This may come as a surprise to the players who abandoned the game long ago and assumed this time had come already, but Crystal Dynamics and publishers Square Enix have announced the impending end of online support for Marvel’s Avengers.
In a blog post published on Friday evening, a latter signed by ‘Marvel’s Avengers Development Team’ reads in part:
To our amazing community,
After two-and-a-half years and introducing twelve of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, following Update 2.8 on March 31, 2023, we will no longer add new content or features to Marvel’s Avengers. All official support for the game will end on September 30, 2023.
Even after official support ceases on September 30, 2023, both single- and multi-player gameplay will continue to be available…
…As a show of our appreciation for our community, starting March 31, 2023 we will make all the game’s Marketplace, Challenge Card, and Shipment cosmetic content available to all players for free. Every single Outfit, Takedown, Emote, and Nameplate from the Marketplace, Challenge Cards, and Shipments will be free for all players from this date onwards if you own a copy of the game.
Gifting the full library of Marketplace cosmetic content is a way to thank our community by letting everyone experience the breadth and depth of content in Marvel’s Avengers.
We know this is disappointing news as everyone in our community has such a connection to these characters and their stories. We’re so, so grateful that you came on this adventure with us. Your excitement for Marvel’s Avengers – from your epic Photo Mode shots, to your threads theorizing who our next Heroes would be, to your Twitch streams – has played a large part in bringing this game to life.
We hope you continue to play and enjoy Marvel’s Avengers. We can’t thank you enough for your support and for being part of our super team.
– Marvel’s Avengers Development Team
While the opening up of the game’s Marketplace is framed here as a gesture of goodwill, it is of course that same marketplace—shackled as it was to some insane notion that every game needs to be a Forever Game, reliant on the grind inherent to a live service experience—that helped kill it off. ‘
While Embracer made a deal last year to buy the game’s developers, severing them from the publisher that made the Avengers licensing deal, it was made clear at the time that any games released prior to the sale would continue to be supported. Which suggests this decision is simply down to not enough people wanting to play or buy stuff in Marvel’s Avengers anymore.
As the note says, this doesn’t mean the game is disappearing off the internet entirely. You’ll still be able to play it, even in multiplayer; there just won’t be any further updates or even technical support for it after September 30.
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If you’re a player and want to see the specifics of what’s shutting down when, and what this means for individual updates, you can check that out here in a series of charts and FAQs. One of which contains the deeply funny reminder that Spider-Man must remain a PlayStation exclusive, even in death.
When Microsoft—a company that made “$198 billion in revenue and $83 billion in operating income” in 2022—made the decision to axe 10,000 workers last week, a number of those came from their video game operations, particularly 343 Industries, the overseers of the Halo series.
343, hit now by a combination of layoffs and key departures, does not appear to be in good shape. As we reported last week:
“The layoffs at 343 shouldn’t have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state,” former Halo Infinite multiplayer designer, Patrick Wren, tweeted Wednesday night. “The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be.”
Even prior to yesterday’s layoffs, 343 Industries has been facing wave after wave of high level departures as Halo Infinite struggled to ship new seasonal updates and features on time. The most notable was studio head Bonnie Ross’ departure last September. More recently, multiplayer director and longtime Halo veteran Tom French revealed he was leaving in December. And yesterday, amid the chaos, Bloomberg reported that director and longtime Halo writer, Joseph Staten, was headed to the Xbox publishing side of the business as the studio made the “difficult decision to restructure.”
Those hits led to reports last week that development on future Halo games was going to be handed off to outside studios, with 343 being relegated to a supervisory role. Reports that have seemingly led 343 to tweet the following statement on the official Halo account, denying them (to an extent) and saying 343 “will continue to develop Halo now and in the future”.
Halo and Master Chief are here to stay.
343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and more of what makes Halo great.
Pierre Hintze
Studio head
That’s a short statement that does nothing to address the report that other studios could now also be making Halo games (which isn’t that new anyway, given Creative Assembly’s work on Halo Wars), nor does it address the scale of the layoffs it was just hit with, but it does at least affirm that 343 themselves will still be directly involved in some way in the series’ future.
