Month: July 2020

When Mario, our favorite mushroom-mashing plumber, made his way to 3D in Super Mario 64, he infamously did it without his loyal brother Luigi. The green-clad sidekick never made it to the game, despite accompanying his brother through adventures since 1983. His absence, and ways to make him appear in-game, have become somewhat of an urban legend. But after the recent Nintendo leak, it seems our missing Mario Brother has been found after all.

25 years later, fans have pulled apart development files for Luigi’s models that were part of the leak and are now showcasing them eagerly online.

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If you’re looking for something to watch on Amazon, and you want to plan your August binge-watching schedule now–something I’m sure everyone does–then you are in luck. The list for Amazon’s releases in August have arrived, and you can check out everything coming below, along with a few recommendations.

On August 10, the Tom Hardy-starring Capone arrives to the service. The film follows the notorious gangster in his late-40s before his death, as dementia takes hold over him. Capone becomes haunted by his criminal past while the FBI lays in wait, trying to figure out where the mobster has hid his wealth. Reviews have been mixed, but the film seems to be entertaining regardless.

If you’re familiar with the kid’s TV show Dora: The Explorer, then you shouldn’t sleep on Dora And The Lost City Of Gold, which arrives on August 3. The live-action adventure comedy follows Dora looking for, well, the lost city of gold. It may not have been on your radar, but the film is a ton of fun and feels a bit like a modern-day Indiana Jones.

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Project Athia, Square Enix’s upcoming PlayStation 5 and PC title, will be an open-world game according to the publisher. Described as a “thrilling other-worldly adventure” when it was revealed in June, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda provided more details on Project Athia’s design and how the PlayStation 5 will allow for more detailed rendering of its world.

“The game Project Athia, which we will release for PS5, is an open-world style game in which users can freely move around the game world,” Matsuda said to Weekly Tokyo Keizai Plus via a Gematsu translation. “PS5 dramatically improves video technology, such as with the implementation of light-reflecting ‘ray-tracing’ technology.”

“Compared to what you see on PC, it is nearly identical. By utilizing these special traits, we’re able to create incredibly precise imagery. We still plan on developing well-balanced games tailored to a platform’s traits, including smartphone and cloud-based games, but we will never stop developing for high-end platforms such as PS5. Because these things are packed with the best technology.”

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For anyone who’s ever watched a monster movie and thought “Hey, it would be pretty cool to be that monster,” the premise of Carrion is immediately appealing. It’s a power fantasy that has you going an utter rampage through an underground facility, terrorizing both armed and unarmed inhabitants along the way. Developer Phobia Game Studio is uncompromising in its approach to making Carrion as true to this fantasy as possible, and it makes for a game unlike any I’ve played thanks to a collection of truly excellent moments. Even when the novelty of grabbing a helpless scientist and slamming them all around a room, Hulk-style, wore off, Carrion’s puzzles and cerebral combat encounters still kept me thoroughly entertained. The monotony that lurks between them, however, is the real monster.

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If there’s one thing that Carrion nails, it’s the movement and abilities of its leading amorphous, multi mouthed, tentacled monstrosity. The monster has total freedom of movement, with its appendages automatically shooting out and pulling it toward whatever direction you point it in. It’s delightfully creepy to watch and there’s a great speed and fluidity to its movements, which is important because hit-and-run tactics are crucial when dealing with the more dangerous weapon-wielding enemies you’ll encounter.

You can control one of your tentacles via the right stick and grab either enemies or pieces of the environment with the right trigger. Enemies can be consumed for health and extra biomass, or slammed and tossed around like rag dolls; bits of the environment can be hurled across the room; and doors can be ripped right from their hinges. It’s hard not to crack a devilish smile when you’re able to creep down on an enemy from the ceiling, quickly pull them up, eat their top half, and drop their lower half down for the rest of the people in the room to freak out about.

Carry On

As you progress through the underground facility, you’ll unlock strains of DNA that add new abilities to your repertoire, such cloaking, growing blades and charging through barricades, and most notably, parasitically controlling a human. In typical Metroidvania fashion, these abilities typically have both a combat use and a navigational use, and every time you get a new ability you’ll be able to explore previously closed-off sections of the map.

