Month: July 2018

Hello Games has launched the new update for No Man’s Sky, called Next. The free update makes massive overhauls to the game by adding multiplayer, character customization, command freighters, and visual upgrades. Next is the fourth major update to No Man’s Sky, following Foundation, Pathfinder, and Atlas Rises. However, it is perhaps the most substantial of them all.

No Man’s Sky originally launched on PS4 and PC in August 2016, and was harshly criticized for a perceived lack of content. Although multiple updates have since expanded the number of activities that players can do, Sony management admits the PR strategy “wasn’t great” and No Man Sky designer Sean Murray acknowledged that he made “mistakes.”

Despite the initial backlash at launch, No Man’s Sky’s updates have slowly earned the game a growing playerbase. “One day I hope to reach a point where I feel No Man’s Sky is ‘finished,’ but luckily there’s still so much more we want to do,” Murray said.

The major changes in No Man’s Sky Next are outlined below, but you can read the full patch notes and bug fixes on No Man’s Sky’s blog. Though it’s not in the patch notes, Murray tweeted out that Next also allows players to command their in-game avatar to sit down–a feature that players have been asking for. Perhaps a few more playful secrets are hidden within the game’s newest update. We’ll keep you updated as we find them.

Multiplayer And Character Customization

Multiplayer is the largest change to No Man’s Sky. Though it was never confirmed whether multiplayer would be included prior to launch, many players wished to explore the galaxy with their friends however they wanted. Next adds a lot of the mechanics those players wanted, as well as a few more.

You can now join up with random strangers, or team up with a small contingent of friends to construct colonies of small shelters, race exocraft, or engage in space battles against other players. You’ll be able to team up with friends right from the start, as the multiplayer extends to No Man’s Sky’s story and tutorial missions.

To help differentiate between avatars, Next adds character customization so that everyone can personalize their in-game appearance. You’ll be able to switch up your race and change your outfits too. Depending on the species of your character, you’ll even be able to change your hairstyle. Next allows players to be a Gek, Vy’keen, Korvax, Traveller, or Anomaly.

Not every player you meet is a friendly face, so when you run into another player in the midst of exploring the stars, it’s best to be cautious. Although a stranger could be a harmless passerby or a future ally, Next allows players to prey on others to survive. A collection of ships approaching on the horizon might be a crew of players acting as space pirates who rely on the stolen loot of others.

Building And Crafting

You’ll be able to invite your friends onto your very own command freighter to tackle challenging multiplayer missions. If you’re still having trouble, you’ll be able to build and upgrade a whole fleet of frigates, which you can then customize to specialize in combat, exploration, trade, industry, or support.

You can use what you’ve found to build bases, which can now be built anywhere on any planet. You’ll even be able to build on top of mountains and beneath the sea. And if you don’t like how the terrain is affecting the shape of your base, the improved terrain manipulator allows players to sculpt the planet’s surface to their needs. The manipulator can be used to excavate ancient treasures too, which can be sold in the new Space Station Marketplace.

There are hundreds of new base parts that allow you to build bases that are larger and more complex so you can construct your perfect hideout. Next also lets players own multiple bases and place teleporters anywhere so travel goes much faster.

The resources used to customize your fleet and bases, as well as craft your gear and equipment, have all been reworked and rebalanced. Many of the resources you remember from the original No Man’s Sky have received new names and been given completely different uses. Planetary resources have been expanded, and a planet’s biome, weather, and classification have a much larger effect on what type of materials you’ll find there.

To help you excavate the larger amounts of materials you’ll discover, the deployable tech used in resource collection can now be easily picked up and carried in your inventory. The improved analysis visor makes it easier to locate terrain resources as well. You can also quickly find your bearings while exploring, thanks to visible latitude and longitude coordinates and the ability to tag points of interest with a marker.

Missions

The opening section of No Man’s Sky has been updated with new story elements, as well as a tutorial that teaches you advanced gameplay features. Mission chains help get players started with exploring planets and starting bases.

Once past the tutorial, new types of missions are available to complete. Exploring is still at the core of No Man’s Sky, but new photography, feeding, freighter attack and defense, archaeology, and hunting missions expand the amount of activities that players can do. Players won’t be getting all of their objectives from the same NPC either, as a diverse assortment of random NPCs on different stations offer missions.

Patch Notes

Hello Games has released detailed patch notes for Next that outline everything that’s changed, including the extreme minutia. Beyond all of the major features above you can see adjustments to controls (like the ability to manually holster the Multi-Tool), the overhaul to space station interiors, bug fixes, and much more.

Galactic Atlas

Just prior to the Next update going live, Hello Games launched a new website called the Galactic Atlas. This is essentially a guide to a specific area of the game–the Euclid Galaxy–that Hello seeded but will leave in the hands of players to explore and grow. From the site, you can track the progress of the galaxy, highlight points of interest, and join hubs or factions.

