Month: November 2017

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Sometimes I wonder if Legends of Tomorrow will ever become too cute and lighthearted for its own good. The trailer for “Phone Home” made it seem as though this episode might go over the top, with its depiction of the team joining forces with young Ray Palmer for a saccharine-sweet spoof of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. But as always, the series manages to temper its goofy, earnest sense of humor with a touch of serious drama and a strong, if very dysfunctional team dynamic. “Phone Home” captures Legends at its most charming and lovable.

This episode makes no bones about the fact that it’s lampooning E.T. Sure, there are plenty of other amusing references and callbacks to other films (including a great Aliens reference courtesy of Amaya), but this isn’t a Stranger Things-style mashup of all things ’80s. That said, the E.T. formula lent itself very well to this episode. The whole point was to explore the root of Ray’s inflappably cheerful and optimistic personality. Who else would befriend a hungry alien he met in a sewer pipe?

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Depending on where you live, it may already be November 1, and that means the next set of Xbox One and Xbox 360 Games With Gold titles are now available. Xbox One owners can now pick up the racing game TrackMania Turbo, while puzzler The Turing Test, a holdover from October, will continue to be free through November 15.

Switching to Xbox 360, the Sega Saturn remake Nights Into Dreams is available at the low, low price of free. Later in the month, starting on November 16, Tales From The Borderlands will go free on Xbox One, while Deadfall Adventures will drop to $0.00 that day.

You can see November 2017’s full Games With Gold lineup below. Click any game link to queue up your download from Xbox.com.

In other news, Microsoft has rolled out the next set of weekly deals for Xbox One and Xbox 360, while the Xbox One X’s release on November 7 is now just a few days away.

November 2017 Games With Gold

Xbox One

• TrackMania Turbo (November 1-30)
• Tales From the Borderlands (November 16 – December 15)
• The Turing Test (now – November 15)

Xbox 360

• Nights Into Dreams (November 1-15)
• Deadfall Adventures (November 16-30)

Mark Hamill has revealed he only returned to the Star Wars universe because his co-star Harrison Ford did.

In an interview with the New York Times, Hamill described that he was initially very hesitant after he and Carrie Fisher were pitched the idea of returning by George Lucas.

“I was completely stunned,” he told the publication. “Carrie, not a minute went by — she slapped the table and goes, ‘I’m in!’ I said, ‘Carrie, poker face!’”

“I was just really scared,” he said. “I thought, why mess with it? The idea of catching lightning in a bottle twice was ridiculously remote.”

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Tonight’s episode of The Flash saw Team Flash take another big step toward figuring out the identity of the Thinker and the nature of his master plan, which is strange considering we usually don’t learn important details about the main villain until much later in the season. As it turns out, that’s by design. We attended a press event where showrunner Andrew Kreisberg explained why the writers are taking a different approach this time around.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for “Elongated Journey Into Night”!

At the end of the episode, Ralphy Dibny finally comes around and gives Barry the name of mysterious villain, DeVoe. But this wasn’t the first time Barry heard the name (thanks to the wonders of time-travel, natch), so he already has a headstart when he goes to work on the clue with the rest of Team Flash. As Kreisberg explains, the show usually keeps the main villain’s identity a secret until the endgame, but holding onto that information for too long can cause issues, so now they’re revealing just about everything to Team Flash (and the audience) in the first nine episodes of the season, which will all lead to a big confrontation with the Thinker.

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Four professional game reviewers attempt to defend utterly rubbish games, but can you guess which one secretly likes each game?

Super Mario Odyssey has been out for a few days now, but many players are still only scratching the surface of Mario’s first Switch adventure. Unlike the more linear level design of Super Mario Galaxy, Odyssey hearkens back to Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine with its many sprawling, sandbox-style Kingdoms, each of which houses a myriad of Power Moons and other collectibles to find.

Mario traverses to each Kingdom in his hat-shaped airship, the Odyssey, but that isn’t the plumber’s only means of traveling between levels. Scattered about many of the Kingdoms are warp paintings, which will instantly transport you back to a specific world without having to take your ship. Not only are these paintings a convenient way to quickly revisit a previous level, they also drop you off in an out-of-reach area of the kingdom, where you can pick up a new Power Moon.

