Disco Review: The Klingons Are Back - With a Big Secret!

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Full spoilers follow for this episode.

And finally… the Klingons return! Not only are L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) and Tyler/Voq (Shazad Latif) back for the third episode of Disco Season 2, answering some long-lingering post-war questions while also teeing up a bunch of new ones, but there are also B and C storylines this week that keep “Point of Light” jam-packed and pumping speedily along… even while setting up that Section 31 spin-off series we’ve been hearing about lately.

The Chancellor and her torchbearer have been missed since last season’s finale, so catching up on all the intrigue going on in the Klingon High Council chambers -- the Klingons are always good for palace intrigue -- is long overdue. L’Rell, who ascended to the leadership of the Empire in that finale, is under siege from various political enemies, who are suspicious of not just a woman leader, but one who keeps the counsel of a human. Of course, Tyler/Voq isn’t really human -- he’s some kind of human/Klingon hybrid. But still, try explaining that to your average angry, human-hating Klingon.

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Alita: Battle Angel Review

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The iconic manga Battle Angel Alita tells a story about the distant future, when a teenaged cyborg is found on a giant scrap heap, and discovers who she is - and who she wants to be - through one amazing action sequence after another. It’s an astounding work of fiction, and it’s now an astounding-looking motion picture, which crams so much plot into one film that there’s practically no room for the actual point.

The film, renamed Alita: Battle Angel, stars Rosa Salazar (Bird Box) as Alita, the amnesiac cyborg who views this dystopian world with wide-eyed wonder. Christoph Waltz co-stars as Ido, the kindly cyborg repairman who repairs Alita and becomes her surrogate father. Ido wants Alita to find her own destiny, free of the baggage that comes with her high-tech body. Nobody seems to know where she came from, why she’s so advanced, and why she’s an expert in a long-lost cyborg martial art.

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Miss Bala Review

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Miss Bala's biggest problem comes before the film even begins. The strange choice to promote it as some kind of female empowerment flick immediately sets the Catherine Hardwicke-directed action film up to fail, as while it's a passable genre distraction it treats the woman at its core like an uninteresting MacGuffin to push forward an unoriginal and often problematic narrative.

Miss Bala is based on a Mexican film of the same name that was loosely inspired by a true life story about a beauty queen who was arrested alongside a gang. This version changes the original premise, introducing Gina Rodriguez's Gloria as a makeup artist -- she's only given as much interior life as that, she does makeup as a job -- who travels to Tijuana to help her friend Suzu compete in a beauty pageant. After a visit to a club to network with some powerful people involved in the contest, Gloria and Suzu are separated during a shootout and Gloria begins her bafflingly convoluted attempt to find her friend.

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Asus ROG Zephyrus S Gaming Laptop Review

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The time has come: I finally have a gaming laptop equipped with Nvidia's RTX 2080 GPU sitting on my desk. To be clear, the Asus ROG Zephyrus S (See it on Amazon) I have houses the Max-Q version of Nvidia's flagship mobile GPU, so it's not quite as powerful as the RTX 2080, but for a laptop, it screams.

I've only had a handful of days for testing, but the impression I'm left with is that the ROG Zephyrus S and the RTX 2080 are quite a combination. Currently, you can pre-order the GX701GX from the likes of Amazon, with the price ranging from $2,699 to $3,299, depending on the configuration. Asus sent me the most expensive configuration to test because of course they did.

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Amazing Spider-Man Celebrates Peter Parker's Villains

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It didn't new Amazing Spider-Man writer Nick Spencer long at all to prove he has the knack for telling classic Spidey stories. You know, the kind where Peter Parker is down on his luck and struggling to find enough time between battling villains to make ends meet and maintain a semi-stable relationship? the bigger challenge facing Spencer has been finding ways to push the character forward even as the new series embraces that "back to basics" mentality. After so many years of seeing Peter work his way up the ranks and become a billionaire industrialist, how do you move forward while simultaneously going back?

The good news is that Spencer, by and large, has proven up to that considerable challenge over the past year. As much as the series features all the hallmarks of the classic Amazing Spider-Man era, there's enough new and different at work to keep things feeling fresh and exciting.

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Netflix's Velvet Buzzsaw Review

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This is a mostly non-spoiler review for Velvet Buzzsaw - which premieres Friday, February 1 on Netflix.

Though half-baked as a supernatural horror flick, and indicative of many Netflix films being somewhat mediocre projects made better/elevated by big names (much like Bird Box), Dan Gilroy's Velvet Buzzsaw is a ghoulish slice of satire dressed up in occasional jump scares and a chaotic swirl of ghost movie cliches.

