Call of Duty has had some great weapons throughout its franchise, in every game, from CoD 4 to 2019’s Modern Warfare there has been at least one stinker that was either under-powered or completely unused. Lets remember the duds.
Celebrate Star Wars Day With These 40th Anniversary Empire Strikes Back Hasbro Figures
40th Anniversary Black Series Empire Strikes Back Figures
On May 21, 1980, arguably the best Star Wars movie was released in theaters, The Empire Strikes Back. The Star Wars film features some iconic scenes and the return of all our favorite characters–plus, the introduction to a few as well. And what better way to celebrate one of the most enjoyable sci-fi/fantasy films from the ’80s than with new toys in classic packaging?
Hasbro’s Black Series line has a new set arriving this Spring featuring figures whose looks are based on that from Empire Strikes Back. Additionally, these toys come in retro Kenner packaging. Back in the ’80s, Kenner originally put out the Star Wars toys before Hasbro took over in 1991.
With this new set, you’ll find all of your favorites: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, and more. However, all of their looks are inspired by different outfits the characters were wearing or the different locales they were in. All of these figures will be sold separately at most major retailers and will be available this Spring. Hasbro sent us a box of the new toys to check out, and you can find all of them below along with links to purchase them if you need them in your collection.
If you’re looking for more Star Wars day merch, check out these Baby Yoda Funko Pops, an amazing Steam sale featuring a ton of Star Wars games, and all the best Star Wars game deals currently available.
R2-D2 (Dagobah)
Price: $20
Available: August
Dagobah may be strong with the force, but it’s pretty muddy, and there’s not really a good place to get yourself clean. This R2-D2 figure is covered in mud.
Yoda (Dagobah)
Price: $20
Available: May
This Yoda figure is as tall as the R2-D2 toy. He comes with a lightsaber, cane, and that snake that Luke removed from Yoda’s hut.
Princess Leia Organa (Hoth)
Price: $20
Available: May
Leia comes with goggles and a blaster. Also, this is undoubtedly her best outfit in the Star Wars series. This figure does a pretty good job at capturing Carrie Fisher’s likeness.
AT-AT Driver
Price: $20
Available: May
Trying to destroy the rebellion on Hoth, here’s the AT-AT driver. He comes with a blaster.
Rebel Soldier (Hoth)
Price: $20
Available: August
While the Empire has Stormtroopers and other foot soldiers, the Rebels has… well… Rebel Soldiers. This Black Series figure comes with two blasters and a mask to cover his face.
Luke Skywalker (Snowspeeder)
Price: $20
Available: August
This incredibly detailed Luke figure in his Rebel pilot suit. He comes with his lightsaber. The helmet technically comes off, but it doesn’t seem like it’s meant to.
Lando Calrissian
Price: $20
Available: August
This Lando figure looks fantastic. The cape isn’t cloth–it’s vinyl–but that’s not a huge deal. He also comes with a blaster.
Han Solo (Bespin)
Price: $20
Available: May
Han Solo is looking pretty slick here–moments before he was frozen in carbonite. He comes with a blaster, and the face matches Harrison Ford exceptionally well.
Imperial Tie Fighter Pilot
Price: $20
Available: August
While this Tie Fighter Pilot may not be getting out of the cockpit, it still comes with a blaster.
Luke Skywalker (Bespin)
Price: $20
Available: Spring
Finally, this second Luke figure comes with a blaster and a lightsaber. The blaster also fits into the holder on his side.
Evo 2020 Canceled Due to Coronavirus, Digital Replacement Announced
Evo, the world’s biggest fighting game tournament, has announced that it will be canceling the 2020 event due to COVID-19. All tickets for EVO 2020 will be refunded and there will be a summer online event planned as a replacement.
In a short message on Twitter, Evo organizers announced that this year’s event, originally set to take place from July 21 to August 2 at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, has been canceled.
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Organizers announced that to “keep the Evo spirit alive,” there will be an event held online this summer. Details for what the online summer event entails will be revealed later.