There are 10 warp paintings scattered about Mario Odyssey, some of which are hidden better than others. In the video above, we take a look at all of the painting locations hidden throughout the game and which Kingdom they transport you to. The video contains some spoilers, so be advised if you’d like to find the paintings for yourself.

Super Mario Odyssey launched for Nintendo Switch on October 27. For more about the game, be sure to check out six things we wish we knew before starting, as well as our roundup of guides, features, and everything you need to know about Super Mario Odyssey.

The United States Men’s National Team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, marking the first time the side didn’t qualify for the event since 1986. Electronic Arts puts out a World Cup edition of its FIFA game timed with the event every four years to capitalize on the increased interest in the world’s most popular sport. The fact that the USMNT failed to qualify won’t have a meaningful impact on sales next year, however, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said during an earnings call today.

Wilson pointed out that there could be some impact but overall, because soccer/football is so massively popular on a global basis, the USMNT failing to qualify is basically a non-issue as it relates to FIFA game sales for the World Cup edition.

“The World Cup is the world’s largest sporting event and it is followed by all people around the world who love soccer or football depending on what they call it where they come from,” Wilson said. “Does it heighten their enjoyment if their national team is participating? Of course. But we don’t see people stopping watching a World Cup just because their team is not there. As you think about the US in particular, we are a very multicultural country.”

Additionally, some of the most widely played teams in FIFA are from Spain and the UK; Spain and England have already qualified, so that bodes well for the new game. “The most-played teams are from Spain and the UK, and the most-played players are also non-American players. So we don’t expect a huge impact [from the USMNT failing to qualify],” Wilson said.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup takes place in June-July 2018. If history is any indication, you can expect EA to release its video game for the tournament a few months earlier.

For more on EA’s latest earnings report today, check out the stories below:

• EA’s Sports Business Is The Big Bright Spot For The Company Right Now
• EA CEO Addresses Loot Crates And Pay-To-Win Concerns
• EA Talks About Closing Visceral And Single-Player Games

Henry Cavill has acknowledged that DC’s cinematic universe – or whatever we’re calling it now – hasn’t exactly had the smoothest ride.

In an extremely candid interview with The Rake Magazine (captured by this Tweet), the Superman actor said that comparisons to rival Marvel haven’t exactly been its biggest problem.

“Even if Marvel didn’t exist, we’d struggle,” he told the publication. “There was a style that

were going for, an attempt to be different and look at things from a slightly different perspective, which hasn’t necessarily worked.”

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Now that we’ve hit the spookiest part of the year, lists devoted to the best horror films are lurking around every corner. But we wanted to do things a little differently too by rounding up the best female leads in the genre. And with so many classic examples probably popping into your head right now, like Ellen Ripley of the Alien series, or Laurie and Nancy from the Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, we felt like a refresh.

The list we came up with isn’t made up exactly of your traditional “final girl” types — in fact, some of these women got laid without getting slayed. Given that all these films came out within the last 30 years, each of the protagonists demonstrates noticeably different qualities from her scream queen forebears. To make the list, we took into account things like strength, attitude, determination, whether she survives (especially in more than one film of a series), and the sheer wow-factor of her kill(s), if any. Read on if you’re looking for the perfect films to watch with that special, bada$$ lady in your life, or if you ARE that special bada$$ lady and like a little side of empowerment served with your blood ‘n guts.

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id Software’s new Doom, released in 2016, was hands-down one of the best shooters of last year, complemented by Mick Gordon’s killer soundtrack. The game is coming to virtual reality this year in the form of the Doom: VFR Edition. We got to try it out recently, and you can watch 10 minutes of gameplay in the video embedded above.

In the 10 minutes we run through several areas and clear out enemies in brutal form, just like the standard console and PC versions, but this time from a new perspective. You’ll also get a glimpse at what the menus look like in VR. It’s all still pretty fast-paced, too. Note that the footage was captured on PlayStation VR.

“Since the hallmark of any Doom game is combat, we’ve made it our top priority to ensure moving, shooting and killing demons with overwhelming force in virtual reality is as brutal and rewarding as it is in the Doom experience that fans have been enjoying for the past year,” game director Marty Stratton said in a blog post.

Doom VFR launches on December 1 for PlayStation VR and HTC Vive. It’s not the only Bethesda VR game coming out this year, as Skyrim VR for PlayStation VR lands on November 17–you can check out some new footage here. Additionally, Doom is coming to Nintendo Switch on November 10.