Culture
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A look back at the Hearthstone cards Blizzard has nerfed

Along with its next expansion and the controversial addition of the new standard format, Hearthstone is set to receive some major downgrades — colloquially referred to as nerfs by the gaming community — to cards from its Classic and Basic sets. These are the first nerfs the game has seen since October of last year, but they're far from the only nerfs it's ever received. In his most recent video, popular Hearthstone streamer and video creator Kripparrian runs down a history of every card update the game has received, starting from early beta. If you weren't playing back then, the biggest surprise might just be how terribly overpowered the rogue class was in general. Kripp also runs down a few notable buffs that some classes or cards received during those early days to help raise their...
Video
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Hover Junkers lets you build defenses and blast other ships in VR

Watch on YouTube | Subscribe to Polygon on YouTube Hover Junkers is a game coming to the HTC Vive this April, and I recently jumped online to play a few rounds with the developers. Some of the highlights from our gunfights can be viewed above, but video doesn't really prepare you for the experience of actually walking around your virtual ship and taking cover as the bullets fly past your noggin. Be sure to pay attention to how easy it is to communicate with people on your team, and even enemy players, non-verbally. The game animates your avatar using the tracking data from the controllers and headset, making it simple to do things like point where you need to go or decide who is driving. "We can teach people the game in about 15 minutes, but it takes hours and hours to master,"...
Cover Story
Issue 15

February 8, 2016

Sonic the Hedgehog’s long, great, rocky history

The peaks and valleys of one of gaming’s most notable characters.

Read more

15 minutes of Wartile, our interview

  • Star Fox Zero's Retro Arwing

  • Hearthstone + Dungeons & Dragons = Labyrinth

  • An embarrassing Hearthstone Tavern Brawl

  • We can't stop playing Stardew Valley

News
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Mega Yarn Yoshi returning to Toys R Us later this month

Toys R Us is bringing back Mega Yarn Yoshi to stores, the retailer announced today on Twitter. Starting March 20, amiibo collectors, Yoshi fans and lovers of anything cute will have another chance to grab the limited edition plush. Mega Yarn Yoshi is a deluxe version of the regular Yarn Yoshi amiibo, both of which launched to coincide with the release of Yoshi's Woolly World on Wii U. The $40 collectible is 8 inches tall and, just as it was in its initial release, is only available at Toys R Us. When Mega Yarn Yoshi hit stores in November, Toys R Us said that it would stock the special toy in "extremely limited" amounts. That holds true for the second wind of the store-exclusive amiibo. To see Mega Yarn Yoshi in adorable action, check out our video below.
31 Comments
Tom Clancy's The Division

The Division Weekly: Launch Week! #Div/0!

Hello Polygon Community. This is the last week before The Division comes out, so I am firing up a community thread for us to gather round the fire to share stories (once it comes out), speculate, and enjoy the anticipation. For this week, I'll round-up some articles with interesting information, and just try to get folks ready to start on the right foot. The game comes out today! Are you excited? Have you pre-loaded the game if you're getting it digitally? I missed my big opportunity to capture deleting Destiny to make room for The Division, but I'm sure someone out there captured it. For this week, I'm sure we'll all be finding our footing, so feel free to share any observations, or tactics. See you in the Dark Zone! Recent Articles Cool gear versus Sweet gear by...
Movies
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J.K. Simmons is joining up with the Justice League

Oscar winner J.K. Simmons has joined the cast of Warner Bros. Studios' Justice League movies, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The actor will play the role of Commissioner James "Jim" Gordon, Gotham City's chief of police and Batman's frequent ally. The film, a two-parter, won't make its theatrical debut until next year. Part One is out Nov. 17, 2017, with Part Two to follow on June 14, 2019. Simmons' co-stars include Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Godot as Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck as the Dark Knight himself. All three will appear in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, out later this month; that movie serves as a prelude to the team-focused Justice League films. Commissioner Gordon was last seen on the big screen in The Dark Knight Rises, where he was played by Gary Oldman....
Deals
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The Division available for $25 off at GameStop with a trade-in

Tom Clancy's The Division, the New York City-based multiplayer shooter from Massive Entertainment, is available at a deep discount from GameStop with select game trade-ins, the retailer announced today. The $25 trade-in deal drops the price of The Division to $34.99, a discount of 42 percent off the game's $59.99 regular price. The same discount is also available for the game's Gold Edition, which retails for $99.99 and includes The Division's $39.99 season pass; that version of the game will cost $74.99 after a trade. GameStop customers can take advantage of the offer by trading in a game from a list of 59 different titles, including Grand Theft Auto 5 (PS4 or Xbox One); a variety of Pokémon games; FIFA 16, Madden NFL 16 and NHL 16 (last-gen and current-gen, where applicable); and...
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Off-topic

Would you be interested in console hardware upgrades?