The talented ensemble - including Jake Gyllenhaal (who gets to devolve into a sweaty obsessive mess, naturally), Rene Russo (in her best role in years), John Malkovich (in his second algorithmic supporting role in a Netflix horror movie in a month), and Zawe Ashton - bring this Robert Altman-style caricature of the modern art scene to life, setting up a cutthroat world that monetizes perception and caters to the super-wealthy and presenting it as a unique hunting ground for a "curse" that rips its way through those involved in selling the macabre art of a recently deceased lunatic.

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AntLion ModMic Wireless Review

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If you need a headset for online gaming, there are plenty to choose from. But if you already have a pair of audiophile headphones that you love, you know how hard it is for most gaming headsets to match up in terms of sound quality, especially for music. That’s where the Antlion ModMic Wireless comes in: it's a small, magnetic boom microphone that attaches to any pair of headphones.

This isn’t Antlion’s first foray into modular microphones—the wired ModMic 5 is still available for $70 on Amazon, as is the older and cheaper ModMic 4 (Review) for those who want a budget option. But while those versions require you to plug the ModMic into a 3.5mm jack on your PC—which can be annoying, since you’ll end up with two cables coming out of your headphones—the $120 ModMic Wireless (See it on Amazon) uses a USB receiver to keep your setup a little cleaner. As a result, it works with PCs, Macs, and the PlayStation 4, but not Xbox—for that, you’ll need one of the 3.5mm wired options.

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DC's Heroes in Crisis Tugs at the Heartstrings

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It would be easy to dismiss the fifth issue of Heroes in Crisis as a glorified filler issue. It's very much a middle chapter of a longer story. There isn't much in the way of plot progression to be had here. The emphasis is more on imagery and mood than story in this issue. But as imagery and mood are pretty much the two major selling points with Heroes in Crisis, that's really not a bad thing.

The series' focus remains where it has been these past few issues, with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman performing damage control after the Sanctuary massacre while Booster and Harley continue their dogged pursuit of the "real" killer. The narrative inches forward in these pages, mainly as Tom King's script begins teasing the identity of that killer. Still, the end result is far more questions than answers, which may be a hard pill to swallow considering that issue #6 is another flashback chapter.

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Wargroove Review

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Someone at Chucklefish clearly got tired of waiting for Nintendo to bring back Advance Wars, because Wargroove’s turn-based tactics combat is as close to a modern, fantasy-themed revival as you’ll find. But this isn’t a game that relies only on its gorgeous pixel-art nostalgia to win your love: Wargroove is a challenging and extremely fun tactics game, with great multiplayer options and a level editor strong enough to make an entire tactics game of your own.

Instead of controlling a party of bespoke heroes like in a Fire Emblem game, Wargroove gives you a unique commander and has you summon waves of disposable units mid-battle. Obviously you’ll still want to play smart and keep your troops alive, but removing that fear of losing someone with a name and a face to perma-death or having to worry about getting your favorite characters kills to level them up makes for a lighter and snappier tactical flavor.

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The Flash Attempts to Change the Future in Episode 12

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This review contains spoilers for The Flash Season 5, episode 12, "Memorabilia." Our regular reviewer, Jesse Schedeen, was unable to review this week's episode - he'll be back next week.

While the war between Team Flash and Cicada continues, this week’s episode technically sidelines the meta serial killer, and opts for a horror-tinged memory-within-memory Inception story. Cicada poses a threat, but only as a defense mechanism within his niece’s unconscious mind. “Memorabilia” also serves as something of a superhero therapy session for the West-Allen family as more of Nora’s story is revealed. The largely enjoyable episode still feels slightly like it’s treading water before Eobard Thawne returns to the fore, but there’s at least some significant reveals, cool Easter eggs, and lighthearted ensemble moments along the way.

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Alien: Blackout Review

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A mobile game in the style of Five Nights at Freddy’s probably isn’t what most people had in mind when excitement for a new Alien game started to stir. As a consolation, Alien: Blackout packs decent thrills for a quick playthrough, and its retro-future computer display interface and sound effects fit the tone and atmosphere of the universe perfectly.

Calling Alien: Blackout a survival-horror game would be a gross exaggeration. It’s really more of an objective-based, hide-and-seek puzzle game with a sprinkle of scary tension and stress to push you as you direct your ship’s crew to avoid a rampaging xenomorph using a computer terminal that displays them and their pursuer as dots. The voice acting is really well done, especially for main character Amanda Ripley (the daughter of Ellen who also starred in 2014’s Alien: Isolation), and there’s quite a lot more story than you’d expect out of a mobile game, even if it is pretty by-the-numbers without any significant hooks or twists. You should expect your muscles to tense up when the alien is spotted or you need a crew member to hurry up and hide, but it’s far from the anxiety-riddled paranoia of other actual survival-horror games.

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Reign of the Supermen Review

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This is a mostly spoiler-free review of Reign of the Supermen, which is now available on Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack and Blu-ray Combo Pack.

