The always-superbly-selling Weekly Shōnen Jump manga magazine has brought countless iconic characters to life over the years, including the stars of such anime shows as Dragon Ball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh! And now, to celebrate the mag’s 50th birthday, Bandai Namco Entertainment has thrust together fan favourite faces from Weekly Shōnen Jump’s manifold franchises into one massive fighting game.

Going by the title Jump Force, this title is sure to serve up heaps of fan service, with 40+ characters from the manga confirmed to appear. The story of the main campaign will see the real world colliding with the Shōnen Jump universes, prompting iconic heroes to team up in a newly formed ‘Jump Force’ and tackle the fiendish foes responsible.

Three-on-three tag-team content is the game’s central mechanic, and we got a good chance to check this out during a hands-on session (on a PS4) with Jump Force’s Versus mode. Separate from the main story, this mode allows you to pit any teams of three that you wish against each other in epic combat. We spent an hour and a half playing around in this mode, with the full roster of fighters, and this is how it went…

Without any tutorials to guide us, and without having the good sense to look at the combat controls on the pause menu, we jumped straight into a battle – we built a team around Son Goku from Dragon Ball Z and pitted him against an array of baddies including his old foe Frieza. And, well, we’re not ashamed to admit that we got absolutely thrashed.

If all you do is jump around and spam the colourful buttons on the front of your controller, you’re likely to get bested, and you’ll probably feel like you’re missing out on all the biggest moves. That’s because, as we learned after bothering to look at the menu, the key to unlocking the most powerful moves it to hold down the R2 button (or RT, presumably, if you’re on an Xbox). Doing so will bring up a list of special moves on the screen, which, depending on how much energy you have saved up, can deal massive amounts of damage to your enemies.

It’s these special moves that really make the characters come to life, and there’s something infinitely enjoyable about seeing Goku dish out massive attacks that will feel familiar to fans of his anime and manga outings. Using his biggest move even makes him go Super Saiyan, showing off a glowing second form that is bound to be a hit with his manifold admirers.

Certainly, as you’ll also find with Mortal Kombat and Injustice games, there’s a level of fun to be had by just flitting between characters and trying out all their special moves. This is basically what we did with our 90 minutes of gameplay, and we found that there are some really snazzy graphics at points, especially with the big-ticket moves. In fact, things get barmy and bombastic at regular intervals, and trying out these huge heavy hitters in conflict with your chums is bound to be a hoot.

The more you play, the more you’ll start to discover which characters really float your boat. Being most familiar with the Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball Z side of things, we initially relished seeing Yugi Moto dishing out card-based attacks (including an epic dragon-summoning attack) and Goku dropping huge enemy balls on his iconic enemies.

But the more we played, the more we found other contenders for our affections: Ryo Saeba from City Hunter, who literally brought guns to a superpower fight, had a neat array of attacks including a really satisfying grenade launcher move. Dragon Shiryu and Pegasus Seiya, both from the Saint Seiya series, had cool armour and mystical attacks to match. Kaguya Ōtsutsuki from Naruto, meanwhile, had an entrancing floaty design and some surprisingly lethal moves.

Speaking of Naruto, the sand-based attacks at Gaara’s disposal seemed to be particularly rewarding to dish out, from his sneaky grab moves to a massive mausoleum-constructing special attack. There were also characters that looked really striking and unique, such as the ginormous pirate Marshall D. Teach, from the One Piece series, who unleashed some visually arresting onslaughts involving dark fruit.

Essentially, this was a really fun and varied roster to spend an hour and a half with. We’ve got a strong idea of who our top three choices would be for our tag team, and we look forward to testing our tactics against other players (as opposed to the tough-but-not-too-tough CPU settings we were up against in this preview).

As for nit-picks, we only have a few. The locations, although plentiful, didn’t feel particularly interactive. Compared to some of the smash-able and changeable locations we’ve seen in other fighting games franchises recently, Jump Force’s staging grounds felt a bit basic and static (although the battles within them were anything but).

