Month: October 2019

The launch of Destiny 2‘s Shadowkeep expansion and New Light was a bit rough, with long queues and servers even being taken down for a period of time on release day. Much of that seems to have been already smoothed out, but there are a variety of other issues that Bungie has acknowledged. One in particular is potentially serious for gameplay, but it’s thankfully something you can avoid if you’re aware of it.

One of the key new additions in update 2.6.0.1 is the Artifact. This is a new type of item players acquire and then level up during the course of the season. You can acquire this whether or not you’ve purchased Shadowkeep; you just have to level up the new battle pass to Tier 7. Once you do, you can claim it from the Seasons menu–but it’s imperative you don’t do so if you’re currently playing an activity where equipment is locked (such as a Nightfall).

Bungie issued a warning on Twitter that players are not receiving the Gate Lord’s Eye when they attempt to claim it while their equipment is locked. You don’t have to worry about hitting Tier 7 while in an equipment-locked activity as long as you don’t actively go and claim it, as you might be tempted to do.

Bungie said it’s investigating the issue, but there’s no word on how soon it might be able to get the item into players’ hands. That’s unfortunate because it’s something you want to acquire as soon as possible. Once you have the Artifact, your XP gains will level it up, unlocking rewards and boosting your Power level. This can only be done during the current Season of the Undying, which runs until mid-December. At that point, the Artifact and its rewards will go away for everyone, paving the way for a new Artifact, rewards, and Power climb in the next season.

There is a running list of known issues impacting Destiny 2 right now on Bungie’s forums. More problems are sure to emerge in the coming days, but for the time being it at least seems that most of the ones preventing people from playing are behind us.

Kenneth Branagh is returning to direct and star as renowned detective Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile, the sequel to 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, alongside a whole new cast of suspects.

Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman herself, was attached to the project last year, however, 20th Century Fox has now unmasked the remainder of the star-studded line-up, which includes famous faces from Black Panther and Game of Thrones.

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Microsoft has been long rumored to introduce a dual-screen device and now we finally know its the Surface Neo. The Redmond-based company introduced the dual-screen tablet well ahead of its 2020 holiday release date at its press conference in New York City.

The headlining feature of the Surface Neo is of course is it’s two 5.6mm thin screens. However unlike true foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Fold or Huawei Mate X, the Neo doesn’t feature a contiguous display that spans across both sides of the device. Rather the device has two separate screens separated by a hinge.

That’s a little less impressive than I was hoping for but this makes the device a bit more flexible as the hinge can rotate around a full 360-degrees. Without the foldable screen it also folds into one compact booklet that only weighs 655 grams.

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Like the character himself, the Joker movie has become the center of numerous controversies–and its October 4 release date hasn’t even arrived yet. That fact hasn’t stopped commentators and critics all over the internet from weighing in, regardless of whether they’ve actually seen the film yet.

But that might not be a bad thing for the movie–films can often provide a solid jumping off point for cultural debates, as is already happening with Joker. And Todd Phillips, the movie’s director and co-writer, told GameSpot that he always intended Joker to be a “real movie”–one that would reach a wide audience than includes both comic book fans and the general moviegoing public.

“I always enjoy movies that are difficult to speak about right after [you see them],” Phillips said during a Q&A after a recent Joker screening in Los Angeles. “You go, ‘I want to process this a little bit.’ I always find those to be particularly rewarding…where you can’t necessarily distill it down into a one-line thing really simply.”

Following the Q&A, Phillips told GameSpot and other journalists about the moment he had the idea for this movie, as he exited the premiere for his 2016 semi-true crime drama, War Dogs.

“I was like, ‘Alright, we made a good movie. Who’s going to really see this? People don’t go to these movies like this anymore,'” the director recounted. “And I’m staring across [the street] looking at a billboard for a comic book movie–one of many–and I’m like, ‘That’s where this business is headed.'”

He remembered thinking that movies he loves, like A Clockwork Orange, Apocalypse Now, and Taxi Driver, couldn’t get made at a big studio today. “And I said, ‘Well, you might be able to do it, if you do it about one of those guys.’ And that’s really where it came from.”

When he pitched the idea for Joker to Warner Bros., the studio went back and forth. “And I go, ‘We’re gonna sneak a real movie in under the guise of [a comic book movie],'” the director continued. That apparently did the trick.

Of course, that’s a controversial statement, as it implies that comic book and superhero movies aren’t what Phillips considers “real movies.” The director took a moment during his story to clarify: “I don’t mean that like disparagingly to comic book movies–those are real movies,” he said. But he went on to double down a moment later.

