Video Games News

April 17, 2024

World of Warcraft’s upcoming The War Within expansion is raising the stakes, as its opening moments sees one of the game’s most beloved cities destroyed and one of its most prominent characters presumably killed.

Spoilers below for the opening of The War Within!

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Now Playing: World of Warcraft – The War Within Expansion Announcement Cinematic

As is made clear in a recent hands-on preview with an alpha version of The War Within, the floating city of Dalaran, home of the mages of the Kirin Tor, has taken a beating. Players wake up on the shores of the new Isle of Dorn zone, buried beneath the rubble of the fan-favorite city that served as a player hub for the game’s popular Wrath of the Lich King and Legion expansions. After battling through groups of the spider-like Nerubians and rescuing survivors scattered throughout Dalaran’s ruins, players meet up with Warcraft heroes Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore, who reflect on their losses.

What, exactly, transpired is a little unclear, as the actual scenario that leads players to the shores of the Isle of Dorn isn’t playable in the alpha–nor are any of the cutscenes depicting the battle for Dalaran or its aftermath. But using some context clues and the descriptive text that currently occupies the space where the game’s cutscenes would be, we get an idea of what went down.

The Nerubians, led by the villain Xal’atath, are presumably to blame for Dalaran’s destruction, though the exact sequence of events isn’t revealed. Last players saw, Dalaran was above the Broken Isles, and must have moved closer to the Isle of Dorn as part of an operation to stop Xal’atath. As Thrall and Jaina take a moment to mourn the loss of their joint strike force, they take an additional “moment for Khadgar.” The archmage isn’t seen anywhere in the alpha or mentioned further, and seems to be presumed dead by Thrall and Jaina.

A cutscene placeholder sees Thrall and Jaina mourning the loss of their task force, and their friend Khadgar.

Whether Khadgar is truly dead or simply missing-in-action for the time being remains to be seen, but his absence, and Dalaran’s destruction, do present a major shake-up for Blizzard’s MMO. Khadgar has long served as an important character and guardian of Azeroth, one who frequently guides and teams up with players to take on the game’s latest threat. The fact that both he and Dalaran appear to have been wiped out in the new expansion’s opening moments does help to establish just how big of a threat Xal’atath and the Nerubians pose.

Dalaran is just the latest Azerothian city to be laid to waste in recent years. The game’s Battle for Azeroth expansion in 2018 saw the Horde burn down the Night Elf capital of Darnassus, after which then-Horde Warchief Sylvanas preemptively destroyed the Forsaken capital of the Undercity with a deadly plague, rendering it uninhabitable, rather than let it fall into Alliance hands.

The War Within’s public alpha launches later this week. A special The War Within Collector’s edition–one that also celebrates WoW’s 20th anniversary–is currently available for preorder.

Hasbro Hopes Next Baldur’s Gate Game Is Here Before 2050

April 17, 2024

Baldur’s Gate 3 was a huge success for developer Larian Studios and Hasbro, the latter of which owns Wizards of the Coast and the Dungeons & Dragons series. Despite that success, Larian is moving on to a new project and is not making Baldur’s Gate 4. But Hasbro is keen to continue the Baldur’s Gate series with a different team at the helm.

Eugene Evans, the senior vice president for digital strategy and licensing as Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, told PC Gamer that it’s going to take its time to map out the future of Baldur’s Gate.

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Now Playing: Baldur’s Gate 4 Isn’t Next For Larian; Something Bigger Is Coming

“We’re now talking to lots of partners and being approached by a lot of partners who are embracing the challenge of, what does the future of the Baldur’s Gate franchise look like?” Evans said. “So we certainly hope that it’s not another 25 years, as it was from Baldur’s Gate 2 to 3, before we answer that. But we’re going to take our time and find the right partner, the right approach, and the right product that could represent the future of Baldur’s Gate. We take that very, very seriously, as we do with all of our decisions around our portfolio. We don’t rush into decisions as to who to partner with on products or what products we should be considering.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 introduced fan-favorite characters like Shadowheart and Astarion, and these are owned by Wizards of the Coast, not Larian. Evans said these characters are now “essentially part of D&D canon,” and Evans hopes they might appear in future products down the road.

“I think it’s too early to express specifics and I think that there’s a much bigger question about how we approach Baldur’s Gate in the future,” Evans said. “But I would like to think that all of those characters, for the sake of the fans, could potentially appear in future products.”

Beyond a future Baldur’s Gate title, Hasbro is planning a number of other D&D games that will appear “over the next five years,” Evans said. These games will cover “all genres, all platforms,” he confirmed.

One of these games is a multiplayer co-op adventure title from the developers of the Payday series. Meanwhile, the developers of Disney Dreamlight Valley are making a D&D life sim.

As for Larian, the studio has said it’s not making Baldur’s Gate 4 because that is “literally the opposite of what Larian is about.” CEO Swen Vincke said, “We want to do big, new things. We don’t want to rehash the thing that we’ve done already.”

Disney Illusion Island For Nintendo Switch Is 50% Off At Walmart

April 17, 2024

Disney Illusion Island is a charming, family-friendly metroidvania with fantastic art direction, a wonderful soundtrack, and writing that’s on par with modern Mickey Mouse cartoons. The Nintendo Switch-exclusive platformer launched last year at a budget price of $40. If you haven’t played it yet, though, Walmart’s current offer is a steal. You can snag a physical copy of Disney Illusion Island for only $20.

A big draw to this game–besides the vibrant art–is that it works brilliantly as either a solo or cooperative experience. Teaming up with up to three others is where the experience is at its best, as the squad of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy get to flex their animated muscles in stages where their unique talents shine.

There is no attack button or combat abilities in this game, as the action comes down to jumping, evasion, and gathering up tools to help you stay one step ahead of dastardly foes, but the challenge is just right for all ages. Plus, it’s effortlessly charming with its visual and audio design.

“Illusion Island has a lot going for it: It looks great, controls wonderfully, is packed with charm and character, offers enjoyable exploration, and features a memorable multiplayer experience,” Heidi Kemps wrote in GameSpot’s Disney Illusion Island review. “If you’re a big fan of the genre, you’ll get a kick seeing little references to other all-time classics, too.”

Game Reviews

Harold Halibut Review – Lost In Its Own Deep Sea

Harold Halibut puts you in the shoes of a lowly maintenance worker aboard a spaceship submerged underwater. To the residents aboard the ship, Harold is a rather charming, lovable, even dopey fellow who is endearing for his simplicity and his complacency in doing his job. Harold is tasked with removing graffiti, cleaning, and fixing machines, and when the work is done, his day ends, he goes to sleep, he wakes up–rinse, repeat. That’s the surface of Harold, but tucked out of sight from people’s view, is a character who is deceivingly introspective, often documenting his life through scribbled images in a notepad, or expressing himself through playful theatrics when he’s alone, like singing and performing operatically while mopping up a filter system. This is a side of the character only we, the player, get to see. As a character, Harold is complex, even if he doesn’t entirely understand how. He attempts to question and explore his curiosity and his own existence within the confines of a spaceship he was born and raised on, but he’s not always capable of understanding exactly what he’s looking for.

Harold Halibut

Harold Halibut, the game, is much like its titular character: It’s charming and lovable on the surface for its unique handmade aesthetic and charmingly simple gameplay. But just beneath that uncomplicated layer is a story that attempts to ask questions about introspection and self-worth, even if the game doesn’t always feel equipped to answer them or understand its strongest suits.

Harold Halibut does an incredible job in exploring its many themes and concepts by putting a magnifying glass on its setting. The FEDORA is a spaceship that was designed to leave Earth during the Cold War and set forth on a 200-year journey to seek a new planet to live on, but the new world it found was devoid of any landmass. With nowhere to go, the FEDORA crashes onto the planet, plunging its occupants into the watery depths, which they’ve learned to colonize. Meanwhile, Harold’s mentor and resident scientist, Mareaux, attempts to find a power source to launch the ship back into space to find a more suitable planet to live on.

In the meantime, as Harold, you interweave through the lives of the FEDORA’s inhabitants, the ship’s politics, and its inner workings. It’s a monotonous process that involves checking off Harold’s tasks on his PDA-like device, as you move through his day-to-day life in the quirky retro-future spaceship. But Harold’s life takes an abrupt turn after discovering a humanoid fish-like being has boarded the ship, creating a whole new perspective on the planet they’ve, in fact, been sharing all these years. It’s in this moment that Harold’s seemingly monotonous life is turned on its head, inspiring curiosity in what lies beyond the only world he’s ever known.

Harold Halibut

Harold Halibut is striking in its visuals because it’s entirely handmade. Characters, articles of clothing, pieces of furniture, teapots, mugs, floorboards, and everything else was handmade in our real world and digitally scanned into the 3D game. Its visuals instantly distinguish Harold Halibut as one of the most visually interesting games of the year. But while it’s easy to get swept up in the awe of its look, the strongest characteristic of the game is the world itself and the characters within it.

