A Kickstarter campaign for Monster Hunter World: The Board Game will launch later this week. First announced back in January, the Monster Hunter board game aims to bring the beast-slaying action of the beloved series to physical boards for the first time.While details on how the game plays are thin on the ground, developer Steamforged Games has previously developed several other physical titles based on popular video games, including Resident Evil 2, Ni no Kuni 2, and Dark Souls. As you might expect, different versions of the Monster Hunter board game will feature different minis to represent each of the game's fearsome foes, with higher Kickstarter pledges resulting in more monsters to fight.If you want all the content, the game's "All-In Pledge" will run you $279--quite a sum to be sure, but not unheard of when it comes to mini-heavy board games. If you're interested in learning more about Monster Hunter World: The Board Game, Steamforged has scribed many blog posts on the game's core mechanics. Polygon's Charlie Hall recently got some hands-on time with a prototype of the game, and he was fairly impressed by it, comparing it favorably to Kingdom Death: Monster, a highly-regarded Kickstarter success story.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A live-action Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots move is in the works by Mattel Films and Universal Pictures, with Fast & Furious mainstay Vin Diesel attached to star in and produce it through his One Race Films label, according to a Deadline report.The film's screenplay was written by Ryan Engel, who wrote the script for 2018's Rampage and the action-thriller of the same year The Commuter. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots will follow a father and son who develop some sort of relationship with an advanced war machine. It's unclear what role Diesel will play in the film.Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots is a two-player action toy and game that puts two boxers, the Blue Bomber and Red Rocker, in a ring to knock the other's head off. When talking about the IP, Vin Diesel said it's "truly exciting" to adapt it to a film.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It's a big week for Call of Duty: Warzone, as the battle royale game's much-anticipated Season 3 event is kicking off very soon. We're expecting some major changes to the game, including a rumored nuke event that could destroy the map and re-launch it with an '80s theme.The specifics have yet to be divulged, but Activision has now provided some clues around what to expect from this week's big Season 3 event.What's Happening In Warzone This WeekIn a blog post, Activision said "Verdansk is about to heat up in a big way." With zombies spreading across the map, it seems something big is brewing for Warzone.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A new update for Xbox OS went live April 19 for Xbox Update Preview users, and it will soon add two small but important features to your favorite Xbox console. The update adds a new audio feature and makes a helpful addition to Quick Resume.First, the update will add audio passthrough to the console, meaning that audio will "pass through" the console with minimal effect. While the specifics of digital audio can be complicated, in layman's terms, this basically means that the Xbox will pass the audio on to a receiver with no processing or effects. This means that your Xbox can pass the signal onto your receiver, which will allow for a surround sound or similar setup with less cables than usual.Second, the update will give users a new group that will show all games that are currently running in Quick Resume mode. The Guide will also indicate if the game you're currently playing supports Quick Resume. This was a much-requested feature, so hopefully it means that you won't be confused when a game spits you back into the middle of a heated fight that you don't remember starting anymore.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Ubisoft has announced that Rainbow Six Siege's first charity bundle in the Sixth Guardian Program raised $171,183 for The AbleGamers Charity, an organization dedicated to improving accessibility in the video game industry. The Sixth Guardian Program, a series of bundles dedicated to benefitting a variety of non-profit organizations, was announced back in November 2020. Focused on equitable and inclusive gaming for all players with disabilities, AbleGamers was the first advocacy group to partner with Ubisoft and the Rainbow Six Siege Sith Guardian Program. More non-profits partnering with the program will be announced later, Ubisoft said.The AbleGamers charity bundle was available at the start of Rainbow Six Siege's Year 5 Season 4. It included a uniform, weapon skin, charm, and headgear emblazoned with the orange, white, and grey AbleGamers colors.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