Evo is an annual fighting game tournament where the best fighting game players gather to test their skills in popular games likes Street Fighter, Tekken, and more. Developers like Capcom and Bandai Namco also usually reserve fighting game announcements for Evo like new DLC fighters.
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Evo Championship 2020 is the latest event to be impacted by COVID-19. Other games industry events like E3 have been canceled, while others like GDC and Gamescom have switched to all-digital events instead.
For a full list of games industry events impacted by COVID-19 see IGN’s full list here.
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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Aligns with Xbox Series X
Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN’s weekly video game podcast. This week we’re discussing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Streets of Rage 4, and more. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service.
Listen on:
6 Upcoming Narrative Games To Get Excited About
Look Out For These Games!
During LudoNarraCon 2020–the online narrative game convention–we were able to go hands-on with some incredible upcoming narrative-focused games. These games impressed us not just with their writing and storytelling, but by each offering something a bit different from what we’ve come to expect from the medium.
Each of the games we’ve detailed innovates on the adventure genre in some way, presenting unique aesthetic elements and carrying a clear sense of identity. They’re also a reminder that narrative-focused games often push for greater representation than most AAA fare–five of these games have you playing as a woman or girl, after all.
Here are the six stories from LudoNarraCon 2020 we can’t wait to continue when the games release. And if you’re interested in trying them out yourself, most of the games included in this feature have free playable demos on Steam. Otherwise, be sure to check out our other feature detailing some of the most interesting games you might’ve missed on Xobx Game Pass for more lesser-known games.
Paradise Killer
Paradise Killer‘s demo does not ease you in. Here’s an excerpt from the opening crawl: “Island Sequence 13: Lady Love Dies, the Syndicate’s lead investigator is deceived by the god Damned Harmony. She endangered Paradise. Her sentence is eternal exile…The island died. The Citizen slaughter ritual took place. Another Paradise Island failed. The cycle always repeats.”
You begin the game as Lady Love Dies on the eve of Island 24’s destruction, asked to investigate the murder of several members of “The Council.” You’ll need to explore all of Paradise Island and interview various gods to get answers. Other questions you might have–like “what kind of a name is Lady Love Dies?” and “wait, what’s that about a repeating cycle of destruction?”–will hopefully be answered over time, too.
Paradise Killer is like if Suda 51 made a Phoenix Wright game, but it’s weirder and more wonderful than even that description suggests. Lady Love Dies is known as an “investigation freak” who solves murders across a regenerating island paradise that was (I think) constructed with the goal of resurrecting alien gods. Paradise Killer is immediately, assuredly weird and extremely specific in its details, the sort of game that will let you dive deep into its lore and is bound to attract detailed fan wikis.
To investigate the demo’s murder case, I wandered around the enormous island town searching for evidence, cross-examining witnesses, solving puzzles, and collecting crystals made of blood (they’re the game’s currency). The hour I spent with the game involved me getting hit with a lot of names and concepts, and while I came away from it with a bit of a headache, I’m looking forward to taking my time and really getting to know this world in the final release, because everything I’ve seen so far is appealing–the wild character designs, the willfully obtuse dialog, the constant references to world events I, as a player, have no prior knowledge of.
The events that occured to me in the demo add up to a very strange whole picture. I investigated a crime scene, but I also looked, at the behest of a demon, for a way to open a gate that would take me into space. I cross-checked alibis, but I also searched for a piece of jewelry lost by a ghost. At times, as I solved puzzles and collected objects to expand the game’s open world, I felt like I was playing a hornier, angrier version of The Witness, populated by sexed-up monster-people that all hate me but begrudgingly answer my questions.
There’s a trial portion of your investigation, too, although it wasn’t playable in the demo. Interestingly, you can approach the judge to commence the trial whenever you feel like you have enough evidence to make the discussion worth it–although, as the judge tells you, certain truths will only come out when you discuss them in this setting. You’ll be able to accuse anyone you encounter, and it’s possible to go after the wrong target entirely–you’ll really need to be careful and thorough in your investigations.
