Month: January 2018

Bandai Namco’s highly anticipated Dragon Ball FighterZ arrives on consoles and PC in only a few more days, but some players have another chance to try the game out ahead of its release. The publisher is holding another open beta for Dragon Ball FighterZ today, January 24, and unlike the most recent test, this round is available exclusively to Xbox One players.

The Xbox One beta is going on now and ends tonight at 9 PM PT / 12 AM ET, giving you a few hours to jump in and try out the Dragon Ball fighting game before it launches later this week. This beta includes the same roster and features as the previous round of tests, but Bandai Namco says it has “made the necessary improvements in order to enable X1 users to experience Dragon Ball FighterZ in all of its online multiplayer glory.”

The pervious Dragon Ball FighterZ beta took place last week and was available on both PS4 and Xbox One. It was originally scheduled to end on January 16, but due to persistent network issues, Bandai Namco held another round of testing for both platforms on January 17; however, the Xbox One version still suffered from problems that prevented many players from participating. The beta featured 11 playable characters, including a handful of recently announced fighters like Beerus, Kid Buu, adult Gohan, and Nappa.

Dragon Ball FighterZ releases for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on January 26. The game has been very well received by critics. GameSpot’s Peter Brown called it “a Dragon Ball fighting game that can go toe-to-toe with the best of the genre” in our Dragon Ball FighterZ review in progress and said, “Even if you think Dragon Ball is old hat, and even if you’re intimidated by fighting games, there’s a good chance you’ll be drawn into the explosive action and personalities that expertly evoke the anime’s infectious spirit.”

For more on the game, be sure to check out our video on understanding the basics of Dragon Ball FighterZ. We’ve also put together a guide on everything you need to know about Dragon Ball FighterZ, as well as compilations of every Dragon Ball FighterZ Easter egg and every Dramatic Finish so far.

Chances are good that you went to Toys R Us at least once when you were growing up. The chain of toy stores was once the place to go for kids dreaming of Nerf Guns, lego sets, and video games. However, the company has been facing financial trouble lately, forcing it to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As part of those proceedings, Toys R Us announced this week that it’ll be closing up to 182 stores.

This does not mean that the company is going out of business altogether, though. The store closures are a necessary part of its plan to rebound from its financial woes and to rebrand itself as a smaller and more strategic retailer.

There will still be hundreds of Toys R Us locations left across the United States after the closures, as well. And there’s a chance that not all 182 stores will shutter, if the company can successfully renegotiate its leases. But most of them are expected to close.

Toys R Us declared bankruptcy back in September 2017, as a result of several straight years of losses. The company has not turned a profit since 2013, and as a result it needed the bankruptcy restructuring in order to deal with $5 billion in outstanding debt.

You can check out the list of stores scheduled to close here. California has the most locations shuttering, followed by New Jersey and New York.

The John Wick films are interesting not just because of Wick himself and Keanu Reeves’ intensely-watchable portrayal of the character, but because of the mysterious world established around him – one filled with assassins and centered on a hotel called The Continental. And now, a television show named after the hotel is in the works with Reeves himself executive-producing the whole affair. We love John Wick, so we’re nervous. Let’s talk about what Starz has to do to get this show right…

Here’s how to make the John Wick TV show work!

Let’s make a comparison to the legendary sitcom Parks & Recreation. In one particularly amazing recurring bit, the show’s resident nerd Ben Wyatt creates his own game, the Cones of Dunshire. It’s an absurd concept with complicated rules, including a player who serves as the Ledgerman, a person who wears a sea captain’s hat and keeps score.

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If you haven’t followed the price of graphics cards lately, or are oblivious to the price of GPUs and are thinking about buying one, then we’ve got an important PSA for you: Now is a really bad time to buy a GPU.

