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!.06-GameSpot - All Content

Star Citizen Passes $400 Million In Funding

Posted: 23 Nov 2021 05:23 AM PST

Star Citizen, the highly ambitious PC space sim from Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, has reached another massive funding milestone. The game has passed $400 million in funding, according to its public crowdfunding page.

The funding page reveals the game started the week on a strong note, raising $1.7 million on Sunday, November 21, before adding another $1.4 million on November 22.

The game brings in money by selling ships and other extras, with funds going toward the ongoing development of the game. Star Citizen is playable and has been for yeas, though fans are still waiting for a "final" release at some point in the future.

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Keanu Reeves Says No To John Wick Or Neo In The Mortal Kombat Games

Posted: 23 Nov 2021 04:55 AM PST

Actor Keanu Reeves has commented on the possibility of two of his most famous characters, Neo from The Matrix and John Wick from John Wick, joining the Mortal Kombat fighting game universe. Speaking to Esquire, Reeves said he's not on board with the idea.

"If it was up to me? No. Mortal Kombat is awesome in so many ways, but I think... you know, Neo, John Wick, they're doing their own thing. Mortal Kombat is doing their own thing," he said.

Mortal Kombat and The Matrix, as well as developer NetherRealm, are all owned by Warner Bros., so this type of crossover certainly seems plausible. But the John Wick series is owned by Lionsgate. That's not to say a crossover couldn't happen, though, and NetherRealm head Ed Boon has even talked about adding John Wick and Neo to Mortal Kombat.

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December Xbox Games With Gold Seemingly Leaked Early

Posted: 23 Nov 2021 04:36 AM PST

As is becoming tradition, the upcoming month's list of Games With Gold titles has seemingly leaked ahead of time. Billbill-kun on Dealabs has revealed December's lineup. This person previously revealed the free games lineups for PlayStation Plus, so there is a track record here.

December's Xbox Games With Gold lineup, according to the leak, will include The Escapists 2, Tropico 5 Penultimate Edition, Orcs Must Die!, and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. The full schedule can be seen below, as shared by VGC.

December Xbox Games With Gold Leak

  • The Escapists 2 (Dec 1 – 31)
  • Tropico 5 Penultimate Edition (Dec 16 – Jan 15)
  • Orcs Must Die! (Dec 1 – 15)
  • Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (Dec 16 – 31)

With only about a week left in November, Microsoft will seemingly make an official announcement about December's Games With Gold titles soon. We're also expecting to hear about the Game Pass titles for December shortly. So far, we already know that Halo Infinite's campaign (December 8) and Among Us (December 14) will be coming to Game Pass in December.

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Halo Infinite Fracture: Tenrai Event Start Time, New Trailer Revealed

Posted: 23 Nov 2021 04:17 AM PST

Halo Infinite's first event, Fracture: Tenrai, is releasing today at 10 AM PT, and now a trailer for it has arrived. The video tells players to "prepare to draw your blade, Spartans."

The video shows off some of the cool new cosmetics that players can purchase or unlock as part of Season 1, which is called Heroes of Reach. The season runs through May 2022, but this event is expected to be shorter than that.

For lots more, check out GameSpot's rundown of everything you need to know about the Fracture: Tenrai event. In short, it comes with its own free event pass featuring unique rewards that exist outside of the standard Halo Infinite battle pass.

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Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Characters Have A Future, Kathleen Kennedy Says

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 11:13 PM PST

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, who has just extended her contract with the company for another three years, has hinted in a new interview that the world of Star Wars hasn't seen the last of sequel heroes Rey, Finn, and Poe. While there don't seem to be any solid plans for the saga-concluding Resistance heroes yet, it appears Lucasfilm is interested in extending their stories.

Kennedy answered the question about the sequel characters in a recent interview with Empire Magazine. "Certainly, those are not characters we're going to forget," she said of Daisy Ridley's Rey, Oscar Isaac's Poe, and John Boyega's Finn. "They will live on, and those are conversations that are going on with the creative team as well."

Since Rise of Skywalker released to a poor critical response in 2019, the Star Wars franchise has pivoted to explore its galaxy through Disney+ TV shows, including the upcoming Book of Boba Fett and the highly anticipated Obi Wan Kenobi series. Rogue Squadron, the film that was meant to be the next cinematic Star Wars release after Rise of Skywalker, has recently been taken off Disney's production schedule due to conflicts with director Patty Jenkins' timetable.

