Month: March 2020

Seven seasons of Letterkenny are available to stream on Hulu.

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Letterkenny is the greatest television program about small-town life ever created. Set in the fictional town of Letterkenny, Ontario, Canada, its characters and settings are instantly recognizable to anyone who lived, or still lives, in a tiny town off the beaten path. Yet its themes and conflicts are familiar to anyone, regardless of where you live or where you grew up.

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Unlike the patronizing depictions of rural life Hollywood writers seem to favor, Letterkenny is a love letter to small-town life. No one on the show is ashamed of where they’re from, nor is anyone written as condescending caricature (although all the characters do fit into various small-town tropes). For me, the realistic, respectful portrayal of what it’s like to live in a small town is an incredible breath of fresh air, but the fact that the show is unbelievably hilarious and smartly written is the icing on the cake.

Letterkenny primarily focuses on Wayne, his sister Katy, and their two friends Daryl (Darry) and Squirrely Dan. They spend a lot of their time in front of the produce stand in Wayne and Katy’s front yard, drinking beers, smoking darts (Canadian slang for cigarettes), and conversating. The dialogue is rapid-fire during these scenes, and the camera is always moving. It’s almost hypnotic, the way these four friends talk to one another, with jokes piling on top of one another until the rhythm is broken by one of Letterkenny’s secondary characters pulling into the “laneway” (slang for driveway) for one reason or another.

The cast of characters is incredible and I honestly can’t think of a single character I dislike. Better still, they seem like one-dimensional stereotypes when first introduced, but as the show carries on, even tertiary characters’ back-stories and motivations unfold. Even without the rural Canadian accents and idioms, Letterkenny could be about almost any small town in North America. Replace the Ag Hall (the Letterkenny Agricultural Hall) with a community center, or a Fisherman’s Co-Op, or just about any other central meeting place and the show would work anywhere. Since I started watching Letterkenny, I’ve found its many catchphrases making their way into my own vocabulary. I’m constantly telling people to “figure it out,” or expressing my understanding of something by saying it’s a Texas-sized 10-4.

As much as I love its Anytown, North America, feel, I particularly enjoy its unabashed Canadianess. In Maine, I grew up close enough to the US/Canadian border to get Canadian broadcast stations on my TV and to tune in French-Canadian radio stations. But even with my exposure to Canada growing up, there’s a mix of familiarity and surprise at the ins and outs of rural Canadian life portrayed in Letterkenny. It’s like watching my own small-town experiences through a maple-syrup tinted lens.

Ultimately, it’s the razor-sharp writing, the machine-gun dialogue delivery, and a cast of characters without a single “bad guy” in the bunch that makes Letterkenny a must-binge right now. Its idiosyncratic Canadianess adds a massive layer of charm to an already excellent show, and it’s the setting that makes this amazing show into something legendary. Seven seasons of Letterkenny are available to stream on Hulu, so clear your scheddy, grab a Puppers, and pitter-patter.

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• Netflix’s Castlevania Is a Bloody Exploration of the Human Condition… With Vampires
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Binge It! is IGN’s recommendation series. Movies, TV shows, books, comics, music… if you can binge it, we’re here to talk about it. In each installment of Binge It!, we’ll discuss a piece of content we’re passionate about — and why you should check it out.

In celebration of Half-Life: Alyx‘s launch, developers Evil Empire and Motion Twin dropped a new Dead Cells PC update that includes some direct references to Valve’s first-person shooter. We’ve compiled the patch notes below.

The update, which is the 18th in Dead Cells’ life cycle, adds a ton of new content. Alongside Half-Life items such as Freeman’s crowbar and a series-inspired skin, the game gets extra goodies like a portable door to give you back protection, six brand-new enemies, more affixes on many of the game’s skills, and more.

Unfortunately, Dead Cells’ latest update is only available on Steam. The studios warn that, since the patch is in alpha for the moment, it may be broken, and it’s best to create save backups while preparing to install it. You can find instructions on how to download the new Dead Cells alpha update below:

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As retailers respond to increased demand for online goods due to the coronavirus, many items are starting to sell out on Amazon, Walmart, and other retail websites. While certainly not as crucial as hand sanitizer, tissues, toilet paper, and other household goods running low on Amazon, the Nintendo Switch is also seeing a major shortage right now, with stock for the main console sold out nearly everywhere online. The $300 console is seeing increased demand as more people find themselves stuck indoors. Nintendo’s massively popular first-party game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, also just released on March 20.

While the main system is sold out basically everywhere, you’ll have an easier time finding the Nintendo Switch Lite, which is smaller, handheld-only, and more affordable. Amazon is nearly out of stock for both systems, but other stores like Best Buy and Target still have the Switch Lite selling for $200. If you’re primarily interested in using the Switch as a handheld device rather than playing it on the TV, the Switch Lite is an excellent option that’ll cost you less money, and it may be a great option for younger gamers who are stuck inside right now.

According to Nintendo, more Switch consoles will be restocked soon. “Nintendo Switch hardware is selling out at various retail locations in the US, but more systems are on the way. We apologize for any inconvenience,” Nintendo told GameSpot in an email statement.

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Ninja Theory’s new melee-focused action game, Bleeding Edge, is now out on Xbox One and PC. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, the game comes included in the service on both platforms.

At first glance, Bleeding Edge looks like it may resemble plenty of the character-based multiplayer games that have released in recent years (like Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends). However, the game has a lot of similarities to multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games too, so there is a bit of a steep learning curve at the start.

