Month: March 2020

Though it was previously set to premiere on April 12, AMC has postponed the debut of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, a two-season limited event series set in the world of the network’s zombie franchise, The Walking Dead. The delay is due to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

The news was first revealed in a tweet that simply noted the premiere was moving. However, in a statement to GameSpot, AMC explained, “Given current circumstances, we have decided to shift the premiere of the new series The Walking Dead: World Beyond to later in the year.”

While World Beyond has already completed filming on its first season, it joins a growing list of delayed entertainment releases, including a long list of blockbuster films that are changing release dates because of the pandemic–from Disney’s Mulan to the highly-anticipated F9: The Fast Saga.

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Video game streaming is a popular and fun way to play games, entertain an audience, and interact with your friends and viewers. However, it can be incredibly confusing when it comes to getting started and figuring out what you need. That’s why we’ve tested a multitude of products–from microphones and capture cards to webcams and gaming headsets–to help you find the best streaming accessories that are perfect for Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, or anywhere else.

If you want to start streaming, then there are some things you need to consider. First and foremost, you need a PC that is capable of streaming. In most cases, dedicated desktop PCs will be able to handle this task much better than laptops, and if you’re also gaming on that PC, you should take your specs and settings into consideration as you’ll need to split the workload between the game and the stream. As for the type of accessories you’ll need, the bare essentials tend to be a capture card, microphone, headphones, and webcam. Some of the accessories that’ll improve your stream (but aren’t exactly necessary) include a second monitor and a controller like Elgato’s Streamdeck.

Of course, there are plenty of professional-grade products that producers and top-tier streamers take advantage of, but in this guide, we’ve focused on products that are affordable and accessible to those who want to start streaming or improve their setup. All of these microphones, capture cards, and other accessories are excellent and easy-to-use, and if you’re looking to get started, then this guide will be perfect for you.

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So you’ve found yourself choosing the peaceful embrace of living on a deserted island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But if you’ve played through the introduction, you probably have a lot of questions regarding how to make the most of your time in a day. And if you’re an Animal Crossing veteran, you might also be curious about what you need to do to gain access to some of the series’ most well-known tools, utilities, and shops. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered with a wealth of guides answering some of the biggest queries you likely have about the game so far.

Below we you can find links to all our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides and videos. If you’re more curious about our thoughts about the game, then be sure to read our review in progress. Otherwise, please read on!

What To Do On Your First Day

We’ve outlined everything you should do on day one on your new island so you can maximize your early progress. You can check out our feature or watch the video above for a breakdown of all the essential tasks.

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Although it’s been 24 years since Scream hit theaters, it doesn’t seem as if the influential slasher movie has ever truly gone away. Three sequels followed over the next 16 years, followed by a spin-off TV show, which ran for three seasons between 2016 and 2019. And earlier this month, it was announced that the film was to be rebooted by Ready or Not directors Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.

It’s clear that Scream is a movie that continues to resonate with horror fans and filmmakers, and that it had a huge effect on the genre. The first half of the 1990s was not a particularly strong one for American horror, and it’s hard to find many true classics in the six years prior to Scream’s release. And on paper there was nothing to suggest that it would stand out from the pack. While director Wes Craven was a much-loved horror veteran who had previously given the genre classic movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes, it had been many years since his last hit. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson was a complete unknown, and the two biggest names in the cast–Drew Barrymmore and Courteney Cox–weren’t exactly known for their work in the genre.

But somehow, everything worked. Williamson’s script was an inspired deconstruction of the slasher movie, while Craven’s experience ensured that while Scream was very clever and funny, it worked just as well as a straight-up scary movie. Established stars Barrymore, Cox, and Henry Winkler all subverted expectations in their roles, and the cast of young, upcoming actors were perfectly cast. And while the decision to release it a week before Christmas 1996 was seen as risky at the time, it totally paid off. The film was a smash, ultimately making more than $173 million at the worldwide box office.

So with Scream’s 25th anniversary approaching, and with the reboot in development, we’re taking a look back at this ’90s classic. And after that, check out GameSpot’s guide to the most underrated horror movies of the 1990s…

1. The screenplay was written fast

While the end result quickly became a box office hit and a hugely influential movie, struggling screenwriter Kevin Williamson wrote Scream very quickly with no intention beyond a quick sale to help his precarious financial situation. He loosely based the concept on a real-life murder case he had seen on TV, and then isolated himself in Palm Springs to get it finished. “I went off to the desert for 3 days, locked myself in the room, and pounded it out,” he said in a subsequent making-of documentary.