Last year's The Death of Superman proved to be a generic addition to DC's lineup of direct-to-DVD animated movies, failing to add much to a story that had already been told once before in 2007's Superman: Doomsday. The good news is that its sequel, Reign of the Supermen, is given more room in which to carve its own identity. Unfortunately, that's still not enough to help it measure up to the best of these animated adaptations.

As Jim Vejvoda noted in his review of The Death of Superman, there's a very "been there, done that" quality to the Superman/Doomsday rivalry, with variations of that story playing out in both the animated and live-action realm in recent years. Reign of the Supermen focuses on the part of that story we haven't really seen told outside the comics. Picking up six months after the events of The Death of Superman, this film explores the rise of four new heroes in Metropolis - teen clone Superboy (Cameron Monaghan), armored hero Steel (Cress Williams), a ruthless vigilante known as The Eradicator (Charles Halford) and the mysterious Cyborg Superman (Jerry O'Connell and Patrick Fabian). Can any of these newcomers fill the void left by Superman, especially as a threat even greater than Doomsday looms over Metropolis?

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My Time at Portia Review

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As my tiny boat sailed into the equally tiny port of the city-state of Portia, I couldn't help but look beyond the small town and toward a decrepit tower looming over its peaceful villagers; I wanted to go there, and it didn’t take too long before I did. My Time at Portia is perhaps one of the most pleasant post-apocalyptic games out there, every part of it full of potential and an interesting sense of optimism. You'll find it in the goals and accomplishments of its people, and in My Time at Portia’s design as a whole. It teases unreachable treasures off in the distance and lists items with parts I haven’t yet encountered, letting me know there is something new still waiting for me. After playing over 65 hours, I’m still finding more to explore and build in My Time at Portia. This town sim with an emphasis on building and resource management (and some RPG elements thrown in) is a fun adventure that, despite its flaws, I had a hard time putting down.

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Acer Predator XB273K 4K 144Hz G-Sync Monitor Review

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When 4K, 144Hz displays were first announced, the sentiment in the gaming community seemed to be one of cautious optimism. While Steam statistics show that most PC gamers are still playing at 1080p, gamers with more powerful hardware have always wanted to run higher resolutions at the highest possible refresh rate. Until now, the sweet spot between performance and fidelity was easily 1440p, 144Hz. However, with GPUs like the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, 4K high refresh rate gameplay is finally possible on AAA titles.

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Fighting With My Family Review

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Hollywood wrestling movies usually fall into two categories: the serious drama of The Wrestler and Foxcatcher, or comedy flicks like King of the Ring and Nacho Libre. Stephen Merchant's supremely enjoyable sophomore directorial offering, Fighting With My Family, is somewhere in the middle of both, though it definitely shares more in common with classic sports movies like Rocky and The Karate Kid as it follows the story of real-life wrestler Paige on her journey to becoming the youngest ever WWE Divas Champion.

Though it is a WWE production that stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Merchant's is very much a British film. There's something magical about the authenticity and realism that Merchant and his stellar cast--including Nick Frost, Lena Headey, and Florence Pugh, who is brilliant as Saraya A.K.A. Paige--bring to the story of a working class family of wrestlers and their daughter's journey to the big time. It helps that the film is based on a 2012 documentary of the same name which gave an unprecedented look at the family, their struggles, and their success. The docu is a great watch and Merchant's film does it justice whilst adding a little Hollywood sheen on the way.

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Arrow Delivers a Very Different Suicide Squad

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Don’t you hate it when one Arrowverse episode tees up a compelling storyline, only for the next to veer off in a completely different direction? That’s basically what we got with “Past Sins.” In lieu of the much-hyped first meeting between Oliver and Emiko Queen, this episode focused on Ollie and Laurel confronting other demons from their pasts. The result was still a decently enjoyable episode, but again, not one that really focused on the most interesting story at hand.

You do have to give the writers credit for attempting to address that familiar Arrowverse flaw and creating a “villain of the week” with actual depth and motivation. Sam Hackett (Luke Camilleri) was by no means the perfect nemesis for Ollie. The idea that, because Sam’s father vanished all those years ago, Sam himself decided to become an electricity-manipulating supervillain is still a bit of a stretch.

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LucidSound LS41 Gaming Headset Review

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Even though they’ve been around for a few years, there’s a chance this might be the first time you’ve heard their name, but they are a company to keep an eye on as they’ve been releasing a solid collection of gaming headsets like the LS35X IGN reviewed last year. Its new LS41 headset is a wireless 7.1 model primarily designed for the PS4, but it's usable on all gaming platforms. At $200 it's competing with other high-end wireless headsets like the Razer Nari Ultimate and Alienware's AW988 headset, so let's see what it brings to the table.

