Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable fictional characters of the last 50-plus years, appearing in countless iterations across comics, movies, cartoons, video games and other media I am surely forgetting. Fans will argue about the best iteration -- but for my money, the Spider-universe Insomniac Games introduced in 2018 on the PS4 with Marvel's Spider-Man is an all-time great. It spent no time rehashing Peter Parker's origins, throwing the player into a vibrant and massive rendering of Manhattan. The city felt alive, with tons to do investigate and a horde of Spider-Man's most famous villains to contend with. It also skillfully introduced a world in which Parker would eventually fight side-by-side with a second Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable fictional characters of the last 50-plus years, appearing in countless iterations across comics, movies, cartoons, video games and other media I am surely forgetting. Fans will argue about the best iteration -- but for my money, the Spider-universe Insomniac Games introduced in 2018 on the PS4 with Marvel's Spider-Man is an all-time great. It spent no time rehashing Peter Parker's origins, throwing the player into a vibrant and massive rendering of Manhattan. The city felt alive, with tons to do investigate and a horde of Spider-Man's most famous villains to contend with. It also skillfully introduced a world in which Parker would eventually fight side-by-side with a second Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

Since its inception in Japan in 1996, Pokémon has become the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. Spanning trading cards, video and mobile phone games, television and film series, music, books, manga comics, merchandise, and even two temporary theme parks, Pokémon is an international cultural phenomenon. Chatrooms, subreddits, and other communication forums exist across the internet for the explicit purpose of Pokémon-centric discussions - including comparisons of the features of various Pokémon (e.g. Herein lies an excellent opportunity for applying both classification and regression machine learning algorithms to an especially fun dataset: the species of the Pokémon universe. Two features are given regarding the name of each species: the base form and the evolved form (if applicable, otherwise the evolved name value is empty).

It was inevitable that a new Nintendo console would spawn another installment in the storied Super Smash Bros. series. And now we're just weeks away from the return of the fun and frantic fighter that's been responsible for countless smiles, frayed friendships and broken controllers. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has far more characters and stages than any of the preceding releases, but the general gameplay formula has merely been tweaked and tuned. That's exactly what we all want, of course, and as a side-effect it gave Nintendo the time to focus on single-player aspects much more than it's done before. Last week I headed to Nintendo's UK base to hear a bit more about the game and experience the single-player firsthand. Where Smash Bros. has been undeniably one-dimensional in the past, Nintendo wants this one to be a bit more accessible.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get to do any exploration, but I did get a good taste of the smooth and fluid combat system during my demo. One trigger locks you on to your enemies and the other lets you blast away, making it relatively painless to keep up with the swarms of fast-moving attacking robots. Another button tells your robot companion to attack, and you can swap rapidly between them at any time. Each bot has its own special attack you can use to even the odds, as well. The bots are designed to be crucial to your success -- if you forget about utilizing those special attacks, you'll likely end up in big trouble.