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Horizon Forbidden West Reveals More About The Game's New Cultures

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 10:28 PM PST

Horizon Forbidden West developer Guerrilla Games is continuing to drop more about the new game and its world, leading up to the game's release in February 2022. A new blog post by Guerilla developers focuses this time on the game's living world, including its cultures, settlements, and the technology that brings it all to life.

The post by Guerrilla's community lead Bo de Vries quotes the game's lead living world designer, Espen Sogn, about how his team brings Horizon's world to life. "When you walk through the Forbidden West, everything should feel like it belongs there," Sogn explains. "The Living World team at Guerrilla works on aspects of the game that make the world feel authentic and alive: the tribes, the settlements, and the people within them. There's an intention behind everything we place within the world."

While most of the post apocalyptic setting's tribes were introduced by name in Horizon Zero Dawn, the sequel will properly introduce factions like the warlike Tenakth and the agrarian Utaru as Aloy explores their settlements and interacts with their people.

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Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City Review - Sometimes Tasty, Often Itchy

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 06:00 PM PST

The struggle of adapting works that already have built-in fanbases is one of appeasing people who already know what they like. It was something that dogged the previous six movies in the Resident Evil film series--those movies are big, goofy fun, but they have very little to do with what fans of Resident Evil like about Resident Evil. The live-action franchise's reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City goes hard in the other direction, but proves that sometimes being too faithful to the original work has its pitfalls, too.

Taking the Resident Evil games and mythos seriously is clearly a major consideration for Welcome To Raccoon City. This is a movie that adapts not one but two games in the franchise--Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2--and is littered with callbacks and references to both. Some sets and locations have been faithfully recreated, like the foyer of the Spencer Mansion or the front desk of the Raccoon City Police Department. Characters are similar to those of the games and find themselves in similar circumstances, with a lot of the same plot beats. It's an adaptation that will have Resident Evil fans pointing at the screen, Leonardo DiCaprio meme-style, as they recognize Easter egg after Easter egg from the game series.

That's not to say that Welcome To Raccoon City is a straight retelling of RE and RE2, however. It takes a few liberties with the characters and the setting, mostly for the better. One of the biggest, although perhaps the weakest, is that it smashes the two games' stories together so they happen simultaneously during the same night in 1997, presumably because neither game has all that much actual story when you cut out wandering through darkened halls and shooting a lot of zombies. Here, we find a Raccoon City more or less propped up by the industrial and pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, but at the start of the film, the company is looking to relocate its headquarters. In doing so, Umbrella is economically killing the town.

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Hearthstone Fractured In Alterac Valley Card Reveal: Rokara The Valorous Warrior Hero

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 05:00 PM PST

Hearthstone's next expansion, Fractured In Alterac Valley, finally pits Alliance vs Horde. It's a way of bringing together all of the various mercenary characters that have been progressively built up over the course of the year, and part of that means new Hero cards based on each of the 10 characters. Among those is the Warrior Rokara.

Hero cards in Hearthstone are class Legendaries with big game-changing effects. They replace your Hero entirely, usually granting you a powerful Battlecry and significantly upgrading your Hero power. In the case of Rokara the Valorous, that means equipping a 5/2 Unstoppable Force, which smashes enemy minions into your opponent like croquet balls. Her upgraded hero power, Grand Slam, utilizes the new Honorable Kill keyword. It can always deal 2 damage, but if you do exact lethal to a minion, you'll also gain 4 Armor. That makes it a strong combination of offense and defense that can help you last into the late-game.

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For those who have been paying attention to Hearthstone card reveals in advance of Alterac Valley, you may notice that Rokara's new 5/2 weapon is a mirror image of another legendary Hero card. The Paladin card Lightforged Cariel comes with her own weapon, a 2/5 weapon called The Immovable Object. So Rokara's Unstoppable Force pairs thematically with Cariel's Immovable Object. That's by design, as Blizzard intends the two to have something of a rivalry going into this final expansion:

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Fortnite Season 8 Recap: Everything That Happened In The Cube War

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 03:56 PM PST

Fortnite Season 8 comes to an end on December 5, meaning we're just a few short weeks away from another epic finale. This time, the chaos of a season-ending event may be magnified tenfold, as credible rumors suggest that Fortnite Chapter 3 is just around the corner. For now though, we'll deal with only what we saw this season. The end of Season 8 is approaching. Here's everything that's happened in the war with the cubes.