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The best Metroidvanias manage to hide worthwhile upgrades and secrets to encourage backtracking and exploration whenever you get a new ability. This is one pro tip Carrion doesn’t follow in that there are only nine mostly useless, optional upgrades. Worse still, searching for them is a nightmare because of how easy it is to get lost. There’s no map to consult, no reminder of your current objective, and no waypoint or hint system to guide you. At one point I backtracked to access a previously blocked off area, only to find that all it did was provide a useless shortcut. Then I found myself hopelessly lost in a cleaned-out facility for an absolutely miserable two or so hours of aimless wandering.

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On my second playthrough, I could see that there is a fairly cleanly laid-out path to follow to get from main objective to main objective, but any deviation from that path makes it very hard to find your way back because you don’t know what those main objectives are. Just to illustrate how much of an issue this was, my first blind playthrough took about six hours. My second took a little over two.

Rip and Tear

It’s worth repeating that the actual moment-to-moment gameplay of Carrion is excellent. There are some very cleverly laid-out encounters that offer a ton of freedom in terms of how you literally pick apart your prey, and while it’s pretty easy early on, in the later bits it ups the ante significantly with armored mechs, fast drones that can rip you to shreds, and flamethrower-wielding soldiers who will have you rushing to the nearest body of water if they manage to set you on fire.

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As far as the story goes, there isn’t much of one to speak of, but that actually works in Carrion’s favor. From the start until the end, the perspective never shifts away from the monster, outside of a couple of quick flashback sequences that provide some context for its origin. That makes it kind of a fun and unique way to experience the increasingly dire state of your human adversaries, as presented through emergency bulletins and LED signs.

Star Trek Discovery Season 3’s premiere date has been announced and it’s coming in just a few months.

CBS announced Monday that the third season of the CBS All Access-exclusive Star Trek show will premiere on Thursday, October 15. The season will consist of 13 episodes released weekly on the streaming service in the United States. As for what to expect, the Discovery crew is heading, “into an unknown future far from the home they once knew,” as stated in a press release.

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If you’ve seen the Season 2 finale, you likely know what is being alluded to there. The cast sees the return of show mainstays like Sonequa Martin-Green in the role of Commander Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Commander Saru, Anthony App as Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Ensign Sylvia Tilly, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland ‘Book’ Booker, and Michelle Yeoh as Phillipa Georgiou.

With Season 3 not starting for a few months, there’s plenty of time to catch up on Seasons 1 and 2. Both are available to stream in full on CBS All Access and it’s also available on Netflix in nearly 200 countries. There’s also Star Trek: Picard to check out on the service in the meantime as well. Read our thoughts on the first season’s final episode in our Star Trek: Picard Episode 10 review.

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If you’re clamoring for more Star Trek Discovery, check out the official Comic-Con 2020 Star Trek Universe panel which features a look back at the first season of Picard as well as a virtual table read of Discovery’s Season 2 finale. After watching that, check out everything to look forward to in the world of Star Trek including a new Enterprise-based show called Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, an animated series called Star Trek: Lower Decks premiering August 6, and the Nickelodeon animated show, Star Trek: Prodigy.

Lower Decks will be more of a comedy than its fellow Star Trek series’ and Prodigy will be a CG-animated show aimed at younger audiences.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Amazon is running a new promotion that can get you an Echo Dot and two months of Amazon Music Unlimited for as little as $16.97. That saves you a whopping $40 off the normal price. That price is for Prime members only, but even without Prime it only comes to $20.97, for a savings of 61%, which is still pretty phenomenal.

Note: this deal is for Amazon Music Unlimited new customers only.

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The Echo Dot is an adorably tiny Alexa device, about the size of a hockey puck. Despite its diminutive stature, it offers the full Echo experience. You can use it to set timers and reminders, keep your grocery list, tell you the news, listen to podcasts and radio station livestreams. It’s no stretch to say it’s the device I use the most every day aside from my phone and laptop.

And with the two months of Amazon Music Unlimited that come with it, the Echo Dot can also play virtually any song that pops into your head. Music Unlimited is Amazon’s answer to Spotify, and it has pretty much all the same songs. It also has curated playlists that are updated frequently, a weekly algorithmic playlist that’s based on what you listen to, and pretty much every other feature you’d expect in a music streaming service in the year 2020.

If you don’t have an Echo Dot, I highly recommend considering this deal. Whether you have Prime or not, it’s an excellent product at a great price.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
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What do you do when your big plans for a music video shoot in London have to be canceled due to a global pandemic? If you’re singer Noah Cyrus, the answer was a no

“It completely blew my mind to see what people were creating in ‘Dreams,” so we decided to get together and make a video for my song ‘July” using PlayStation 4,” said the Sony Music Entertainment recording artist in between shooting mini hoops at home during quarantine with her dog Spike cheering her on.brainer.