Welcome to Polygon Asks, where we have community discussions about the things we love. Our topic: Would you be interested in console hardware upgrades? With the talk of the Xbox One possibly getting hardware upgrades, would you be interested in a console that you could upgrade? What sort of upgrades would you be interested in? What are the pros and cons of an upgradeable console? Do you think fragmentation is an obstacle that would prevent the idea from succeeding or do you think it could be minimized to an acceptable degree? Do you think this would phase out the console generation as we know it or do you think this should be a mid-cycle option? So many questions! Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Opinions will differ on this matter and all of us are passionate...
News
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Key figure quits beleaguered project to make a new Coleco console (update)

A person connected to the Coleco Chameleon — a project to create a cartridge-based retro gaming console — has quit, citing the controversy surrounding the console and questions of its legitimacy raised this week. In a note on his LinkedIn page, David Giltinan said "everything going on with the Coleco Chameleon is a major reason why I have to separate myself from everything associated with it." Update: Giltinan responded to a request for comment; additional remarks are further down in this story. Giltinan is, or was, the managing editor of Retro Magazine, which is owned by Mike Kennedy, the co-founder of RetroVGS, which is behind the Coleco Chameleon. At New York Toy Fair in mid-February, RetroVGS faced allegations that the unit it was showing was in fact a SNES Jr. "duct-taped" inside...
TV
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Snow artist walks 20 miles for Game of Thrones tribute

In 1988, The Proclaimers, well, proclaimed that they would walk 500 miles for love. While international snow artist Simon Beck didn't quite walk that far, he did trek a fair bit to showcase his love for Game of Thrones. Hosted by Sky Atlantic, the British television channel that carries HBO's hit series, Beck walked approximately 20 miles through Alpine snow to create this artistic tribute to the Stark family. According to the description on the YouTube page, it took Beck about 24 hours to carry out the design, using just a compass for navigation. The entire piece takes up approximately 2.5 soccer pitches. Game of Thrones returns to HBO for its sixth season April 24.
News
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Bear Simulator dev calls game 'lost cause' after negative reception

The developer of Bear Simulator, a Kickstarter-project-turned-Steam-release in which players take on the role of a bear, says he will no longer work on the game, thanks to "drama" following its launch. In a campaign update on Kickstarter over the weekend, developer John Farjay of Farjay Studios wrote that "making any updates or going further is basically a lost cause now," due to the game's reception. While backers and the majority of players on Steam, on which Bear Simulator launched Feb. 26, have spoken positively of the humorous game, Farjay referred to its most vocal, negative reviewers as the cause of his frustration. Most notably, that includes PewDiePie, the popular YouTube streamer whose videos attract millions of views. After Farjay made Bear Simulator widely available,...
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All Games
News
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The Division's first two expansions are exclusive to Xbox One for a month

The first two expansions for Tom Clancy's The Division will be 30-day timed exclusives for Xbox One, publisher Ubisoft confirmed today. Ubisoft announced developer Massive Entertainment's schedule of planned updates for The Division last week, laying out a slate of three paid expansions — Underground in June, Survival in the summer and Last Stand in the winter — along with free content updates. Ubisoft has yet to announce individual pricing for the expansions, but all three are covered by the game's $39.99 season pass. A promotional video for The Division that GameStop released in February pointed out the downloadable content's timed exclusivity, which Ubisoft originally announced during E3 2014. We asked Ubisoft last week for details on the exclusivity, but the publisher didn't...
Movies
10 Comments

Marvel casts Disney star Zendaya in new Spider-Man movie

Disney star Zendaya (Shake It Up!, K.C. Undercover) has reportedly signed on to star opposite Tom Holland in Marvel and Sony's rebooted Spider-Man series. According to Deadline, the actress will play the female lead in the movie, but it's unclear as to whether or not she'll play one of Peter Parker's love interests, including Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane Watson. Exactly who Zendaya will play in the movie is still unknown. Holland, who will make his first appearance as the new Spider-Man in Marvel's upcoming Captain America: Civil War, was brought on board last June. Spider-Man will be released in theaters July 7, 2017.
Star Wars
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Exclusive images by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others from the Topps archives.

