Dailyposts

Bryan Singer’s 2006 movie Superman Returns is infamous. A lukewarm, direct follow-up to a 30-year-old superhero franchise from none of the same creative team feels like an idea out of the 2020s , not the 2000s. Returns did halfway decent business in theatrical release, with a $390 million international box-office take. That wasn’t bad enough to call it a flop, but wasn’t good enough to warrant a sequel — especially not after Singer hugely overran his budget on a troubled production. Warner Bros. moved on to reboot Superman with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel , and the rest is history .  And yet . With James Gunn’s Superman on the horizon, I’m inevitably thinking about one of my favorite Superman movies, one that stirs my emotions and gets my heart going pitter-pat every time I return to watch it. I’m not embarrassed about this, because I’m right.  Not Superman Returns itself — hell no. I’m talking about the first teaser trailer for Superman Returns .  I...

In a secret pre-holiday update to Cyberpunk 2077 , developer CD Projekt Red added a little tabletop-shaped gift. A spokesperson from Cyberpunk publisher R. Talsorian Games told Polygon that “any person who owns Cyberpunk 2077 and can access their Bonus Content folder can now find Cyberpunk RED: Easy Mode in there, of course for free.” Without mention, Cyberpunk 2077 ’s update 2.2 quietly offered up the quick start guide to the tabletop role-playing game. Easy Mode has abridged rules and an introductory mission to onboard new players quickly to using dice pools instead of controllers and keyboards. Players will be able to act as one of five pre-generated characters in the quick start: the charismatic Rockerboy, the lethal Solo, the inventive Tech, the lifesaving Medtech, and the hard-hitting Media. Though the guide includes a brief dive into the history and landscape of Night City, fans of the video game should feel intimately familiar with the prequel world of Cyberpunk RED . Th...

World of Warcraft is renowned for its expansive set of locations, from barren deserts to lush forests, but some of the most interesting zones are densely inhabited, like Suramar or Tiragarde Sound. The first major patch for The War Within expansion adds another such area with Undermine, the goblin capital and a massive urban center that’s not quite like anything else seen on Azeroth. On Thursday, Blizzard released a video of Undermine detailing what to expect from the goblin capital. The goblins have been underserved by World of Warcraft ; since their introduction all the way back in 2010’s Cataclysm, they’ve mostly served as goofy comic relief for the Horde. The goblin starting zone in Cataclysm is similarly advanced, with cars, highways, and even a personal assistant for the player — but it was destroyed by the emergence of Deathwing. Some of the goblin collectives in Patch 1.1 (which is cleverly titled Undermined ) have been enemies in past patches. Luckily, they’re in...

Warner Bros.’ first trailer for 2025’s Superman arrived on Thursday, and it gives fans a look at David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, and lots and lots of people looking up at the sky. It’s been almost two years since Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn took over leadership of DC Studios alongside producer Peter Safran, and announced a new slate of DC Comics films . Superman , formerly known as Superman: Legacy , is the new DC Universe’s first big-screen effort, introducing a new version of the original superhero to a wide audience. Superman rounds out its cast with Edi Gathegi ( X-Men: First Class ) as the superhero Mister Terrific, who Gunn has said “ has a big part of the plot .” Written and directed by Gunn himself, Superman also features a whole cadre of other DC Comics superheroes — including Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrig...

For Humble Bundle’s Very Humble Holiday , Adams Media is having a flash bundle sale that will give you all the skills and knowledge you need to be a great dungeon master . Raising money for Worldreader, the bundle includes 22 books collected from the Ultimate RPG series , Teri Litorco’s Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming , the Düngeonmeister food and drink recipe books, and a collection of mythology books to inspire your worldbuilding.  One of the only major publishers to venture into tabletop roleplaying games, Simon & Schuster imprint Adams media began publishing books about tabletop games in 2016, with Litorco’s guide that included 100 gaming etiquette rules “every gamer must live by.” In 2018, it published the Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide by James D’Amato , Polygon contributor and founder of the One Shot actual play network . The book offers prompts and exercises to flesh out player character backstories, creating a more fully fleshed persona for players to ...