Slone's betrayal

During Operation: Sky Fire, IO boss Doctor Slone recruited loopers to help end the alien threat once and for all. The uneasy feeling about Slone's season-long alliance with players proved to be merited in the end; after she felt she had dispatched the aliens for good by arming a massive bomb, she turned on players, leaving them to die in the explosion.

Instead, the alien Mothership was revealed to be some sort of storage facility for countless cubes, a sentient race of beings we first saw in Fortnite way back during Chapter 1 when Kevin The Cube was introduced. Even today we don't know exactly how these cubes work, but we know they saved loopers on the Mothership that day, even as that seems to have been a byproduct of their true intentions: to take over the island.

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Halo Infinite Advanced Tips And Tricks: 8 Ways To Be An Even Better Spartan

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 03:38 PM PST

Halo Infinite seems to have brought in a swarm of new and returning players, thanks to its design that both modernizes Halo while still feeling rooted in the classics that so many fans adore to this day. With that in mind, we've put together some advanced tips and tricks, meant to help you step your game up to the next level if you find yourself ready for more. If you're still treading carefully, you may instead benefit from our Halo Infinite beginner's tips, which do a better job of being your on-ramp to the free-to-play hit. If you're ready to unlock a few next-level tips, read on.

Learn the run / slide / jump combo

Halo Infinite is already a fast game, but what if you could go a bit faster? With this emerging meta move, you can string together quicker movements anywhere on the battlefield, though it's especially helpful when moving down a slope, even if just a slight one. To do it, simply crouch while sprinting to initiate a slide, and while you're sliding, jump. This tactic is beginning to creep into multiplayer matches, especially ranked matches where players seek every advantage big and small, so you'd be wise to master it yourself if you plan on competing for Halo Infinite ranks.

Take out Drop Walls instantly

When you find yourself on the wrong side of a drop wall shield, it can take a bit of ammo before you're able to engage the enemy's armor and health directly. But there's a trick to nullifying enemy drop walls very quickly. When you see one placed on the ground, rather than take out its patchwork of protective panels, aim for the metal device on the bottom of the shield. One hit to it will remove the entire Drop Wall immediately and allow you to not only hit your enemy head-on, but you may leave them stunned as to how you eliminated their defenses so quickly, too.

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Ridley Scott Blames Millennials And Their "F***ing Cellphones" For The Last Duel Flop

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 03:23 PM PST

Ridley Scott's The Last Duel is, according to critics and moviegoers alike, a very good movie. The film has an 85% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and the audience score isn't far behind. The movie tanked at the box office, though, and Scott says it's all because of smartphones (via The Hollywood Reporter).

It can't be that it's an ultra-serious period piece coming out during a very serious time in the United States and elsewhere. It definitely can't be the fact that theaters are still recovering from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, up to and including Marvel Studios movies. It's definitely not because Matt Damon has a really weird haircut in the movie.

"I think what it boils down to--what we've got today [are] the audience who were brought up on these f***ing cellphones," Scott told Marc Maron on the latest episode of the comedian's WTF podcast, which debuted earlier today. "The millennian, [who] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you told it on the cellphone."

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Mass Effect Legendary Edition Coming Soon To Xbox Game Pass? | GameSpot News

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 03:10 PM PST

In today's GameSpot News, Persia talks about Mass Effect Legendary Edition possibly coming to Xbox Game Pass, some fighting game announcements, and more.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania Is Just $20 In This Black Friday Deal

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 02:51 PM PST

Monkeys make everything better, whether it be testing NASA spacecraft or being added to a Clint Eastwood movie, and the same goes for video games. One of the best games out there to feature pure simian silliness, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, is now more affordable than ever thanks to Black Friday deals at Walmart and Amazon. For just $20, you can get your hands on Sega's repackaging of the GameCube's Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2, which has been given a fresh coat of digital paint.

