After a month of exclusive new stuff, our IGN First with Control is coming to an end. But before it does, we thought we’d ask one more favour of Remedy Entertainment – getting them to answer your questions.
Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen and Thomas Puha assembled to answer some of the IGN community’s queries about the game – you can see what they had to say below. And if you missed any of our Control coverage, it’s all in one handy spot for you to check back on. Onto the next month!
Dangatv asks: Control looks like the natural progression from your last 3 games, what game play aspect are you most proud of and can’t wait for the public to experience?
Last week’s House of X #1 officially kicked off writer Jonathan Hickman’s grand plan for the X-Men franchise. But House of X itself is only telling half of the story. This week it’s joined by sister series Powers of X, a book that provides a wider view of the mutant race in both the past and future of the Marvel Universe.
Read on for a breakdown of what happens in this first issue, how Powers of X connects to House of X and why the bright new future dawning for the mutant race may not last. And if you need a refresher, check out our recap of House of X #1.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Powers of X #1 and House of X #1!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s big 4.0 update has arrived, adding another DLC fighter to the roster–the Hero from Dragon Quest–and a few other new features to the game, such as an Online Tournament mode that will occasionally host special themed events and a new Spectate mode that lets you earn prizes for successfully predicting the winner. Alongside the update, Nintendo has quietly released a little Smash Ultimate freebie for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
Right now, NSO members can download the Spirit Board Challenge Pack 1. The pack contains an assortment of helpful items for the game’s Spirit Board mode. You’ll receive the following:
1,500 Spirit Points
10 Shuffle All (reshuffles every Spirit on the board)
10 All Primaries (reshuffles the board with Primary Spirits)
10 All Supports (reshuffles the board with Support Spirits)
As previously mentioned, the Spirit Board Challenge Pack 1 is an exclusive offer for NSO subscribers. The Eshop notes the pack cannot be downloaded during a free trial for the service, so you need to have an active, paid membership in order to claim it. To download the pack, select the Eshop icon from Smash Ultimate’s main menu and you’ll see it listed beneath the game’s other downloadable content.
NSO subscriptions cost US $4 / £3.49 / AU $6 for one month, US $8 / £7 / AU $12 for three months, and US $20 / £18 / AU $30 for one year. Nintendo also offers an annual Family Membership, which runs for US $35 / £31.49 / AU $55 and covers up to eight Nintendo Accounts across multiple systems. Along with online play, subscribers get access to other special offers, such as the game voucher program (although your last day to purchase vouchers is today, July 31), and some free titles such as Tetris 99 and the Switch NES library. Those who purchase a 12-month individual or family membership will also receive an exclusive set of gear for Splatoon 2.
Speaking of Splatoon 2, Nintendo is offering a free set of gear for the game via My Nintendo. The batch costs 100 Platinum Points and includes the following four items: Gray FA-11 Bomber, Brown FA-11 Bomber, Red V-Neck Limited Tee, and Green V-Neck Limited Tee. The gear set will be available on My Nintendo until February 1, 2020.
After five blockbuster movies that have grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide, the Bourne universe is making the jump to the small screen with Treadstone, a globe-trotting, time period-hopping action series that will explore the titular black ops organization that created Jason Bourne and numerous other CIA assassins.
Premiering this fall on USA network, Treadstone “explores the origin story and present-day actions of the infamous covert program that uses behavior modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season of Treadstone follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously ‘awakened’ to resume their deadly missions.” The plot of the series will span decades as it delves into Treadstone’s history and present activities – and while Jason Bourne is in the wind after the events of the last movie, his “presence will be felt” in the new show.
Subspecies aren’t totally new to Monster Hunter World, but they’re making a comeback to the series in a big way in the upcoming Iceborne expansion. We recently got to play the beginning of Iceborne, and some of the first few monsters we faced were three brand-new monsters: Nightshade Paolumu, Coral Pukei-Pukei, and Viper Tobi-Kadachi! They may look familiar, but these subspecies are more than just a reskin.