Palia is a cozy crafting game set in a beautiful fantasy world where humans have recently re-emerged into a world claimed by friendly elves and helpful robots. Over the game’s time in beta, game developer Singularity 6 has been adding new activities in the underground market of Kilima village and the open zone of Bahari Bay, making it more inviting to venture out into the world. But there’s no place like home, and Wednesday’s Holiday Homestead patch adds some fun new activities for players to enjoy at their homestead. Players in Palia have a home plot where they can build whatever they like — usually a lovely house and base of operations. But looking through community lots, you can also find things like giant dinosaurs, movie theaters, or forest glades. During the first Winterlights celebration in 2023 — it’s the Kilima equivalent of Christmas — players unlocked seasonal decorations like a tree and strings of lights. This year, Singularity 6 decided to capture the experience of ...

Elden Ring Nightreign is a cooperative spinoff with an asterisk. You can play it with a group of three or by yourself, but not in a duo, according to an IGN interview with director Junya Ishizaki. There isn’t a technical reason for this awkward limitation, however. It’s about game balance. “This was largely a game balancing decision, rather than a game design decision,” Ishizaki said. “So it came as development progressed.” Like in Elden Ring , enemy health will scale based on your group size. However, the team found the “sweet spot” is three players because it doesn’t “feel too overwhelming or too busy,” he said. Even though Elden Ring worked just fine with two people, Nightreign has a very different approach to combat. You only have three nights to level up and collect gear before its baddest bosses show up. Hands-on previews from IGN and PC Gamer say the run-based structure speeds up the action from what you’re familiar with in the original game, and its unique heroes have ...

The GameDiscoverCo newsletter is a regular biz-centric look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s, featuring ‘how they sold millions’ posts, charts, and the latest game discovery & platform news. It’s written by GDCo founder Simon Carless. We’re here: last stop for 2024, everybody off, the GDCo newsletter is heading to the depot. Before we quit for the annum, massive love to our increasing band of colleagues at GDCo: Alejandro, Avi, Matt, Tomek and Strale – building our game data and info platform right, behind the scenes. (Some exciting news about that in Jan!) And the other set of people to thank? Why, it’s you! We have over 32,500 GDCo newsletter subscribers – up from 22k at the start of 2024 – and almost 3,000 of you have access to the Plus tier or higher, via individual and company subscription. Our boundless enthusiasm is fueled by yours, and we deeply appreciate the opportunity. [ FINAL BOSS: for EOY, please support GameDiscoverCo by subscribin...

Though the three Sonic the Hedgehog movies have charms of their own, they’ve also clearly benefited from a confluence of lucky breaks in order to reach their rarefied beloved-franchise status. The generally poor track record of previous video game adaptations; the release of the first movie before COVID closed theaters and the second one not long after movie-going started to return to normal; genre fan weariness with the sheer volume of Marvel continuity; the Sonic-nostalgic ’90s kids starting to have kids of their own: All of this has combined to overcome the fact that the Sonic movies tend to be sloppy, motormouthed, half-nonsensical affairs. (Weirdly, this might make Sonic the video-game-movie equivalent of Venom. They’re both ’90s icons! It tracks!) The series may actually be subject to a bizarre formula: The looser and more disparate the parts of a Sonic movie are, the better the whole somehow holds together. At least that would explain why Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, improbably, ...

“It’s been a minute since we’ve done this,” says Todd Kenreck in Dungeons & Dragon’s latest YouTube video , “but we have a new Unearthed Arcana.” Sitting across from him is a smiling Jeremy Crawford, D&D’s lead rules designer, who says he is “so glad that the first Unearthed Arcana after the new Player’s Handbook and the new Dungeon Master’s Guide is the Artificer.”  Unearthed Arcana , in its current form, has been an avenue for D&D designers to present players with in-progress fifth edition materials like class archetypes, species, and rule variants. Through playtests, designers like Jeremy Crawford are able to see how audiences engage with these new mechanics, and are able to make adjustments before these additions are canonized in core books. Supplements like Planescape and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything were publicly playtested as Unearthed Arcana. The playtests have also been used to trial big edition updates D&D 2024, which Wizards of the Coast re...

