Category: games

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Discovery’s latest episode, “Lethe.”

Last night’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery (read our review here) had a cool scene where Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) puts Lt. Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) through his paces as the pair find themselves in a gunfight with the dreaded Klingons. As the two Starfleet officers stalk through the corridors of a Klingon ship, phaser rifles blazing, they take out a bunch of enemy soldiers with precision military skill. And then, as the strike comes to an end, the image of the last batch of Klingons wavers and they, and the ship around them, disappear. The Discovery computer then announces “hologram battle simulation complete” as we realize that Lorca and Tyler have been in exactly that — some kind of holodeck training program.

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Fall is typically the busiest time of year for new game releases, and this year is no exception. This week in particular, though, is certainly the busiest of the season and maybe even the entire year.

Tuesday, October 24, marks the much-anticipated debut of the Destiny series on PC, with Destiny 2 finally launching on the platform. In terms of content, it’s identical to the Xbox One version; it’s missing certain PS4-exclusive content that won’t be released on other systems until late next year. Despite that, the PC version looks as if it might be the best way to play, thanks to the added visual options, improved performance, and the ability to play with a mouse and keyboard (or controller, if that’s your preference), among other things. We got to try it recently and broke down what sets Destiny 2 on PC apart.

Things get wild on Friday, October 27. We’ve more frequently seen publishers choose to release their games on Friday in the US, as has been customary in Europe for some time. Three different companies have chosen this particular Friday to release their high-profile games: Nintendo with Super Mario Odyssey (Switch), Bethesda with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PC, PS4, and Xbox One), and Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed Origins (PC, PS4, and Xbox One).

Any of those would ordinarily be the biggest game in a given week (if not month), and yet they face stiff competition from each other in even claiming to be the largest title for a single day. And if the games themselves weren’t enough for you to buy this week, they crowd the release slate further, with Mario Odyssey receiving new Amiibo figures and Origins featuring a number of special editions best conveyed through scientific notation.

That’s four major releases happening in the space of four days. And those somehow don’t represent everything coming out this week, either, as Just Dance 2018 arrives on October 24, joined by a number of smaller games: Hidden Agenda, Knowledge Is Power, Rapala Fishing: Pro Series, and more. That’s to say nothing of the many digital-only releases that will arrive on the various console stores–recent weeks have seen dozens of new Switch games–and Steam, which attracts a constant stream of new games.

November, often the busiest month of the year, feels comparatively quiet. That’s not to say it’s lacking big releases of its own, with Call of Duty: WWII, Star Wars Battlefront II, Need for Speed Payback, Sonic Forces, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon, Skyrim VR, Horizon: Zero Dawn‘s Frozen Wilds DLC, and a trio of big-name, mature Switch games that release in the space of one week. As of now, December will be slower, though we still have Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Doom VFR, Okami HD, and Fallout 4 VR to look forward to at the very least.

It’s going to be a busy couple of months. Hopefully your wallet and schedule are ready.

Although the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel It has become one of the most successful movies of the year, 2017’s other high profile King adaptation–The Dark Tower–did not fair so well. The movie was met by largely negative reviews and an underwhelming box office, putting into doubt plans to make further movies and a TV spinoff. Now King himself has weighed in on the film’s failure and what the franchise might look like if it comes to TV.

In an interview with Vulture, King explained that much of the problem was the challenge of distilling his epic ten-part series of novels into one movie. “The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages,” he said. “The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behaviour in a fairly graphic way.”

Nevertheless, the writer is happy with the end result, stating: “I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie.”

As for the TV version of the The Dark Tower that is currently in development, King revealed that if it happens, it would in fact be a “complete reboot” of the fantasy property, rather than a continuation of the story started in the movie. “The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that,” the author says. “It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”

In August, it was reported that former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara will oversee the development of the Dark Tower TV show. The series will be a joint-production between Sony Television and the independent studio MRC, and it is expected that a first season would be 10-13 episodes long.

Netflix in November means tons o’ guns as Marvel’s The Punisher launches, Longmire rides off into the sunset after six seasons, and Steven Soderbergh unleashes a new western series, Godless, starring Jeff Daniels a dastardly outlaw.

Plus, Netflix Originals Lady Dynamite and Frontier return for second seasons while films like Oculus, Chappie, Field of Dreams, Men in Black, Michael Clayton and Silent Hill will all be available for streaming.

Check out the slideshow gallery for a spotlight of some of the most notable November Netflix offerings, followed by the full list below…

42

Casper

Chappie

Charlotte’s Web (2006)

Field of Dreams

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Xbox One X releases around the world in a couple of weeks, and one of the games that will be enhanced on the new console is Gears of War 4. Today, Microsoft shared more details about the game’s Xbox One X enhancements, which will be available as a free update the day the console launches.