2. Wes Craven wasn’t interested at first

While many of the great horror directors that emerged from the 1970s either floundered in the 1990s or moved away from horror, Scream gave Wes Craven the biggest hit of his career. But although the Nightmare on Elm Street director was producer Bob Weinstein’s first choice to helm Scream, Craven turned it down several times. At the time Craven himself was tired of making horror movies, describing many of them as “misogynistic”, leading Weinstein to approach a variety of other filmmakers, including Robert Rodriguez, George Romero, and Sam Raimi. But they all turned it down too, and ultimately it was Drew Barrymore’s interest in appearing in the movie that persuaded Craven that there was more to the project than he had initially thought.

3. Barrymore became Barry-less

Although Drew Barrymore was one of the first stars to sign on and helped get Craven on board, her role changed shortly before production. She was originally set to play the lead role of Sidney Prescott, but five weeks before filming was to start, commitments elsewhere meant that her shooting time would have to be reduced. Instead, she took on the role of Casey Becker, Ghostface’s first victim. It wasn’t the first time a big star had been unexpectedly killed off towards the start of a scary movie–Hitchcock pulled the same trick with Janet Leigh in Psycho–but it really worked in terms of subverting audience expectation in this scene.

4. Alternate casting

A variety of upcoming actors were considered for the roles in Scream. Alicia Witt and Brittany Murphy both auditioned for the role of Sidney after Barrymore left the part, and Reese Witherspoon was also considered. Brooke Shields and Janeane Garofalo were among the notable names who auditioned for the role of news reporter Gale Weathers, a role ultimately played by Cox. While the Friends actress was a huge TV star at the time, producers didn’t believe she could play nasty as well as she played nice. “They didn’t really see me as a b***h,” she subsequently said, and it took her months to persuade them.

5. The actors never met the voice of Ghostface

The voice of Ghostface is one of the most iconic aspects of the movie–his taunting and terrifying phone call with Drew Barrymore’s Casey is a big part of what makes the opening sequence so effective. While most directors would just dub his voice on afterwards, Craven decided that those scenes would be far more effective if the actors could hear the dialogue on the other end of the line. To add to the effect, he ensured that Barrymore and Neve Campbell didn’t meet the man who performed the voice (actor Roger L. Jackson) before filming these scenes.

6. The Ghostface mask wasn’t popular with everyone

very good slasher movie needs a memorable killer, and many of them are defined by their masks–think Jason, Michael Myers, or Leatherface. Ghostface wears a weird, white screaming mask that joins the pantheon of great slasher villain masks, but it almost didn’t happen. The design was based on a Halloween mask created by a Fun World, who gave the filmmakers permission to use the design. It was then made even weirder and scarier by make-up effects designers KNB. Unfortunately, producer Bob Weinstein was less impressed and later stated that he thought the mask looked “goofy,” demanding at one stage that Craven film each scene with four different masks so the issue could be decided later. Luckily, a screening of the footage shot convinced Weinstein that the mask (and the movie) was working well, and he backed off.

7. Scream originally had a different title

The original title of Scream was Scary Movie. Production on the movie had almost wrapped before Weinstein decided to change the name, choosing “Scream” because of the popular Michael Jackson song of the same title. The cast and crew weren’t happy about the change–co-star Rose McGowan later said “I was really mad when they changed it,” and in the movie’s DVD commentary, Craven also states he didn’t like the new title. Of course, Scary Movie was subsequently used as the title for the Wayans brothers’ popular series of horror spoofs.

8. Cameos to watch for

There are a couple of cool cameos to look out for in Scream. Linda Blair, who became a horror icon for playing the possessed Regan in The Exorcist, appears as a reporter in the press scrum who shouts “people have a right to know!” at the police. And Craven himself appears briefly as a janitor in the high school, dressed amusingly in a jumper that is suspiciously similar to the one worn by his greatest creation–Freddy Krueger. The principal, played by Winkler, even refers to him as Fred.