Harold Halibut is entirely focused on exploration, conversational choices, and the occasional challenge-free minigame. At its core, Harold Halibut is focused on the world and the characters that inhabit it, which, story aside, is where the game is at its best. While you may play as Harold, it’s the characters you interact with who give the game a sense of intimacy and, over time, a feeling of density that shows there’s actually a lot going on–these are the game’s biggest achievement.

Across my 18 hours, I met nearly two dozen characters, each with their own story to unpack, and I loved all of them. More than the discovery of an alien species, or the urgency to find a power source for the ship, my biggest motivation was to get to know each and every person aboard the FEDORA. Whether it was the comical musings of the sports store owner Slippie, or the by-the-book Major who enforces the ship’s laws, each character is multifaceted, with deep personalities to learn, explore, and oftentimes see challenged.

While most of the time spent with these characters is completely optional, the game’s most important and consequential moments, both hilarious and heart-wrenching, start and end with the citizens of FEDORA. The conversations can feel inconsequential in the grand scheme of the game’s plot, but are invaluable to making this handmade world feel alive and lived in.

With the abundance of characters also comes a desperate need to keep track of them. Early in my time with the game, before I had become well acquainted with the cast of characters, I was often confused with who was who and where they were located. The game’s lack of waypoints was to its benefit, however, as this kept me engaged in using the ship’s signs to navigate its many sectors, but also better learn and remember these characters, as I would with people in real life. However, those early stages also created unnecessary friction by causing me to bumble around and waste time. This could have been alleviated with the addition of an in-game glossary to remind me who is who that could have existed in Harold’s PDA.

Harold Halibut

Each character is as distinct in their looks as they are their views on life–even with the shared perspective of living in the confines of a small colony underwater. It’s their stories that gives the FEDORA believability and lends the game a prevailing heart and soul that overshadows all of the game’s other plotlines. But its achievement of creating a rich cast of characters also gives rise to struggles in properly exploring them under the weight of its other story ambitions.

Aside from the thoughts and feelings of its very broad cast of characters is an abundance of ideas and narratives driving the main plot. These range from unpacking a corporation’s ulterior motives, to a secret society lurking in the shadows, to the urgency to locate a power source for the FEDORA. And while they are no doubt necessary to tell an overarching story, they feel like ideas that are too big for the dollhouse-sized nature of Harold Halibut.

As Harold’s world aboard a spaceship begins to collide with the alien world he’s been living on, he makes friends with the planet’s inhabitants, which are known as the Flumuylum. The fish-like humanoids’ philosophies are a complete contrast to that of humans, though also pretty much what you’d imagine what it would be like if fish were humans: a species that simply floats along through life, existing and observing, giving little to no meaning to anything. This mentality crashes head-on with Harold’s everyday existence: a life that boils down to routinely taking orders and doing what other people expect of him, often in service of the ship’s corporation-based ethos and in adherence to arbitrary rules like having a curfew or paying for its water tube transportation system. The duality between Harold’s and the Flumuylum’s lives are juxtaposed for several hours in the game, until Harold is forced into a crash course in existentialism towards the latter half of the game, causing him to question whether or not he was ever in control of his own life. The scene was a tonal whiplash as the game made a hard turn to answer questions that it had only just begun to ask, and in doing so, felt more clunky than enlightening.

Harold’s abrupt journey of introspection is sandwiched on top of and between the stories and ideologies of other characters, as well as the game’s overarching plots and conspiracies. No one idea or theme felt like it had the breathing room it needed or deserved, which means they can feel more like fleeting concerns instead of food for thought. For example, one scene hints at themes of the industrialization, pollution, and consumption of animal products by the human race, only to never refer to it again, or even set up a satisfying throughline for its purpose in the first place.

In trying to weave its characters, story, and themes together, I found its focus to become muddled. With such an emphasis on all its characters, and by making them an integral part of the game’s core experience, Harold ends up being the only character that has a substantial narrative arc–he sees his world through the lens of a mere errand boy but has his world turned upside down, creating a perspective that gives his life more meaning by the end. But in spending the time to do this, the game, in turn, leaves many threads for the other characters I had grown attached to feeling unfulfilled. By the time the climatic end unfolds, I was less interested in the conspiracies behind the events that transpired and more focused on the growth of the characters.

Harold Halibut is at its strongest when intimately exploring its characters, their inner workings, and their relationships with one another. But in attempting to build towards a dramatic conclusion, many of the hours spent fostering relationships with the characters took a backseat to plotlines that were less interesting.

To quote one of the game’s own characters, Buddy the mailman, “each person aboard this ship is a world their own.” In a story about a man trapped on a ship, who is trying to understand himself better, their lives and perspectives should be the most important stories to tell for Harold’s journey. Harold Halibut’s world and the people that inhabit it were literally crafted by people that cared about him and his story. And while that story struggles under the weight of its ambitions, the human touches on every part of it are evident. Those are the heart and soul of the game, and they imprinted on me too.

April 16, 2024

Children Of The Sun Review – One Shot

It only takes a single bullet to burn down an empire. That’s the ethos behind Children of the Sun, an excellent supernatural puzzle-shooter from solo developer René Rother and publisher Devolver Digital. Like many of the games in Devolver’s vast library, Children of the Sun is wonderfully stylish, violent, and built on a unique gameplay hook; think Sniper Elite mixed with Superhot and you’re on the right track without quite telling the whole story.

You play as a protagonist known simply as The Girl, a one-woman wrecking crew waging a vengeful war against the eponymous cult that ruined her life. As one cultist after another is turned to mincemeat behind the vindictive crosshairs of your sniper rifle, you gradually make your way up the food chain until coming face-to-scope with your true target: The Leader. While embarking on this blood-soaked killing spree, hand-drawn flashbacks reveal tidbits about the atrocities committed by this mysterious cult and The Girl’s reasons for seeking revenge.

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Now Playing: Children Of The Sun GameSpot Video Review

There’s no dialogue during these cutscenes; instead, the narrative is intentionally minimalist, bombarding you with unnerving memories that are both terse and chaotic. This scattershot approach makes it difficult to glean all of the available information–perhaps deliberately so–which means you might feel lost and slightly detached from the story at times. It’s all complemented by a discordant soundscape of ambient white noise that matches the game’s striking art style–composed of deep purples and vivid yellows–and gritty, surreal tone. The game’s arresting aesthetic paints a picture of a brutal world of saturated filth, where cultists defile seedy motels, gloomy forests, and derelict apartment buildings, spreading their deceitful disease like plague-infested rats.

For as evocative as Children of the Sun’s story, visuals, and music are, it’s the innovative gameplay where it truly shines. At the beginning of each level, you’re able to move The Girl either left or right on a predetermined path. Sometimes, you can navigate around a level in a full 360-degree circle, while other times, you may only be able to move a few yards before being impeded by a fallen tree or steep riverbank. From here, you can get a lay of the land, mark enemies, and determine the best position to fire from. Once you’ve aimed down the scope and pulled the trigger, the camera snaps to the crown of the bullet as it hurtles through the air. Blood spatter and disintegrated flesh usually follow, but the catch is that this is the only shot you’ll fire for the duration of the level.

The Girl’s backstory pulls from a classic fiction trope where a young girl discovers she has latent supernatural powers once she reaches puberty. Each time a bullet is propelled through a cultist’s skull, time slows down to a crawl, and The Girl’s psychic abilities let you take control of the round and re-aim, allowing a single bullet to cleave through an entire enemy compound in one fell swoop.

Initially, you can only move the bullet in a straight line from one enemy to the next, ping-ponging between them like a murderous pinball machine, and this makes your first shot the most crucial. From that initial point of impact, you need to chart a course through every other enemy until none are left alive. This is easier said than done, of course. While some enemies remain stationary, others are walking around, circling the entire map in a car, and sitting out of view of your initial vantage point. Considering all of this, you might have to finish a level by ensuring that the penultimate kill provides a clear sightline of the final cultist, who was hidden until now. There are wrong ways to do this, but there isn’t a definitive right way, so experimentation is incentivized and rewarded.

Children of the Sun is wonderfully stylish, violent, and built on a unique gameplay hook; think Sniper Elite mixed with Superhot and you’re on the right track without quite telling the whole story

As you progress through the story and more enemy types are introduced, you’re given additional powers to counteract the likes of shielded and armored cultists and the increasingly elaborate environments they’re inhabiting. The first of these powers lets you take direct control and gently curve bullets like James McAvoy in the 2008 film Wanted. This is useful for firing over walls and bending the shot so it lurches downwards and hits the cultist on the other side, or simply tweaking the bullet’s trajectory to guarantee it lands on-target.

Another ability reveals enemy weak points, which, when destroyed in a hail of slow-motion blood, grant you the power to redirect the bullet in mid-flight. Using this, you can fire past a shield-wielding enemy and then spin the bullet around to nail them in the back of the head, entirely negating their bullet-proof protection. Other times, you might use this technique to escape a building and re-enter it elsewhere or fire into the sky to provide a better view of the area and uncover a previously elusive enemy.