Paradise Killer is, without a doubt, one of my most anticipated upcoming games. It’s singular and weird and has more style in an item description screen than some games have in their entire runtime. Hopefully the full game lives up to the extraordinary promise of this demo.
Developer: Kaizen Game Works | Platforms: PC | Release Date: TBA 2020
Welcome To Elk
Welcome to Elk’s demo is so compelling and convincing that I did not notice how little traditional “gameplay” it featured until I thought about it afterwards. There are some very light adventure elements in the 10 minutes of the game the demo consists of, but it’s mostly a matter of walking, talking…and singing.
You play as Frigg, a young woman on the island of Elk, an isolated place that seems to have some kind of spiritual significance. In its opening, Frigg finds herself on a raft with her friend Anders and a giant creature (who doesn’t look very elk-like, just by the way). She’s told that Anders has died, and needs to be sung into the next life. You freestyle sing to help him pass into the afterlife–pressing the four face buttons to create melodies–and enjoy the sound of your own in-game voice. Anders features throughout the rest of the demo, and claims to be dead, despite the fact that he’s still walking around–obviously something odd is going on here.
Later in the demo, after some very light adventuring and mini-games (including making identi-kit faces and pouring beer), a woman tells you the story of her husband’s death, and the last song she and her daughter sang for him. The singing mechanic has no pass or fail states in the demo, but it makes for an effective emotional hook as you tap out tunes and hear the characters sing.
After watching the woman and her daughter sing, the game reveals video footage of a real-life interview, and a man describes meeting this same woman and hearing her story–but the real-life version is less whimsical, more graphic, and quite horrifying. The sweet song I sang made for a far more graceful death than this man was actually allowed, I realise, and as the demo abruptly ends I realise that I’m already hooked on this game’s weird, funny, sad island, and how reality and fiction are being blurred here.
Is the island limbo? What’s the connection between the real-world stories and the ones told in game? The Welcome to Elk demo was all of 10 minutes long, but I am already surprisingly invested in exploring this island.
Developer: Triple Topping | Platforms: PC | Release Date: TBA 2020
Backbone
In Backbone, you play as raccoon Howard Lotor, P.I. That’s right, Backbone is set in a world where raccoons have worked their way out of your neighbor’s trash can and are now operating detective agencies. In fact, the entire world of Backbone is populated by animals, all rendered in incredible 2D pixel-art. The Prologue demo–which is available on Steam–is about an hour long, and does a great job of introducing Howard’s strange little world–by the end of it, I was desperate for more.
Backbone is an adventure game, but it’s not a point-and-click–you control Howard directly, moving left and right through 2D levels and pressing E to interact with environmental elements as you pass them. There’s no pixel hunting, nor inventory management. While the controls initially seem too simplistic for an adventure game, it eventually emerges why you have direct-but-limited control of Howard–the game has stealth elements, too, which require crouching and sneaking. You’ll occasionally have to hide, or find ways to distract enemies to get past them. It’s fairly rudimentary, but it gives certain scenes a sense of palpable danger, and makes for at least one interesting puzzle in the short slice of game I played.
Visually, Backbone is stunning. The pixel art style perfectly renders the splashes of neon light onto the game’s rain-slicked streets, and the locations you explore feel alive with animal activity. The world is fun to explore, and it seems that puzzles will have multiple solutions. As Howard investigates the game’s first case (a seemingly simple investigation of a promiscuous husband that immediately spirals into something much more sinister), I was presented with multiple paths into a bar I needed to infiltrate. Do I trick the person operating the intercom, or sneak onto the roof? I went with the roof, but there were, again, major choices involved in how I got up there. It all depended on which clues I uncovered, who I talked to, and which decisions I made.
Backbone looks to be a smart twist on the adventure game genre, with a compelling central character and fun, inventive puzzles and storytelling. We’ll have to wait until 2021 to dig further, though.
