While 2006’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a huge hit, so it’s no surprise there is a follow-up coming, even if it is 14 years later. According to a report from Deadline, Amazon Studios has purchased a new Borat movie, and it will be out before Election Day in the United States.
A filing with the WGA, which has now been deleted, stated the full title of the film is Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan (via The Film Stage). Although the world is in the middle of a pandemic, the film, as indicated by a Deadline report, was shot quickly after unions agreed on production reopening for movies.
The movie has been rushed to be ready before Election Day and because many movie theaters are still closed or not at full capacity, reports indicate the Borat sequel will be on Amazon Prime before the end of October. However, it is unclear if this will be free to Amazon Prime Video subscribers, a rental, or purchase.
Back in August, we learned about the filming of this movie as a production truck and pick-up truck with Cohen as Borat in it were spotted on the streets, as you can see in the video above. No other details about the film have been revealed as of this writing.
A Demon’s Souls remake is set to release for PS5 on November 12 (see it on Amazon). That makes it a launch title for Sony’s upcoming system. The game is a from-the-ground-up remake of original, which appeared on PS3 back in 2009. It was something of a cult favorite, but it didn’t sell all that well at the time (though IGN gave it a 9.4/10 in our review). Despite the slow sales, the game planted the seed for what would turn into a massively popular franchise for developer FromSoftware.
This Demon’s Souls remake was done by the Bluepoint Games, the same studio that remastered Shadow of the Colossus for PS4. The graphics have certainly gotten a massive upgrade, which isn’t all that surprising, seeing as it’s landing on a platform two generations removed from the original. It will also take advantage of the PS5’s next-gen features like super-fast load times, 3D audio, and haptic feedback on the DualSense PS5 controller.
If you’re ready to lock in a copy of PS5’s Demon’s Souls for yourself, you can do so right now. It’s up for preorder at a number of retailers. Here’s everything you need to know.
Predator: Hunting Grounds developer IllFonic has released new content for the multiplayer title, adding a new map and a PvP mode. The new mode, called Clash, pits teams of four against each other, but it still keeps the Predator element that gives the game its namesake intact.
According to the announcement, rounds of Clash last about 15 minutes and the teams are tasked with taking a series of control points. But while you’re battling, you’ll also be slowly filling your Predator meter, and once it’s filled up one teammate will become the hunter. That grants you the superpowered abilities you’ll recognize from the Hunt mode, but you don’t get a second wind or target isolation tools.
The update also includes a new map called Excavation, which features the usual jungle biome alongside a more vertical multi-level cave. It’s built to create confrontations in narrow chokepoints, which facilitates the Predator’s hunting style.
Finally, the update includes a Quickplay menu to choose the Hunt or Clash modes, and loadout slots are increased from 5 to 10. IllFonic teased this update in August, when it announced a patch that included cross-play between PC and PS4.
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In time for the spooky season, developer NetherRealm Studios has unveiled an additional character outfit pack for owners Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath with three brand-new skins.
Part of the All Hallow’s Eve Skin Pack, the skins are for D’Vorah, Johnny Cage, and Sub-Zero. They transfer these three fighters into Halloween tropes, like Cage as a beastman and D’Vorah as an undead nurse. The All Hallow’s Eve Skin Pack is free for anyone who owns the Aftermath expansion.
The studio shared a brief trailer of the skins in action, as well as a screenshot with all three of them on display next to each other. You can check out the Halloween-themed skins below. At present, NetherRealm is investigating an issue where Xbox players can’t download the pack.
Check out these spooky Mortal Kombat 11 skins.
Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath is the latest major expansion to the critically acclaimed fighter. It includes additional characters, an extra storyline centered on Liu Kang’s attempts to defend Earthrealm, skin packs, and more. It retails for $40 USD on its own or $60 as part of the Kollection bundle.
In other Mortal Kombat news, MK11 may be getting a voice pack based around the cult ’90s film. There’s evidence that suggests actors from the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie may have recorded lines for the game.
Perhaps the primary appeal of the wildly popular Among Us is its social element, which would partly explain why the two-year-old game didn’t quite take off until quarantine began in March of this year. We now know that Among Us’ massive popularity is actually having a ripple effect for another social-oriented product under lockdown. According to Apptopia, the chat client Discord is raking in about 800,000 new installs per day thanks to the growing audience for Among Us.
Discord’s recent growth spike was aided first by nationwide shutdowns as COVID-19 cases began to rise earlier in the year, forcing many to seek alternate, no-contact ways to socialize. As lockdown continued and Among Us began to rise in popularity, so too did Discord’s download rates. You can see the worldwide daily download rates for both Among Us and Discord in Apptopia’s chart below.
