Forza Horizon: Reinventing the Wheel

“It’s almost exactly two years since I met Dan for the first time, here in LA,” says Forza Horizon design director Ralph Fulton of Playground Games. “We had dinner and we talked about games, about racing games, about car culture and Dan really talked to me about his vision for the Forza franchise.”

He’s talking about Dan Greenawalt, the big wheel down at the Turn 10 cracker factory and the man with the keys to the Forza franchise. We’re tucked away in a room deep in the bowels of Microsoft’s E3 stand. The deafening buzz from outside is still a persistent hum but Fulton doesn’t need to shout.

“It’s gone from strength to strength over the years, and as a developer and a gamer I’ve always been totally aware of it, but Dan just wants more,” he continues. “He wants to broaden what Forza means. He wants to turn car lovers into gamers and gamers into car lovers, and the ambition of that statement really resonated with us, because we set Playground Games up to make racing games that make a difference.”

It’s a statement Greenawalt himself uses regularly but it’s one that’s been a crucial pillar of the Forza franchise. Fulton goes on to explain Greenawalt challenged them to go away and think about what Playground Games could bring to Forza. Forza Motorsport has circuit racing stitched up, so Playground Games looked to the world outside the racetrack.

“We looked at car culture, and we looked at the point where car culture coincides with youth culture,” says Fulton. “We set out to make a place where cars belong, and that’s the Horizon festival. The Horizon festival is the conceptual starting point and the centrepiece of our game.”

“As soon as we created the Horizon festival a lot of things about our game just fell into place. We knew, for example, that we were making an open world game because if the Horizon festival was really this Mecca for car lovers then surely it would be surrounded by the world’s greatest driving roads.

“

The Horizon festival is the conceptual starting point and the centrepiece of our game.

“We knew a lot about our world as well, from the Horizon festival; we knew the world needed to be vast, we knew it needed to be environmentally diverse. We knew it needed to be visually stunning with amazing vistas begging to be explored. So we set about finding a location for the Horizon festival; we researched 30 places around the world and ultimately we ended up in Colorado, in the United States, as a place that just ticked all of our boxes.”

On paper Colorado seems like a random place to settle on, particularly with the world at your fingertips. Even Greenawalt, who hails from Colorado, admitted to me earlier he was initially surprised. But when you begin to absorb the sort of driving variety a single environment like Colorado can encompass the decision makes a lot of sense.

“We learnt more about our game from the Horizon festival than just where it was to be set,” continues Fulton. “We knew we wanted to create a really authentic, vibrant festival atmosphere for the game so we went to a guy who has the inside track on festival culture, a guy from the UK named Rob da Bank. He’s a radio DJ, record label boss but most relevantly he’s founded and run two of the biggest summer music festivals in the UK and he’s been on board with Horizon right from the start advising the festival culture and also curating the soundtrack.”

The Horizon festival will basically be your hub for the game.

Fulton is quick to stress Horizon does not represent a sidestep in the fundamental feel of a Forza game. The handling has not been overhauled and simplified to suit the new open-world focus.

“Open-world games in the past have been characterised by arcade handling, which is fine,” he says. “But there’s a problem with those games: that all the cars start to feel the same, they start to handle the same. And that doesn’t work for Forza. In Forza, the car is the star. Every car is special.”

“We use exactly the same best-in-class physics and graphics systems that you’ve known and loved in Forza games previously. We have the same unrivalled handling model, which gives all those cars a sense of weight and heft, and believability. We prove, I think, that action racing doesn’t have to compromise on authenticity in order to achieve what we’ve achieved.”

The team also knew right from the start that they were going to be the ones who would bring off-road racing to Forza franchise for the very first time.

“

We have some devs who’ve worked on the best off-road racing games; the DiRT franchise, the Colin McRae Rally franchise...