9. Scream had trouble getting an R rating

The filmmakers didn’t have an easy time getting Scream through the US censors. Craven had to submit it no fewer than eight times to get it passed with an R-rating by the MPAA. In the movie’s DVD commentary, he reveals that he lied to them at one point, telling them that there was no alternative footage of the opening scene for him to use, instead of the gorier shots in the movie. In the end, it took a direct appeal from Bob Weinstein to the MPAA, who successfully argued that they were focusing too much on the horror aspects and not enough on the humour and self-referential storyline.

Family Guy recently returned to airwaves. Here are the funniest cutaway gags from the show’s first three seasons.

Family Guy returned to the airwaves recently for the second half of its 18th season. Who could have guessed that this show would have lasted over two decades since its rocky beginnings? It was cancelled after its third season due to low ratings, but the show’s young, college-aged fans were persistent, and as a result of strong DVD sales, Fox revived the show.

Since then, creator Seth MacFarlane has become a mainstream success, authoring additional animated shows, several films, and a sci-fi send-up of Star Trek. He even has a moderately successful career as a singer, specializing in big band American standards.

What has kept Family Guy unique and distinctive for 18 seasons is its reliance on cutaway gags. These are rapid fire non-sequiturs, that are framed either as flashbacks or intrusions upon the episode’s main plot. Good cutaway gags allow the show to indulge in the bizarre and the nostalgic, and make Family Guy easy to binge, because even the weaker episodes can have fantastic individual jokes scattered throughout.

We’re looking at the best cutaway gags from the first three seasons of Family Guy–the original run of the show from 1999-2003, before it became a mainstream success. Family Guy is currently streaming all its episodes on Hulu.

1. Kool-Aid Man

Episode: “Death Has A Shadow” – Season 1 Episode 1

Trigger Line: “Oh no!”

The biggest laugh in the show’s pilot episode came from this gag, when the Kool-Aid Man broke through the wall of Judge Blackman’s courtroom. “OH YEAH!” The show has continued to reference this early, classic moment; the Kool-Aid Man has made at least 10 appearances in subsequent episodes.

2. Do Not Push Button

Episode: “The Son Also Draws” – Season 1 Episode 6

Trigger Line: “Rules were made to be broken!”

What makes this gag work is the unexpected effect that pressing the button has. One would expect a bomb to go off, or for some other, mechanical chain reaction to take place. Instead, a karate master walks into the room, bows, and kicks Peter in the head.

3. Hit A Deer

Episode: “Brian: Portrait Of A Dog” – Season 1 Episode 7

Trigger Line: “Yeah, except for the time Dad hit that deer.”

It’s a nightmare situation for every driver: You’re in a fender bender, and you have to interact with the other driver. Is this worth calling the insurance company? Do you call a cop? Do you take down the other guy’s information? You just want to get out of there before one of you starts screaming. Or grunting, in the deer’s case.

4. Fixin’ The Shed

Episode: “Brian: Portrait Of A Dog” – Season 1 Episode 7

Trigger Line: “Can’t you two go back to the way things used to be?”

Family Guy created this loving tribute to black and white cartoons from the pre-synchronized sound era. Especially nice touches include Brian’s black pupils, the flexible stretch-and squash physics of the characters, and the subtitle placard at the end of the short. “ha-ha-ha-ha!”

5. One Horse Town

Episode: “Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater” – Season 2 Episode 1

Trigger Line: “Quahog? That one horse town?”

This gag is simple but effective; it’s a figure of speech, taken literally. For whatever reason, Family Guy has the best horse characters. This is one of many examples.

6. Chicken Fight #1

Episode: “Da Boom!” – Season 2 Episode 3

Trigger Line: “I don’t take coupons from giant chickens. Not after last time.”

All this over an expired coupon? This is one of those things that people who don’t even watch the show know about. The Family Guy chicken fights are a loving sendup of every action movie trope. This first one, which has Peter and Ernie fighting on a truck, on a helicopter, and in an office building, got the proverbial ball rolling on one of the show’s longest running gags.

7. That’s Tom Selleck’s Food!

Episode: “Da Boom!” – Season 2 Episode 3

Trigger Line: “When I think back at all the food we’ve wasted in this house…”

When Peter wastes money, he wastes it in a way that benefits no one. Remember the Peter-copter? Or the gold tuxedo? Or how about this cutaway, where he takes time to feed beans to Tom Selleck on Magnum P.I.? None for Higgins though. He already had his.

