The Sonic the Hedgehog movie is getting an early digital release after many theaters have closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Paramount Pictures tweeted that Sonic will be available on-demand starting on March 31. This marks just 46 days since it opened in theaters on February 14.
Sonic the Hedgehog will become available on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD May 19.
If you’ve found yourself scrolling endlessly through your streaming services without settling on anything you’re excited to watch, maybe a new streaming service is in order. Right now you have a choice of deals on Starz. One of them gets you a three-month membership $5 per month. The other asks you to buy in for six months up front for $24.99, but the total cost is a little less per month than the first deal. It’s your choice!
Starz may not quite have the reputation of an HBO or Showtime, but it has amassed a good number of original series over the years, and it always has great movies available to stream.
Right now, for instance, you can stream popular movies like Venom, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Men In Black International, and The Equalizer 2 on Starz. And in case you thought Disney movies were locked on Disney+, that’s not the case. Starz also has movies like Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, and more for kids and adults alike.
On the original series front, you’ll get instant access to shows like the American Gods, Black Sails, Ash vs. Evil Dead, Party Down, and Outlander, which is currently in the middle of its fifth season.
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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
The Call of Duty: Warzone beta takes a vastly different approach than most other battle royales. Death is an inconvenience rather than the end, top-tier weapons are consistently easy to come by, and skill will only get you so far when there are no more armor plates to loot. While that means it excels at being accessible and easy to pick up, it pays a high cost where depth is concerned. Solos manage to get all of the good without very much of the bad from these trade offs, but the same can’t be said when you squad up. Still, the impressive 150 player count, tried and tested arsenal from Modern Warfare, and well-crafted, massive map consistently deliver excellent firefights even if they sometimes lack the genre’s high stakes and endless variety.
World of Warzone
Like Blackout before it, Warzone’s Verdansk battle royale map mashes up several familiar locations from Call of Duty’s past, albeit on a much larger scale. Verdansk is massive, dwarfing its predecessor and then some. And for a space this vast with a 150-player capacity, Warzone’s performance on PC impressed me as I rarely experienced frame drops or connectivity problems, which feels like a triumph in this context. I did have some trouble with mantling onto ledges in certain areas and the ping system just stops working if you try to use it at too long a range, not to mention that it isn’t nearly as intuitive or robust as the one found in Apex Legends. But these annoyances are very much the exception rather than the rule. You’ll be hard pressed to find an area devoid of well-crafted explorable structures brimming with weapons, supplies, and cash which can be redeemed at randomly placed buy stations for things like killstreaks, armor plates, or weaponry in loadout drops
Like the name suggests, the loadout drop lets you equip the guns, gadgets, and perks of your custom Modern Warfare multiplayer loadouts in the middle of a Warzone match. And when I say middle, I really mean beginning. Acquiring the requisite $6,000 to purchase a drop can be done within the first minute of the round if all three players in a squad chip in. While you’ll still need to come by ammo and armor elsewhere, using a loadout drop to scratch two weapons, throwables, and perks off your shopping list in the first 60 seconds of a match is just too easy to make hunting for the randomly placed guns feel worth it.
As a result, the stellar weapon variety that fuels other battle royales’ replayability, creates exciting asymmetrical firefights, and incentivizes combat isn’t really a part of Warzone’s main squad-based battle royale mode. I never jumped with joy when scoring a rare gun from a chest or slain enemy since I knew my prefered kit was only moments away, if not already in hand. I also didn’t see the appeal of straying away from the Overkill perk or my favorite weapons from Modern Warfare’s multiplayer (like the M4 and HDR sniper rifle with a thermal optic), especially since trying something new would have effectively meant spending several hours unlocking attachments I didn’t already have – and I’m evidently not the only one who feels this way since the aforementioned combination (or some similar variation) are ubiquitous in Warzone.
