Splatoon 2‘s next Splatfest competition is scheduled to begin very soon. This month’s event kicks off in North America tonight, October 13, at 9 PM PT/12 AM ET and concludes at the same time tomorrow, October 14.
For the first time since Splatoon 2 launched this past summer, North America’s Splatfest features a different theme than Europe’s. While European players battled over the proper way to hang a toilet roll, players in North America will be settling a more fitting dispute in time for Halloween: which monster is better, vampires or werewolves?
Ahead of the Splatfest, Nintendo is adding a pair of new weapons to Splatoon 2. This week’s free DLC guns are the Custom E-liter 4K and the modified Custom E-liter 4k Scope. These two chargers will be available tonight at 7 PM PT/10 PM ET and can be purchased using in-game currency from the Ammo Knights weapon shop.
Both the Custom E-liter 4K and Custom E-liter 4K Scope come outfitted with the Squid Beakon sub-weapon and Bubble Blower special. The difference between the two guns is their range; the Scope variant can fire further, but it isn’t able to store a charge shot like the standard model.
WWE 2K18 officially launches next week, but some PS4 and Xbox One players can start playing this year’s wrestling game a little early. Those who purchase the Deluxe edition can access the title starting today, October 13.
2K Sports has also announced a slate of downloadable content that will be released for the title. Five different themed WWE 2K18 DLC packs are on the way throughout late 2017 and early 2018, which will add new moves, iconic wrestlers like the Hardy Boyz, and more to this year’s wrestling game.
Perhaps the greatest marker of the success of writer-director Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is that it feels both incredibly specific in its depiction of this one family at the same time as being completely universal in its assessment of family. Well, there’s that, and the fact that it is also terribly funny and utterly heartbreaking.
Of course, it should be universal enough. There are certain situations and moments in a family’s existence which, while they may be executed in different fashion are, themselves, easily identifiable to everyone. There is nothing particularly unique when at the start of the film a father, Danny (Adam Sandler), brings his daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten), to his father’s house for a final dinner before she goes off to college. There is nothing terribly different in Danny’s father, Harold (Dustin Hoffman), being an undeservedly pretentious artist hoping for one last chance at renown, or Harold’s current wife, Maureen (Emma Thompson), being an awful cook. These are just facts, and while they may not be the facts of your family or mine, they are perfectly understandable.
Nintendo’s first console with 3D games, the Nintendo 64, revolutionized a number of beloved franchises and genres.
And with the SNES Classic now available, the Nintendo 64 is the next home console in line to conceivably receive the Classics treatment. So what would a possible library for the theoretical N64 Classic Edition look like? IGN boiled the system’s library down to 16 games representing a variety of genres while also making sure to include some of the most influential titles to release on Nintendo’s 64-bit system. Yes, there may be better iterations of some of these games on later Nintendo systems, but many of them are foundational to the N64’s history.
It is Xur day my dudes! Which means it’s time to once again look into the Destiny 2 merchant’s cavernous void of a face and shuffle through Exotic wares to find something that tickles your fancy. Don’t get too close though, who knows what those weird tendrils will do.
This week, Xur has planted himself on Nessus. It’s fairly straightforward to get to him as he’s popped up there before. Simply fast travel to Watcher’s Grave and then scoot over to the tree in the north end of the area. You’ll spot him lurking at the top of the large tree. He has the usual array of three pieces of Exotic armor and one weapons for sale. Here’s what you can expect to find.
Knucklehead Radar (Hunter Class Helmet): 23 Legendary Shards
Peacekeepers (Titan Leg Armor): 23 Legendary Shards
Wings of Sacred Dawn (Warlock Class Chest Armor): 23 Legendary Shards
Earlier this week Destiny 2’s Iron Banner event kicked off. If you’d like to see all the Iron Banner weapons, gears, and other rewards, head to our gallery. In related news, Bungie has said it is hearing criticism of Destiny 2’s endgame activities and is taking it to heart. Although it didn’t provide any specific details, the developer nonetheless said that discussions about endgame improvements are happening internally.
Furthermore, Bungie has said it is working on fixing Destiny 2’s black screen issue. In the meantime, it has detailed two workarounds that can help alleviate the issue. A new hotfix for the game–1.0.3.2.–was out this week, and it fixed issues involving The Tower crashing when players load into it. This is separate from the black screen issue mentioned above.
Marvel’s latest annual relaunch is in full swing now, as a number of ongoing series have rolled out new status quos and reverted to their classic numbering in the past few weeks. No hero is more directly impacted by the advent of Marvel Legacy than Spider-Man. No longer is Peter Parker a respected business tycoon and globetrotting playboy. With his company in ruins and his bank account at an all-time low, Peter is back to being the perennial sad-sack hero in the Marvel Universe. It’s a change many fans have been clamoring for for years at this point. But while it’s satisfying to see Spidey getting back to basics, the franchise faces a very difficult road ahead in Marvel Legacy.
