Category: Gamespot

Get your DVRs ready for the fall TV season, when networks release every new show and season they have at the exact same time. Obviously, that can be a lot to go through, making it difficult to figure out what’s worth your time. Don’t worry: we’ve got you covered.

Over the course of the next couple of months, we’ll be looking at a selection of new and returning shows and giving you a quick breakdown of what is worth watching and what you should pass on. This week, we’re talking about The Orville, The Deuce, The Mindy Project, and South Park.

The Orville

400 years in the future, Seth MacFarlane plays Ed Mercer, who has been given command of a spaceship named The Orville. His second in command is his ex-wife, Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), and the two bicker with each other while running the ship. Their first mission goes awry, and the crew find themselves face-to-face with an evil alien race known as the Krill.

Regardless of what you’ve seen from the teasers and promos for this show, The Orville is not a true comedy. It’s more a drama with a couple of jokes sprinkled in. In fact, every joke from the series premiere is contained within the trailer for the show. So what is The Orville actually like? Well, it’s Star Trek: The Next Generation with a better computer-effects budget and some knee-slappers tossed in. While the show seems like it is supposed to be a parody, it never hits that same level that one would, like Galaxy Quest. The Orville tiptoes around parody and can’t decide if it’s going to be a serious show or a mildly amusing comedy. Luckily, the supporting cast is dynamic, fun, and adds some life to the show. If you’re really looking for a space adventure with some comedy tossed in, Firefly exists, and it has its own voice.

Is It Worth Watching?: It’s a pass. This is a really middle-of-the-road pilot. It doesn’t feel like anything new, with only its supporting cast managing to stand out. Ultimately, it’s Star Trek fanfiction.

The Orville airs on Sundays at 8 PM ET on Fox. You can watch the first episode on Hulu.

The Deuce

HBO’s newest series takes place during the ’70s in New York City; more specifically, Manhattan. It was a time when drugs, porn, and prostitution ruled Times Square, not Broadway shows and people dressed as Elmo. James Franco stars as twin brothers Frankie and Vincent Martino: one is a degenerate gambler, and the other is a bar manager trying to make a living to help his family, whom he never sees. In addition, the show follows numerous other characters including prostitutes working the area, their pimps, and an NYU student.

The pilot episode comes in at almost an hour and a half, and it is a giant information dump onto the audience; however, this show is brilliant. There is not a single moment when we’re being introduced to the world that the show feels like it drags at all. The Deuce does a spectacular job jumping between characters and introducing their story arcs, which tend to weave into other character’s stories as well. Maggie Gyllenhaal does a spectacular job as a prostitute who doesn’t have a pimp, something almost unheard of in this world. Somehow, a fully fleshed-out story arc for her is present in the pilot, without feeling rushed or overshadowing the rest of the episode. The pacing and balance for these arcs is expertly crafted. Also of note is the set design and overall look of the show, which are perfect. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that Times Square used to be a completely different place than it is now.

Is It Worth Watching?: Stop reading this and sign into HBO or video on demand and watch this episode. The Deuce is one of the best pilots for a series I have ever seen.

The Deuce airs on Sundays at 9 PM ET on HBO. The first episode is available on HBO Go/HBO Now.

The Mindy Project

Mindy Kaling is back as Mindy Lahiri, the young doctor trying to balance her work life and her personal life. The premiere for the final season has a recently wed Mindy learning about what it takes to be in a marriage. Obviously, she has a lot to learn as she’s not very good at it.

This was a rough episode. The Mindy Project was a show I casually enjoyed a few seasons back, but this episode really didn’t do anything for me. The show looks as if it was shot in 2017, but the writing and characters feel like something from a decade prior. It’s clinging to a grounder, but overly wacky writing style that just doesn’t work anymore. The episode straddles the line between being a compelling comedic drama and an over-the-top, silly show. The Mindy Project could be a whole lot more successful if it focused on one direction or the other.

Is It Worth Watching?: No.

New episodes of The Mindy Project are released on Tuesdays on Hulu.