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Chris Pine's New Murder Mystery Series Doesn't Land a Punch

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This is a (mostly) spoiler-free review for the series premiere of I Am the Night, which airs on TNT on Monday, January 28. 

An overwhelming sense of foreboding best describes the tone of TNT's new murder-mystery thriller, I Am the Night. This melancholy tale is brought to life by Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, who reunites with leading man Chris Pine in a show that has the creative pedigree to be a "prestige" television series but fails to stand apart from the True Detectives and Luthers of the world. While Jenkins excels at building tension, there's no payoff in the first hour, begging one to consider if sitting through another 5 hours of this period drama will be worth finding out how it all ends.

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Cold Pursuit Review

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Throughout his career, Liam Neeson has played a variety of boxers and badasses, but it wasn't until 2008 – when he starred in Taken – that his reputation was solidified as this generation's Charles Bronson. Following Taken, Neeson appeared in film after film as put-upon dads or aging veterans kicking ass and vengefully murdering the wicked. Indeed, Neeson appeared in so many of these films that my own personal circle of friends began counting them as unofficial sequels to Taken; The Next Three Days was Taken 2, Unknown was Taken 3, The Grey was Taken 4, Taken 2 was Taken 5, etc.

At first glance, Hans Petter Moland's Cold Pursuit – a remake of his own 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance – appears to be yet another rollicking and shallow Neeson-kicks-ass-and-takes-names revenge thriller. The plot certainly apes familiar talking points: When Nels Coxman's son is killed by a vengeful drug dealer, Coxman – a regular citizen who drives the snowplow in his tiny Colorado ski resort township – begins stalking and killing the men responsible. Luckily for Coxman, the drug dealers are sloppy enough that they can easily be located and murdered by a sexagenarian snow plow driver.

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The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part Review

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The LEGO Movie was one of the biggest surprises in recent memory, a film which was obviously made to sell toys, but which also turned out to be sidesplitting, intelligent, and genuine. It’s one of the best animated movies of the decade, but there’s a downside to The LEGO Movie: it raised the bar so high that the sequel can’t reach it.

It’s not for lack of trying. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is an ambitious film, with complicated storytelling techniques and thoughtful messages about growing up and opening your mind to new ideas. But the ending of the first film dropped a bombshell that changed the way we look at this series, and there were some unexpected side effects on the sequel.

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Slay the Spire Review

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Slay the Spire is one of those games where I found myself sitting alone at my desk just giggling as I played. Not because it’s exceptionally funny – though its well-written encounters can be that – but because some combo of cards that had chanced its way into my hand would just go off, and the result was an absolute thrill. I couldn’t help but laugh because, win or lose, that combo may never show up again. But boy, was it a blast in the moment.

Here’s a genre mix you probably haven’t seen before: Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding roguelike dungeon crawler. Don’t mistake it for a deckbuilding game like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering; instead, you pick one of three varied but equally exciting characters with unique card pools and start with a super basic deck. As you work your way up the Spire, you’ll fight increasingly difficult monsters to acquire a randomized selection of new cards that slowly build your deck into something better.

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Our Favorite Calvin & Hobbes Crime Parody Returns

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Note: this is a spoiler-free advance review of Spencer & Locke 2 #1, which will be available to pre-order in February 2019.

The traditional comic strip may be a dying art form at this point, if only because the newspaper itself is a dying medium. But regardless of the medium, these iconic characters and archetypes still strike a powerful chord when paired with the right storytellers. That's pretty much the appeal with Spencer & Locke. The original miniseries was notable for spoofing one of the most beloved strips of all time - Calvin & Hobbes - even as it distorted the story of a boy and his imaginary tiger friend through a Sin City-style lens. These two gritty, psychologically damaged detectives are finally back for a sequel, and Spencer & Locke 2 immediately proves there's plenty of potential left in this bizarre comic book mash-up.

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Young Justice Is a DC Nerd's Dream Come True

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Warning: Full spoilers for Young Justice: Outsiders Episodes 10-13 below. If you need a recap on where we left off, check out our review of Episodes 7-9.

The downside to getting such a concentrated dose of Young Justice Outsiders over the past month is that it's over that much sooner. This week's batch of four episodes serves as the midseason finale, with the series going on hiatus until June to make way for Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing. It's going to be a long, hard wait. But, hey, Young Justice fans are plenty used to waiting by now.

This week's four-episode arc felt like a return to the formula established by the opening three episodes. That's true both in that the focus returned to the concept of teen metahuman trafficking, and that there's more of a direct flow from one episode to the next. In some ways I find myself actually preferring the looser, more scattered approach of previous weeks. But the good news is that "Nightmare Monkeys" is thrown into the mix as a sort of weird, quirky outlier. In that sense, you get a "best of both worlds" approach with these episodes.

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Review: Star Trek Discovery Just Keeps Getting Better

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Full spoilers follow for this episode.