Developer: Eggnut | Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch | Release Date: TBA 2021
Wayward Strand
We’ve previously covered Wayward Strand at PAX Australia, but this was always a game that was going to sit better at home, played on a quiet afternoon in a sunny room, a cup of tea on hand–especially since the demo benefits from being played through multiple times.You play as Casey, an aspiring journalist who can’t be any older than 12, as she spends three days aboard an airship hospice talking to its workers and elderly residents. Over time, you get used to the schedules of the staff and residents, and learn how to move through the home gathering information and learning as much as you can about the ship and its passengers. It’s like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, but I suspect that instead of the world ending on day three, you might instead see Ida finish knitting the scarf she’s working on.
The Wayward Strand demo, which I’ve now played through five times, covers the first half of the first day. You choose where Casey goes at any given point, and then control her conversation options; interesting facts go into her notebook, which opens up further choices when she talks to other folks aboard the ship. In one morning, you can learn all about the quiet woman on the top floor who used to work on films, or find out more about the family that pilots the airship. You can talk to Margot, who will clearly take time and effort to befriend, or start to get to know Heinrich, who enjoys the view of the sun off the ship’s prow but will retire to his room later that morning.
It’s easy to get invested in these residents once you start to get to know them, and the voice acting feels extremely authentic–older actors are voicing the elderly characters. Tracking their full schedules makes each character feel more like a real person, and it doesn’t take long for empathy and care to develop. Wayward Strand is a low-stakes, chill experience, but one that I can see myself playing repeatedly to try and uncover every story and secret.
Developer: Ghost Pattern | Platforms: PC, Mobile | Release Date: TBA 2020
Chinatown Detective Agency
Chinatown Detective Agency was recently funded on Kickstarter, and it’s an adventure game that asks you to be meticulous and careful. You play as Amira Darma, a private investigator in 2032 Singapore who must deal with strange, secretive clients as they come in off the street. Unlike a traditional adventure game, though, everything you need isn’t necessarily in the game itself–you’re encouraged to use Google to perform some real detective work.
Early on, for instance, you’re given a quote, and it’s up to you to go to Google and find out which book it’s from to continue the investigation. In another section of the game, you need to figure out which city to fly to by investigating a partial cancellation notice on a postage stamp. I solved the first easily enough, but struggled with the stamp; I picked the right country, but not the city.
To travel, you jump into your travel app and book a flight using Amira’s cash reserves. Depending on how effective you are at solving the game’s puzzles, though, it’s possible to waste time and money on the wrong flight. The final game promises over 30 locations, so you need to be careful. Resource management seems to be important in Chinatown Detective Agency, and a wrong move could be disastrous. Once I tracked down a target, for instance, Amira ended up in a gun-drawn standoff, and how I aimed my shot with the mouse determined whether my target lived or died–and, thus, whether they would stick around for the rest of the game’s plot.
Chinatown Detective Agency looks like an intriguing spin on the adventure genre. Even a slightly tedious code deciphering puzzle that the demo threw at me felt like a good fit for what the game is doing–after all, detective work isn’t all glamourous, which just makes the moment when you find the person you’ve been looking for all the more satisfying.
Developer: General Interactive Co. | Platforms: PC, Switch | Release Date: Early 2021
Ring of Fire
The Ring of Fire demo recommends that you play with a pen and paper on hand. You play as Grosvenor, a brash, abrasive detective who disdains her young partner, Nacir, and is openly antagonistic towards witnesses. She’s unlikable in a way game protagonists rarely are, which makes for an interesting dynamic. The year is 2062, you’re in London, and for reasons that aren’t immediately clear many people now wear animal masks that are tied to government issue IDs.
The first crime you encounter is an absolutely grisly murder–a man has been severely mutilated (thankfully you don’t see the body, but the description is a lot to deal with), and there are no real leads on who did it or why. In the demo, I explored the corpse’s apartment, interviewed a witness, and got stuck pretty fast. You cannot brute force solutions in Ring of Fire, because getting ahead requires using the game’s search bars, figuring out and typing in both addresses and terms that might point towards more evidence.
For instance, to find the name of the victim’s wife, you need to examine a photo, extrapolate from the caption what her first name is, then find the victim’s surname, and search for them together. To find where the victim was the night before, I cross-referenced some details to find the name and address of a bar he had visited. Typing in the exact details and finding a hit is very satisfying, and allows Grosvenor to interrogate the victim’s wife and visit the bar for further clues.