Being an offshoot of Modern Warfare, every weapon in the arsenal feels sublime, so it’s a shame that I wasn’t tempted to use more of them. I loved that Modern Warfare’s Gunfight mode exposed me to a wide variety of weapons thanks to its randomized loadouts and I had hoped Warzone would scratch that same itch. But even the high rarity weapons found in special orange chests around Verdansk and come pre-equipped with several attachments are a distant second to the guns I have literally dozens of hours of experience with. Loadout drops are a messy solution to a problem that didn’t exist in the first place, but they are less of an issue in solo battle royale where gathering the necessary cash is harder and the risk of calling in a conspicuous package at a hotly contested buy station is more perilous.
The prospect of earning cash itself is at least a fun one thanks to contracts visible on the minimap that task your squad with scavenging supplies, capturing a zone-revealing recon station, or hunting a specific player. The bounty hunt contract reveals the enemy’s approximate location but doesn’t feel unfair since the prey are given ample warning and receive a cash bonus if the hunter fails to seal the deal in the allotted time. These novel mini-missions did a great job of breaking up duller moments and incentivizing movement.
On the subject of looting, Warzone does away with the inventory entirely. Instead each player has a resource bar they can pull up to drop things like ammo, armor plates that effectively act as extra hit points, and cash for their teammates. Not having to manage an inventory in the middle of a firefight is nice, and automatically picking up any ammo you come across is even better. This system is a much better fit for the ease-of-use and fast pace synonymous with Call of Duty than Blackout’s somewhat clumsy inventory. The only place where it felt a little fidgety was looting specific equipment from dead players as their gear can sometimes explode around them in such a way that makes it hard to pick up any single item.
Battle Casuale
Warzone is teeming with new ideas, taking the default squad-based battle royale mode in a more casual direction than Black Ops 4’s Blackout. A large factor that contributes to this less than punishing change of pace is just how easy it is to respawn after dying in what is ultimately a last-man-standing mode. When you perish in battle your teammates can simply buy you back in at a buy station. This can occur as many times as their wallet allows, but it still feels fair since it gets harder to do as the round progresses, the respawning player is marked via a red flare, and, most importantly, it is a deliberate action that someone still in the game has to execute. None of the same can be said for the gulag.
The gulag is where you go when you die for the first time – not to the menu to queue for a new match, but rather to the shower room of a prison to take part in a gladiatorial scrap with another dead player for a shot at reincarnation. The weapons are randomized and you only get one chance to redeploy via the gulag. If it sounds fun, that’s because it absolutely is. Even better, while you’re waiting for your turn to fight for your life, you can hurl stones at the current combatants or feed your incarcerated teammate realtime information about their gulag opponent’s location. That last part is pretty scummy, but hey… that’s prison.
While the gulag itself is a blast, I’m definitely not a fan of the effect it has on the battle royale taking place outside. You never really know when, where, or if a player has been respawned via the gulag, so getting killed or even just damaged by an enemy that drops on top of you feels terrible, even more so if you were the one that killed them in the first place. On one occasion I died during a teamfight, won my gulag match, and respawned directly over the same firefight just in time to spoil what should have been a clear victory for the opposing squad. While that may have been epic from my perspective, being on the receiving end of such a comeback feels utterly unfair because you’re never sure whether enemies are gone for good or just on their way back in. As a result, kills are neither particularly gratifying or assuring in the squad-based battle royale. The good news is that Warzone’s solo mode completely skirts around this problem by deploying victorious gulag players far away from the location of their death – I wish the default team-based mode followed suit with every respawning player, not just fully-wiped squads.
My first win in Warzone came as a result of getting lucky as the gas ring closed directly onto a well-fortified hilltop that my squad and I were defending. It was a hollow victory though since I usually prefer to be aggressive in battle royales, but the more I played the more I realized Warzone’s mid-to-late game just doesn’t reward that behavior, which is disappointing. Unlike Blackout and Apex Legends, which guarantee that slain players drop at least some armor, Warzone has no problem leaving you on death’s door after successfully eliminating multiple squads. That’s because enemies only drop what they have on them, and armor plates and buy stations are naturally harder to come by as the round progresses. In a game like Call of Duty, it doesn’t feel good to walk away from a victorious firefight wishing you had avoided it all together.
