“Each one of us is greater than the worst thing we’ve ever done” is the sort of line that reads great on paper, and sounds even better coming from Denzel Washington, but demands a heck of a lot of scrutiny. And a heck of a lot of scrutiny it gets in Dan Gilroy’s anxious and captivating new legal drama Roman J. Israel, Esq., one of the richest examinations of catastrophic ethical collapse you’re likely to see.
Denzel Washington stars as Roman J. Israel, Esq., who has spent decades of his life in a small room at a law firm, doing complex paperwork while his partner makes all the appearances in court and – as Roman J. Israel, Esq. learns too late, after his partner has a heart attack – all of the difficult decisions. Roman J. Israel, Esq. is suddenly thrust into the real world of criminal law, where principles are considered a luxury and practicality reigns supreme, and where there’s no place for an introvert who refuses to compromise his integrity.
Welcome back to Next Big Game, the show where we give you an inside look at the hottest and most exciting upcoming titles. In this video series, we work with the talented studios behind these highly anticipated games to provide you with the inside scoop and plenty of new content, including gameplay footage, and much more.
Those of you anxiously awaiting the release of Dragon Ball FighterZ this coming January won’t want to miss Episode 5, which delivers a detailed look at Bandai Namco and Arc System Works’ upcoming 2.5D fighting game, including an exciting glimpse at its impressive roster of playable characters.
Nearly every one of the 283 episodes of South Park that has aired over the last 20 years started out with an identical disclaimer. If you’re ever tuned in before the show’s intro, you know the one: the white-text-on-black-background message warning people of poor impressions and foul language, punctuated with the statement, “Due to its content, it should not be viewed by anyone.” With the release of the franchise’s new mobile game, South Park: Phone Destroyer, we now have a new version of that disclaimer.
Phone Destroyer, which was revealed back at E3, is out now worldwide on iOS and Android. Before you get into the action, however, you’re presented with a familiar sight–albeit with a few differences to account for this being a free-to-play, microtransaction-based game.
“This game contains both in-app purchases and the option to watch ads for rewards,” it reads. “To disable the ability to make in-app purchases, adjust your device settings. In-app purchases cost real money and are charged to your account and for those reasons, this game should not be played anyone.”
Phone Destroyer was developed by RedLynx, the studio best known for the Trials series. This game bears little resemblance to that series; it’s a collectible card-based real-time strategy game where you’ll do battle by summoning various South Park characters using cards. As in publisher Ubisoft’s South Park console games, you play as the New Kid as you work your way through a single-player campaign. There’s also a PvP mode where you can use the cards you’ve unlocked to compete against other players.
BBC has given us our first look at Jodie Whittaker as the thirteenth Doctor.
“New season. New Doctor. New look!” BBC America wrote alongside the reveal on Twitter. Whittaker, the series’ first female Doctor, was announced as Peter Capaldi’s replacement earlier this year.
First look at Whittaker as the thirteenth Doctor. Image via BBC America
The first image of the new star of Doctor Who has been released. The picture was tweeted by the show’s official twitter account and gives us a first look at the latest Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker.
Whittaker was announced in the role of the 13th Doctor in July. She is the first female star of the long-running sci-fi series, and is pictured on a grassy plain with the TARDIS behind her. Check it out below:
Whittaker replaces Peter Capaldi, who has played the Doctor since 2013. Capaldi will make his final appearance on this year’s Christmas Special, and it’s likely we’ll see Whittaker make her debut in it too. The Christmas episode is titled “Twice Upon a Time,” and a trailer was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con in July.
Whittaker’s first full season as the Doctor will air in 2018. The show also has a new showrunner, with Broadchurch‘s Chris Chibnall taking over from Steven Moffat. In a recent interview with the Radio Times, Chibnall suggested the show might take a different approach from previous seasons.
“What the BBC was after was risk and boldness,” he said: “I had ideas about what I wanted to do with it. When I went to them and said, ‘This is what I would do,’ I actually expected them to say, ‘Ooh, let’s talk about that.’ But they said: ‘Great!’
