Crossfire X, the Xbox One version of the massively popular PC FPS game Crossfire, has a closed beta right now, with an open beta running this weekend. The open beta begins Thursday, June 25 and runs through Sunday, June 28.
Xbox Insiders (a free program anyone can sign up for) can register to join the closed beta now through June 23 through the Xbox Insider Hub. A limited number of people will be granted access to the closed beta, with the number increasing as it continues.
The beta features three game modes: Spectre Mode, Team Match, and Point Capture. Players who complete a match during the beta will receive the X-B.C. Axe weapon skin when the game launches.
Michael Keaton is among the long list of actors to portray a live-action version of Batman, and he’s certainly one of the most beloved to do so. While he’s been away from the role for decades, Keaton may be coming back to play Bruce Wayne once again.
That’s according to a story from The Hollywood Reporter, which states that Keaton is “in talks” to reprise the role for the upcoming movie The Flash. THR also reports that Keaton may appear in “several other DC-oriented film projects” as a mentor, a role similar to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seems Batgirl could be one of the films Keaton may show up in.
No further details are shared on Keaton’s role; perhaps The Flash’s time-travel abilities will send him back to a time when Keaton was Batman. Will Flash do him a kindness and bring him the tools to be able to turn his head? Only time will tell.
Joel Schumacher, the director behind films like The Lost Boys and St. Elmo’s Fire and two Batman movies, has died at 80. The news of his passing comes from Variety, which reports he succumbed to a year-long battle with cancer on Monday.
He is likely best-known for his movies about the Caped Crusader, 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman & Robin. He took over directing duties from Tim Burton, who helmed Batman and Batman Returns. During his tenure, both Val Kilmer and George Clooney portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman. Schumacher’s Batman movies leaned heavily on camp, rather than the dark gothic version of the Dark Knight that Burton brought to the screen.
Schumacher didn’t start his filmmaking career as a director. Instead, he first worked as a costume designer after attending Parsons the New School for Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His directorial debut was 1981’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman, starring Lily Tomlin and Charles Grodin.
Nintendo is reportedly retreating from the mobile gaming market, and currently has no new mobile games in development.
A Bloomberg report indicates that Nintendo has been underwhelmed by its mobile games’ financial performance, and is now preferring to concentrate on making games for its own Switch console following the huge success of games like Animal Crossing (which contributed to a 12-year high in share price).
Analyst Serkan Toto told Bloomberg that “since the release of Mario Kart Tour in fall 2019, Nintendo’s mobile pipeline is empty”. The analyst added that the huge success of Switch has “reduced the need and the pressure” to create mobile game successes at the company.
Nintendo has previously said that it will now concentrate on its current mobile games, such as Mario Kart Tour and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. The company’s mobile development partner, DeNA, has reportedly also said not to expect new games until the end of the Japanese fiscal year (31st March 2021), implying there’s no Nintendo mobile games coming anytime soon.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Update: A new report claims that Batman: Arkham studio Rocksteady is indeed the developer behind the Suicide Squad game mentioned in the domain name registrations.
According to Eurogamer, the London studio has been working on the project for years, and the “Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League” domain is potentially the game’s full title, as well as a summation of it’s content.
Eurogamer also says that the domains were registered by WB Interactive, that Gotham Knights does refer to WB Montreal’s long rumoured Batman: Court of Owls game, and that both games will be shown in some respect at the DC Fandome event.
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Original Story: Domain registrations for a game seemingly titled Gotham Knights, and a potential Suicide Squad game have been found online.
ResetEra user DriftingOrbit posted their findings, which include domain registrations for “suicidesquadgame.com”, “suicidesquadkillthejusticeleague.com” and “gothamknightsgame.com.”
The source of the domain registrations isn’t immediately clear but, as pointed out by user JaseC in the same thread, the company listed as the domain registrar is MarkMonitor Inc, which also registered the wbgames.com domain. This lends some credibility to the existence of these games, but it’s nothing concrete.