Armored cultists, meanwhile, provide an altogether different challenge. The only way to penetrate their thick armor is by using a power shot–achieved by holding down the trigger for the duration of the bullet’s flight. These shots necessitate a large enough distance between targets to build up the requisite velocity needed to blow through armor, so figuring out how to remove these enemies is a unique problem. Doing so is always a thrill, though, as you get the gratification of seeing the bullet reach supersonic speeds before blasting through the cultist’s now-useless defense.

Finding a solution to each level’s grisly puzzle is immensely satisfying, especially when trial and error is abundant. Your first few attempts might revolve around tentatively exploring to find where all of the cultists are located and then figuring out the best way to carve through each one. You can sometimes use the environment to your advantage, too, shooting vehicles’ fuel caps and gas canisters to eliminate multiple enemies in one vehement explosion. You could blow up a car just to attain a better angle or snipe a pigeon flying overhead to gain a bird’s eye view of the area. I wish there were more opportunities for environmental kills besides destroying vehicles and explosive barrels, but restricting how you can interact with the world around you adds to the challenge and sense of achievement when you emerge victorious.

Gallery

At around three hours in length, Children of the Sun is a relatively brief experience. Usually, this would be a blessing in disguise for a game that doesn’t diversify from its core conceit too often, yet I still found myself desperate for more. Fortunately, replayability is rife, as the game’s scoring system encourages you to go back and replay previous levels to achieve a better rating. Headshots are scored differently from leg wounds, just as you earn more points for better timing and efficiency, while leaderboards create a sense of competition. Completing a level also reveals an excellent snapshot of the flight path of your bullet, which the game makes easy to share on social media for some extra fulfillment.

Children of the Sun’s unconventional approach to sniping is consistently thrilling and wholly satisfying. It might be full of gruesome blood spatter and cracked skulls, but it’s also the thinking person’s shooter–more of a delightfully macabre puzzle game than anything else. It’s admittedly short, and the game’s longevity will largely depend on how hard you fall for its inventive and bloody puzzles. That shouldn’t be a problem when it’s so difficult not to. And even if it’s relatively one-note, Children of the Sun plays that note with such morbid aplomb that it’s easy to recommend.

April 9, 2024

Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection Review – Fire Away

I spent many a weekend afternoon playing the first two Battlefront games back in 2004 and 2005, my friends and I sinking hundreds of hours into our repeated efforts to conquer the galaxy, recreate battles from the Star Wars movies, and theorize why the video game version of General Grievous was so much stronger than his movie counterpart. Heck, my hope that we’d one day see a Clone Wars animated series that focused on exploring the clones’ individuality was born from Battlefront 2’s wonderfully narrated 501st Journal. Now that I think about it, much of my love for Star Wars can be traced back to the first two Battlefront games. But that doesn’t change that their dated mechanics and the unbalanced nature of their unrewarding tug-of-war matches don’t hold up two decades later. And Aspyr Media does not address these issues in Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, a collected pack of the two games, leaving them feeling like relics of a bygone era that aren’t worth playing in this shape today.

Pandemic Studios’ Battlefront and Battlefront 2 (not to be confused with EA DICE’s 2015 Battlefront and 2017 Battlefront 2) are both shooters that focus on Star Wars’ Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War periods, seeing you step into the boots of ordinary soldiers who participate in the conflicts. Mechanically, both games play very similarly to one another, though Battlefront 2 adds to the first with space battles, playable heroes (who are notable characters from the Star Wars movies like Yoda and Darth Vader), and a more story-driven campaign that ties into Revenge of the Sith.

The 501st Journal is still great.

Each army features four standard soldier archetypes. You’ve got your assault rifle-wielding standard trooper, long-range sniper user, heavy-hitting rocket launcher demolitionist, and a support soldier who excels at short-range combat and fixing up vehicles. Beyond those four, each army has additional special units–the Republic Clone Army has the jetpack-equipped Jet Trooper, for example, while the CIS has the roly-poly Droideka. Because the main units all handle the same for the most part, you don’t have to learn entirely new mechanics for each class, while the more specialized troopers add a bit of distinct flair to each army. I like it–it makes it easy to pick up both games while also ensuring the gameplay doesn’t grow stale quickly.

The collection includes six maps that were added as post-launch content to both games (one for Battlefront and five for Battlefront 2) as well as two playable heroes in Battlefront 2 who were previously Xbox-only DLC (Kit Fisto and Asajj Ventress). Beyond that, there are some changes to the gameplay, such as to Hero Assault, a Battlefront 2 game mode that sees all the playable Star Wars heroes face off against the villains. In the original Battlefront 2, this mode could only be played on the game’s Tatooine map, but the Battlefront Collection makes the mode available on all ground-based maps. In addition, the collection adds cross-gen multiplayer support (but no cross-play, unfortunately) and increases the number of players per match to 32v32.

It’s those improvements that irk me, as they’re evidence that Aspyr Media did make efforts to change and improve aspects of the original games. And that’s good! Great, even. But this decision throws what wasn’t adjusted into stark contrast and highlights how outdated Battlefront and Battlefront 2’s gameplay is. It locks the Battlefront Collection into this weird space where it’s neither a good remaster nor a completely accurate preservation of the original games.

Both Battlefront and Battlefront 2 really show their age in Classic Collection.

But even without that observation, it’s clear that what was once great gameplay for a console shooter has lost its luster after 20 years. Battlefront 2 fares a tad better than the original game, given how it was able to make improvements to the first Battlefront’s mechanics back in 2005–soldiers can sprint, the details of characters are sharper so it’s easier to discern targets from further away, and maps are larger so firefights are more spread out. Plus, Battlefront 2 just has a more compelling campaign. Even if the story is no longer part of the Star Wars canon, witnessing the rise of the 501st Legion during the Clone Wars and subsequent transformation into Vader’s Fist during the Galactic Civil War is still a compelling viewpoint for the Clone Troopers’ view of the Star Wars movies, strengthened by the chilling narration of actor Temuera Morrison (Attack of the Clones’ Jango Fett, The Book of Boba Fett’s Boba Fett). His monologue of the troopers’ silence as they march into the Jedi Temple to execute Order 66 is still one of my favorite moments from any Star Wars story, and 20 years later, it hasn’t lost its impact.

Even if the story is still interesting to experience, however, the act of playing through it isn’t all that fun. Movements are sluggish and aiming isn’t precise, promoting the use of soldiers armed with automatic weapons over the others. The other classes are serviceable, but the gameplay clearly pushes you away from them, making every firefight feel increasingly the same. There’s no incentive to branch out and master the other classes–victory is achieved by whittling down the other team first, so killing as many people as fast as you can is ideal, and that’s just easier with an assault rifle or minigun than a sniper rifle or pistol.

Battles in the offline campaign and online multiplayer also suffer from imbalance–once one side takes the lead, they almost always win. It’s clear there’s meant to be some sort of tug-of-war element to each match, as each side fights over command posts, but it rarely plays out that way. Your side can only spawn from command posts your side has captured, so once one side has more command posts than the other, it’s easier for that side to pressure the losing side as the number of places where the losing side can spawn shrinks. This creates a slog where it becomes quite clear about halfway through a match which side is going to take the win, and you’re just left playing out the rest of the time to witness a conclusion that you saw coming. Heroes alleviate this a bit in Battlefront 2. If a player does well enough before being killed, they can spawn as their army’s hero for that map, and certain heroes can change the tide in an instant (especially the villains on the CIS and Empire, who are all around stronger than the good guys for the Republic and Rebellion). This would be a great counterbalance to the uneven nature of Battlefront 2 if heroes could be summoned more regularly but, as is, they’re just too tricky to unlock if you’re on the losing end of a battle. It’s hard to do well when the enemy is closing in around you. This issue is even worse in the original Battlefront, which doesn’t have playable heroes.

Why do the bag guys get all the cool powers in Battlefront 2?

The moment-to-moment gameplay of each match isn’t all that fun either. Firearms aren’t very precise, relying on a generous auto-aim feature that feels like it’s rewarding me for pointing my gun roughly in the right direction instead of actually landing a precise shot. When I was a kid, I was always just happy that my friends and I won, but now as I see the “victory” message splash across the screen, all I can wonder is how it happened. I can’t point to what in my performance led to my team winning as opposed to losing, leaving little opportunity to think back and improve. There’s an uncomfortable amount of luck associated with victory–more than I want in a shooter.

The space battles in Battlefront 2 don’t feel much better. It’s telling that the campaign still lets you skip them outright if you want, like an admission that they aren’t very fun (which is true). Though the concept of manning a starship and flying out to meet the enemy, whittling away at their capital ships or flying into their hangar to sabotage their systems from the inside is initially thrilling, it very quickly loses its appeal once you realize all matches play out pretty much the same. There’s next to no variety to Battlefront 2’s different space maps, so your strategy for one tends to work on all of them–you don’t have to adapt, leaving the gameplay feeling stagnant. Plus, the starships in Battlefront 2 don’t handle very well, making it frustratingly tricky to maneuver through dogfights.