Among Us and Discord’s daily download rates between July and September 2020, from Apptopia.
Based on Apptopia’s data, “Discord has been hitting a new lifetime high for mobile app downloads every day since September 5th.” You can get a better idea of just how high that is in Apptopia’s second chart below, which shows both the initial spike in downloads around the start of the pandemic (“hockey stick like growth,” according to Apptopia) and the second spike as Among Us began to take off a few months later. At this point, that’s about 800,000 new Discord downloads per day.
Discord’s two major popularity spikes at the start of the pandemic and as Among Us grows in popularity, from Apptopia.
Discord offers a quick and easy way for Among Us players to connect in voice chat, which probably accounts for a portion of those downloads. Discord’s recent rebranding efforts have also centered around making the chat client more appealing and accessible to non-gamers and non-gaming communities. While Among Us is still a video game, its party game format and social deception elements grant it a much wider appeal.
Among Us is free to play on mobile, but also offers crossplay support with its paid PC version, making it super easy and quick to hop into a match with friends, family, and even strangers. It is so popular that its planned sequel Among Us 2 was canceled so the developers could spend more time and resources on the original game, which remains one of the top mobile games right now.
When the PlayStation Store page for Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time launched, it revealed that the game would support offline multiplayer for 2-4 players. In an interview with GameSpot, Toys For Bob’s co-studio head Paul Yan revealed more details about the upcoming game’s competitive and co-op multiplayer modes.
“Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is at its core a single player game,” Yan explained. “However we’ve added some new modes for players to compete or cooperate locally by taking turns and passing the controller between rounds.”
Both the competitive and co-op modes will work on a pass-the-controller basis. The competitive mode is called Bandicoot Battle and involves two separate mini-games for players to race against their friends in. “Two to four players can compete head-to-head on any level of their choosing,” Yan explained. “Either by racing to be the first to the next checkpoint in ‘Checkpoint Races’ or by achieving the biggest combo of crates for the highest score in ‘Crate Combo’.”
Players can choose to play as Crash, Fake Crash, Coco, or Fake Coco–who was newly introduced for Crash 4. Players take turns racing through the level, and will be able to see ghosts of previous players going through the same level to compete against.
The Co-op mode is called Pass N. Play, and “allows two to four players to take turns making their way through the campaign, passing the controller between turns. Each player’s scores will be tallied individually at the end of the level before moving on to the next,” Yan said.
Crash Bandicoot 4 is due out on October 2 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Check out our Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time pre-order guide for more details about the release, as well as what pre-order bonuses are available.
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While we may not be getting any theatrical MCU content in 2020 after Black Widow was pushed back yet again, Disney+ is coming to the rescue with new shows for Marvel fans to enjoy. The first is set to be a docuseries called Marvel 616, which will feature unique and personal deep-dives into the various corners of the sprawling Marvel Universe from the comics to the MCU and far beyond.
We’ve already taken a look at some sneak-peeks of the show featuring clips of two episodes and seen the first trailer, but today Marvel’s official twitter account released yet another clip with more never-before-seen content. Take a look at it now.
In addition to the episodes centering on the C and D list characters of Marvel Comics and the genesis of massively popular new heroes like Kamala Khan, the clip features a look into moments taking a look at multiple facets of Marvel fandom. There are cosplayers, toy designers, even a shout-out to the meme-filled live-action Japanese Spider-Man TV Show.
And Marvel 616 won’t be the only Marvel show to hit the streaming service this year. The MCU’s first TV series, WandaVision, recently got a trailer of its own. While no exact premiere date has been set, it is scheduled for “late 2020.” The surreal superhero sitcom will follow Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Betany) as they try to navigate a strange, new, suspiciously idyllic world they’ve both found themselves in, somehow, after the events of Avengers: Endgame.
The Force is strong with firefighters after a little boy donated his Baby Yoda doll, which they now carry with them to the frontlines of battling wildfires in Oregon, California, Wyoming, and Colorado.
“These firefighters are away from their children, their loved ones. This is a little pal that brings a bit of normalcy to a crazy time,” Carver’s grandmother, Sasha Tinning, told CNN.
Now, the Baby Yoda doll has become a companion to firefighters across the Pacific Northwest and West as they go out on calls.
Baby Yoda and his firefighter pals (via Baby Yoda Fights Fires Facebook group)
The doll’s journey with its firefighter companions is chronicled by the Facebook group Baby Yoda Fights Fires, which includes photos and videos of the firefighters posing with the doll or carrying it on their backs into blazes.
