Month: March 2020

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is only a few days away, but Amazon has decided to give us all a bit of a shock by discounting the first-party Nintendo Switch game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is currently $49.94 on Amazon right now, so if you want to get the game this Friday at a discount, you’ll want to pre-order it now.

Thankfully, those who’ve already pre-ordered Animal Crossing: New Horizons won’t have to worry about doing anything. Amazon pre-orders carry the company’s price guarantee, which means you’ll get the item’s lowest price between the time you order and the time it ships.

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This week, Animal Crossing fans finally get the island getaway they’ve been waiting for when Animal Crossing: New Horizons releases on Nintendo Switch this Friday, March 20. Best of all, Amazon recently discounted Animal Crossing: New Horizons to $49.94, the cheapest we’ve seen it so far. New Horizons is the first mainline entry in the series since 2012’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf, so it’s easy to see why fans are so excited. The Switch entry is making some big changes, including the ability to mold your island village however you see fit.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, your character will be ferried (via the Nook, Inc. charter) to a deserted island, where you can set up a tent and start growing your own town through many of the same activities seen in previous Animal Crossing games: crafting items, shaking trees, fishing, and more. You can read the GameSpot Animal Crossing: New Horizons review-in-progress to learn more.

In its Animal Crossing Direct last month, Nintendo revealed a slew of new information about the upcoming Switch game. We finally know quite a few details about New Horizons, including brand-new characters that will turn up on the island, Amiibo compatibility, a new terraforming gameplay mechanic, restrictions on save data recovery, and more.

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One of the most-anticipated TV specials ever, the Friends reunion for HBO Max, is facing a delay due to the COVID-19 crisis. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. has decided to delay the previously scheduled March shoot due to concerns around the virus.

“Given the current state of the global coronavirus pandemic, production has been delayed until at least May,” the site reported.

One of the sticking points with getting the Friends reunion off the ground was the challenge of aligning each of the six star’s schedules. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer are also attached to in-development TV and movie projects, some of which have also been delayed due to the virus. Whether or not this could cause further delays is unknown.

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Some big changes are coming for WWE Wrestlemania 36. Following the news that the event is moving from Tampa to the Performance Center, we’re now finding out that, despite having no live crowd, this Wrestlemania could be the biggest ever.

No one will be able to attend Wrestlemania 36 due to concerns relating to COVID-19 (coronavirus), but those who watch the event on WWE Network or through pay-per-view channels will get more bang for their buck, with the event running over two nights. Wrestlemania will play out across April 4 and April 5, with both portions beginning at 7 PM ET.

Former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has been announced as the host. The three-time Super Bowl champion took to Twitter to proudly announce his role in this historic Wrestlemania. He’ll also appear on SmackDown on March 20 to talk about what fans should expect.

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March 20 will see the release of two very different games from long-running franchises, Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Nintendo Switch and Doom Eternal on PS4, Xbox One, Stadia, and PC (the Switch version will arrive later). Fans have responded to the tonal disparity between these two games with plenty of fan art, and the producer and director of Animal Crossing have taken notice.

In an interview with IGN, New Horizons director Aya Kyogoku and producer Hisashi Nogami have commented on the Doom/Animal Crossing fan art they’ve seen.

“I definitely do notice and have noticed that there’s a lot of Doom and Animal Crossing collaboration art and illustrations that are being posted, and as I look through them I’m in awe of how much creativity our fans have,” Kyogoku told the site. “I think because there is a common denominator of this type of communication happening between Doom and Animal Crossing fans, and also the fact that Animal Crossing is a communication game.”

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For years, choosing an IPS monitor meant sacrificing speed and response time. Those days are becoming a thing of the past. Over the last year, we’ve seen IPS displays from big companies like Gigabyte and ASUS hit the market, delivering the blisteringly fast 1ms response times and high refresh rates gamers crave. Usually, those features come with a hefty price tag, but what if you’re on a budget?

Pixio may have the answer. Today, we’re looking at the Pixio PX247, a 24-inch 1080p gaming monitor that uses a color-rich IPS panel clocked to 144Hz. Combine that with an esports-ready 1ms response time and a $169 price tag, and you have a compelling package. But is it as good as it seems?

Design and Features

The PX247 is a budget gaming monitor and it shows. The design is very simple with no RGB or other aesthetic frills. The stand is barebones and only allows you to adjust tilt. There are two video inputs, HDMI and DisplayPort, and only DisplayPort unlocks the full 144Hz (HDMI is limited to 120Hz). It’s light on gaming features, the speakers are some of the worst I’ve ever heard, and the five-button menu navigation system feels last-gen. Having reviewed several of Pixio’s monitors, it was clear to me right away the company pushed itself to make this monitor as cheap as possible.

What the Pixio PX247 does have is a fast IPS screen. In my testing, it performed well through the response time and ghosting tests on Lagom’s LCD Test Pages with no color shifting or visible ghosts. This shows how quickly the panel in the PX247 is able to transition from light to dark colors and is on par with some of the best VA panels I’ve tested. Blur Buster’s Test UFO did show minor ghosting, but in actual gaming I wasn’t able to observe any at all.

To pull off that low price, you’re also sacrificing some modern display features, like HDR and 10-bit color. This is a standard SDR screen rated for 350-nits of peak brightness. That said, certain scenes looked unusually dim, such as running through the fields in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I actually found myself digging inside the monitor’s menus to make sure the brightness was turned up all the way.