Truth be told, I found myself frustrated by Ring of Fire demo thanks to a code that I could not crack, but there’s huge potential already in this world, the protagonist, and these mechanics to really make something interesting. Ring of Fire won’t be for anyone who gets queasy easily, and Grosvenor’s quick anger and cynicism could turn some players off–but these elements are also what makes the game distinctive and interesting.
Developer: Far Few Giants | Platforms: PC | Release Date: TBA 2021
The Best 17-inch Laptops For Work and Play
If you’re in the market for a new laptop, size is probably a major consideration, and for those who want more real estate for work, gaming, or both, a 17-inch machine is the way to go.
17-inch laptops give you a ton of screen real estate and horsepower to work with, while still being portable. We’ve rounded up what we consider to be the best 17-inch laptop right now, spanning a range of different needs.
TL;DR – These are the Best 17-inch Laptops:
1. Alienware Area-51m
Best 17-inch Gaming Laptop
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If you have the money, Alienware’s Area-51m is a gaming laptop of extraterrestrial proportions. It comes in both Intel Core i7 and i9 flavors, with up to 64GB of RAM depending on what your heart desires.
Meanwhile, you’ve got an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 with 8GB GDDR6 powering the show, with G-Sync to keep it all running smoothly. Both the CPU and GPU are also upgradeable, along with the RAM and storage, so you can consider yourself future-proofed. If you can move past the ostentatious design and the eye-watering price tag, this is a gamer’s dream.
2. HP Envy 17t
Best 17-inch laptop for those on a budget
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With great size comes… usually a great big price tag. But not with the HP Envy 17t, a solid performer that won’t break the bank. If you can afford the Intel Core i7 we’d recommend it, and there’s up to 16GB of RAM on offer alongside the Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU.
A stunning full HD 1080p display too, and for an extra cost, you can get it with a touchscreen. Don’t expect great performance for intense gaming or design work, but the Envy 17t delivers on value.
3. HP ZBook 17 G6
Best 17-inch work laptop
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If you like to work – and we mean really work – then look no further than the HP ZBook 17 G5, its powerful engine matched only by its eye-popping display. There’s plenty of customization here, but we’d recommend the Intel Core i9 if you can afford it, and there’s up to 128GB of RAM on offer. Graphics max out with the Nvidia Quadro P5200 GPU, netting you 16GB of video RAM.
But it’s the display we’re really gushing over: 4K IPS and absolutely stunning. If that’s more than you need, you can get the 1,600 x 900 display instead, but we’d recommend maxing out if you can. It’s just a shame about the sub-par battery, which will get you around 4 hours of use.
4. Razer Blade Pro
Best 17-inch laptop for video editing
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A strong performer with the beauty to match the brawn, the Razer Blade Pro impresses on all fronts. With an Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU (which can be brought up to an RTX 2080 if you’d prefer), this is a great machine if video editing or gaming is top of your priority list.
Meanwhile, the 17.3-inch full HD display runs at a silky smooth 144Hz, with 16GB of RAM that’s expandable to 64GB, and a 512GB SSD. Battery life is an average five to six hours, but expect to chop that in half if you’re gaming. It’s not cheap though, and the cost will run even higher if you want to soup up that graphics card.
5. MSI GT76 Titan DT
Best 17-inch desktop replacement
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Just because you’re taking your computing portable, why should you compromise for less? Enter the MSI GT76 Titan, which will soon make you forget you’re using a laptop at all. It’s a beast, in both specs and design, but the aluminum body manages to feel classy and sturdy.
Whether it’s gaming, work, or 3D modeling, the Titan can bear the load. Inside you’ll get an Intel Core i9 hex-core processor, 64GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU with 8GB of video RAM. Talk about Phwoar!
You’ll also get a 1TB hard drive and 1TB of solid-state storage – plenty to work with – and did we mention the display? A 4K IPS screen, naturally. Battery life runs for up to five hours, which is respectable, but considering it weighs a whopping 10 lbs, it’s not a 17-inch laptop we’d recommend using on the go.
