Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Siege Operation Velvet Shell Available Tomorrow

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Siege Operation Velvet Shell Available Tomorrow 

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX^® SIEGE OPERATION VELVET SHELL AVAILABLE TOMORROW

The first main content update of Year 2 introduces a brand-new map with two new operators, an additional gameplay feature as well as a major navigation update 

Sydney, Australia — February 7^th 2017 – Today, Ubisoft announced that Operation Velvet Shell, the first free update of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Year 2 will be available for Xbox One, Sony Playstation^®4 and Windows PC from February 8, 2017. Year 2 pass holders will instantly receive the two new Operators of the Spanish Counter Terrorist Unit as well as their 4 signature weapons skins and non-Season Pass owners will be able to unlock them using Renown in-game currency or R6 Credits starting on February 14, 2017.

Click below to view trailer.

The new Coastline map featuring Operation Velvet Shell

In Operation Velvet Shell, players will be plunged into an effervescent night ambiance on the seashore of Ibiza. While embodying two Spanish operators from the Grupo Especial de Operaciones, the Rainbow team will regain control of the coastline thanks to their unique tactical expertise:

·         Mira has proven her strength and endurance but her best asset is her knowledge in mechanics. She is specialized in armoring process for ballistic protection. Equipped with the Vector 45 ACP and ITA12L as primary weapons, she can find the weaker spot on any machinery and reinforce it.

·         Jackal has developed his expertise in tracking down HVTs and intercepting narcotics shipments with the G.E.O.s. Equipped with the C7E and PDW9 as primary weapons, he triggered an acute sensitivity relating to his environment, which enables him to spot irregularities rapidly.

Additionally, as part of the ongoing commitment to enrich Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege playing experience, Year 2 will start with new dynamic navigation interface, making all players activities such as challenges, news and boosters available in the same place. Xavier Marquis, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Creative Director explains “We are working hard on ensuring the game’s longevity. Since we are here to stay, we’re making sure that you are getting comfortable”. 

To learn more about Operation Velvet shell, please visit www.rainbow6.com/VelvetShell

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is currently available worldwide for consoles and Windows PC.

More information about Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, is available on rainbow6.com  

Ubisoft Reveals For Honor 360° Immersive Experience, Pre-Load Open Beta Now

Ubisoft Reveals For Honor 360° Immersive Experience, Pre-Load Open Beta Now

FEEL THE THRILL OF THE FOR HONOR BATTLEFIELD WITH “IN THE BATTLE”, A 360° IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

Sharpen your Blade by Pre-Loading the Open Beta Now

To download all assets please visit the press extranet: ubisoft-press.com

SYDNEY — February 7, 2017 — Today, Ubisoft released ‘In the Battle’, a CGI video that transports viewers directly to the ground floor of a clash on the battlefield. This motion-captured, 360-degree video experience introduces viewers to the world of For Honor as Knights, Samurais and Vikings embark in perpetual conflict.

In the midst of a foggy plain, an everlasting war continues as the 3 great Factions are locked in battle. Each of them strives to rebuild their nations as they take to the frontlines in fierce close-range combat to bring glory back to their people. The 360-degree “In the Battle” experience is viewable here on YouTube and here on Facebook.

Click below to view 360 Battle trailer.

Players looking to experience the thrill of ruthless melee-combat firsthand can now pre-load the For Honor open beta on current-gen consoles and PC. Available from February 10 to February 13, 2017, this beta will include the new Elimination mode, a best of five rounds four-versus-four match with no respawns. Elimination joins three additional modes playable in the open beta including Dominion, Brawl and Duel, and nine playable Heroes. At launch, For Honor will feature twelve playable characters, five different multiplayer modes and a Story mode.



On February 8, 2017, at 9:00 am AEST, Ubisoft and Twitch, the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers, will call forth the fiercest warriors to participate in War of the Factions Live – a livestreamed event that will showcase the new Elimination Mode and help decide which Faction reigns supreme. Players looking to get a head start in the battlefield can sign up for Twitch Prime to receive 10-day Champions Status, available at launch on February 14, 2017, which comes with XP boosts that can be shared among friends along with more XP from crafting, more loot at the end of each match, and a special emblem they can use to customize their warrior. For more information and to sign up for Twitch Prime, visit: https://twitch.amazon.com/prime 

Blair Witch: DVD Review

Blair Witch: DVD Review

17 years ago, a little film called The Blair Witch Project redefined the found footage horror genre and set the world alight in 1999.

