Two of Marvel's upcoming movies, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the Eternals, feature Chinese-born creators in front of and behind the camera. And yet, these two movies may not make it to Chinese theaters if a hint from CCTV6 China Movie Channel ends up being accurate, according to a report from Variety.CCTV6 aired a list of the United States release dates for all of the upcoming MCU Phase Four films, but Eternals and Shang-Chi were missing despite being the nearest films after Black Widow, which releases July 9. As Variety notes, their absence from the list doesn't guarantee they won't make it over, but the two films are already facing some challenges. These two movies are the first to significantly feature Asian creators; Shang-Chi stars Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, while Eternals was helmed by Academy Award-winning director Chloe Zhao.Shang-Chi's major obstacle comes from its history as an older Marvel comic. Shang-Chi first appeared in Marvel comics in 1973, a time when Marvel creators were taking inspiration from Eastern film and culture. Doctor Strange first appeared in 1963, and the Mandarin and Iron Fist a year after Shang-Chi, in 1974. Marvel didn't always handle these characters gracefully. Variety points out that Shang-Chi's father in his original backstory is a character called Fu Manchu, a character long associated with Asian racism and stereotyping. Marvel tweaked Shang-Chi's backstory for his movie, making the Mandarin his father and casting veteran Chinese actor Tony Leung, but Chinese moviegoers appear skeptical.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With vaccines rolling out across the country, in-person gatherings are finding calendar dates again. Star Wars fans can look forward to their next event even sooner than planned, as Lucasfilm has moved the next Star Wars Celebration date up by three months, from August 2022 to May 2022.Star Wars Celebration Anaheim was initially scheduled for August 18-21, 2022. Instead, Lucasfilm announced today that the event will run from May 26-29, 2022."These new dates will provide fans with more incredible offerings to enjoy at Star Wars Celebration," the organizers wrote in the official announcement.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

There's a lot more Steamworld in the works. Today, developer Thunderful announced that it's developing a number of new entries in the post-apocalyptic robot steampunk series.Howdy! We’re thrilled to share that several new SteamWorld games are in the making!With this in mind, we'll dedicate this space to SteamWorld games old and new! Image & Form is @ThunderfulGames nowadays. Same folks, new name! Follow us there for news on The Gunk and more games! pic.twitter.com/FQPpXS1t9i — Image & Form is home Questing! 🃏⚔️🤖 (@ImageForm) May 12, 2021In a Twitter post, the studio revealed that there are "several" new Steamworld games in the works. In addition, it explained that the Steamworld team is still intact, even though the original studio Image and Form merged with publisher Thunderful last year.Thunderful hasn't shared anything about the games yet--but in the case of Steamworld, this means we know even less than usual about what's to come. We don't even know what type of game it could be, considering that the Steamworld series has bounced around from genre to genre.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Assassin's Creed franchise has typically relied on its story-based DLC to enhance the narrative of its games. This is usually done in one of two ways: As a means of filling in obvious holes within a game's plot (like Assassin's Creed II's Bonfire of the Vanities), or as a method of continuing a protagonist's story to further explain how they connect to other games in the series (like Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade). The first of Assassin's Creed Valhalla's two post-launch story-driven DLCs, Wrath of the Druids, doesn't fit into either camp. Without much tying it back to the main story of Valhalla or the franchise as a whole, the DLC doesn't quite serve a distinct purpose and it's worse off for it.In Wrath of the Druids, Eivor receives a letter from her cousin Barid saying that he wishes to see her again--as it happens, he's become king of Dublin, a major port town in Ireland. Upon arrival in Ireland, Eivor learns that Barid seeks to protect his crown by securing the trust of soon-to-be High-King of Ireland Flann Sinna, a man who desires to unite all of the country--whether they be Catholic or druid--under his rule. Eivor agrees to aid her cousin, also teaming up with shrewd economic chief Azar to increase Dublin's financial standing and by working with the mysterious bard and poetess Ciara to stop the Children of Danu, a cult hellbent on preserving the druid people by destroying the increasingly Catholic leaders of Ireland.Tonally, this story feels odd. Though Wrath of the Druids releases months after Valhalla, its story is clearly meant to fit somewhere within the main game's campaign, not take place afterwards. The ideal power level for the DLC is 55, making it a great story to play mid-way through Valhalla in order to strengthen Eivor if you ever need to. But Valhalla doesn't have any obvious holes in its campaign, so Wrath of the Druids' story is structured to fit into it anywhere. Thus, there's very little momentum or character growth in this particular story arc. As I played the DLC after having completed Valhalla's campaign, it actually felt like Eivor had regressed in her development, saying and agreeing to things that didn't track with the Eivor I had come to create over the course of the main campaign--she didn't feel like my Eivor.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