One of Star Trek: Discovery’s greatest moments (to date) comes late in this episode, the second of Season 2, when Anson Mount’s Captain Pike meets with Jacob, a human whose people have lived their entire lives on a planet on the other side of the galaxy, ignorant of Starfleet, the Federation, and even space travel. “Do you have a ship?” Jacob asks Pike, sort of half-flapping his arms like wings. “Do you, uh… fly among the stars?”

Pike grins slightly in response and just says “Yeah,” almost embarrassed at how awesome not just his life is, but life is for just about every citizen of the Federation.

Mount sells the moment, enshrining himself in just two episodes as one of the great Star Trek actors. But also, in that moment Discovery’s Season 2 transformation from dark and brooding war drama to a more traditional Trek story continues, as Pike grapples with the Prime Directive -- aka General Order 1 -- in “New Eden,” a planet-of-the-week style story that still manages to thread the season’s bigger Red Angel arc into its plot. The result is an episode that crackles with humor and some exciting moments, while also giving Pike and Sonequa Martin-Green’s Burnham some good old-fashioned Trekkian dilemmas to deal with.

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The Best Smartphone Battery Cases

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Last Updated: April 2018

There are few more panic-inducing moments in this day and age than suddenly realizing your smartphone is going die without a charger in sight. Amazingly, we used to survive without smartphones, but our modern dependency on those devices means we're constantly draining precious battery life. You could always keep a big power bank with you, but that's just one more thing to lug around. For true mobility and peace of mind, you'll need a battery case. Not only do these battery-infused cases keep your smartphone charged, but they also keep it protected as well. Here's a list of some of our favorites.

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from IGN Reviews http://bit.ly/2U8PXcu
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Polar Review

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Polar is currently available to stream on Netflix.

Netflix sets its sights on the assassin film genre with Polar, a thrilling blood-soaked romp in the style of John Wick and Kill Bill and starring Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) and Vannesa Hudgens (Spring Breakers). Based on the Dark Horse graphic novel written by Victor Santos, Polar centers on an infamous assassin named Duncan Vizla (Mikkelsen), aka The Black Kaiser. In Duncan’s killer-for-hire organization, retirement starts at age 50, but when his employer considers him to be a financial liability, the aging hitman becomes a target for some of the world’s most dangerous death dealers.

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Cooler Master MM830 Gaming Mouse Review

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Be sure to visit IGN Tech for all the latest comprehensive hands-on reviews and best-of roundups. Note that if you click on one of these links to buy the product, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

The Cooler Master MM830 is the company's newest flagship gaming mouse (See it at Amazon). It's expensive at $74.99, but it offers an impressive array of high-end features including a 24,000 DPI optical sensor, "hidden" D-pad controls, four zones of RGB illumination, and a customizable OLED display. Its pricing definitely positions it as a “premium” gaming mouse, so let’s take a closer look and see if it's worth it.

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Netflix's Ted Bundy Doc Retreads Familiar Ground

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Note: This is a spoiler-free review of Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, which will is streaming now on Netflix.

Many of Netflix's true crime documentaries are notable for shining a light on cases relatively few are familiar with - Making a Murderer, The Innocent Man, etc. But the streaming network's latest foray into true crime takes a very different tack. Conversations With a Killer focuses on one of the most notorious and fascinating serial killers of them all. But in the process, it serves as a painful reminder that when dealing with a subject this infamous, it's all the more difficult to bring something new to the table.

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Kingdom Hearts 3 Review

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Some of my fondest childhood gaming memories are of being wowed by the first Kingdom Hearts and its recreation of Disney worlds I knew from my favorite animated movies and shows. But even viewed through the rose-tinted glasses of 17 years worth of nostalgia, those memories pale in comparison to Kingdom Hearts 3’s colorful, varied combat and huge, lovingly detailed levels. Square Enix’s long-awaited conclusion to its beloved action-RPG trilogy is so satisfying in its gameplay evolutions that it makes me feel like a kid again, even if its story resolutions don’t think far outside the toy box.

This new set of movie-quality Disney worlds are almost all delights to explore. The sheer amount of treasures to collect and hidden Mickey emblems to discover really highlights the scale and detail of each world. They also introduce some fun gameplay options, including the chance to control toy mechs and even pilot your own ship on the high seas.

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The Hong Kong Massacre Review

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The Hong Kong Massacre is Hotline Miami meets Max Payne on the set of a John Woo movie, and for the most part it’s every bit as violent and thrilling as that combination sounds. While the minimalist story presentation and some repeated environments and boss fights expose its slightly limited scope, The Hong Kong Massacre consistently delivers a brutal ballet of ballistics that remains gripping from the first shot fired to the last enemy downed.