South Park

The 21st season of South Park opened with Alexas and Google Homes taking over homes across the town. However, this has angered unemployed citizens who feel Google and Amazon are taking their jobs (dey derp r derps). The unemployed stage a protest in town, complete with Confederate flags and tiki torches. Meanwhile, Cartman deals with his girlfriend. What is Randy Marsh up to? He’s hosting a new show with his wife called “White People Renovating Houses.”

The episode is weirdly disjointed and the sound mixing was way off, leaving the score a whole lot louder than the dialogue; however, I’ve come to expect pure insanity when it comes to South Park, especially after last year’s season, which was the only episodic season to date. Everything during the episode was a home run, especially a local waving a Confederate flag over an Alexa.

Is Is Worth Watching?: Even if you were put off by last season, you should check this episode out, but please make sure your Alexa, Google Home, and/or Siri are turned off before starting it. You’ll thank me later.

South Park airs on Comedy Central on Wednesdays at 10 PM ET. New episode appear the day after they air on Hulu.

Come back next week when we’re talking about Vice Principals, Channel Zero, Gotham, and Fuller House.

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Cliff Bleszinski knows the player figures for LawBreakers right now are low. But he isn’t losing faith. Games can be slow-burners–just look at Warframe as an example–and developer Boss Key has big plans to get lapsed players to return and bring in new ones. In an interview with GameSpot this week, Bleszinski spoke frankly about LawBreakers. He told us he’s been humbled by the low player figures; he talked about the mistakes he made in the direction of the game. He said launching near “Destiny season” probably didn’t help. And he said he wants to be “less of a dick” with his interactions with people online.

Released in August for PC and PlayStation 4, LawBreakers is a team-based shooter that you might say resembles Overwatch in some ways. But for Bleszinski, he says he never wanted to try to go head-to-head with Blizzard’s juggernaut. LawBreakers has an edgy, R-rated tone, you might say, while Overwatch is more colorful and lighthearted. Bleszinski spoke extensively about Boss Key’s layers of differentiation, and the game no doubt stands out from the pack. But the game’s release did not go entirely to plan. As mentioned, player figures fell off a cliff, at least on PC; the current player count on PC is reportedly very low, with a peak concurrent player figure of 181 over the past 24 hours; it had an all-time peak of 7,482 players, according to Steamcharts. These numbers may not be entirely accurate, but it is clear that player figures are low on PC. The PS4 edition is “doing fine,” Bleszinski said. The console and PC communities have different mindsets when it comes to judging success, the developer said.

“There is a situation where players look at numbers on Steam; that doesn’t happen on PlayStation 4. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but you look at PC, [concurrent user] health versus PS4, PS4 is doing fine,” he said. “People cough up 30 bucks and hop online and they don’t overthink it. On PC there is you wanting to declare something a success or a bomb by this internet culture that loves to just observe things. But it’s like, guys, you know, the small bit [of players] that we have, we’re going to continue to iterate and engage. As we issue content drops, maybe there’s going to be sales or potential free weekends down the line, continue to fluff that CCU up.”

One of the big issues with low player figures is long matchmaking times. Here in Australia, GameSpot has not been able to find a match on PS4 at all over the past two weeks after multiple attempts. We stopped trying the last time after 45+ minutes of matchmaking.

Boss Key has big plans for LawBreakers going forward. In addition to “rapid fire” updates for quick fixes and changes, the studio is working on new maps, new features (the much-requested Team Deathmatch is coming!), a ranked mode called Boss League, and a new, defensive-minded class.

“It’s a marathon. Not a sprint,” Bleszinski explained. “We’re going to keep iterating keep working on it. At the end of the day, I didn’t want to make the exact same archetypes that everybody else did. I wanted to make a game that was first and foremost a shooter for shooter players.”

“I’m going to continue to iterate on this game, continue to add to it. And try to be less of a dick, honestly” — Bleszinski

Bleszinski believes LawBreakers could have a trajectory similar to Warframe, which he says launched with low player numbers and scaled up in time due to developer Digital Extremes’ commitment to release new and exciting content. For LawBreakers, Bleszinski says the team is also overhauling the game’s marketing. As you may have seen, the game’s logo–a Blink 182-like sad face with Xs for eyes–does not look all that inviting or one that would espouse positive feelings. The new marketing campaign for LawBreakers will take steps to help people understand the appeal of the game; principally that it is a white-knuckle, high-action, over-the-top shooter that is fun to play with friends.

