Month: January 2018

It’s hard to believe we’re a few measly months away from the end of Dan Slott’s Spider-Man saga. At this point, there’s room for little more than putting the house in order before Slott kicks off his last (and potentially biggest) story arc, “Go Down Swinging.” Amazing Spider-Man #794 tackles a loose thread from earlier in the series in a fun way, but it does seem to suffer from the one-and-done approach.

Back in issue #11 of the current volume, Spidey wrapped up his fight with Scorpio by trapping the villain in Limbo for a year. The idea being that Scorpio’s newfound ability to know everything that would happen on Earth for the next year would be of no use if he were kept out of commission for that entire year. In this issue, Scorpio returns with one hour remaining in which to put his knowledge to use.

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Warning: The following interview contains big spoilers about Vikings’ Season 5 winter finale “Moments of Vision.”

Vikings aired its action-packed Season 5 winter finale tonight, “Moments of Vision,” and with all the big things that happened – the deaths of Astrid and Halfdan, the mental unraveling of Lagertha, Floki offering himself up for sacrifice, and the return of Rollo – we thought it’d be a good time to chat with series creator Michael Hirst (who writes every single episode) and ask him about some of the revelations.

IGN: There’ve been quite a few battles this year, but this one was cut from a different cloth. We saw it cut back and forth from the fighting to characters preparing for battle. And for death. What was behind this choice?

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This interview contains spoilers for The Magicians Season 3 episode 3, titled “The Losses of Magic.”

Magic has consequences. If The Magicians has taught us anything over the past two seasons, it’s that severe lesson. Having powers may seem cool and exciting and fun, but it comes at a cost, and Penny (Arjun Gupta) just paid the ultimate price in “The Losses of Magic.”

By the end of the jam-packed episode, Penny’s “super cancer” reached the point of no return, and while Kady (Jade Tailor) and Julia (Stella Maeve) did their best to save him (even summoning a legit demon to literally eat the cancer out of his body), they were too late. And since Penny had decided to astral project his consciousness outside of his body during the whole encounter – turns out, having a demon eat your cancer is pretty painful! – he’s now stuck outside of his dead body where no one can see or hear him. They don’t even know he’s there. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Firstly, anyone else a little surprised at how much, or even how much more, they like Vikings without Ragnar? Or is it just me?

“Moments of Vision,” Vikings’ Season 5 midseason finale, gave us another huge battle, amidst a season already full of big violent set pieces (from the two giant scenes of York carnage to the war a few weeks back), but presented it to us in a different package. Mixing the fighting scenes with some pre-battle moments, contemplative and tender scenes between characters before they set out to (possibly) die, this episode managed to take on an air of suspense that previous chapters didn’t/couldn’t. With everyone expecting to fall, and ready to go out swinging, the question wasn’t “Will someone die?” it was “Who will die?”

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Theoretically, the return of Jean Grey should be a huge deal. This is a character who’s been dead for an eternity by comic book standards, and one who is beloved by X-Men fans the world over. Yet the greatest failing of Phoenix Resurrection is that it doesn’t make her return feel like the momentous event it should be. It’s simply one more underwhelming event comic in a franchise that seems to offer nothing but lately.

The best that can be said for issue #4 is that the X-Men are no longer wasting time traveling the globe and trying to solve a mystery to which readers already have the answer. Our heroes have finally figured out Jean is returning, and they’ve tracked her down to the deserts of New Mexico. But even with the endgame staring them in the face, the X-Men are annoyingly slow to get the ball rolling. Too much of this issue involves characters standing around an either cracking jokes and laying down exposition. Once again, I find myself wishing that Matthew Rosenberg had kept his cast trimmed down to a small handful of characters with close personal ties to Jean, rather than inserting basically every active X-Man into the mix.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

“I’m Fox freakin’ Mulder, you punks!” 

Perhaps one of the reasons that X-Files’ modern-era mythology episodes don’t land well (aside from them also being a turgid mess) is that the show, now decades removed from its heyday, works best when it’s lovingly skewering itself and presenting us with parody.

Season 10’s “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” was arguably (though I have a fairly strong argument) the best chapter of that 2016 run, and a big part of its success rested with the stars, their chemistry, and how much fun it seemed like they were having cutting loose, free from the usual bump-in-the-night dourness. As we’ve witnessed with latter day X-Files, there are definitely moments where it feels like Duchovny and Anderson “show up” more than others. Such was the case, this year, with “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat” – an outrageously funny, outside-looking-in chapter that explored/skewered the phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect (or is it the Mengele Effect? or am having a Mengele Effect about the Mandela Effect?)

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The world of storage density took another monumental step forward with the announcement of the 512GB microSD card.

At 512GB, it’s the largest capacity microSD card ever created, and it almost certainly will work with Nintendo Switch. However, it hasn’t been tested yet, which is why we’re saying it “almost certainly” will work, and not “will definitely and 100% totally work for sure.”

The card conforms to the MicroSDXC standard, which is the same standard the Nintendo Switch is designed to work with. In fact, Nintendo Switch will work with microSD cards up to 2TB when our future scientists and engineers figure out how to make them a reality.

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EA announced it’s implementing changes in the Star Wars Battlefront II progression system, based on player feedback.

In its announcement, EA calls the changes “significant,” and they “address many of the things” players have asked for. Details on the changes aren’t coming until March, so this is merely a tease of things to come.

In the short-term, EA announced a new, limited-time mode coming in February called Jetpack Cargo. The new game mode sees “two teams of eight players equipped with jet packs” compete against one another in what EA calls “a frantic, fast-paced way to play.”

EA also promised a new season is “coming soon.” No hard dates were given for any of the announcements.

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Ubisoft has announced the third free PVP update to Ghost Recon Wildlands’ Ghost War PVP mode, which adds player skins from Rainbow Six Siege.

Extended Ops launches January 25 and introduces a new mode: Extraction. In the mode, one team will attempt to locate and extract a hostage, while the other team tries to stop them by any means necessary. Hostages can be found at several different locations, complicating the rescuer’s job.

Alongside the new mode is the addition of new player customization options. Icon costumes are based on operators from Rainbow Six Siege and characters from the main game, and since these skins can be used in Extraction mode, Siege players should feel right at home.

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