Remember that Eli Roth was making a Borderlands movie? Yeah, I forgot, too. Well, the film was shot and is currently undergoing reshoots, but without Roth at the helm. So instead, Deadpool’s Tim Miller will be tasked with modifying the video game adaptation, which stars Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black.
Deadline investigated the rumors that Roth was no longer in charge of his own movie and found the gossip was true. While this change in leadership could mean that the production was in trouble, the reshoots are said only to take two weeks. It’s doubtful that two weeks of shooting will massively change whatever Eli Roth has already put together. The reason for Miller’s involvement? Allegedly it is because Roth is busy on the long-awaited Thanksgiving.
What does worry me is that both Roth and Craig Mazin wrote the script for Borderlands. The Chernobyl scribe is responsible for The Hangover Parts 2 & 3, Superhero Movie, and two Scary Movie sequels. He is also the writer of the upcoming The Last of Us HBO series. Mazin downplayed the impact characters’ deaths had in TLOU by saying, “When you’re playing a section, you’re killing people, and when you die, you get sent back to the checkpoint. All those people are back, moving around in the same way. Watching a person die, I think, ought to be much different than watching pixels die.”
The adaptation of Gearbox’s looter shooter has been weirdly out of the news cycle for a while. The last time we actively covered it was during the middle of 2021. Even after Tiny Tina’s Wonderland came out, I’d forgotten about the Roth film. The film itself is not connected to the videogames’ canon in any way aside from sharing characters. Every event we experienced in the FPS versions and Tales from the Borderlands does not play into the movie’s plot. This could be a good thing, but if the well-known characters also depart from their polygon counterparts, this could be a turnoff for fans of the series.
The first-person shooter genre simply would not exist how we know it now without the release of the original DOOM by Id Software. So many first-person shooter games to come out after borrow many gameplay elements are concepts that have evolved over the years. But sometimes it’s just fun to go back to the simplicity and mindless fun of the original DOOM for posterity’s sake. Prodeus on Xbox and PlayStation consoles brings together the visual style of classic DOOM with a few modern FPS sensibilities, but still manages to maintain the fun factor that old-school shooter fans loved about the classics. It feels like the iconic game that inspired it so heavily, sometimes even to a fault, but is still a heck of a lot of fun to play.
It’s easy to write off Prodeus as a DOOM-style clone that doesn’t stand out too much, but that would be wrong. While the game plays and looks like DOOM in many ways, a few gameplay elements mix up the formula into something interesting. You have plenty of guns that are both classic staples of the genre, but upgrades and secondary fire features add something new. Using a shotgun feels right, but having an extra blast shot lets you approach shootouts in different ways. On top of that, you can get upgrades to your character such as double jump, dashing, and a few other abilities to take on legions of enemies. It’s a nice touch that takes some of the best advancements in the genre over the last 20+ years but applies them in ways to not compromise Prodeus from feeling like you could’ve plucked it out of the mid-90s games industry.
Speaking of which, the visuals are what make Prodeus a joy to go through. The game uses the DOOM or Castle Wolfenstein style of graphics, with an almost pixelated look to most objects and characters. The gore and explosions that you encounter feel right at home next to classic DOOM visuals, even right down to the face of your character showing the damage and turning into a skull as you lose health. It’s a nostalgia trip and introduction to fun elements from back in the day to players who never got to experience classic DOOM-style games that were abundant back then.
But for as much as Prodeus is inspired by DOOM, it also gets a few shortcomings from it too. This includes difficulty spikes that can be a little frustrating on some levels, including fights that might be overwhelming without getting enough weapons beforehand. There are also levels that can be confusing on where you need to go or interact with, especially when key elements to the stage blend too easily with the background.
You might need to find a specific switch to hit to open a new door but might glance over it too easily when its either too small or hidden by a lot of stage elements. You do have a map to give the layout of the environment around you, but it’s not always complete and doesn’t give a clear waypoint to go to often. You can find Map icons to build it out, but the map can still be tough to read after that.
One of the better aspects of Prodeus is how you can replay any level you complete for better rewards and find secrets. This is helpful for getting newer weapons and other goodies that can be a big asset later on. You can even discover extra items to open up new stages and bonus challenges that further build up your arsenal.
The shop of the game acts like a full testing range for all of your weapons and abilities, which can be accessed any time from the Map Screen after you find it. Replaying stages is key to really going crazy against enemies with your weapons and finding out how Prodeus allows you to explore stages. You don’t need to do so to advance through the game, but it’s very rewarding if you do so.
