microsoft says that all of its first-party games will use it to automatically determine the optimized version for your hardware.

Ubisoft’s launched its battle royale game Hyper Scape this week, which has so far seen a lukewarm response on Twitch now that it’s available to the public.

A first-person shooter that was built to compete with the biggest games on the streaming platform, Hyper Scape is designed to be more closely integrated with Twitch and provide an interactive experience for viewers who can vote on where a match takes place or what modifiers will be present within each round.

At the time of writing, Hyper Scape had around 6200 viewers tuning in and 252,000 followers. In comparison, the recently launched Fall Guys, which has its own game show spin on the battle royale formula, currently has over 184,000 viewers and more than 475,000 subscribers. Hyper Scape’s primary competition (Apex Legends, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Call of Duty: Warzone) all have hundreds of thousands of viewers watching daily, and subscribers numbering in the millions.

Hyper Scape’s viewership stats are also nowhere near the numbers it achieved when it was surprise-dropped on Twitch in early July, as the technical test phase saw various streamers and influencers rack up over half a million viewers within 30 minutes. The current numbers may paint a bleak picture for Hyper Scape, but Ubisoft has experience in approaching their games with longterm planning in mind.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege struggled at first to find an audience, but after five years of constant fine-tuning and expansions, the team-based title has become one of the most popular games in esports today.

Hyper Scape is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and recently introduced a new patch that tweaked certain weapons, and Hacks, and it also adjusted health regeneration.

The brand-new, just-released 27-inch iMac is now available to purchase at Amazon for up to $100 off. This 2020 model of Apple’s flagship desktop computer features a host of upgrades, including new 10th-gen Intel processors, faster GPUs, more RAM, and additional SSD storage capacity. It’s a welcome update, and you can order one right now at a discount of up to 6%. It might not be a massive discount, but it’s the best one we’ve found yet.

These iMacs are available in the standard configurations on Amazon. If you want extra customization options, like adding nano-texture glass for an extra $500(!), you can do that on the Apple Store. In any case, here are the configurations available on Amazon.

New 27-Inch MacBook Is Up at Amazon

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All of these new 27-inch iMacs come with 10th-gen Comet Lake processors. They have 5120-by-2880 Retina 5K displays. Apple has also switched out the webcam, which in previous models included a 720p sensor, with a new 1080p HD sensor. It also has better software for tone mapping and face detection that will make your work-from-home Zoom calls look better.

The other notable upgrade in this model is that SSDs are standard in all configurations, replacing the fusion drives in previous models. Aside from that, you get two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, four USB-A ports, and a gigabit Ethernet port. It also comes with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse 2 for your wireless input enjoyment.

For more deals on laptops, watches, tablets, and more, check out the best Apple deals, including the wireless, noise-canceling Apple AirPod Pros on sale for $219 and up to $300 off the latest MacBook models.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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