“We need the bodies. We need to keep fluffing up the CCU,” Bleszinski said. “We need to do what we can to let people know this is a really sweaty palm type of experience that can hopefully lend itself to eSports. But you know, I have to keep this game alive, first and foremost. I can be very cocky and very brash on social media. And realising that, you know, we have a fledgling player base. It’s been very humbling for me. I’m going to continue to iterate on this game, continue to add to it. And try to be less of a dick, honestly.”

The excitement of what it feels like to play LawBreakers is “not coming across right now,” Bleszinski acknowledged. One further element of Boss Key’s attempts to bring back lapsed players and draw in new ones is an overhauled onboarding experience. The full details are not known at this stage, but it’ll include new tutorial videos and other guides to help players learn the ins and outs of each class.

Also in the interview, Bleszinski candidly spoke about what he would have done differently. There was no Team Deathmatch at launch (but it’s in the game now through the Skirmish playlist), and Bleszinski unequivocally said it was a mistake to not ship with it; a mistake he made because he wouldn’t budge on his vision and development mantra.

“I didn’t want to do the exact same stuff everybody else did. The funny thing was, making a character-based, class based shooter–even though it’s not as simple as a traditional arena shooter, it still has a lot of that kind of feel underneath it all,” he said. “In hindsight, I think it was a mistake to not ship with it. I was stubborn. I was like, ‘Ohh, everybody’s [already] done TDM.’ Even Blizzard’s like, ‘Screw it, we need to put TDM action in Overwatch.’ Fundamentally, at the end of the day, players just want to get in and shoot some stuff sometimes. That’s one of the things that I consider my strengths: I am willing to admit when I am wrong. I think people in the public eye–it would do them a great benefit to do that more often.”

The lower-than-expected player figures for LawBreakers might have come as a surprise to Bleszinski, Boss Key, and publisher Nexon. After all, the game received a lot of praise in the press and from fans. Reviews on Steam are designated as “Very Positive,” while the press mostly enjoyed the game as well. Whatever the case, the player figures are low, and Bleszinski is the first to admit his mistakes.

“I have a reputation for being brash and loud, but I am the first person to admit when I’m wrong,” he said. “We certainly did make our share of mistakes with the game. In spite of the mistakes, we’re going to continue to update and iterate, and the reviews do not lie.”

“Fundamentally, at the end of the day, players just want to get in and shoot some stuff sometimes” — Bleszinski on why he wanted to add TDM to LawBreakers

LawBreakers is the first game from Bleszinski’s studio, Boss Key, which he founded after leaving Epic Games. Because the studio is so new, and relatively small, at just 65 people, some “concessions” had to be made in regards to the content that would be in the game at launch. Bleszinski wanted to put his employees first–and that is an notable, admirable thing, given the stories of extended crunch and overly stressful working conditions we often hear about.

“The problem with what we were trying to pull off with this company and this title was shipping a quality product with a team of 65 people without ruining everybody’s marriages,” he said. “”So certain concessions did have to be made from a production standpoint. It’s easy for me to sit there and go, ‘Ah, we should have shipped with this,’ ‘We should have shipped with that.’ [Or] change the date. In hindsight, it would have made sense. But hindsight is always 20/20. If I could go back in time I’d find a way to change the schedule and ship with more of those things.”

“Those of you who have been kind enough to drop $30 on this; we’ve got your back and we’re sticking with it.”

We will have MUCH MORE from our conversation with Bleszinski coming up soon. He also spoke about if the game could adopt a free-to-play, the likelihood of Xbox One and Nintendo Switch version, what’s being done to improve matchmaking times, and how he’s on a first name basis with the governor of North Carolina. This story has been updated to clarify the Steamcharts figures.

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Reluctant hitman John Wick is heading back to screens. It has been confirmed that John Wick: Chapter 3 will hit theaters in 2019, with Keanu Reeves returning in the lead role.