All of this sounds great, but what about multiplayer? The original DOOM and Quake eventually had a following of players who liked to play against each other. Prodeus does have a multiplayer mode that everyone can jump into, but it’s a dead end. It’s difficult to connect with anyone in multiplayer because there are not a lot of people playing it. More than likely you won’t be playing this because of that, despite the single-player campaign having more than enough content to engage with.
If you grew up playing games like DOOM or simply love playing first-person shooters, Prodeus will be right up your alley. You’ll love going through stages and wrecking through groups of monsters with powerful weapons and wild explosions. It’s disappointing to see the multiplayer modes be practically non-existent, but the single-player mode is still a lot of fun. It’s not quite DOOM, but it damn near feels just like it.
Are you a fan of first-person shooter games? Have you gotten to check out Prodeus on any platform? Post a comment with your thoughts down below!
Based on the video game series by SEGA, the 1995 anime ‘Virtua Fighter’ is going to be released by Discotek Media for a home video Blu-Ray DVD box set. It will include all thirty-five episodes from the show with the English dub for the first season, though the last eleven episodes will only be presented with the Japanese audio with English subtitles.
This will be the first time the series will be released on DVD in English subs and dubs. It will be released on January 31st, 2023 with the Right Stuf Anime website for pre-order.
The animated series was a production of TMS Entertainment with Hideki Tonokatsu and Masahiro Mutō directing the show’s episodes. It originally ran from 1995 to 1996 on TV Tokyo with the first season being dubbed by GMA Network.
“Akira Yuki, a Hakkyoku-Ken martial artist, is Wandering the Earth on a journey to see the eight stars in the sky once again, which can only be seen by those who possess true strength. He ends up in Chinatown and meets Pai Chan, a young girl who is being chased down by the Koenkan, a powerful martial arts organization that terrorizes the town. Along with the help of fellow martial artists Jacky and Sarah Bryant, Akira and Pai fight off against Koenkan’s leaders and free the townspeople from their iron grip. As the Koenkan continues to chase them across the country, one of their partners takes an interest in Sarah and hires the mercenary Kage-Maru to kidnap her.”
The anime is based on the ‘Virtua Fighter’ video game series created by Yu Suzuki and released by SEGA in 1994 for the SEGA Saturn console. It has had numerous sequels and spin-offs.
If you have a FedEx account and backed HasLab’s Ghostbusters Plasma Series Spengler’s Proton Pack, odds are you received an e-mail this week saying the replica would be shipping out soon. FedEx is expected to pick up the Proton Packs from Hasbro’s California depot starting Monday, January 9th! This news comes just weeks after word dropped that the crowdfunded toy would arrive ahead of schedule!
For those without a FedEx login, getting one just by signing up and adding your shipping details is easy. The company does a pretty good job of letting you know something’s on the way, but not always. This was one of the few times FedEx sent me something, but I didn’t get an e-mail alert.
Thanks to Ghostbusters News spreading the word that the replicas were coming, I logged in, and sure enough, the info was right at the top of my list. Now, there is something important that everyone expecting the Pack to know: a signature is required for delivery. You can’t pre-sign for it via FedEx’s website. You need to be there in person.
Sadly, FedEx’s delivery windows aren’t as tight as Amazon’s. So if your shipment is arriving on a weekday, you may want to tell FedEx to hold the box at one of their local pickup spots. These places may be a FedEx store or Walgreens. It could delay the arrival by 24 hours, just so you’re aware.
Backers in the UK and Europe have received theirs since December. Based on the videos uploaded to YouTube, the Pack looks fantastic, but we noticed a few issues. When the prototype pack was shown off on Adam Savage’s YouTube channel, it was noticeable that some parts could be removed to create a 1984-styled Proton Pack. Specifically, we’re looking at the wiring connected to the base of the Clippard valve. In the video, we can see that this Afterlife add-on was removable, but in customer videos, we know that it’s now a solid piece that will require cutting the “copper” wires from the Pack. Unfortunate.
Another presented problem was that all the stickers were on the Pack. Within the box are additional clean 1984-style stickers, but those will need to be placed on top of the existing ones unless you want to take a lot of time and delicately remove the existing ones.
Has your PS5 been noisy? Does it shut down randomly? If so, the Sony console may be the victim of loose cooling liquids.
In a story that appeared on Wololo, repair shops are reporting that the cooling liquid around the APU may leak if the PS5 is sitting in the vertical position. When the liquid metal gets free, it eventually solidifies somewhere else on the console, leading to hardware failures. The failures could be short circuits or the console overheating.
The leak’s exact cause is unknown because the sealed area around the APU and the cooler would need to be damaged or moved for the metal to escape. If the console is static, how does the seal become ineffective? Could this be from continuous vibrations over time, or does it require something more intense, like the console being knocked around?
