Best Action Game

IGN’s Best Action Game category is a celebration of that sheer tactile energy that only video games can deliver – intense military shooters, high-stakes battle royale, or quick and calculated melee combat. Whether it’s 2D or 3D, our favorite action games are all about mastering skills and battling our way through exciting new worlds with whatever tools or moves are at our disposal.

Hugely anticipated video games, some of the most thrilling movies and TV shows in years, exciting strides for comics and anime, and tons of incredible new tech have defined a year full of surprise masterpieces and hidden gems.

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Marvel Movies Power Disney to Historic $7 Billion Mark at Global Box Office

Disney has topped $7 billion at the global box office in 2018, thanks in big part to its Marvel films.

As reported by Variety, this marks the second time in Disney’s storied history that it reached this milestone, with the first being in 2016 with $7.6 billion earned.

Avengers: Infinity War, which holds the number one spot on the worldwide-grosser list for 2018, brought in $2 billion, with Black Panther and Incredibles 2 earning $1.35 billion and $1.24 billion, respectively.

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Avengers: Endgame — NASA Gives Marvel Advice To Save Tony Stark

Even NASA is getting in on the Avengers hype. The American space agency wants to help save Tony Stark from his tough situation in the new trailer for Avengers: Endgame.

Writing on Twitter, NASA offered some advice for how to save Stark. He directed the rest of the Avengers to listen for a signal from Stark saying “Avengers, we have a problem.” But if Stark’s comms are down, what then? In that situation, NASA said it recommends teams on the ground to “use all resources” to scour the skies to find Stark.

As you can see, Marvel Studios responded to NASA’s tweet, saying it appreciates the help. If you zoom in on one of the desks at the back of the picture, you’ll see one of the desk clumps is labeled “Thor,” with the hammer leaning against it. What’s that all about?

NASA explained in another tweet that THOR is an acronym that stands for “Thermal Operations and Resource.”

Tony Stark is looking like he’s in a bad way in the new Endgame trailer. The trailer opens with Stark adrift in space with no food or water, with oxygen about to run out. He’s recording a message to Pepper Potts saying he no longer expects to get rescued.

The new Avengers trailer confirmed the movie’s name, Endgame, a title that makes a lot of sense given what is expected to happen after the dramatic, cliff-hanger ending of Infinity War. The massively popular Avengers: Endgame trailer also of course raises a lot of questions, like what happened to Captain America’s beard, how much time has passed since Infinity War, how Scott Lang seemingly got out of the Quantum Realm, and more. Check out GameSpot’s rundown of all the big questions here.

More: Avengers 4: Endgame Trailer Breakdown: Everything We Learned About The 2019 Marvel Movie

GTA Online Update Adding New Arena War Update, And It Sounds Intense

The next big update for Grand Theft Auto Online sounds like an exciting one. The “Arena War” update, as it’s called, will add a competitive mode that sounds very intense.

“Enter Arena War, where ruthless gladiatorial combat meets the bleeding-edge of vehicular modification technology in one spectacular–and highly combustible–competition,” reads a line from Rockstar’s official description.

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The event will take place inside the Maze Bank Arena, apparently, and it will see players fighting until the grisly end, apparently. “Sign up and embark on an entirely new career under the stratospheric dome of the Maze Bank Arena, one that involves turning your opponent’s brains into pulp on the steering wheel in the name of entertainment, courtesy of Alan Jerome Productions,” reads another line from the description.

Arena War will add new vehicle types that were custom made for it (check out the teaser image above to get an idea for what to expect), along with seven “explosive” new modes. In the Arena, you’ll earn Arena Points, which you can use to move through the ranks and unlock more “toys,” according to Rockstar.

Arena War arrives in GTA Online for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 11. GTA Online is the multiplayer mode for Grand Theft Auto V.

As it always said it would, Rockstar Games continues to support GTA Online even though the studio’s newest game, Red Dead Redemption 2, is out. The western also has a multiplayer mode, Red Dead Online, but it is still in the early, beta stages of its lifecycle.

Elseworlds’ the Monitor Explained: Who Is the All-Powerful New Arrowverse Character?

This year’s Arrowverse crossover, “Elseworlds” (watch the trailer here), will introduce several key new characters to The CW’s shared superhero universe. One of these is the Monitor (played by LaMonica Garrett), an omniscient being who watches over the entire multiverse and whose presence foretells dire things to come for the Arrowverse.

To help get you up to speed on this character and his enemy, the Anti-Monitor, here’s everything you need to know about the Monitor and his role in the DCU.

Note: this article has been updated with a few spoilers for the first two episode of “Elseworlds.”

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Snake Eyes: Here’s Why Ray Park Won’t Star in the G.I. Joe Spinoff

Ray Park, known for his martial-arts/action roles such as Darth Maul, Toad and more, won’t be reprising his role as Snake Eyes in the upcoming G.I. Joe prequel spinoff due to his age in relation to the character’s.

Per /Film, producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura was asked about the upcoming movie and if Park would return, saying “Probably not, because we are going to the origin story. As you know in the comic book, you saw his face. And it is, I’ll say, the formation of a hero. So you’ve got to see somebody and it can’t be Ray’s age, unfortunately.”

Park, a 47-year-old British actor, is still regularly featured in films performing martial arts feats. In the two G.I. Joe movies, Park is masked and silent, though a younger actor played the 10-year-old version of Snake Eyes in the 2009 original. The prequel reportedly “centers on the character’s origins where he tries to become a member of the Arashikage Clan,” part of which was shown during the first film.