Naturally, most of the enhancements coming to Gears of War 4 are visual in nature. Following its free update, the game will offer several different display modes. Visuals Rendering Mode will offer true 4K (3840×2160), though Microsoft says the bump in visuals will be apparent even if you’re playing on a 1080p set thanks to supersampling.

Players will also have two Preferred Rendering Options to choose from: Performance and Visuals. Performance places a greater emphasis on framerate and, for the first time, will make the game run at 60 FPS in 1080p in both the Campaign and Horde modes. Visuals mode, on the other hand, is all about graphical fidelity. It uses “Ultra Quality Textures” and “a wealth of new and improved graphical features,” though as before, Campaign and Horde mode will both run at 30 FPS. Regardless of which you choose, Versus mode will run at 4K 60 FPS with adaptive resolution scaling.

In addition to that, Microsoft has detailed all of the tech enhancements players can expect from Gears of War 4 running on Xbox One X. Along with Dolby Atmos support, the game will offer enhanced light shafts, dynamic shadows, increased draw distances, enhanced character textures, and better reflections.

Xbox One X launches globally on November 7. You can watch a trailer showcasing Gears of War 4’s Xbox One X enhancements above. More details about the enhancements can be found on the official Xbox website. Along with the full list of the Xbox One X-enhanced titles, some Xbox 360 games will receive improvements on the new console as well. Xbox boss Phil Spencer also teased that Xbox One X owners may receive some kind of special backwards compatibility support. The first batch of Xbox backwards compatible games releases tomorrow, October 24.

Today, Bethesda unveiled the required and recommended hardware specifications for the PC version of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. In addition, many of the graphics options were revealed, which includes an FOV slider, ultrawide monitor support, an uncapped framerate, and multiple colorblind modes.

Minimum Requirements

• CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD FX-8350 or better
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 770 4GB / AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB or better
• RAM: 8 GB
• OS: Windows 7, 8.1, or 10 (64-Bit)
• Storage: 55GB

Recommended Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 / AMD FX-9370 or better
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB or better
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 7, 8.1, or 10 (64-Bit)
• Storage: 55GB

Bethesda also makes note of additional requirements such as Steam and broadband internet for activation and installation of the game. And if you happen to use the Windows 8.1 operating system, new AMD GPU drivers will not work.

As far as specific options in the graphics settings menu, you’ll have plenty of customization. Three colorblind modes are available: protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia. The field of view (FOV) slider will range from 70 to 120, and the game will properly support the ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio (as well as standard 16:9, 16:10, and even 4:3). There are four anti-aliasing options to choose from: TAA, FXAA, SMAA, and TSSAA–check out how these different anti-aliasing techniques work for more information. As for the more granular advanced options, these are the visuals you can tinker with:

• Lights
• Shadows
• Directional Occlusion
• Reflections
• Decals
• Motion Blur
• Image Streaming
• Volumetric Quality
• Decal Filtering
• Deferred Rendering
• Chromatic Aberration
• Depth of Field
• Resolution Scaling

The game was built with the Vulkan graphics API, which was a precedent set with the support in last year’s Doom; Bethesda specifically calls out AMD’s RX Vega video cards as optimized for Wolfenstein II and the Vulkan API, but we’ll see how the latest hardware runs the game once it’s released.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launches on October 27 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It will also come out for the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2018. For everything else you need to know about this upcoming first-person shooter, be sure to check out our roundup of Wolfenstein II features and videos.

13 original Xbox games are headed to the Xbox One very soon.

Filmmaker David Fincher said he discussed directing Star Wars: Episode IX and turned it down.

Known for movies like Fight Club, Seven, and Gone Girl, Fincher shared his thoughts in an interview with Empire. As someone who considered directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens before J.J. Abrams took the job, he was asked if he had any desire to take on Episode IX.

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After flopping in its debut weekend, box office analysts are projecting the disaster film Geostorm will lose up to $100 million in its box office run.

Box office analysts tells THR that Geostorm could lose anywhere from $50 to $100 million for production companies Skydance, Warner Bros., and RatPac. Deadline‘s predictions are even more grim, suggesting the film could lose over $100 million. According to Deadline’s analysts, Geostorm would need to make anywhere between $300 to $360 million worldwide. to break even for its combined production and advertising budget.

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BBC has revealed who will star alongside Jodie Whittaker in the upcoming eleventh season of Doctor Who.

Series regulars include Bradley Walsh (Law & Order: UK), who will play Graham; Tosin Cole (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) as Ryan; and Mandip Gill as Yasmin. Sharon D. Clarke has also been cast in a recurring role.

The cast of Doctor Who: Season 11. From left to right: Gill, Walsh, Whittaker, and Cole.

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