The biggest detriment against the Battlefront Classic Collection is that we’ve had more Star Wars games since their release that all improved upon what Battlefront and Battlefront 2 did. EA DICE’s two Battlefront games have sharper shooting mechanics that better reward precision and huge battlefields that prevent one side from quickly surrounding and destroying the other. 2020’s Squadron’s aerial dogfights are huge improvements over Battlefront 2’s space battles, with more responsive controls and greater variety to the maps. Sure, Battlefront Collection brings these elements together, but not in a way that’s strong enough to make this a more compelling experience than what’s already out there.

Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection is ultimately just disappointing. It’s unclear whether it wants to be a remaster or a collection that preserves two major games from Star Wars’ history, but in both instances, it fails. This is neither an accurate representation of what Battlefront and Battlefront 2 were, nor does it make enough adjustments to bring two decades-old games into the modern era. The result is a collection that’s not really fun to play, and well worth skipping.

April 2, 2024

Open Roads Review – Quick Trip

I once read in a very profound article published in a very prestigious magazine (okay, it was a TikTok) that “daddy issues” make artists while “mommy issues” make writers. I can’t attest to the science–or lack thereof–behind this statement, but as a writer born into a long line of guarded women who wielded pens as weapons, I can absolutely relate.

As such, I have a particular fondness for mother-daughter stories and the catharsis they can offer. When I heard the team behind Gone Home would be tackling the subject in their upcoming game Open Roads, I braced for a beautiful cross-country journey that would inevitably hit too close to home. However, while Open Roads has moments of relatability that are powered by solid dialogue, charming characters, and nostalgia, I was ultimately left underwhelmed by the walk-and-click exploration game. With a runtime too short to truly pull players in and an abrupt ending that leaves things feeling hastily resolved, Open Roads feels more like a pit stop than an adventure.

That’s not to say the game’s premise isn’t interesting. Open Roads begins shortly after the death of the Devine family matriarch, Helen, and follows her daughter Opal and her granddaughter Tess as they cope with loss and what to do next. Throughout the entirety of the game, we play as Tess, a 16-year-old high school student who is every bit as strong-willed, cheeky, and hopeful as most 16-year-old girls are. On top of her grandmother’s death, Tess is also processing her parents’ recent separation and the loss of her home, as she and her mother lived with Helen but were not given the house upon her death.

While cleaning out her grandmother’s home, Tess and Opal stumble upon a suitcase buried within the attic walls and find what appears to be evidence of Helen’s secret life and a passionate love affair. With a week to go until the house is sold and an empty agenda, the pair set off on a series of short trips to get to the bottom of Helen’s mysterious life.

At each of the game’s handful of locations, you walk around as Tess and interact with objects from different time periods ranging primarily from the late ’60s to the early 2000s–the time the game is set in–that are sure to be familiar to many American millennials. Occasionally you’ll be able to pocket the items to use later, adding a slight puzzle element to what is otherwise a game driven by simple exploration, though these moments are few and far between. Certain items will also prompt you to call for your mom, who will chime in, add context, or mull over your findings with you. All this makes for straight-forward gameplay that can, unfortunately, start to feel a bit dull as the game goes on.

Outside of exploring the game’s dusty abodes and dimly lit motels, Tess spends most of her time riding shotgun in her mom’s late-’90s sedan. There, she’ll have the chance to cycle through mostly static-filled radio stations, chat with her mom, or use her trusty flip phone to text her father or best friend. Yet for a game titled Open Roads, your time spent on the road is extremely brief and only happens a handful of times, which ultimately takes away from the road-trip experience and doesn’t help to break up its repetitive gameplay.

This is a recurring issue, as the game in its entirety is too brief to effectively address everything it sets up or fully establish a deep sense of relatability and emotional connection. This is a shame considering the underlying plot is interesting and the game’s characters are very endearing. Though Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell might be known for their live-action careers, the pair bring a lot of personality to Tess and Opal respectively. Even Helen, who has no speaking parts and appears in the game only through grainy photographs, has a lot of personality. In fact, her vivaciousness is a frequent subject of discussion between Tess and Opal, who both exhibit her more free-spirited behavior, albeit in different ways. This is another aspect of the game I really enjoyed, as it’s all too often that mothers are written as protective, worrisome, uptight, and relatively flat–Open Roads avoids falling into that trap.

However, I also think Open Roads pivots a bit too far away from this mother-daughter tension. Sure, Tess and Opal do have their spats and Opal frequently expresses frustration towards some of her late mother’s actions, but for a pair going through grief, divorce, major life transitions, and betrayal, there’s a lack of drama that turns into a lack of evolution and catharsis. Between its overall brevity and hesitation to dig into messiness–humanness, even–Open Roads puts up a bit of a wall between the player and its story. As a result, I found I liked its characters, but I didn’t feel much towards them. While they were relatable enough, I didn’t find myself in them.

Sure, not all mother-daughter relationships are contentious or imitate Lady Bird, but in shying away from the emotional, you lose, well, emotions. For example, even with all the big plot points unraveling around them, the most impactful conversation in the game, to me, was the one Tess and Opal have after Tess accidentally leaves her phone at the hotel and demands they go back. As an adult, you’re able to see the situation rationally: It makes sense to finish up the drive and grab the phone on the way back–it’ll only be a night without it, after all. But Tess’s dialogue options are limited and a bit more intense than usual–she needs her phone. And despite being 30 years old, I still felt that desperation.

It’s clear that Open Roads wants to have meaningful conversations about generational trauma, the oft-dismissed complexity of mothers, and how humans have different ways of showing love, a fact that can lead to pain when misunderstood, and I wanted to have them too. Yet it doesn’t offer the time or vulnerability to dig into these interesting topics. And while some of its story beats are unique, or offer at least a slight variation on ones we’ve perhaps seen before, all of these stories end somewhat abruptly and without much fanfare or introspection.

Where the game does succeed in storytelling, however, is in its environments. Presumably thanks to the studio’s pedigree and history of working on exploration games like Gone Home and Tacoma, you can tell there is an understanding of how to make locations nostalgic without pandering, interesting but not overwhelming, and immersive but not disjointed. Though I’m slowly discovering that a lot of first-person exploration games make me a bit nauseous (definitely a “me” problem here, so I don’t fault Open Roads), I really enjoyed walking around the environments the studio created. There were so many objects and pieces of decor that reminded me of the ones I grew up with, and it was interesting to note how these objects–and the memories attached to them–moved me more deeply than a lot of the game’s conversations.

At every location, there were little reminders–be it newspaper clippings, a Blockbuster copy of Clueless, or a CorningWare-style casserole dish–of the time that had passed. Sure, this sense of place is aided by some of Tess and Opal’s conversations–I particularly loved the one in which Tess admits to her less-computer-inclined mother that her idea of a wild Friday night consists of pizza rolls and The Sims, because same–but a heavy amount of lifting is done by the artistry and detail put into creating these locations.

I also really enjoyed Open Roads’ character art, which feels inspired by the animated films ’90s kids grew up watching. The style stands out against the more realistic-looking environments and works well with the game’s voice acting, though the lack of proper lip-syncing did feel awkward at times. More awkward, however, was the game’s sound, which felt almost incomplete. I had expected to hear songs and sounds that would take me back to 2003, yet they were noticeably absent. While I wasn’t expecting to hear “Stacy’s Mom” or “Hey Ya!” pop on the radio, having multiple radios and TVs that you could interact with that did effectively nothing was a bit of a letdown.

It’s unfortunate that “letdown” and “underwhelmed” are words I’ve used multiple times when talking about Open Roads because there’s still so much about the game that works. The overall narrative touches on some meaningful topics, there’s a fair amount of intrigue, plenty of well-crafted dialogue, some interesting characters, and a lot of heart. Yet most things fall frustratingly short or are cut off far too early, making the whole experience slightly lackluster. Despite being a game about a mother-daughter road trip, the game doesn’t go too far and that relationship is left only slightly altered rather than meaningfully examined and changed.

March 28, 2024

Pepper Grinder Review – Short And Spicy

It only takes a glance to understand Pepper Grinder’s inventive gimmick. A small girl named Pepper–a pirate by trade–wields a drill named Grinder that’s roughly the size of her entire body. The gear allows her to grind through soft surfaces with ease, complete with the ability to launch out of the surface with a leap. That might have been enough to carry the game by itself, but what’s most surprising about Pepper Grinder is its sheer variety. Though it’s short, that brevity helps to make the campaign a no-filler thrill ride that continuously pushes the boundaries of its central mechanic.

It turns out Grinder is a pretty versatile tool, even regarding its most basic function. You can burrow through the ground, which immediately feels natural and smooth. At the same time, you can’t simply turn on a dime with an instant about-face like a typical platformer–you have to handle turns by curving an arc out of your drilling path. Additionally, when you pop out of the surface of the dirt, you won’t gain much distance unless you jump just before breaking through. Those little touches give the core mechanic a sense of finesse, imitating the feeling of a playful dolphin–or at least, a dolphin video game like the classic Ecco.

