Month: September 2019

The upcoming Joker movie starring Joaquin Phoenix is one of 2019’s most-anticipated films. Phoenix physically transformed himself for the role, losing a dramatic amount of weight, and now the actor has shared more insight on that and other interesting elements of the film.

Speaking at Joker’s Venice Film Festival premiere, Phoenix said losing an estimated 52 pounds in a short amount of time allowed him to perform scenes in a different, more emotional way. “It turns out that [losing a lot of weight very quickly] affects your psychology. You start to go mad,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Phoenix, who has earned three Academy Award nominations, also spoke about Joker as a character in general and how the experience of filming changed over time.

“It was his struggle to find happiness and to feel connected and to feel warmth and love, and that’s the part of the character I was interested in,” he said. “He was so many different things to me. Who he was in the first few weeks of shooting was completely different than who he was in the end. He was constantly evolving. I’ve never had an experience like this. The more unpredictable and looser we left it, the more exciting it was.”

Phoenix also shared more insight on Joker’s iconic laugh in the movie. For his part, Phoenix said he struggled with getting it to a place that he was happy with.

“I didn’t think that I could do it,” he said. “I kind of practiced alone but I asked [director Todd Phillips] to come over to audition my laugh. I felt like I had to be able to do it on the spot and in front of somebody else. It was really uncomfortable. It took me a long time.”

In addition to Phoenix in the title role, the movie stars Robert de Niro, Zazie Beetz, and Frances Conroy. Joker is something of a change for writer-director Todd Phillips, who previously made the Hangover and Old School comedies. He also wrote for Borat, which earned him his Oscar nomination.

GameSpot’s review of Joker scored it a 10/10. Reviewer Michael Rougeau said Phoenix turns in an “iconic” performance as the clown price of crime as he delivers a “new, complex version of the character we haven’t seen before.” For a wider look at Joker’s critical reception, check out this roundup of Joker reviews.

Following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Joker hits theatres widely on October 3.

One of the biggest changes to the competitive Hearthstone scene this year has been the introduction of Grandmasters – a league-style system featuring 48 of the top players in the world, divided into three regions: APAC, North America and Europe, each with 16 players. The second season of Grandmasters started quite recently, and sees players battling it out every weekend to try and come out on top in their respective region and earn a place at the Hearthstone Global Finals at BlizzCon. Season 2 will also see two players from each region relegated to make room for fresh faces, so the stakes are high. On top of that, this season has also introduced a new format, moving away from Specialist towards a modified version of Conquest. You can find out what a number of Hearthstone pros think about that change here.

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Among the new features in this month’s NHL 20 are Alumni Teams, which are squads featuring legacy players and even teams altogether that no longer exist.

There are 33 Alumni Teams in NHL 20. Among the former teams featured in the game are the Hartford Whalers, the Minnesota North Stars, and the Quebec Nordiques. The rest are teams that still exist today but they feature rosters of some of the best players from each team’s history.

Hailing from Connecticut myself, I am particularly excited to play as The Whalers. The team played its final game in Hartford in 1997, before moving to Raleigh, North Carolina where they became the Carolina Hurricanes. Mark Rein, the co-founder and vice president of Fortnite studio Epic Games, is one of the minority investors in the Hurricanes.

During last year’s NHL season, the Hurricanes played the Bruins in Hartford Whalers jerseys as part of a commemorative event. They even played the famous Whalers “Brass Bonanza” goal-celebration song. Check it out in the video clip below from the NHL.

NHL 20 launches on September 13 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In other news, EA Sports has officially announced the Top 50 highest-rated players, and Connor McDavid is No. 1.

Activision’s big new Call of Duty game, the Modern Warfare reboot, launches in October. It’s poised to be one of 2019’s biggest games. But how long will it take to beat?

As with pretty much all games, the way you play will determine how long it takes to beat. That’s also true for Modern Warfare, studio narrative director Taylor Kurosaki told Game Informer. That being said, Kurosaki said players can expect Modern Warfare’s campaign length to be “in line” with what players would expect from a Call of Duty game.

“It varies greatly,” Kurosaki said. “The length of this campaign is exactly in line with the lengths of what you would expect in a contemporary Call of Duty campaign.”

Campaign is just one element of the new Modern Warfare. The game also features multiplayer, which adds the large-scale Ground War mode this year, along with a Spec Ops co-op mode. The game doesn’t feature a Zombies mode, and there are no current plans for battle royale.

The new Modern Warfare launches on October 25 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. In a big change for the series, there will be cross-play multiplayer support between competing consoles.

Early access to the upcoming multiplayer beta for Modern Warfare begins September 12 on PS4, while the open beta starts September 14 on Sony’s system before it extends to Xbox One and PC at some point later on.

Mary Kish and Mike Mahardy discover the pitfalls of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s difficulty menus. They also face off with William – to the death!

One of the more surprising and unexpected Xbox products of 2019 was not a new game or piece of hardware, but rather it was Xbox body wash and deodorant spray. Now, those strange and wonderful products are on sale. The body wash and spray remains exclusive to the Australia New Zealand (ANZ) region.

If you happen to live in Australia or New Zealand, you can pick up the body spray, which comes in antiperspirant and deodorant options, as well as the body wash for $4 instead of $6. The spray and washes are available at a number of local grocery stores and pharmacies, including Woolworths.

Xbox ANZ made the body wash and spray in partnership with Lynx, which is known as Axe in the United States. What does it smell like? Here’s how Microsoft sums it up:

“Lynx Xbox is a fresh scent of pulsing green citrus, featuring top notes of kaffir lime and winter lemon, aromatic herbal middle notes of mint and sage, and woody bottom notes of patchouli and clearwood. Containing a range of natural essential oils, the Xbox Lynx range comes with a sleek new look and features a body spray, deodorant, and shower gel.”

