Hans Zimmer has revealed his favorite ever Batman score, referring to the musical arrangement as "the most glorious statement of Batman" he's ever heard – and it's Elliot Goldenthal's work on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

Speaking to IGN, the award-winning composer, who previously worked on the scintillating scores of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series, reflected on the evolution of his career and the experiences he's had with other music maestros over the years, including those who have scored Batman films such as Danny Elfman and Michael Giacchino.

Zimmer considered what makes a great Batman score by thinking about the distinct sounds of each composition before declaring Elliot Goldenthal's musical number as "the greatest Batman score of them all." Zimmer said he was invited to Poland to take to the concert stage to play Inception, where Goldenthal presented his superhero suite.

"It was the happiest moment of my life how his art, and craftsmanship, and sheer audacity of writing, and imagination, completely wiped the floor with my little Inception piece. And his thing was just the most glorious statement of Batman I'd ever heard," Zimmer said of Goldenthal's music. "It was just amazing. It was amazing and everybody knew it."

"It's nice when you can actually say somebody did something that you are immediately, incredibly familiar with, and they've just done it so much better than you could ever do it, and you can just be inspired and rejoiced," Zimmer added, admitting that it comes with the realization that you could perhaps "do a little bit more studying" and "work a little harder."

Goldenthal took over the reins from Danny Elfman to compose the score for Batman Forever in 1995 and later returned with director Joel Schumacher to score Batman & Robin in 1997, showcasing a fun and unique style that struck a different kind of chord. Zimmer gave Goldenthal the credit he felt he deserved after thinking about his own work.

Zimmer identified his score for Tony Scott's The Fan as one of his least appreciated scores, admitting that "nobody went to see" the film when it was released in 1996. "Maybe it wasn't the greatest movie in the world," he said. "But I think it's a pretty good score, I think it's a pretty daring score so I'm rather fond of that one. And it's not for the faint of heart."

He also highlighted Ridley Scott's Hannibal as another film with an underrated score, which he approached like a romantic comedy. "I think I wrote my best love theme in that one because I always felt that Hannibal Lecter has no reason to live were it not for his obsession with Clarice Starling, and vice versa," he explained. "He gives her purpose."

Acclaimed composer Michael Giacchino is writing the music for Matt Reeves' The Batman, due out on March 4, 2022. He recently shared a clip of an orchestra performing part of the piece, which aligned itself with the visual tone and atmosphere present in the franchise reboot's first trailer, with a suitably gothic, haunting and dramatic sound.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Heads up, gamers of a certain age who are planning to decorate a Christmas tree this holiday season. The Hallmark SNES Christmas ornament is available to order from Amazon right now. It's been going in and out of stock (mostly out) since it went up for sale earlier this year. Grab it for the list price of $19.99 if you want it.

Hallmark Signature SNES Christmas Ornament

The ornament is slightly backordered at the time of this writing, but it's currently shipping out around October 30, which means it'll arrive in plenty of time before Christmas.

It's a fairly adorable little Super Nintendo console, complete with a tiny copy of Super Mario World in it. Press a button on it, and the little red light glows and it plays music and sounds from the game. It's really cool. It's like last year's NES ornament, which also sold out quickly.

So if you want to hang this delightful mini-console on your tree this year, you'll want to mash that buy button before it's gone.

The HTC Vive Focus is a new portable virtual reality headset that takes us that much closer to our inevitable Ready Player One future.

The HTC Vive Focus is an astonishingly lightweight VR headset that’s more like a pair of VR glasses than any of the heavy head-strapped displays that have come before it. Of course, it helps they even look like a pair of oversized sunglasses that uses traditional temples that fold up into a small package too. This headset basically sits on your ears instead of using a big adjustable head strap system to wrap itself around your head.

Wearing the HTC Vive Focus reminds me of using science goggles thanks to its large gasket that basically forms a light-blocking seal around your eyes with soft and extremely flexible fabric.