Three years after he initially signed on for the movie, Channing Tatum is finally going to get to play card-throwing mutant Gambit in a spin-off of the X-Men film franchise. It’s been a long road to develop Gambit, which has already seen directors Rupert Wyatt and Doug Liman drop out of the project. Now though, with a release date and a director, it looks like all systems are go.
Gambit will follow in the footsteps of Deadpool with a release in the middle of February–specifically, February 14, 2019. So start planning your Valentine’s Day accordingly.
The film hails from 20th Century Fox and will be set in the same X-Men universe as Deadpool, Logan, and the upcoming New Mutants. As previously reported, Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski is set to helm Gambit with a script from Josh Zetumer. Tatum will produce the film, alongside Reid Carolin, Simon Kinberg, and Lauren Shuler Donner.
This will not be the character’s first appearance in the X-Men films. Previously, Taylor Kitsch played Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, though given how panned the film–and the portrayal of the character–was, it should come as no surprise that they are going in a different direction. Gambit is actually the second character from that film to be rebooted within the franchise, the first being Deadpool. Interestingly, Ryan Reynolds played both versions of the merc with a mouth.
Before Tatum hits the big screen as Gambit, there will be three other X-Men films coming to theaters. New Mutants, Deadpool 2, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix are all scheduled for 2018 releases.
Being in the writer’s room for Big Mouth sounds like an insanely personal experience.
“We had all of our writers on day one bring a picture of themselves as an awkward-ass adolescent,” Mark Levin, one of the show’s creators and executive producers, told GameSpot.
“And if you looked too good, it’s like, nah. You’re not playing this game right,” Andrew Goldberg, another EP/creator, added, laughing.
Big Mouth stars comedians Nick Kroll as his prepubescent self, and John Mulaney as a stand-in for a more-pubescent Goldberg. The two wrestle with their hormones–literally, in the case of Mulaney’s character Andrew, who’s haunted by a sex-obsessed Hormone Monster who encourages him to touch himself and constantly inserts inappropriate thoughts into his brain.
It’s basically a Seinfeld situation; Kroll and Goldberg created the show, Kroll is himself, and Mulaney plays Goldberg. That makes Kroll, who ended his eponymous Kroll Show in 2015 after three critically acclaimed seasons on Comedy Central, Jerry Seinfeld; Mulaney, who appeared regularly on Kroll Show, is Jason Alexander; and Goldberg, who grew up with Kroll in real life, is pretty much Larry David.
That’s a comparison Big Mouth itself acknowledges in a couple of gags throughout its 10-episode season. But it’s not a perfect analogy, because on Seinfeld, you never watched George Costanza masturbate or saw Elaine use a handheld mirror to chat with her own vagina.
“I think the whole show, it was a question of, ‘This is funny to us, but is it going to be funny to more than us?'” Levin said.
Bar Mitzvah Boys
We’d met during New York Comic Con at the NYC headquarters of Titmouse, the animation house that helped create Big Mouth. Titmouse co-founder Chris Prynoski, who sat in on the interview, said he was surprised how much heart the series has, in addition to all its dick and period jokes.
“We got away with a lot, really because we were with Netflix,” Levin said. “Because they give you the creative freedom that you hear about, and in our whole careers we’ve never really experienced.”
In Levin and Goldberg’s original conception, the show would have been called “Bar Mitzvah Boys.” But the idea morphed as Kroll became more involved and Levin was inspired by his own son’s journey through puberty.
“Mark really empathized with [his son],” Goldberg said. “He was like, ‘Is there some way to use animation to create some sort of physical manifestation of the angst of puberty? And I said, ‘Like a hormone monster or something?'”
“Later that day I was on the phone with Nick and as soon as I said the words ‘hormone monster’ Nick instantly had the voice,” Goldberg recalled. “And the first thing he said was ‘Touch yourself Andrew.’ I was like, ‘Yes! That’s it! Exactly! That’s the guy!'”
The ultimate title, “Big Mouth,” comes from Kroll’s famously large mouth, which Goldberg said is drawn in the show to more or less realistic proportions for 12-year-old Nick Kroll. Much of the show’s conflict arises from Nick’s envy over Andrew’s faster development. Nick gets jealous when he sees Andrew’s pubes, for example, and he wonders when he’s going to get his own Hormone Monster pal.
“Like 6th, 7th, 8th grade was when the two of us really spent every single moment together, like every night sleeping over at each other’s houses, kind of becoming members of each other’s families,” Goldberg said. “Where the two kids are developmentally at that age is very much based on where Nick and I were. Puberty smashed me over the head like a two-by-four when I was about 12 years old, and Nick was a much later bloomer. At the time I didn’t realize how much that affected him.”