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Now Playing: Pepper Grinder GameSpot Video Review

Once you get the hang of it, drilling through soil and leaping out of the surface in a perfect arc, only to catch another piece of soft ground in the distance and continue your digging, feels thrilling and acrobatic. The drillable surfaces are nicely differentiated from hard environmental pieces, so you quickly learn to read a level and see the path through it, evoking a feeling similar to performing a great run in Tony Hawk. Collectibles like gems are scattered strategically throughout the stages to both subtly guide your eye along the path, while also sometimes setting traps for your greed.

Aside from being a traversal tool, Grinder is also your primary and often only weapon. It’s not enough to simply run into most enemies with a spinning drill, though–they often have their own specific approach to defeat them, like beetles with a hard upper carapace who need to be stabbed from the underside by burrowing underground. The main enemies, a breed of vicious narwhal-like creatures with horns on their head, are just as capable of hurting you with a head-on collision as you are of hurting them. None of the regular enemies are terribly tough by themselves, but they introduce new ways of approaching stages and obstacles as you need to get around them or through them to continue on your path.

A platformer with a standout hook like this one probably could have coasted on it, but Pepper Grinder doesn’t rest on its laurels. Instead, it consistently introduces new elements to master. These either integrate with your balletic burrowing or provide a change of pace from it. Grabbing a key with your drill will make it turn a lock, and you can use the kinetic energy to power machines. You’ll also shoot from cannons, drill holes into the bottoms of ships to make them take on water, carve through skyscrapers to make them collapse as you traverse through, and even pilot a giant mech. What appears at first to be a simple tool gives way to constant delightful little surprises.

A series of boss battles ramp up the difficulty nicely, taking the skills you’ve learned and putting them to the test. The first is relatively straightforward, as you dodge projectiles by moving through the soil and wait for the opportune moment to attack from the underside, while the second severely limits the amount of soft ground available and challenges you to leap high into the air to do damage. They progress from there, including one tough encounter with another human-like character that has roughly your size and agility. All this leads to a final boss encounter that is one of the most tense and difficult retro platformer bosses I’ve seen in a long time, which felt satisfying to overcome.

And on top of all this, Pepper Grinder carries itself with a cute, pixel-punk personality. Pepper’s diminutive sprite artwork has a charm to it, like how she revs up her trusty drill threateningly when coming face-to-face with a boss, or how she raises her pirate flag to declare victory in an area. The enemies can sometimes be seen doing their own pirate duties before you crash their party. And though story sequences are few and far between, they were just enough to explain what was going on with mimed, dialogue-free action. A short story sequence just before the final boss even made me laugh out loud.

This gentle giant is one of the fantastical creatures in Pepper Grinder.

Gallery

At such a breakneck pace of new ideas, Pepper Grinder doesn’t last very long, which is to its credit. I finished the campaign in roughly four hours, which is a relatively short playtime. Every stage also has a time-trial option, and there are still collectibles and cosmetics to unlock like stickers and hairstyles. The most important collectibles are Skull Coins, a limited resource–five per stage–that can be used to unlock special bonus stages in each of the four worlds. These are used to further explore gameplay concepts that had been introduced in the main stages. The first one, for example, takes the cannon mechanic to its logical conclusion with an entire stage built around ping-ponging from cannon to cannon, which felt pleasanlty reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country’s famous barrel stages.

Perhaps because of its brevity, I enjoyed every minute, and I appreciate the rare instance of a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Rather than slog through filler stages to pad its length, Pepper Grinder is bursting with new ideas for exactly as long as it can sustain that momentum. There’s something admirable about approaching its length with that level of confidence. I would have loved to play even more, if it could have sustained that pace, but this felt like a conscious choice to let the best ideas shine.

Pepper Grinder is here for a good time, not for a long time. Every piece, from the core drilling mechanic itself to the various ways it manifests with cannons and mechs and more, feels meticulously engineered to teach you a new concept, wring the fun out of it, and then move on to the next. That sense of propulsion makes every moment fun and engaging. It’s a great little gem of a game which, like its heroine, may be small in size but makes every bit count.

March 28, 2024

MLB The Show 24 Review – Base Hit

A lot of people will tell you that Hank Aaron is the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is one of those people, and it’s easy to see why. You only have to look at Hammerin’ Hank’s stats–755 home runs and 3,771 hits in Major League Baseball–his outstanding consistency across 23 big league seasons, or the fact that he achieved all of this after such humble beginnings. Growing up, Aaron had few opportunities to play organized baseball. In fact, he had few opportunities to even use the right equipment. Instead, a young Henry Aaron would take his mom’s broomstick and use it as a makeshift bat to hit bottlecaps–it’s no wonder he ended up being so good.

I knew of Hank Aaron’s incredible career, but supplemental details like this are part of what makes Storylines such a captivating and enlightening experience. If last year’s game was all about introducing this brilliant and groundbreaking new mode, then MLB The Show 24 is more about fine-tuning the existing framework. This isn’t an uncommon approach for annual sports games, and while Sony San Diego’s latest baseball sim might not seem as fresh or exciting as last year’s offering, it still plays an excellent game of baseball while possessing a tangible reverence for the sport’s rich history and inherent romanticism. Players are more than just stats and numbers, after all.

This is where Storylines comes in, and it’s once again the highlight of the whole package. Like any good TV series, MLB The Show 24 returns with a second season of The Negro Leagues, exploring an era of baseball that has often been overlooked and forgotten. At launch, there are four stories to play through, shining a spotlight on the aforementioned Henry “Hank” Aaron, as well as Josh Gibson, Walter “Buck” Leonard, and Toni Stone, with more set to arrive in forthcoming updates.

MLB The Show 24

Bob Kendrick’s charismatic and insightful narration brings these tales to life, aided by slickly produced videos that weave in historical photographs, original artwork, and archival footage to paint a portrait of these players and their profound impact on baseball and American culture. In between these video packages, you’ll play through pivotal moments from each player’s career, from Aaron’s first hit as a member of the Milwaukee Braves to Josh Gibson’s decimation of MLB pitching in exhibition games–where he batted a ridiculous .426. Perhaps the most interesting collection of episodes focuses on the career of Toni Stone, a true trailblazer who became the first woman to play for a professional baseball team when she took Hank Aaron’s roster spot after he departed the Negro Leagues for the MLB.

Alongside these eye-opening tales, MLB The Show 24 also expands on the Storylines concept by adding a series on legendary New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. By using a New York subway motif as the backdrop for Jeter’s story, the former captain recounts important moments from the first few years of his storied career as you travel along the tracks from 1996 to 2000. Starting with his first steps as an unheralded rookie to achieving legendary status as the Yankees won three consecutive World Series titles, Jeter gives you an insight into his and the team’s mindset during this monumental run. There are also three side stories that center on the other members of the Yankees’ Core Four: Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte. These stories are brief, consisting of a single video package, but completing each additional mission unlocks their player cards for use in Diamond Dynasty.

As a Yankees fan, I enjoyed Jeter’s retelling of the era’s events, along with being able to recreate moments like his iconic jump-throw and a number of his clutch hits. Admittedly, however, it’s not the most interesting collection of stories. This is a team and player that won four championships in five years with little to no adversity, while Jeter himself was relatively drama-free off the field. It doesn’t make for the most compelling narrative, but the inclusion of Jeter’s Storylines does at least set a precedent for the series where we’ll hopefully see more engrossing tales in the future, whether the focal point is on a single Hall of Fame player or an entire team.

MLB The Show 24

Gallery

Road to the Show, meanwhile, lets you create and play as a woman for the first time. There are specific video packages that differ from those in the male career, with MLB Network analysts embracing the historical significance of a woman being drafted by an MLB team. A separate narrative based around you getting drafted alongside a childhood friend also differentiates the female career from the male side–which lacks any kind of story–while considerations like a private dressing room add an element of authenticity. The majority of cutscenes play out via text message, however, replacing the series’ previous narration with a hackneyed alternative.

The only other new addition to Road to the Show is the return of the Draft Combine, which gives you three games to improve your draft ranking by playing well against other prospects. While it’s good to see the combine back, it’s a fairly superfluous addition for those who simply want to choose which team to play for rather than leaving it up to fate. It also doesn’t take into account starting pitchers, dropping your draft stock because you’re only able to play in one of the three available games. The inclusion of women is a positive one, but Road to the Show is still in desperate need of an overhaul to its tired loadout system and bland presentation.

Franchise remains mostly the same, aside from one new addition with the potential to completely alter how you engage with the mode. Custom Game Entry Conditions is a setting that lets you simulate games until certain conditions are met, at which point you’re able to take control. You can customize these conditions based on how critical the situation is by tinkering with a situation-importance slider that ranges from low to very high.

