Month: January 2018

Part of what makes The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so great is how open-ended and non-linear it is. If you enjoyed this, you may be happy to learn that series producer Eiji Anonuma has come forward to say Nintendo is committed to this strategy, suggesting the next entry in the series will follow a similar format. He told IGN that the reaction to Breath of the Wild’s non-linear nature has been eye-opening.

“I can’t speak to what other people, other companies will do in their own games, but I think for me, especially just in terms of the Zelda series, the incredible freedom that this game offers you and how well that’s been received…to me, it means that freedom, that level of freedom is something that needs to be maintained in Zelda games going forward,” the producer said. “My eyes have been opened to how important that is.”

The next Legend of Zelda game is currently in some form of production, but you should not expect it to launch anytime soon.

Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s best-selling Switch game, with sales standing at 4.7 million units by Nintendo’s latest count. That is an incredibly strong sales figure when you consider the Switch itself has sold 10 million units.

In other Zelda news, Breath of the Wild’s newest expansion, Champions’ Ballad, launched earlier this month. It adds new story content, along with more weapons and items. For more, check out GameSpot’s video review here.

Everyone has access to this special Pikachu, if you know how to get it.

In the pages of Thanos #14 by writer Donny Cates and artist Geoff Shaw, it was revealed that Thanos almost had a different name.

Warning: full spoilers ahead!

Art by Geoff Shaw. (Marvel Comics)

In the story, Thanos is whisked away to the future where he meets an aged, bearded version of himself who sits alone as the ruler of a dead universe. This future-Thanos needs the help of his past self. Naturally, present-Thanos thinks this guy is some kind of pretender, so he does what Thanos does best and beats the hell out of him. In order to convince present-Thanos that this is all real, future-Thanos speaks aloud something only the real Thanos would know: their original birth name, Dione.

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Christian Bale still hasn’t watched any of Ben Affleck’s Batman films.

On the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Collider), Bale explained he hasn’t watched Affleck portray the Dark Knight due to a lack of interest from his son.

“Yes I’m interested, my son seemed like he was really interested, but then I realized he just wanted to see the trailer and that was it,” Bale said. “I tend to go see films that

want to see.”

Bale also revealed he isn’t much of superhero movie fan and hasn’t watched most comic book films, including even The Avengers.

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Two issues in, it’s beginning to seem like there’s a fundamental flaw with Phoenix Resurrection. The story of how Jean Grey comes back to life is inherently less compelling than what happens after her return. Death and resurrection are built into Jean’s world. So it is that Phoenix Resurrection is reading less like a momentous event for the X-Men line and more like a placeholder for X-Men Red. It’s just as well Marvel is publishing this comic weekly.

As with issue #1, the scenes focused on the X-Men at large are far less memorable than those geared towards Jean herself. There’s too little impetus to the X-Men’s struggle. Once again, they spend the issue blindly flailing about and struggling to arrive at the conclusion that readers already know full well – that Jean Grey has returned. Once again, the X-Men split into smaller groups and travel to various global hotspots, but to even less purpose this time around. Writer Matthew Rosenberg doesn’t spend enough time with any of these teams to be able to take advantage of their various group dynamics.

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Shaun Escayg, who has worked at Naughty Dog for seven years and most recently served as creative director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, has left the studio. He joined Naughty Dog seven years ago when The Last Of Us was only just getting off the ground. He worked on that title, along with its expansion, Left Behind, before contributing to Uncharted 4. As mentioned, he served as creative director on The Lost Legacy, which launched in 2017 and was widely praised. He said on Twitter that he will “miss all my dogs,” referencing his co-workers at Naughty Dog.

As spotted by IGN, Escayg posted a picture of the Avengers logo on Instagram, with the caption, “To new adventures–bring it 2018!” This might mean that he’s joining Crystal Dynamics to work on their in-development and unannounced Avengers title. Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are working on new Avengers projects. More details on these titles will be announced this year, so we may learn more soon.

The Lost Legacy launched in August for PS4. A standalone game, it doesn’t feature Nathan Drake but instead puts you in the shoes of Chloe Frazer who fights alongside Nadine Ross in a new story. Our Lost Legacy review scored it a 9/10.

In other Uncharted news, the entire franchise recently passed 41 million copies sold. No new entries have been announced, and Naughty Dog is finished with the series, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more games coming out…eventually.

Rocket League, the popular soccer-with-cars game, just continues to grow. It has now passed 40 million players, developer Psyonix reported on Twitter. This is up from 33 million back in July and up from 38 million just two weeks ago.

Back in July, Psyonix reported that players had collectively logged 1.5 billion matches since Rocket League launched in 2015. In the just five months since then, gamers played 500 million more matches to bring the total to over 2 billion.

While 40 million is the number of people who have played Rocket League to date, the game hasn’t necessarily sold that many copies. That’s because the figure includes people playing on guest accounts and in other ways. Rocket League launched in July 2015 as a PlayStation Plus freebie for PS4, so all of those downloads don’t count as sales either.

Rocket League is a huge hit, but don’t expect Rocket League 2 anytime soon. “Our goal was to keep making Rocket League better and better so that we don’t lose any of the people that want to play,” Psyonix’s Jeremy Dunham said in a previous interview. “If they’re playing our game, we’re not going to penalise them and make them buy our game again just because we want to add a couple new features. We want to let them know we’re in it for the long haul, if they’re in it for the long haul.”

Rocket League is also available on PC, Xbox One, and most recently, the Nintendo Switch. Psyonix has supported the game with regular updates, and it sounds like more are coming. “We can’t wait to tell you about everything else we have in store for 2018,” Psyonix said in a blog post.

FBI agents Mulder and Scully return as the The X-Files kicks off Season 11. Find out everything you need to know about the series just in time for the premiere.