Month: November 2019

Looking for the next level gaming? We’ve picked out the best 4K gaming monitors that will give you the sharpest picture you’ve ever experienced.

Looking for the next level gaming? We’ve picked out the best 4K gaming monitors that will give you the sharpest picture you’ve ever experienced.

Academy Award-winning director, writer, and producer Martin Scorsese has followed up and expanded on his Marvel movies are “not cinema” comments, saying that while “many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures,” there is no “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk.”

Scorsese wrote out his side of the story on The New York Times in response to him stating that he’s “tried to watch a few

and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.”

Continue reading…

Whether you’re buying a new PS4 this Black Friday or have owned one for years, you should consider purchasing a PlayStation Plus subscription. Normally $60 a year, PS Plus grants users access to online multiplayer as well as two free games each month. As long as you have an active subscription, you can keep playing the free games for as long as you want.

Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday will likely bring deals on PlayStation Plus. Last year, the service was discounted to $40 at numerous retailers, including GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. PlayStation also offered the $40 price on the PlayStation Store, so you could buy it straight from your console.

Will PS Plus be on sale for Black Friday 2019?

Nothing has been confirmed, but we’d be shocked if PS Plus subscriptions weren’t on sale once again. Conventional wisdom suggests 12-month subscriptions will be discounted to $40. PS Plus very rarely drops lower than $40, and even when it does, the discount is just ever so slightly better (it was recently $39 at Ebay, and during this year’s Amazon Prime Day, we saw it for $37).

Even if you still have several months left on your current subscription, it’s wise to re-up at a discounted price as subscriptions can be stacked. And if PS Plus is on sale for around $40 again this Black Friday, it’s a worthwhile add-on to your Black Friday PS4 shopping. It would also make for a great gift for any and all PS4 owners on your shopping list, especially when you’re unsure which games they already own.

Where to find PS Plus deals on Black Friday

When PlayStation Plus is discounted on Black Friday, it’s typically on sale just about everywhere that sells PS Plus, either in card form or printed as a code on your receipt. That includes the major retailers, like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and GameStop, as well as the PlayStation Store, which will be the most convenient if you’re buying the subscription for yourself.

That said, keep your eye on the deals at Ebay and Newegg–these two stores tend to have the best discounts on PS Plus year-round, and if it drops to $40 elsewhere, you may be able to find it even cheaper at one of these sites. Of course, stay tuned to GameSpot in the weeks leading up to and during Black Friday as we’ll be reporting on all the best gaming deals, including any PS Plus discounts.

Overwatch 2 is an unusual sequel in that a lot of the new content it introduces–including new characters, maps, and PvP modes–will also be added to the original Overwatch on all platforms. Overwatch 2 will feature an exclusive campaign mode with PvE combat and a story that will delve deeper into the series’ lore, but if you’re just playing Overwatch for the PvP experience, you won’t miss out on anything if you don’t upgrade. It goes the other way as well–all cosmetics you’ve unlocked in the original game will carry over into Overwatch 2.

This is not a standard model for a sequel, but game director Jeff Kaplan has told Kotaku Australia that, while it was a difficult decision to make, he believes that this is the model that best benefits Overwatch’s player base. “It’s very challenging because the industry has done things the same way for so long,” he said. “And so it’s hard to get people, push them out of their comfort zone and say, hey, I think we could do it a better way.”

Kaplan said that convincing people at Blizzard to do this meant explaining how it would ultimately benefit their players. “I try to tell them if we do what’s right by the players, they will be happy, we will have a better game, and we will end up in a better place in the long run.” He believes that cutting off players from the first Overwatch to “make that game just sort of die on the vine” is the wrong approach. “I always try to come at things from a player-first standpoint,” Kaplan said. Ultimately, this model will allow Overwatch 1 and 2 to coexist, and will allow for crossplay between the two games.

Overwatch 2 is just one of several big announcements to come out of BlizzCon 2019, where Diablo IV and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands were also shown for the first time. Overwatch 2 will release on Switch as well as PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and might feature a ping system similar to Apex Legends.

Last night, HBO’s Watchmen TV show introduced its incarnation of a familiar face: Laurie Blake, AKA Laurie Juspeczyk, AKA the second Silk Spectre has joined the show played by the legendary Jean Smart. But in true Watchmen style, this isn’t the Laurie fans of the graphic novel will be all that familiar with and we can assume that a lot (and we mean a lot) has changed over the last thirty years for her.

But before we talk about where she is now, let’s rewind to talk about where she was during the 1980s. Laurie’s position within the Watchmen canon has always been a little complicated. As the original Silk Spectre’s (Sally Jupiter) daughter, she was uniquely situated within the masked vigilante underworld and uniquely privy to the darker side of the career. Laurie was a teenager when she learned that her biological father was actually Eddie Blake, otherwise known as The Comedian, one of the heroes her mother had worked with The Minutemen; and that she was the product of a brutal sexual assault that The Minutemen had elected to cover up. The revelation drove a wedge between Laurie and her mother that was never really repaired, even when Laurie finally agreed to pick up the Silk Spectre mantle and continue in the “family business.”