On paper, Hood: Outlaws and Legends has a lot going for it. It's a competitive riff on the co-op multiplayer heist game where two teams of four merry men and women simultaneously attempt to unlock a vault and extract a giant chest of gold. Its stealthy race to elude computer-controlled knights and rival players rarely plays out with the grace implied by the concept. More often, the competition for keys, chests, and respawn points devolve into protracted brawls that showcase Hood's clumsy combat, rather than dynamic stealth. Throw in some confusing UI, easily exploitable stealth-kill mechanics, and myriad small design flaws, and Hood's execution fails to deliver the goods it's promised.Each match in Hood has four phases. First, someone needs to steal the vault key from the invincible (but generally unaware) Sheriff. Second, you find and open the vault. Third, someone carries the chest to one of a few extraction points on the map. Once the chest is locked in, one or two players use a winch to lift the chest while the others defend them. The “other team,” meanwhile, has opportunities to disrupt the mission to try and acquire the key or chest for themselves. With both teams naturally meeting at a few key locations, you have plenty of opportunities to surprise and overtake the objective.In this idealized version of the game, the match is a coordinated stealth run, where each character uses their unique skills to advance the mission or help their teammates. Each of the four characters theoretically has a role to play: Marianne, the stealthiest fighter, moves quickly and has abilities that let her steal the key or assassinate enemies discreetly. Robin's bow allows him to take out enemies from afar. Little John can lift gates and move the chest quickly. Tooke is a solid backup fighter with a wide-reaching melee attack and a healing ability. Though some of these skills make certain characters well-suited to different tasks, there's no moment where you need a specific character and their skills. This opens the door for players to choose characters based on their playstyles, but also minimizes the importance of class-based play around the heist itself.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Fortnite update 16.40 is now available, and with it comes a new Exotic weapon that players can find in every round of Battle Royale. If you're looking for the Marksman Six Shooter, this guide will show where to find it, how many Gold Bars it will cost you, and how much hurt you can put on other players by using it. Here's what you need to know about the Fortnite Marksman Six Shooter.Fortnite Marksman Six Shooter Location Fittingly, this new wild western revolver is sold by Fortnite's resident cowboy, Deadfire. You can find Deadfire at the Sheriff's office to the northwest of Lazy Lake. He roams around the building but won't leave the small property, and as always, you can find him by looking for his speech bubble overhead and map icon as you approach the unnamed location.Head to the purple icon to find Deadfire and the Marksman Six Shooter.Fortnite Marksman Six Shooter PriceTalking to Deadfire will reveal the Marksman Six Shooter is sold for 400 Gold Bars each, and Deadfire can sell up to five such weapons per round. That means if you bring your whole Squad, you can each leave with one, though if Deadfire has fewer than five when you talk to him, watch out. It may mean there are already gunslingers roaming the island.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With the introduction of Intel's latest 11th Gen CPUs for laptops, Razer has announced a new range of Razer Blade 15 laptops that utilize the new chips. The new Advanced Edition of the popular and sleek gaming laptop comes with the latest Core i7 (and Core i9 if you need it) as well as a range of choices when it comes to which RTX 30-series GPU you want to power your games. The new range starts at $2,300, with preorders open today. Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition Starts at $2,300 The entry point for the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition is steep, but it comes packed with hardware you can depend on for gaming and content creation on-the-go. This configuration comes with an Intel Core i7-11800H, RTX 3060, 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. That powers a 1440p display with a refresh rate of 240Hz, which might be a touch challenging to fully utilize with this GPU but is still a great resolution for this 15.6-inch display. See at Razer Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition - 4K Configuration $3,400 If you're looking for the absolute best of the best, Razer has that covered on the other end of the spectrum with the most expensive configuration for the new Advanced Edition. This comes with the same Core i7 but pairs that with a much more powerful RTX 3080, 32GB of RAM, and a 4K display. Not just any 4K panel either--this is Razer's 4K OLED Touch display, which limits the refresh rate to just 60Hz but makes up for that with drastically richer colors, higher contrast, and much better HDR support. See at Razer Of course, there are a variety of configurations in between each of these price points, all of which come with the improved webcam (1080p from the previous 720p one) and a new anti-fingerprint coating that has been a long time coming for Razer's Blade laptops. Configurations with an RTX 3070 or higher will also benefit from an additional M.2 slot that can be used to install another SSD, while the entire range ships with an expansive I/O suite that includes Thunderbolt 3, a full-sized SD card reader, Wi-Fi 6, and an HDMI 2.1 output.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

In a series of tweets, actor and prolific multi-hyphenate Donald Glover has recently thrown down an opaque gauntlet seemingly against critics and content creators in TV and film. Normally, it would not be considered news when a celebrity tweets, but Glover so rarely tweets that these three new tweets compose a significant percentage of his sporadic total of 24 tweets the account has ever broadcast in its existence.It's not at all out of character for Glover to speak out about the state of entertainment industries or directly address critics, but these trio of tweets--each sent out around 1 A.M. local time--seem to be a direct response to unspecified critics or possibly fans who are "reviewing boring stuff." Glover doesn't appear to be taking sides, doesn't name names, but seems to agree that both TV and movies are getting less "experimental." Check out the tweets below.saw people on here havin a discussion about how tired they were of reviewing boring stuff (tv & film). — donald (@donaldglover) May 11, 2021we're getting boring stuff and not even experimental mistakes(?) because people are afraid of getting cancelled — donald (@donaldglover) May 11, 2021so they feel like they can only experiment w/ aesthetic. (also because some of em know theyre not that good) — donald (@donaldglover) May 11, 2021Regardless of his social media habits, Glover has been incredibly prolific lately. It was recently announced that his FX award-winning comedy series Atlanta recently begun production in Europe on both Seasons 3 and 4. Season 3 of the series was originally slated to air in January of this year, but the pandemic and resulting quarantine had the knock-on effect of both delaying that series and opening up time to write the next season. In November, Glover declared on Twitter that these seasons "are going to be some of the best television ever made. Sopranos only ones who can touch us."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Valorant's 2.09 patch is now live, and it brings a limited time game mode called Replication that is live now. It's a relatively minor update for the game, but it brings some changes to the Breeze map and slightly nerfs the Viper changes introduced by recent updates.Riot's ongoing quest to balance Viper continues in update 2.09, though this time it's actually a slight nerf. Viper got significantly buffed back in 2.06, which made any contact with her toxin powers automatically deal 50 decay. 2.09 has adjusted that number down to 30 decay, because the developers feel that it's become so powerful that players avoid it at all costs.The most significant addition that patch 2.09 brings to Valorant is the new Replication game mode, which sounds like something a chaos-loving modder would come up with. It's essentially a best-of-nine take on Valorant's basic game-mode, only all players on a team play as the same agent, and all abilities (except ultimates) are automatically refreshed each round. This mode also features a much-needed "flashguard" if they're hit by flash abilities twice in a four second window, which prevents them from being flashed for five seconds.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Grab your knee pads and bike helmet as the CW is bringing back Legends of the Hidden Temple but for adult competitors this time. So if you missed out on getting to play as a kid, you're in luck. The rules look to be the same as you're part of a team, trying to solve the mystery and find the treasure, getting help and clues from the mysterious entity Olmec.While the rules and teams remain the same, the entire show will be taken out of the studio into a man-made jungle and scaled up with tougher challenges, but much bigger prizes on the line. Five teams begin the journey, but only one will enter Olmec's Temple, avoid the Temple Guards, retrieve a lost treasure, and return it to its rightful owner.The original Legends TV show was a huge hit that was the perfect fit for the other Nickelodeon shows like Guts and even Double Dare that paired trivia with physical challenges. Legends of the Hidden Temple even had its own Monopoly board and TV movie a few years ago.