Even better, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania also contains extra stages from the PS2's Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, and several cameos from Sega superstars. Ever wanted to collect bananas as Kiryu Kazuma from the Yakuza series or Jet Set Radio's Beat? Well, here you go.

"Banana Mania doesn't reinvent the wheel (ball?), but it doesn't need to," critic Heidi Kemps wrote in her Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania review. "Having the ability to play classic Super Monkey Ball levels and minigames without having to drag your old consoles and CRT TV out of storage would be enough of a selling point on its own, but the additional gameplay tweaks and charming extras sweeten the deal quite a bit."

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Monster Hunter Rise Discounted To $25 In Walmart Black Friday Sale

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 02:48 PM PST

Capcom's Monster Hunter series has grown in popularity over the last couple of years, and if you've been looking to face off against gigantic dragons on your Switch console, then Monster Hunter Rise is the perfect game to get stuck into. Arriving on the Switch after 2018's Monster Hunter World took the world by storm, Monster Hunter Rise builds on its predecessor's ideas to create a bold and confident new slice of intrepid exploration.

Built from the ground up for Switch, Monster Hunter Rise retains the core gameplay loop of the series while introducing a few novel ideas of its own, creating an experience that's uniquely suited to Nintendo's hybrid console. Over at Walmart, you can grab the game for just $25, a tremendous discount on a game that was only released in March this year.

"Going toe-to-toe with these intimidating beasts is the unmistakable core of the Monster Hunter experience, and Rise still feels like a distinctly Monster Hunter game, even if it's more of a fully-fledged action title than any other entry in the series," critic Richard Wakeling wrote in his Monster Hunter Rise review.

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10 Iconic TV Show Casts That Reunited

Posted: 22 Nov 2021 02:23 PM PST


In the days before streaming and on-demand destroyed its business model, network television forged its appeal on regularity. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel. The casts of TV sitcoms became reliable parts of a family's evening schedule, slotted in after dinner and washing dishes, but before brushing your teeth for bed.

It's that consistency--that intertwining of entertainment with domestic routine--that made these classic TV characters feel so intimate and relatable. And so, when the old casts organize reunions or retrospectives, it's pure childhood nostalgia. Whether they were a reminder of our good days or an escape from our bad ones, these characters were omnipresent.

Here are 10 iconic TV show casts that reunited.


1. The Brady Bunch


Original Run Date:1969-1974

The Bradys have been the subject of numerous fictional and non-fictional reunions, starting immediately after the original sitcom ended in 1974. Its popularity in syndication led to multiple one-off specials and failed attempts to recapture the original magic. There were nine episodes of a variety show The Brady Bunch Hour (1976-1977), featuring the entire original cast except, appropriately enough, Eve Plumb, who played Jan. There were made-for-TV movies like The Brady Girls Get Married (1981) and A Very Brady Christmas (1988).

There was an attempt at a dramatic reimagining called The Bradys (1990), although that only lasted one month. And of course, there have been endless documentary and reality show reunions, the most recent of which was HGTV's A Very Brady Renovation (2019), featuring the six kids restoring the old Brady house.

In many ways, The Brady Bunch demonstrated the commercial potential of the TV reunion. The entire franchise has been more profitable since it ended than when it was first broadcast to air.


2. Saved By the Bell


Original Run Date: 1989-1993

Saved By The Bell reunions have largely been characterized by the one person who didn't attend them: Dustin Diamond, who played social outcast Screech. Diamond played the role for 13 years, across the original run and both reboots (The College Years and The New Class).

After the show ended, Diamond had cold words for his former cast members and even wrote a tell-all book alleging bad behavior on set. Between all the cast drama, his legal troubles, and his sex tape, Diamond was persona non grata at Saved By The Bell reunions, including the 2015 reunion on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Any attempt at reconciliation ended in February 2021, when Diamond died of a rare form of lung cancer at the age of 44. However, the original cast will pay tribute to him in Season 2 of Peacock's Saved By the Bell continuation.


