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Voice actors are refusing to record any voices until game makers and entertainment companies agree to update a decades-old contract.

The post BREAKING: Voice Actors Go On Strike Against Disney, WB, EA, Take 2, Activision and Other Game Makers appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Dark Horse Comics has announced two new books based on highly anticipated video games. Call of Duty and Lara Croft will join Mirror’s Edge: Exordium this fall as the publisher is quickly turning big video games into a full on line of comics.

Over on IGN, the publisher announced an official prequel comic to Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty Black Ops III game. Written by Larry Hama (G.I. Joe) with art by Marcelo Ferreira (Transformers, TMNT), Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the comic, will follow the story of an elite group of soldiers infiltrating a terrorist cell only to find something even more dangerous. A free mini-comic will be available to anyone attending SDCC next week at the Dark Horse booth and outside at the Activision experience. In addition to the free mini-comic, a full series is set to debut on November 4, just two days before the release of game.

Not to be outdone. Based in the same universe as the Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light games from Crystal Dynamics, Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen is a five issue miniseries written by Corrina Bechko (INVISIBLE REPUBLIC) and illustrated by Tomb Raider comics veteran Randy Green.

In this all-new adventure, Lara must stop a group of cultists from causing world-wide cataclysmic devastation, and ancient ivory artifacts hold the key to both salvation and destruction. The miniseries marks the return of impractical teal tank and dual pistols Lara Croft.

Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen will hit stores on Oct 7, 2015.

Since pioneering the “toys to life” genre in gaming, the Skylanders franchise has generated over $3 Billion and sold over 250 million action figures. It’s become a yearly franchise for the game’s publisher, Activision, and this year at E3 the franchised announced the next step in the game. This year it’s about giving fans of two different gaming worlds moments they can both enjoy this Fall in Skylanders Superchargers.

We were invited to a behind closed doors demo at the Activision booth featuring gameplay walkthrough with developer Vicarious Visions and a close look at how the Nintendo Skylanders characters work.

In Skylanders Superchargers, Kaos has unleashed The Darkness to take control of Skylands. Fortunately, a special team of Skylanders known as the SuperChargers has been assembled to pilot an incredible fleet of vehicles with the power to travel through the destruction – over land, sea, and air.

Our demo took us through the main part of the game as we saw how the new vehicles work with the game. Everything you love about the previous games is here. Children and their family’s will see the puzzle solving, platform, and quirkiness these characters are known for. The new vehicle toys can be activated at any time but they really come into play accessing and exploring new areas of the Skylands. For example one area will only let you explore it if you have a water vehicle while another can only be traversed with an plane.

The demo wasn’t so much about the game’s story, but what this new element of gameplay would add. Each vehicle, when put on the portal for the first time, would show a unique animation that introduces it as the magic happens. Every one of these new types of toys also has the ability to be “supercharged” when paired with its corresponding Skylander. When Spitfire gets put on the portal with the new Hotstreak car, the game visually shows the hot rod beef up with new features and attributes including increased attack power for tougher bosses.

What will really set Skylanders Superchargers apart for Nintendo fans are two big additions to the game. Bowser and Donkey Kong are coming to Skylanders through special new figures. As someone’s kids say, don’t get it twisted. These aren’t just Amiibos with cross functionality. They’re Skylanders first. Donkey Kong and Bowser each have unique attributes in Skylanders Superchargers and each will have their own vehicles inspired by games like Donkey Kong Country including supercharged abilities. When playing the game with Donkey Kong, players get to launch unique attacks such as throwing barrels or leaving a conga drum mine for enemies.  Turning over the Donkey Kong figure players can switch it from Skylander mode to Amiibo for use in supported Nintendo games such as Smash Bros.

Vicarious Visions have listened to players and consumers alike in making this new Skylanders game. If you don’t want to add every new Skylander toy to your  hundred figure plus collection, you don’t have to. Every toy from every game will work on Skylanders Superchargers in some capacity. If you previously invested in Trap Team, even those special toys have a function in Superchargers. The new Superchargers portal has a slot for Trap figures. Though you will not be capturing your enemies in the same way as Trap Team; the toys will unlock different power ups in the game for the character on the portal.

Every Skylander can jump into any vehicle and the team has cashed in on any small element they could tweak in the game. For instance when you pair a bulky Skylander in a smaller vehicle it looks adorably awkward on screen as the team intended. Even Nintendo characters can ride in anyone’s vehicle.