Once you overcome that hump, though, Bleeding Edge can be a great game to play with your friends if y’all have nothing to do and are stuck inside all day. In the following article, we go over some tips to help improve your chances at succeeding in Bleeding Edge.

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If you haven’t yet heard, Animal Crossing and Doom fans are the best of friends these days. A slick fan video put together by TheDashingDoctorK shows the mild-mannered dog-friend from Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros. teaming up with the Doom Slayer to kill imps in a bombed-out hellscape.

If you haven’t kept up with the memes, this all started because Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons happened to share a release date. This triggered a flood of imaginative fanart based around the unlikely pair.

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The new Takedown Shakedown limited-time event in Borderlands 3 has been extended on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. The event will now end on Thursday, April 2 instead of the originally planned March 27.

Takedown Shakedown sees the bosses in the Maliwan Blacksite, the location from 2019’s Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite event, dropping more loot than usual. Gearbox said this special event is to provide some solace for those “stuck at home and looking for something fun to do in the here and now” while practicing social distancing. (We’ve compiled some of the best games to play while stuck at home during these times.) The studio also said it will be “rolling out a series of similar mini-events in the coming weeks.”

According to Gearbox, Takedown Shakedown is specifically targeted at endgame users as only those who have finished Borderlands 3’s main story campaign can access the endgame challenge. While Takedown’s difficulty will scale depending on the size of your party, Gearbox said the event is really intended for “max-level characters with powerful gear.”

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The Division 2 is well into its new season of content following the launch of the Warlords of New York expansion, and now its first global event has gone live. It’s called Polarity Switch, and it adds some modifiers that will make your gunplay feel pretty different for a while.

According to a tweet from Ubisoft, Polarity Shift adds damage modifiers to both yours and hostiles’ weapons. That will make you both tougher, and in the process earn you some rewards for playing with the modifiers on.

Polarity Shift follows a recent patch that made a number of adjustments across the board. Those include reworked health and armor values for enemies and allies, damage reduction for enemies and NPCs, reduced health and armor for elites, and more health and armor for heroic and legendary enemies. It also adjusts how progress works for seasonal manhunts in groups, and increases drop rates of certain items.

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Two days after release, Valve has updated its VR hit Half-Life: Alyx with enhanced movement options. You can now use an analog stick to turn your perspective smoothly, as in most first-person games, a feature the game calls a Continuous Turn. As before the patch, you have the option of using the analog stick to turn in the direction you were already facing by a fixed number of degrees, which the game now calls a Snap Turn. Previously, it was known as a Quick Turn.

In this new setup, you can choose either to keep the Snap Turn or to change it to a Continuous Turn. If you choose the latter option, you can adjust the speed of the turn. You can also fiddle with the distance of the Snap Turn, or choose to turn off controller turning entirely. The patch added some minor improvements, including its detection of quality settings on some PCs. For more on the game’s motion settings, check out our guide to Half-Life: Alyx’s accessibility options.

In our review, our critic Michael Higham called Half-Life: Alyx a triumph. “Yes, this game is somewhat of a companion piece to mainline Half-Life games, taking place five years before Half-Life 2, but that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Disappointment you may have felt in its 13-year hiatus will feel like water under the bridge, and in a way, have played into just how powerful Half-Life: Alyx turned out to be. The names, the faces, the iconic objects that have become synonymous with Half-Life have their specific place. And if you weren’t aware previously, you’ll see just how important Alyx Vance–the series’ most infallible personality–has been the entire time.”

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Now that we’re all stuck inside, it’s a great time to catch up on some of the video game franchises we’ve been meaning to try out. If you’ve wondered what all the fuss is about with Yakuza, now’s a great time for PC owners to jump in. That’s because, between now and March 29, the Humble Store is having a Yakuza franchise sale that gets you the first three games in in the series’ timeline for up to 75% off. All of the games come in the form of Steam codes. Check it out.

Yakuza Franchise Sale

Don’t see the deals below? Click here.

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Just as Yakuza Kiwami brought the original game up to date with modern conveniences, this sequel does the same for the second game in the series.

Yakuza 0 originally landed in the US in 2017. It’s a prequel that offers origin stories for two of the series’ most beloved characters, Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima. It tells a dramatic story of a land battle between two rival criminal enterprises, and contains all the humor, absurdity, and diverting side quests the series is known for. Read our Yakuza 0 review for more information.

Yakuza Kiwami is a modern remake of the first game in the series, which originally launched on PS2 in Japan back in 2005. Pretty much everything has been rebuilt from the ground up, including the graphics and combat. It even features brand-new additional side quests. Our Yakuza Kiwami review has plenty more details if you’re interested in learning more.

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As for Yakuza Kiwami 2, it brings a similar modernizing treatment to the second game in the series that Kiwami brought to the first. The difference is that this game is based on the Dragon Engine created for Yakuza 6, so it has even more enhancements and improvements. Our Yakuza Kiwami 2 review can bring you fully up to speed.

If you grab all of these titles while they’re on sale and you’re wondering where to start, we have you covered with our Which Yakuza Game Should You Play First? article. The TL;DR of it is that either Yakuza 0 or Yakuza Kiwami are great places to start. But since Yakuza Kiwami was originally intended to be the series’ introduction, it’s probably best to play them in release order. So there you have it.

Disclosure: Humble Bundle is owned by Ziff Davis, the parent company of IGN. Humble Bundle and IGN operate completely independently, and no special consideration is given to Humble Bundle announcements or promotions for coverage.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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