“Now at Playground Games we were excited by that because we have some devs who’ve worked on the best off-road racing games; the DiRT franchise, the Colin McRae Rally franchise,” says Fulton. “And if you marry that experience to Forza’s best-in-class physics system you get an unrivalled off road racing experience.”

There are 65 different surface types in Forza Horizon.

“It’s not as simple as asphalt and dirt; there are many nuanced combinations in between,” says Fulton.

The team also knew they would need a dynamic day/night cycle; in Fulton’s words, “that’s price of entry for open world game.”

“A road that you’ve travelled during the day could take on a completely different complexion during the night, with only your headlights to light the way,” he says.

Fulton is rehearsed yet earnest during his presentation; chatting further after the demo it’s clear his passion is sincere. Pressed on the accessibility of Horizon, which is promising to be as hard-nosed as its circuit-based brother, Fulton is relaxed.

“I think I would argue that Forza has always been about accessibility,” he says. “They’ve always been about offering an experience to people regardless of their ability level and catering for both ends of the spectrum, if you like. Horizon’s not different from that. We’ve designed it so if you pick up the pad and leave all the assists on it’s a fun experience to drive and navigate around this open-world.”

“Now that’s necessitated some changes to, not the physics, but the car set-ups – and also the assists themselves, because there are certain things you do when driving in an open-world that you would never do driving around Silverstone. But if you want to switch any or all of those assists off, even down to activating simulation steering, you can totally do that in Horizon and have a fantastic experience doing it, and be rewarded in festival races for having upped the difficulty level.”

The UK has traditionally had a very strong racing game culture, and also a very different car culture to the likes of North America and Australia. We ask Fulton what Playground can bring to the series now they’re part of the Forza umbrella.

“That’s a good question; I think you hit on the first part of my answer already,’ he says. “One of the reasons that the Turn 10 guys went out looking for a partner and eventually turned up with us in the United Kingdom is that the United Kingdom has a really strong heritage of making great racing games, and also motorsport culture as well.”

“

The United Kingdom has a really strong heritage of making great racing games.

“I think we bring a different perspective on a lot of different things just because of who we are. When we first met the guys from Turn 10 we knew we had a lot of shared values, and we had shared goals as well. We set both of our teams up to be the best racing game developer in the world.

“But we think about things differently in some key ways; I think that brings us together a lot. Our skills and our attitudes complement each other, which is why I think the Turn 10 guys put so much faith in us to take Forza and take it in this entirely new direction.”

So with two teams now sharing the load and building up a shared stockpile of assets and experience where does Fulton see Forza going?

“As I said, right at the top, one of the things Dan always wants is more,” says Fulton. “To broaden. To bring more people in, and infuse them with not only a passion for racing games but a passion for cars as well. And he sees Forza, I think, as a real way to encourage, almost create car passion in people that maybe don’t have it.”

“I don’t want to speak too much for Dan, he can speak to the franchise goals much more articulately than I can, but certainly I know this is one part of his plan to increase what Forza means in both the videogame space and also in automotive culture in general.

“One of the things I’m really keen to stress whenever I can is that this doesn’t divert from the Turn 10 guys’ efforts with the Forza franchise; it doesn’t mean you’re not getting more track racing, although Dan will be the guy who will announce what’s next. I think there’s a huge amount to love for the hardcore Forza faithful in this game. It gives not just one, but a number of new experiences which they’ve never had before; you know, driving at night, driving off-road, driving on the open-road, away from a race track.”

You can't do this at Laguna Seca.

Forza Motorsport 4 has a well-integrated Top Gear partnership that utilises the show’s famous Test Track. If there’s any similar involvement with the BBC’s motoring juggernaut in Horizon no-one’s being overt about it but, that said, Horizon does seem to tap into a certain Top Gear-style fantasy; the joy of open-world driving in world-class driver’s cars. The idea of being able to tackle public roads in the kind of cars Clarkson, Hammond and May regularly test outside of the track is tantalising.