Stockpiling armor for the end of the match isn’t an option either since you can only hold five armor plates in reserve and it takes three to effectively heal back to full. That means that if a single encounter towards the end of the game doesn’t yield armor plates you’re in trouble. As a result, aggressive players or those forced to fight their way into the circle are punished while campers and opportunistic third parties are rewarded, which just isn’t any fun.
Plunder
Aside from the squad and solo battle royale modes, Verdansk also plays host to the Plunder mode, which sees about thirty teams of three players competing to collect the most cash in an allotted time. Unlike battle royale there is no circle, you spawn with your full multiplayer loadout, and upon dying you redeploy after a short delay. The goal is to earn cash by scavenging, competing contracts, and killing other squads and then bank it in a helicopter or cash-deposit balloon. I really like the idea of a more freeform objective-based mode on such a large scale, but in practice Plunder does absolutely nothing for me. The fast respawns mean that firefights with the same squad can drag on much longer than they should, and in one match where I was the top contributor on the winning team I hardly fought or came across anyone else. There are some cool concepts here, but in my experience they didn’t translate into fun gameplay.
Paramount Pictures’ Sonic the Hedgehog will become available to purchase very soon. The film production company announced that the family-friendly adventure movie can be bought on digital storefronts on March 31, while those waiting for the 4K UHD, Blu-ray, or DVD physical releases can grab the film on May 19.
The digital, 4K UHD, and Blu-ray releases all come packed with a bunch of extras, including commentary from director Jeff Fowler and Sonic voice actor Ben Schwarz, bloopers and deleted scenes, a Dr. Robotnik character breakdown by actor Jim Carrey, and more. You can check the full list of bonus features below.
On top of all of this, the 4K UHD digital and physical releases of Sonic the Hedgehog come with Dolby Vision, a format that “brings entertainment to life through ultra-vivid picture quality with spectacular colors, highlights that are up to 40 times brighter, and blacks that are 10 times darker,” according to a press release. Further, these two versions also pack in a Dolby Atmos soundtrack “remixed specifically for the home to place audio anywhere in the room, including overhead.”
Doom Eternal‘s fourth mission has you mounting an assault on the Doom Hunter’s base. Below you can find a walkthrough detailing how to get through its deadly demonic threats. For walkthroughs of Doom Eternal’s other chapters, check out our guide hub collecting what we have up so far. We’ll be publishing more in subsequent days. But if you’re looking for more basic Doom Eternal tips, be sure to read our guide detailing everything you should know before playing. Otherwise, you can read our Doom Eternal review in progress.
Mission 4 Walkthrough — Doom Hunter Base
This mission begins on a train, so kill all of the Soldiers and Imps here–using the Rocket Launcher to make short work of the Mancubus–and then follow the waypoint to detach a carriage and pull into the station.
Climb up the left hand side to reach the platform and defeat the enemies waiting for you. From here, follow the waypoint to jump and wall climb your way to the other side. Head through the door and you’ll encounter a Pinky for the first time.
An overwhelming majority of people are practicing responsible “social distancing,” and lots of places have issued orders minimizing the size of gatherings. While it’s unlikely your D&D group has more than 10 people, it’s a good idea to keep your distance anyway.
Thankfully, we live in 2020, so there are great ways to keep your D&D campaign running, or even start a new one, all from the comfort of your couch. Or computer desk.
What You Need to Play D&D Online
Most importantly, you still need other people to join your digital campaign, but we’re assuming you’ve got that part covered. Honestly, if you’ve already got your own rulebooks (or want to playing for free with the basic ruleset), you just need a chat service like Google Hangouts or Discord and some dice. That said, for as close to the full experience as you can get, you’ll want to find a virtual tabletop — and for that, we recommend Roll 20.
You might think of Roll20 as just an online Dungeons & Dragons solution – which it is – but it also supports dozens of other games like Pathfinder, Starfinder, Cyberpunk, even older versions of D&D like 3.5 and AD&D. It also has a robust community and game-matching services, so if you don’t have a dedicated group to play with, you can just find one. There are other resources for this, too, like the party-forming subreddit r/lfg.
Honestly, the Roll20 suite of tools is robust enough that we could write an entire wiki about it (though thankfully, R20 already took care of that), but even just creating a free account and messing around with its interface a bit is enough to get you one step closer to playing D&D remotely with your friends.
