Author: dpugh007

Niantic, the developers behind Pokemon Go, have released a brief teaser for its upcoming game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. While at first the footage might seem a bit random and out of place, there are a few hints it might give about exactly what this magical mobile game has in store.

The official Wizards Unite Twitter account posted the teaser (which can be seen below), along with a caption reading: “Several riderless broomsticks were spotted flying off erratically in the Muggle world. Stay alert for any other cases of unexplained magical activity and sign up for the Statute of Secrecy Task Force!”

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Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry is pretty busy in the Aquaman movie. In addition to battling his jealous brother Orm — a.k.a. Ocean Master — for control of the Atlantean throne, Aquaman will also be battling Black Manta, an armored sea pirate harboring a particularly nasty grudge.

But just who is Black Manta? Here’s everything you need to know about Black Manta, why he hates Aquaman so much and why he has one of the more convoluted origin stories in the DC Universe.

Watch the video above to hear from director James Wan why he went full comic book with the film!

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Forza Horizon 4’s first expansion may lack the unbridled madness of the previous game’s Hot Wheels expansion, and it’s not as immediately divergent as Blizzard Mountain was (which brought winter conditions and snow for the first time), but Forza Horizon 4: Fortune Island is a great add-on that features some of the most brilliant and fun stretches of road in the series to date.

Set on a fictional, high-latitude island far off the coast of Britain, Fortune Island is more of a driving purist’s playground than Forza Horizon 3’s more experimental DLC. The star attraction is the Needle Climb, a several-mile stretch of sealed switchbacks that winds up Fortune Island’s highest peak. The Forza Horizon series has been begging for a ribbon of road like this since the beginning, and the Needle Climb doesn’t disappoint.

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Since the last instalment of IGN’s Red Dead Online review in progress Rockstar has confirmed that new anti-griefing measures are in the works, and has also teased “new features, modes, and additional Red Dead Online gameplay content updates” that it will share in the new year. The prospect of measures that may dissuade pointless griefing – or at least punish it appropriately – is very welcome.

I’m genuinely confused by the sentiment that the bedlam that sometimes occurs in free roam in the Red Dead Online beta is something that players should just put up with (or, worse, that it’s in some way totally faithful to the era). Certainly the American West earned its “Wild” moniker thanks to its untamed nature during the frontier era. However, if the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral had happened four times a day, every day, we wouldn’t remember the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (and every Western you ever watched would just be a 90-minute battle royale). Players who want to be left alone aren’t being precious; if they’re anything like me they just want to be able to immerse themselves in a believable world. There’s just nothing especially authentic about towns becoming war zones multiple times a day. I’ll be pleased with anything Rockstar can concoct to foster a free roam multiplayer environment that’s always fun to hang out in.

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Now that battle royale games have become legion, the new arms race is to find clever ways for a new game to set itself apart from the Fortnites and PUBGs of the world. In Tencent’s winter-themed Ring of Elysium, which recently launched as a surprisingly polished early access game with cosmetic-only microtransactions, there’s more than a little inspiration taken from those two behemoths, but its wintery theme, clever new ideas around movement, and exciting final moments make it feel distinct.

Here, a smaller-than-average group of 60 players (either alone, in pairs, or in groups of up to four) battle it out to escape a deadly blizzard that ravages remote mountain towns. But unlike the usual trudging around on foot or the occasional vehicle, Ring mixes up the way you get from point A to point B with a map that features not only ski lifts, but also gives you access to snowboards, hang gliders, and mountain-climbing gear. That change injects exciting creativity into the genre without going into off-the-wall fantasy.

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