A couple days ago news broke of Korean game giant Netmarble is purchasing a majority of Canadian Kabam's assets- with it's extremely lucrative licensed ties to Marvel, Universal, and Warner Bros. Though, the thing I'm particularly interested in here is how the Marvel games will be effected.
It's estimated that 95% of Kabam's income (over 450 million since Dec. 2014) came from the IAP heavy Contest of Champions, a game I found to be decent but HIGHLY repetitive, so this might be a huge hit in their production budgets. On the opposite end of this Netmarble's far superior game Marvel Future Fight might not make as much money (couldn't find comparative figures for this) it's a much better game in so many ways. It's a much more action RPG type game with loads of multiplayer additions and things to do. Contest is a basic 2D fighter.
My intrigue with this business deal comes from the fact that Contest of Champions has a one singular thing I see as better than Future Fight- the mutant populace.
It is doubtful that well be getting mutants any time soon in Future Fight, but this does offer a slight ray of hope for our x-gene friends of the X-Men universe. It's also a bit concerning that Marvel is pushing the comics from the mutants more towards Inhuman, meaning we have even less of a chance at seeing the popular mutants arrive any time soon. I mean look at the crap Marvel did with Squirrel Girl, a long-time mutant, was altered to be now a non-mutant, meaning Fox can't cash in on the very profitable film rights while Marvel now can make tons of money off her popularity. Marvel tends not to like to share. But I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that we may still someday see characters like Colossus, Storm, or Wolverine in Future Fight.
Despite my waning interest in Marvel's comics' comic-book universe they still get me with a few things to keep me coming back.
While I'm not really impressed with the new run of Venom, these recently released upcoming Venom-ized variant covers for all their monthly books are pretty damn cool.
I mean, just Yasmine Putri's Gwenpool is downright superb. It's a brilliant use of Symbiote as costume, with the Gwenpool flair of shorts. The black, white, and pink color scheme works perfectly, and the whole image flows nicely. Very awesome job to Yasmine Putri on this!
The Ghost Rider is one great, Spider-Gwen's is a cool design, and the Squirrel Girl has the Symbiote on Tippy Toe. It's nice they put it on the supporting character instead of the main, it gives a little bit of an added punch for interest.
To see 23 of the 25 total covers head to: -Comic Book Resources [ CBR ]
Pre-registrations for Netmarble's new free-to-play mobile MOBA Star Wars: Force Arena have begun just in time for the release of Star Wars: Rogue One.
With over 60 upgradeable characters, ranging from classic icons like Luke Skywalker to newer ones such as Ezra Bridger, Force Arena players must create a team of characters and lead them into real-time PvP battles with other players.
In competing for galactic dominance players have the option of either 1v1 or 2v2 matches. They'll need to collect their favorite characters, decide whether they want to be a Rebel or Imperial, build customizable decks of controllable sub-units like Stormtroopers, and utilize strategic advantages such as pairing the legendary duo of Han Solo and Chewbacca to gain the upper hand in defeating opponents.
Players will be competing for special rewards, characters, and bonus items on a global leaderboards.
Did I mention that by pre-registering for Star Wars: Force Arena players can get up to 1,400 crystals and 10,000 credits free?
Cyanide Studios' curmudgeonly amber-addicted goblin assassin Styx has gotten a whole new gameplay trailer for the highly anticipated sequel to Master of Shadows called Shards of Darkness.
After the fall of the tower of Akenash, rumor of an impregnable diplomatic summit has lured Styx out of hiding. Infiltrating the Dark Elf city of Korrangar, he sneaks his way in to find the event is just a deception...
In Shards of Darkness, Styx's arsenal has been expanded greatly. New weapons, such as a crossbow that can kill, tranquilize, and set off traps, and skills like a teleport to clone are fully at his disposal. He's got new moves such as more fluid climbing abilities like zip-lining and rope-swinging. There is also an awesome and useful new craftable item called the Acid Trap that can help dissolve armored enemies and eliminate those pesky hard-to-hide dead bodies.