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Blizzard has announced that a new "What's Next" livestream for Overwatch 2 with the game's new director Aaron Keller will take place on Thursday, May 20.The event will begin that day at 12 PM PT (which is high noon) and you can watch live on Twitch and YouTube. In terms of what to expect, Blizzard said will show off more of the changes coming to Overwatch 2's PvP. "From new maps to major gameplay updates, we're reinvigorating the core Overwatch experience," Blizzard says.The May 20 Overwatch 2 event will be hosted by Matt "Mr. X" Morello and Mitch "Uber" Leslie. In addition to Keller, Blizzard's Geoff Goodman (lead hero designer) and Dion Rogers (associate art director) will appear on the stream to discuss Overwatch 2 PvP and show off live gameplay for the first time.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The adventures of eccentric detective Benoit Blanc continue in Knives Out 2, which appears to be ramping up pre-production efforts. The new movie has gained Edward Norton, according to Deadline, who will join Daniel Craig along with the recently cast Dave Bautista.The movie will be written and directed by Rian Johnson and find a home at Netflix, which has been working on a record-breaking deal to feature both Knives Out 2 and 3.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Guild Wars 2 is honoring composer Stan LePard, who passed away earlier this year, through an in-game memorial that includes a statue, a new NPC, and more.As part of the May 11 game update for the MMO, ArenaNet added a memorial statue for LePard in the city of Lion's Arch that players can visit to listen to 10 of his songs that he composed for Guild Wars 2. Additionally, an NPC named "Van Leopard" is now in the game and can be found near the Grothmar Valley concert stage. You can see images of the statue and the NPC in the gallery below.The Stan LePard statue inside Guild Wars 2Gallery Before working on Guild Wars 2, LePard wrote music for a number of gigantic franchises, including Halo, Destiny, Age of Empires, and Fable. For Guild Wars 2 specifically, LePard either composed or contributed to more than 40 tracks between 2012 and 2021.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Fortnite update 16.40 is out today and arguably the busiest patch since Season 6 kicked off nearly two months ago. One of the highlights comes by way of further leaks regarding the rumored survival PvPvE mode, Daybreak. The mode was first inadvertently teased earlier this month in documents made public during the ongoing Epic versus Apple hearings.While the Fortnite 16.40 patch notes speak only to the game's intentional new content, dataminers have uncovered some potentially even more exciting details regarding Daybreak, including a splash screen that summarizes the mode."You wake up alone and unarmed along the coast of an island, with no memory of how you arrived," starts the splash screen. "Quickly search for weapons and ammunition before night falls and creatures begin to roam the hillsides, hunting for prey. Keep an eye out for other stranded people--they may prove to be invaluable allies in your fight to stay alive on the increasingly hostile island.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Apex Legends has rolled out a new update on all platforms, and it nerfs both the LMG Spitfire and the new marksman weapon, the Bocek Bow. It also fixes a number of bugs, including a "ghost rock" on Phase Runner that lacked collision, so players were hiding in it to troll their enemies.According to the patch notes linked in the tweet below, the Spitfire's per bullet damage was decreased from 19 to 18, and its max mag size was decreased to 50. The Bocek Bow's body shot damage was decreased from 70 to 60, its charge up time was increased slightly, and both its stack size and inventory slot count were significantly decreased.We're shipping two separate updates to @playapex today to address bugs and balance some weapons.Later today these changes will be added to the Legacy update patch notes at this link: https://t.co/X7ihMfTuHFSee the full list of changes early in the image below: pic.twitter.com/681FJLyB1o — Respawn (@Respawn) May 11, 2021Re: the BOCEK and the SPITFIREBefore Legacy launched, we knew the Bow would be strong, and we debated whether or not to even ship it with 70 dmg. We erred on the strong side because it’s a really freakin’ cool weapon and we wanted to make sure y’all gave it a chance. (1/10) https://t.co/euYnHTxK66 — John Larson | JayBiebs (@RSPN_JayBiebs) May 11, 2021Respawn live balance designer John Larson said on Twitter that the team behind the game knew that the Bocek had the potential to be a bit overpowered, but they decided to have it deal 70 damage so players would give it a chance. Larson also stated that the Spitfire nerf is part of an ongoing effort to make the game's LMG's feel distinct from assault rifles, and that the Spitfire was simply a bit overpowered at the moment.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com