There were also points at which the controls felt a bit fiddly. It could have just been us, but within 90 minutes we still hadn’t got to grips with effectively blocking (although the L1 quick-travel technique provided a handy dodge). We also found that it’s easy to get stuck in a string of combos that goes on for ages: while it’s fun to dish these out and see your enemies flail around hopelessly, it is frustrating when you get hit by the same sort of move and just have to watch your character get thrown around like a ragdoll for an indulgent amount of time. At these points, with the incessant attacks in full flow, the game’s yelp-heavy in-fight dialogue also became a bit grating.

But, for the most part, we did have a fun time with Jump Force’s Versus mode. Great mates who plan to play this game together should expect epic battles and familiar faces, along with a huge heap of eye-pleasing special moves. We’re looking forward to playing the full campaign and battling with other players, and we’ll be sure to bring you more thoughts once we have.

Jump Force is released in the UK for PS4, Xbox One and PC on 15 February.

Taika Waititi is a very busy man, but not too busy to be chatting to Marvel about doing another MCU instalment, it seems.

The beloved Kiwi director ragnarok’d up to FX’s TCA press tour this week to promote his new TV series, a spin-off of his cult classic mockumentary, What We Do In The Shadows, where he confirmed that he’s still in talks with Marvel about directing a new film in the never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Deadline revealed that upon being pressed for details about his plans for any further projects with Marvel, Waititi made sure to state categorically that he was absolutely not interested in taking over the helm of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 from ousted director James Gunn, but added “I’m still hanging out with those guys (Marvel) and talking about new stuff. I want to do another movie with them.”

Waititi was also asked if he had met with the studio about replacing Gunn at any point.

“I didn’t really. For me, those are James (Gunn)’s films. Going into something like that with his stamp all over his films, would be like going into someone’s house and saying ‘Hey, I’m your new dad, and this is how we make peanut butter sandwiches now. It feels kind of awkward.”

Waititi’s next film is the dark comedy Jojo Rabbit, which made it to the top spot of our 30 must-see movies in 2019, but in the midst of post-production he’s found time to direct an episode of Disney’s forthcoming Star Wars live-action TV series, The Mandalorian.

“It was amazing. [Jon] Favreau is a genius…it’s fun doing something in the Star Wars universe. It’s the strangest to see a stormtrooper, and then when you’re doing a scene with 50 or 60 of them, it’s amazing,” Waititi remarked, before tackling the issue of reining in his signature irreverent style when working on the show. “Star Wars is very different to the Marvel style. The tone of the first films really should be adhered to, it’s what the fans like. You can’t disrespect it. Definitely my tone is in there.”

This review contains spoilers.

1.4 Whose Blood Is That?

The Passage juggles a lot of plot threads this week, but it keeps all the balls in the air as it reveals the past and future of Anthony Carter. All this while dealing with a cracked-up NOAH agent on a shooting spree, which forces Wolgast and Richards to work together. The viral villains also make first contact with Amy in this thrilling episode.

The Carter-centric flashbacks reveal the heartbreaking story of how he ended up on Death Row, then as a NOAH candidate, and one of The Twelve. Actor McKinley Belcher III delivers a solid performance as the transforming Carter, going from the initial effects of the viral injection to being overtaken by the monster Fanning wants him to be. The sun is getting to him now, he’s rejecting food, and his lips twitch as a new fang starts to come in. Carter is haunted by his past with Rachel (Elizabeth Alderfer in an impressive role as a troubled, but an incredibly likeable woman). He thinks he deserves his fate for responding so badly when she revealed that she is married and in an abusive situation.

Carter is sweet, but naïve and blinded by guilt, and Fanning has been voyeuristically watching the man’s tragic memories on a loop. It is interesting seeing him play Carter in the dreamscape, using the truth to manipulate him. He tells the young man his anger is warranted – at being another black man framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and at himself for failing Rachel – but that Carter deserves power. As Fanning draws on the energy of the other virals to overload Carter’s system, he invites the young man to join the vampire family.

The transformation, culminating in the final scene where Carter “dies” and is reborn a bloodsucker, is effective. It is a believable turn, punctuated by a hulk-out horror moment. He has been an interesting character as he trades notes with Amy, but this pushes his story in a better direction. He essentially rejected Lear’s attempts to save his human side, but how much humanity is left in Carter? Though Lear warned Carter that Fanning is a master manipulator, actor Jamie McShane showed how good at being bad he can be (and it is foreboding to think how he is able to not only appear as a hallucination but invade memories).