First revealed at Paris Games Week 2017, Concrete Genie is all about letting your artistic creations flourish amid a space that seems intent on extinguishing them. Developed by PixelOpus, your fictional hometown serves as the canvas to restoring the once lively streets that have been corrupted by a strange force. Helping you are your new friends in the form of the energetic Genies, who will bring color back and a newfound sense of identity back to your home. Nearing its October 8, 2019 release, we had the chance to both play the game and speak with director Dominic Robilliard about the creation of this colorful adventure.
The story focuses on an introverted and lonely teenager named Ash, who spends his days drawing in his journal while hanging out in the seaside town of Denska. Though it was once a thriving place, it’s now a depressing locale plagued by a large number of young delinquents. Ash finds himself at odds with a group of bullies who tear apart his journal, scattering the pages across town. He eventually discovers a new outlet to explore his artistic talents after finding a magical brush, allowing him to conjure up enchanted graffiti and beings known as Genies. With his brush and Genies in tow, he’ll take to the streets and rooftops to restore Denska, pushing back the darkness that has crept into town.
Throughout its opening acts, Concrete Genie wears its influences to classic kids adventure films on its sleeve. With little to no adult supervision, young teens explore and cause mischief with reckless abandon–giving way to a conflict that only they can resolve. Ash can use his artistic talents to create vibrant and detailed landscapes across the walls of the city, which help him communicate with the Genies and open access to new areas. The contrast between the vivid graffiti and the depressing seaside town creates unique visuals that lead to some stunning moments where your work slowly brings the decaying Denska back to life.
It’s an endearing concept, driven by a spirit that many films and TV shows in a similar vein, like The Neverending Story or the more recent Stranger Things, run with. Speaking with Robilliard, the director went into Concrete Genie’s origins and how the setup focuses pretty heavily on the game’s anti-bullying message.
“When we started this second game [following 2014’s Entwined], we had a decent amount of time to explore different concepts,” said Robilliard. “Originally the idea of Concrete Genie came from our VFX artist Ashwin Kumar, which is why our main protagonist is called Ash. The very first image was of a bullied small boy who was drawing these large characters in the wall and imagining that they were sticking up for him. The theme of bullying and the idea that art can help cope was always there from the very beginning. Those two things just inspired everybody, and it really took off. That was the beginning for us to explore art as a gameplay mechanic, and to let people express themselves.”
At the heart of Concrete Genie are the constructs crafted from the enchanted brush. When facing the side of a building or a different structure, Ash can pull out his brush to paint grass, flowers, trees, and a starry sky across the surface. The more art you place on the town’s key areas, the more the darkness will dissipate. There’s a lot of room to experiment with these drawings, and I found it to be quite entertaining to stack on layers upon layers of art. Ash’s sprawling landscapes add an impressive ambiance to the environment, turning the depressing and drab alleyways into vibrant nighttime galleries teeming with detail. These drawings are also the catalyst for your Genies to spring into action.
Ash’s greatest allies are the Genies. They not only help him overcome various obstacles, but they also liven up the town with their inquisitive personalities. They’re also entirely of your own making. Along with creating landscapes to free up the city form the corruption, the brush can conjure genies, allowing you to select from a variety of different body types and attachments. You can get creative with your Genie–and of course, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. While drawing the body of my Genie during the early sections, I accidentally placed the horns and tail on the opposite end. Instead of the game telling me I was doing it wrong, it rolled with it. The resulting Genie, a smiling bright red creature with a tail on its head and antennae around its rear, felt like a creation that came from the minds of Jim Henson or Tim Burton.
As you explore more of Denska, tagging new walls and finding lost pages from your journal, more of the town’s history will be revealed. The bullies that taunt Ash also have distinct backstories, and Ash discovers what set them on such a destructive path. Concrete Genie presents different areas to explore that progressively becomes more intricate as you head further into town. Though it’s not quite a Metroidvania-style game, there is an incentive to backtrack to earlier areas once you have acquired some new Genies and abilities. While there are a lot of puzzles to overcome in Denska, most of them seemed a bit one-note–centering mostly around creating an object in a spot to get the Genie to open a door elsewhere. I did enjoy seeing everything come together after finishing a complex tag. I was always surprised by what I could create with the painting mechanics, and it’s easily the game’s most exciting feature.
