Filmmaker Tim Burton’s later-stage offerings have been a mixed bag, with his directorial choices replacing visual ingenuity with a lot of CG. The early trailers and promos for Dumbo hinted that this might be the film to buck the trend, but alas the faded palette and what looks like massive amounts of post-production work take away much of the visual charm that a circus film by Burton starring Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito promises.
Disney’s current trend of adapting their classic animated films to live-action has thus far served them pretty well. A mix of nostalgia, brand recognition, and curiosity have made box office smashes out of Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. The success of those explains Disney’s eagerness to continue that streak with three flagship ‘live-action’ releases just this year, beginning with Burton’s Dumbo. The film was first announced a few years ago, but sadly for fans of the original and the lauded director, the uneven and uninspiring offering wasn’t worth the wait.
In this special episode of our monthly interview series IGN Unfiltered, filmed at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, game design legend Amy Hennig (Uncharted series, Legacy of Kain series) and Insomniac Games founder Ted Price (Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank series, Sunset Overdrive, Resistance series) separately join us to discuss their decorated careers. Hennig talks about her canceled Star Wars game with EA, codenamed ‘Ragtag’, experimenting with VR, and much more. Price, after having been a guest on Unfiltered last fall prior to Spider-Man’s release, talks about what life has been like since their open-world superhero adventure took the world by storm and won a number of awards in the process.
Apocalypse Studios and founder Denis Dyack – the developer behind games like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness – have released the first gameplay teaser trailer for their new project, Deadhaus Sonata (see it above).
Deadhaus Sonata is an upcoming free-to-play action-RPG that promises Twitch integration as well as cooperative play for up to six players. It was announced last Fall, though no release date has been set as of yet. “We are combining elements of many of my past games into Deadhaus Sonata,” Dyack told us when the game was announced. “Deadhaus Sonata is a cooperative multiplayer, free-to-play RPG where you are an unstoppable force of the dead. There are Lovecraftian overtones from Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, the gothic role-playing elements of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, where you are undead, and finally, some the action RPG elements of Too Human.”
SNK’s once-prolific output in the ’90s has slowed in recent years, but thanks to Neo Geo ports arriving weekly on Switch and other platforms, some of the company’s most popular arcade series are once again vying for players’ attention. Samurai Shodown is one of those. The weapons-based 2D fighting series thrived for close to 15 years, but it has largely remained dormant since 2008’s Samurai Shodown Sen. While it’s great to revisit the series’ past on modern consoles, it’s also exciting to know that a brand-new Samurai Shodown fighting game is on the way–and it feels even better to report that my time with the game has only increased my anticipation for its upcoming June release.
In order to get an inside look at the new systems and to discuss the game’s overall direction, I recently played a few rounds during a meeting with three Samurai Shodown developers: producer Yasuyuki Oda, game director Nobuyuki Kuroki, and game designer Josh Weatherford. Oda and Kuroki have experience working at SNK during its heyday in the ’90s, and though they both worked on 2016’s King of Fighters XIV, each had spent years away from the publisher working with other companies. While Kuroki helped ship a number of Sonic the Hedgehog games, Oda worked on Street Fighter IV at Dimps, the studio that co-developed the title with Capcom–which may help explain the similar inky rendering effect seen in the new Samurai Shodown. The team at SNK, we’re told, is roughly a 50-50 split of veteran SNK developers and fresh talent from across the industry.
Weatherford, Oda, and Kuroki are all very good players, as you’d expect, and in their capable hands the new Samurai Shodown looked very impressive. Familiar faces like Nakoruru and Galford clashed with great speed and ferocity, with spurts of blood and blots of ink accenting the action. As with the ink, characters were vaguely reminiscent of Street Fighter IV‘s expressive and slightly exaggerated designs, yet it all feels distinctly Samurai Shodown, where beauty and brutality clash with ease. It’s a testament to the strong character designs that have evolved with the series over the years, and proof that lessons were learned after King of Fighter XIV’s poorly received graphics had to be overhauled post launch.
“I’ve led the charge on the art style,” said Kuroki, “and I was really worried prior to the announcement and reveal of the game what the reaction would be to the visuals. I went really hard on the Japanese style with everything, from the UI, to the colors, and the textures. It’s not what the Western image of ‘Japanese’ would be, it’s a very original style, no corners cut or anything, and I wasn’t sure if that would be popular in the West. Still, so far, everyone has been positive, so I’m happy to see that.”
We now know that the roster will feature a total of sixteen characters, including 13 returning faces and three new fighters. The new characters remain a mystery, but we can now confirm that the 13 veterans are: Charlotte, Earthquake, Galford, Genjuro, Hanzo, Haohmaru, Jubei, Kyoshiro, Nakoruru, Shiki, Tam Tam, Ukyo, and Yoshitora. For Oda, seeing these familiar characters shine in a new light is a relief. “If you think about how the old 2D art was made,” he posited, “it was very stylized, to the point where if you viewed the same character from the front, their hair would be so ridiculous and it would make no sense. I’ve loved the reaction so far, with everyone saying it looks like the old games, but in 3D; not like a reimagining.”