English actor and martial artist Lewis Tan has been cast in the leading role in the upcoming adaptation of the David Ignatius novel Quantum Spy, according to Variety. No production start date or other casting announcements for the project have yet been made, but given that the adaptation was previously in development in NBC, it's expected as of this writing to remain a series.Quantum Spy, published in 2017, is an espionage thriller about the race between the United States and China to build the world's first hyper-fast quantum computer in their respective secret research labs. Ignatius, who is an editor and columnist for The Washington Post, has been a prolific novelist for many years and has specialized in novels involving suspense and espionage. Tan will star and co-executive produce on the pilot, in collaboration with Boies/Schiller Entertainment, Anonymous Content, Flame Ventures and 24's Tony Krantz.Tan will play the newly assigned Chinese-American CIA officer Harris Chang, who is tasked with hunting down a Chinese mole, who has compromised the American lab. From there, according to an official synopsis, "he's caught in an ever-expanding maze of spymasters, assassins and temptations turning the investigation into a personal obsession." The show is also being described as "action-packed" and "sexy."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Dota animated show has been out less than a month, and the series' official Twitter account has already confirmed that Season 2 is happening. "Book 2 is coming! The second season of DOTA: Dragon's Blood is in the works," reads the tweet, fired off Monday morning.Dota: Dragon's Blood is based on the popular Valve game series Dota, which began life as a fan-made mod for the Blizzard game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. "DOTA" stood for Defense of the Ancients, and the series is credited with kicking off the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre (League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, etc.).The animated adaptation Dota: Dragon's Blood hit Netflix on March 25. It followed the Dragon Knight Davion and explored the series' lore. The show was a joint production between the South Korean Studio Mir and the American company Kaiju Boulevard, with animation by another South Korean studio, Production Reve. And before you start furiously writing us a comment about the definition of "anime," the streaming service refers to it as such. Who are we to argue?Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With a new Mortal Kombat movie arriving in theaters and on HBO Max this week, it's hard not to look back at the films that came before, 1995's Mortal Kombat and 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Not only did the characters from the games make up the supporting cast for the film, but the story centered around the iconic Liu Kang. In the new film, though, the central figure isn't from the games. He's an original character.While the new Mortal Kombat is loaded with superpowered fighters that fans of the franchise will be very familiar with--along with a few surprises--this is essentially the story of Cole Young (Lewis Tan), who is a new creation for the film. What we know of Cole is that he's a former mixed martial arts champion who's fallen on hard times and winds up entwined in the mysterious Mortal Kombat tournament due to a dragon-shaped birthmark on his chest.Practically everything else about the character is being kept under wraps. However, director Simon McQuoid told GameSpot that utilizing Cole as the primary protagonist in the story was an easy decision. "We needed to have a way to bring a new audience into this and also allow for those fresh eyes to be on and to learn things," he explained.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Rumors have been swirling since last June that the upcoming Flash film is set to go the way of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with two version of Batman appearing in the film. After speculation and some recent doubt, Keaton is now set to reprise his role as Batman in The Flash, according to TheWrap.Michael Keaton's talent agency, ICM Partners, confirmed to TheWrap that Keaton will indeed appear in the film. While rumors started back in June, Keaton himself threw all that into doubt in a March interview with Deadline. There, Keaton said the "COVID situation in the UK" would "determine everything." The actor said that the pandemic was informing all of his decisions for upcoming roles."Is this thing going to kill me, literally? And you know, if it doesn't, then we talk," Keaton had said.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Shaun Escayg, writer and creative director of Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers, has announced he has left the studio and returned to work for former employer Naughty Dog. Prior to his departure from "the kennel" back in 2018, Escayg worked as a cinematic animator for The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 as well as game director and writer for Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. While he has yet to announce what project he'll be working on, from the looks of his Twitter bio Escayg is back to writing and directing. Naughty Dog later shared the news, tweeting it's "looking forward to doing awesome stuff together."Happy to be back with the Dogs! pic.twitter.com/0xcKIwFUkW — Shaun Escayg (@ShaunEscayg) April 19, 2021The news of Escayg's departure from Crystal Dynamics comes less than a year after Marvel's Avengers' release and subsequent lackluster sales. Despite praise towards the game's single-player campaign and protagonist Kamala Khan, the game suffered from a plethora of technical difficulties that "rendered the game unplayable at times," according to our review. However, Escayg has assured fans not to be worried about the future of the game, tweeting "Marvel's Avengers is in good hands."As for what kind of "awesome stuff" Escayg and the rest of the Naughty Dog staff will be working on together, the options seem endless as more and more projects are teased over at the studio. Earlier this year, studio co-president and game director Neil Druckmann retweeted a post from the official Naughty Dog Jobs account listing off dozens of new positions the studio was looking to fill. According to Druckmann, the new hires would join the team to work on an (at the time) unannounced project, and get the chance to "make something very cool."