This isn’t affecting only consoles that are in use. Even boxed PS5s are having this issue, according to TheCod3r’s YouTube video (see below).
Do not put your Ps5 upright, here is the result the liquid moves and the freezes are there pic.twitter.com/A4Do3TkcXk
The PS5 is a big boy. A big, big boy. The biggest boy. So, standing the console vertically helps save space in an already crowded entertainment center. The system is roughly 15.4″ tall, 10.2″ deep, and between 3.6″and 4.1″ wide, depending on if it has a disc drive. In my opinion, the system looks better when standing upright, but considering the recent news, it may be time to reorganize the consoles to make more space.
I’ve had my Playstation 5 in the vertical position for nearly two years now, and I’ve yet to have an issue. The number of consoles having the loose liquid issue hasn’t been aggregated yet, but this news may cause more people to come forward. Unfortunately, Sony has yet to release any response to this issue, but it is probably coming if this story grows legs.
It was inevitable. Arcade1Up has started to move past the typical arcade classics and is stepping into the world of casino machines. The Wheel of Fortune Casinocade Deluxe will provide customers with a casino experience in the comfort of their homes. So you can get all the fun of gambling without crippling debt!
The Casinocade differs from Arcade1Up’s previous releases in several ways aside from being a “gambling” rig. It stands over 5′ tall without the typical riser. WoF has a 10.1″ bottom touch screen and an 8″ top screen. Like a machine you’d see in Las Vegas, this one has lots of flashing lights and light-up buttons. Yes, this thing is WiFi enabled for leaderboards. Twenty-five games are included, with four of them being Wheel of Fortune-themed slots. The others included are the typical casino fare such as blackjack, poker, baccarat, craps, roulette, 3 card monte, and sudoku.
A final price was not listed, and pre-orders are not yet available. However, given that Arcade1Up’s newer machines have been priced fairly high, it’s a fair guess that the Wheel of Fortune Casinocade will be around $599.
Photo Credit: Arcade1Up
Photo Credit: Arcade1Up
Photo Credit: Arcade1Up
Wheel of Fortune Casinocade Deluxe’s features:
Wi-F Leaderboards to challenge players from across the country!
Daily Spin
Dual LCD Screens (8″ top screen & 10.1″ bottom screen)
Bottom screen is a touch screen for immersive interactive gameplay and includes surrounding flashing/ chaser lights around screen.
Light-Up Buttons
4 Premium WOF Slot games and over 21 unlockable games built in Dual Speakers for crisp casino sound
Fans of the dark fantasy anime ‘Goblin Slayer’ got some good news on multiple fronts with the reveal of the season two teaser trailer as well as a video game based on the animated series.
Among the announcements for the show was that production would be moving to a new studio and that a new staff would working on the upcoming episodes.
Crunchyroll said on their website, “It has been confirmed that the Goblin Slayer and his merry party continue their story this year with the second season of the TV anime series, dubbed GOBLIN SLAYER II, premiering in 2023. A new teaser trailer was released to coincide with the news that announces LIDENFILMS will be taking over from White Fox as the production house with some new staff members.”
“Misato Takada (Saiyuki RELOAD ZEROIN) will be taking over directorial duties from Takaharu Ozaki, who has been promoted to Chief Director. Hideyuki Kurata returns to write the series composition with Kenichiro Suehiro also returning to write the music. Hiromi Kato (Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut) will be taking over the character design duties from Takashi Nagayoshi.,” they added.
You can watch the teaser below:
Along with the season two teaser, the dark fantasy anime is also getting a video game for multiple platforms.
“Kumo Kagyu’s GOBLIN SLAYER series had more announcements up its sleeve during the GA FES 2023 livestream. There’s also a new game on the way, complete with an original story and support for English and Japanese languages. While there’s no release date at the moment, GOBLIN SLAYER -Another Adventurer- Nightmare Feast is currently in the works for Nintendo Switch and PC,” Crunchyroll reports.
While information is scarce, they did release a teaser image:
Former French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot has slammed the film industry in her new book ‘682 Jours – Le Bal Des Hypocrites’ which translates to ‘682 Days – The Hypocrites’ Ball.’ The book is slamming filmmakers and celebrities for continuing to make money during the Covid-19 pandemic when France had some of the strictest lockdowns. She specifically targeted the French government giving movie companies subsidies for what she referred to as “flops.”
Deadline reports that she wrote, “The famous ‘Cultural Exception’ in fact allows very many French films ‘not to find their public’, to put it politely, or more explicitly, to be flops.”