New Visuals

The visuals to No Man’s Sky have also gotten an overhaul. Terrain generates faster and ground, water, and cloud textures have been upgraded. Ships, NPCs, and buildings have more detail too. No Man’s Sky is also now fully playable in both first- and third-person, whether you’re walking on the surface of a planet or soaring amongst the stars.

Draw distance has been improved so planets appear more dense and a new colour palette paints the forests, oceans, and plains of each world with added vibrancy. The hazardous storms that can spell the doom of smaller aircraft use new biome-specific particle effects to look more dangerous than ever before.

Fauna And Flora

The creatures you’ll discover on your travels will now act more enthusiastically towards you if you feed them, letting you herd them together. The creatures’ AI has also been revamped so they act more intelligently, responding to players they recognize as friendly and fleeing as a group from a perceived danger. Not all of the new animals and plantlife are friendly, however. Keep on the lookout for new hazardous species, as they will kill you if you’re not careful.

Release Date/Time

No Man’s Sky is available on PS4, PC, and Xbox One. Next is live on all platforms.

If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

Like us on Facebook and follow me on Twitter for the latest deals.

Today’s Best Deals

Continue reading…

Before she became a voice actor in games like Firewatch, Darksiders 3, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Cissy Jones found herself in a moment of existential crisis. Her corporate job brought her a comfortable amount of income, but it didn’t fulfill her the way she imagined voice acting might. Little did she know that a writer named Sean Vanaman and a studio named Campo Santo would give her the break every actor dreams of, and lead to international recognition. Jones sat down on IGN Unfiltered to chat with Ryan McCaffrey about her journey as a voice actor.

Continue reading…

As the Mission Impossible movies have got bigger, so too has star Tom Cruise’s desire for danger. While many action stars slow down a little as they hit middle age, 56-year-old Cruise has gone the other way, pushing his body for the sake of our entertainment in ways that would terrify many actors half his age.

The sixth movie in the series, Mission Impossible: Fallout, hits theaters this week and reviews have suggested that it’s the most spectacular entry to date. Some of Cruise’s Fallout stuntwork was notorious long before the film had even finished shooting, with an on-set accident causing the star to break his ankle and production to shut down for several months. Behind-the-scenes promotional videos have teased some of the movie’s other amazing action sequences, such as the terrifying-sounding HALO jump, showing that the movie’s marketers know that Cruise’s willingness to risk his life is now a big selling point for the series.

The previous five movies all feature some incredible moments–from climbing onto planes and being thrown around by explosions to getting way too close to knives and cliff edges. So as we get ready to marvel at Cruise’s latest batch of movie-set madness, here’s a look back at the wildest stunts from the series so far:

10. Mission Impossible – Train Chase

Back in 1996, Cruise–or perhaps his agent–wasn’t prepared to go to quite the same lengths to endanger his life, and there’s a good chance in 2018 that Tom would’ve spent the climax of the first movie actually strapped to the top of the Eurostar train. But although the stunt was mostly achieved through greenscreen, a powerful wind machine was set up to blast 140mph winds at Tom as he clings to the speeding train.

9. Mission Impossible 2 – Knife Fight

It’s not the biggest stunt in the second Mission Impossible movie, but in some ways it’s the hardest to watch. In the final confrontation with bad guy Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), Cruise, of course, insisted that real knives were used. There’s a moment where Ambrose gets his blade scarily close to Hunt’s eye, in extreme close-up. To get the dramatic effect, the blade was attached to a retractable cord that was measured precisely to stop just before it hit Cruise’s eye. An inch further and it would’ve plunged straight into Tom’s eyeball.

8. Mission Impossible – Hanging Around

Sometimes a great stunt doesn’t involve running, jumping, and swimming. Sometimes it just involves staying very still under very difficult conditions. For the iconic scene in which Ethan Hunt hangs upside down in the vault while attempting to break into Langley in the first movie, Cruise was suspended 40 feet from the ceiling, maintaining incredible control over his body to remain absolutely still while he taps away at the computer.

7. Mission Impossible III – Bridge Blast

During the bridge confrontation towards the end end of MI3, a missile smashes into the ground, causing an explosion that sends Cruise flying several feet into the side of a car. In any “normal” film this shot would’ve been performed by a stuntman in long shot, before cutting to a final close-up of Tom. But of course we get to see the whole thing in one spectacular take. The car was padded, but man, it looks painful.

6. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – Bike Chase

Rogue Nation is packed with so many great stunts that this bike chase is sometimes forgotten, but it still a stunningly dangerous sequence. Ethan races after Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) in order to get some stolen files back, skidding around the alarming bends of the Marrakech Highway in Morocco, while also trying to evade the henchmen on his trail. And of course, Cruise ensures that we know it’s him performing these alarming high-speed stunts by refraining from wearing a helmet for the entire sequence.