Graphics card prices have skyrocketed because GPUs are so effective at mining cryptocurrency, which has gained a lot of traction in recent months. To get a gauge for the price discrepancy, let’s look at the GTX 1080 Ti; the lowest you can find Nvidia’s flagship gaming card online right now is $1,350, which is roughly twice the card’s MSRP. The situation is arguably worse on the AMD side. The 4GB version of the RX 580, which carries an MSRP of $200, is going for roughly 2.5x as much online currently. The following chart encapsulates modern GPU MSRP against their current, lowest street prices.

GPU	MSRP	Street Price
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti	$700	$1,350
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080	$550	$1,100
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti	$450	$800
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070	$380	$900
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060	$250	$400
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	$150	$185
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050	$110	$140
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64	$500	$1,500
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56	$400	NA
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB	$229	$540
AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB	$200	$495
AMD Radeon RX 570	$170	$476

Lowest prices reflect time of publish.

As you can see from the comparative chart above, the pricing surge has affected all GPU sectors. Even lower-end cards like the GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050 are well above MSRP, albeit less so than the higher-end cards. Not only are GPU prices sky high right now, but cards like the RX Vega 56 are currently completely sold out everywhere.

While it’s possible to find some high-end gaming GPUs near MSRP if you’re vigilant, the windows of opportunity are small. One way to skirt around this issue if you are thinking about building a gaming PC with a new GPU is to buy a prebuilt system.

When we met with system vendor CyberPower PC at CES, the company revealed to us that it, along with many other system vendors, have strict GPU pricing guidelines. This effectively means they can’t over-inflate the price of its systems based on the street prices of graphics cards.

Historically, it’s generally been cheaper to build a PC than to buy a pre-built system, but that has changed in today’s climate. While we think you should learn how to build a PC as it can be very rewarding and educational, there’s no shame in purchasing a pre-built system, especially right now when they’re largely unaffected by the current cost-prohibitive price of GPUs.

To exemplify this, we tried recreating CyberPower PC’s Z370 i5 configuration. CyberPower PC’s rig costs $1,169 and comes with AMD’s 4GB Radeon RX 580 GPU. When we spec’d out the build ourselves using the cheapest prices found on Newegg and Amazon, our total came out to $1,322. That’s $144 more than CyberPower PC’s price. On top of that, it doesn’t come with the company’s warranty and customer support.

	Component	Price
OS	Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition)	$120
Case	IN WIN 101 w/ Tempered Glass	$70
CPU	Intel® Core Processor i5-8600K	$257
CPU cooler	Corsair Hydro Series H60	$65
Motherboard	MSI Z370 – A Pro ATX	$100
RAM	8GB (4GBx2) DDR4/3000MHz dual channel memory (ADATA XPG Z1)	$103
GPU	AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB	$495
PSU	600 watt PSU 80 Plus certified	$45
HDD	1TB 7,200RPM HDD	$67
Total		$1,322

Prices reflect time of publish.

If you still really want to build a new gaming rig yourself, we suggest you use browser extensions like Honey to provide you with alerts on GPU price drops. As for when graphics cards will come down to normal MSRP levels, only time will tell.

Pacific Rim is back, but this time, they need more pilots.

Thanks to the upcoming Dragon Ball FighterZ, we’ve all been reminiscing about afternoons spent watching Dragon Ball Z on TV. But if you want to revisit the anime–or if you want to watch any of the Dragon Ball series for the first time–it can be a little tricky to know where to find them. Here, we’ve compiled a list of every legal streaming service for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super, and more for the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia and New Zealand.

Unfortunately for UK fans, most of Dragon Ball isn’t available to stream legally due to licensing complications. Blu-ray or DVD are your best options and will feature the widely used Funimation dub, rather than Europe’s original English dub (which was based on a French translation and refers to Piccolo as “Big Green”).

Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball adapts the first 194 chapters of Akira Toriyama’s manga of the same name and mostly features series protagonist Goku as a child. In the US, it had a few failed runs–an original “Lost Dub” in ’89 and another dub in ’95, both of which were canceled due to low popularity–before Funimation’s re-dubbed version began airing in 2001.

Funimation currently has the exclusive rights to the English dubbed version in the US and Canada.