This week, all at once, a perfect storm of deals, discounts, and sales has hit the Nintendo Switch eShop. Batten down the hatches, open up your wallets, and check out some of these limited-time deals, including massive savings on numerous Lego titles, Mortal Kombat games, and hits from Capcom, Ubisoft, and Bandai Namco.
Before we go any further, just note that—with the exception of Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids—there aren’t any Mario, Zelda, or Kirby games on sale. Instead of first-party discounts, all of these sales are focused on third-party publishers and developers. But there are still plenty of great games to grab up for cheaper than usual, even if Mario and Luigi aren’t part of it.
Here are some of the best deals I spotted cruising through the various sales currently happening on the eShop. While all of these sales are ending at slightly different times, you more or less have until the end of the month (or a few days past that) to take advantage of these discounts.
Now, with that out of the way, here are the best deals I found so far. (The figures in parentheses are the normal prices.)
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are about two months old at this point, but the quest to find out which Pokémon are the very best like no one ever was is an ongoing conversation among the competitive community. Smogon, one of the biggest hubs for competitive Pokémon on the internet, has been trying to sort through the games’ meta for awhile now, and while talks are still unfolding, we do have some idea of who the best Pokémon are in Generation IX.
If you want to just see the top Pokémon, feel free to ctrl+f/command+f “Who are the top ranked Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet?” Otherwise, let’s run through some context for those that don’t know how competitive Pokémon rankings work.
How do Pokémon competitive tiers work in Scarlet and Violet?
There are a lot of Pokémon, and a lot of disparity between them in terms of stats. So when it comes to creating a tier list for a Pokémon game, the community doesn’t just make one giant list. Instead, the Pokémon are divided into separate tier lists that have their own tiers. It sounds confusing, but think of it like this: the gap in stats between a little baby Pichu and Actual God Arceus is huge, and there are hundreds of Pokémon with different stats, movesets, and abilities that make them more or less competitively viable. Overall, the prospect of a perfectly balanced Pokémon game is unattainable in its current form, so rather than try and make a giant list and compare Pichu to Arceus, Pokémon fans divide Pokémon into different tiers that put different mons alongside others that are close in viability.
These tiers have contained rule sets that include and ban certain Pokémon for competitive play, but you’ll see a bit of overlap between the different tiers, as some ‘mons are considered viable in different tiers of play. These different tiers include:
Standard/Overused: This is often considered a ‘baseline’ experience for competitive Pokémon battling. Here you’ll find a lot of the most popular, non-legendary Pokémon.
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Underused: The next tier below is for the middle of the road Pokémon who are decent, but there are typically better options depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Rarely Used: Here is where we start to get to the Pokémon that would be a rarity to see in any higher tier play, as a lot of these critters have either some notable drawbacks or would just be better off replaced by a different Pokémon.
Never Used: These are the real stinkers. The losers. The weakest links, as it were. While Never Used is not the standard way of play, some folks just prefer the Pokémon who occupy the less competitive space as it can make for a more interesting or at least different type of competitive environment. Personally, Beautifly is one of my favorite Pokémon, and it’s considered a Never Used Pokémon. Sometimes your friends are just not as good as the pros, and that’s okay.
Uber: This is the tier where most legendary Pokémon fall. Palkia, Arceus, Mew, the Lati twins? All of them exist here alongside a select few normies who have some great stats or strategies. A great deal of Pokémon that fall into the Uber tier are banned elsewhere, and for good reason. They’re the most powerful Pokémon in the game and can pretty easily bulldoze over everything else. So now they get to be in their own pool and fight each other, rather than stomping on a family of Maushold.
A lot of players will pick the Pokémon they like to play the main game, but competitive play tends to require a more calculated team.Screenshot: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
What is Smogon?
For the uninitiated, Smogon is basically the officially unofficial hub for competitive Pokémon. Though the site technically abides by different rules than the official Pokémon competitive leagues, it has a pretty robust and thorough system for tier rankings that has become extremely common vernacular for the Pokémon community. It’s so prevalent that it’s recognized across Pokémon hubs like Serebii. So if you’re looking for an official ranking of the best Pokémon straight from The Pokémon Company’s mouth, that’s not what Smogon is. Plus, these kinds of discussions are often spurred by the community, as they’re the most equipped to speak candidly about the strengths and shortcomings of a game. So if you want to learn more about the best Pokémon to make up a competitive team, you won’t find a source more qualified than the users at Smogon.