If you’re using the popular D&D Beyond tool to keep track of your character sheets, magic items and more, you’ll want to consider installing the Beyond 20 Chrome extension. It allows you to make (almost) all of your rolls in Roll 20 straight from your D&D Beyond character sheets, which will save you and your party a ton of time otherwise spent converting them between platforms.
Roll20 also has video and voice chat integration, but depending on what works best for your group, other chat services (like the aforementioned Discord or Hangouts) work just fine, too.
There are plenty of digital dice rollers out there, from the 3D ones that everyone can see on Roll20 to the one that comes up when you search “Dice Roller” on Google – but they’re nowhere near as fun rolling your own. Even if you’re playing remote sessions, there’s something incredibly satisfying about rolling physical dice and seeing how they play out. Just be aware: no one is going to believe you rolled 3 crits in a row, even if you weren’t lying.
At the minimum, you’ll want a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 (you can use the D10 for percentage rolls, or get a set with 10-sided die with multiples of 10). Most of the sets you’ll find online have the dice you need. It’s up to you to decided how fancy you want to go.
A basic set of resin dice will set you back a few bucks. A set of dice made of gems recovered from the bowels of the Earth, shaped and engraved with runes, will set you back considerably more. If you’re running a game, you’ll need more dice, so consider picking up dice in bulk.
Square Enix has joined the growing number of publishers offering free games to pass the time while we practice social distancing. From now until March 24, you can grab a pair of Tomb Raider games–the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris–completely free of charge on Steam, and they are yours to keep.
Tomb Raider (2013) reinvigorated the classic action-adventure series, offering a new origin story that chronicles Lara’s turn from an academic to a burgeoning explorer. Often compared to the Uncharted series in terms of style and gameplay, Tomb Raider features a stellar campaign with excellent combat mechanics and plenty of secrets to uncover. If you somehow haven’t played it yet, now’s the perfect time. Both Tomb Raider sequels are also steeply discounted on Steam. Rise of the Tomb Raider is down to $9 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition is $19.58.
The 2014 Tomb Raider spin-off Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is a different kind of adventure. Whereas Tomb Raider offers an engrossing single-player campaign, Temple of Osiris leans into arcade co-op action and is lighter on story. Played from an isometric perspective just like its predecessor Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Temple of Osiris sees you and up to three friends exploring Egyptian tombs filled with gods and monsters to vanquish. You can play drop-in-drop-out with friends and family either online or locally.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons takes place on your very own deserted island, and as such, you have to work for some of the things you want. Luckily, the game gives you most of the tools you need right away. However, the shovel is notably absent from the start. Here’s how to get it.
First, you’re going to need a fishing rod or a net. Catch five different bugs and/or fish and give them to Tom Nook at Resident Services; he’ll call up his friend Blathers the museum curator, and Blathers will show up on your the next day. There’s nothing you can do to accelerate this part, so you’ll just have to go to wait.
Once Blathers has set up his tent, go talk to him–he’ll give you the DIY schematics for the shovel. You’ll need hardwood to make it, so take a flimsy axe to some trees to get wood (don’t worry, it won’t chop down the tree). Once you have enough, you can craft a shovel at any DIY bench.
The first season of Beastars arrived on US Netflix on March 13, and it’s the anime that everybody should be watching. Combining the holy powers of both horniness and genuine thoughtfulness about identity, sexuality, and society, Beastars lays out both a cerebral and emotional treat over the course of 12 episodes.
But first: Yes, Beastars is that series openly embraced by furries across the internet, and Netflix acknowledged it as so by calling furries to the frontlines for the US release of Beastars. If you’re a furry or a curious individual, anthropomorphic animals do have sex in the show. Not graphically, but it’s a thing. For the extreme perverts among us, a chicken enjoys watching a wolf eat a sandwich made with her eggs. Make of that what you will!
Beastars is an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Paru Itagaki. It’s set in a civilized anthropomorphic society where herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores coexist without getting eaten or eating each other. As you can imagine, that’s pretty hard to do when you have rabbits and wolves in close contact.