Previous rumours have alluded to a Suicide Squad game being cancelled at WB Montreal, with recent teases from the studio pointing to a game based on Batman: Court of Owls. Some have taken these domain registrations to mean that WB Montreal’s project is Gotham Knights, and the long-silent Rocksteady (creator of the Batman: Arkham series) have a Suicide Squad game lined up.
DC is holding a digital event called DC FanDome on August 22, where WB Games will be making announcements. Many are already speculating that these games will be revealed or announced at the event.
The Last of Us Part 2 is Sony’s fastest-selling boxed PS4 game in the UK, and the biggest UK boxed launch of 2020.
According to GamesIndustry.Biz, Naughty Dog’s gritty sequel has beaten the previous record-holder Uncharted 4 by 1%, making it the fastest-selling PS4 game of the current generation in the UK. The UK sales charts do not include digital sales and, given the growth in digital sales in recent years, potentially means it’s broken Sony’s overall UK records too.
The Last of Us Part 2’s boxed launch sales are also “76% higher” than 2013’s The Last of Us. Lots of Naughty Dog records broken by… Naughty Dog.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons previously held the title for the biggest UK boxed launch this year, but this was also toppled by The Last Of Us Part 2 by a 40% margin.
For more on The Last of Us Part 2, check out IGN’s review of the game, where we called it a “masterpiece that evolves the gameplay, cinematic storytelling, and rich world design of the original.” If you’ve already went hands-on, check out our piece running through 14 brilliant little details that you might have missed!
Cobra Kai, the acclaimed YouTube spin-off series of the Karate Kid franchise, will see its third season premiere on Netflix. That’s according to Variety, which says Cobra Kai Season 3 will initially air on the streaming service.
Max Schaefer and Matt Uelmen, two of the developers responsible for legendary action RPG Diablo II, have given their thoughts on the rumored Diablo II Remaster, which is reportedly coming later this year.
The statement comes from tomorrow’s new episode of IGN Unfiltered, in which Ryan McCaffrey sat down with Echtra Games’ Max Schaefer and Matt Uelmen to talk about Torchlight 3, Diablo 2, the action-RPG genre, and much more.
Rumors of a Diablo II remaster have been circulating for some time, but earlier this year, those rumors came into sharper focus with sources suggesting it would be called Diablo 2: Resurrected. These rumors also come from the same source which correctly predicted the Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands announcements.
When asked what they would and would not want to see from the potential remaster, Schaefer said, “First of all, I think it’s probably impossible to really capture it… It wasn’t even a true 3D game, everything was rendered sprites and so to really capture the exact feel of what happens when you click in a 3D environment is going to be challenging at best.”
“[The development team on the remaster is] going to have to spend a lot of their time [on capturing that feeling], not just on recreating maybe slightly higher fidelity graphics and all that… that’s the easy part. It’s easy to go back and kind of 1:1, make the game look better. It’s going to be the feel and the atmosphere that are kind of inherent in the technology that was behind it, which was… at this point we can look back and say it’s kind of ‘spaghetti code.'”
“It was [built using a] custom engine… it was stuff that hadn’t been done before. I would assume that a remaster is going to be done using an established graphics engine with its own conventions and its own quirks, and so much of what made [Diablo II] special was the feel and the intangibles, so it’s a daunting task. The ideal remaster would be something that actually retains that feel and that atmosphere, that has a modern take on the graphics. Honestly, I hope they pull it off. I’m glad they’re doing it and I don’t have to.”
Uelmen, Diablo’s original composer, also gave his perspective on the potential remaster; “My only strong opinion is that it needs to have more violence, more gore, and more nakedness. Long as they do that, then they’ll be true to the series, in terms of what we were going for, as artists.”
At that, Schaefer added, “Yeah, I’m going to agree with that. The game was made to be shocking and push boundaries and when you have an opportunity to remake it with modern graphics, you’re going to be confronted very quickly with how much are you really going to want to reproduce something that was down to a few pixels in the original version, and not succumb to the temptation to make a censored version.”
“We’re talking about modern Blizzard right now, and they have shareholders and things like that, that we didn’t have to worry about back in the day,” Shaefer laughed before continuing, “I’m curious as to what their approach is gonna be.”
