Category: Game

Bizarro makes a complete mess of Kara’s romantic moment Last week, Supergirl was grappling with a galactic genocidal gangster, so it was must have been something of a relief for her to get back to the relative familiarity of her tangled love-life, in this touchy-feely episode that was all about relationships.
She (or at least, her alter-ego Kara Danvers) finally got it on with model sappy boyfriend material Adam, which was nice, up until the moment when an undead version of herself swooped in and flew her away.
This Other-Supergirl (nicknamed Bizarro by media queen Cat Grant) is an abominable creation of vile tech entrepreneur Maxwell Lord. As in the original Superman DC comic-books, Bizarro is an evil copy of heroic protagonists, in this case, Bizarro Supergirl. Lord plays the Doctor Frankenstein role, breathing new life into a dead young woman, so she can wreak havoc on the world.
In one teeth-grinding moment, he has her call him “My Lord." The way he strokes her hair and touches her skin is almost as unpleasant as his exhortation that she destroy Supergirl.

This leads to the usual to-ing and fro-ing in abandoned buildings and dusty out-of-town locations. The two antagonists get down to some Rock-Paper-Supergirl. Lazer Eyes counters Lazer Eyes. Fiery Breath countered by Freezy Breath. Punchy Flying Attack blocked by Stone Fist.
Alex Danvers puts an end to all this nonsense, turning up with an anti-Bizarro weapon. Big Sister With Fancy Kryptonite Gun Wins. Poor Bizarro loses her looks and is rendered into a zombie, which actually matches perfectly with her stilted conversational techniques. "Must. Kill. Supergirl."
"Once again, a super-powered monster is on the loose in National City," sighs Hank Henshaw. But it turns out that if you reverse the ionic charge of Kryptonite and apply that to a weapons-grade discharge … something, something … resolution of final action sequence.
Just prior to Bizarro’s undoing, she has a quiet chat with James Olsen, who tries to make her feel better about the fact that she looks like someone who has been dead for a few weeks. "We all feel like we’re ugly sometimes," says this fantastically good-looking man who is dating one beautiful woman and in a pleasingly flirtatious relationship with another. "We all feel like no-one loves us," says the geezer who is best mates with a bloke who can fly.

Anyway, let’s get back to Adam. Supergirl and he went out on a date. They shared secrets. They smooched.
I mean, obviously, he’s not really right for her. He seems to me to be a prize berk. He’s the sort of cleft-chinned fellow who coos, "You’re amazing," on a first date. In my book, this alone makes him as much a monster as any freaky insect alien. But there’s no accounting for taste and no comprehending the mysteries of sexual attraction between good-looking people.
Suffice it to say, Supergirl likes him. So it’s painful for her to throw him over the side. Despite their romantic connection, she comes to understand that being a superhero AND fetching coffees for Cat Grant AND attending to her own human, emotional needs is just too much, so something has to give.

Adam is devastated. He exits the show, hopefully for a very long time, so we can get back to the far more interesting romantic ties with sad-sack Winn and spoken-for James. Also, Cat is mad at Kara because Adam is her son. This is bad for Kara but good for the rest of us.  If Cat starts being nice to Kara, this show is pretty much dead.
Now for the best bit. Alex has finally had enough of Maxwell Lord and his slimy shenanigans, so she pays him a little visit. "Maxwell Lord, You’re under arrest," she declares, whipping out her evil-proof handcuffs. Glory-be.
Lord is a wonderfully hateful villain, a zero-empathy, smug tycoon with a God Complex. Oh man, we all love to see dudes like that get their comeuppance.
You can read all Polygon’s Supergirl recaps here.

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The Division’s closed beta wraps up today, and despite the super limited amount of content available in this pre-release sliver of Ubisoft’s open-world third-person shooter, I’m gonna miss it. The beta showcased some slick progression hooks, let players take a run at an instanced co-op mission and, best of all, let anarchy run wild in the Dark Zone. That’s The Division’s player vs. player area, where you’re encouraged to trust nobody — unless, of course, in that cruel arena, an unlikely friendship is forged.
You can hear some thoughts from Arthur and me and watch a bunch of gameplay video from The Division’s beta above. The Division launches March 8 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC.