6. LG Gram 17
Most portable 17-inch laptop
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Look, 17 inches is a lot of space, but LG makes it feel considerably less with its Gram 17 laptop which measures just 2.95 pounds. The chassis is slight and LG wastes no space with the ultra-thin bezels.
But on top of that, the Gram 17 is a great performer behind a bright and gorgeous IPS display boasting a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. There’s an Intel UHD 620 GPU and we recommend going with the Intel Core i7 processor for the best performance.
However, this isn’t a machine for heavy gaming. Rather, it’s an impressive all-rounder in an enticing design – the 12 hours of battery life is just the icing on the cake.
What to Look For in a 17-inch laptop
Buying a laptop of any sort requires detailed research, and we wouldn’t want you rushing into any decisions with foolish abandon. Here are some things to consider first.
Screen resolution: 17 inches means more screen real estate, but bigger also doesn’t necessarily mean better. We’d recommend that any laptop you buy has a resolution of at least 1080p (1,920 x 1,080) which is Full HD.
CPU: It’s easy to get tangled in numbers when comparing laptop specs, but when it comes to CPU (the processor) here’s what we recommend. First, don’t go lower than an Intel Core i5 processor if you must: this will give you enough power for all the essential tasking. Second, if you plan to use your machine for intense gaming, video editing, or other high-power productivity reasons, look for something with more cores, ideally a quad-core processor.
RAM: Again, the higher the number here, the more power you’re getting. Some laptops come with 4GB of RAM which is an acceptable baseline but won’t afford you much grunt. Really, you want 8GB at the very least and more if you plan to use your laptop for heavy tasks.
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Hugh Langley is a tech journalist who’s fascinated by wearables, health tech, the smart home, and more. You can find him tweeting (often nonsense) over at @hughlangley.
Activision-Blizzard Donates $2 Million to Help Veterans Employment Impacted by Coronavirus
Activision Blizzard announced that it donated $2 million to help veterans find high-quality jobs through its Call of Duty Endowment program. Activision also released a new “Fearless” in-game content pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with 100% of proceeds going towards the endowment.
The Call of Duty Endowment is Activision-Blizzard’s long-running program helping raise funds for veteran needs. The timing of this month’s donation is also part of National Military Appreciation Month and there’s a social media campaign asking for followers to post photos or names of veterans with the hashtag #CODEFearlessChallenge.
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“Military veterans need our support more than ever. With unemployment rates at all-time highs, we know from past experiences that veterans will be far more affected than ordinary citizens,” Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement. “With this donation to the Call of Duty Endowment, we hope to find jobs for at least 4,000 veterans.”
Unemployment has grown multi-fold since the outbreak of COVID-19 aka the novel coronavirus. As businesses close due to the ongoing shelter-in-place order and public spaces become restricted due to the highly contagious nature of the virus, employees have seen their work hours reduced or eliminated.
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“We’ve seen a huge increase in veterans asking our partners for assistance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said executive director of the Call of Duty Endowment Dan Goldenberg. “We’ve been committed to helping veterans find meaningful employment for over 10 years, but we’ve never seen anything like this.”
For more information on COVID-19 check out our guide on how to stay safe during the pandemic.
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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.
The Best Ways to Play Board Games Online
Even at the best of times, it can be hard to schedule games. You need to find one, and often more, like-minded people who want to play the same thing at the same time. No wonder a lot of games sit on shelves, seeing way less action than their owners would like. Being in the middle of a global health crisis is, of course, about the worst of times when it comes to scheduling games.
Given this issue, then, it’s lucky that designers and developers have come up with all sorts of ways to get your game on digitally. From live play with voice chat in dedicated software to sedate play-by-email games in your browser, there’s a huge array of options with a huge array of games. Many of them are free, too, or at least cheap.
Here’s a rundown of the biggest and best options for digital board gaming. Take your choice–or choices –and get back to gaming.