For more on the best, brightest, most interesting minds in the games industry, be sure to check out every episode of Unfiltered, which includes interviews with Master Chief co-creator Marcus Lehto, 343’s Bonnie Ross, Valve’s Robin Walker & Chris Remo, Respawn’s Stig Asmussen, and many, many more.
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Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
Prepare to take your first step into a new era of Star Wars. Set 200 years before the events of the Skywalker Saga, the High Republic finds the Jedi at their peak as they watch over the galaxy during a time of peace. But it’s not long before that peace is disturbed by a devastating incident and the Knights of the Jedi Order must spring into action.
The first novel to explore this era is Star Wars: The High Republic – Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. We are excited to exclusively debut the first chapter of the upcoming book, out January 5, 2021 from publisher Del Rey, available for preorder now.
Soule offered us some insight on the explosive events of the opening chapter, but if you’d rather go in blind, skip down to the excerpt now and read what he had to say afterward.
Credit: Lucasfilm
Soule is a familiar face to Star Wars fans. He’s the writer of Marvel Comics featuring Darth Vader, Lando, Obi-Wan & Anakin, Poe Dameron, and The Rise of Kylo Ren. He’s also an accomplished novelist (check out 2018’s The Oracle Year), so it’ll be little surprise to hear he was one of several authors (the others being Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel José Older, and Cavan Scott) who went on a secret retreat to Skywalker Ranch with a team of creative minds from Lucasfilm in order to create a brand new era for Star Wars storytelling.
And now Soule is leading the charge on this new publishing initiative that will feature not only his novel but books for young adults and comics. Light of the Jedi is the flagship book for the High Republic era that reveals what happened that threw the galaxy into chaos and introduces us to a new cast of characters like stalwart Jedi Knight Avar Kriss and a Wookiee Jedi named Burryaga (already a fan-favorite before the book’s release).
As the preview for Light of the Jedi reveals (last chance to skip ahead and avoid spoilers…), it’s the seemingly accidental destruction of a large spaceship traveling through hyperspace that causes all of the calamity. In The Last Jedi, the Holdo Maneuver showed us just how dangerous a ship moving at hyperspace speeds can be, but the way Soule describes what happens in his story makes it sound considerably worse.
“This excerpt is our first look at the moment that changes The High Republic forever,” Soule told IGN. “The destruction of the Legacy Run is the catalyst for a galaxy-wide disaster. Fragments of the destroyed cargo vessel begin flying out of hyperspace at super-accelerated speeds, meaning that deadly missiles of debris can appear anywhere at any time, from the Outer Rim to the Core. In this moment of crisis, the Republic turns to the guardians of peace and justice—the Jedi.”
Soule continued, “The opening beats of Light of the Jedi depict an epic disaster, and a heroic, thrilling response by both the Republic and the Jedi to save lives and end the crisis. It’s just the beginning, though. The Legacy Run disaster kicks off a much larger story; it really is just one piece of a much bigger saga.”
Now, check out the excerpt from Light of the Jedi below.
Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
It’s been over two decades, but the iconic PlayStation character will soon be back in action: Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time was announced today and will launch on PS4 and Xbox One this fall. The fourth Crash game will release October 2, 2020, and it’s available to pre-order now in both physical and digital formats.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time picks up after the end of the third game, Crash Bandicoot: Warped–villains Neo Cortex, Dr. N. Tropy, and Uka Uka are back and planning an all-out assault on the entire multiverse. Crash and his younger sister Coco must reunite four quantum masks and “bend the rules of reality” to save the day. The masks will help you through tricky areas, including a Time Mask that can slow down time and a Gravity Mask that lets you move upside down. Crash Bandicoot 4 will have the same platforming mechanics but with modern additions like wall-running and rail-grinding. You’ll also be able to play as Neo Cortex in addition to Crash and Coco.
Whether you’re a longtime Crash fan or new to the series (it did come out 20 years ago, after all), you can go ahead and secure your copy now so it’s ready to go on day one. Below, you can check out the pre-order bonuses for Crash Bandicoot 4 and place your pre-order.