“That’s something we’ve always come back to; that freedom, sometimes just to drive aimlessly, almost purposelessly,” says Fulton. “It’s difficult to put that in the context of game design, which is always about setting objectives for players and goals for players.”

“I rarely have more than 10 minutes to sit down and lose myself in the game but, when I do, I get in a really fast car, I put on our second radio station, it’s our metal radio station, and I’ll set the time of day and just drive towards the Rockies as the sun rises behind them. Games are about magical moments, right? That is just one of Horizon’s.”

I’m able to chat further with Fulton after the first day of E3 draws to a close at an after-hours Microsoft event. We talk about our love of the original Test Drive: Unlimited and reflect upon the satisfaction you can glean from simply cruising through a vast, picturesque open-world.

We talk about the work Playground Games has done to the cars the team has inherited from Turn 10; for instance, with the addition of night racing Playground has needed to add functioning driving lights and illuminated dials for the cabin view, and some cars have required things like pop-up headlamps. Fulton also mentions they’ve added indicators.

Fulton talks about one of the non-traditional races they’ve added, a race between a Mustang and a Mustang. The catch is only one of them is a Ford; the other is a P-51 Mustang, a classic WWII fighter. He talks about how, after discovering how much fun it was to drive through a golf course they had designed, they decided to make the fence smashable and allow players to drive over it too.

We talk about the shift to 30 frames per second in order to free up headroom for the likes of night racing and the game’s stunning 20 kilometre draw distance; Forza Motorsport 4 was 60 fps. I mention I’m not actually able to notice the change and Fulton tells me they had a similar reaction from Turn 10. Horizon is absolutely locked at 30 fps, Fulton tells me, and it will not deviate. This is why it still looks incredibly smooth. Horizon’s physics still update at 360 fps.

We also talk about the pedigree of Playground Games, and this is a hugely important point for racing game fans. Playground Games is a veritable supergroup of UK racing developers. Fulton tells me how the team went from around 20 people to over 100; how over the space of a year they had new people starting every week.

Playground Games was co-founded by British games industry veterans Trevor Williams and Nick Wheelwright. Williams was formerly GM of Codemasters’ Southam and Birmingham development operations. Wheelwright was Codemasters CEO between 1996 and 2004.

Development Director at Playground Games Gavin Raeburn was executive producer at Codemasters for DiRT and GRID, and his involvement with Codemasters stretches back to 1988.

Fulton himself was formerly chief game designer at Codemasters.

Senior cinematic designer Matt Turner also hails from Codemasters, as does senior producer Adam Askew, technical director Alan Roberts, chief engineer Matt Craven and many more.

In fact, Playground Games has so many former Codemasters employees that, back in mid-2010, Codemasters actually accused Playground Games of poaching key employees and disrupting the development of its own racing games.

Former Bizarre Creations staff are also well-represented; lead environment artist Chris Downey, lead audio designer Mathias Grunwaldt, and senior environmental artist Gavin Bartlett all used to work for the house Project Gotham Racing built.

Lead game designer Martin Connor was lead multiplayer level designer at Rockstar North. Senior physics engineer Graham Daniell came to Playground Games from Criterion. Lead vehicle artist Simon Gibson has worked for Ubisoft Reflections, Evolution Studios and Eutechnyx.

Juice Games, Supersonic Software, Slightly Mad Studios, BlackRock Studios; the list of experienced racing games studios that members of Playground Games have worked for in the past goes on. Today Playground Games occupies three floors of its building in the centre of Leamington Spa, in the UK’s West Midlands.

Playground Games may be a brand new studio working on its first title, but experience is not something it lacks.

"Tonight, on Top Gear..."

"We are, as a group, actively worried about replacing ourselves," Greenawalt recently told Autoblog. "I love cars, but I'm 40. I want my kids to be into Camaros and Mustangs and Supras. I want cars like the Subaru BRZ to come out and ignite a new car lust among the younger generation."