Tabletop Simulator
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This commercial Steam title does exactly what the title suggests: it’s a real-time sandbox for creating and playing all manner of tabletop games. New users may find the third-person view and real-world controls disorientating: you have to pick up dice and flick them with the mouse. But you get used to it, and together with text and voice chat, it makes it easy to simulate games of every kind. Pay once for the Steam title and there’s a dizzying library of free game modules to enjoy, plus a large, active community to play with. Tabletop Simulator does not enforce rules, so you’ll need to know how to play whatever you try.
Tabletopia
Tabletopia also has a Steam version, and an app for mobile platforms too. But they’re free and you don’t need them as you can play directly in your browser. You can pay a subscription to upgrade your account to silver or gold, which gets you access to premium games and lets you have more games running at once. It’s focused on real-time games, which is unfortunate for users who want to play by email because the game interfaces are uniformly excellent, clean, and modern, while enforcing rules in-game.
Boardgamearena
Starting out as a place to play live games, Board Game Arena has added support for turn-based play by email and become very popular. It has a big list of games, it’s easy to find opponents, and the interfaces are often very good. To set up matches of some of the more recent titles like Sushi Go and Kingdomino, you’ll need to pay a small fee to get a premium account. That will also let you log on when the site is very busy, which it often is in the early evenings, European time. But you can join a match of any game without premium.
Yucata
Yucata is one of the older board gaming websites around and it shows from the site design. It can be hard to create and find matches and invitations at first. But don’t let that fool you: it has a big library of play-by-email games that is still growing, and the in-game experience is often excellent. Use the “Games” menu, pick “Invitation List” and use the plethora of filters to find games waiting for players. You can find a list of all the titles available under “Games”, “Game Information”. There are some hidden gems to check out like Automobiles and A Few Acres of Snow.
Boiteajeux
This is a French site, but you can switch the language options with the flags in the top right. Among the options on offer are an impressive number of heavy strategy games including Tzol’kin and Alchemists. Like Yucata, the interfaces for a lot of these games are a bit dated, but they’re perfectly playable. You can join games waiting for players in the “waiting room” and there’s normally plenty to choose from.
Vassal
You’ll need to put in a bit of effort to get Vassal up and running, but it’s worth it if you like longer strategy games, particularly military simulations. It’s a Java-based client so you’ll need to install the runtime then download Vassal itself, then download modules for the games you want to play. It doesn’t have a lobby as such, it’s more for arranging matches with friends, but you can play live or swap play by email files as you prefer.
BrettSpielWelt
If you’re happy installing Java for Vassal, you might also want to have a look at BSW. It’s a German-based service for playing live games online. Web-based play needs Java, but you can avoid it by downloading and installing a client from the site instead. It’s also quite confusing to get set up and playing, all the more so because everything is in German. If you can make the effort, though, it has a huge library of games, including some excellent titles like Imperial that you won’t find anywhere else. It also has a fun community leveling and “township” system.
Custom Apps
A lot of publishers have made digital versions of their games available, often on multiple platforms, both desktop and mobile. You have to buy them, of course, but for the money, you often get the best, smoothest play experience possible. Rules are enforced, tutorials show you how to play and there are solid solo and AI-based options to enjoy.
There are too many of these to list individually, so instead here are a few of our favorites. Galaxy Trucker ought not to work on digital at all but is brilliant with a solo campaign and a whole new game mode unique to this version. Jaipur also boasts a solitaire campaign and is brilliant for bursts of two-player fun. Crossover classic Ticket to Ride works really well online, with fast, exciting matches. Finally, newcomer Sagrada is a delightful dice-drafting game with a beautiful stained glass aesthetic.
Others
There are a very large number of smaller or more niche services you can check out if you want to play particular games. Happy Meeple has a slew of two-player titles to enjoy and makes it easy to get up and running. Spiel By Web is an old-school site for turn-based play with some games not found elsewhere, such as Wallenstein. For military game fans, Wargameroom offers custom-built, bare-bones clients for real-time play of a bunch of card-driven wargames. Board Space is an app-based service with a lot of abstracts, including the entire GIPF project. There are many others just a Google away, but they tend to have smaller collections and weak interfaces.