The site also publishes usage statistics to give people a sense of how often certain Pokémon show up in competitive play, and based on December’s stats, it seems Paradox Pokémon are occupying a lot of space in standard play. Great Tusk was the most used Pokémon in December, with Iron Valiant, Roaring Moon, Iron Tusk, Iron Moth, and Iron Hands all appearing in the top 36 Pokémon in the tier.
Who are the top ranked Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet?
As previously outlined, who the “best” Pokémon are varies by tier, but it’s not just stats that determine how high a Pokémon will rank. There are also abilities, attacks, and stat training that will help a Pokémon climb the ranks. So while those are all key factors, the Smogon community has been debating and discussing the matter since Scarlet and Violet launched.
The easiest place to start is the Uber tier, as that’s where the most powerful Pokémon are, though a lot of them you won’t be able to use in competitive play outside of that tier. Unsurprisingly, the game mascots Koraidon and Miraidon are ranked at the very top of the Uber tier list. It’s often the case for most Pokémon games for the legendary box art characters to rank high, as they’re propped up as a powerful entity at the end of your journey. In Scarlet and Violet, you befriend these two almost immediately as the game starts, but they aren’t usable in battle until the endgame. They have powerful stats, abilities that give them stat boosts the second they’re on the field, and have a lot of tricks in their moveset.
Unsurprisingly, Miraidon and Koraidon are at the top of their tier.Screenshot: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
Further down the list, the A rank of best Pokémon is primarily made up of both the secondary legendary monstersPokémon you’ll meet in the Paldea region (Chien-Pao, Ting-Lu, and Chi-Yu are here, though Wo-Chien is not part of the Uber tier) and the Paradox Pokémon that are ancient or futuristic relatives to established Pokémon. Flutter Mane, Great Tusk, and Iron Bundle lead the pack, with Iron Treads coming at the bottom of A-tier. There are a few normies here, as well, with Corviknight, Gholdengo, and Skeleridge also in A-tier.
When you go from Uber to Overused, you’ll notice some Pokémon who were ranked lower than others in Uber are ranked higher in lower ranks. This is because having some of those Uber Pokémon in the pool changes things in the meta, and as they’re not in the OU pool, some Pokémon who suffered from significant counters can rise in the ranks. So right now, Gholdengo, Dragapult, and Great Tusk are at the top of Smogon’s OU rankings for best Pokémon. This is above several legendaries like Chien-Pao and Ting-Lu, who fall into the A ranking alongside some Paradox Pokémon like Iron Valiant and Roaring Moon, as well as some standard Pokémon like Dragonite, Espathra, and Kingambit. As the A ranking goes down the list, some Pokémon that were ranked high in Uber like Corviknight, Iron Treads, and Glimmora appear alongside Dondozo, Graganacl, and Grimmsnarl.
The Paradox Pokémon ranking high makes sense, as they’re meant to be primal/synthetic versions of typical Pokémon with more powerful stats, more diverse movepools, and new typings that often give them a leg up on their modern day counterparts. They are, inherently, meant to be more powerful and dangerous Pokémon than the ones you’ll come across in the rest of Paldea. So they’d naturally float to the top of competitive play, as well.
Paradox Pokémon like Iron Bundle are some of the strongest new additions in Scarlet and Violet.Screenshot: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
Should you use the top Pokémon from the competitive tier lists?
Crucially, if you’re looking here for ideas on how to build a good competitive team, know that a tier ranking is not the end all be all of a Pokémon’s viability. For example, a lot of competitive players have latched onto Murkrow because it can use the move Tailwind to increase your team’s speed, and the Prankster ability gives you turn priority when using it. So while Murkrow’s stats are nothing to write home about and it doesn’t show up in most competitive rankings, it’s still a very useful addition to your team.