US	Funimation (sub and dub); Hulu (sub only); Yahoo (sub only)
Canada	Funimation (sub and dub)
Australia and New Zealand	Anime Lab (sub and dub)

Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z adapts the latter 325 chapters of the Dragon Ball manga. The first (censored) English dubs aired in the late ’90s, and it was re-dubbed by Funimation in 2005.

US, Canada	Funimation (sub and dub)
Australia and New Zealand	Anime Lab (sub and dub)

Dragon Ball GT

Dragon Ball GT is an unofficial sequel to Z and isn’t based on Toriyama’s manga. In it, Goku is turned back into a child.

US	Funimation (sub and dub); Hulu (sub only); Yahoo (sub only)
Canada	Funimation (sub and dub)
Australia and New Zealand	Anime Lab (sub and dub)

Dragon Ball Z Kai

There is an HD remastered and recut version of Dragon Ball Z called Dragon Ball Z Kai, which cuts out a lot of the “filler” from the original series that wasn’t in the manga. Dragon Ball Z Kai isn’t available to stream currently, though you can watch it on the Adult Swim site in the US with a cable login.

Dragon Ball Super

Dragon Ball Super is the newest anime series based on the franchise and the first Dragon Ball anime with an original story in 18 years. It’s an official sequel to Z with Toriyama involved in production, and its early episodes cover the events of the films Resurrection F and Battle of the Gods (which aren’t available to stream). Thanks to a partnership between Crunchyroll and Funimation, the English sub is widely available.

US, Canada	Crunchyroll (sub); Funimation (sub and dub)
UK	Crunchyroll (sub)
Australia and New Zealand	Anime Lab (sub and dub); Crunchyroll (sub)

For more on Dragon Ball, check out our full list of Dragon Ball FighterZ Easter eggs and everything else you need to know about the fighting game. You can also test your Dragon Ball knowledge with our History of Dragon Ball Games.

PUBG has a problem with cheaters. We all know it. We even encountered one on our livestream. But anti-cheat measures are being implemented to stamp out this behaviour and ban players who are spoiling the fun for the rest of us.

The current test build of the game will be moving to the live servers on PC, according to a Tweet from the official PUBG account – and a lengthier update over on Steam details that new security measures are a part of this patch.

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Mere days before launch, Bandai Namco has announced one last 24-hour Dragon Ball FighterZ beta for Xbox One players to dive into.

The Dragon Ball FighterZ beta on the Xbox One has had more than its fair share of problems. But hey, that’s what they’re are for. The initial beta, which ran from January 13 to 16, experienced a multitude of “network issues” which Bandai Namco acknowledged, and they followed it up with a 24-hour open beta on January 17 which promised “improvements to the experience”.

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Behaviour Interactive is adding another chapter to its asymmetrical 4-v-1 multiplayer survival horror title, Dead by Daylight. Hot on the heels of Nightmare on Elmstreet’s Freddy Krueger, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, comes a Saw-themed map, survivor, and killer.

The new chapter introduces The Pig, detective David Tapp, and the Gideon Meat Plant. In case you hadn’t pieced together their roles, The Pig is the new killer, and poor old David is the new survivor.

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Sonic the Hedgehog’s upcoming comic book series will be introducing a new character named Tangle, a ring-tailed lemur.

Check her out:

After over 300 issues at Archie Comics, IDW Publishing acquired the rights to make Sonic comics from Sega in 2017 and are rebooting the series with a fresh #1. Starting over from scratch gives IDW and series writer Ian Flynn the chance to shake things up and add new things to Sonic’s world, and Tangle is one of them.

“Before she even had a name, we knew we wanted her to be like a lot of other great Sonic characters and have a special ability tied to one of her features. Think Tails or Knuckles,” IDW associate editor David Mariotte told IGN in an email interview. “So, we were brainstorming animals who could do cool stuff and a ring-tailed lemur who could use her tail alternately like a whip or like a fist was too cool to pass up! Throw in her scrappiness, she likes to ‘tangle’ with bad guys, and you have an awesome character!”

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