Far from getting discouraged, Noah and the Sony creative team rallied to create a groundbreaking project that turns the art of music videos on its head — with the help of a DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controller, Sony RX0 II cameras, and some other amazing Sony technology. The centerpiece of the effort, the third in the Sony Collaboration Series, was ‘”Dreams,” a game creation system developed by Media Molecule and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4 in February.

The Collaboration Series is an effort by Sony to bring together its artists from different disciplines to create new types of art using Sony technologies. A hub for community-created games, art, and music, ‘Dreams’ allows players from around the world to access tools to create and publish their own content.

“You are basically free to create pretty much anything you can imagine, and it’s completely crazy that this is possible on a PlayStation 4,” said Martin Nebelong, a freelance 3D artist who joined the official ‘July’ music video creative team.

The group also included Media Molecule co-founder and art director Kareem Ettouney and other Molecule developers. Their goal? Nothing less than defying “the laws of gravity and dimension,” said Cyrus.

No pressure, right? Working from their bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens, the team set to work, talking extensively with Noah over Zoom to flesh out the story and inspiration. Over the last few months, the developers, using the cloud-based ‘Dreams’ to collaborate, set to work sketching, painting, and animating the music video for “July.”

“The meaning behind the song, beyond just outlining a toxic relationship that I had been in for too long, is this uncertain path you get put on when you make certain decisions,” said Noah. “This ‘Dreams’ video took the lyrics and the visuality behind those lyrics to a new level involving pure nature and mankind. It became less about the actual story that I’m telling and more about what the symbols, messages, and themes from that story mean when they interact with mother nature and the universe.”

The developers’ Zoom chats with Noah proved fruitful when it came to building upon the original concept, she said.

“Even talking to them about how I wrote the song in Bali was important because someone on their creative team was aware of The Ring Of Fire, which you’ll see inspired a scene in this new ‘Dreams’ video,” Noah added.

Ettouney, the Media Molecule co-founder and art director, said the philosophy behind the ‘Dreams’ user experience is based on “flow, expressivity, and playfulness.”

“Audio, music, logic and animations all co-exist in the same system, in real time, leading to very fast prototyping of ideas and trying different things out,” he said. “It really enabled our collaboration as a remote team.”

What makes the story behind the official “July” music video even more remarkable is that none of this would have been possible without ‘Dreams,” which was released only a month before the pandemic hit.

Though she acknowledged being skeptical about its capabilities at first, Noah said the final product blew her expectations out of the water, and the process as a whole has changed the way she thinks about the intersection of art, music, and technology.

“It definitely exceeded my initial vision,” Noah said. “It introduced me to new forms of technology that go beyond traditional forms of music video and content creation. I’ve been messing around with the game these last few weeks too, and I could see myself creating mood boards or live touring visuals with the system as well.”

There may be some confusion about Phantasy Star Online 2‘s future following New Genesis‘s reveal, which is slated to hit PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2021. However, publisher Sega has shared a new video confirming that the two universes will coexist.

While New Genesis will serve as a “complete redesign” of the traditional Phantasy Star Online 2 experience, the expansion will not outright replace PSO2 in any way. In fact, the New Genesis expansion will operate as a compliment to Phantasy Star Online 2, allowing you to play both universes with the same character. Unfortunately, certain elements–like level, class skills, and Photon Arts–will not transfer between universes.

“You can continue to enjoy the original PSO2 even after PSO2: NGS has been released,” developer Online R&D said. “Accounts that have been playing PSO2 will be able to hop between PSO2: NGS and PSO2.”

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Valve appears to be trying out a new feature on Steam, which will streamline the process by which players gain access to beta tests for upcoming games. A dedicated Playtest widget lets fans request option with a single click.

The addition of a playtest function, currently available in the store listing for Total War: Elysium, should make the process easier on developers and players alike. So far Total War: Elysium appears to be the only store listing with the function, but in a marketplace as large as Steam there may be others that simply haven’t been noticed.

Total War: Elysium entered closed beta in May. The playtest widget on Steam shows a “Request Access” button, and says you’ll be notified when the studio is ready to invite more participants.

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