Month: September 2019

In a recent Nintendo Direct, the company revealed a slew of new games coming to the Nintendo Switch in late 2019 and 2020. One of the most exciting announcements was Overwatch: Legendary Edition, which releases on the Switch October 15. To celebrate, PowerA is adding two new Overwatch-themed controllers to its enhanced wireless Switch Pro controller collection, which we’ve written about previously and highly recommend as a more affordable, third-party option. PowerA will also offer a protective Overwatch-style Switch case. All three Overwatch accessories are officially licensed by Blizzard and Nintendo and will be available this fall at major retailers in North America, Europe, and Australia.

The first controller features Reaper and has a black-and-red design. You can pre-order the Reaper controller for $50 USD at Amazon, which lists the release date as September 20.

See Reaper Switch controller at Amazon

The second controller is for D.Va fans, featuring pink buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks against a baby blue background. So far, it’s only listed at the EB Games Australia website for $89.95 AUD and is slated to release in October. According to PowerA, the D.Va controller should appear at more retailers in other countries soon.

See D.Va Switch controller at EB Games AU

PowerA’s enhanced wireless Bluetooth controllers have a similar ergonomic design to the first-party Pro controllers and are comfortable to use. While there’s no rumble or NFC reader, these controllers do allow for motion controls and custom button mapping. The main drawback is that they use two AA batteries, but that still provides up to 30 hours of gameplay and isn’t a huge loss if you use your Pro controller only occasionally or need a backup. The PowerA enhanced wireless Switch controllers always launch at $50 USD, but you can get this black-and-red design for only $35 on Amazon right now.

If you’ve yet to buy a protective carrying case for your Nintendo Switch, you now have another option available: this new Overwatch-themed pouch. With a hard outer shell, padded screen protector, and game card storage, this travel case will shield your Switch from any damage when you take it on the go. It costs $25 USD and will be available on September 15, according to Amazon.

See Overwatch protective Switch case at Amazon

Overwatch: Legendary Edition is available to pre-order now for $40 USD and comes bundled with 15 character skins and a three-month Switch Online membership, which you’ll need to play. Anyone who pre-orders the game will also receive the bonus Noire Widowmaker skin. Note that this is a digital download, so there won’t be a physical game card with your purchase.

See Overwatch: Legendary Edition at Best Buy

WWE’s next PPV is right around the corner. Clash of Champions comes to PPV and the WWE Network on Sunday, September 15. For this event, every major WWE title will be on the line, and it should be a fantastic evening of wrestling.

This year’s Clash will happen at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The main card will kick off at 4 PM PT / 7PM ET, with a Kickoff Show starting one hour prior. While the Kickoff match has yet to be announced, chances are it will be the Cruiserweight Championship triple threat bout. Check out the start times for the PPV for around the world below.

Clash of Champions Start Time:

• 4 PM PT
• 7 PM ET
• 12 AM BST (September 16)
• 9 AM AET (September 16)

You can watch the event for yourself on PPV through your cable or satellite provider or watch via the WWE Network. If you’re a new subscriber, you can sign up for one month for free, and cancel at any time. The service costs $10 a month if you enjoy it and choose to continue your subscription.

At the time of this writing, there are 11 matches on the card, and only one of them isn’t a title match. That bout sees Roman Reigns taking on Erick Rowan, who has been trying to murder The Big Dog for months in a twisted version of Looney Tunes that rarely makes sense. This is the only match with a stipulation, as it will be a No DQ match, so expect something ridiculous to happen before someone claims the victory.

What’s going to be very interesting with this card is that Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman will be in two matches during the evening. First, they’ll be defending their Raw Tag Team Championships, and later, they’ll be fighting each other for Rollins’ Universal Championship. How will the tag team match affect the main event? That should be very interesting to see during the PPV.