One more Fanning note: He is so enjoyable to watch when he appears in his human form, but the veiny, pseudo-catatonic viral-Fanning is less interesting. He is doing a lot of work via nightmares and hallucinations and isn’t zoned out, but I hope to see viral-Fanning do more soon.

I mention this each week, but the dynamic between Wolgast and Amy continues to be the core of the show, and the light-and-breezy scenes of them connecting (over traditional father-daughter treehouse moments – which also involve surveillance) are fun.

It is nonetheless refreshing to see the girl interact with other characters. The scene between Amy and Babcock is menacing because Shauna can be so disarming in her human form, but her vampire boss has taught her some tricks regarding manipulation. Amy’s powers are developing – and Wolgast no doubt saw how fast she ran when escaping the rogue agent Paulson – and Babcock plants the seed that “The Agent” might not still care for the girl once she changes. Amy is such a smart kid (and she knows how to scam a pair of binoculars), and Saniyya Sidney’s performance is sharp without being annoyingly precocious. She is already onto Babcock and rejects her, but for how long? Similar to Fanning’s offer, Babcock invites Amy to join her new family and not to fight the transformation. Also, did you notice that her “true form” is still a lie?

Not content to manipulate a child, Babcock toys with Richards again this episode. Sure, she thanks him for not executing her last week, but she amps up his paranoia by alerting him of Sergeant Paulson’s knowledge. Paulson is cracking from having the viral David Winston in his head.

There is a little moment where Winston – who was on Death Row for gruesome murders – blankly stares at Paulson, and it conveyed how messed up it must be to have these virals forcing their way into a person’s head and making them see the horrors the inmates inflicted on others. It is quite the chilling beat.

Paulson decides to revolt by taking up a sniper post, and demanding a chopper out of the compound. Meanwhile, Richards silently cracks. He can’t allow the truth to be known that Babcock is inside him.

He needs to kill Paulson lest the sergeant tells Wolgast too much. Actually, Wolgast manages to learn a lot this week. His “let’s build a tree house” scheme (which was a nice way to get him and Amy out of the stuffy, white room) allows for some birds-eye-view surveillance beyond the compound. Plus, we learn Fanning doesn’t want the humans dead and instead needs them alive because the humans will let the virals out. But he only needs one more. And Wolgast now knows about Babcock in Richard’s head.

I wonder if Paulson’s question, “How do you know we’re not the lab rats?” will connect with Richards before it’s all finished. I suspect not. The walls are closing in on the head of NOAH security and he’s fighting a viral in his head while battling the suspicions of humans.

The NOAH pseudo-science stuff involving Lear and Fanning dragged a bit. The character knows the faeces is hitting the air conditioning and even discusses how humans may need to defend themselves against the new viral evolution. But he still needs a come-to-Jesus (or come to Dracula) moment where he’s like, “OK, we gonna die due to vampires.”

Maybe getting blood on his face at episode’s end will help with that. But, as Sykes asks, “Whose blood is that?” Though the episode title could also be related to the figurative blood of Rachel on Carter’s hand, Lear’s possible infection certainly counts as a big finale moment.

One final thought about this week’s story: the Lila and Lacey plot is not doing it for me yet, even if I really enjoy Kecia Lewis’ portrayal of the former nun/current badass. The Department of Defence is onto their attempts to blow the whistle on NOAH, which led to the death of super-reporter Sierra (who somehow assembled an entire investigative video package on the secret programme in a matter of days). But the subplot takes us out of the action too much when everything is happening in Colorado.

And would someone kill Dr Pet, already?

Read Aaron’s review of the previous episode, That Should Never Have Happened To You, here.

The Walking Dead apparently doesn’t need Rick Grimes to survive AMC’s apocalyptic ax. It’s doing well enough on its own, according to the network, which has renewed cable’s premier zombie drama for a tenth season. 