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Reflections are a movie camera's arch nemesis, and VFX artists spend a bunch of time taking them out. But it's not often the reflection comes from a main character's moving helmet, as is the case with John Cena's Peacemaker character in the upcoming The Suicide Squad film, James Gunn says.Yes. Peacemaker's helmet is a damn mirror ball, & we need to remove me & the crew from every single shot in which we use it, in the movie & in the show. We shoot a full wraparound plate of every set (most of which are fortunately practical) to put in the helmet when needed. https://t.co/AGNSGiVMKe — James Gunn (@JamesGunn) April 19, 2021"Peacemaker's helmet is a damn mirror ball," said director James Gunn in response to a question on Twitter. "We need to remove me and the crew from every single shot in which we use it, in the movie and in the [HBO Max spinoff] show.Peacemaker's mirror-reflective helmet protects his mind from the voices that haunt him (seriously), but it's also a unique problem for a filmmaker. A round, reflective surface like this is going to catch not just the camera, but the entire set all around the actor. And being that it's a helmet, it has all the unpredictability that comes with a human moving around on camera.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

When you get your PS5--if you're lucky enough to find one--you'll notice that its packaging is different from other consoles, particularly the much flashier design of the Xbox Series X box. It lacks some of their elegance in favor of a simpler design, but this was not a matter of designers phoning it in. Instead, this was a conscious decision by Sony to make the entire box recyclable, and it managed to do so without sacrificing protection. In fact, it's just part of a larger company-wide push toward greener practices.In a post on the Sony Interactive Entertainment website, director of environment and technical compliance Kieren Mayers said that Sony has committed to eliminating plastic use in small product packaging by 2025 in an effort to cut down on ocean pollution. In the case of the PS5, Sony was able to do this by making fairly minor adjustments to the box design. In place of plastic trays are card inserts and "paper pulp cushion trays," and the plastic cable ties we've seen for so long have been replaced by paper ones. If you opened up any PS5 accessories' boxes, that change was made for those, too.Instead of gluing hanger tabs for the outer portion of the packaging, folding techniques were used, and unnecessary plastic bags holding things like cables and manuals were removed. One feature of smaller boxes--plastic display windows--had to be eliminated outright, but we all know what a PS5 controller looks like.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Amazon has reportedly canceled its Lord of the Rings MMO game, first announced in 2019, making it just the latest in a growing list of unreleased projects from the tech giant. However, it appears this game's cancellation came from a contract dispute rather than any issue with creating something that met quality standards. The company was not making the game alone, and its development partner was acquired by another company in the middle of production. Bloomberg reported on April 17 that issues arose after co-developer Leyou Technologies was purchased by Tencent back in December. Amazon and Tencent could not then come to an agreement to continue developing the game, which was also being co-developed by an internal Amazon team, and this forced it to be canceled. According to a statement Amazon gave to Bloomberg, the internal team will move to other projects. The game was going to be free-to-play, according to the initial announcement, and was planned for both PC and consoles.Leyou is the same parent company behind Warframe developer Digital Extremes and Gears Tactics studio Splash Damage. It also owns a stake in Certain Affinity, a studio that has worked extensively on support development for the Halo series.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It doesn't appear we'll be getting a sequel to Days Gone, and some of the game's creative leadership at Sony Bend is no longer at the studio. This includes director and writer John Garvin, who appeared to put the blame for games not getting sequels--at least in part--on players not willing to pay full price at launch.Speaking to fellow former Sony developer David Jaffe, Garvin said (via VGC) that "If you love a game, buy it at full ****ing price," and said he has heard players talk about getting games on sale or through PlayStation Plus, instead.Jaffe asked the obvious rebuttal to this, which is how can you know you love a game you haven't played? Garvin doubled down but didn't have much of an answer. He pointed to the PS4-exclusive God of War getting more support out of the gate.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Nintendo is a big fan of Bowser. In fact, Nintendo of America's president is even Doug Bowser, as of a few years ago. However, not all Bowsers are in the company's good graces, as Nintendo has filed a lawsuit alleging that a man named Gary Bowser is in charge of a piracy operation targeting the Switch.In a lawsuit filed in Seattle (via Polygon), Nintendo alleges that Gary Bowser is one of the leaders of a piracy group called Team Xecuter, which makes and sells an operating system called SX OS that is used to circumvent Nintendo Switch security systems. Once installed, Nintendo says this OS allows for pirated games to be played on Nintendo Switch, which would be otherwise impossible."If a user already owns a lawful, properly purchased Nintendo Switch game, the user can use the SX OS and accompanying features to turn that game into an unlawful copy, which allows the user to share additional unauthorized copies with more users also using the SX OS on the Nintendo Switch," the lawsuit says.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com