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Disney Movies Have Already Made $7 Billion This Year, Here’s How They Rank

Movie giant Disney had another massive year in 2018. With multiple weeks left to go in the year, Disney movies have collectively made more than $7 billion worldwide. Disney hit the milestone on December 9, according to Variety. This is just the second time ever that any movie studio has reached $7 billion in a year. The first studio to do it? You guessed it, Disney set the record with $7.6 billion in 2016.

The movie industry’s top movies of the year came from Disney. Avengers: Infinity War ($2 billion) was the No. 1 movie of 2018 based on box office performance, with Black Panther ($1.35 billion) following in second place. Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($1.3 billion) was No. 3, with Disney’s The Incredibles 2 ($1.24 billion) at No. 4

Another 2018 Disney movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, made $622 million worldwide to land at Number 6 for the year. The Star Wars spinoff, Solo: A Star Wars Story, currently sits at the No. 18 position with $392 million. Some of Disney’s other 2018 movies included Ralph Breaks the Internet (No. 31 / $258 million), Christopher Robin (No. 36 / $197.4 million), The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (No. 41 / $151 million), and A Wrinkle in Time (No. 44 / $132 million). These numbers come from Box Office Mojo.

Disney’s movies made the most from international markets, where they collectively pulled in $4.07 billion, with $2.95 billion coming from the domestic market.

Disney has one more very big movie coming up this year, Mary Poppins Returns starring Emily Blunt. The film is due out just before Christmas, and it is tracking to make $65 million in the US for its opening.

Disney looks set to have another big year in 2019. Some of the studio’s announced movies for next year include remakes/reboots of The Lion King, Dumbo, and Aladdin, as well as Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2, to name a few. Star Wars: Episode IX is due out in December 2019. Disney also owns Marvel, and some of the biggest releases from Marvel in 2019 include Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. So yes, we expect Disney to again do very well in 2019 at the box office.

Destiny 2’s Dawning Cosmetics Are Already Available–Here’s What You Can Grab

Arrow: “Elseworlds, Part 2” Review

This review contains spoilers for Arrow Season 7, episode 9, which is Part 2 of the DC TV “Elseworlds” crossover event. 

After seasons of teasing and namedropping, the Arrowverse finally takes us to Gotham for Part 2 of the “Elseworlds” crossover, introducing Ruby Rose as Batwoman (aka Kate Kane), and revealing why Oliver and Barry haven’t crossed paths with Batman in all their years of crime-fighting. (For everything you need to know about Batwoman and her comic book history, click here.)

While ostensibly designed as the Arrow portion of the crossover, this episode has to do a lot of heavy lifting in other areas – both in establishing Batwoman enough to sow the seeds for the heroine’s potential spinoff series, and sufficiently explaining The Monitor’s motives so that the final part of the crossover hopefully won’t feel like a complete infodump when all is revealed.

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Batwoman’s Arrow-Verse “Elseworlds” Arrival Sets Stage For Spin-off Show

It’s finally happened. After months of teases and images, Batwoman has officially joined the Arrow-verse. In the second part of the “Elseworlds” crossover, The Flash (Grant Gustin), Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) ventured to Gotham City for the first time and met the city’s Caped Crusader.

This Gotham is one that no longer has a Batman to keep them safe. Instead, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) suits up as Batwoman in an attempt to save what she can of a dead city. While, for now, this will be contained to the second piece of the three-part “Elseworlds” event only, a Batwoman TV show is being developed for The CW that would pick up where “Elseworlds” leaves off.

Before they could bring Batwoman to life, though, the writers and producers of the Arrow-verse had to figure out who she was. What’s more, they have to create the world she lived in and decide how it would compare to the likes of Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl.

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For Caroline Dries, who’s responsible for the story of “Elseworlds Part 2” and is developing the Batwoman series, the goal was to give away enough to make you wonder about what comes next. “We all as a group knew who the character was when we were breaking the story so our goal was trying to create a set-up story-wise where we could meet her kind of be intrigued by her, introduce Gotham a little bit, you know, plant a little visual things that are curious and then have people wondering what is this world she’s part of,” she said during a Q&A with press.

That planning gives viewers some hints about what to expect, should Batwoman go to series. This Gotham is dead and rotting, with even Bruce Wayne leaving town–for reasons that haven’t been revealed at this point. However, Kate Kane has no intentions of following suit and is instead renovating the old Wayne tower to be the home of her real estate business–which is pulled from the comics. Likewise, a number of potential villains were teased in the trip Gotham City, including Penguin, The Riddler, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, and Nora Fries.

This was all done with an eye toward expanding the universe in a spin-off. “We created it with a bigger story in mind for sure,” Dries explained.

Just as important as teasing what Batwoman and Gotham City could become, though, was grounding it in the Arrow-verse. This version of Gotham is very different from anything else seen on Arrow, The Flash, or Supergirl. This is a city without hope, that wasn’t saved by its vigilante the way Oliver has done countless times with Star City.

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Instead of using Gotham City as the tread to keep it rooted in the Arrow-verse, it’s Batwoman herself that is the link. “It was important for us I think to humanize Kate in a way that made her relatable to the other characters in the Arrow-verse, even though we’re creating an enigmatic character we wanted sort of an in to her and in our minds Kara obviously has this cousin who’s, you know, she’s started in his shadow and her story was getting out of his shadow and that’s exactly Kate’s story,” Dries said.

That’s why the moment at the end of the episode when Supergirl and Batwoman admit they know each other’s secret identities was included. “It just felt like the right moment, the right movie,” she explained.

So what happens next? Now, we wait. The CW hasn’t actually ordered Batwoman to series, though it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. As for when it’ll premiere, the best bet is in Fall 2019, allowing Batwoman to once again play a role in the annual Arrow-verse crossover. In the meantime, there’s still one more piece of “Elseworlds” to watch Tuesday, December 11, at 8 PM PT on The CW.