The headset also isn’t front-heavy at all because HTC opted to remove the internal battery and instead have it draw power from an external power bank via its USB-C connection.

The second reason the Focus is so compact is newly developed pancake lenses that are much thinner than the Fresnel lenses used in most VR headsets. Aside from that, all that’s in the headset is a pair of 1,600 x 1,600 resolution screens, a Qualcomm XR One processor to power all the virtual experiences, and a cooling fan.

As the HTC Vive Focus is designed to be portable, it primarily connects to Android phones (there’s no word of iOS support yet) over Bluetooth. The headset merely uses your phone as a controller and amazingly it doesn’t need you to launch into any dedicated app. instead, HTC has found just overlays a virtual D-Pad-like control scheme over the Android home screen.

The onboard Qualcomm chip handles all of the Focus’ processing. It’s powerful enough to drive your basic polygonal VR experiences like attending a virtual meeting in Vive Sync or play games like Space Slurpies, which is basically like a 3D version of snake that uses your phone’s gyroscope as a joystick.

HTC is also pushing its latest VR product as more of a relaxation and entertainment device. During my hands-on time, I went into a pseudo-sensory deprivation tank with TRIPP and explored a bit of the virtual reconstruction of Route 66 in A Road to Remember. In a virtual theater setting, you can also use the Vive Focus to watch any content from streaming service apps on your phone – such as HBO Max, Netflix, and Disney+.

Unfortunately, the HTC Vive Focus isn’t really designed as a gaming device as its displays only refresh up to 60Hz and the pancake lenses only offer up a 100-degree field of view. HTC has also told us you can’t connect the headset to a gaming PC or gaming laptop through USB-C – we really wished it could because it would be the perfect portable VR headset for gaming.

The HTC Vive Flow will retail for a steep $499 price which includes the headset and a carrying case, but no bundled power bank. Pre-orders open on Oct 14 and the headset will be available starting November 2021.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Kevin Lee is IGN's SEO Updates Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.

Battlefield 2042's Hazard Zone aims to squeeze down the margins of the franchise. If you’ve grown tired of Battlefield's all-encompassing chaos — if you no longer want to dodge helicopter strikes, artillery blasts, and tank shells like gristle in a meat grinder — here is a new game mode that places you in a tight, tiny squad of four. Together, you’ll venture into terrain that no Battlefield has gone before; a world bereft of infinite respawns, control points, or the reassurance that a whole army always has your back.

I wasn't afforded the opportunity to play Hazard Zone, but from a brief keynote delivered by Senior Design Director Daniel Berlin, the third major pillar in Battlefield 2042 seems to be an interesting hybrid between Counter-Strike tactics, MOBA-style composition building, and a straight-up battle royale. The fiction, like everything in 2042, is hilariously apocalyptic. Satellites are falling from the sky, and we've decamped to various Battlefield maps to secure the valuable "data drives" left to rot in the smoldering husks. You and three other players will select specialists plucked from 2042's All-Out Warfare format, and the team edits their precise loadout of gadgets and guns before deployment. Hazard Zone is capped at 32 players on the new consoles and PC, and 24 on last-generation machines. alongside rival groups, NPC combatants guard the objectives, and they'll need to be dispatched as you secure the payloads. To me, that sounds a bit like the creeps from League of Legends, and I hope they make DICE's famously beautiful maps feel a little more alive.

That's the core loop here. You barge into a map, secure as many drives as you can, and ideally extract out with everyone alive. (Yes, Hazard Zone features permadeath, though there is a way for your squad to buy you back in.) The most interesting tidbit I learned from the presentation is the mode's closed-circuit economy. The drives you rack up are transmuted into "dark market credits," which are then spent on different weapons and munitions in future Hazard Zone matches. I mentioned Counter-Strike above because it really seems like EA is toying with a similar warfighting economy that Valve originally established, where we spend a few minutes in a lobby deciding if we want to drop a wad of in-game cash on the AWP or whatever. Remember, those "dark market credits" are exclusive to Hazard Zone; you won't be hoarding them for the cosmetics market. It's always a relief when a studio adds a currency to their game and limits it to exactly one variant of play.