8. I’m Not Stephen King

Episode: “Brian In Love” – Season 2 Episode 4

Trigger Line: “He suggested I go out into the world and pursue my dreams. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Stephen King once said that Dean Koontz’s work is “sometimes… just awful.” Clearly, Brian Griffin agrees with that assessment; this cutaway is a send-up of the infamous car accident that nearly killed Stephen King. Brian is initially worried he ran over King, but when he finds out it’s actually Koontz, he backs over him again for good measure.

9. Albert Einstein, Patent Thief

Episode: “The King Is Dead” – Season 2 Episode 7

Trigger Line: “Peter, a lot of creative people have mindless jobs… Albert Einstein worked at a patent office.”

Albert Einstein is more a myth than a real person these days; his name is shorthand for “genius.” So when Family Guy exploded that myth in one, hilarious cutaway, it hit that much deeper. Smith’s Theory of Relativity is now Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, thanks to a cutthroat attitude and a booth window to the back of the head.

10. Infinite Monkey Theorem

Episode: “The King Is Dead” – Season 2 Episode 7

Trigger Line: “Put enough monkeys in a room with a typewriter and they’ll produce Shakespeare.”

The Simpsons did it first and best, but Family Guy’s take on the infinite monkey theorem, which imagines the monkeys as the occupants of a burnt out writer’s room, is a close second.

11. Mr. Fargus Dissects A Clown

Episode: “Running Mates” – Season 2 Episode 10

Trigger Line: “Oh my God! That’s Mr. Fargus! He was my favorite teacher!”

Morbid and distasteful, this cutaway took the cool, fun teacher trope to its most ridiculous extreme. There’s a fine line between outside-the-box lesson planning and emotional disturbance.

12. Big Bird

Episode: “A Picture Is Worth 1000 Bucks” – Season 2 Episode 11

Trigger Line: “[Whistles]”

Big Bird is such a recognizable, beloved figure, that his very presence in Family Guy is hilarious on its face. When Meg practices one of her bird calls in Rockefeller Center, a very grouchy Big Bird shows up to answer it.

“Yeah? Well, whaddya want?”

There’s that New York hospitality. He nearly punches Meg in the face for inconveniencing him.

13. Please Sir, I Want Some More

Episode: “Let’s Go To The Hop” – Season 2 Episode 14

Trigger Line: “‘Oliver Twit’ if you ask me. I would have done things rather differently, I can tell you that!”

One of the most famous scenes in English literature is when Charles Dickens’ protagonist, Oliver Twist, asks for more gruel from the overseer. In the novel, this leads to a beating. In Stewie’s fantasy, it leads to pure wish fulfilment.

14. Cavity Creeps

Episode: “There’s Something About Paulie” – Season 2 Episode 16

Trigger Line: “She doesn’t want to see me fall in with a tough crowd again.”

This is the type of gag where Seth MacFarlane dates himself. Everyone who came of age in the late ’70s and early ’80s knows exactly what this is: a sendup of a classic ad campaign, featuring the squeaky clean Crest Team against the evil, rock-like Cavity Creeps.

15. The Dating Game

Episode: “There’s Something About Paulie” – Season 2 Episode 16

Trigger Line: “What if something happens to you? I’m too old to start dating again!”

The real-life Dating Game was filled with double entendre questions like these, and Peter suffers humiliation from a particularly mixed metaphor.

Woman: “I’m an ice-cream cone. How are you going to eat me?”

Peter: “Well, I would try to eat you really fast, before I got flaccid!”

16. Peter Sees Cats on Broadway

Episode: “Brian Does Hollywood” – Season 3 Episode 2

Trigger Line: “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve disrupted a performance.”

Now that the Cats movie just flopped at the box office, this cutaway is even funnier. Peter runs over Munkustrap with his car and inmediately begins babbling excuses.

“I didn’t see it! It jumped right out in front of my car!”

At the time the episode originally aired, Cats was the longest running Broadway musical in history, and played at the Winter Garden Theatre for 18 years before closing in 2000.

17. Evil Monkey Origins

Episode: “Ready, Willing, And Disabled” – Season 3 Episode 15

Trigger Line: “You know, the sad part is? He wasn’t always evil.”

The Evil Monkey was one of the earliest viral characters on the show, and this cutaway gives him just enough of a background story. He would later finally get the full story treatment in the Season 8 episode “Hannah Banana.”