With Forza Horizon Playground Games is aiming to do just that.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and the GTHO Phase III on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

Source : ign[dot]com

ZombiU: Good Cop / Bad Cop

ZombiU was one of the surprise hits of this year's E3. A return to classic survival horror gameplay, it makes extensive use of the Wii U controller's screen and shows Ubisoft is serious about supporting Nintendo's new platform. But is it really going to be a great game, or were gamers just excited to see something that isn't a sequel?

IGN Australia's Lucy O'Brien and Cam Shea have both played the game, but came away with contrasting opinions. They battle it out in another classic IGN AU Good Cop / Bad Cop debate...

Good Cop Lucy: As you know Cam, I am a massive survival horror fan. My love for the genre knows no bounds. Well actually it does; I played Silent Hill: Homecoming. But as we all know, it’s a genre on its knees, long overtaken by balls-out action clamoring for our attention spans. Remember when the scares in video games came from what we couldn’t see? Remember when we weren’t ultra-powered space marines with muscle to spare, but weedy everymen? Remember that frantic scramble past packs of zombies to reach that single green plant?

Luckily for me, a bunch of good folk at Ubisoft remember all that stuff too, and are currently developing something remarkable on the new Wii U tech – a game that actually evokes our sense of dread. The use of the Wii U controller as both a useful tool and a means to put your character into a vulnerable position is a killer blow to our senses, and I found myself terrified despite the fact I was surrounded by a bunch of media and a Ubisoft rep who politely ignored my loud swearing. I caught up with you later that day, sure we were going to riff gleefully on ZombiU’s virtues, only to find the game left you cold. What gives?

Bad Cop Cam: It's not that I hated ZombiU, more that I found the demo resolutely mediocre. I agree that there's a lot of potential for tension in the inventory mechanic, which leaves the player vulnerable while they rifle through their backpack on the Wii U tablet screen, or pick items off a corpse, but the gameplay itself was too predictable for this tension to ever come to fruition. I didn't ever feel I was doing anything I haven't done before, so whether it was zombies shambling towards me on the post apocalyptic city streets or zombies lurching at me in the darkness of a dank basement, it just didn't get my blood pumping. I may be way off, but I wonder whether the fact that the traditional survival horror genre is "on its knees" means you're willing to cut this a lot more slack than I am. For me, very little about the E3 demo seemed particularly fresh or compelling.

Even what is arguably the game's most interesting feature - the fact that the player starts afresh as a new survivor when they die - isn't something that I think is necessarily going to work that well. On the one hand, I like the idea that you'll have to find the zombie version of your former self to retrieve your stuff. This should make for some incredibly tense sequences. On the other, it's still really 'gamey'. I can see waking up over and over again in the safe house, then - essentially - teleporting back to the start of the area you died in, getting old really fast. Are all these survivors just lining up outside the safe house? Twiddling their thumbs waiting for their turn? Ubisoft is selling this as something unique - no checkpoints and no game over screens, but the system effectively is just another form of checkpoint… with infinite lives and more time required to get back into the action.

There's also the potential for horrendous bottlenecks where the player dies in a situation that's going to take a lot of attempts to get through. Oh great, I'm back in the safe house. I'm all for making it challenging, but this is going to have to be balanced really tightly to work. I also thought it was interesting that the team has said that survivors gain 'skills' the longer they last. When a survivor dies, you can retrieve their stuff, but not their skills. This may make sense, but - again - could be a source of frustration and feel overly punitive. Am I missing the point?

Good Cop Lucy: It’s a pity you found the gameplay mediocre. I agree that my love of the genre could have meant I was more ready, more open, to being scared, but I found the careful dispersion of zombies and claustrophobic environments absolutely terrifying. So while the demo may not have been ‘fresh’ as you say, it struck me as very finely-tuned. And that’s not taking into account the implementation of the gamepad.