Across the board, 2042 is shaping up to be one of the boldest Battlefields in years. The traditional bedlam is good and fun, but I'm most excited for the profoundly robust level editor introduced with Portal, and the thinky, more cunning approaches possible in Hazard Zone. It's been a century since 1942; about time this old dog learned some new tricks.

Hisense isn’t what you would call a household television brand in the United States, at least not yet. But while you may not have heard of it, the company has been making some excellent televisions in the last year and the U7G is the latest that can be called such.

I saw a lot of potential in Hisense last year, and the U7G has made me a believer. While there is still room for improvement, Hisense has focused on what matters most for the most people. The result is a television that is so good, it’s going to be hard to recommend anything else for most people who don’t want to spend much more than $1,000.

Hisense U7G – Design and Build

The U7G doesn’t really break any design conventions nor does it take many risks, but the result is a television that stays out of its own way. While the wide-spread nature of the feet means you better have a pretty large media console for the 65-inch version of this television, it feels stable and sturdy once it’s in place.

Hisense kept most of the front of the television focused on the display: small bezels and a thin silver bar below the screen is all that you really see. Hisense didn’t just make everything flat either, and gave a few of the pieces some nice geometric edges that are reminiscent of the “aggressive” design on high-end cars without getting too in your face. I like it.

Hisense did build in some cable management into the U7G, but it’s imperfect. There are built-in loops on the inside of the back foot on the left and right sides that very nicely hide a cable, but they are not flexible and positioned awkwardly. That means while it can hide a cable well, it was a bit of a struggle to get it properly positioned. Also, they are tight: one HDMI 2.1-compatible cable and there isn’t any room to fit another cable through the loop. I have to give Hisense credit here for providing some kind of solution even though anyone with more than one cable to run into the television will feel underserved.

The back of the television isn’t much to write home about, and that’s probably fine – most people aren't spending a lot of time looking at the backside of their television. The U7G isn’t particularly thin, especially when compared to OLED televisions, but it’s inoffensive. The back left of the television (looking at it straight on from the front) plays home to all the ports, which includes four HDMI ports – two of which are HDMI 2.1 and support up to 120Hz framerates, and one supports eARC – along with two USB ports (one 3.0 and the other 2.0), an ethernet port, RCA composite, an optical digital out port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The back left of the television is where you will find the port for the power cable.

Hisense U7G – Remote

The remote for the Hisense U7G eschews from using the traditional number pad and joins Vizio, Roku, and Samsung remotes by prioritizing compatness over giving users all possible options. It never feels like you’ve made a sacrifice though, as everything you likely need is right there.

It took me a minute to figure out which button would bring up the settings menu since the box with two lines did not immediately read “menu” to me, but once I figured it out it was smooth sailing from there.

Hisense has a robust six shortcut buttons in this remote, and in my review model that included Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+, Tubi, and Peacock.

Hisense U7G – Software and UI

The U7G is a 2021 television, but it isn’t using the most recent version of Google’s smart TV operating system. Instead of Google TV, you’ll be greeted with Android TV. There isn’t a noticeable difference most people will see, but Google TV is considered to be a better and smoother experience. I will say that with the U7G, I didn’t find myself strongly wishing it had Google TV since it is able to render an experience with Android TV that is snappy and responsive. There is no lag when changing any settings or navigating to any application, for example, so most will be perfectly happy with what they find here.

Just like with Google TV, Android TV offers a bunch of apps for pretty much everything you could be looking for.

One small complaint I have with the interface is how Hisense chooses to name color balance. In Advanced Settings, the Color Temperature is noted as “low” through “high.” I have no idea what “high” color balance is, but Hisense treats that to mean “cool” which I only know after toying with it.