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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.
Elon Musk tweet wipes $14bn off Tesla’s value
The tweet was one of several bizarre postings, including a promise to sell his possessions.
Binge It! Clone High Is the Funniest High School Comedy You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
Clone High is available to stream on MTV’s website and can also be purchased on sites like Amazon, iTunes and Google Play.
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“Remember when MTV used to be good?” That’s a common refrain for a lot of ’80s and ’90s kids who still yearn for the days when the cable network was about more than just trashy reality TV. You can argue about the exact point at which MTV fully crossed over the the dark side, but the network definitely hit the point of no return when it canceled Clone High. That series ranks among the best animated sitcoms of the early 21st century, even if far too few people discovered it during its short life.
Binge It! The Venture Bros. Is a Smorgasbord of Pop Culture Hilarity
The premise of Clone High is pretty simple and aptly summed up by the show’s catchy theme song – “Way, way back in the 1980s, secret government employees dug up famous guys and ladies and made amusing genetic copies. Now their clones are sexy teens. Now they’re gonna make it if they try.” Basically, it’s your textbook high school comedy, if said high school were home to clones of dead historical figures and secretly run by a sinister government organization bent on harnessing their military potential. Oh, and the principal is a power-mad supervillain with a cardigan-clad, robotic assistant named Mr. Butlertron.
Clone High brilliantly mashes up all the expected teen comedy/drama tropes with your favorite historical figures. Abe Lincoln (Will Forte) is a lanky, awkward everyman who’s best friends with hyperactive party animal Mahatma Gandhi (Michael McDonald) and moody Goth loner Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan). Abe pines after the lovely Cleopatra Smith (Christa Miller) while failing to acknowledge Joan’s unrequited love. JFK (Christopher Miller), whose accent is apparently genetically inherited, is the school’s designated handsome but brain-dead jock. Over the course of the show’s single 13-episode season, these teens deal with everything from school elections to standardized test prep to a seemingly endless series of proms, all while struggling to live up to the impossible standards set by their genetic predecessors.
In addition to having a really great premise and easy hook, the series benefits from being overseen by a real comedy dream team. Clone High was created by future LEGO Movie/21 Jump Street masterminds Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence (hence why most of the show’s incidental characters are voiced by Scrubs alums like Donald Faison and Neil Flynn). If you’ll pardon the pun, you can really sense the DNA of Clone High in Lord and Miller’s later work – that same emphasis on pushing a simple idea to the most comedically extreme places.
That’s where the show’s brilliance lies. Even when the show tackles a tried and true concept, like an election for class president, it winds up with a ridiculous scenario where Abe becomes the unwitting spokesman for predatory junk food peddler X-Stream Blu (mad-packed with all nine essential nutramites to fortify your X-Zone!) and Marilyn Manson steps in to sing about the importance of the Food Pyramid. Later episodes feature everything from a rock opera spawned by a new raisin-smoking craze to Gandhi and George Washington Carver teaming up for a buddy cop movie called Brown & Tan. The show is ridiculous in the best way, yet it’s just earnest enough that the character drama still carries weight.
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Clone High’s one great flaw is that it never got a proper conclusion. MTV canceled the series after one season, robbing fans of any resolution to the show’s cliffhanger ending. The cancellation came in part because many Indians were less than thrilled with Gandhi’s depiction. But in a time when networks and streaming services are constantly hunting for more content and everything from Invader Zim to Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been given a new lease on life, maybe there’s still hope for a Clone High revival. Hilariously dated celebrity cameos aside, that one season still feels as fresh in 2020 as it did in 2002.
More From Binge It!…
- Darkplace Is the Medical-Procedural/Occult-Action-Thriller-Doc You Need
- The Deuce Is a Perfect Chaser for Fans of The Wire
- Netflix’s You Is the Insane Erotic Thriller You Need to Watch
- The Imagineering Story Is the Disney Parks Tale That’s Both Riveting and True
- The Venture Bros. Is a Smorgasbord of Pop Culture Hilarity
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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.