Thanks, EA Electronic Arts is giving away 2012’s Need for Speed Most Wanted on its Origin service starting today. The Windows PC version of the game is the latest addition to EA’s On the House offerings, joining the group of free, downloadable games.
An Origin membership is required to download the game; registration for an account is free, and all On the House titles are yours to keep forever.
The previous On the House game was Jade Empire, the role-playing game from BioWare. Other past titles have included Dead Space and Plants vs. Zombies.
Most Wanted first saw release in 2005 as the racing game series’ ninth installment. That version was developed by EA Black Box, but it was Burnout series developer Criterion Games that took charge of 2012’s reboot. Criterion’s version of Most Wanted drew inspiration from its forebears as well as the Burnout series, and combined open-world gameplay with a multiplayer focus.
We liked the game when we took it for a spin on the Xbox 360 upon release. It was later followed by 2015’s Need for Speed, another rebooted game in EA’s racing franchise.

“It will consume you, change you … into something else." "Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting," the third episode of The Magicians, lives up to its name: It reiterates that magic can completely screw up your life if it’s used carelessly.
The Magicians’ two-episode premiere, which aired a week ago, set up the show’s universe as one in which magic is real and deadly. Episode three hammers that point home right from the start, continuing to contrast the parallel upbringings that Julia and the graduate students get with the hedge witches and the Brakebills faculty, respectively.
"Just don’t forget to manage your shit," Pete admonishes Julia, after she makes excuses for being a poor girlfriend to James. Meanwhile, Dean Fogg — alive, but left blind by the Beast’s attack in the pilot — does his best to scare the students straight by giving them a with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility speech.
Alice, seemingly undeterred by the Beast’s appearance and Dean Fogg’s warning, remains determined to reconnect with her dead brother Charlie. She doesn’t relent even after she and Margo speak with Emily Greenstreet, a classmate of Charlie’s whose own misguided attempt to transform herself eventually led to Charlie’s death. Quentin advises against continuing down this path, too. Thankfully for Alice, Quentin and the niffin box are around to save her from Charlie’s malevolent immaterial form — even if she doesn’t appreciate the help just then.

The scene starts out in the most touching way, with Olivia Taylor Dudley’s voice cracking in heartbreaking fashion as she beautifully sings Simple Minds’ "Don’t You (Forget About Me)" to bring Charlie back, and nearly ends in tragedy. The fact that Quentin accompanies Alice to the fountain despite his concerns (or perhaps because of them) is a sign that he cares about being a good friend to her. On the other hand, during a chance encounter with Julia in the hedge witches’ hideout, Quentin doesn’t just discourage her from pursuing magic like he did in the pilot; he belittles her efforts in an ugly, arrogant outburst.
"Stop slumming because you’re pissed that you lost for once in your life," Quentin says. "You could really get hurt doing this shit, and for what? Grow up."
It’s a role reversal from the pilot, when Julia told Quentin to move on from his childish dreams of Fillory and get serious about post-college life. Only this time, Quentin’s well-meaning warning is fueled by lingering anger at Julia over her decision to go out with James instead of him — as well as the idea that magic is supposed to be his thing, not hers. Way to torch that bridge, Quentin.
I wonder if The Magicians will keep bringing the students in contact with the hedge witches. At the very least, we know that Kady is Marina’s back door into Brakebills, so it seems like the show wants to maintain that connection rather than just tell Quentin’s and Julia’s stories separately. Either way, I enjoyed the fake-out in which she calls James over, presumably to tell him about what’s been keeping her so busy, only to use magic to shore up her Adderall addiction cover story.
"Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting" also impressed me with the way it leavened its dire message with some humor. Quentin describing himself as "a nothing-mancer" is the line that’s gotten the biggest chuckle out of me so far in the series. And it was fun to see the reserved Alice tentatively open up to Margo, even if the bespectacled overachiever didn’t quite trust that Margo had the best intentions. Now we’ll see how the writers resolve Alice’s departure from Brakebills going forward.