New bestiary, new enemies, and new side-missions to complete have also been included. Probably the most notable new addition to the sequel is a co-operative mode, allowing players to join friend's games and play together. And of course a lot of new story with actually animated cinematics.
This looks to be a case of taking an awesome game and making a sequel better in every way possible.
Styx: Shards of Darkness sneaks onto PS4, Xbox One, and PC in March 2017.
I'm not going to lie, when I first heard Universal wanted to reboot their monster movie franchises as a sort of group meetup like an Avengers-featuring horror icons like the Mummy, Invisible Man, Wolfman, and Dracula- I was a little excited. You know, getting back to the roots of horror film classics and slowly bring them together into one grand story down the road.
But of course, I should've known better. After watching the trailer it should've been evident that Universal would completely disregard what made those old films classics by tossing out horror film tension for short-term action spectacle. and ignoring all the substance that made them the special timeless characters they are. The Tom Cruise version of The Mummy. is a typical Cruise staple- action, running, absurd stunts, and the all too common world threatening events. What happened to the small and intimate stories? In the right hands a monster movie can be the simplest story of one hero and one villain and still maintain a tremendous amount of emotion and tension if done properly- it could be an unbelievably moving experience.
It's getting really irritating that the studios keep putting big names* up as the leads in these films- it winds up shoehorning the story to fit certain molds. We know Tom Cruise won't truly die. We know his peril is only on the surface and he'll never be subject to some awful fate. The trailer even features some of Cruise's most common activities- running from explosions, riding in crashing planes, and looking generally confused about a plot he hasn't figured out yet. I mean look at the extremely amazing Edge of Tomorrow, it should've ended with him blowing the hell out of the creature at the end and dying- then it should've cut to a scene much later with the military digging through the rubble and piecing the story together and not that stupid forced love-story happy ending they went with. The studios pull punches to tell a safe story, and not take the chance that the better tale will strike well with audiences. I mean if they let pieces of shit like Dracula Untold, Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing, or Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters why can't they make more films like the original version of Let the Right One In (definitely not the American remake)? Something extremely well done with great care, wonderful subtlety, and true horror tension behind it.
We need something more films like Scorsese's Dracula rather than Brendan Fraser's Mummy. Mind you, I'm not saying the film will be bad, but I just have very little faith in it as a real horror film. What we'll likely get is a typical Cruise action movie with the faces of horror plastered over it giving us in the end an entertaining yet hollow end product. We could use a good dose of fear and terror on the big screen. We want real dread. We crave the terror. We need the fright of things like the original Poltergeist, not the more recent wave of cheap jump-scare garbage and gore-porn crap that studios seem to be churning out and attempting to pass off as horror. We want people who understand what makes things fundamentally scary first, and then add action later.
Please studios, remedy this problem swiftly, audiences will appreciate the smart and tense films much more than the explosion-filled action pieces.
*A note on the big names- if they could get the right Director's to make the big names go with the roles without the actors holding sway over the stories they're in then I might have a different view. Though I do think it's awesome that Sofia Boutella is playing the Mummy. She's been quite good in her last few roles.
The new Marvel Future Fight update is arriving much swifter than I had anticipated, hitting this Wednesday with the pre-update server maintenance occurring on 12/6 16:00 ~ 12/7 01:00 (UTC+0) and 12/6 08:00 AM ~ 12/6 05:00 PM (PST).
Firstly, we'll be getting 7 new characters, Odin, the Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg), Hela, Ulik, and lastly the Enchantress will finally be arriving in game after a leak from early 2015. Sadly, Odin looks to be only obtainable after completing the new chapter 12 stage 8, and can only be leveled up with Black Anti-matter, other character biometrics for experience and Chaotic Norn Stones for mastery. Enchantress is locked behind the 20 Biometrics Daily selector package, which really isn't terrible, and the rest will be through standard level biometrics in the new chapters. I also noticed that Malekith bios will also be in the chapters, which is a nice change.