I’m sure Ubisoft will build a narrative wrapper around the survivors being re-spawned, and considering you re-spawn as a whole new person, losing your skills whenever you die makes sense. And it’s a brilliant punishment, too, as the finality of every playthrough demands a hugely considered approach. I don’t know about you, but I was moving forward at a snail’s pace, taking into account every part of the map, every corner of my current surroundings and nerve-jangling groan in the background. In this sense the game can be compared to Dark Souls, another game where achievement feels more euphoric thanks to punishing mechanics. ZombiU’s online integration – where you can encounter other zombified-survivors – also echoes Namco’s title, their presence acting as both a warning and a threat. Isn’t it time for more games where greater punishment offers greater reward?

The best backpack management sim ever?

Bad Cop Cam: Sure, and hopefully the development team can make the most of it. I just worry that the kind of game design where dying actually punishes the player - or is something to be avoided at all costs - and this particular game may not gel that well. Survival is a reward for skilled play, but this is a horror experience built on manipulating the world around the player to surprise and scare them, as opposed to giving players a lot of choice in how they're going to play, thereby putting survival on them in no uncertain terms. Survival horror games need things jumping out at the player, they need claustrophobic environments where there's very little room to move, they need weapons and ammo to be scarce. Do you think it would be fair for ZombiU to, say, drop the player into an enclosed space with five zombies, then punish them for failing to find the door quickly enough, or having the wrong weapon equipped? That's what's going to happen, and the fine line between fair and frustration will be crossed - particularly if you lose something significant as a result. Compare this to a game like Diablo III and its hardcore mode. A hardcore character's death is permanent, but players with skill and a deep understanding of the game mechanics will be able to survive. Such are the options available to the player that if they die, it's pretty much their own fault.

I'm getting a little sidetracked here, however, as we don't yet know what skills the player will earn in ZombiU, and thus what will be at stake. I will say, however, that you very clearly played through the demo in the spirit of the game more than I did. I assumed I'd be able to take on whatever the game threw at me, so wandered about hitting zombies with cricket bats then shooting them in the face with relative abandon. If death had been permanent in the demo I would have played it differently, but instead I wasn't too worried about dying, because hey, I wanted to see how the safe house mechanic worked, anyway. This obviously means it was stripped of a lot of its atmosphere, and is probably the reason it felt so unremarkable. I just wasn't doing anything all that interesting. Shooting zombies? Done it a million times. Finding a key card to open a locked door? Ditto. Finding medicine for some dude? Yawn. Being forced to step on a burnt section of floor that I know is going to collapse then having it collapse? C'MON!?

Did any of the uses for the Wii's second screen - aside from backpack management - excite you? Lockpicking? Scanning the environment?

Dying on work's Stupid Hat Day... how embarrassing.

Good Cop Lucy: I understand your concerns regarding ZombiU’s ‘survive at all costs’ pillar, but the game isn’t quite as ruthless as you’re suggesting. The game always presents the player with a variety of options, so it’s up to you to decide if you’re going to crouch in a darkened corner, hands over your ears while mumbling the national anthem, or if you’re going to quickly scan the room, bolt towards some ammo and carve your way through. At one point during my E3 playthrough I was totally overwhelmed by a horde and seemingly trapped without an escape route or ammo, and my first instinct was to back into a wall and more or less crucify myself. But somehow – and honestly, I experienced an inexplicable zen - I put some space between the horde and myself, enough to spot some obstructed stairs. Anyone who’s played a Resident Evil or Dead Island will know that the top of a flight of stairs are your friend, particularly when you have a cricket bat. Sure, it’s not a great example of rewarding knowledge of comprehensive game mechanics, but it’s a great example of the minute-to-minute challenge to keep your sh*t together. In this regard, the player takes total ownership over the outcome.