18. Expressed Written Consent

Episode: “A Very Special Family Guy Freakin’ Christmas” – Season 3 Episode 16

Trigger Line: “Sorry, the VCR hasn’t worked since you tried to tape Monday Night Football.”

There’s lots of laws and regulations that are on the books, technically, but no one follows. You’re not supposed to tape Monday Night Football, and Peter learns the consequences of doing so, the hard way.

19. Stewie’s Sexy Party

Episode: “From Method To Madness” – Season 3 Episode 18

Trigger Line: “Well at first, I wanted you to fail. But then I realized you’d be out of the house five days a week! Which means I’d be free to throw some of my sexy parties!”

This Hugh Hefner fantasy is oddly innocent (Stewie is a baby, after all) and has made repeated appearances in subsequent episodes. Apparently, Stewie has that ship captain’s uniform underneath his clothes at all times. The kid is ready for a sexy party at a moment’s notice.

20. Eye Surgery

Episode: “When You Wish Upon A Weinstein” – Season 3 Episode 22

Trigger Line: “I just don’t think it’s [laser surgery] safe.”

Family Guy would eventually create full-length Star Wars spoofs of the original three movies. But in this cutaway from the “banned episode” of Season 3, Luke accidentally kills a woman by using a lightsaber to do eye surgery. Obi-Wan’s suggestion–to use The Force to guide him–doesn’t help matters. A frustrated Luke turns to his mentor:

Luke: “Are you happy?”

Obi-Wan: “I’ve never been happy.”

Valve has recently put the Steam page for its Dota 2 card game, Artifact, ‘Under Construction’ and says there will be more news about the digital card game after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx next week.

Even a video game company like Valve makes mistakes. Probably the most public of the company’s errors was the Dota 2-themed card game called Artifact. So much so that even Valve founder Gabe Newell called it a “giant disappointment” when IGN visited Valve headquarters recently.

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But Valve hasn’t given up on Artifact just yet, and there are reports that the changes to the game are so massive the overhaul is internally being called “Artifact 2” according to the latest Edge Magazine.

Artifact was released in 2018, and despite some initial interest the card game’s player count soon cratered. The community criticized Artifact’s monetization model and progression difficulties. Valve soon announced that small updates would not be able to fix the game’s core problems and announced it would be working on large-scale overhauls.

“Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome,” Valve wrote in a blog post announcing the re-development.

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While it’s not yet known what steps Valve has taken to fix Artifact and make it more popular with players, but Valve is taking big steps.

For more, check out IGN’s First this month where we previewed the first 4 hours of Half-Life: Alyx, answer your biggest Valve questions, and our exclusive interview with Gabe Newell and Half-Life: Alyx developer Robin Walker.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

The Spanish dystopian sci-fi satire The Platform has been set for a Netflix release for a while. The streaming giant bought the distribution rights when the movie made its US premiere at Fantastic Fest in September 2019, and the plan was always to release it sometime in 2020. But at that stage no one could have predicted how horribly apt the release of a movie in which isolation and food shortage play a key part of the plot would be in March 2020.

Like many of the best dystopian sci-fi movies–from Planet of the Apes to Escape from New York–The Platform takes modern life to a chilling extreme. At some point in the future, prisoners are placed into a narrow skyscraper-like construction consisting of hundreds of levels, known amongst the inmates as the pit. Each level is occupied by two people, with a gap in the center through which a large platform passes daily. At the start of each day, the platform is loaded with an incredible array of food–slowly it descends through the pit, giving the inhabitants at each stage a few minutes to grab what they can. The further the platform descends, the less food there will be for those on the lower levels. Each inmate duo starts every month randomly assigned to a new level–it could be one of the higher levels, where food is plentiful, or down below with only a few scraps.

The Platform is not a subtle movie, and its influences are obvious. The 1997 cult sci-fi favorite Cube is an obvious comparison, with its protagonists trapped in a room in a mysterious futuristic building, as is Snowpiercer, with its inventive take on class and social divisions. Surreal Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel is another; this 1962 classic focuses on a group of upper-class dinner guests who find they cannot leave the room and descend into a primal state. And there are also shades of groundbreaking writers JG Ballard and Samuel Beckett, and their dark dystopian visions and absurdist comedy respectively.

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