At 16, Laurie met and became romantically involved with Jon Osterman, AKA Doctor Manhattan, which only served to put more strain on Laurie’s connection with her mom–not because Manhattan was a grown adult at the time, but because Sally thought Manhattan’s nuclear powers were dangerous to be around. Yikes.

Laurie and Jon remained together for around 20 years, even after the Keene Act outlawed vigilantism and forced them into retirement. However, Jon’s growing detachment from humanity eventually put a real end to things. Laurie eventually left him and began a romantic relationship with Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl, who she remained with through the events of the graphic novel.

Following Ozymandias’s squid scheme, Laurie and Dan adopted new identities, Sam and Sandra Hollis, which they figured out keep them safe from any potential fallout both from Adrian Veidt himself and from the law, considering just how many they broke doing things like breaking Rorschach out of prison. They did not, however, plan on giving up the vigilante lifestyle. Their final moments in the comic are dedicated to them having a conversation about new costumed identities where Laurie implies that she’s going to want a new costume, a mask, and possibly a gun.

We learned from the Peteypedia that she did indeed get all of those things at some point. She adopted a new hero name, The Comedienne, after her father. She maintained this identity, presumably with Dan, until the mid-90s when they were caught. This is where things start to get a little tricky. Dan ended up in federal custody as a result and is still there in 2019. Laurie, however, is now a federal agent herself and a member of the anti-vigilante task force. We can’t be sure of what exactly happened, or what kind of deal Laurie would have struck to keep herself out of jail, but it’s certainly possible that she flipped on Dan to ensure her own safety.

Regardless of what happened in the 90s, the Laurie we see in the show is anything but sympathetic to the vigilante cause. She’s ruthlessly good at her job and makes no pretense for her disgust and disinterest in Joe Keene’s “DOPA” or “Defense of Police Act” that allows cops in Tulsa to wear masks and adopt vigilante identities for their own. She’s just as ready to kill costumed adventures as she is to arrest them.

With any luck, the gaps in Laurie’s story will be filled in eventually as HBO’s Watchmen continues every Sunday at 9PM.

It seems December will be a very big month for Star Wars: Battlefront II. The game’s community manager, Ben Walke, confirmed on Twitter that December will be a “celebration month” for the game, with new content based on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker acting as a headliner.

There are no details available just yet regarding what will be included in the Rise of Skywalker update for Battlefront II, but it’s a safe bet that it will feature maps or characters from the movie. The Rise of Skywalker hits theatres on December 20, so you can expect the new Battlefront II update to release around then, though no specifics have been announced yet.

Multiple new updates are also coming in December. The first of these will be the update that was previously planned for release in November. A second update will follow later in the month.

Walke clarified that EA has not cut any content, but rather explained that the studio merely shifted dates. He did not, however, give any rationale for the delay of the November update. Another EA Star Wars game, Jedi Fallen Order, launches on November 15, so moving the Battlefront II update to December gives the other game more room to shine.

While the November update for Battlefront II has been delayed, EA is still supporting the title this month with new limited-time events and other bonuses. For example, a special “Fast Spawn” mode will arrive in the Blast and Strike playlists from November 8-11, while EA is giving out double XP from November 15-18 to celebrate the launch of Jedi Fallen Order. On top of that, EA will offer double XP every Wednesday in November You can see the full schedule below.

EA has steadily supported Battlefront II since its release in November 2017 with lots of new content in the form of new heroes, maps, modes, and more.

The 2015 Battlefront and the sequel have combined to sell 33 million copies, making them some of the most popular and successful Star Wars video games of all time.

Netflix is introducing a new button that lets viewers skip jokes about President Trump in a new comedy special. The button will be first implemented in comedian and late night TV host Seth Meyers’ comedy special, Lobby Baby, which arrives on the streaming giant November 5.

This button will seemingly work the same way as the “Skip Intro” button that is already in place.

According to Netflix, this is a one-off feature that Meyers is using purposefully as a joke about the saturation of political jokes in comedy specials. This is also a way to get people talking about his special. A spokesperson for Netflix confirmed to GameSpot sister site CNET that giving Meyers the “Skip Trump Jokes” button is part of its desire to support the creative views of its clients.

“It dawned on me that because it was on Netflix, there would be this opportunity to put in technology that would allow people to skip it,” Meyers told CNN. “It was a way to build in the response to anyone who would say, ‘Oh, let me guess there’s going to be jokes about the President.'”

Netflix comedy boss Robbie Praw said the streaming network was “thrilled” to work with Meyers on the new feature that helps people experience comedy specials “in such a funny and innovative way.”