5. Mission Impossible – Exploding tank

The first Mission Impossible fully established Cruise as an action movie star. Although the set pieces are a little more modest than in later movies, there are still some great moments that show that the star was very willing to put himself in danger. During a tense standoff, Ethan Hunt uses some detonating gum to blow up a huge fish tank that surrounds the actors, causing 16 tons of water to explode, right next to the star. A huge wave of water crashes through the room, as Cruise sprints just ahead. Director Brian De Palma was reportedly reluctant to let Cruise perform the stunt, on account of the risk from both the glass and sheer volume of water. But an earlier take with a stuntman didn’t look any good, so Cruise went ahead and did it himself.

4. Mission Impossible 2 – Rock Climbing

It was MI2 that truly established the franchise’s–and its star’s–dedication to the dangerous. The movie opens with a sequence in which Cruise scales the cliffs of Dead Horse Point in Utah. While the actor was wearing a safety harness that was later removed digitally, it’s still 100% Tom up there, jumping between rocks with no safety net below him. From that stunt on, there was no going back.

3. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – Taking Off

Like the Bond movies, the Mission Impossible franchise is known for its spectacular opening sequences. At the start of Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt clings to the side of a plane as it takes off. Cruise performed the stunt four times over the space of two days, and subsequently provided some alarming details about it. “While we were going down the runway, we were worried about bird strikes,” he said. “Any kind of particle that the propellers could pick up, any kind of stone. I remember I got hit by a stone that was so tiny, you cannot believe it. I thought it broke my rib. Luckily it went to my vest, and not my hands or my face, or it would have penetrated and gone right through.” Ow.

2. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – Dubai So High

It’s not all running, jumping, and nearly drowning. Cruise also seemingly lacks a fear of heights, even when scaling the world’s tallest building. In Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt is seen on the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 2,722 feet above the ground. And as the behind-the-scenes footage reveals, it’s 100% Tom–swinging, climbing, and clambering around the outside of the building, as the camera crew circle him in a helicopter.

1. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation – Water Lunatic

Given that Rogue Nation starts with the Cruiser hanging off the side of an airplane as it takes off, you’d be forgiven thinking that the movie had peaked early in terms of life-endangering stunt work. But you’re be wrong. An hour later, Ethan Hunt attempts to crack open an underwater safe, a sequence that took two weeks to film and required Cruise to not only act underwater but also reportedly hold his breath for up to six minutes at a time. Tom’s physical training took months, as he trained alongside a freediving expert and taught his mind to believe “that you don’t have to take a breath.”

This is an advanced SPOILER-FREE review of Hulu’s Castle Rock from Comic-Con 2018. You can stream the first three episodes on July 25 on Hulu.  

The expanded Stephen King universe has finally arrived in Hulu’s new psychological-horror series, Castle Rock.

Castle Rock’s showrunners, Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, had the difficult task of not only creating a believable Stephen King-inspired playground for their characters to inhabit, but also delivering a compelling standalone drama that will attract non-King enthusiasts as well. Fortunately, Castle Rock accomplishes both in this tense, haunting, and surprisingly funny slice of creepy small-town America.

Continue reading…

Alright guys, San Diego Comic-Con is over for 2018, so it’s time to get back to watching movies and shows on Netflix. This week, there are a bunch of titles coming to the service, including a lot of Originals from the streaming giant.

Perhaps the most exciting addition on Netflix this week is Season 6 of Orange Is The New Black, which will be released on Friday. After the dramatic conclusion of Season 5, many fans are really looking forward to seeing what will happen next.

Some other originals coming to Netflix include shows like Roman Empire: Reign Of Blood (July 27), and Iliza Shlesinger’s new stand-up special, Elder Millennial (July 24).

As far as non-Originals go, there are a few movies coming to Netflix this week including Her, the futuristic love story starring Joaquin Phoenix, and The Company Men starring Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones. Season 8 of Shameless is also hitting the service this week.

Check below if you’d like to see the complete list of everything coming to Netflix this week, or if you’re looking for something more comprehensive, head over to our complete list of everything coming to Netflix in July. We don’t yet know what’s coming in August, but that list should be coming along soon, given that the end of July is in sight.

Arriving On Netflix This Week

July 22

• An Education

• Bolt

July 24

• The Warning- Netflix Original Film

• Iliza Shlesinger: Elder Millennial- Netflix Original

July 27

• Cupcake & Dino – General Services- Netflix Original

• Extinction-Netflix Original

• Orange Is the New Black: Season 6-Netflix Original

• Roman Empire: Reign of Blood: Master of Rome- Netflix Original

• The Bleeding Edge- Netflix Original

• The Worst Witch: Season 2- Netflix Original

• Welcome to the Family- Netflix Original

July 28

• Shameless: Season 8

• The Company Men

July 29

• Her

• Sofia the First: Season 4