A sequel, Book of Shadows did little to build on what the film offered in the first place (except to expand out some ideals of the first) - and now 20 years after the first film's found footage was shot, a bait and switch threequel from directing wunderkind Adam Wingard (You're Next, The Guest) was unveiled at San Diego Comic Con.

Previously masquerading under the title The Woods, Blair Witch once again heads back into the woods of Burkittsville and into the world of urban legend. This time, it's due to James (Allen McCune) whose sister Heather Donahue went missing first time around. When footage purportedly of Heather shows up on YouTube, James contacts the poster and asks to meet.

This leads to 4 friends, including one lifelong friend and documentarian Lisa (Hernandez), heading to the woods to see if they can find the original house and consequently, James' sister.

But this being Blair Witch, you can guess what happens next as the freaky moments begin to hit....

A lot's changed since the first Blair Witch arrived on the scene with its lo-fi skills and reasonably high concept game-changing ethos - and Wingard's smart enough, and also crippled enough by its legacy, to embrace that.

This one has wearable tech (ear cams) and utilises a drone and walkie-talkies; there's talk of the dark net, and a hint of Creepypasta's Slenderman thrown in as well, but at its heart, this film is as old-fashioned and as familiar as the first one. In many ways, a lot of the film feels like the first Blair Witch, slightly re-hashed and done again; there are cracks and noises in the woods, there are those stick figures, and there's the old pesky witch again.

But just as the jaded blanket of cinematic familiarity threatens to strangle your idea of what this film's setting out to do in its first 2 acts (which feel like a carbon copy of number 1), Wingard changes it up a little and throws in some effective jump scares that you know are coming but arrive with bone-crunching glee, before a distinctly claustrophobic finale.

It's more about the execution of some of these moments and the touches (a camera use in the Descent like finale's quite inventive) because most of the rest of it feels eerily familiar. And there's one element which is likely to provoke plenty of discussion and head-scratching confusion over timelines. (But to say more is to spoil, though needless to say resolution is frustratingly wanting)

If anything, Blair Witch plies deep into a world we now inhabit.

It's a world where the internet distorts and dissects urban legends, where internet grainy films are pored over endlessly and debated in reddit threads or forums; it's a world that's got too savvy for cheap thrills. And that was essentially what the first Blair Witch film offered - a lo-fi grainy hand-held take on a ghost story told around the camp fire. In among the truly impressive and dissonant, distorting soundscape, Wingard cleverly evokes that sense of questioning and plays on those down-the-rabbit-hole moments to provoke some thrills and expand some of the mythology that many may feel adds a sheen of freshness after the usual mundane set up antics.

And yet, if you go down to the Woods today, you're in for a familiar surprise in many ways, which is ironically, both Blair Witch's strength and its weakness.

It mines some effective thrills, and some genuinely unsettling and atmospheric moments, but it can't quite live up to the power of the first and in parts, feels like a re-tread of the iconic horror.

Ironically, Blair Witch is hampered by the first film's collective cultural importance to cinema; Wingard comes close to replicating parts of that film's success, but it can't help but escape its feeling of deja vu when the lights go up.

KONAMI confirms latest PES 2017 Data Pack will release on February 9th

KONAMI confirms latest PES 2017 Data Pack will release on February 9th

KONAMI confirms latest PES 2017 Data Pack will release on February 9th

Sydney, 6th February 2017 - Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. has revealed the details of its third free Data Pack update for its acclaimed PES 2017 title, with a wealth of new faces, Legend players and more coming February 9th on PlayStation®4, XboxOne, and PC.

KONAMI is constantly looking to improve the playing experience of PES 2017, and the update will be automatically downloaded to add the new features. PES 2017 is rightly regarded as having the most authentically recreated player faces of any football title, in addition to bespoke animations and true-to-life playing styles for its players. To this end, over 100 players will be visually enhanced within the Data Pack, spanning current squads and also bolstering the detail of a number of Legend players within the game as well.

In addition to face updates to a number of top players, Data Pack 3 will introduce eight classic Borussia Dortmund strips, spanning 1975-2012, marking key moments in the illustrious German team’s rise to become a world powerhouse. KONAMI has also added new pitch side hoardings to the game, and will premiere the adidas ball that will be used in the 2016/2017 UEFA Champions League final in Cardiff in June. Additionally, new boots will be added, with the newly released footwear from Nike, adidas and Puma.