The U7G has Google Assistant built-in, and if you’re not a fan of having your television listening to you, there is a manual “off” switch located at the bottom of the television upfront underneath the Hisense logo. That said, when you turn this off, the television emits a bright orange light from three circular LEDs, which is extremely annoying. These lights can be turned off by toggling a set of Google Assistant functions from the TV settings, but it’s not straightforward. I wish Hisense did not make it so convoluted just to get that set of lights to turn off.

Hisense U7G – Picture Quality

The U7G offers a fantastic viewing experience. This television promises 1,000 nits of peak brightness and it certainly feels like it. This television gets extremely bright, to the point where I was easily able to play games in the middle of the day with sun streaming in from the windows of my office with no issues.

That brightness seems to come at very little cost to color fidelity as well, as SDR and HDR content looks fantastic, with black levels even impressing me with how much contrast there was to enjoy.

Hisense is using an LCD-style screen and 72 local dimming zones, which isn't particularly impressive. Therein lies the only real complaint I have with the display: bright points set against dark backgrounds have a noticeable halo around them.

In local dimming tests, this halo is very easy to see, but just like was the case with the Sony A90J, in real-world viewing situations, you’ll probably not notice it. The only time it bothered me was if I was watching widescreen content and captions appeared in the lower thirds, as a halo would bleed off the letters and into the lower section of the picture.

One other thing to keep in mind with this display is that it does have an ideal viewing angle: straight on. Viewing content on the display from an angle doesn’t make it unwatchable, but there is a notable difference in quality as colors and blacks wash out. When setting up the U7G in a space, make sure that seating is set up as close to directly in line with the front of the panel as possible.

Hisense U7G – Gaming Performance

Both HDMI 2.1 ports support variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto-low-latency mode (ALLM) which makes it perfect for both the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, and enables each to output maximum settings. In my testing, all games really shone on the U7G, especially those in HDR. That outstanding brightness means that the contrast between darks and brights is maximized, making for some particularly excellent scene rendition.

Before you can get the most out of the HDMI 2.1 ports, you do need to tell the display to allow it, which is an odd step. By default, the ports are set to “standard format.” To get up to 120Hz in 4K, you’ll need to change this to “enhanced format.” A weird step, but a necessary one.

I tested multiple games on the U7G including Destiny 2, Apex Legends, and A Plague Tale: Innocence. In all cases, color was rendered beautifully and the display responded quickly to controller commands. Especially in Apex Legends and Destiny 2, combat felt smooth and responsive.

Specifically with Destiny 2 in the Crucible where 120Hz is enabled, combat and motion felt buttery smooth. The brightness was also a boon, as other displays – especially OLEDs – may give excellent response time and frame rate but struggle with dark areas. That problem is definitely less of an issue here. Even though the U7G has some impressive black levels for an LCD television, it doesn’t have a problem coming out of those blacks and that makes for an easier time seeing into dark corners and shadows.

The issues I found with halo around bright objects never became a real issue for me in any gaming environment, so those looking to pick up a U7G specifically for gaming won’t be disappointed in the performance.

Hisense U7G – Audio Quality

While I have not held poor audio quality against any modern flatscreen television, it’s still worth noting. Just like its contemporaries, the U7G struggles when it comes to the low end for audio. On top of that, I heard something “off” about the audio that it was able to output. Notes felt flat in such a way that I think even the mids aren’t doing a great job.

All this means is that I am once again going to recommend the purchase of a dedicated sound system, even if that means just a simple soundbar. Any such sound system is going to be world’s better than what is built into the U7G.

Hisense U7G – The Competition

TCL used to own this segment, and while the new 6-Series is close in price and likely in performance ($1,200 for a 65-inch with Google TV), Hisense is really giving it a run for the title of best value, especially for gamers.