You’re able to pick the earliest inning you’re willing to enter games, and can also ensure that you’ll always jump into player-highlight moments, such as finishing off a potential no-hitter or extending a batter’s hitting streak. With this setting, you might decide you only want to enter games during high-leverage situations in the ninth inning or play from the seventh inning onwards in tight games. This alleviates the grind of a full 162-game season while keeping you invested and making sure you have an impact on games that might mean the difference between making the playoffs or missing out on October baseball. The one side-effect of this addition is that Road to October and its truncated seasons now feel obsolete, but improving Franchise makes this a worthy trade-off.

Diamond Dynasty, the card-collecting and squad-building mode, is also not too dissimilar from last year’s game. The implementation of Sets and Seasons has been tweaked, with longer seasons giving you more playing time with season-limited cards. The amount of top-rated cards attainable at the beginning of a season has also been reduced to give you something to build towards.

Cards will now gradually escalate in power over the course of a single season so you won’t be rocking a 99-rated team after a single week. These are positive changes in what remains the most approachable of the many card-collecting modes in sports games, such is the ease with which you’re able to acquire great players without spending a dime. The plethora of single and multiplayer modes is also a feather in its cap.

MLB The Show 24’s on-field action remains stellar. For the first time, new rules like the pitch clock, slightly larger bases, and limited pick-off attempts have been implemented. Impact Plays, a new addition that emphasizes great defense, are also new, reinforcing the impact of spectacular diving catches and difficult throws. Impact Plays are possible anytime you’re player-locked, such as in Road to the Show. If there’s a possibility for a highlight-reel play, the game will slow down and task you with completing a quick-time event. How you perform here determines how successful the play will be. It feels great each time you’re able to rob a batter of a base hit by plucking the ball out of the air moments before it touches the ground or firing a laser beam to first base to beat a runner. I only wish Impact Plays were more frequent and were included as an option when controlling a full team.

The continued absence of an online Franchise mode and the stale nature of Road to the Show are disappointing aspects of this release, but MLB The Show 24 still maintains the series’ commendable output with fantastic gameplay and another collection of fascinating stories exploring The Negro Leagues and its players. A journey through the exalted career of Derek Jeter might not be quite as gripping, but it builds on Storyline’s established framework and lays down an exciting blueprint for the mode’s future. The addition of women in Road to the Show is another positive step, further reinforcing the overarching theme that baseball is for everyone, while the ability to customize how you play Franchise mode makes it a much more palatable proposition for those embarking on a 162-game season. MLB The Show 24 might not swing for the fences, but it’s still a great way to spend the looming summer months.

March 27, 2024

FX’s Alien Series Adds Wheel Of Time Star

FX’s upcoming Alien series has resumed production in Thailand after halting last year during the Hollywood strikes. And now that the show is filming again, Deadline is reporting that Sandra Yi Sencindiver has joined the cast of Alien.

Outside of Danish cinema and television, Sencindiver is best known in America for her roles in Apple TV+’s Foundation and Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time. She has also lent her voice to Assassins Creeds: Valhalla.

Sencindiver is slated to appear in multiple episodes of Alien as a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the corrupt company that was previously established in the films. Deadline also notes that “there’s scope for the character to grow in future series,” which suggests that Sencindiver’s character may return beyond the initial season.

Alien features a cast that includes Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, Timothy Olyphant, David Rysdahl, Babou Cessay, Erana James, Lily Newmark, and Adrian Edmonson. Fargo and Legion’s Noah Hawley developed the series for television, which will be executive produced by Ridley Scott. The story is reportedly set on Earth a few years before the events of Prometheus, as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and its rivals race to create “new android life.”

FX hasn’t set a premiere date for Alien, but a 2025 debut seems likely.

The Office Spin-Off Adds Star Wars And White Lotus Actors – Report

A new version version of The Office is said to be in the works, and two possible leads for the potential series have been revealed. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Star Wars actor Domhnall Gleeson and The White Lotus star Sabrina Impacciatore will star in the show as part of an ensemble cast.

Greg Daniels, who adapted The Office for the US, is working on the new version of the show with Nathan For You’s Michael Korman. Universal Television is said to be producing the show, and representatives declined to comment when approached by THR.

The Office currently streams on Peacock, but there is no word yet on where the new iteration of the show, should it be made, would be available. The report said Daniels and his team want to “make sure the take is right” before finding a home.

There is no word yet on who Gleeson or Impacciatore could play in a potential new version of The Office. Reports have suggested the new series would take place within the same universe as the original Office, which could make cameos from popular characters possible.

Fans have been holding out hope for some kind of Office reunion of sorts featuring the main cast, but a different report said that is “out of the question.” A number of the stars of the show recently reunited to sell a product, though.

The Office, an adaptation itself of the Ricky Gervais BBC TV show in the UK, debuted in 2005 and ran for nine seasons, ending in 2013. Steve Carell, who played Michael Scott, left the show in Season 7. The series also starred John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, B.J. Novak, Jenna Fischer, Leslie David Baker, Mindy Kaling, Kate Flannery, Phyllis Smith, Brian Baumgartner, Ed Helms, Craig Robinson, Melora Hardin, and Oscar Nunez.

Carell has said a character like Scott would not fly in today’s climate with his off-color jokes. The Office continues to be extremely popular and lucrative in syndication. NBCUniversal paid Netflix $500 million to bring all the episodes to its own streaming service, Peacock.

In other places around the world, like Australia, The Office has already been remade with new casts.

Best Buy Members Get Access To Exclusive Deals This Weekend

Best Buy is offering exclusive deals to its My Best Buy Plus and Total members, giving them a chance to score dozens of today’s hottest gadgets at some of the lowest prices of the year. The event ends Sunday, so you have plenty of time to explore its catalog and see if anything fits your needs.

If you’re not a My Best Buy member, it could be worth signing up if you’re a frequent shopper or even if you make a single large purchase. My Best Buy Plus costs just $50 per year and gets you exclusive pricing on select items, access to exclusive sales (like this one), and free two-day shipping. Stepping up to My Best Buy Total costs $180 per year but comes with 24/7 tech support, access to protection plans like AppleCare+, and a few other perks.

One of the most enticing offers available to members right now is for laptops equipped with an Intel Core Ultra processors. While most of these price cuts are available to all customers, My Best Buy Plus and My Best Buy Total members will get an additional $100 promotional certificate sent to their account by May 15. That makes this a great time to upgrade your laptop–as not only can you save up to $500, but you’ll also get another $100 to spend on accessories or other gear.

Sony noise-canceling headphones

If you sign up for My Best Buy Plus today, this offer will not just recoup your yearly membership fee but, it’ll also put you ahead by $50.

Other notable deals include the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra with S-Pen (Wi-Fi, 128GB) for $650 (down from $1,100), Alienware 34-Inch Quantum Dot OLED Curved Ultrawide Monitor for $750 (down from $900), and Sony WH-XB910N Wireless Headphones for $120 (down from $250).

That last deal is particularly impressive, as it’s one of the lowest prices we’ve seen for the mid-range noise canceling headphones. They’re not the WH-1000XM5, but they offer extra bass, solid noise cancellation, and last up to 30 hours before needing a recharge. For something smaller, be sure to look at the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2, as they’re on sale for just $189 (down from $279).

Plenty of other gear is discounted for My Best Buy members, and you’ll find all our favorite deals below.

Best Buy Member Deals Days – April 19-21

Intel Core Ultra Laptops — Save up to $500
HP Envy 2-in-1 14-Inch Laptop (1TB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 7) — $800 ($~~1,100~~)
ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (1TB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 7) — $800 ($~~1,050~~)
HP Envy 17.3-Inch Laptop (1TB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 7) — $1,000 ($~~1,350~~)
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (1TB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 9, RTX 4070) — $1,700 ($~~2,000~~)
HP Spectre 2-in-1 OLED Laptop (1TB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 7) — $1,130 ($~~1,630~~)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra with S-Pen (Wi-Fi, 128GB) — $650 ($~~1,100~~)
Alienware 34-Inch Quantum Dot OLED Curved Ultrawide Monitor — $750 ($~~900~~)
LG 24-Inch IPS Borderless Monitor — $80 ($~~170~~)
LG 27-Inch IPS Borderless Monitor — $120 ($~~220~~)
Sony WH-XB910N Wireless Headphones — $120 ($~~250~~)
Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 — $189 ($~~279~~)
Samsung 990 EVO 2TB SSD — $130 ($~~240~~)

Aliens: Ultimate Collector’s Edition On 4K Blu-Ray Is Already Steeply Discounted

Aliens might just be one of the greatest film sequels of all time, and if you’re looking to revisit this landmark 1986 sci-fi action movie, Amazon and Walmart have the definitive edition of it in stock and on sale. Normally $40, you can get the ultimate collector’s edition of Aliens for just $27.77 and enjoy the film in a sharp ultra high-definition format.

Aliens: Ultimate Edition — $27.77 ($40)

Aliens

It’s worth mentioning that Amazon has a one- to two-month delivery window for Aliens. That said, you can also snag it at Walmart for the same price.