If you’ve played Samurai Shodown in the past with any amount of regularity, you should have no problems picking up where you left off with the returning fighters. The rage gauge system is back, where each fighter has a meter that fills as they take damage, activating powerful buffs and attacks when it maxes out–including the disarming weapon-flipping technique. And once per match, you can activate a rage explosion with a simple button combo that destroys your rage gauge but gives you the chance to use a Lightning Blade attack, a move powerful enough to dramatically turn the tide of a contested battle.
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Having left the series after Samurai Shodown V in 2003, it felt great to take control of these characters again. The speed, the hard-hitting fights, and the attitude is there. The visuals truly pop, giving me a newfound appreciation for a series that had until last year felt all but forgotten. I’ve only played a handful of fights so it’s too early to say whether or not Samurai Shodown will have what it takes to excite casual and competitive fighting game players alike, but it will be tested soon enough.
“People always ask why we brought the series back,” said Weatherford, “and as Kuroki always says, it’s not just that the community’s request via polls was very high, but it’s also, even among other fighting games, it has a very different style and a different pace. We felt, with the current trend towards esports, that it could stand out on its own very easily.”
The team at SNK won’t have to wait long to see how its revival shakes out with fans and pros alike. The new Samurai Shodown is currently scheduled to release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June (Switch and PC at a later date), and shortly after, it will share the spotlight as one of the nine main games at EVO 2019 in August. That will be a big test, for sure, but having had a taste of what’s possible during my demo, I already know it will be one of my most anticipated tournaments when the annual fighting game event kicks off in a few months’ time.
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Microsoft has refreshed its weekly sale on digital Xbox One games, which means there’s a whole new set of deals to check out. Some good stuff is on here, including deep discounts on Soulcalibur VI and Batman: Arkham Collection, though you’ll need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to take advantage of some of the discounts. You can find our picks for the best games and hardware on sale below, or head over and see the full list at the Microsoft Store. Just make sure to finalize your purchases before the prices go back up on April 1.
Welcome to Daily Win, our way of giving back to the IGN community. To thank our awesome audience, we’re giving away a new game each day to one lucky winner. Be sure to check IGN.com every day to enter in each new giveaway.
Today we’re giving away an Xbox One copy of Square Enix’s action role-playing game Kingdom Hearts 3. To enter into this sweepstakes for a chance to win, fill out the form below. You must be at least 13 years old and a legal U.S. resident to enter.
Aliens could have been developed into a TV miniseries by Legion show-runner Noah Hawley, but the pitch was declined by Fox.
Deadline (via Bloody Disgusting) reports that Hawley, creator and writer of Fargo and Legion, wanted to bring an Aliens miniseries to the now Disney-owned FX channel in the “recent past,” but the proposal was shut down by Fox’s Vice Chairman, Emma Watts.
According to the report, Watts has been thwarting numerous attempts to have Fox’s film properties ‘re-purposed’ for television. She similarly prevented Searchlight from doing “something” with The Omen franchise.
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HyperX has made a name for itself with its gaming headsets, so when it announced its first-ever standalone streaming microphone at CES 2019, my ears perked up. A dedicated mic is a very different beast from a gaming headset but having enjoyed so many of their other products, I was curious to see what a HyperX microphone would offer. Priced at $139 (See it on Amazon), the HyperX QuadCast is pricier than some of its more established competitors, like the Blue Yeti or Samson G Track Pro, but it also offers features the competition doesn’t. Did HyperX get it right with its first mic out of the gate and, more importantly, is it worth the extra money? I’ve spent the last week putting it through its paces to find out.
Hollywood has gone from occasional reboots to semi-regular reboots to now building definite reboots into future plans for a mega-franchise. And gone are the days when studios would give viewers a bit of breathing room between an original story and its inevitable re-telling. Nowadays, if a valuable IP doesn’t click the first go-round, it’s resurrected in just a few years.
With the news that James Gunn’s Suicide Squad movie isn’t a sequel to the 2016 DCEU film, but a total reboot called The Suicide Squad, we’re presented with a grand opportunity to sift through all the recent reboots and marvel at how little time has passed between films.
April’s Xbox Live Games with Gold have been revealed, and there are some great games going free for Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners in the next few weeks. Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) is perhaps the most exciting game of the month, but there’s plenty more besides that.
Xbox One owners can look forward to playing the 2016 action-RPG The Technomancer, which is free throughout April. Then, from April 16 through May 15, Outcast: Second Contact will also be free on Xbox One.
On Xbox 360, the free games will be Star Wars: Battlefront II–the 2005 game that first launched on the original Xbox–and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. The former is free from April 1 – 15, while the latter is available for no added cost from April 16 – 30. Both titles are backwards compatible, meaning you can play them on your Xbox One.
