Month: January 2021

The growth of streaming was one of the entertainment industry’s few success stories in 2020, and the marketplace is only going to get more competitive in 2021. Back in September, it was reported that ViacomCBS was set to rebrand and expand its CBS All Access platform as Paramount+. The studio has now announced that the service will launch in March.

As reported by Variety, Paramount+ will go live in US and Latin America on March 4, with international territories rolling out over the following months. In Canada, CBS All Access will simply be rebranded as Paramount+ in March, with the full service launching later in the year.

ViacomCBS will present a full overview of its plans for Paramount+, and its overall streaming strategy, at an investor event on February 24. The service is expected to bring together existing CBS All Access content with shows from Paramount’s vault, such as those produced by BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon.

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Bryan Cranston is a veteran actor who has appeared in numerous TV shows and movies over the years, but perhaps his most notable and recognizable role is Walter White in Breaking Bad. As it turns out, Cranston nearly did not get the job.

He recalled his path to Breaking Bad in an appearance on the SmartLess podcast with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes. Before Breaking Bad, Cranston was known for his smaller roles on shows like Seinfeld and The X-Files before breaking out with his leading role on Malcolm in the Middle as Hal. He explained on the podcast that Malcolm in the Middle network Fox had considered picking up the show for an eighth season, but decided against it.

Had Fox renewed the show for one more season, Cranston would not have been available to film the pilot for Breaking Bad.

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A code-savvy Redditor has created a bot that turns Reddit arguments into Ace Attorney courtroom scenes.

As reported by Mashable, you can see the bot in action over on creator micah5’s YouTube channel. The bot will read a section of provided Reddit thread, and insert the text into a courtroom debate between Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright, emoting and objecting at each other’s claims.

Micah uses a neural network to check the tone of each comment, and if it is deemed ‘negative’ the bot will count it as an objection, while more positive comments will see the charcater sprites made happier. If more than two users are part of the debate, they’re represented by tertiary Ace Attorney characters, chipping in as the two most prominent commenters duke it out.

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You can try it for yourself by commenting !objectionbot in a comment thread on Reddit – the bot will apparently take about 10 minutes to create the video, and message you back with a link to the video (although Micah points out that it is still buggy). The bot’s source code can also be found here if you want to dig into how it all works.

Micah told Mashable that the bot took him three days to complete and that they plan to keep it running “for a couple months”. In other Ace Attorney news, here’s our review of the last-gen Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy collection, which launched in April 2019. We scored it a 7.5 for providing a “solid collection of courtroom dramedies”.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning will be released on Nintendo Switch on March 16, 2021.

Announced alongside a new trailer, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is a remastered version of 2012’s Kingdoms of Amalur that was released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2020.

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The remaster includes all the DLC, including Teeth of Naros and Legend of Dead Kel. Furthermore, there will also be a new DLC expansion – Fatesworn – that is scheduled to arrive later in 2021.

In our review of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, we said “On some levels, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is still a worthwhile RPG to hack and slash your way through, even if this remaster doesn’t go above and beyond the bare minimum expectations. But while the ideas and mechanics that make games like Red Faction: Guerilla and Burnout feel special are still largely singularly unique to them, almost everything that made Amalur stand out in its day has become standard fare for just about any RPG to come out in the past decade.”

Kingdoms of Amalur was originally developed by 38 Studios and was published by EA. In 2018, THQ Nordic bought the property from the now-defunct studio.

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While received positively, Amalur did come with its fair share of controversy, as the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation filed a lawsuit against 38 Studios founder and ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and other executives.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Wrestlemania is heading back to Tampa Bay again for the first time as Raymond James Stadium will host Wrestlemania 37. The stadium was the original host last year, but with the pandemic, the event eventually moved to WWE’s own Performance Center without a live crowd–the first of its kind.

“Florida is excited to welcome back Wrestlemania to Tampa in April at Raymond James Stadium. Florida has continued to work with professional sports and entertainment to safely operate while generating revenue and protecting jobs,” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “Wrestlemania will bring tens of millions of dollars to the Tampa area and we look forward to hosting more sporting and entertainment events in Florida this year.”

Following the model for last year’s Wrestlemania, this year’s will also be a two-night event: Saturday, April 10 and Sunday, April 11.

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Microsoft has announced a second wave of new additions to Xbox Game Pass in January. Following an initial run of titles like Injustice 2 and Torchlight III earlier this month, Microsoft has now announced nearly 10 more games that will be in the subscription program soon.

New additions to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC later in January include Control, Desperados III, Donut County, and Outer Wilds on January 21. Later in the month, Microsoft will add Cyber Shadow and The Medium to Xbox Game Pass. The Medium is of particular note, as the psychological horror game has been in the works since the Xbox 360 days and it’s finally releasing as an Xbox and PC exclusive on January 28.

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Hitman 3 is nearly here; the newest entry in the stealth-action series launches on January 20. Ahead of that, reviews for the game have started to appear online–including GameSpot’s 9/10 Hitman 3 review–and alongside that, we now know about how long the game takes to beat.

Bearing in mind that Hitman 3 is an open-ended game with a lot of replayability, our reviewer suggests that players looking to zoom through the campaign might need around eight hours to complete it, or potentially less depending on how much you intend to see and explore.

But if you only follow the story missions and the main path, you can complete Hitman 3 in relatively short order. Every mission, on average, is about 45 minutes to an hour, our reviewer said.

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Microsoft’s sprawling North American headquarters in Redmond, Washington will become a COVID-19 vaccination site.

The announcement comes by way of Washington governor Jay Inslee’s statement regarding its vaccine distribution system, which hopes to reach 45,000 residents every day.

Microsoft’s role in all of this is to provide technology expertise and support to the local government, and for some of its buildings to act as vaccination sites.

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Hitman 3 doesn’t make changes to the the franchise’s core formula–instead, it refines it through excellent level design.

Since it rebooted its Hitman franchise in 2016, IO Interactive has been putting on a level design masterclass. Each of the missions the developer rolled out in what it calls its World of Assassination series has contained a huge, intricate collection of scripted and free-form systems that create harrowing moments, presented elaborate puzzles to solve, and allowed the player to orchestrate ludicrous and often hilarious situations. Levels are designed to be played over and over so you can explore, understand, and eventually master all their moving parts, and it’s impossible to see everything one has to offer in a single playthrough (or in most cases, even two or three).

At first blush, Hitman 3 appears to be more of the same. It makes no drastic changes to the underlying formula, instead adding a few graphical upgrades and quality-of-life improvements to the existing Hitman framework. But Hitman 3 improves on the World of Assassination through consistently excellent level design–which is saying something, given how strong all the previous missions are. Hitman 3 is full of fun and fascinating ideas, many of which play with the concepts underpinning the last four years of Hitman levels.

Presumably knowing that players have spent all sorts of time mastering its many settings and systems, IO throws in some brilliant curve balls that require you to use your assassin skills and knowledge in clever, challenging new ways.

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