There’s some semblance of hard-boiled plot backboning the experience – you play an ex-cop out for revenge after his partner was killed by triad gangsters – but it mostly serves as a vehicle for your violent shootouts. It’s told through a series of disjointed cinematics and bar room conversations, with each of the 35 levels serving as a flashback to prior events. The storytelling may be sub-standard, but the shooting is so electrifying and addictive that the only plot you really need concern yourself with is the plot you’ll bury each of your enemies in at the dead triad cemetery.

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Batman #63 Provides the Answers We Need

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Batman's current "Knightmares" storyline has been a disorienting read, to say the least. Initially, that was a bad thing. Issue #60 wrapped with one of the most significant cliffhangers yet in Tom King's run, yet #61 proceeded as if that twist never happened at all. But issue #62 showed a method to that madness, urging readers to question the very reality of Batman's surroundings. And now this new storyline shows its full hand in issue #63, reminding us once again that it's all part of King's plan.

While the cover highlights the team-up between Batman and John Constantine, it's not really that Dynamic Duo that anchors the book. King mainly uses this issue as a means of reflecting on the tragic failure of the Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle romance. Readers are given brief glimpses at the life the two might have shared together had Bruce not been abandoned at the altar. This, as much as anything else, speaks elegantly to Bruce's troubled state of mind following the recent tragedies in his life. And given how much King has emphasized this series as one massive tribute to the Bruce/Selina relationship, it's good to see her actually put in an appearance for the first time in half a year.

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At the Gates Review

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Imagine sitting down in a concept car that has all kinds of awesome extras and amenities - things you’ve wished cars had for ages! But then you try to take it for a spin and a lot of the basic stuff that your beat-up sedan back home can do fine seem to be a challenge for this flashy wonder. Things like… brakes. That’s what At the Gates is to the 4X genre. Conceptually, there are so many reasons to be excited about it, but once you start playing it falls apart pretty fast.

Coming from Jon Shafer, the lead designer of Civilization 5, Sid Meier’s storied series is the closest point of comparison for this hand-drawn, turn-based trek through the early 400s CE. But where recent Civ entries have stuck a bit too close to familiar design space, At the Gates holds no cow sacred – and that’s the best thing about it.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Gets a Much-Needed Fresh Start

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BOOM! Studios is taking a fairly risky approach to its first Buffy comic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 isn't a continuation of the long-running sequel saga Dark Horse published from 2007 through 2018. Nor is it a tie-in to the original TV series. It's instead a complete reboot that overhauls the Buffy mythos for 2019. While that approach threatens to alienate long-time Buffy fans, the new series actually strikes a very delicate balance. It retains the spirit of the old Buffy while also giving newbies an easy jumping-on point to the franchise.

It helps that there's nothing radically different about this rebooted Buffy. Writer Jordie Bellaire and artist Dan Mora aren't attempting to reinvent the Slayer wheel here. Even describing the new series as "Ultimate Buffy" overstates the differences. This is still the story of Buffy Summers moving to Sunnydale and trying to balance the pressures of high school with her vampire-hunting responsibilities. The characters all still closely resemble their respective actors. This first issue makes it clear that the new series will follow its own path in terms of plotting and the order in which certain major characters are introduced, but also that it won't be making changes simply for the sake of change.

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Vizio P65-F1 4K HDR Television Review

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There is always the hope that as time passes things get better, products improve. On paper that is certainly the case with the Vizio P65-F1 (See it at Walmart). Compared to last year's model, it has a higher light output for better HDR, and it just looks more stylish. Its $1,200 price (street) puts it in a crowded market though, so let's see if the improvements help it stand out.

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The Flash Needs to Move Past Cicada

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Warning: full spoilers for The Flash, Season 5, Episode 11 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 5, Episode 10.

The Flash’s recent 100th episode wasn’t quite everything it could have been. Looking back, the most frustrating thing about “What’s Past Is prologue” is that it didn’t take the opportunity to neatly wrap up the Cicada storyline. What initially seemed like a dramatic final battle between Team Flash and their current nemesis instead became one more skirmish in an ongoing war. At this point, Cicada comes across as little more than a stalling mechanism until the show is ready to dive headlong into the far more compelling Nora/Eobard Thawne alliance. “Seeing Red” did little to counteract that perception.

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Netflix's Carmen Sandiego Gets Lost in Her Own Show

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This is a (mostly) SPOILER-FREE review for the first season of DreamWorks Animation and Netflix' Carmen Sandiego. You can stream the entire right now on Netflix. 

“Where in the world is Carmen Sandiegoooo?” Whether you listened to the theme song from the 1994 original cartoon series or the incredibly boppy opening titles of Netflix’s new incarnation, it’s an earworm that will burrow its way as deep into your brain as the titular fedora-wearing character it’s referencing. Carmen Sandiego taught a legion of children about history, geography, math, and that stealing could be really cool if you wore a slick outfit.