Speaking of daily biometrics, each level will now offer 10, boosted from the previous 5, which of course used to only be a meager 3 each day per stage.
In addition, Thor, Sif, and Silk are getting great new costumes. As always, they'll be on sale for their initial arrival. The new upgrade material is Uru (awesome), a new World Boss Invasion has been added, and the top S.H.I.E.L.D. player level is being raised to 70. There's a ton of other little changes, but I'm just pumped for the major characters and costumes right now. Seriously, check out the link below for all the details. There is a huge amount of stuff in this update, which explains why it took longer than many of the previous ones.
Netmarble has made another amazing update to the best Marvel mobile game around.
Of course there's no surprise, baby Groot steals every scene in the trailer. The full trailer gives us a bunch of little hints, a big monster, and we finally see Mantis. Awesome.
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 hits theaters May 2017.
Naughty Dog has brought us back to the lives of Ellie and Joel with the highly anticipated announcement of The Last of Us part 2. They have yet to disappoint with a game, and I'd expressed hope that any sequels to this series would leave both Ellie and Joel out and go with other stories in the same world, but this does have me intrigued despite that fact.
Before the Left Behind DLC dropped, I had talked about the ending being quite clear- Joel wasn't just selfishly lying for himself, he was giving Ellie a choice, and I think that simple fact will tie directly into this sequel. Honestly, Naughty Dog will have a lot to live up to, and perhaps they can find a way to balance the intense emotional journey with some of the irritating game mechanics of the first game. A good shiv shouldn't break after 2 damn uses. It's a damned annoying mechanic in every single survival game made.
I also wonder, but very much doubt, if they'll give us a small PS Vita game tie in. Maybe some other stories in the world of The Last of Us, but done in a manner as Uncharted: The Golden Abyss was.
The Last of Us 2 has no release date, and is "still in early development."
It really isn't any surprise that the character Netmarble teased for the 2.7.0 "Asgard" Update is the Unworthy Thor. Most of us assumed it would be with a few oddballs thinking it might be Taskmaster- which doesn't make sense either for the Asgard part or for the cape color.
There's two new locales, Asgard and Muspelheim, being probably chapters 11 and 12 due to the Black Bolt image displaying a chapter 12 mission in the upper left corner. We are also getting a new material, and the typical new characters and costumes.
Maybe we'll finally see the Enchantress who was datamined way back in July 2015. I suppose we might see other new characters like the Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg), perhaps Beta Ray Bill, Valkyrie, Heimdall, Thunderstrike (lol), or maybe even Surtur (because of Muspelheim). Though I doubt that we'll see him, but only because they left the dreaded Dormammu out of the Doctor Strange update, which seems completely ridiculous. On the other hand we are almost certainly getting Odin, who the new teaser pic below could be.
There's a decent chance we'll see new costumes for Angela, Destroyer, Jane Foster, Malekith, and Sif. Jane and Sif really need some new looks as they each only have one. Plus, I'm crossing my fingers we'll receive new costumes for some non-Asgard related characters, as we got a few extras with the Strange update.
It's been an entire year since the last bit of news about indie game developer Brian Provinciano's homage-fueled follow-up to the tremendous Retro City Rampage, called Shakedown: Hawaii, but low- yesterday we received the gloriously pixelated PSX 2016 trailer.
This game evolves it mayhem from the 8-Bit world to that of the 16-Bit, moving from the era of NES to that of the Super NES. The story follows "The Player," the same protagonist from Retro City Rampage, and moves him 30 years into his future. He's become older, fatter, and balder as he steps out of his corporate empire's boardroom and on to the streets in an effort to destroy the rising competition.
Shakedown: Hawaii will be coming to Nintendo, Steam, and Playstation in 2017.