Beginning February 9th, the popular myClub mode will also be accessible in the free-to-play, PES 2017 Trial Edition. The myClub mode introduces users to PES 2017’s gameplay elements in readiness for building their own title-winning squad. Users can obtain players using accrued points from in-game achievements or micro-transactions to assemble a team of their own. For those who start myClub for the first time on that day, through until February 23rd, will receive a UEFA Team of the Year and PES Player agent to help bolster their squad. 

PES 2017 centres on the concept of ‘Control Reality’, as the game ups its levels of intuitive control and its recreation of top-level football. With its ‘Real Touch’ system to ensure players can receive a pass and make space with a variety of movements, all-new ‘Precise Pass’ elements that ensure the user has complete control over the weight and speed of every pass they make, and stunning advances to both the out-field and goal keeping AI, PES 2017 delivers the definitive match day experience in every way.

Live By Night: Film Review

Live By Night: Film Review

Cast: Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, Robert Glenister, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller
Director: Ben Affleck

For Ben Affleck's latest directorial outing after Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo, he heads to Boston and gangster land for an adaptation of a 2012 Dennis Lehane novel.

Affleck is small time two-bit robber Joe Coughlin, who finds himself in the middle of a mob war between the Irish and the Italians after the end of World War I. Having survived the Somme, Coughlin's got no desire to become another soldier in another fight, but finds himself slap bang in the middle of a war when he attracts the wrong sort of attention of Irish mob boss Albert White (Glenister, in an almost unrecognisable role.)

Escaping barely with his life, Coughlin relocates to Florida and allies himself with the Italian mob with the aim of getting back at White. Sent to the hotter climes and to run the rum business as well as advance the Italian mob's desires, Coughlin finds himself in the middle of another fight when the KKK comes calling and Prohibition continues to bite.

Despite all the elements being in place for a reasonably strong crime caper, Affleck's Live By Night fails to find any hint of life or energy to keep you engaged.
It's a problem from the muted start; and despite the attention to the period detail and some truly effective crime scenes, Affleck fails to hit any of the emotional highs that are necessary.

With a strong cast (Messina particularly impresses as Coughlin's Florida right hand man and Cooper's stoic work as the conflicted yet practical Sheriff) and the hint of a good story, nothing quite gels as it should. It's a shame as the premise is there - when was the last time you saw a gangster film in the Florida coast? But Affleck's character lacks any of the bite of a gangster or a man out for revenge - most of the film his expressionless and emotionless face merely spouts words and phrases; there's no heart and no fire in a moment of it, and the malaise is contagious.

It doesn't really help that Coughlin's so inherently a good guy (as witnessed by his continual wearing of white suits) when a bad guy's touch would have added more to the film.

Under-sketched characters don't add much either- Saldana's presented as a matriarch of the Rum industry in Florida and fades when her presence comes into Coughlin's shadow; and Miller's one-note turn at the start gives little edge either.

To be fair, it can't all be laid at Affleck's door; his eye brings a sutiably taut (if murky) final shoot-out and there are some truly wonderful vistas caught on camera.

But without the fire in the cinematic and narrative belly, Live By Night is left to flounder and wither on the vine. And that's a rum deal for all of us.

The Neon Demon: DVD Review

The Neon Demon: DVD Review

Simultaneously surreal and vapid, Nicholas Winding Refn's visual powerhouse The Neon Demon is a translucent dream of a film that's centred around a tale as old as time.

More a visual experience than a narrative triumph, Nicholas Winding Refn's The Neon Demonwill engage some and infuriate others, but proves once again this cinema's enfant terrible knows exactly how to pull people's strings and visually present a film.

Following 16 year old naïf Jesse (a waif-like and impressive Elle Fanning) who heads to LA on the dream of becoming a model, the story is a familiar retread of the old innocent going down into the woods, where the Big Bad wolves of the modelling industry live.

Orphaned and with only a portfolio of questionable quality to her name, she finds her "deer in the headlights" look is fresh and engaging within an industry that (in this case) literally chews up and spits out talent. Finding a friend in Jena Malone's make-up artist Ruby, who practises her art on the dead as well as the living, Jesse's circled by a pack of predators, both in the form of a sleazy motel owner (played with terrifying duplicity by Keanu Reeves) and a couple of models (Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee ) who are wary that Jesse may usurp them.

But as Jesse's seduced by the world she wants to enter and her power grows with her hold on those around her thanks to her innocence, the wolves are circling...

Too weak to be a scathing satire on the fashion industry (the viewpoints espoused in wooden dialogue and bon mots are hardly new or fresh), The Neon Demon's trance-like hold comes from its visual trappings. Swathes of blues and reds swamp the screen as a sensory synthesiser score blasts from within; the allegory is all too obvious but the execution of it is seductively sublime, once you succumb to its rhythms (which may prove too hollow and grating for some).