Star Wars, from the comic world’s greatest artists

A new book from Abrams Comic Arts, Star Wars Galaxy: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, features art from more than 170 artists, including Sergio Aragonés (MAD Magazine), Simon Bisley (Judge Dredd), Bret Blevins (New Mutants), June Brigman (Brenda Starr), J. Scott Campbell (Spider-Man), Howard Chaykin (Star Wars comics), Mark Chiarello (Hellboy), Gene Colan (Daredevil), Amanda Connor (Power Girl, Vampirella), Steve Ditko (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and other Marvel and DC classics), Colleen Doran (The Sandman, Wonder Woman), Rick Geary (Heavy Metal), Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), Keith Giffen (Suicide Squad), Jean "Moebius" Giraud (Alien, Tron and The Fifth Element) Mike Grell (Green Lantern, Green Arrow), Jeffrey Jones, Jack Kirby, Karl Kesel (Superman, Captain America), Jae Lee...
News
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Valve returns to Aperture Science with new VR experiments called The Lab

Valve will debut a new virtual reality test next week that returns players to the world of Portal. The studio revealed the project in a press release ahead of its formal unveiling at next week's Game Developers Conference 2016. According to Valve, the "compilation of new VR experiments" are collectively called The Lab and are set in Aperture Laboratories. That location is best known as the setting of the Portal titles, Valve's fan-favorite first-person puzzle games. When The Lab launches on Steam later this spring, it will be available free of charge. It will also show off various ways to test out the room-scale VR features of HTC Vive, the $800 headset Valve is producing in collaboration with HTC. Valve recently used the backdrop of Portal for another VR release: The SteamVR...
Movies
19 Comments

Hellboy 3 is 'probably never going to happen'

Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy series was always meant to be a trilogy, but its biggest star says fans probably shouldn't hold their breath waiting for the final installment. Ron Perlman, the actor who plays Hellboy in the series, told Variety that while he believed in the expression, "never say never," they simply weren't getting enough support from the studio to move forward and make the third movie. It's something that Perlman has expressed his grief over before. In an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Perlman confessed that he didn't care if it was an "$8 million independent film" at this point. "We are obligated as filmmakers to give it [the final movie] to the audience," Perlman said. The actor added that he's talked to del Toro about the third film and told The...
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Wartile is a gorgeous strategy game that keeps the action moving, our interview

Watch in 60 fps on YouTube | Subscribe to Polygon on YouTube There are many video games out there that attempt to replicate the experience of tabletop gaming, but let's be honest: Many of them are painfully slow, and some are downright boring. To combat that tedium, Wartile does something very ambitious by blending a real-time movement system with tabletop miniatures-style combat. Michael Rud Jakobsen is the founder and creative director of Playwood Project, the indie team behind Wartile, and you can try the demo on Steam right now. I had a few days with the press version of the game, which is now on Kickstarter, and was very surprised by the level of polish — even at this early state. Turns out that this isn't Jakobsen's first rodeo. He's been a game developer for about a decade,...
Video
11 Comments

Sniper Elite 4 sends the World War II series to Italy this year

Karl Fairburne, the eagle-eyed hero of Rebellion's cult hit World War II franchise Sniper Elite, joins the Italian resistance in Sniper Elite 4, which launches sometime this year on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. In the description from Rebellion, Fairburne will take up arms with Italians struggling to free their nation in 1943, with the fate of the Allied liberation of Europe on the line. Rebellion is promising settings in "sun-drenched mediterranean coastal towns, colossal Nazi megastructures, daunting forests and giddying mountain monasteries inspired by Monte Cassino." The studio also promises that all the action for which Sniper Elite is well known will return, particularly the stealth operations that can break down into up-close life-and-death struggles. Must Read ...
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Books
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J.K. Rowling to release four-part series about magic in North America

J.K. Rowling is about to release the first of four new pieces of writing detailing the history of magic in North America, according to a post on Pottermore. Based on the description provided, the new series will be very similar to Rowling's work in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, except this time she'll be exploring the vast species of magical creatures that live within the United States, Canada and Mexico. The series will act as a lead up to the release of the Fantastic Beasts film, which hits theaters Nov. 18. It's not the only new piece of Harry Potter-related writing Rowling will gift to fans, either. The author is also making the script for her new West End play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, available in book format on July 31. The Cursed Child acts as the eighth...
News
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Overwatch launching May 24, open beta coming in early May (update)

Update: Overwatch will be released May 24, Blizzard Entertainment confirmed in a post on the game's website. The studio also announced that it will run an open beta for the game from May 3-9. Customers who pre-order by April 29 will get early access from May 3-4, while anyone will be able to play the beta from May 5-9. The beta will be available on all three platforms: PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. Original story: A since-removed advertisement on IGN leaked the launch date for Overwatch, the upcoming class-based shooter from Blizzard Entertainment. It is May 24, according to the IGN ad. Kotaku published a screenshot of the ad sent in by their tipsters. The ad also mentioned that another beta will be held in May, with access to it granted by a pre-order. Overwatch is c...
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