Kind of feels like Left 4 Dead Pandemic, the new zombie film that stars Star Trek’s Rachel Nichols, wants you to see what it’s like to take on the undead from the scientists’ perspective.
The film follows a group of scientists — lead by Nichols — as they scour a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles that has become overrun by individuals infected by the virus that causes them to become zombie-like. The goal, like most zombie movies, is to hopefully find a group of uninfected survivors and develop a serum that will reverse the infection.
Based on the trailer, it looks like Pandemic will be similar to and other found-footage style horror movies, attempting to give it an up-close-and-personal feel.
Starring Alfie Allen, Mekhi Phifer and Missi Pyle alongside Nichols, Pandemic is slated to hit theaters April 1.

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Here’s what we’re covering in your daily audio tour through the world of video games, related technologies and pop culture like comics, movies and TV.
THE BIG STORIES

Insomniac Games reveals Song of the Deep
Friends’ deception, not strippers, sank Ant Simulator, developer says
Metal Gear Online will add Quiet, new maps, a new mode and more in March
EA exec’s remarks shine a light on Xbox One sales
Fallout 4’s latest patch fixes numerous issues with quests and perks
Ubisoft wants EA to give up the ‘ghost’ in trademark battle

THE BEST OF THE REST

XCOM 2 review
Video game releases for February 2016
10-Minute Barbarian is just the good parts of RTS games

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That’s a lot of people scratching their heads The Witness, the brain-melting puzzle game from Thekla Inc., racked up sales of “substantially more than 100,000 units" and over $5 million in gross revenue during its first week of release, lead developer Jonathan Blow announced today.
The figures are combined totals for the two platforms on which The Witness is available, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC. Blow noted that sales on both were "very strong," and said that "neither of these platforms dominates our sales." Thekla’s publishing contracts with certain online storefronts prevent the studio from revealing specific sales numbers for either platform, but Blow said that figures from Steam Spy — which currently estimates the number of Witness owners on PC at more than 50,100, with a margin of error of just under 5,000 — are "a bit too low."

Must Read

The Witness beginner’s guide

The Witness thus qualifies as "a really nice success," Blow said. Launch-week sales on each platform — PC and PS4 — "handily " those of Braid, Blow’s previous game, which debuted on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade platform in August 2008. Braid launched at $14.99, while The Witness costs more than twice as much at $39.99.
"So the fact that we beat Braid by units, more than doubly, is a really nice success," said Blow. He also noted that the $5 million of gross revenue for The Witness’ first week is "a good chunk more" than what Braid generated during its entire first year of release, although he said Thekla has not yet broken even on The Witness. The studio does seem to be on its way to making its money back, which is great news for Blow, who said a year ago that he had borrowed "a bunch of money" to finish The Witness. (Braid’s development budget was $200,000, which Blow funded himself.)
Thekla is currently focusing on fixing issues with graphics drivers for The Witness on PC, and is also working on adding configurable controls and rendering options to both versions. Blow added that "in the near future," the team will "start investigating" bringing The Witness to other platforms, with Android, iOS, Mac and Xbox One all "under serious consideration." Thekla previously announced plans for an iOS version.
For more on The Witness, which was released Jan. 26, watch the trailer below and check out our review. If you’re stumped, you can get hints and even full solutions from our work-in-progress guide.

Out of the trash compactor, into the fire. Captain Phasma did not meet an untimely demise in a garbage chute, actress Gwendoline Christie confirmed on the 2016 SAG Awards red carpet.
“I will be in the next Star Wars movie. I think that’s an exclusive, actually," the actress told People Magazine.
Captain Phasma’s chromed stormtrooper armor and inimitable style (the cape! the walk!) grabbed fans’ attention very early on in the media blitz surrounding the new Star Wars trilogy. But in the end, her appearances in Star Wars: The Force Awakens were far smaller than many had hoped. Her lines were few and far between, she never even appeared without her mask and in the end Han Solo, Chewbacca and Finn literally threw her in the trash.
Of course, there are three movies in a trilogy, and just because a character doesn’t feature heavily in the first doesn’t mean we won’t see more of them later — provided, of course, that Phasma survived her close encounter with Starkiller Base’s sewage system.
Fortunately, it appears that she has. Christie was frank about how excited she was to be reprising the role, not least for breaking the barrier of becoming the first prominent female stormtrooper on screen.
"I also just liked this notion of a female stormtrooper," she told People. "I felt it encouraged diversity and it was doing something new and it was an interesting bit of casting for women, and I hope that in something that was such a mainstream success it would breed more of those kind of opportunities for other women."
Star Wars: Episode VIII will premiere Dec. 15, 2017.