At the moment, it seems like Legendary and Paradox Pokémon are coming out on top for competitive play in the Uber and Standard tiers, but these rankings are still in flux and will change in the months to years to come as players discover new strategies and builds. These changes are pretty frequent right now because the game is still so new. So things are shifting around with some pretty broad strokes. So it will be interesting to see how the meta changes as time goes on and players learn new combinations and builds.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot faced tough questions from some exhausted and fed-up staff about recent missteps and future plans in a company-wide Q&A session on Wednesday. The meeting comes just a week after the Assassin’s Creed publisher announced new cancellations, delays, and cost-cutting measures, and told employees “the ball is in your court” to help get the $3 billion company back on track.
“The ball is now in our court—for years it has been in your court so why did you mishandle the ball so badly so we, the workers, have to fix it for you?” read one upvoted question on a list submitted in advance through corporate communication channels and viewed by Kotaku. It was a reference to a now infamous email Guillemot sent to staff last week that appeared to shift blame for the publisher’s recent mistakes and hold lower-level employees accountable for fixing the situation.
Guillemot opened the meeting by apologizing. “I heard your feedback and I’m sorry this was perceived that way,” Guillemot said, according to sources present who were not authorized to speak to press. “When saying ‘the ball is in your court’ to deliver our lineup on time and at the expected level of quality, I wanted to convey the idea that more than ever I need your talent and energy to make it happen. This is a collective journey that starts of course with myself and with the leadership team to create the conditions for all of us to succeed together.”
While that clarification resonated with some developers, others who spoke with Kotaku still feel management is out of touch and found little in the meeting to reassure them. The hour-long affair was filled with industry buzzwords and business jargon and light on specifics. Chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said they needed to reduce costs and increase productivity. Chief people officer Anika Grant rejected a recent proposal for four-day work weeks and said requested raises to keep up with inflation were off the table amid the current financial struggles. None of the executives directly addressed the recent call for a strike over working conditions at the company’s Paris studio.
Guillemot remained vague about the potential for layoffs as well. “It’s not about doing more with less, but finding ways to do things differently across the company,” Guillemot said at one point.
The meeting comes after a particularly poor 2022 for the global publisher which included no marquee blockbuster as several projects were delayed, trapped in development hell, or shipped and failed to find an audience. “It appears that management is out of touch with games saying that we need to adapt to an evolving industry,”?” read one of the questions for the meeting that received hundreds of upvotes. “Why are we chasing trends instead of setting them?”
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Those trends could include the company’s 2021 misadventure with NFTs or its partnership with the now-defunct Google Stadia streaming service. It could also describe the publisher’s recent race to ship multiple free-to-play spin-offs of existing franchises and a crowded slate of battle royale and hero-based shooters. Some of these, like Hyper Scape and Roller Champions, have already launched and struggled to find audiences. Others like The Division Heartland were announced a while ago and have yet to actually come out.
Ghost Recon: Frontlineis another example. Revealed in 2021, it looked like a rip-off of Call of Duty Warzone but with some new gameplay twists. Internal testing reportedly revealed that it did indeed play like a Call of Duty Warzone rip-off and Ubisoft decided to can it last summer along with three other projects, leaving Ghost Recon fans scratching their heads and developers disillusioned.
In today’s meeting, Guillemot spoke of doubling down on Ubisoft’s core franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, andits Tom Clancy games, including Rainbow Six Siege, whose potential the CEO compared to Riot Games’ Valorant. Some see it as a retreat not just from chasing trends but from experimentation as well. “We need to acknowledge that the trends are for mega brands,” said Marie-Sophie de Waubert, senior vice president of studio operations, when asked about why the company didn’t pursue more varied, smaller games like Anno 1800.
One big criticism of Ubisoft in recent years has been the lack of variation between sequels and an over-reliance on an open-world blueprint that bleeds over from franchise to franchise. When pressed about the lack of inventiveness, Guillemot pointed to Far Cry 6 as a “good quality” game that was still considered “not innovative enough.” It remains unclear how Ubisoft will juggle the budget demands and production complexity of its big blockbusters with creative risks going forward.