And while I wasn’t thrilled by lockpicking and scanning the environment as singular experiences, I did enjoy the way they helped gel the experience together into something more cohesive. It’s a tactile thing, nothing more, but having an actual 'toolkit' in your hands helps immerse you in the game, doesn’t it? For me, that immersion has always been the appeal of the Wii U’s second screen. And ultimately, I think it’s exciting to see Ubisoft doing new things with the tech. They’re paving the way for other publishers, and they’re being bold with their experimentation. For that reason alone, I’m glad ZombiU exists.

(Not Particularly) Bad Cop Cam: Here's hoping I got the wrong impression. This game definitely has potential, and while the demo didn't excite me a great deal, there's no doubt that there are some good ideas here. I liked the sequence, for instance, when you encounter that teleporting mini-boss and the feed to your "prepper" (the player's guide, essentially) is cut. Suddenly the second screen's only showing static and your ties to everything you've been relying on is gone. Doesn’t necessarily make a great deal of sense, but it shakes things up nicely.

Coming back to the parallels with Dark Souls, you can also leave messages on walls for other players that are only visible using a black light pick-up you get at some point. I should also mention that when you finish the game you unlock Nightmare mode, where you have just the one survivor. I've already voiced my concerns about this, but that's a good addition if they can make it work. And last but not least, I also agree it's great to see Ubisoft taking a leadership position with Wii U and creating a game that isn't based on an existing franchise. Fingers crossed you make me eat my words later this year!

Source : ign[dot]com

True Blood: "Whatever I Am, You Made Me" Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...

While I’m happy that we’re still hanging with the cool new characters that populate the underground lair of the Vampire Authority, “Whatever I Am, You Made Me” dragged a bit simply because Bill and Eric were, you know, also still hanging around the underground lair of the Vampire Authority. No, I didn’t mind seeing Tina Majorino (Napoleon Dynamite, Veronica Mars) as a quirky vampire techie who fits them with their kill vests ("You guys are too cute to be goo”), but then, afterward, it really felt like the two of them should have been released to go hunt down Russell. But no, they had one more night to spend in the keep, sexing it up with the mysterious contemporary-of-Jesus, Salome, who is somehow able to determine whether or not the two of them are die-hard Sanguinistas via copulation.

A lot of this episode hinged on Italian actress Valentina Cervi and whether or not she was able to make Salome an interesting addition to the show. And I’ll go so far as to say that the “idea of Salome” is interesting, but that her actual portrayal felt very dry and underwhelming. And while it’s very true that she looks great naked, I’m not completely sold on her being Roman’s “secret weapon.” It’s hard to actually present us with a seductress on a show like this as it seems very likely that Bill and Eric, at that point, would have slept with any attractive female vamp that put the moves on them. Hell, Eric just banged the s*** out of Nora the day before. So what they’re trying to show us here is someone who can somehow get Bill and Eric to offer up intimate details about their soulless desires. A legendary manipulator. I don’t know. It came off as dull to me.

More intriguing was the fact that Salome tried, softly, to convince Roman to change his views on the anti-mainstreaming movement. Which does raise a few questions about where her heart ultimately lies on the whole issue. Especially since her protegee Nora seems to believe that Lilith will rise from the grave and violently put an end to mainstreaming. Again though, Roman seems like such a powerful, badass character that his views on mainstreaming, and his belief that humans birthed the vamps, comes off as a dichotomy. He seems like more the kind of vampire who’d want to farm humans as food (which was the plot of this past season’s Supernatural, by the by). But I think the one thing that bugs me about the Roman story right now is that...they brought in Reverend Steve! Steve, who now seems to hop around from story to story in the True Blood-verse. Yes, his utter goofiness is now infecting the one, decent thread this show has. Hopefully, now that Steve’s been named the new media face of the Authority, he can clear out of Roman’s sight and just pop up on TV (and Bon Temps) now and again.

On the Bill and Eric front, I was way more interested in the Pam-related flashback showing us the way that Bill and Eric actually met; with Bill and Lorena being the undead fiends who were draining Pam’s prostitutes. It was a pretty cool way to show us that one of the reasons Bill’s always been a bit resentful of Eric is due to the fact that Eric knew Bill back when Bill was a monster. Before he was the “enlightened gentleman” who courted Sookie.