Where previous sequels to XCOM games have failed, XCOM 2 — the sequel to 2012’s reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown — succeeds.
Stand down, Terror from the Deep. Sleep softly, Apocalypse. Resquiat in pacem, Freedom Ridge. Your watch has ended. Firaxis, XCOM’s newest steward, is here to relieve you.
XCOM 2 is bigger, stronger and more capable than XCOM: Enemy Unknown in every way. And in spite of a few lingering technical issues, it may be the best XCOM game ever made — and a fitting tribute to those that came before.
“XCOM’s last remaining soldiers, scientists and engineers wage a guerrilla-style war without an end in sight."
XCOM 2 takes place after the first game’s alien invasion and the governments of the world’s attempts to stop it. 20 years later, humanity has fallen to the alien invasion, Earth’s militaries are routed and the original XCOM project overrun. The aliens, who now call themselves Advent, have taken control of the planet’s last remaining urban centers and remodeled them in their image. It is a police state, where order is ruthlessly maintained by heavily armed hybrid soldiers. Outside these futuristic urban centers mankind ekes by without running water, power or security of any kind.
What remains of the XCOM project has retreated inside of the hulk of an advanced alien UFO, constantly moving around the world to avoid detection. From this mobile base XCOM’s last remaining soldiers, scientists and engineers wage a guerrilla-style war without an end in sight.

What XCOM 2’s premise provides are opportunities to build characters, not the least of which is you —€” the Commander —€” who are dramatically welcomed into the narrative during the game’s tutorial mission. There’s Central Officer Bradford, your Jiminy Cricket from the original Firaxis game now hardened by 20 years of struggle. There’s An-Yi Shen, the daughter of your head of engineering in the 2012 game as well as Dr. Richard Tygan, who spent years as a slave before escaping the aliens and joining XCOM. They all give evocative digital performances and provide the game with its heart.
Traditionally the meat of any XCOM title are the turn-based, isometric battles. As in Firaxis’ first outing, in XCOM 2 they are fantasies about the kind of perfect, real-time information that allows remote commanders to order individual troops to pull their triggers from a comfortable distance. In practice players watch over their soldiers’ shoulders, march them into the dark parts of the map, push back the fog of war to activate hidden aliens and put a bullet in their brains.

Multiplayer
XCOM 2 features a peer-to-peer multiplayer mode, allowing for head-to-head battles between squads composed of mixed Advent and XCOM forces. Using a points-based system, players purchase units and then select the game type and the kind of terrain they’ll fight on. It features public and private games, ranked matches and options for playing over a local area network.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get enough experience with the mode before 2K’s embargo lifted. We’ll update this review with impressions of XCOM 2’s multiplayer mode in the next few days.

In that way, XCOM 2 plays like every other game in the franchise that’s come before. Except for the times when it doesn’t.
Much of the time it’s your troops that are hidden and lurking in the shadows, and it’s the aliens who are drawing aggro from you.
XCOM 2 is about the art of the ambush. A clever concealment mechanic means that during many missions your soldiers will be able to sneak up on the enemy without alerting them. This one change breathes new life into the formula. Suddenly there were twice as many tactical options, and twice as many different kinds of missions as there were before.
Firaxis has also added mission objectives to the mix. In addition to simple extermination, most have a thematic timer counting down. Not a can of "meld" sitting in plain sight but a piece of intel rigged to explode, or an off-map assault craft closing in to shoot down your ride home. XCOM 2 has search and destroy missions, rescue missions, covert sabotage missions, asset retrieval missions and good old-fashioned heavily armed assaults.
The incredible scenario variety, and the procedurally generated maps themselves, gives the gameplay an organic, deliberate kind of pacing. The progression from offense to defense, from reconnaissance to assault kept my attention. As importantly, where other XCOM games were a slog from start to finish —€” lengthy bug hunts bracketed by total party kills —€” XCOM 2 uses its different mission types to create a narrative arc that simply hasn’t existed in the series before.