Kotaku understands that developers onsome of the recently canceled projects will pivot to helping ship games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a smaller and more traditional entry in the stealth action series. Originally planned as an Assassin’s Creed Valhalla expansion, Mirage grew into a full-fledged game in part out of the need to plug holes in Ubisoft’s release calendar. Instead it slipped into the fiscal year starting in April 2023, along with Skull and Bones and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Guillemot recently called that lineup and what comes beyond it the best in the company’s history, though if its recent past is any indication, it’s unlikely to go exactly as planned.
Ubisoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Now that 2022 is over (thank God), the NPD group has done its thing, collecting and processing all the resulting sales data. Now we can look back at the last 12 months and see what games and consoles sold best, and how much money people spent on this stuff. Shocking nobody, Nintendo had another successful year while Elden Ring nearly topped the charts, beating out both God of War and Madden.
Yes, it’s once again that time of the year when the NPD Group—a decades-old retail tracking and market research company—releases data on what people bought last year. While the group tracks and monitors many different industries, since 1995 it’s monitored the sale of video games and consoles in the United States, and usually publishes some of this data every month.
Nintendo is likely pleased to see that in 2022 the top-selling video game console in the United States was the Nintendo Switch. The NPD doesn’t release specific sales numbers publicly, so we don’t know just how many Switch consoles were sold this year, but Nintendo’s aging console outperformed the PlayStation 5, which was the second best-selling platform last year, and Xbox Series X/S, which came in third. It should also be noted that the Switch was the best-selling console of December 2022 so it appears the Switch is still the hot item to get around Christmas. And two new Pokémon games in 2022 (even if they were buggy) probably helped, too.
Late last week, the NPD Group also released its list of the 20 best-selling games of 2022. Before we jump into the list, remember that Nintendo doesn’t share its digital numbers with the NPD, potentially hurting its own games’ rankings. But anyway, here’s the NPD top 10:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Elden Ring
Madden NFL 23
God of War: Ragnarök
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Pokémon Scarlet/Violet
FIFA 23
Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Horizon Forbidden West
MLB The Show 22
While Elden Ring was on a roll this year and still ends up as the second best-selling game of 2022, it wasn’t able to defeat the juggernaut that is Call of Duty. There’s a reason Activision continues to focus almost all of its resources and studios on Call of Duty: because it makes a lot of money. And as always, some big-name sports games and console exclusives fill out the rest of the list. This data is also a great reminder that most folks outside of the people reading this or commenting below don’t care about bugs, as Madden NFL 23 and the new Pokémon games launched in fairly rough states yet they still cracked the top 10.
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Now that 2022 is over and done with, it’s time to place your bets for the best-selling game of 2023! The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom seems like a solid bet…assuming it releases this year.
The last few Assassin’s Creed titles have been gigantic games that can easily take over a hundred hours to fully complete, with huge maps crowded with POIs and tons of side quests to distract you from the main story. According to Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the upcoming spin-off, is smaller and more “intimate” because fans grew tired of these giant RPGs. And the devs were more than happy to go in this direction with the latest game in the franchise.
While I’ll be the first to say that modern Assassin’s Creed games have been a lot of fun, I’ll also admit that recent entries in the series like Odyssey and Valhalla have become far too big and bloated. More recent Assassin’s Creed games, starting with Origins, have evolved the franchise from a series of smaller, stealth games set in large cities into a collection of massive open-world RPGs often filled with hundreds of quests, side quests, collectibles, and places to explore. And if you, like me, long for a smaller, more focused Assassin’s Creed, well, we aren’t alone.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s creative director Stéphane Boudon explained that while Origins, Odyssey,and Valhalla were all “great games” that let players “live an epic journey” it was clear that those players were longing for something different and smaller.
“Amongst our fans, we started hearing the desire for a character-driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first ACs in a more intimate scale,” explained Boudon. “It resonates with us as well, as developers, and this was the starting point of the project.”
Read More:How Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Creators Snuck In Connections To Older Games
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Boudon also said that while Miragecame about from a “convergence of several inputs” the biggest driver behind the upcoming spin-off’s smaller scale and focus on narrative came from what the community was asking for after years of huge RPGs.
Further, Mirage pays homage to the OG Assassin’s Creed game starring Altair. Mirage is set in a similar part of the world—the Middle East during the 13th century—and features actual assassins and not proto-assassins as seen in recent games.