Even though the panel offers the expectedly rich colors and wide, 178 degree viewing angles typical of IPS, how good it looked really seemed to depend on the content. In Overwatch, the visuals felt very good, thanks, I believe, to the oversaturated color pallete and that silky smooth 144Hz refresh rate. Kingdom Come and even certain parts of The Witcher 3 just made me worry I was missing out on details in the shadows. The monitor offers a few generic picture profiles – Standard, Internet, Game, and Movie – but none of them looked better than what I could dial in myself with the built-in color balance.

On the plus side, the combination of 144Hz and 1080p is a great fit. Upgrading to any high refresh rate monitor is an improvement if you’re used to 60Hz, but if you’re not running at high fps, you’re missing out on its potential. 1080p is easier than ever to run with modern graphics cards, so pulling off triple-digit fps is a real possibility without turning down all of the graphical bells and whistles.

The screen size is also a good fit for 1080p. The 24-inch screen of the PX247 feels a bit small, but it allows for a higher pixel density and a more crisp image. The screen isn’t “frameless” like some of Pixio’s more expensive models, but the bezels are still very thin and help the screen to feel more spacious. I would have liked to have seen a curve to enhance the effect further, but at this price, it’s something I can live without.

Getting started with the monitor is simple, which is one of the only good things I can say about the stand. It comes in two parts and needs to be screwed into the back of the monitor with four separate screws. Thankfully, the silver plate is hidden behind a plastic cover. It sits low, and I repeatedly felt like the screen wasn’t completely level, as if the mounting plate were slightly off. Even if it was my desk (which I don’t think it was), there was no way to fix it since you can only adjust tilt, not pivot. It’s bad, and I would waste no time replacing it if the PX247 were my daily driver.

Performance

Gaming on the PX247 wasn’t bad but wasn’t that impressive either. The first game I tried was Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which I’ve already said was a disappointment. The game makes heavy use of shadows and the dynamic range of the monitor wasn’t able to consistently make it look good. The darks felt crushed at times (a cross-check of Lagom’s did reveal black crushing, even at 100 percent brightness) and made taking in that beautiful world less fun than it should have been. I tried to turn Black Equalizer up – a gaming feature that lets you spot enemies skulking in the dark – but then the rest of the image looked washed out.

Playing shooters seemed to be a better fit. I main Orisa in Overwatch and picking off enemies while shielding my team was a lot of fun thanks to the saturated colors. I even found myself choosing Tracer to take advantage of the high refresh rate. My 2080 Ti was easily able to churn out more than 144 fps and the reduced motion blur when performing quick flicks and turnarounds allowed me to pick off other players while staying constantly on the move.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Battlefield V were a bit harder since they each make heavy use of shadows to hide enemies. I didn’t find it to be as off-putting as with Kingdom Come, which makes me think its blandness may have something to do with the game engine, but I still found myself craving more dynamic range to make enemies and objects stand out more in the environment.

You’ll also need a headset or separate speakers to enjoy any kind of gaming. The speakers here are terrible. They’re quiet, tinny, and once even distorted inside a dialogue tree. It’s nice Pixio included them, but they should only be used as a last resort.

For the price, I was impressed to find that the PX247 worked very well with both FreeSync and G-Sync. Given the other issues I found, I was worried it wouldn’t play well with my RTX 2080 Ti. As it turns out, I had nothing to fear as the monitor performed flawlessly across the different games I tested it with.

Purchasing Guide

The Pixio PX247 is available on Amazon with an MSRP of $169.

The Walking Dead actors for Carl and Lori, Chandler Riggs and Sarah Wayne Callies, have brought back the classic “CORAL” meme for a good cause.

Callies uploaded a video to her Twitter feed where she calls out those who aren’t practicing social distancing in the coronavirus pandemic. She says she has “a message” for them.

STAY IN THE HOUSE CARL!! #SocialDistanacing pic.twitter.com/3GdibqoBmA

— Sarah Wayne Callies (@SarahWCallies) March 18, 2020

“I got a message for everyone choosing not to practice social distancing right now,” Callies said. “Stay in the house, Carl! You know what happens when you don’t.”

Her on-screen son, Riggs, responded to the tweet with “LOL” before quote-tweeting it with a message of his own. Clearly, he loves that this meme is still alive and well:

jesus christ this has been going on for eight years i can’t take it anymore https://t.co/h5oVs3yzVO

— chandler riggs (@chandlerriggs) March 18, 2020

The actors are referencing the Carl memes that were so rampant on social media during the early seasons of The Walking Dead. Carl, the young son of Callies’ Lori and Andrew Lincoln’s Rick, had a tendency to get himself into trouble, thus causing his father — played by the British Lincoln doing his best Southern accent — to shout after him in a way that more often than not sounded like he was saying “Coral.” The infamous meme “Stay in the house, Carl” was even made into a t-shirt that can be bought on Amazon.

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The Walking Dead is currently airing its 10th season on AMC. IGN reviewed the last episode positively by praising the twists that keep the series fresh. The show has already been renewed for season 11.

As medical experts have advised social distancing as a key preventative measure to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, IGN has rounded up links to donate to charity and tips on how to stay safe.

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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.