WWE Clash of Champions Match Card:

• Drew Gulak (c) vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. Lince Dorado (Cruiserweight Championship)
• AJ Styles (c) vs. Cedric Alexander (United States Championship)
• Shinsuke Nakamura (c) vs. The Miz (Intercontinental Championship)
• Big E & Xavier Woods (c) vs. The Revival (Smackdown Tag Team Championship)
• Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross (c) vs. Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville (Women’s Tag Team Championship)
• Seth Rollins & Braun Strowman vs. (c) Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode (Raw Tag Team Championship)
• Bayley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair (Smackdown Women’s Championship)
• Roman Reigns vs. Erick Rowan (No DQ Match)
• Kofi Kingston (c) vs. Randy Orton (WWE Championship)
• Becky Lynch (c) vs. Sasha Banks (Raw Women’s Championship)
• Seth Rollins (c) vs. Braun Strowman (Universal Championship)

Come back to GameSpot on Sunday, September 15 for live coverage of the event.

The Joker has premiered to rave reviews from almost everyone who’s seen it at festivals, pointing to what could be one of the best comic book films made yet. Still, even with the final product getting critical acclaim, the process of actually making it sounds sort of awful.

Speaking to the New York Times, co-writer and director Todd Phillips explained the method behind the madness star Joaquin Phoenix created for his role as the Clown Prince of Crime and it sounds like a lot for his fellow co-stars to put up with. “In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out,” Phillips revealed. “And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them–it was always him, and he just wasn’t feeling it.”

Once the actor cooled off, Phillips said he’d return to set and offer, “We’ll take a walk and we’ll come back and we’ll do it.” While that may not sound like the greatest working environment, Phillips and Phoenix clearly thought it was important to his process.

However, there was one actor Phoenix didn’t walk out on. Robert DeNiro appears in the film as a late night talk show host that Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is fixated on, and he never found himself on the opposite end of his co-star leaving the set. “Joaquin was very intense in what he was doing, as it should be, as he should be,” DeNiro said of his experience with the actor. “There’s nothing to talk about, personally, on the side, ‘Let’s have coffee.’ Let’s just do the stuff.”

And do the stuff they did. Thus far, Joker is enjoying quite a bit of buzz. GameSpot’s Michael Rougeau praised the film in his review, writing, “Joker succeeds, without equivocation, because it transforms the villain into the populist antihero we need him to be now. Joker wears its influences on its maroon sleeves, but it also carves its own gashes through the blood-soaked landscape of contemporary comic book movies, offering something that, despite teetering on the shoulders of 80 years of history, is wonderfully fresh, dangerously exciting, undeniably entertaining, and rock-solid in its artistry.”

Joker arrives in theaters on October 4, 2019. Don’t get too excited about Phoenix’s character getting further integrated into the DC film universe, though. Phillips has already confirmed this take on Joker won’t meet up with the next Batman, Robert Pattinson

Hyperreal Darth Vader Box

Hasbro has a new line headed your way aimed at high-end collectors. These highly-posable action figures have both hard and soft goods making up the costume and come with a bunch of accessories. This new line stands at eight inches tall, two inches taller than The Black Series figures.

With a premium product like this, it’s going to come at a price. The listing for this Darth Vader figure on Hasbro Pulse has is costing $80. Think of the Hyperreal collection like a cheaper alternative to Sideshow Collectibles’ Hot Toys. Hasbro sent us the Darth Vader figure to check out, and we’re going to detail everything that’s in the box.

Also, since this is a very posable figure with an interior skeletal structure, we’re going to pose this toy in as many ridiculous poses as possible, including ones all the cool kids were doing two years ago. Here’s what the Hyperreal Darth Vader looks like.

The Hyperreal Darth Vader figure will be available in stores this October.

The inside of the box

Opening up the box, the graphics give you a good idea of what you can do with this figure, along with a look at all the accessories. The packaging is really cool, but this is a figure that needs to come out of the box.

Out of the box

We took old Darth Vader out and kept him in the pose from the box.

Close-up on Darth

There is a lot of detail in the face, and the helmet has the same sheen as it does in the movies.

Close-up on costume

There is lots of detail, down to the buttons on his chest and on his belt.

Need a hand?

Vader comes with a bunch of different hands to put on to recreate your favorite scenes from the Star Wars movies.

Kapow!

There is also a blaster reflection accessory that goes on one of Vader’s hands.

Now, let’s get down to posing this collectible as ridiculous as possible.

Best Mates

Coming from the world of never-ending Fortnite dances, here’s Vader in the Best Mates pose. The joints are pretty tight and hold very well, so Vader could have stayed in this position indefinitely.