I think all of this is a great direction to take the franchise. I want to keep playing these games, but after Valhalla, I’m not sure I need yet another 200-hour epic RPG. This could really help mix things up and keep the franchise feeling fresh and fun. I hope this is the start of a new trend where we see a mix of bigger, open-world entries (Valhalla, Origins) and smaller games focused on stealth. The franchise can support this mix and it would help avoid burning out fans who play every new game AKA me.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is set to release sometime this year for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
“Just buy a PS5? What, is it hard?”Screenshot: Square Enix
Final Fantasy XVI, the upcoming installment in the long-running JRPG series, drops on June 22 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. That exclusivity is a bit of a bummer as other Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake, were also available on PC. And the last mainline entry, Final Fantasy XV, was multiplatform. Unfortunately, at least for now, the new Final Fantasy game will remain on PlayStation 5 only, according to the game’s producer.
Producer Naoki Yoshida, colloquially known as Yoshi-P, was interviewed at a Mahjong tournament over the weekend, where he was whether Final Fantasy XVI would come to PC, something Square Enix confirmed when it revealed the game almost two years ago. However, despite that detail found in the footnote text at the bottom of the trailer, Yoshi-P said the release information is wrong, according to a “rough translation” by the Japanese gaming news Twitter account Genki_JPN. In fact, there may not be a PC version coming at all, as Yoshi-P is apparently suggesting folks go out and buy a PS5 instead.
“Nobody said a word about a PC version releasing,” Yoshi-P said. “Why is it like a PC version is releasing six months later? Don’t worry about that, buy a PS5! Sorry, I went overboard. We did our best so please look forward to it.”
It’s interesting Yoshi-P is purporting that a PC version isn’t planned. Scrubbing through some old Final Fantasy XVI trailers, such as the “Awakening” one from September 2020, it was definitely stated that the game is “not available on other platforms for a limited time after release on PS5,” suggesting it could possibly hit other consoles in the future at the very least. Such was the case with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, where the “limited time” window was about a year. However, all recent marketing for the game, from newer trailers to its official website, now makes no mention of it coming to PC. This is unfortunate considering other Final Fantasy games are on more platforms than just PlayStation and the fact that Sony’s newest console can still be difficult to find. But in the grand scheme of things, knowing how deep Square Enix’s relationship with PlayStation is, it’s not surprising. At least the exclusivity deal should take advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware so that there’s no loading.
Kotaku reached out to Square Enix for clarification but did not receive a reply before publication.
Alongside sticking firmly to PlayStation consoles, Final Fantasy XVI has been rated mature for certain types of content featured in the game. Specifically, according to a translation on the Brazilian Ministério da Justiça website, for hate crimes (yikes) and sex scenes (nice).
Evil Dead Rise’s Lee Cronin talks about moving the series to a city setting. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckman talks about a big change to The Last of Us’ virus for the TV show. Plus, new images from the set of The Flash movie, and what’s next on Mayfair Witches. Spoilers now!
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
A new synopsis for Quantumania (via ComicBook) reveals Bill Murray plays Lord Krylar, a character who appeared in one issue of The Incredible Hulk in 1972, while David Dastmalchian plays an all-new inhabitant of the Quantum Realm named Veb.
Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return tocontinue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Scott’s daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought possible. Directed by Peyton Reed and produced by Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” also stars Jonathan Majors as Kang, David Dastmalchian as Veb, Katy O’Brian as Jentorra, William Jackson Harper as Quaz and Bill Murray as Lord Krylar.
Renfield
During a recent interview with Collider, Nicolas Cage confirmed his Dracula doesn’t “have a lot of screen time” in Renfield.
The movie’s really not about me, Dracula rather, I don’t have a lot of screen time. It’s really Nick Hoult’s movie, and it’s about Renfield. I didn’t have the time, like the two-hour narrative to really dig deep into Dracula’s pathos per se. It’s not that. But I did have enough screen time to be able to try to develop a pop-art style to the character that hopefully will be a nice contribution to the other performers that have done it, that have had their take on this legendary character in both literature and cinema.
Evil Dead Rise
In conversation withEmpire Magazine, director Lee Cronin stated he didn’t “need” to set Evil Dead Rise in a city, he simply “wanted” to.