3. Star Trek: The Next Generation


Original Run Date: 1987-1994

The Next Generation cast gets along very well, and has reunited multiple times at Star Trek and sci-fi conventions. But one of the most memorable reunions, which included both Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar), was in the Season 7 episode of Family Guy, "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven." Stewie reunites the entire cast via transporter, but discovers that unlike the characters they play, the cast is a pack of juvenile a**holes in real life.

It's not the only time Star Trek has been involved with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Patrick Stewart has performed multiple Family Guy cameos over the years, and was the voiceover narrator for the film Ted in 2012.


4. Full House


Original Run Date: 1987-1995

The Full House cast also gets along extremely well; the cast members show up at each others' birthdays, weddings, and movie premieres. All of them seem happy to have been involved with the show, and nearly all of them took part in the Fuller House (2016-2020) reboot on Netflix, where DJ and Kimmy raise their children in the old Tanner house.

The two most frequent hold-outs are Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who co-starred as scene-stealer Michelle Tanner. Their fashion empire leaves them short on time, and the twins officially retired from acting in 2012. Fuller House made a meta-reference in its pilot, stating that Michelle had a career in New York, which prevented her from visiting. The cast then stared directly into the camera, Jim Halpert style.



Original Run Date: 1992-1996

California Dreams, a Saved By the Bell clone about a group of teens who start a rock band, was not particularly good or original, but it set itself apart with its episode-closing musical performances. It aired not on primetime, but on NBC's Saturday morning block, where it benefitted from its lead-in: Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

In 2010, Jimmy Fallon gathered the former cast on the Tonight Show, where they sang their title song whilst playing their instruments.


6. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air


Original Run Date: 1990-1996

The Fresh Prince cast also got along very well; there were multiple casual reunions over dinners and social events, which the former cast members would then post to social media. These reunions were tainted, however, by the back-and-forth mudslinging between Will Smith and Janet Hubert, who played Aunt Viv for the first three seasons before being replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid. Both accused the other of being unprofessional and disrespectful, and Hubert blamed Will for her low pay offer to return for the fourth season (which she declined). They eventually hashed out differences and reconciled during an HBO Max Fresh Prince reunion in 2020. Everyone was there except for James Avery (Uncle Phil), who died in 2013, following complications from heart surgery.


7. Married… With Children


Original Run Date: 1987-1997

The four main actors, Ed O'Neill, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate, and David Faustino, are supportive of one another's projects; they film guest shots in each other's work, and celebrate each other's award wins. They all showed up for Sagal's unveiling on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. and they've all gotten together for two reunion specials, the first in 2003, again on Faustino's web series Starv-ing in 2009, and the last in 2012, to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary.


8. Family Matters


Original Run Date: 1989-1997

What originally began as a family sitcom about the Winslow family, slowly but surely became The Steve Urkel Show. And by the show's final seasons, it had become a sci-fi farce, with Steve creating mind-reading devices, a machine that turned him into Bruce Lee, and in the series finale, blasting off into outer space.

The Family Matters reunion took place in 2017, 20 years after the show ended, for an Entertainment Weekly cover story. Unfortunately, it didn't include two key people. The first was Rosetta LeNoire, who played feisty grandma Mother Winslow and died in 2002. The second was Jaimee Foxworth, who portrayed youngest daughter Judy until she was quietly written out of the series in Season 4. As an adult, Foxworth had troubles with drugs and alcohol and starred in a handful of adult films, which might have disqualified her reunion participation from the start.


9. Seinfeld


Original Run Date: 1989-1998

Seinfeld did its reunion in the most Seinfeld-ish way possible--by staging a fictional reunion show on Larry David's meta HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2009. Since Larry David actually wrote Seinfeld, and Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and Jerry Seinfeld all played fictionalized versions of their true selves, Curb's seventh season finale played like a redo of Seinfeld's series finale, which was widely maligned at the time of its airing. There was also a little nostalgia and warmth, despite the show's long standing mantra of "no hugging, no learning."


10. Friends


Original Run Date: 1994-2004

After 10 seasons and 17 additional years since it aired its last episodes, Friends was ripe for a splashy reunion. The six mains, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, all came together for an HBO Max extravaganza, featuring special guest stars, the writers and creators of the show, and reconstructed sets of all the show's familiar locations. It was so glossy, heartwarming and rehearsed that it could serve as a workable template for any other Reunion that a network might produce in the future.
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