Bluey , the kid-friendly series that has made a name of itself by wrecking adults with stories of family, friends, and little life moments, is getting the movie treatment from Disney. The Australian animated series globally distributed by the BBC became a sensation in the U.S. after a streaming deal brought it to Disney Plus in 2020. Since that debut, Bluey ’s been regularly in the top 10 most streamed programs across all platforms, leading to a merchandise bonanza, an iffy video game , a hunt for the show’s “forbidden” episode , and millions of people melting into puddles over the adventures of Bluey, a blue dog with the sensibilities of an six-year-old, and her fun-loving family. In this house, we love Bluey . The Bluey movie will be written by series creator Joe Brumm and produced by Ludo Studio, which has been behind the series’ gorgeous animation from the beginning. Amber Naismith ( Happy Feet , The Lego Movie ) is joining the feature as a producer, while Richard Jeffery, who...

Slugma, the lava Pokémon from Johto, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go . Yes, Slugma can be shiny in Pokémon Go ! You won’t see neither Slugma nor Magcargo get any use in PvP or PvE content, but it’s a pretty good shiny! It’ll be a hard decision whether or not to evolve your sweet silver slug into a slay hot pink snail. What is the shiny rate for Slugma in Pokémon Go? As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine ), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Slugma is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate). What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon? Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokém...

Days before the final episode of Survivor ’s 47th season, gaming company Exploding Kittens announced Survivor The Tribe Has Spoken , a new card-based party game designed in collaboration with the show’s Emmy Award-winning host and producer Jeff Probst. Designed for both superfans and the uninitiated alike, the Survivor card game attempts to mirror the social strategy the genre-defining reality show has become famous for. This is not the first licensed game by the Exploding Kittens team — having released Exploding Minions in 2021 — but co-founder and CEO Elan Lee’s excitement for this partnership seems to be more than just a savvy business collaboration. “I’ve watched every episode of Survivor since the first season — 24 years ago. It has had a massive influence on my own game designs and ability to craft amazing experiences for our players,” said Lee in the game’s press release. “I have always wanted to bring the Survivor experience to at-home audiences, but condensing a multi-week...

Your crosshair is customizable in Marvel Rivals — a relative rarity for this sort of competitive shooter. Given the wide range of characters (and equally wide range of playstyles) in Rivals , a custom crosshair can give you a serious edge. In this Marvel Rivals guide, we’ll teach you how to customize your crosshair to perfectly fit your playstyle and how to import crosshair styles from other users, plus a list of the best crosshair codes for some commonly used reticle styles. How to customize crosshair in Marvel Rivals To get to the crosshair customization menu in Marvel Rivals , open the settings menu and select your input device of choice (keyboard or controller), then select the combat sub-menu. Scroll down to HUD, and Reticle Save will be the first option at the top of the list. From here, you can simply swap to another default reticle, or you can open the advanced menu setting by hitting the plus symbol, and fully customize your own crosshair. You can change the wid...

Dungeons & Dragons celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, a major milestone not just for Wizards of the Coast but for the entire tabletop role-playing game industry . Even as Wizards sought to simultaneously take a victory lap and secure D&D’s dominance by releasing new core rulebooks , other publishers looked back to the hobby’s history to put fresh spins on what old-school gaming means. The hobby’s growing popularity also leaves plenty of room for innovation , as designers craft fantastical new worlds and put strange spins on history. This alphabetical list of the best tabletop role-playing books of 2024 includes items from the industry’s top designers and standout work from brand-new publishers. Whether you’re looking to hunt monsters or for hope at the end of the world, deep mechanics or plenty of laughs, these books show off the power of TTRPGs to unleash the imagination and how far the hobby has come in the past half-century.  Blades in the Dark: Deep Cu...