And speaking of Sookie, it was time for her to actually go back to Merlotte’s and work a dinner shift. There she finds out that Sam had stored a sleeping, vampire Tara in the walk-in freezer, leading to all sorts of hi-jinx that ended with, yes, Tara running away again. But now both of Sookie’s secrets are out of the bag, as not only does everyone now know that Tara’s a vampire, but Alcide knows that Sookie killed Debbie. I’m not sure what they have in store for Sookie this summer (other than probably hooking up with Alcide) but she’s really started things off with a series of well-intentioned mistakes. I’m not sure if this means that she’s going to eventually need Bill or Eric’s help because she’s a f*** up machine when she’s on her own, but she’s not having the best time of it right now. On a side note, it was fun to see her blast Pam with her pixie power. It seems like she’s confident and ready to use it when the situation calls for it. It's really the only cool thing to have come out of the fairy storyline.

And while I’ve run hot and cold with Tara over the years, I’m okay with the vampire stuff. Yes, it would have been better for the show if she had bought it, but that’s mostly because the show needs to kill off someone. And she was most people’s pick to go. But I’m always up for watching a new vampire find their footing and Tara’s been so bitter about so much for so long that her becoming, essentially, what she hates most actually feels like one of the most natural arcs on this series. Plus, if they ever commit to the Pam/Tara maker-ship, things could get adequately enjoyable.

Then there’s the rest. Blerg. Jason having sex with an old teacher who apparently turned him into a sex addict for life by seducing him as a teenager; making him, once again, become self-reflective about what an idiot screw-up he is. Hoyt putting in guy-liner and hitting the Fangtasia dance floor. Debbie’s parents looking for signs of Debbie. Andy’s ass winding up on Facebook. Oh, and Terry taking off to have some "outside Bon Temps" adventures with Patrick? We have to actually purposefully follow him on an honest-to-goodness side adventure? Just awful.

While this episode felt excessive meandering, I'll still head back into the Pam flashback one more time and say that I liked the way that Pam basically forced Eric (who had an unexpected kind streak back then) to turn her into a vampire. That scene also spoke volumes about their relationship; with her being the vampire he never wanted to make. The flashbacks this season are in serious danger of being vastly more interesting than anything going on in the present-day stories.

Matt Fowler is an Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @MattIGN and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Pixar's Brave Hits Box Office Bullseye

As expected, Pixar's Brave debuted atop the weekend box office, while Fox's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter had to settle for a middling, third place opening.

Here are the weekend estimates via Rentrak:

1. Brave $66,739,000

2. Madagascar 3 $20,200,000

3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter $16,500,000

4. Prometheus $10,000,000

5. Snow White And The Huntsman $8,012,655

6. Rock of Ages  $8,000,000

7. That's My Boy  $7,900,000

8. Marvel's The Avengers  $7,040,000

9. Men in Black 3  $5,600,000

10. Seeking a Friend For The End of The World  $3,836,348

Check out last week's Keepin' It Reel podcast to see how we did with predictions!

Source : ign[dot]com

The Newsroom: "We Just Decided To" Review

In 1976, world renowned filmmaker Sidney Lumet made a film called Network, with Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and William Holden. In the film's most famous sequence, a news anchor named Howard Beale (Finch) has a mental breakdown on camera. He engages his audience directly and rants for several minutes about the nature of journalism and humanity's failings, culminating in one of cinema's greatest lines,"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

I bring this up because of a scene early on in HBO's latest series, The Newsroom (premiering Sunday, 6/24 at 10pm PST/EST), where Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) has a similar outburst after being asked why America is the best country on the planet. While he's nothing but calm, jovial and humorous in the moments preceding his rant, you can feel the inner turmoil and tension itching and clawing at his soul, and finally it becomes too much for him to bare.