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Thrustmaster T.Assault Six Collection Edition Gaming Headset Review

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The Thrustmaster T.Assault is taking aim at the Rainbow Six Siege crowd with a headset emblazoned with the game’s iconic “6” logo. This latest entry in the company’s line of licensed “T” headsets sits atop their product stack, entering the market at the competitive $99.99 (See it on Amazon). As an analog headset, they’re versatile and made to be used with any gaming platform that supports a 3.5mm jack. They feature stereo sound, a detachable mic, cross-platform compatibility, and a militaristic look. They're going up against heavyweights such as the HyperX Cloud 2, Cooler Master MH752, the Razer Kraken TE, and other midrange, wired stereo headsets.

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Resident Evil 2 Review

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I have fond memories of playing the original Resident Evil 2 in my dorm room at the University of Kansas back in 1998 and thinking the CGI cutscenes looked incredibly realistic. (Oh, 1998 Daemon, you had so much to learn!) Another great gaming recollection of mine is playing the 2002 remake of the first Resident Evil on GameCube with its beautifully updated visuals, completely new areas to explore, and terrifying new enemies. Now, in 2019, Capcom has given me a new experience I’ll remember for a long time: this ground-up remake of Resident Evil 2 is a very fun, very creepy adventure thanks to its completely new and modern graphics, controls, and some smart quality-of-life improvements. It does squander a golden opportunity to make good use of its two playable characters, but I enjoyed nearly every gory minute of my return to Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield’s shoes.

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Arrow Kicks Off 2019 With Fun New Twists

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Warning: Full spoilers for Arrow Season 7, Episode 10 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Arrow Season 7, Episode 9

Before transitioning into the “Elseworlds” crossover and then taking a few weeks off for the holidays, Arrow hit viewers with one of the more memorable twists in recent years. Star City’s imposter Green Arrow is none other than Oliver Queen’s half-sister, Emiko. Thankfully, the series isn’t wasting any time digging into the implications of that reveal. This episode serves as a choppy start to 2019, but one that sets several intriguing subplots in motion.

This episode is the first to give us a truly in-depth look at Sea Shimooka as Emiko. So far, she’s fine in what’s turned out to be a fairly straightforward role. Shimooka has the necessarily physicality and brooding darkness, but the series isn’t calling for much else just yet. Hopefully that’ll change as Emi and Ollie come face-to-face for the first time next week.

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Young Justice Gets Bigger and More Epic in This Week's Episodes

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Warning: Full spoilers for Young Justice: Outsiders episodes 7, 8 and 9 below.

You truly never know what you're going to get with any given installment of Young Justice: Outsiders. That has nothing to do with the show's quality, which has remained satisfyingly consistent over the course of these nine episodes so far. Rather, there's no telling which heroes and villains will become the focal points of any given episode. This week's batch casts an impressively wide net, from cosmic heavy-hitters to oddball Gotham villains and everything in between.

The new season has definitely taken on a looser, almost improvisational feel following those first three episodes. No longer are showrunners Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti staying locked on one group of characters for these three-episode arcs. As we saw in "Triptych," they're perfectly content to switch up the cast multiple times in a single episode.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 2: "Fight or Flight" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 2 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of the Season 2 premiere.

I'll say this much for The Punisher Season 2 so far - it seems more willing to build and maintain story momentum than its predecessor. Whereas Season 1 seemed willing to go multiple episodes without a real action scene, Frank has already racked up a respectable body count in the span of two episodes. The problem we're seeing right now, however, is that the show isn't doing a great job of making his new foes feel like anything more than disposable cannon fodder.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 6: "Nakazak" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 6 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review for Season 2, Episode 5.

Perhaps the biggest question surrounding The Punisher: Season 2 is whether we'll see Frank Castle evolve into a character more in line with the one from the comics. In those stories, Frank is an inhuman force of nature. He punishes indiscriminately. If you're a criminal, he kills you. If you're a criminal who helps him, he kills you anyway. By comparison, Jon Bernthal's Frank is much more restrained. He tends to limit his wrath to those who have specifically wronged him. But with this episode, there's a definite sense that the real Punisher is fighting his way to the surface.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 7: "One Bad Day" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 7 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 6.

Well, it only took them seven episodes this season to actually get Frank Castle in the Punisher costume again. I guess that's progress. The season seems to be gaining momentum in general as it rounds the halfway mark, with Frank now firmly in the hunt for his nemesis and Billy working his way up the ranks from escaped felon to criminal mastermind.