This was released last month, and like other 4K Blu-ray releases, you’ll also get a copy of the film on standard Blu-ray and a digital streaming code. For special features, there’s a lot on offer here. The film has additional commentary from director James Cameron, the cast, and the production crew to listen to, isolated scores to enjoy from Aliens composer James Horner, and additional scenes that didn’t make the theatrical cut.

To see how the film was brought to life, the third disc has behind-the-scenes features detailing the creature effects, the superior firepower of the Colonial Marines, and much more. Aliens was first released in 1986, and while its predecessor set the bar for sci-fi terror, this sequel went in a different direction with its gung-ho action and expansion of the Alien mythos. There are still plenty of suspenseful scenes–like being cornered by a face-hugger eager to violate your personal space–but Aliens fuses those chilling moments with more thrilling scenes.

This isn’t the only James Cameron movie to get a big 4K upgrade lately, as two of the director’s other iconic films are available to order. True Lies, the spy movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is down from $40 to $25, and The Abyss is also available at Amazon. Cameron’s groundbreaking underwater odyssey isn’t on sale (yet) but it’s still essential viewing if you’re a fan of his work.

True Lies — $25 ($40)

True Lies

The Abyss — $40

The Abyss

Microsoft Games Are Having A Major Moment On The PS5 Best-Seller Charts

Microsoft courted controversy earlier this year when it announced it would start bringing formerly Xbox console-exclusive titles to PlayStation, but if the current PSN charts are anything to go by, the strategy seems to be working.

A look at the PSN chart for the top 25 best-selling games on PlayStation 5 today revealed that seven of the 25 games were owned by Microsoft. Those games, unsurprisingly, include giants like Call of Duty and Minecraft, which have long been available on Sony platforms, but also two of the four games that Microsoft recently announced would make the jump to Sony’s platforms: Grounded and Sea of Thieves. Grounded released earlier this week, while Sea of Thieves launches on PlayStation April 30.

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Now Playing: Sea of Thieves On PS5 – A Message from Our Crew

The now-Microsoft-owned Overwatch 2, which recently released its 10th season, also made the cut. Rounding out Microsoft’s heavy-hitters are Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, both of which are currently on sale and no doubt have seen a boost in interest thanks to Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV show, which was just renewed for a second season.

That’s compared to five games from Sony on the list, three of which–Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, and Helldivers 2–were not developed internally by a PlayStation-owned studio but instead published by Sony. The remaining two games are MLB The Show 24 and Destiny 2.

It’s a little unclear what data points all go into calculating the top 25 best-seller list on PSN, and it’s worth noting that the list changes depending on region and includes free-to-play titles. But even without concrete sales numbers, it’s clear that Microsoft has become a major publisher on its competitor’s platform.

Meanwhile, of Sony’s games, only MLB The Show 24 and Destiny 2 are available on Xbox. MLB The Show 24 at time of writing hadn’t cracked the top paid games list on the Xbox Store, but was among the top 20 most-played games, likely due to it being available on Xbox Game Pass. Destiny 2 is also among the top-played games on Xbox, and additionally appears towards the top of its most popular free-to-play games list. It’s worth noting that only one Microsoft-owned game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, cracked PSN’s March 2024 top 20 most-downloaded PS5 games list for the US and Canada.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said previously that he believes Xbox has already lost the console war against Sony. Recent sales estimates do back that up, suggesting that PS5 console sales are double that of the Xbox Series X|S. But if Microsoft can still make money by selling its games directly to PlayStation players, without needing them to buy an Xbox, it seems Microsoft can have its cake and eat it too.

When asked if more more Microsoft-owned games could come to the PS5 in the future, Spencer has said it’s a possibility, telling The Verge, “I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform.” He also said that Microsoft “wants to make sure that the return makes sense” when it comes to deciding to port titles to PlayStation and ensure that “the audience that’s there has an appetite” for future Xbox releases.

Where Is Xur Today? (April 19-23) Destiny 2 Exotic Items And Xur Location Guide

We’re drawing closer to The Final Shape in Destiny 2, and if you’re planning to hit the ground running when you take on the Witness, you’ll want to make the weekly trek to see the Exotic gear Xur is offering for a limited time. Here’s where Xur is this weekend and what he has for sale.

This week you can find Xur on Nessus, in The Watcher’s Grave. For his weapon, Xur is offering Skyburner’s Oath. Hunters can pick up Fr0st-EE5 leg armor; Titans can grab the Ursa Furiosa gauntlets; and Warlocks can buy the Starfire Protocol armor.

Xur Location

Xur’s location on Nessus

Head to Nessus and use the Watcher’s Grave transmat zone to find Xur this week. When you arrive, hop on your sparrow and head north toward the exit of the area. Look for a big tree with pink moss on the right side of the area. Climb up onto its big, flat branch, where you can reach Xur.

Xur Exotic and Legendary Items

Exotic Engram – 97 Legendary Shards
Skyburner’s Oath- 29 Legendary Shards
Fr0st-EE5 – 23 Legendary Shards
Ursa Furiosa – 23 Legendary Shards
Starfire Protocol – 23 Legendary Shards
Hawkmoon – 200 Legendary Shards, 125,000 Glimmer, 1 Ascendant Shard, 1 Exotic Cipher
Xenology quest – Free
Legendary weapons and armor – 50 Legendary Shards, 1,000 Glimmer

Exotic Armor

(Exotic Hunter leg armor)

Fr0st-EE5

A solid option for PvP, Fr0st-EE5 offer increased grenade, melee, and dodge regeneration while sprinting. The mobility stat on these boots are average considering the emphasis to keep running during firefights, but there are some nice resilience and discipline stats here for when you face down enemies.

Mobility: 12
Resilience: 16
Recovery: 6
Discipline: 18
Intellect: 2
Strength: 10
Total: 64

(Exotic Titan gauntlets)

Ursa Furiosa

This is an Exotic that’ll benefit you if you enjoy using your Sentinel Shield to absorb damage, as you’ll move faster while guarding and convert all that guarded damage to Super energy. The resilience on this Exotic could be better, but it’s decent and bolstered by a high strength stat that’ll make your shield and melee blows hit harder when you unleash them.

Mobility: 2
Resilience: 12
Recovery: 18
Discipline: 2
Intellect: 11
Strength: 20
Total: 65

(Exotic Warlock chest armor)

Starfire Protocol

For a while, Starfire Protocol was the Warlock Exotic to have for high-level PvE activities, until Bungie nerfed it. It’s still decent, as the Fusion Harness perk gives you a super-quick grenade cooldown rate so long as you deal damage while dealing empowered weapon blows. This will in turn grant you more rift energy, to help cast your empowered rift subclass ability more quickly and keep the cycle going. This Exotic has a very high recovery stat in case you’re using Solar effects from the seasonal artifact to quickly heal yourself, but discipline could be higher and resilience is extremely low, so this could turn you into a glass cannon.

Mobility: 2
Resilience: 3
Recovery: 32
Discipline: 12
Intellect: 8
Strength: 12
Total: 69

Exotic Weapons

Skyburner’s Oath (Exotic scout rifle)

Skyburner’s Oath

One of the best weapons for dealing with Cabal, Skyburner’s Oath is an overhauled classic with a wide range of effects. If you have its catalyst, it’ll punch right through Cabal Phoenix shields, and it can be used as either a scout rifle when aiming or as a slug-launcher when firing from the hip.

Slug Rifle
Extended Barrel
Extended Mag
For the Empire
Short-Action Stock

Hawkmoon (Exotic hand cannon)

Hawkmoon

Hawkmoon this week is an average roll, as you’re getting Snapshot Sights as the weekly weapon perk. This lets you aim down sights more quickly.