Microsoft’s next big non-body wash release is Gears 5, which launches on Xbox One and PC in September. The game launches on September 10, but people who buy the Ultimate edition or subscribe to Xbox Game Pass can start playing on September 6.

Looking further out, Microsoft will release a new console, Project Scarlett, in 2020 alongside Halo Infinite as a launch title.

Every Pokemon card collector will know that the rarest cards can fetch a small fortune, and sometimes they even get lost in the mail. But what’s unusual about the latest card to have the community abuzz is that it is from a set barely two weeks old, and yet has already fetched a sum of over $10,000 on eBay.

Hidden Fates is the latest expansion in the Pokemon Trading Card Game, but this one is special. The main set is relatively small at just 68 cards, compared to the couple of hundred we’d see in most other expansions. However, Hidden Fates has a ‘Shiny Vault,’ a 94 card subset of Shiny Pokemon which is sending collectors into a frenzy. Hidden Fates isn’t sold like other Pokemon cards, either, as you won’t find single booster packs on sale in your local gaming store. Instead the set is being released in a number of boxed products, such as the Mewtwo and Mew Pin Collection packs, and the upcoming Elite Trainer Box featuring legendary bird trio Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno as a special Tag Team card.

The holy grail of Hidden Fates is Charizard-GX, a reprint from Sun & Moon Burning Shadows, but this time Charizard is shiny, in black and red instead of its usual orange. It’s the most sought-after card in the set by a long way, and the average copy is going for upwards of $400. But that’s not the limit on how much this card can sell for. An eBay seller has not only pulled a Shiny Charizard from a Hidden Fates pack, but they have had the card assessed by professional grading company Beckett, who returned the card with the legendary ‘black label’, meaning the card is pristine.

Bidding ended at a whopping $10,100, which isn’t the most a Pokemon card has sold for, but considering this set has just come out it’s a pretty crazy figure. Hidden Fates is already hard to find in the wild, with collectors buying dozens of boxes at a time, which has only increased the hype for the set amongst fans. There are more Hidden Fates products on the way, so you’re still in with a chance to pull that Shiny Charizard for yourself, but if you’re one of the lucky few to have caught the fiery lizard, you could be sitting on a small fortune.

We recently spoke to legendary Pokemon card artist Mitsuhiro Arita—whose art features in Hidden Fates—about the inspiration and hidden stories behind each card. And if you’d like to know more about how Pokemon cards are made, we had the chance to take a firsthand look at Creatures, Inc in Tokyo, Japan.

Pokemon hype will only continue to grow over the coming weeks, as the next installments in the video game series, Pokemon Sword & Shield, arrive on Nintendo Switch later this year. Be sure to keep an eye on GameSpot.com for all the biggest Pokemon news.

European video game age-rating organisation, PEGI, has responded to complaints filed by some after watching the NBA 2K20 MyTeam trailer released last week. The video is largely focused on the various mini-games players have access to as a means of winning in-game rewards, featuring standard casino games such as slot machines and prize wheels. NBA 2K20 is rated E for Everyone in the US and PEGI-3 in Europe.

The fact it can be legally bought by children led Reddit user Anime-NoireChan to e-mail PEGI directly. They shared the board’s reply, which Eurogamer has since verified.

The full PEGI statement says, “We have seen the announcement trailer of NBA 2K20 and noticed the controversy it has caused. We feel it is important to carefully explain when certain content is triggering the gambling descriptor in the PEGI system, but also to show when it does not at this moment.

“A video game gets the gambling content descriptor if it contains moving images that encourage and/or teach the use of games of chance that are played/carried out as a traditional means of gambling.

“We use a help text to clarify this in more detail: This refers to types of betting or gambling for money that is normally played/carried out in casinos, gambling halls, racetracks. This does not cover games where betting or gambling is simply part of the general storyline. The game must actually teach the player how to gamble or bet and/or encourage the player to want to gamble or bet for money in real life.

“For example, this will include games that teach the player how to play card games that are usually played for money or how to play the odds in horse racing.

“It is important to stress that the controversial imagery played a central role in the trailer, but it may not necessarily do so in the game, which has not yet been released.

“At this point in time, PEGI can only comment on the trailer that has been made publicly available.

“The trailer includes imagery that is generally known from casinos (wheel of fortune, slot machines). Using this sort of mechanic to select an item, or character, or action by chance is not the same as teaching how to gamble for money in a casino. These differences currently prevent us from applying the gambling descriptor. But we are very aware that it may get too close for comfort for some people, and that is part of an internal discussion that PEGI is having for the moment. The games industry is evolving constantly (and rapidly in recent years). As a rating organisation, we need to ensure that these developments are reflected in our classification criteria. We do not base our decisions on the content of a single trailer, but we will properly assess how the rating system (and the video games industry in general) should address these concerns.”

Although PEGI isn’t applying the gambling rating to NBA 2K20 just yet, the statement suggests it may do so after seeing the final game. If it does apply the descriptor, NBA 2K20 would lose its PEGI-3 rating in Europe. It would be interesting to see if the ESRB follows suit in the US.

NBA 2K20 launches on September 6 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. Check out our NBA 2K20 pre-order guide for all the info on pre-order bonuses and what’s included in the Digital Deluxe and Legend editions. You can also download a free demo for NBA 2K20 right now.

Rey’s switchblade saber is just the latest in a long line of strange lightsaber designs. Here’s a look at the most memorable blades in Star Wars history.