While McAvoy's anti-American outburst is perceived as ugly by the public and his peers, the rant is nothing more than an angry follow-up to Beale's "Mad as hell" rant from more than 30 years ago. As though the two are connected, McAvoy's rant seems to indicate his anger and frustration that everyone did, in fact, get angry, but no one really listened to each other and fixed the problems that made Beale angry in the first place.

The Newsroom is Aaron Sorkin's much-anticipated return to TV. It's a sharp, biting sociopolitical drama set within the walls of a TV news journalism, a world rife with intense competition, slanted ideals and compromised moral values. In other words, it's a proverbial playground for Sorkin's razor-sharp commentary, token wit and lightning-quick dialogue.

At the center of the series is McAvoy, a mean-spirited, burnt-out TV anchor who's loved by his fans and loathed by his co-workers. He fears his outburst may well spell the end of his career, but he also doesn't seem to care about perception anymore, either. In an effort to bring the show back to its glory, producers bring on some new blood, specifically Mackenzie MacHale, played by Emily Mortimer. Before McAvoy really has a chance to react to the startling news, his team is thrust head-first into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (the show is set in 2010). Together, they attempt to make a difficult call -- do they report the news or, with the evidence they have, begin pointing fingers at who's to blame.

With any Sorkin series, casting is absolutely everything, and The Newsroom delivers one of the single best cast rosters out there. Jeff Daniels, an actor whose never fully hit his stride, is absolutely outstanding here as the old dog TV anchorman, poised to tell the world what it doesn't want to hear. His "average joe" nice-guy appeal comes off extraordinarily well, but it's easy to see that it's nothing more than a sugar-coated layer designed to protect a very cynical, tired interior. This is a breakout role for Daniels that should keep him working well into retirement years.

Daniels is perfectly complemented by Mortimer, who plays a brave, seasoned journalist who might just challenge him to rise to the occasion. She's quick-witted, savvy, and seemingly fearless. The two boast remarkable chemistry together, charmingly nipping at one another, creating a humorous tone to their otherwise venomous relationship and complicated past.

The supporting cast includes the ever-dependable Sam Waterston, relative newcomers John Gallagher Jr. and Thomas Sadoski, up-and-comer Olivia Munn, the always-likable Allison Pill, and Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel. Though their screen time is brief in comparison to Daniels and Mortimer, every character is well introduced and surprisingly complex. In just a few brief scenes, we get a strong sense of who these characters are, and what they could become -- good or bad.

The first episode does drag a bit in the middle, running a padded 75-minutes. Oddly enough, considering this is a Sorkin series, pacing was just a touch off. The show spent a little too much time introducing the characters without biting into the meat of the narrative. Still, the time spent wasn't really wasted as it did help establish the show's supporting cast, and establish the show's sometimes silly sense of humor. Regardless, it's a lull that might deter some viewers, or have them reaching for the remote.

Direction, from director Greg Mottola (Paul, Superbad), is quite great. It's clear that he gets down to the nitty-gritty with his cast, and he manages to make everyone shine, even those with minimal screen time. He also adds a touch of indie flare to the look of the series, giving it a theatrical appearance.

Naturally, The Newsroom does feature the usual left-of-center commentary from Sorkin, but for those who've long fallen in love with the writer's ideals, cynical take on politics and hope for a better future, there's much to adore about this new series. And Sorkin does his best to keep things refreshing, despite having played in similar sandboxes in past, with shows like Sports Night and The West Wing, and with movies like Charlie Wilson's War and even The Social Network.

In some ways, The Newsroom should ultimately play as a sort of snappy sequel to both Sports Night and The West Wing, melding the world of TV journalism with the hot-headed sociopolitical arena – two places forged in chaos, and in dire need of repair. To be honest, this is Sorkin's home, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

The Newsroom debuts Sunday, June 24th at 10pm ET/PT on HBO.

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Source : ign[dot]com