AMC made the announcement on Twitter with a video featuring Samantha Morton’s Alpha and her creepy band of flesh-wearing Whisperers. Check it out below:

The renewal should quiet skeptics who have been wondering since the beginning of season 9 whether the show still has the legs to shamble on. It’s no secret that the last few years have been rough for The Walking Dead in terms of viewership. After the show posted its weakest ratings for a season premiere since season 2, with only 9.36 million viewers watching the season 9 opener, the viewership has continued to decline over the weeks, falling to 4.79 million during episode 7 before a slight improvement during the midseason finale, which posted 5.09 million viewers. 

But while it’s been a weak year in the ratings — although not as bad when compared to many of AMC’s other, more niche offerings — the show has continued to improve its storytelling. Under new showrunner Angela Kang, the series has seen three major shakeups that have brought back a bit of energy to the post-apocalyptic proceedings: the year-and-a-half time jump in the season opener, Rick and Maggie’s exit in episode 5, and a six-year time jump directly after that. 

Let’s not forget the introduction of the Whisperers, a new faction of villains that fans of the show have been clamoring for since last season. The debut of this twisted group left a major character dead and the lives of a few other beloved characters in limbo. The second half the season will flesh out the story of these knife-wielding maniacs and introduce their ruthless leader, Alpha, the show’s new big bad. It’s likely that we’ll get a few more deaths along the way, too…

The Walking Dead season 10 air date

The Walking Dead season 10 will arrive in October 2019. 

When you try to conjure an image in your mind that sums up Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, the upcoming second instalment in Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment’s RPG/shooter series, the first thing you think of probably isn’t an underground car park in the middle of Paris. That is, however, exactly where we went for a preview event of the game during the cold snap at the end of January.

Improbable as it may seem, this subterranean structure that once housed stationary vehicles was transformed into a post-apocalyptic bunker of sorts, with journalists from around the globe – wearing more layers than Joey from Friends when he donned Chandler’s entire wardrobe – huddled around portable heaters in between hands-on sessions with The Division 2.

With the pleasantries out of the way, and a presentation completed that promised big things, Den Of Geek was dropped into an early stage of the game on an Xbox One X. Picking up after the prologue (which we didn’t get to see), we were greeted by an ethereal montage of clips and concepts, which set the stage nicely and recapped the state of the world.

Seven months after disease brought society to its knees, Washington (the new stomping ground for this title) is divided between nice folk that want to rebuild and a triumvirate of street gangs that all want to rule the chaos. One of these gangs is attempting to take over the White House, which is currently housing a sizeable community of well-meaning survivors, and that’s where the brand new player character comes in.

Having selected a character design we were happy with (there seems to be an endless array of skins, spanning male and female options), we were dropped into a simple mission: reach the White House and defend it from these marauders. The game, assuming you already know the ropes thanks to The Division’s first instalment, throws you straight into combat. There’s no waiting around, which is fine by us.

It quickly becomes apparent that, whether you’ve played the first game or not, you’ll want to stick close to cover at all times. Whichever weapons and skills you’ve acquired – and there does seem to be loads of them, spanning familiar old-faithful options from the first game and heaps of fresh ideas – running straight towards your enemies rarely ends well. A gung-ho approach leads to your death, basically, pretty much every time.

You’ll want to stay hidden, then, inching closer to your enemies and taking them down when the opportunity presents itself. Once you’ve got to grips with these mechanics, which will come easy to seasoned veterans of the franchise, you shouldn’t find it too hard to halt the attack on the White House and put the community within it at ease. With that out of the way, you can take a look around the settlement, upgrade a couple of items and pick up your first proper mission. This task will send you out onto the streets of Washington DC, where danger is waiting at basically every crossroads.

Once you’ve fought and/or sneaked your way across town, and made a quick pit stop at another settlement (this one is an old theatre), the mission awaiting you is a fun one: battle your way to the top of a hotel, like a gun-toting reimagining of The Raid, and take down a big armoured baddie.

Fighting through the hotel’s various rooms and levels provides a neat early test of the player’s abilities, as well as showing off some decent graphics and imaginative mini-arenas. Some rooms are littered with smash-able items, while others provide only very limited places to cover. You’ll find yourself quickly sizing up a location and rushing to the best defendable vantage point, before picking off your enemies one by one.