DC has released the middle act of Three Jokers, the long-awaited spiritual sequel to Batman: The Killing Joke. And unsurprisingly, there are more huge reveals as Batman, Batgirl and Red Hood investigate the mystery of the three Jokers and what this trinity of evil has planned for Gotham City.
Read on to learn what happens in this issue and why Batman has more to worry about than just Joker himself. Beware of full spoilers ahead for Three Jokers #2!
Three Jokers #1 was plenty shocking in its own right, revealing Jason Todd’s darkest secret and ending with the former Robin brutally executing The Clown, the version of Joker responsible for (almost) killing him back in 1988’s Batman: A Death in the Family. But even with one of their number gone, The Criminal (the original Golden Age Joker) and The Comedian (the modern Killing Joker-era Joker) are still hard at work carrying out their master plan. They’ve been kidnapping and experimenting on dozens of unwitting Gothamites, all in the hope of creating a newer and even deadlier incarnation of the Clown Prince of Crime.
Jason is the first to track down the two Jokers, hoping to finish the job he started with The Clown. But instead he’s captured and tortured by the Jokers, forced to relive that terrible night The Clown nearly beat him to death with a crowbar. However, the Jokers don’t kill Jason. They’re still holding out hope he’s the specimen they’ve been searching for – the man capable of becoming the perfect Joker. After all, he’s already transformed into Red Hood. Maybe all he needs is that one, final push into madness.
Art by Jason Fabok. (Image Credit: DC)
A New Bat-Family Romance
Batman and Batgirl arrive too late to stop the two Jokers, but they rescue the physically and psychologically battered Jason. As Batman continues his hunt for the remaining Jokers, Barbara brings Jason back to her apartment to recuperate. There he discovers a stack of self-help books and mementos from Barbara’s years of physical therapy recovering from her gunshot wound in The Killing Joke. For the first time, Jason realizes how much he and Barbara are alike and how much they both carry the lingering trauma of the Joker in their lives.
Barbara tells Jason the one thing no one in the Bat-family has been able to admit – they all wish they had done more to help him recover from his near-death experience and help him find his way back into the light. At that moment, the two throw caution to the wind and kiss.
Art by Jason Fabok. (Image Credit: DC)
At this point it’s unclear whether Three Jokers is setting up an ongoing romance between Batgirl and Red Hood or if this is just a case of two emotionally vulnerable people processing a very heated moment. As it is, Three Jokers’ place in current DC continuity is vague. But we do have to wonder if this surprise moment could wind up impacting the long-running Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson relationship going forward.
Batman’s Original Enemy Returns
While Batgirl focuses more on helping Red Hood, Batman’s single-minded quest brings him to Blackgate Penitentiary, the prison that houses Gotham’s non-criminally insane felons. After examining the body of a corrupt, murdered judge, Batman discovers the fingerprints of the man who sent him down the path toward becoming a costumed vigilante in the first place – Joe Chill. But how can that be when Chill himself has been locked up in Blackgate for years?
Batman attempts to confront Chill in his cell, at which point his fearsome façade cracks and we see a glimpse of the wounded boy beneath:
Art by Jason Fabok. (Image Credit: DC)
Batman discovers Chill’s cell is empty, with Batgirl informing him Chill is currently dying of terminal cancer in Blackgate’s infirmary. Batman is left to return to his cave and ponder how Chill factors into The Criminal and The Comedian’s plans. Further complicating that mystery is the fact that The Comedian seems to have a twisted obsession with Chill’s family. The opening pages of this issue show him driving to a quiet suburb and enjoying dinner with a mother and son who clearly want nothing to do with him. That dinner is eventually shown to be part of The Comedian’s overactive imagination, but photos at Chill’s bedside reveal that mother and son do exist, and they’re Joe Chill’s family.
Art by Jason Fabok. (Image Credit: DC)
The two surviving Jokers are clearly fascinated with the criminal who created Batman, and we get a better idea of why that is in the closing moments of Three Jokers #2. The two Jokers kidnap Chill and film him, hoping to force a confession about his true reasons for murdering the Waynes.
Traditionally, the Wayne murders have always been depicted as an act of senseless violence by a desperate mugger. This issue seems to suggest a deeper motive at play. Perhaps Chill was hired as a hitman by a powerful Gothamite hoping to end Thomas Wayne’s philanthropic crusade? Or did some version of the Joker exist even then, knowing full well the deaths of the Waynes would fuel the rise of his beloved Batman? We’ll find out the truth when the third and final chapter of Three Jokers arrives on October 28.