A new starter pack with portal and two characters will be available at launch, but any portal will work with the game. You can buy a digital version of the game by itself and use previously purchased portals. Though only the Trap Team portal will be able to use trap characters. Only the Nintendo characters will be available in a two pack of toy and car but that price hasn’t been announced.

It’s remarkable what this franchise has accomplished since it spawned from Spyro the Dragon. Activision and the developers that work on Skylanders haven’t settled and they don’t take the new competition in the market lightly. While the Nintendo characters are exclusive to the Nintendo versions of the game; it does raise the question of possible crossovers with characters from those other platforms in future games. We can’t wait. Year after year the franchise has managed to deliver something that feels new and Superchargers is going to continue that tradition when the game releases on September 20, 2015.

Find out more about Skylanders on the game’s official website here.

What a 48hrs it’s been. Gamers have been given reason to cheer and cry. Such weight that can only be decompressed with hours of performing Mortal Kombat X fatalities.

Wait that ain’t it… oh well let’s talk about some of the major news video games has recently bombarded us with.

On Sunday, Treyarch showed off the first full trailer for the next installment of the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty: Black Ops III comes to the PS4, Xbox One, and PC this November.

Now the series has become a yearly expectation, not unlike a new Madden Football game or MLB The Show. Hell, the game has even aided in giving birth to pro gaming leagues where Mountain Dew fueled players compete for bragging rights and copious amounts of cash. So what can a new installment bring that we haven’t seen before? Bigger combat arenas allowed the game to boast a 4-player co-op campaign. For the first time in the franchise’s history, the campaign’s protagonist is fully customizable. In addition to upgrading abilities, changing your character’s appearance and tweaking weapons, players can pick the gender of their Call of Duty hero. Black Ops also brings back Zombie survival mode, where players obliterate wave after wave of the undead. This time the mode comes with a full character progression system similar to multiplayer.

Being the third CoD game by Treyarch, the group is leaving nothing out. Come November we’ll see wall running, underwater combat, unlimited sprinting, the ability to customize your solider as a heroic female in the campaign, and swimming. Yes according to the developer certain battle arenas will have areas where players can have their solider swim while still controlling weapons and combat. Though we haven’t seen much of how this development will affect the game, it sure does sound like a thing they threw in after the art directors pool party. The one thing the game really needs is a new Jim Lee drawn cover.

Cause this weird “I gotta go to the bathroom but I don’t want to put my guns down” box ain’t cutting it.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is set to release on November 6, 2015. Preordering through Gamestop will get you access to the upcoming beta.

Disney Infinity 2.0 finally released their mobile app on Android today. The guesstimated five of us that don’t have iPhones can now:

Create your own worlds and games starring over 60 of your favorite Marvel and Disney characters! Marvel Super Heroes come to Disney Infinity: Toy Box 2.0, with some of your favorite characters including the Avengers, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Also explore some of your favorite Disney and Disney/Pixar characters from Frozen (Elsa & Anna), Big Hero 6 (Hiro & Baymax), Brave (Merida), Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters Inc, and more!

For anyone that hasn’t picked up any Disney Infinity console and PC version… yes the cost goes beyond what you’ll initially pay after the starter set. This is just the new trend in gaming. These miniature versions of Mickey Mouse, Venom, Jack Sparrow, and Baymax we all have to buy are the new form of downloadable content for games. Though they have the distinction of having desk/shelf potential for collectors, it can still add up to serious coin, which is why it’s a nice feature that you can use web code cards from your physical Disney Infinity Figures to unlock characters in the mobile game. Such a novelty is essentially making the content transferable through all the platforms that gives it a value other games could learn from.

Now if we could just get those Legos and Amibos to talk to each other.

Plus look at the meme potential!

As we talked a little about yesterday, Batman: Arkham Knight or as I call it “That thing I’m not going to work the week of June 23rd for,” dropped a new trailer that included the long awaited story playability of Nightwing, Robin, and Catwoman (I don’t count Arkham City cause you had to download her). The feature looks to be similar to what Grand Theft Auto 5 did with switching between three main characters at the push of a button at any time.