Playing as a member of The Division, of course, means that you get a vast array of weapons and gadgets. There are some really fun ones, which we won’t spoil here, that come in very handy in tight spots. (The gadgets aren’t always easy to control, though, it’s worth noting.) You’ll also want to watch out for different sorts of enemies – some will stay at a safe sniper distance, while others will try to flank you and a handful of utterly unhinged adversaries will sprint and scream straight to your location.

The skills you honed on the way up come in very handy on the hotel’s roof, as you team up with another Division agent (and any online chums you might’ve brought with you) to take down a few waves of goons and their leader. He doesn’t go down easy, and will stalk you around the map, so you’ll want to move regularly and keep firing until his armour smashes off. It took us a few goes to get that bit right, but it sure did feel like an achievement – a triumph of the will and of sheer tactics – when we finally managed to fell him.

After a bit more open world exploration (there seems to be loads of side missions to pick up, and lots of ways to assist communities and save random strangers), we broke for lunch while the consoles were rejigged. Once we were done scoffing, it was time for something entirely different: checking out some endgame antics, which will keep players occupied after they’ve completed the main story.

As it turns out, the endgame content on The Division 2 will pit players (you can play in teams of four through online co-op) against an evil organisation known as Black Tusk. Remember in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation when Simon Pegg dubbed The Syndicate an “anti-IMF”? There’s a similar vibe going on here, with the elite agents of Black Tusk clearly intended as the greatest challenge yet for the Division agents. Random street thugs they are not, packing an arsenal of heavy weapons and some very tactical thinking.

In the endgame, you’ll be able to visit two new locations to battle Black Tusk, as well as revisiting earlier locales and missions that have now been invaded by their villainy. In our hands-on preview, we got to see some really snazzy places: one area had an underground nightclub feel, with big flashing boxes that change colour scattered around; and, in a different mission, we got to fight Black Tusk in a planetarium’s picturesque observatory. Certainly, these skirmishes threw up new problems to solve, and they felt nicely different to the White House and hotel battles we’d tried in the main game.

Again, the difficulty was pitched just right, with a couple of casualties (rather than a frustratingly massive amount) occurring along the way to our eventual victory. Playing as a co-op team of four, which you can do on any of the missions in the game, we were able to revive each other in times of need and chat tactics throughout over headsets – well, in our case, the chat mainly consisted of swearing and apologising.

The co-op missions we tried were packed with plenty of enemies, numerous eye-catching environments and just the right amount of challenge to keep us engaged but not annoyed. There were lots of different types of danger peppered throughout, from foot-soldiers to drones to sizeable armoured adversaries, and this variety kept us on our toes. We never felt overpowered or overstocked with ammo, and we can easily imagine ourselves diving into these co-op missions again and again in the hope of properly mastering them.

We can imagine this endgame content being a really enjoyable experience for mates to tackle together, especially with the different classes of character you can select at this stage – in the endgame, you can either be a health-happy Survivalist, a bomb-chucking Demolitionist or a sniper-wielding Sharpshooter. Black Tusk may be made of tough stuff, but you’ve got plenty of options when it comes to taking them on.

There were a few moments during our time with the game in which The Division 2 didn’t quite feel fully polished, but perhaps that’s to be expected in a pre-release build of the title. The frame rate wasn’t always top notch and some of the dialogue felt quite stilted, and you could argue that the world doesn’t feel all that realistic given that the apocalypse is only supposed to have started seven months ago, but there certainly weren’t any fatal flaws here that put us off the game.

If anything, our main takeaway from this event is that it made a very strong case for The Division 2’s existence. The previous game in the series may not seem that old, especially given all the post-release support it received, but the big new world and all the fresh toys in The Division 2 – along with all those fun co-op missions – make this feel like a necessary addition to the Tom Clancy gaming franchise. And with the addition of Black Tusk, this sequel is sure to challenge gamers in ways that The Division didn’t.

We look forward to playing the whole thing, in the hope that a few of the kinks will be ironed out and that the elements we enjoyed will be stitched together well. The Division 2 is set for release on March 15th 2019 across PS4, Xbox One and PC, and, in the meantime, you’d better prepare yourself for some epic co-op action.