“This system also guarantees lead actors to secure extraordinary fees, three or four times superior to actors in American independent cinema,” she said. “Public subsidies, advance on receipts, tax breaks, intermittence (the support scheme for freelance entertainment workers) have created an assisted economy that hardly cares about the tastes of spectators and is even contemptuous of popular, profitable films.”
“You may tell me that some of these flops are perhaps essential works that we will discover later with a sense of guilt for having missed their genius. It’s always staggering to see how people of the ‘left’ are contemptuous of ‘the people’ who, for them, have crap tastes,” the French bureaucrat continued.
Asked to clarify if she thought France should stop paying the film industry altogether, she replied, “Ah non! It makes perfect sense to continue to do so. If France is the only European country to have a cinema industry, which in turn feeds into an industry on the platforms, it’s because of the policies we’ve had in place since 1946, since the creation of the National Cinema Centre.”
She added, “We need to maintain it.”
Bachelot has served in several key positions within the government of France. A member of the UMP party, she served as Minister for the Environment, Minister for Health and Sports, and Minister of Social Affairs before becoming the Minister of Culture in 2020, a role that ended in 2022. She briefly served in the European Union parliament representing the West of France (2004-2007).
‘Get Out’ star Allison Williams is set to appear in ‘M3GAN,’ a film about a roboticist who adopts her orphaned niece. Unable to connect with her, she uses her latest project M3GAN, a robot designed to protect its owner, to help the young girl, but the robot soon turns violent. The movie’s teaser trailers have gone viral on several social media platforms, including TikTok and Twitter.
Williams, who is also an executive producer on the movie, commented on this development and how she is excited to see the film’s killer robot turn into an “icon.”
“I just thought, ‘If there’s a chance we can make M3GAN iconic, this is going to be so much fun,” she told NME in an interview. “And when I saw her for the first time, I was like, ‘Chef’s kiss! She’s just unreal.’”
“Everyone has that friend who’s like, ‘If he’s meant to you, I’ll kill him,’” Williams continued. “But M3GAN’s like, ‘I actually will kill anyone who’s mean to you. She’s fierce, fully confident and bursts into song or dance occasionally – who doesn’t love that?”
Speaking of her own inventor character, she noted, “When I first read the script, I thought Gemma was awesome.”
“I love the idea of this very career-driven, genius roboticist who is kind of focused on that to the exclusion of everything else,” she said. “And then as I carried on reading the script.”
Williams added, “I was sweating and panicking because I didn’t know who I was rooting for and I didn’t know what was going to happen. That’s always a good sign in this genre.”
‘M3GAN’ is directed by Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper who came up with the story along with James Wan, who serves as a producer for the movie. Besides Williams, it also stars Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, and Brian Jordan Alvarez.
It is set to hit theaters on January 6, 2023, where it will join the horror subgenre of killer toys including ‘Child’s Play,’ ‘Puppet Master,’ and ‘Demonic Toys.’
This week LG revealed at CES 2023 the world’s first wireless OLED television. With three HDMI inputs being beamed to the TV via a box up to 30′ away, this could be the ideal solution for those who find cable management a significant hassle.
PC Mag covered the LG booth at this year’s CES, and the TV does look impressive. Although this new display does solve the annoying issue of cable management for multiple devices, what about performance? According to PC Mag, the M3 will support Nvidia’s G-Sync, which helps to cut down on screen tearing. But what about lag? That’s not mentioned anywhere, nor is it shown how the display performs while a 120fps game at 4K.
The LG M3 display will connect to its transmitter box via a proprietary signal rather than WiFi. LG told PC Mag that this secret signal is 3X faster than WiFi 6. The linkrates for WiFi 6/E are between 574 to 9608 Mbits per second. However, the box needs to have a line-of-sight connection to the TV. It’s unclear if the transmitter must be in front of the TV or if it can sit below it on an entertainment center.
This sounds great on paper, but I need to see it in action and a price tag.
A full breakdown of technical specs was not readily available. However, here is what we can gain from the CES 2023 coverage:
HDMI Ports: 3 (including one with eARC support)
Coax connection: 1
Optical Audio-In: 1
Ethernet Port: 1
USB Ports: 2 (unknown type)
Supported Audio: Dolby Atmos and unnamed others
Available sizes: 77″, 83″, and 97″
Transmitter Operating Distance: Up to 30′
Connectivity: Proprietary
Release Date: Q3-Q4 2023
“LG SIGNATURE OLED M is the world’s first wireless OLED TV with a separate AV transmission solution – Zero Connect Box that can send video and audio signal to this impressive, 97-inch display wirelessly at up to 4K 120Hz.”