“All of a sudden kids who wouldn’t care or go to this movie if it was called ‘Arthur’ are going to go sit in this movie and be exposed to something entirely different than Avengers: Endgame,” he continued. “I love those movies. [Robert Downey Jr.] is my boy. But they just watched a real movie, in a way.”

One problem Phillips sees with contemporary comic book movies is they all start to blend together. “How do you cut through the fog?” he asked. “It can’t all be CGI parking lot fights. It’s gonna just burn itself out.”

A Character Study

Some of Joker’s detractors–including both those who have and haven’t seen the movie–are worried about the violence it might inspire in disenfranchised fans who view the villain as a role model. Given the current climate around issues like shootings and gun control, that’s a valid conversation to have.

But it’s not a black and white issue. Joker may be painted as an antihero throughout the film, but most viewers will find they stop rooting for him at some point–although that point will vary from person to person, according to Phillips.

“Our thing was let’s make an origin story about a villain who’s actually the hero in the beginning, and you love him until you can’t love him anymore,” he said. “Other people I’ve shown it to stop rooting for him at different points. But like I said [after the screening], I watch Scarface, I’m rooting until the end of the credits.”

“That’s the fun thing about the movie, and that is one of your goals as a filmmaker–inspire conversation and theories and things,” Phillips continued. “There’s nothing more thrilling than that debate.”

Phillips said he intended Joker as a character study first and foremost. Given the film’s relative lack of connections with the rest of the DC universe, it’s fair to ask why it’s a Joker movie at all–couldn’t it have just been called “Arthur” and avoided all the messy baggage that comes with this character?

“Could it have been called ‘Arthur’ and just be about a clown? Maybe,” Phillips said. “I just thought there’s a new way to tell a comic book movie–and maybe I’m wrong–let’s do it as a character study.” He added that another goal was to “deconstruct the comic book movie a little bit.”

Setting the movie around the late ’70s or early ’80s (it’s somewhat ambiguous) helped as well. “Tonally, the movie is very much a character study,” Phillips said. “There’s movies we grew up on and loved, and you go, ‘God, those movies don’t get made as much anymore.’ They get made–The Social Network is a great one, There Will be Blood is probably the best in the last 20 years–but in the ’70s and ’80s they were much more frequent. So in a weird way, it was also just an homage to that time. We’re making a movie that feels like that, why not set it there?”

We’ll soon know whether all these gambles paid off, as Joker hits theaters October 4. Read our Joker review here, and keep an eye on GameSpot for more Joker coverage up to and following the movie’s release.

Super Mario Maker 2 was well-received, but it’s gone several months without a promised post-launch feature. That has now changed, as the new 1.1 patch adds online multiplayer modes with your friends, instead of restricting it to random players. The new update adds a few other new features and tweaks as well.

According to the announcement, Version 1.1.0 lets you play with people on your friends list for both versus and co-op modes, for courses uploaded to Course World along with anything saved to Coursebot. The update also adds voice chat support for the mobile app, so you can talk with your friends while running courses too. Nintendo notes that a Switch Online membership is required.

A few other additions were included in the update as well. The “Nearby Play” function now lets you play in co-op mode as well, and if you play a Coursebot stage the host system doesn’t need to be connected to the Internet. It also added an Official Makers list so you can more easily find levels made by Nintendo. Finally, it adds a Play Together option directly from courses uploaded to a player’s profile, Maker Profiles now include more info, and you can play with a horizontal Joy-Con in all modes.

The word that Mario Maker 2 wouldn’t include friends list co-op came out just before the game’s release, and fans quickly expressed dissatisfaction. Nintendo responded by promising it would come in a free update at E3, again before the game released, but it didn’t give an expected timeline. The news didn’t seem to slow down the game’s sales, as Nintendo announced it had hit 2 million copies in its first three days.

“The Mario series is worth all the admiration it gets, and Super Mario Maker 2 is an excellent tool for picking it apart by pushing its enemies, mechanisms, and Mario, to their limit,” Peter Brown said in GameSpot’s review. “I’ve yet to make a stage of my own that I think is worthy of sending out to other players, but I’m committed to getting there. Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I’ve got the itch to join the creator’s club. Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable. Most importantly, it’s enabled designers amateur and professional alike to share their creativity with the world. The community is off to a great start, and thankfully, the fun has only just begun.”