That’s the kind of thing that came out in this writers room. “When we were interviewing writers to join this and sit at the table, we would ask them masturbation questions, and period questions, right in the interview,” Levin said. “And then if they weren’t comfortable there, they weren’t going to be able to really feel comfortable in the room. So by the time we were in the room together it was a really safe environment.”
“I think Nick and I would set the tone by being very honest,” Goldberg added. “And it’s one of those things where, like, when somebody says, ‘Yeah, I came in my pants slow-dancing with a girl,’ Nick says like, ‘I got pantsed and had no pubic hair and a little penis and I was humiliated.’ Everyone else is like, ‘Oh yeah? Well I have to keep up, so I will tell you that what happened to me is this!'”
Those personal pre-teen embarrassments are where they mined most of the material for Big Mouth, from Andrew getting too excited while slow-dancing to their friend Jessi, voiced by comedian Jessi Klein, having her period for the first time while wearing white shorts on a school trip inside the Statue of Liberty–one of the biggest women in the world.
Levin’s wife, Jennifer Flackett, worked on the show as executive producer and writer, and her experience was crucial for the episodes that focus on female characters like Jessi and Kroll Show alum Jenny Slate’s Missy. Big Mouth goes way past periods while exploring female puberty, including an episode where the boys discover that “girls get horny too” when all the female characters–pre-teens, moms, and teachers alike–start obsessing over a made-up romance novel called The Rock of Gibraltar. The women even have their own Hormone Monstress, voiced by Maya Rudolph.
Goldberg and Levin said they were able to capture those often very personal things so effectively because of the women involved at every step of Big Mouth‘s creation. “You, as a man, don’t totally relate, but you can tell that it resonates amongst them, and you trust them,” Goldberg said.
The big question
When the show’s first trailer debuted, some online commentators wondered at the legality–never mind the good taste–of showing animated pre-teens’ genitals. Obviously, that came up during creation.
“The question was asked, I think by John Mulaney, on day one,” Goldberg said. “He’s like, ‘Are we sure we’re not doing child pornography?’ And we really thought about it.”
“I feel like the people who have those objections for the most part have not seen the show, and if they have, and they’re looking at these images and finding them sexy or titillating, to me that says a lot more about them than the show,” he continued. “What we’ve experienced a lot more is people watching the show and saying, ‘Wow, that’s just what it was like, or what it is like, going through this, and I feel better and not alone,’ which is what our goal is.”
Goldberg’s parents, at least, approve–although to varying degrees. They aren’t portrayed in the most flattering light in the show, and it just so happened that his mother, who was in town to watch their New York Comic Con panel, was also in the room for our interview.
Goldberg said he felt awkward showing Big Mouth to her and his dad, and their tepid reaction to the first episode caused a row between them and his wife.
Since then, “I think at least my mother has genuinely come around,” Goldberg said. She confirmed that she’d watched the whole season after all, but she felt more comfortable watching it without her husband present.
“My father didn’t appreciate the extended description of Marty’s balls,” Goldberg admitted.
“Well, I’m glad they got that far,” Levin quipped. “That’s good!”
Super Mario Odyssey won’t be released until later this month, but the upcoming Switch exclusive has already gained some popularity amongst the speedrunning community.
As reported by Polygon, players are trying to see how quickly they can complete the 10-minute demo currently available in stores and are posting videos of their accomplishments on YouTube.
So far, the fastest time appears to be Jacob Babione, who’s managed to complete the demo’s Tostarena level in five minutes and 28 seconds. You can watch him speedrun through the sandy Super Mario Odyssey level right here. Just two days prior, he finished the level in six minutes and 39 seconds.
A new mode is coming soon to Grand Theft Auto V. Beginning October 17, GTA Online players will be able to take part in the much-anticipated Transform Races, a new type of race that Rockstar describes as the “next evolution of Stunt Racing.”
Unlike in a typical Stunt Race, during a Transform Race, your vehicle will be changing between bikes, planes, and more depending on the terrain. As you can see in the trailer above, these transformations happen instantly when you hit a specific point on the course, which should keep races constantly surprising.
On top of transforming vehicles, Transform Races add a new type of checkpoint called Warps. These instantly transport you to a different location on the map, which Rockstar says “allow[s] for a huge range of new Stunt Race types.”
Transform Races will be available with next week’s GTA V update. Until then, you can still take advantage of this week’s GTA Online bonuses, which include the new Buckingham Pyro airplane, as well as discounts on a handful of vehicles and upgrades. Beyond Transform Races, GTA Online players also have new Condemned and Dogfight modes to look forward to, both of which will be added to the game “in the coming months.”