Paracausal Shot
Arrowhead Brake
Alloy Magazine
Snapshot Sights
Heavy Grip

Legendary Armor

Titan	Type	Mobility	Resilience	Recovery	Discipline	Intelligence	Strength	Total
Holdfast Gauntlets	Titan Gauntlets	7	14	12	14	15	2	64
Holdfast Plate	Titan Chest Armor	10	16	6	7	18	6	63
Holdfast Mark	Titan Mark	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Holdfast Helm	Titan Helmet	7	2	24	7	14	12	66
Holdfast Greaves	Titan Leg Armor	2	10	18	12	10	12	64
Warlock	Type
Holdfast Gloves	Warlock Gauntlets	6	23	2	11	12	10	64
Holdfast Robes	Warlock Chest Armor	17	14	2	6	24	2	65
Holdfast Bond	Warlock Bond	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Holdfast Cover	Warlock Helmet	10	10	10	2	15	14	61
Holdfast Boots	Warlock Leg Armor	10	18	2	2	14	15	61
Hunter	Type
Holdfast Grips	Hunter Gauntlets	7	14	12	20	2	10	65
Holdfast Vest	Hunter Chest Armor	2	22	10	2	24	6	66
Holdfast Cloak	Hunter Cloak	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Holdfast Mask	Hunter Helmet	7	14	12	2	6	23	64
Holdfast Strides	Hunter Leg Armor	2	2	30	15	10	6	65

Legendary Weapons

Jian 7 Rifle	Energy Pulse Rifle	SLO-12 Post / SPO-28 Front	Alloy Magazine / High-Caliber Rounds	Firmly Planted	Outlaw	Tier 2: Range
Death Adder	Energy Submachine Gun	Arrowhead Brake / Chambered Compensator	Tactical Mag / Steady Rounds	Subsistence	Moving Target	Tier 2: Handling
Corsair’s Wrath	Heavy Linear Fusion Rifle	Corkscrew Rifling / Smallbore	Liquid Coils / Projection Fuse	Killing Wind	Kill Clip	Tier 2: Charge Time
Tarantula	Heavy Linear Fusion Rifle	Arrowhead Brake / Hammer-Forged Rifling	Accelerated Coils / Projection Fuse	Genesis	Snapshot Sights	Tier 2: Charge Time
Legal Action II	Kinetic Pulse Rifle	Arrowhead Brake / Corkscrew Rifling	Extended Mag / Steady Rounds	Surplus	Frenzy	Tier 2: Range
Under Your Skin	Energy Combat Bow	Tactile String / Flexible String	Natural Fletching / Straight Fletching	Tunnel Vision	Explosive Head	Tier 2: Target Acquisition
Brigand’s Law	Energy Sidearm	Arrowhead Brake / Smallbore	Appended Mag / Extended Mag	Pugilist	Swashbuckler

Xur is present every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET each Friday. His exact location is always a mystery when he first arrives, as he is not listed on the map, and for novice players, he can be easy to miss. However, there are a set number of locations where he takes up residence, including the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ.

Sony In Talks To Join Bid To Buy Paramount – Report

In the race to acquire Paramount, Skydance Media still has the inside track. But there may be more players pulling up in the rearview. According to The New York Times, an investment firm, Apollo Global Management, is in talks with Sony Pictures for a joint bid to take over Paramount, the storied studio behind Mission: Impossible and several other film and TV franchises.

Officially, neither Sony nor Apollo are currently in negotiations with Paramount itself, which is only talking with Skydance. However, the potential deal with Skydance has not been well-received by many of Paramount’s investors. Via Bloomberg, Paramount investor William Riley has formally notified Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone about his belief that the Spyglass deal is solely for her “personal gains.” Because Redstone has a controlling interest in Paramount’s stock, she is currently pushing for a sale to Spyglass without asking the rest of the shareholders to vote on it.

During an earlier stage of negotiations, Apollo extended an offer for Paramount that would have been valued at $26 billion, which included Paramount’s debt. Paramount seemingly ignored that offer because it is in the middle of an exclusivity deal for negotiations with Skydance. The New York Post recently reported that Paramount and Skydance may not close a deal before that exclusive period expires on May 3.

The dynamics of a partnership between Apollo and Sony have not been locked down, especially since no deal has been made between the two companies. If Sony does enter the picture as a potential co-owner of Paramount, it would give the studio its own streaming service with Paramount+ as well as an expanded library of film and TV shows.

However, the biggest hurdle between Apollo and Sony taking over Paramount may be the U.S. government. Following Disney’s 2019 purchase of Fox’s entertainment assets, the FCC has pushed back on large media mergers, and the combination of two major studios into a single studio may face extreme scrutiny from multiple angles. Since Skydance isn’t one of Paramount’s competitors, it may face an easier path to the FCC’s approval. But the battle for Paramount is far from over.

Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn Says Attitudes Toward Skyler Have Now Changed

Anna Gunn famously played Skyler White on Breaking Bad, and when the show aired, many people criticized her character, and Gunn felt that blowback and found it upsetting. But now, Gunn says attitudes have changed, and people better understand the position Skyler was in and how she was trying to get Walt (Bryan Cranston) to do the right thing on the show.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn said she wasn’t tuned into the controversy at the time over her character because she wasn’t plugged into social media. People told her what others were saying, and she decided to read the comments–this was “probably a mistake,” she said.

“But it’s a mistake that led to a great deal of soul searching and me thinking, ‘Well, is it me?’ And I think the writers went through the same thing: ‘Is it the way we’ve written her?’ [Series creator Vince Gilligant] would sometimes say, ‘My gosh, no matter what we do with Walt, no matter how bad he breaks, people are still going, ‘Yay!’ They’re still in his corner and they’re still behind him,” she said.

Gunn said it was her lot to “go through that ring of fire” and deal with the abuse. A lot of it, she said, was misogynistic. “A lot of it was the way that female characters were treated, and I think we’ve come a long way since then,” she said.

Gunn said she’s proud of the many actresses who have spoken up over the years and “continued to pave the way and created their own antihero characters for themselves.”

Gunn said she wrote her 2013 op-ed for the New York Times about the response to Skyler because she has two daughters and she wanted them to understand what was going on.

Part of the reason people were so mean to Gunn was due to the anonymity of the internet, she said. “Nobody ever came up to me in person and said, ‘Oh my God, I hate you!’ People don’t do that. They save that stuff for the internet because, for the reasons that we all know, it’s anonymous and it’s hidden and people can let it fly,” she said.

But anonymous comments online can still be alarming and upsetting, Gunn said, because they can become violent. “Sometimes, the comments could turn threatening or violent, and that concerned me. So I just didn’t want to feel bullied by all that, and I felt that it was my responsibility to stand up and answer to it, which is what I did,” she said.

These days, when people approach Gunn and talk to her about her Breaking Bad character, Gunn says she’s observed a shift in what people say. “There’s still a long way to go, but we really have made seismic changes since then. So people come up to me now and say, ‘You were the linchpin for me. You were the conscience of the show. You were what pulled me into the show,'” she said. “Or they say, ‘The first time I watched it, I hated that character. But the second time I watched it, I realized, ‘Oh my God, that poor woman.'”

Gunn currently stars on the AppleTV+ series Sugar with Colin Farrell.

Prison Architect 2 Gets Last Minute Delay To September

The jail simulator game, Prison Architect 2, has been delayed once again. It was initially due out in March, then delayed to May. Now, it’s coming out on September 3.

Despite being less than a month away from release, publisher Paradox Interactive has revealed that Prison Architect 2 has been running into problems. “Recently, we ran some stability tests on our latest version of the game and noticed unexpected issues occurring too often, especially on low specs configurations,” Paradox Interactive explained in a statement to Eurogamer.

“Once we identified the issue, we started working on improving Prison Architect 2’s memory usage to mitigate the situation. Overall, the work has been successful, and we have seen improvements on lower-spec machines and consoles.”

The publisher went on to say that the memory fix gave way to new issues, such as crashes, especially on other PC configurations. Remedying them took time away from polishing the game up for release. While there is a certified version of the game on all platforms ready for launch, the publisher wants to launch it in the best state possible, hence the lengthy delay. It believes the new memory usage system will significantly improve player experience in the long run.

Paradox Interactive also issued a statement this week about another game it published, City Skylines II, addressing the game’s rough state and rushed content plans.

The first Prison Architect game was released in 2015. In GameSpot’s Prison Architect review, we said, “That’s the strange duality of Prison Architect. It provides a gripping, God’s-eye view of an element of society the Sims and Sim Cities of the gaming world dare not touch, but it is so beholden to the idea of being ‘a game’ that it threatens to neutralize the considerable number of strong, lasting aspects it possesses.”

Prison Architect 2 will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

COD Mobile Weapon Inspection Is An Entire WW2 Cinematic Experience

Call of Duty: Mobile is apparently getting a new weapon that has the most cinematic weapon inspection animation we’ve ever seen. A leak has revealed a new mythic weapon for Call of Duty: Mobile that has players staring down the barrel of the gun to see a WW2 sequence that looks like it could be from Saving Private Ryan. Soldiers take cover and shield themselves from incoming machine gun fire on a battlefield complete with a tank and planes flying overhead.

A solider collapses on the battlefield and is helped up by another infantryman who says, “Don’t worry, soldier, I’m with you every step of the way. We stand together. We fight for the generations to come.” Again, all of this is happening on top of the weapon, an MG42.

Normally, Call of Duty weapon inspections amount to the player looking down the barrel and around the sides of their gun to get a better look at it. This is something entirely different and far more impressive.

The video was published by the Leakers On Duty account, but as of yet, this specific weapon animation doesn’t appear to have been officially announced or detailed. The music from the sequel was apparently composed by none other than legendary composer Hans Zimmer.

The MG42 has various kill effects, too, including one that emits a small airplane that drops bombs. Check out the video below to get a closer look.

The Mythic MG42 is apparently a new gun for Call of Duty: Mobile, but whether or not it could show up in Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, Warzone, or Modern Warfare III remains to be seen. Warzone Mobile, Warzone, and Modern Warfare III share store bundles, but Call of Duty: Mobile stands apart as its own thing.