Dabbing

Remember dabbing? That was totally a cool thing a year or two ago! Vader has a bit trouble with this pose because his helmet stops him from bending his neck.

Flossing

Vader’s right shoulder can’t pop forward, so his arm stops at his waist.

Gangnam style

PSY has plenty of hits, and you should watch all his music videos. Here’s the main dance from the “Gangnam Style” music video. Again, Vader stands on one leg perfectly fine.

The Hulk Hogan pose

WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan is a man of many poses. What you gonna do, brother, when Vadermania runs wild on you?

Planking

This was the easiest pose to get Vader into. Planking was a weird three weeks in the world where people just laid down everywhere.

Razor Ramon

Hey yo. It’s the bad guy. Honestly, this was an early pose I tried, and I was trying to do Finn Balor’s entrance, but Vader’s head didn’t tilt back far enough.

Shawn Michaels

When people talk about Darth Vader, they say he’s a sexy boy but not your boy toy.

The failure of YMCA

Because of Vader’s shoulder armor/pads/whatever, his arms only go so high. So making him do the YMCA dance was a bit tough. And yes, the second and fourth picture are the same, but I really did try.

A new Fire Emblem: Three Houses update is now live. Alongside the patch, Nintendo has released the game’s second wave of Expansion Pass DLC, and it includes new outfits for protagonist Byleth and other characters, additional auxiliary battles, and more.

First, Expansion Pass holders can change Byleth and the students into new loungewear based on their respective houses, while Byleth also receives an additional accessory: glasses. You can take a look at the new outfits below. However, Nintendo notes the loungewear is “only wearable inside the monastery, or for specific unit classes during battle.”

In addition to the outfits, Nintendo has added a handful of new auxiliary battles to take on. There are five new battles in total, and they may reward you with special status-up items such as Ailell Pomegranate and more Gold. You can see the full list of new auxiliary battles below:

• Battle at Lake Teutates
• Battle in the Forest
• Battle at Gronder Field
• Battle at the Sealed Forest
• Battle at Conand Tower.

Finally, Expansion Pass holders have received another pack of helpful DLC Supplies. You can receive the following items from the bed in Byleth’s personal quarters:

• Sacred Galewind Shoes (Movement +1)
• Sacred Floral Robe (HP +7)
• Sacred Snowmelt Drop (Strength +3)
• Sacred Moonstone (Speed +3)

This marks the second wave of DLC Nintendo has released for Fire Emblem: Three Houses since its launch this past July. The company still has two more waves of additional content in store for the game. The next is slated to arrive sometime by the end of the year, and it will add new quests and costumes to the game. The fourth wave, meanwhile, will launch by April 30, 2020 and is introducing new story content, including additional playable characters and locations.

All four waves of DLC are only available as part of Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ Expansion Pass and cannot be purchased individually. The pass runs for $25 USD / £22.49 / $37.50 AU. You can read more details about it on Nintendo’s website.

Beyond the new DLC, the new Fire Emblem: Three Houses update adds a new, more challenging difficulty mode for all players: Maddening. It also makes a few other changes to the game; you can read the full patch notes for Three Houses’ latest update here.

While Tokyo Game Show kicks off tomorrow at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, a trailer for Nioh 2 found its way out into the wild. The trailer for the PlayStation 4 exclusive has been taken down, but a mirror was uploaded to a separate YouTube channel.

Boss Fight Database snagged the trailer before it was pulled. The Nioh 2 trailer oscillates between cinematic cutscenes featuring war scenarios and dramatic conversations, and gameplay sequences showing various samurai getting pummeled by a plethora of big and frightening-looking enemies.

Sony has outlined its plans for this year’s TGS, which runs until Monday, September 15. Alongside 80 minutes of Death Stranding footage, the PlayStation booth will have playable demos of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Nioh 2, and more. We’ve also gotten a glimpse of Final Fantasy VII Remake in a new TGS trailer.

Developer Team Ninja unveiled Nioh 2 at E3 2018. Some PlayStation 4 owners were invited to play an alpha version of the game earlier this year. Though the game has no official release date, the new leaked trailer indicates that Nioh 2 is expected to arrive on PS4 sometime in early 2020.