This episode is another that plays into what is easily the new season's strongest element - the dubious morality of Frank Castle. For the most part, every single person he's attacked over the course of the season has deserved a little Punishing, whether it was the pedophile ringleader from Episode 6 or John Pilgrim's hired goons. But seeing Frank resorting to "enhanced interrogation" to pry Billy's location out of Jake shows our "hero" crossing a fundamental line. We don't even need the distraught Agent Madani there to know Frank has become the bad guy. He's losing himself to his mission, bringing suffering to a poor war vet who just happened to get swept up in the wrong scheme with the wrong guy. In that sequence we see Frank through a very different and not at all flattering lens. And for Curtis to stand their stoically backing up Frank speaks to how desperate he's become.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 4: "Scar Tissue" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 4 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 3.

The fourth episode of The Punisher Season 2 bumps up Billy Russo from supporting player to main event. Even as Frank and Agent Madani begin the long, difficult search for their shared nemesis, this episode explores Billy's fractured state of mind and a few key tidbits of his tragic past. This episode is a great reminder that, for whatever else these Netflix Marvel shows may struggle with, they really know how to make the most of their villains.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 3: "Trouble the Water" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 3 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review for Season 2, Episode 2.

Whether intentionally or not, The Punisher Season 2 seems to be going all-in on the action movie homages. Episode 2 took several cues from No Country for Old Men as it depicted Frank battling a wave of trained killers inside a seedy motel. Now Episode 3 ventures into Assault on Precinct 13 territory as Frank rallies a ragtag group of cops against an overwhelming enemy. Hey, whatever helps this season keep the action flowing hot and heavy.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2 Finale: "The Whirlwind" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode The Punisher Season 2 Episode 13 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 12.

That's a wrap on The Punisher Season 2. And most likely the series as a whole, for that matter. This episode wraps up everything about as well as can be expected given the rocky road the season has taken of late. Most importantly, it brings the story of Frank Castle to a satisfying conclusion.

Easily the most surprising thing about the finale is the decision to shift the plot very much back towards John Pilgrim and the Schultzes. That was always going to yield messy results. The Schultzes in particular have never been given the attention they needed this season. Even here at the end, they felt more like minor footnotes in the Season 2 narrative rather than the ultimate targets in a hard-fought war. That really worked against the final encounter between Frank and the Schultzes. Whatever sense of satisfaction in seeing two profoundly evil people given vigilante justice was fleeting, at best.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 5: "One Eyed Jack" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 5 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 4.

Frank Castle may be back in New York now, but it's not looking as though we can expect a Punisher/Jigsaw showdown anytime soon. Just as Frank whiled away many hours with Micro in their abandoned power plant hideout in Season 1, Frank and his new partner Amy seem content to coast on Agent Madani's increasingly strained hospitality for as long as possible this season. The series is in danger of stalling at this point, though there's just enough progression in the latter half of this episode to keep the momentum going.

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Netflix's IO Review: Mackie's Post-Apocalyptic Drama

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Netflix’s IO is an interesting take on post-apocalyptic survival films. Instead of dwelling on a given threat or offering broad strokes that are reflective of societal ills, it presents a more intimate story, one centered on the importance of human relationships. It isn’t always successful. The subdued pace and muted thematic elements that allowed for such nuance also reduced the film’s impact. IO never becomes boring (although there are patches that run the risk of dullness), but it's also not as noteworthy as it could have been either.

Directed by Jonathan Helpert, IO details the exploits of scientist Sam Walden (Margaret Qualley) after a cataclysmic event sends most of Earth’s inhabitants into space. This mass exodus happens in waves, with some people leaving sooner than others. Sam opts out completely; she’s determined to find a way to save the dying planet. Time isn’t on her side though. With the final shuttle’s departure rapidly approaching, she only has a few days to make a meaningful scientific discovery or face the possibility of being left behind.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 11: "The Abyss" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 10.

Well, that went pretty much exactly as expected. Following last week's unsatisfying twist, with Frank Castle losing his nerve after apparently killing innocent civilians, the series proceeds to quickly walk back and reveal how it was all just a big misunderstanding. Good thing a familiar face from Frank's past showed up just in time to salvage a disappointing story turn.

As expected, resolving rank's crisis of conscience turned out to be as simple as doing a bit of forensic work and realizing that those women were already dead by the time Frank shot up Billy's warehouse. It was painfully obvious from the start that this was going to be the end result. And so once again, while I realize there was both a need to find some way of striking Frank on a psychological level and a lack of available options, this particular detour just doesn't seem to have worked out.

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Marvel's The Punisher Season 2, Episode 12: "Collision Course" Review

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Warning: Full spoilers for The Punisher Season 2, Episode 12 below. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review of Season 2, Episode 11.

For the most part, the complaints with The Punisher's second season have remained consistent. The season's new characters are badly underdeveloped and don't measure up to the returning favorites. The conflict is split along two fronts that don't seem to have much to do with one another. As much as the season manages to dial up the intensity and violence in its penultimate episode, it's also painfully clear that these recurring problems aren't going to be addressed before the end.

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