To me it felt very natural to make that move. It wasn’t forced in some way of like, ‘We need Evil Dead in the city!’ It was, ‘I want a family, and I want it to be urban’. I still treated it very much the same way. I view the apartment as the cabin, and the hallways and the other aspects of the building as the forest.
The Flash
The Flash director Andy Muschietti shared a new photo of the Central City set on Instagram.
Disquiet
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is trapped inside a spooky hospital crawling with supernatural, faceless orderlies and sexy, gauze-wrapped women in the trailer for Disquiet, co-starring Rachelle Goulding, Elyse Levesque, Lochlyn Munro, Garry Chalk, Trezzo Mahoro, Anita Brown, and Bradley Stryker.
DISQUIET | Official Trailer | Paramount Movies
Sorry About the Demon
Meanwhile, bloodthirsty ghouls infiltrate an otherwise unassuming rom-com in the trailer for Sorry About the Demon, available to stream on Shudder this January 19.
Sorry About The Demon | Official Trailer | Horror Brains
The Last of Us
Entertainment Weekly reports Rutina Wesley has been cast as Maria, “the leader of a settlement of survivors in Jackson, Wyoming” in The Last of Us series at HBO.
Relatedly, co-showrunner Neil Druckman revealed that because the series didn’t want its actors wearing face masks, the show’s cordyceps fungus propagates itself through underground “tendrils” instead of airborne spores.
Eventually, those conversations [about not using gas masks] led us to these tendrils. And then, just thinking about how there’s a passage that happens from one infected to another, and like fungus does, it could become a network that is interconnected. It became very scary to think that they’re all working against us in this unified way, which was a concept that I really liked, that got developed in the show.
[Collider]
Inside Job
According to TV Line, Netflix has canceled Inside Job after one season.
Velma
Elsewhere, Mindy Kaling’s adult-oriented Scooby-Doo spinoff has a new poster.
School Spirits
Peyton List must solve her own murder in the trailer for School Spirits, premiering March 9 on Paramount+.
School Spirits | Official Teaser | Paramount+
Mayfair Witches
Finally, Rowan continues to give bad men brain embolisms in the trailer for next week’s episode of The Mayfair Witches.
Next Time: The Dark Place | Mayfair Witches | AMC+
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Have you ever found yourself paying for over-salted food and overpriced drinks at an Applebee’s and thought: “What if I just stayed here…forever?” Well, a bug making the rounds in the Rick and Morty-adjacent shooter High On Life is allowing such a macabre fantasy to come true.
Released earlier this month on Xbox and PC, High On Life is a shooter steeped in the wacky comedic stylings of Rick and Morty. Developed by Squanch Games, a studio founded by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland himself, the game is about as loud and obnoxious as you’d expect. Despite obnoxiously bright colors and talking guns capable of delivering a headache or two, the game has soared to the top of Game Pass’s most-played titles. Recently, players have been finding themselves trapped in the game’s rendition of well-known American chain restaurant Applebee’s. It’s a bug for sure, but one that feels fittingly on-point for such an absurd and silly game.
Read More: High On Life: The Kotaku Review
“TRAPPED IN SPACE APPLEBEE’S!!” starts one Reddit thread on High On Life’s subreddit. “Hey guy’s, I love Applebee’s. Like fucking LOVE it. I thought Space Applebee’s would be better (AND IT IS!!) but I am stuck inside. This is my checkpoint, trapped inside with the 2 for $25 for all eternity. Anyone know a way out?? Plz help,” the post continues.
Searching “Applebee’s stuck” or “Applebee’s trapped High On Life” on either High On Life’s subreddit, or Twitter, yields similar pleas for help. A few have even captured some footage to share the struggle.
Others who have managed to escape are finding themselves teleported back into the Applebee’s. “Before going home I saved a human outside of the Applebee’s, I got teleported by accident to the sanctuary then I was teleported back where I was, got killed almost instantly and now I’m stuck in the Applebee’s because the door won’t open.”
In addition to asking Squanch Games for comment, Kotaku has reached out to Applebee’s to find out what one should do if you find yourself in a similar situation.