As hallucinatory elements take hold, and the music video aesthetics fall by the wayside, a final act horror tale comes to the fore and some darker elements rise to the top. But there are moments that are telegraphed throughout by the somewhat underwritten peripherary of characters; each exchange between the models is soaked with double meaning (One asks if the other is "food or sex") as the cynicism of scatty and catty dialogue is despatched. 

Both Fanning and Malone impress; the former in her gradual growing and ultimate journey as she morphs from innocent to power; and the latter for a performance that pushes all the buttons it should as it provocatively goes to where it's always been heading.

It may be that Refn fetishizes the models, the actresses and their ultimate transposition to the screen but ultimately The Neon Demon is a visual triumph; an intense blast of provocateur cinema that won't be for all, and is certainly not flawless as it borders on stultifying tedium at times; it's electric in other parts and, thanks to some incredible visuals, best experienced on the big screen.

LEGO(r) Dimensions(tm) Expansion Packs Based on The Goonies, Harry Potter, and LEGO City Announced for May Release

LEGO(r) Dimensions(tm) Expansion Packs Based on The Goonies, Harry Potter, and LEGO City Announced for May Release

LEGO® Dimensions™ Expansion Packs Based on The Goonies, Harry Potter,

and LEGO City Announced for May Release

__________________________________________________________________________________

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today revealed details around three highly collectable new expansion packs for LEGO Dimensions, the LEGO toy and videogame hybrid, that will be available on May 10, 2017.  The Goonies Level Pack, the Harry Potter Fun Pack and LEGO City Fun Pack will broaden the selection of the world’s most popular entertainment brands available for the game, allowing players to customize their experience by mixing and matching favorite characters and universes with full compatibility. In addition, LEGO minifigures included within each of these expansion packs come with special golden Toy Tags which unlock a free play Adventure World of the corresponding entertainment brand, as well as a Battle Arena that can be reached through Vorton. Each Battle Arena is unique to the world of the character used to unlock it and features competitive split-screen local gameplay for up to four players, with four exciting gameplay modes including Capture the Flag, Objective, Base Bash, and Tick, Tag, Boom!.

The Goonies Level Pack includes a complete level of The Goonies gameplay where players can help Sloth and Chunk escape the Fratelli hideout and join the rest of the Goonies on their search for One Eyed Willy’s treasure. Players can use Sloth’s Super Strength to smash through walls or play as Chunk and use his infamous Truffle Shuffle. The rebuildable One-Eyed Willy’s Pirate Ship will sail on water and can also be built into the Fanged Fortune and the Inferno Cannon; while the rebuildable Skeleton Organ has Sonar Smash abilities and can also be built into the Skeleton Jukebox and Skele-Turkey for added game play capabilities.  Sloth provides access to a new The Goonies Battle Arena, and also the Adventure World where players can explore Mikey’s House, Inferno Cove and the Goon Docks. Once the level is complete, players will be able to replay through the game and other levels as any of the seven other Goonies characters to solve additional puzzles and access more collectibles in their journey through the LEGO multiverse.

Players can extend their wizarding adventures in LEGO Dimensions with the Harry Potter Fun Pack which includes a Hermione Granger LEGO minifigure. She can cast magical spells such as Wingardium Leviosa to levitate objects and Lumos to light up dark places. She also allows players to unlock the Harry Potter Battle Arena for a competitive match, along with the Adventure World where they can explore locations in Hogwarts, Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley. Players can build the 3-in-1 rideable Buckbeak the Hippogriff and use its Stomp Attack to smash Silver LEGO bricks, then rebuild it into the Giant Owl and the Fierce Falcon for additional in-game abilities.

Players can help stop crime in the LEGO Dimensions multiverse with the LEGO City Fun Pack featuring a Chase McCain LEGO minifigure.  Chase can become a Miner to break Silver LEGO bricks or a Fireman to use his Water Beam to put out fires. Gamers can use his LEGO City Detective Scanner to track down bad guys and change his disguise to unlock more abilities.  In the LEGO City Adventure World, there are new areas to explore like Blackwell’s moon base and the LEGO City Police Department.  Players can also compete with up to three of their friends in the LEGO City Battle Arena. Additionally, Chase’s 3-in-1 Police Helicopter can be built to fire off bolts, then rebuild it into the Police Hovercraft and Police Plane for additional in-game abilities.

Developed by TT Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, LEGO Dimensions is now available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment systems, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and the Wii U system.