Lionsgate has announced that the movie will debut on May 17, 2019. This is the first time that a film in the action franchise has premiered in the summer, which shows the increasing popularity of the series. While the first movie made a modest $88 million worldwide, this year’s John Wick: Chapter 2 has earned more than $171 million.

John Wick director Chad Stahelski first spoke about a potential third movie in May. He said: “We’re currently in the middle of writing it right now. It’s more [about] how fast can we get our s**t together. But I would assume that if not by the end of this year, [filming will start by] the beginning of next year.”

Stahelski also hinted at what fans could expect from John Wick: Chapter 3 in terms of the movie’s scale.”We want, not so much to go bigger on the third one, but to show you more of the intricacies of the world,” he said. “I feel like there are all these different subtleties that I skipped over in part 2, that I’d like to go back to [with part 3] and show you the inner workings of different parts of New York.

A John Wick TV show is also in development. In June, Stahelski revealed that the working title is The Continental, named after the series’ chain of hitman-friendly hotels. “It’s very tied to the film [in that] it’s about the Continentals all over the world, how certain people come into that world, and what happens in relation to those people,” he said. “I think the world is very vast. It’s something that studio seems very, very intent on [making] and very, very behind.”

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Like in the original game, Exotics are the most desirable items for you to obtain in Destiny 2. While you’re sure to get your hands on some through loot drops from enemies or chests, there are also those that you can obtain through a specific process.

There will likely be more uncovered in the days and weeks ahead, but to help kickstart your Exotic collection, we’ve rounded up the ways in which you can get your hands on several right now. You’re guaranteed to get one piece of armor fairly early on by completing story missions, but these guides should give you some targets to aim for (or an idea of what’s required if you want something specific). One word of caution: You may want to wait before completing quests that reward you with an Exotic, as your Power level will determine how strong it is. By waiting, you’ll ensure you get a higher-level weapon without needing to infuse it.

We’ll continue to update this guide with more walkthroughs in the days ahead. For more, check out our roundup of Destiny 2 guides, tips, and tricks.

Coldheart (Exotic Trace Rifle)

Coldheart is very straightforward to obtain: if you pre-ordered the game, you’ll get it–eventually. As with the bonuses for purchasing Destiny 2’s Deluxe edition, you first need to complete the campaign. Once you’ve done so, you can simply head to the Gunsmith (located at the Farm) to acquire it.

Sturm (Exotic Hand Cannon)

Once again, completing the campaign is a prerequisite for getting your hands on Sturm. With that out of the way, head to Nessus and start the mission O Captain (at Exodus Black, near Failsafe). Make your way through it and you’ll receive the sidearm Drang, and then receive a request to talk to Rahool. You’ll have to bring him a number of Engrams–five Legendaries and one Exotic–and kill 10 Fallen on Nessus using Drang. Rahool will then send you to Tyra Karn at the Farm, who will send you to Nessus to kill 10 Fallen without reloading (though it seems you can kill a few, reload, and then kill a few more to make progress). After that, you’ll have to 10 powerful Fallen on Nessus using Drang. Head back to Tyra and she’ll send you to the Exodus Crash Strike on Nessus where you have to kill the Servitor named Kendriks-7. Go back to Tyra, and Sturm is yours.

MIDA Multi-Tool (Scout Rifle)

Again, you’ll need to complete the campaign to qualify for this. Work your way through the various missions available in the European Dead Zone, culminating in the mission titled Enhance, which will net you the MIDA Mini-Tool. (Take note that this step involving Enhance is currently bugged–make sure you have more than one Energy Weapon slot available when completing the quest.) With that in hand, head to Banshee-44 at the Farm to receive a new mission: using a scout rifle, land 50 precisions shots and then get 25 multi-kills without reloading. Go back to Banshee-44 for the next quest, which tasks you with dismantling five Rare (or better) scout rifles. Returning to Banshee-44 will give you another quest, this time to rack up 50 kills while in mid-air with the MIDA Mini-Tool. With that complete, see Banshee-44 for your new MIDA Multi-Tool.

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