“We worked really hard never to judge your painting,” said the director. “One of the reasons that we have the lights as a mechanic for gauging your coverage is that it’s encouraging you to paint in specific places. We never tell you what to paint or how to paint them, and we never say whether your artwork is good or not. That’s completely up to you. So using paint to push back the darkness that could actually be on the walls, creating more of an environmental aspect, was a theme that we wanted to explore. It suddenly became this very natural fit that this beloved hometown idea that Ash is trying to save and rejuvenate from this environmental disaster that has befallen it. It all just fit together really well, and it gives you this nice baseline for the progression of the story, and it mirrors what’s happening to Ash as well.”
However, it’s not just drawing that you can do with your brush. Eventually, Ash will confront monsters that spawned from the darkness. You’ll have to use the brush’s elemental attacks and light to subdue them. As we transitioned from the game’s more relaxed and free-from drawing structure, the combat felt a bit jarring to jump into, but it’s certainly an interesting twist for the game. It works well given where the plot leads, but it still felt a bit lacking if somewhat unrefined compared to the flexibility of the drawing mechanic. Still, given that it’s pulling heavily on tropes from ’80s adventure films, I’m interested in seeing how it will develop alongside the painting gameplay.
I was struck by Concrete Genie’s attention to detail when it came to its location, and how in-depth the drawing mechanics were. It left me curious to see how far you can stretch Ash’s artistic skills, and just where the story will go next. It’s got a modest feel throughout, but I was impressed with how more grand it became after the closing of the first act, which gave me the sense that this adventure could go places that you’d least expect.
Monster Hunter World’s upcoming Iceborne expansion brings some big changes and bigger monsters. But while cool new tools like the Clutch Claw have likely already caught your eye, there are tons of less flashy tweaks that will probably make seasoned hunters yell “YES FINALLY” with the same level of enthusiasm.
We got to play through the first few hours of Iceborne last week, and while you can watch us take on three of its new subspecies monsters here, these little quality-of-life improvements really stuck out. There are surely plenty more, but here of nine of the most exciting tweaks we’ve seen saw so far – be sure to watch the video at the top of the page to see them in action!
Although the massive success of Deadpool might suggest that Fox was completely behind the movie from the start, this wasn’t the case. The studio only greenlit the movie after test footage leaked online and was met by an incredibly positive reaction from fans. This week was the fifth anniversary of the footage leak. To mark the occasion, star Ryan Reynolds made a hilarious new Instagram post that also hinted at Deadpool’s potential entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following Disney’s purchase of Fox’s entertainment assets earlier in the year.
The post shows a crime board, which attempts to trace the source of the leak. Was it Deadpool director Tim Miller or writer Rhett Reese? Perhaps it was Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman, who only got Logan made after Deadpool proved an R-rated superhero could be a hit. Or maybe Reynold’s wife Blake Lively was the culprit. The most intriguing name on the board is Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, while Reynold’s reference to “Phase 5” in the caption hints at Deadpool finally entering the MCU. Check it out below.
The Fox deal means that all the X-Men characters are now owned by Disney, with Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige in charge of these properties. But while the main X-Men characters will almost certainly be rebooted at some point, it is likely Reynolds will continue to play the Merc with the Mouth.
The R-rated Deadpool might seem an unlikely fit with the more family-friendly tone of the rest of the MCU, but both Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were huge box office hits. In February, Disney boss Bob Iger confirmed that the studio will “continue in that business,” after the deal.
“We do believe there is room for the Fox properties to exist without significant Disney influence over the nature of the content, meaning that we see that there is certainly popularity amongst Marvel fans for the R-rated Deadpool films, as a for instance,” he said. “We’re going to continue in that business, and there might be room for more of that.”
There’s one final X-Men movie still to be released–the long delayed New Mutants, which was shot back in 2017, long before the Disney deal. It currently has a release date of April 2020, two years after it was first scheduled to hit theaters. For more, check out GameSpot’s guide to all the upcoming Marvel Phase 4 movies and TV shows.