“I finally said yes because I love the show to my bones. I resisted it for a very long time, and [the BBC] really had to woo me.”
It was another big week of comics. Marvel released new chapters of Venom and Despicable Deadpool, brought Moon Knight back into the spotlight and welcomed a new writer on Star Wars. DC delivered more great tie-ins to Dark Nights: Metal and finally revealed Wonder Woman’s twin brother in Wonder Woman #34. And there were two great crossovers on tap this week thanks to Kong on the Planet of the Apes #1 and TMNT/Ghostbusters II #2.
Scroll down to check out our reviews for these and various other new releases, and be sure to let us know your favorite books of the week in the comments below.
Han Solo’s famous ship the Millennium Falcon has been found dormant in a field in England.
Eagle-eyed Google Earth users spotted the iconic freighter seemingly left near a golf course in Surrey, in the South of England.
Now that filming has wrapped on the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it looks like the production team has decided to hide it in the great outdoors until filming starts for Episode IX.
The Millenium Falcon kept under wraps in a field in Surrey, England (courtesy of Google Earth).
Despite the fact that both Wii and Wii U offered video streaming apps for services like Netflix, Nintendo Switch launched without them. For its part, the company said it was focused on making Switch a solid games system and that such apps could come later, but firm plans were never revealed. Now, the US is finally getting its first Switch video app, some eight months after its initial launch.
As always, Nintendo has sent out its weekly press release detailing the games releasing on the Eshop in the coming days. And it’s there, quietly buried toward the end of a bullet point list, that we see Hulu launches for Switch today. At the time of this writing, neither its Nintendo website page or system Eshop page has gone live, so we don’t yet know any details beyond that.
Still, its release is notable given that it marks the system’s first video streaming app (with the exception of Japan’s NicoNico Switch app). There’s no indication if this will open the floodgates for Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, and other services to also release their own apps or if this is intended as a test.
The absence of video streaming apps proved to be a confusing decision to some. Just after launch, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime stated, “We built the Nintendo Switch to be a world-class gaming device, meaning we want you first and foremost to play games on the system and have an incredibly fun experience. We’re talking to a range of companies about other services, companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon–things that will come in time. In our view, these are not differentiators.”
“When you think about a new platform, what will define it as a long-term success are the ongoing range of games and experiences that come to the platform–not what’s available on day one,” he added. “For the Nintendo Switch, we were very deliberate in wanting to make sure, from a Nintendo publish[ing] standpoint, that we had a steady cadence of great games in addition to strong titles at launch.”
Beyond feeling it would not help to set the system apart, Nintendo may have wanted to be clear in its messaging that this was a gaming system first and foremost–not something to be confused with a tablet. Whether that has played a part or not, Nintendo has achieved a great deal of success with Switch in its first eight months on the market. It’s sold 7.63 million units as of the end of September, and it recently projected that Switch will top Wii U’s lifetime sales within its first 13 months on the market.
Repurposing LA Noire as a $30 VR game (called LA Noire: The VR Case Files, exclusively for the HTC Vive for now) is as fun as I’d hoped it would be. And on the Nintendo Switch (priced at $50, including all of the DLC ever released), it runs and feels like it belongs, even if it’s Switch-exclusive features – like motion controls and touchscreen functionality – don’t add a lot to the experience. I played both ahead of their imminent launches – November 14 for Switch and December for VR Case files, though remember that the 4K Remastered release is also out on November 14 for Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.
LA Noire looks nice and clean on Nintendo’s newest console when running at 1080p in docked mode. It’s got every piece of content ever released for the detective thriller, and it’s (mostly) slower pace make it a great fit for an on-the-go game in handheld mode. It’s aged reasonably well; the motion-captured facial animations that LA Noire hung its hat on in 2011 have held up best. The rest of the game world shows some last-gen cracks, but nothing I’d knock it for. The most obvious issue was the object pop-in on the horizon when you’re speeding down the streets during driving sections.
First look at Whittaker as the thirteenth Doctor. Image via 