The strategic layer of the game has also been completely overhauled. What was essentially a resource-optimization game, a race to unlock the next scientific advance, is now something on par with a finely tuned worker placement board game. You’ll assign engineers to specific tasks by hand, carefully pushing your mobile base to its limits. The Avenger itself will need to go on errands here and there, all while avoiding detection. You’ll travel to one corner of the world to launch a daring raid behind enemy lines, and the next moment you’ll swoop in to defend a resistance cell at their hidden base.
It’s as if the same kind of tension found in XCOM’s tactical layer has finally trickled up to the strategic layer, and XCOM 2 is all the better for it.
When the administrative work is done and missions are unveiled, they’re not rushing you from location to location to put out random fires. Instead, the game regularly feeds you goals and objectives that focus on supporting your civilian allies in the resistance and striking strategic blows against Advent military installations. It teases at plot points, it foreshadows climactic battles and provides solid feedback —€” in the form of in-game currency and loot, but also cinematic cutscenes — that make the effort worthwhile. In motion, XCOM 2 makes the original reboot from 2012 and its DLC expansion look amateurish by comparison.

Unfortunately, XCOM 2 suffers in overall fit and finish. For instance, placing grenades and rockets precisely where you want them will still devolve at times into a hunt for the perfect pixel. The game’s bullet-time effects are gorgeous, except for the times when there’s a wall in the way that completely obscures the action. More than a few times messages popped up over units without any text inside, and the game has a nasty habit of grinding to a standstill while the AI considers its next move, while someone fires a gun or merely takes a step forward.
The most irritating thing I discovered in XCOM 2 was the ghost of an annoying save game bug found in the Enemy Unknown. If you have too many save files it jumbles them up and gets their timestamps wrong. While I never lost a save as a result of the bug, it was challenging to find where I left off from day to day. The only solution was to selectively delete saves every so often to keep them at a minimum, but in this day and age that shouldn’t be something I have to worry about.

The maps
The environments in XCOM 2 are richly detailed and much more diverse than those found in Enemy Unknown. That’s in part because they’re procedurally generated to be different every single time. But they also benefit from an exceptional amount of set decoration. The spots I enjoyed the most were the ruined suburban spaces, because they told the story of what’s happened to humanity over two decades of alien rule. Makeshift wood gas fuel cells power broken-down SUVs. Burned out buildings sulk below sunken roofs. Rain barrels huddle next to salvaged solar panels.
Every once in awhile I would catch a glimpse of tattered XCOM posters pinned to bedroom walls or a bit of inspirational graffiti. By keeping my Avenger flying I was giving the people of Earth hope for a better future, and the game world reflected it.

The closest thing to a Nintendo PC port you’re gonna get Nintendo has launched a Super Mario Maker-themed wallpaper creator, expanding the game’s level creation to the PC and mobile devices.
While the functionality of the wallpaper designer — or, if you prefer, Super Mario Maker wallpaper maker — is more limited than its Wii U counterpart, it’s a fun riff on the in-game feature. Design options are available for both PC desktops and mobile screens, with various pixel resolutions to choose from. It’s completely in Japanese, as this tool comes courtesy of the Japanese Mario Maker website, but it’s intuitive enough to follow without understanding the language.
After selecting a platform, the creator offers tools akin to those available in Mario Maker. There are different Mario game-themed backgrounds and level packs to choose from, as well as a small set of objects to surround Mario with.
The only thing that’s really missing is the ability to play through the tiny level you create, but that’s what the Wii U game is for. With Nintendo’s recent addition of web-based course searches to Mario Maker, it’s become easier to share and find players’ designs, too.
We were big fans of Mario’s 2015 marquee console title, which we named our fourth favorite Game of the Year.