Meyers himself has ripped into Trump on numerous occasions. He was the host of the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, and he used his platform to crack numerous jokes about Trump, who was the host of The Apprentice at the time. Meyers, like other late night TV hosts, continues to lace into Trump during his TV show.

Meyers said he doesn’t expect many people to actually use the “Skip Trump” button, however, and its announcement seems to be more of a marketing ploy than anything else.

“I think, look, sometimes at a fancy restaurant they’ll put parsley on your plate and you’ll think, well, that’s a nice touch, but you’re not going to eat the parsley,” he said.

For more on what’s new on Netflix in November, check out this roundup of all the new TV show and movies on Netflix.

The next expansion for World of Warcraft, Shadowlands, is taking the conflicts of Azeroth to a whole new place: the afterlife. Venturing to a new plane of existence–one that Blizzard hasn’t explored much either in its games or in WoW’s lore–offers opportunities for the developer to add new ways to play WoW in the expansion that haven’t been a part of Azeroth before.

Torghast, the Tower of the Damned, is a pretty literal expression of the Shadowlands offering something strange and different to the WoW formula. The new endgame activity in the Shadowlands basically imagines WoW as a rogue-like. On paper, it shares similarities with Final Fantasy XIV’s Deep Dungeons called “Palace of the Dead” and “Heaven-on-High” which use a rogue-like structure and throw challenging enemies and variables at you as you ascend a number of floors. And here, WoW seems to be providing an endless challenge that plays differently from the rest of the game in some key ways.

At Blizzcon 2019, executive producer John Hight and senior game designer Johnny Cash explained how Torghast gave Blizzard a chance to mess with the WoW formula and experiment a bit. Essentially, Torghast is a tower in which you face a variety of battles that ratchet up in difficulty the higher you climb. Your goal is to get as far as you can before you’re eventually killed.

“We really wanted to give you a place to be able to go, commit maybe 45 minutes of your time, but have a very exciting replayable experience,” Hight said. “The way that’s designed is you alone, or up to five people in your party, begin ascending this tower that was really designed to kill you, or to put an end to you.

“The reason it’s replayable is because everything changes each time you play through. You might enter that first level, and the walkway that you were used to that goes to the right now goes to the left, and the traps that you were about to face, be it fire or blades, will be completely different. The bosses that you encounter, the spawns you encounter, and more importantly, the crazy loop that you’re going to get when you go in there. Because these are in the form of buffs and power-ups, and if you get lucky, you’ll find some combinations that make you completely [overpowered]. You’ll be able to completely clear a level, master it, be the hero amongst your group, walk to the next level and find a completely different setup.”

The shifting reality of Torghast also applies to the items you’ll find in it along the way. The tower is full of buffs and power-ups you’ll earn that linger only for a particular run, like the power-ups and equipment you’d get in a rogue-like game. It sounds fundamentally different from other World of Warcraft activities because, by design, it’s not focused on balancing your abilities against the enemies you’re facing.

“One of the things we can do is really fundamentally play with the rules of what you assume. and what we’ve all assumed, WoW is,” Cash said. “Normally you’re getting gear, and it might be an incremental power upgrade, and over time you’re going to get a bunch of those, and then you’ll gradually grow in strength. In Torghast, there’s the cool opportunity amongst the ever-changing layouts and monsters and traps, what if we can give you a buff that you find that doubles your power instantly? And that combos with another thing and another thing and another thing, such that you can instantly blow up enemies, and when they blow up, they chain to blow up other enemies, and those enemies heal you. These crazy combinations, and you need them to defeat those more powerful levels.”

“It’s an opportunity to explore a space that–you know, we can’t double your power in the outdoor world because people would farm the hell out of that, and clear the raid way too fast or way too easily,” he said. “And so it lets us play with rules that we normally can’t.”

There’s no timer in Torghast, and eventually, you will die. But ascending the tower isn’t just about seeing how far you can get and having a randomized activity you can replay over and over. Torghast also provides rewards beyond the buffs you can find along the way to make a particular run more enticing.

Working through Torghast will reward you with runes that will let you craft new Legendary items. The system also gives you some control over the gear you earn as you fight your way through the tower’s torments.

“We know that people love loading in their Legendaries,” Hight said. “They told us after Legion, ‘Where are my Legendaries?’ They’re not Legendary weapons, but they are going to be Legendary pieces that you can equip–up to one, but you can build more than that and you can swap out. You’re going to have a lot of control over the aspects, the abilities that are on those Legendaries.”

The challenges of Torghast sound as though they’ll give WoW players something new to think about when they hit the endgame of Shadowlands. You might bring different builds to bear in the rogue-like tower, or take advantage of other elements, like the new Soulbinds system. It all seems like a fresh take on the WoW formula that has allowed Blizzard a little freedom in playing with the game’s underlying formula–and will likely provide players with an opportunity to shake up how they play as well.

See a list of every Pokemon that will allegedly be in Sword and Shield.