Here it is again in all it’s glory:

Two-Face, Oracle, Azrael, and the bat-plane also appear in the trailer. In addition to all this, pre-ordering the game get’s you a playable Harley Quinn in the game’s challenge maps and if you do it through GameStop then the Red Hood (Jason Todd) will also be yours. The game’s “Mature” rating doesn’t shine through in the trailer but you can see a level of despair that hasn’t been hit in the series yet, and that’s saying a lot because Arkham City wasn’t exactly sunshine and roses.

Fortunately we won’t have to wait too much longer as the game is locked into releasing worldwide June 23, 2015 on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

In the meantime, have you figured out who “Johnny Charisma” is yet?

Before we start the rundown of what gaming comics will be in stores this week, we should take a moment of “silence” for Silent Hills. Last year the world was told to play the creepy ass downloadable game P.T. In it, you’re put in the shoes of a man trapped in the hallways of a house where some supernatural depressing Scooby Doo ghost shit is going down.  The erie vibrance and mind bending nature of the situation made the game a brief but intense ride. Then at the end players find out that this is just a “Playable Teaser” for a game called Silent Hills. As if that wasn’t enough, we’re then told the game is being developed by Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and master film director Guillermo Del Torro. Then as if that isn’t enough we’re told Daryl Dixon himself, Norman Reedus, is going to  model and voice the main character.

Yesterday, Konami confirmed our worst fears and officially canceled Silent Hills.

For fans of the Silent Hill series; the teaser was like being defibrillated back to life. A franchise whose better days were behind them, only showing mere glimpses of awesome in comics being published by IDW, was going to make a comeback. For a brief moment two storytelling giants that specialize in the bizarre were going to give fans the game they knew this series could be and P.T was the proof.

What went wrong? While we may never know the real answer to that, at least until someone makes the documentary about all this ten years from now; the writing had been on the wall for quite sometime. Rumors surrounding Kojima leaving Konami after Metal Gear Solid 5 turned into plausible scenarios. Though he doesn’t look it, Hideo Kojima is like 50 something years old (Somewhere there’s an attic with a painting of an old Hideo Kojima screaming cause this guy doesn’t age). If he feels it’s time to move on and tell a new story then he’s earned that right. Most feel that he’ll put his passion for Hollywood to use. Then, Konami itself is starting to show signs of restructuring to focus on other ventures like gambling; they even pulled themselves from the New York Stock Exchange. Though, if you look at their numbers, it was apparent very little trading happened in the US for them. Both parites will undoutebly be okay as their names and properties alone could keep them afloat for years.

There’s the matter of Guillermo Del Torro. He was the first one to come out and say that he was no longer working on Silent Hills. The news was just the latest in a string of incomplete projects the filmmaker has in his portfolio; Justice League Dark and Haunted Mansion (announced at SDCC 2010 but only now finding its star) come to mind . It looks like Pacific Rim 2 will be done before either of those movies gets to theaters. In the end the tragic news of Silent Hills doesn’t fall on Del Torro, he’s a gamer and a storyteller who wanted to create art with a man he sees as a legend. When it became apparent that the legend was leaving the table, he decided not to do the project.

Kojima will be okay, Del Torro will be okay, Konami will be okay; the only real casualties here are all of us because we’ll never know what could have been.

Gaming Comics 4/29:

Injustice: Year Three Annual #1                                                                                                                                         (W) Ray Fawkes, Brian Buccellato (A) Sergio Fernandez Davila & Various (CA) Neil Googe

Today we look at the work of Alexandre Diboine, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

Video gameplay is about to get a lot more realistic. Game producer Activision unveiled this new demo yesterday at the Game Developers Conference. Uncanny or not, the progresss in computer animation has been remarkable. Real-time rendering techniques today look far more impressive than any rendering from a decade ago:

This animated character is being rendered in real-time on current video card hardware, using standard bone animation. The rendering techniques, as well as the animation pipeline are being presented at GDC 2013, “Next Generation Character Rendering” on March 27. The original high resolution data was acquired from Light Stage Facial Scanning and Performance Capture by USC Institute for Creative Technologies, then converted to a 70 bones rig, while preserving the high frequency detail in diffuse, normal and displacement composite maps. It is being rendered in a DirectX11 environment, using advanced techniques to faithfully represent the character’s skin and eyes.

More details on Jorge Jimenez’s blog.

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